public practice, part 2

As previously stated in Public Practice Part 1, Kieskagato had booked three shows of low expectation in rapid succession. We thought of them basically as being public practices- a chance for us to get used to playing together outside of the garage. Having gotten through the first show, the previously described day-after-Christmas show at Kelly’s Olympian in the midst of a snowstorm, our sights were now set on public practice number two:Wednesday January 7^th at Satyricon. Claiming to be Portland’s oldest rock club, Satyrican has had its ups and downs over the years, recently going out of business and then reopening as an all ages room. Room 101 had played there somewhere around 2001, but none of us had since even been inside. Maybe, as an all ages venue, there would be kids there that we could freak out with our monstrous, wordless compositions.

The show came about through an out of the blue message on Myspace from a band called Kate’s Mirror. Apparently they had since changed their name to Total Hippy Comeback, or THC for short. Since the club website said that the show started at 7:30, and having not heard back from the Total Hippy Comeback folks about load in time, we showed up at about 6:30 just to be safe. That’s when things got kind of weird.

We pulled up in front and the doors were all locked. I knocked on the only backlit door, that of the tiny bar adjoining the venue, and identified us as Kieskagato. The bartender told us to go ahead and load in, that the show would be in this little bar instead of the main room, that there was no PA system because the other band was bringing their own, and that we could basically do whatever we wanted as long as we were done by 11:30. So, we loaded our stuff onto the “stage,” the small area at the back of the bar between the pinball machines and the entrance to the bathrooms. THC having not yet arrived and the bar being empty, we waited to set up, collected a sizable string of drink tickets from the bartender, traded in some of them for beers, and sat down at the bar to wait. The bartender, despite being very patient, quickly grew tired of listening to our conversation (regarding how Adam had liked the band U2 as a kid until he went to see the Rattle And Hum movie and was confronted with disturbing images of the band’s undershirt-less leather vests, leather pants, rawhide jewelry, etc), so he turned on the Family Guy movie on the bar TV’s. We drank beers and watched the whole movie- just us and the bartender. Toward the movie’s end, we started getting pretty nervous because the other band was still not turning up and it was now past 8:00.

Adam: “Dave, how did this show come about again?”
Dave: “A band emailed us on Myspace and offered it to us,”
Adam: “How do we know them?”
Dave: “We don’t, it was purely random. I’d never heard of them before.”
Adam: “Did they say anything about when they’d be here?”
Dave: “No, I emailed them for show details and never heard back.”
Adam: “Have we really pissed anyone off lately, made them angry enough to construct this situation as an elaborate trap to make us feel like idiots?”
Dave: “I don’t know!”

Shortly after this exchange, the other band did show up, along with Adam’s parents, wife, sister w/ beau, and Dave’s fiancé. Also fleshing out the crowd was Total Hippy Comeback’s fans, consisting of two awesome guys that sat right in front and listened to our whole set and an AV Tech guy that had an old fashioned slide projector like my parents once used in their dining room. After much technical preparation, he projected some slides on a ceiling pipe during THC’s set. It was dank. We played, interrupted only by the audience needing to tiptoe between us to use the bathrooms. Then we loaded out. Then THC played.

Another interesting exchange, outside the club during a fresh air break while THC was playing:
Random pedestrian: “Ya’ll got a smoke I can bum?”
Dave and Bryan: “Sorry.”
RP: “I’m wasted, dog.”
D/B: “That’s good!”
RP: “How much is the cover?”
D/B: “Free, you should go in.”
RP: “Naw, I fi’n to go down to the gay clubs and make ‘em all buy me drinks.”
[long silence…]
RP: “Alright, y’all have a nice evening.”

After this, we stayed as long as we could through THC’s set, which was kind of fun- like a lo-fi Sonic Youth, and went home.

True Story.