Sunday, April 22, 2012

Day 11

Sunday, April 22
Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland
with Cardinal Wyrm and Spectre

We had the hardest time locking down a Bay Area venue... dunno why. Michelle's been booking this thing for months, making calls, sending e-mails, texts, facebook messages, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, you name it. Eventually she found Eli's, which had a Sunday night open, and said "Reserve me Sunday night. I'll get it booked."

And she did, certainly. Spectre was kind of a last minute addition, but Cardinal Wyrm has a member who did my Cyclocosmia tattoo-- really good to see him again. They were all really cool, actually.

The crowd seemed kind of unresponsive, to me, from up on stage... though my band says I'm being paranoid. It might just be fallout from the house show madness. People clapped and hooted and whistled after the songs, but, to be fair, they were an awful lot like me at a show: I tend to stand with a drink and watch the band. I don't do a lot of emoting when I'm on the floor either, so I really can't complain.

The bartender was cool to me when we loaded in, but everyone tells me he was slagging off the bands loudly, to everyone, from behind the bar, even before the first band went on. Eli's seemed like a pretty good place to be, but they were locking the doors at 11:00 tonight. The bartender was hopping from the stage area to the back patio, flicking the lights on and off, and telling everyone to get the fuck out.

We'd actually misunderstood the timing-- Spectre only played 15 minutes (on Cardinal Wyrm's equipment), and we thought music stopped at 11:00... so we drug our feet setting up, trying to go on at 9:00 or so. We found out before our first song that everything stopped at 11:00PM, music had to be done by 10:15. We had fucked up by not doing our usual, quick, pro, set-up-and-play, and we kind of screwed over Cardinal Wyrm by doing that, but we just plain didn't know. And that bartender just didn't want anyone there-- not bands, not crowds, not drinkers, and certainly not himself. When a club supplies you with free drinks for the show, it's band etiquette to tip the bartenders... but I feel like a chump for having tipped this guy. We cut songs from our set to not hog the short, early-ending stage time; the closing band shouldn't have to suffer because of our misunderstanding and the bar's intolerance.

Vegan fortune cookie finger puppets
The day was spent in Oakland. We found a vegan Chinese place, wandered all around town, popped into Beer Revolution (the two sours on tap there were nowhere near as awesome as the one I had in Petaluma), visited a barbeque that members of Weekender were putting on. This is my second Oakland tour stop and, you know what: I kinda love Oakland. I had a damn fine day walking around town, with good food, good beers, good people. There was a hatchback blocking the van and trailer from backing out of the Fukm/Embers driveway, and one of the housemates and an across-the-street neighbor went door-to-door finding the car's owner and getting it moved.

Seriously, Oakland is a good town.

Since the show ended so early, we didn't stay-- the Sacramento house was on the way to the next show, and we'd been given an open invite, so we headed north. The tape adapter in the van has gone south (gee, I've only had it for like 8 years), so we actually had to root around for tapes. We found the Decline of the Western Civilization tape, and when it played through and looped, we dug around and found two Judas Priest cassettes: Ram It Down and Unleashed in the East. These are all Michelle tapes, but I love Unleashed in the East... Ram It Down... er... I think Ram It Down appeals to Michelle in the same way WASP does.

Anyway, Joel and I knew some people at the show from back in our California days, and we all drove to Sac together, and sat on the back porch and drank many Hoegaardens.

Tomorrow is a driving day: Sacramento to Portland. About 10 hours.

Comments

Posted by at
Labels: , ,