Tied For Last

Second band of a four-band night.

I'd like to be talking about how much fun we had playing our holiday show, and about how awesome the crowd response was. We did. And it was, and I'll talk about it later. But for now, I can't address this show without addressing what were SERIOUS problems with the sound (story in between hyphenated breaks. If ya just wanna know about us playing skip down)

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It's rare that we have debilitating sound problems - especially at The Continental where the sound is usually outstanding - but this night was to be a not-so-fun exception to the rule. I'm not going to mention the soundguy's name, but I will say that he's not either of the two regular soundmen we've often worked with at The Continental, and I hope that we will not have him again. Worse yet, it was our second show in a row with crappy sound, and as our last show of the year, it was a bit of a downer.

In an experiment to see if we could perhaps get more people to come if we played a little later, Rev. Caroline booked us as the third band on instead of the second slot, which is where we normally play at this club. We got there to find that the first band was a no-show, so we would be going on second, but we would keep our later time slot which was cool.

When an early band cancels, that usually means good news for the bands that follow. What would be the second band can now set up early, and that helps everything stay on track. At The Continental, this is important because the bands only get 35 min. sets.

This time, though, the four girls that made up what was to be the second band didn't show until 8pm. They were due to start their set at 8:15, so by club policy, they should have been there by 7:15. They ended up taking a LONG time to set up, and their lateness combined with the soundguy's inadequacies, resulted in them not starting until after 8:45. We, along with our very patient friends/fans, hung out and waited.

When they finally finished, instead of clearing the stage so that we could set up, they lingered at the front of the stage, blocking our access. We worked around them though, and, because we were so damn antsy by this point, we got set up quite quickly.

Three of us sing, but we were told by the soundguy that the club only had two working vocal microphones. I could be wrong, but I think the real issue was that he was falling so far behind on time that he was lying to us. The bottom line is that good clubs always have more mics than they need. If a band has backup singers, four or five mics is sometimes not enough, so having only two was ridiculous. Even on the off chance that there were only two working vocal mics, they no doubt had other instrument and amp mics which could have been used, and would have worked just as well. Instead, Geller couldn't sing, and our songs lost some power. Weak.

The soundguy then chose to not do a real soundcheck for us. This hurt us a lot, because for the rest of the set, there were big time sound problems. On stage, we could not hear ANY vocals (mine or Tommy's). Nor could we hear ANY bass. There's no way you can play a great show when you can't hear what you're playing. No matter how good you are, not being able to hear yourself means that you can't make the small corrections that can move you from being 90% "on" to 100%.

I'm actually listening to the recorded cd of the gig right now. On the whole, we were surprisingly good under the circumstances, but I'm cringing at the occasional vocal errors made by me and Tom, that I know would not have been made had we been able to hear ourselves. How Battistini was able to stay on beat for most of the night is a mystery, but he's sounding good on the recording. Despite our complaints to the sound guy, and his continued adjustments (which, we were later told, were changing the room sound, but not the stage sound), we just had to muddle through.

My biggest complaint in all of this though is that he cut our set short. Bands get 35 minutes at The Continental, which is a short set to begin with. Because most of our songs average between two and three minutes, we have VERY well-timed sets, and we had room for two more songs, but were only planning on playing one anyway, but he cut us, so y'all missed out on bloody Tuesday. Because of his dicking around, and the incredible lateness of the band before us, our set lasted a mere 29 minutes, 54 seconds (I have it on a cd, so it's real easy to time). I want my five minutes back.

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Now, as for the show…

We were real psyched to do our Christmas show, and we had a few treats in store for those who showed.

Because of screwed up schedules, we weren't able to practice within the week prior to the gig, so we were a little sloppier than usual. Luckily, because of the delays, many in the crowd were a little drunker than usual, so I don't think they minded a bit.

We were playing fairly well, if a little shaky at first. Since we were starting with four songs that we play nearly every time, we were able to go on autopilot. Then, it came time to debut "Atomic Picnic" - a brand new TFL original song. During rehearsals, this song took a little longer than most to put together before it sounded full enough. By now, though, we had it down, and, listening back to the cd, I can say we played it more steadily the first time live than many of our other songs. I was happy.

We cruised through Superstar and Achiever, and got to the big X-mas number. We had decided to do a punked-up version of "Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)" by John Denver. We had worked out a fantastic arrangement in rehearsals, but I screwed it up a little live, so I was disappointed in myself a little bit.

During the song, BatPam, our own elf in attendance, passed out a lot of TFL loot (t-shirts, cds, stickers, and candy) as our Christmas gift to our friends, the audience. I think it made up for any of my screw-ups in the song (or at least I tell myself that).

We then went into Baghdad, which got a great crowd response, and after which, a very drunken new friend (with TFL shirt on backwards) came up to the front to Hi-Five me and tell me how awesome we were. That's always cool - and damn funny if it's in the middle of a set!

We were then planning to play "Bloody Tuesday" when the sound guy told us that we had only one song left (I still feel gypped). We tore through Viva Las Vegas, and we put the close on an awesome year!

Set List:
SHE WAS JUST A GIRL
WE'RE ALRIGHT
TAKE JANINE AWAY
SAILOR
ATOMIC PICNIC
SUPERSTAR
ACHIEVER
PLEASE DADDY
BAGHDAD
VIVA LAS VEGAS