February 12, 2004

1:40 a.m.

Gig from Hell and Grapefruit

We knew it was going to be a bit of a toss, and it's the kind of gig we almost never do any more; but we wanted to get in front of somebody who books another place, and has influence all over the Boston market, and we've been wooing him for a long time and we just have no following in Boston -- so we agreed to do it for the hat. One half-hour set, in the middle of several hours of open mic.

At first it seemed okay; the staff were so nice, and went out of their way to grill us vegetables that weren't on the menu, and really were very solicitous. I was getting a good impression. The stage was small for us, so we went three stations across instead of four, and we'd left several instruments at home since it was such a short night. We sound checked, which was a little iffy, but we're at the mercy of what's there and who is running it. Then we ate, warmed up and waited for the open mic to start.

It was ghastly.

I'm sorry. It was bad. Mostly really... bad.

Microphones that had worked in sound check suddenly went off. Vocals pierced. The room is long and narrowish, and the whole back half ignored the fact that there was music going on, and chatted and laughed, and one guy decided to practice his song right at the table next to us, while someone else was performing.

The second slot was taken by a trio, and the girl had a sort of faux furry jacket and big russian sort of hat on, so her face was completely obscured because the stage lights were directly above, so that if she'd taken her hat off she'd have looked scary with all the vertical shadows. As it was she was just a mouth under a big, white, faux furry hat. And though her speaking voice was normal, when she sang all of a sudden she got really affected, very nasal and dropping off the ends of her lines and warbling certain notes kind of on and off the pitch. It was remarkable. Halfway through her song I leaned over to Carol and said, "She's sort of an Edith Piaf-meets-Marlena Deitrich-and-has-a-child-that-grows-up-to-be-mayor-of-Munchkin City." And she snorted her tea out her nose because I was exactly right.

Save me.

The saddest part of the night was that the back half continued to blab throughout, even through our set, which surprised me because we've shut up noisy rooms before -- but you know, it was about a twenty year old crowd, clique-ish, all of whom had come out to play two songs and try to get heard, and I think it's just not our, shall I say, ideal demographic. The sound was a disaster; feedback galore (what was he DOING back there, picking his nose?), and when he'd finally get to it, he'd just turn down the mic in question and suddenly, boom, no more monitor and not much mains. Muddy bottom end, strident highs, and the lights that made us look like Frankentrio. I just waited for it to be over. Two songs before the end, several kids next to us lit up cigarettes. We thought it was a nonsmoking room. Later we were told that, after dinner, people are allowed to smoke. Asthma and a gut-deep aversion to noxious lung-eating smoke-sucking habits prevent me from playing smoking rooms. Chris had some kind suggestions for our presenter about maybe holding off on it in future until the feature act is done, and then just letting folks smoke in the back of the room where the fans are; the guy thought it was a great and novel idea and said that he would start doing just that. Of course he's a smoker too, so naturally it never would have occurred to him that any singers might object to having smoke in the room. (Slaps forehead)

The whole thing royally pissed me off, nevermind the joke that was our fee. We mourned the ludicrousness of it all, and shook our heads in wonder that this day, where we made all of forty bucks, was the same day that we booked a gig for $2100 elsewhere. I think, if people only knew how bizarre and sometimes arbitrary this life is... they just wouldn't believe it. One day heroes, the next day nobody again.

So on the way home I described the night in my best BBC Newscaster voice, where they drop off the last word of every sentence in this very stern tone, even if they're saying something utterly mundane; and we described the night's adventure using our alphabet game ("How was the gig tonight?" "Awful." "Boring." "Caca-y." "Dumb." "Excruciating." "Flaky." "Ghastly." "Horrible." etc.) (Of course, when we play this game, every time we get to X we can't think of anything, so it always ends up being "Xylophone Repair Man something," because that was the first X we came up with when we were playing with the topic of "Depressing Jobs.") And we passed the hour and a half back to my apartment where they dropped me off and I came upstairs, talked to Dar on the phone, and ate a grapefruit from Florida instead of ice cream because I've been pigging out too much. And that was my night, and now I'm going to bed, before 2a.m., dammit.