inexplicably, we won

so we played a show last night, and it didn't go all to perfectly. we had trouble hearing each other, tommi had trouble seeing the notes. tommi usually follows me to a degree, instead of the other way around, ya know, how yr supposed to follow the drummer, not the shitty guitarist. we learned that we really do need to be facing each other, and that if and when we get other band members, we're gonna copy the boredoms and stand in a circle, cuz that sure as hell works for them. so we fucked up the starts to a couple of the songs, but didn't stop, always push ahead, no do-overs, cuz that's tacky. and the PA was sketchy as fuck, it cut out half way thru failed musician, so i kicked over the mic and walked directly into the audience hollering the words, cuz i also don't stop songs for shitty PAs, no fucking do-overs. because i felt contrary, i decided to start us off with the pretty melodic ballad type thing, count the days. this scared off the goth girls in front pretty quick, oh well. pretty much the whole set was rather confrontational lyrically, my current subject matter being as it is, failure and the self analysis of sucking. we kept the mood light though, cuz as we fucked up like half the songs, i pretty much took the piss out of us consistently throughout the night. it was not our best show. tommi described it as exactly how he nightmared it to be. inexplicably, we won! why? because all of these people from tommi's work came! and they were all awesome and super nice, well except for the kid all twacked out on mushrooms and that got kicked out of the club and then passed out on the sidewalked and initially refused to get into a cab and gave me attitude. but everyone else was really cool. mikey came, so yay mikey! and so did daniel after he got off work. so i made sure both of them stayed drunk on shitty $2 pabst. anyways, even though we sucked to a degree, i felt that we did come together on the 2nd half of the set, other than the fact that the god damn drums kept sliding away, cuz we didn't have room for a carpet rug in my shitty corolla.

what we played was: count the days, my self doubt (fucked up the intro cuz tommi got confused and didn't realize i had actually started when i was pretending to talk the lyrics to the audience), corporate rock, i hate music, jazz (which we fucked up cuz i sped up at the beginning and wasn't listening to tommi), the failed musician (where the PA cut out and shenanigans ensued), ambisexual (went really well, i broke a string!), i got a mental block (i think tommi broke a stick on this one...but i'm not sure which song exactly), hack, and another dead queer boy (which featured tommi doing an extended drum solo at the end even after i unplugged my guitar and turned off my amp, i was so mark e smith, haha, but mainly i was like what the fuck are you doing tommmi?! but the audience of his friends really dug it). we pulled the new song charisma from the set, which we were gonna do during the middle of the set, cuz as i said, the first half was pretty fucking shaky, and i figured i'd just fuck it up real bad or something and forget the words and shit.

the other bands:

afekt went first. they're this industrial goth duo, playing guitars and screaming emotionally over pre-recorded beats and synths. i like their influences and they have potential, but as they were, i felt they regurgitated their influences just a bit too heavily with not quite enough originality. but i did have one of their tunes stuck inside of my head all day. i talked to the singer afterwards and told him i enjoyed their set, he was really nice, said that they were bummed that the mix sucked. the goth girls that came to see them got there late and missed their set, which was a bummer for them. one of the guys from the band told tommi later on that they'd really like to play with us again, so they were cool kids.

fighting the villian were second, and were pretty much faceless emo-punk pop, and a lot of their songs were in 3/4 time. with an actual front man they could be really good i suppose, but their lead guitarist just could not sing, as he was way too far from the mic, all chipmunk-ish like the guy from superchunk, not that i don't like superchunk, they're great. solid rhythm section though, mikey really liked the bass player. their sound check was like 15 seconds of raining blood, always love to hear some of slayer.

triangles went third, and i missed most of their set cuz of mushroom boy out on the sidewalk. they could have been really good if they actually sang into their mics instead of like six inches away, fucking hell. bartender slash soundguy was like, what the fuck else can i do, shit was feeding back if it got any higher, i was like ain't shit you can do dude. anyways, like the electro hip-hop was interesting and totally different from the other bands on the bill, but it would have been cooler if the chick did more than just stand their while the guy did all the work on the synth. would have liked to have seen more of their set even though they weren't quite performance ready.

so we were fourth, told y'all about that already.

cervantes went fifth, and they were honestly the best band, in a performance sense. solid musicianship, a singing drummer, cool influences, pretty much solid classist dischord style hard rock. a real strong jawbox influence, one of my favorite bands. i got a copy of their demo afterwards, they seemed like nice guys.

so as we were breaking down at the end of the night, kristen, the girl i guess mainly organizing the event, informed us that we had received the most votes and that we would move on to the semi-finals. semi-finals? hadn't heard anything about that...she said it was in three weeks, and i was like, nope can't do that, cuz we got meshell n'degeocello tickets, and so she was like, how about the week after that, and i was like sure. the sketchy thing is that we never knew that this was an on-going competition. instead the previous dialogue had made it sound like that each week the winning band would receive $300, 2nd place $100, the rest a cut of the door. as far as i know, nobody last night got paid shit. now i ain't about the money, but part of our method of getting peoples to come down and hang and buy drinks and vote for us was that we'd get them all drunk afterwards or at later time with a portion of our winnings, cuz we're such swell kids, ya know? so clearly, this chick very much mis-represented herself and her event, but i didn't make a big thing about it at the time cuz i'm not gonna make a scene, i wasn't there for the money nor necessarily win. but at the same time a cut of the door however meager would have been nice, especially being that we brought the most people in, be that only 15 kids, but they all did drink, why we each spent over $30 on drinks. so some clarification is very much in order. obviously they probably didn't even make enough to cover the cost of renting out the space, so whatever, they need to work on their promotion aspect. hundred people my ass, not on a sunday night at a venue that is usually closed that day. the other sketchy aspect is that tommi and daniel both felt that the event was set up for the last band, cervantes, to win, as daniel observed kristen hanging out with them throughout the night and it appeared that they were friends. now in all honesty, i'll be straight-up, cervantes was the best band last night, they played a solid set and had their shit together. but hey, we somehow got lucky and tommi managed to get people to come (i failed miserably, all my friends are on notice as of now, haha). anyways, whatever, so we move on to the semi-finals, yay for us, whatever. hopefully we'll play better next time.

as for some changes, daniel has declared his desire to be our keyboard player, so i'm like ok, lets give a go. we're gonna give it a serious try tomorrow. i guess we're also gonna try and find a bass player again too, cuz we might as well have someone to fill out our sound, so we'll see if we can find anyone. no straight boys. unless they're really cute. and nice. and can play. yeah.