Tied For Last

First off, you should probably read the BACKSTORY.

Now for the gig... I'm gonna try and cover everything, but I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff.

One band of many.

We were looking at this show as a good way to be seen by an audience who might not otherwise know us, but might dig us anyway. With this in mind, we decided to give out free sampler cds at the show called "Is This Your Homework, Larry?"

We also hoped to get some press coverage, and that quest was successful when Rev. Caroline worked the pones and faxes and got an interview in our local daily paper. That's here if you wanna read it.

There are three floors at the Knitting Factory - the main floor, and two floors below. We got there and found that we were due to play the bottom floor. Because we knew that most of the folks there weren't there to see a specific band, we figured they'd be going in and out of all three rooms, catching different bands all nigth. We also knew that they'd start at the top, so we knew that we had to do something to woo them downstairs to see us.

With that in mind, about a half hour before showtime, Tom and I brought armfuls of free cds and handed them out to everyone we met. The audience was incredibly receptive, and it paid off big, with a whole bunch of people we didn't know coming down to check us out, and staying quite awhile.

Because we were one of only two bands downstairs, and because we went on first there, we got to set up and soundcheck early, so that we could just take the stage when it was time to start later. The room was incredibly loud, which was weird for a room with only a vocal PA. We had tried doing the soundcheck with our amps low, but the drums just drowned everything out that way (and, compared to most drummers, Geller doesn't play too loud). We had to turn up the amps to get a decent balance.

The set went very well, and we were quite comfortable all the way through. We had a larger number of our friends show up than we had initially expected, but even with that, the room was filled with a buch of people we didn't know. The audience response was outstanding, and they seemed to like us very much.

We planned on doing a lot of Lebowski-themed songs, along with a few cover tunes from the film, and decided to do some of our catchier numbers so that we could perhaps pick up some new fans along the way. Based on time contraints and ease of "punking up" a song, the songs from the movie we chose to cover were, ironically enough both cover versions in the movie as well.

We did "Dead Flowers" by the Rolling Stones (as done by Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the movie). Our version was a Social Distortion-esque rave-up, which, though a lot of fun to play, we'll probably be retiring if only because so many other bands do that song as well.

We ended the set with Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" (done by Shawn Colvin in the film). Not only do we love playing this song, we got such a great audience response from this, that we're definitely adding this to our stable of covers.

During "Wasted," Tommy took the vocals and I played guitar like usual, but at one point Tommy lost balance onstage and, trying to avaid stepping on my ger at the front of the stage, ended up falling off and into the audience (landing on his feet, though). The audience (and we) loved it!

We tied in many of our other tunes (Achiever, Got No Life, Lesbian Circus, Wasted and Baghdad) to the movie with Tom and I announcing the songs with movie quotes. Rev. Caroline later found out that we were pretty much the only band to reference the movie in any serious way, and really I hope that's not the case.

What WAS the case, however, is that only two of the nine bands who played on Friday actually came to the second night's festivities as well - Tied For Last and Hair Supply (a metal tribute to Air Supply). Scott and Will, the Fest's organizers were cool enough to gives us shout-outs on Saturday though, so that was cool.

All in all, the whole damn thing was a rousing success. We got a bunch of new fans, we met a buch of awesome people, we got to perform at a party that we would have gone to anyway, and we got awesome press coverage. Not only that, but we've received booking inquiries based solelyon the fact that we played Lebowskifest. It was a damn good week for team TFL!

Set List:
SHE WAS JUST A GIRL
SAILOR
BLOODY TUESDAY
WE’RE ALRIGHT
DEAD FLOWERS
SUPERSTAR
ACHIEVER
STAY UP AND TALK TO ME
GOT NO LIFE
PARTY DRESS
LESBIAN CIRCUS
WASTED
TAKE JANINE AWAY
BAGHDAD
VIVA LAS VEGAS