Show Journal 2015-10-13
This show was a long time coming. Looking back, it had been two years since our last show and one year since Dustin wandered off to pursue a steady paycheck playing music in Nashville. After his departure I wrote a 5-part blog post outlining our time as a band. Towards the end of that post I mentioned we wanted to play a 20th anniversary show, but were afraid that we may have missed the chance. A few weeks after the story went online, we got an unexpected e-mail from Jim, who played drums with us from 1999-2005. He said he’d gladly play a show. There was one catch. Jim currently lives in Germany. He promised he would make it over regularly enough, so we agreed and patiently waited. Sure enough in the Spring, he appeared. We practiced and it sounded pretty good. He came back in the Summer. We played again and it was still pretty good. He came back in the Fall, we booked a show and next thing you know here we are. Although we had seen Jim numerous times over the years we certainly did not expect to be playing music together. In fact, it had been 10 years since his drums and our instruments made that all too familiar racket. The whole practice experience leading up to this show was surreal. We were the same people doing the same thing and with the same sensibilities, but at a totally different point in our lives. Our jokes and references hadn’t changed a bit, but the reasons for missing or rescheduling practices were totally different. In those 10 years, four marriages and five children have happened. Everything is the same, but everything is different. The songs we practice and ultimately played were a slow evolution. Jim diligently learned a bunch of songs from Requiem, but in the end I think Dave, Justin and I wanted to hear the stuff we hadn’t played in a while. So, did the show live up to all this hype? Yeah, for us it did. All in all, the show was pretty good. Black Karma Social Club played first and sounded pretty solid. Any band that covers ‘Bodies’ by the Sex Pistols will do ok in my book. Burn The Stage was next and they were great. We’ve known Ike and Nathaniel for a long time, so we shouldn’t have been at all surprised by how solid they were. Trivia time: back in 1996, 800 Octane played with Nathaniel’s band, The Drapes, in North Carolina. They were on tour from Portland, and we opened for them. Who would have known we’d cross paths so many times since then? I was pretty nervous and even a bit shaky for our set. Not as shaky as Jim, who stood on his drum stool to wave and promptly fell sideways onto my amp spilling his beer everywhere. It’s true, we are rock royalty. The set was great. Lots of old stuff. Lots of singing along. People seemed to have a great time and the word I kept hearing afterwards was “positive”. I’ll accept that. The show was a great experience. Although it wasn’t a formal “20th” affair it did the job. Thanks to Ike for making it happen, those who have seen recently, and those we hadn’t seen in upwards of 5, 10 and 15 years.
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