September 18, 2003 - The Alumni Club - Valley Advocate Grand Band Slam
Henning says: As we pulled on to Worthington Street last night, I was delighted to see a bunch of Valley Advocate Grand Band Slam banners and posters all over the place. And look! Right there in front of the Alumni Club, an open parking spot! Even though, we know from past experiences that open parking directly in front of the club where you will soon be playing is almost always a bad bad sign, we were still glad to not have to double park or lug our stuff too far. I'd never been to The Alumni Club before. It's big. We were supposed to play upstairs in the smaller room. When we walked into the room we found Tom Vanna unpacking and setting up a brand new drum set. It was nice to put a face to his name. Brian and I helped in setting up the never-before touched drums. I was helping partly in order to keep warm - the air conditioning was set on arctic chill. We arrived exactly 45 minutes before our set time of 7:00, unfortunately, the sound engineers didn't show up for another 20 minutes and then it took them well over an hour to set up their stuff. All the while people kept approaching me about how long it was going to be before we started. I was doing my best to just be a guy in a band and not a stage manager and sound guy, but it wasn't easy. When it was about 15 minutes after we were supposed to start, the feedback began. If you have seen the movie "The Pianist", you might remember at one point a bomb explodes right next to the main character. All the sound is sucked out of his ears to be replaced only by a high high pitch whistling. That's what it was like, getting hit by a bomb (or at least watching someone getting hit by a bomb in a movie theater - don't worry, I'm not really comparing a little bit of monitor feedback to actually being in a warzone). When it was about half an hour after we were supposed to start, a guy walked up to me and curtly said, "When are you playing?" I said, "Well, we were supposed to start fifteen minutes ago." He said, "Half an hour ago. What's the hold-up?" I said, "Well, the sound guys are having have some problems..." He turned around and walked away before I even finished my sentence. Suddenly I felt guilty for ruining his life. About 45 minutes after we were supposed to start, one of the sound guys started asking Brian to help him tune the drums. I ran up on the stage and just said, "I don't think we have time to start messing with the drums now, we are 45 minutes behind schedule and the next band is supposed to start in fifteen minutes." He looked up and said, "Ok, we're ready." 10 minutes later, we got the official go-ahead after I told the other guy to not worry about the second monitor and that we just had to start. Finally, we got on stage and were presented with an award for Ken (It's going right up on the Rub Wrongways wall. Our little Ken). We pretended that Ken was going to pop up on the wide-screen tv behind us via sattelite, but he never did. At this point we tore into our set and played every song really fast because we were so filled with hurried adrenaline. But, even though we were playing in a strained environment and there weren't many people in the room - I felt strangely at ease and humored. Many thanks to Anya, Debbie, The Codys, and Tom Merchant for being in the crowd and looking towards the stage. Otherwise, it would have felt like we were playing only for the three flashing TVs hanging above the empty dance floor. My apologies to the bands after us, after they were so kind, I ended up not going back up to watch them even after I said I would, and I felt bad all night. I think it was Drunk In July specifically. I'm a jerk. Also, thanks to the Advocate and Alumni Club people who were all really friendly and enthusiastic. Tony Says: I don't play in my hometown of Springfield often but that's okay by me. It's not the place for original rock bands, never was. And there's a lot to be said for the fact that I ran across several fellow Springfield-raised musicians on our 5-show tour (Jose, Sara, Larry) who ply their original songs in other locales. I don't want to drag us all down here too much but this show was too loud, I didn't play well, the set-up was frantic and stressful and it was an atmosphere of smoke, noise, alcohol, TV and mostly empty space. On the positive side, I did get to catch up with Tom Merchant (whose car was broken into during our set- ahh, Springfield), a songwriter whose talents are in inverse proportion to his fame. After playing, SFTD plus Anya and Debbie all had a lovely dinner together at The Sitar Indian restaurant a few blocks away. We were all delighted to inhale the heavenly curry aromas, taste the delicious food, listen to the swirling combo of sitar ragas and Bollywood chestnuts, witness the sight of Henning's clown glass and laugh, laugh, laugh when Witty Tony took note of Brian spreading his napkin over his lap and quipped "Cover your lap when you eat, my sweet!" Oh, how we laughed! Merriment! I Love Springfield.