SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 at Ravari Room

FOOL'S CROWN
DEVILCAKE
EVE OF SHADOW
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Ravari Room

It was kind of a strange night all around, so I'll have to rely on the opinions of everyone else.

Eve of Shadow included members of a band we played with in the Midgard Comics days. They were like a black metal version of Korn or something. The keyboard dude headbanged more than everyone. It was cool.

Fool's Crown included Jim Swanson, whom I've known for approximately forever. I think since about 1985 or 1986, something like that. I haven't seen him in a long long long time, so long that I did no recognize him at first. We were in a band together in the late 80s. He's easily the greatest drummer I've played with. And the dude isn't even a full-time drummer.
In Fool's Crown he plays bass. So, there. I mean, I play bass and drums but Jim SLAYS on all instrumentation. Me, I just have a go. That's all I can do is have a go. Take a crack, that kind of thing. At any rate, it was sweet as pie to see Jim.

Meanwhile I think Michael Bill had the biggest posse in the whole place. I can't say I saw that one coming. But hey, it's about damn time.

The venue was not packed out to the gills. Not overrun with drunks like last time. Just a nice clutch of hardcore peeps down front for the whole set.

And can I just say that it cracks me up that Michael Bill can still come up with shit like asking...what's the stupidest song we could open with, that we've never opened with before? Answer below.

The set was a humorous blend. Drumming-wise, I didn't have as many problems as last time. I knew in advance which pieces of the drum set would come loose during every song. Playing-wise, I threw a few clangers. But, again, hopefully not as many as last time.

I do think the BURN SANDWICH BURN into SAUERKRAUT LURKING followed by I WANT A FUCKING BIG MAC before MARSHMALLOW was kind of a long bunch of plodding. But that's what happens when we insist on using John Cage approved methods of chance determination for setlist construction.

We played
CHICKEN NUGGETS OF SIN (with the old school BOOOBIEESSSSS intro)
PIZZA PARTY
BURN SANDWICH BURN
SAUERKRAUT LURKING
I WANT A FUCKING BIG MAC
MARSHMALLOW
CARMEL KNOWLEDGE
HANDS OFF MY MOTHERFUCKING OREOS
SALAD BAR MAN (including BLACK SABBATH'S "RAT SALAD" in the middle)
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT SATAN
WEENUSMOBILE
FRIBBLE

I didn't break anything or drop anything. I did get blisters on my hands & fingers though. Which is fine. I didn't draw blood, so it's all fine.

Steve sounded great. Michael Bill sounded great. Gourley was on fire, as usual.

Oh yeah & the soundman kicked ass. He apparently works/worked at Thee Alrosa, so he's got his shit together. & the rumor is that he was running sound at Alrosa on THE infamous night there. Fuck.

So anyway. See y'all next month, hopefully. Hopefully my glam rock alter ego will be signing in.

PRETTY PLEEZE!!!!

JULY 1, 2006 RAVARI ROOM

Around 1am I BOLTED up to Ravari Room. MCB and Steve were outside. we chatted briefly while a band finished playing. Then we took our shit in. By "we" I mean "they". Gourley not only drove my drums there, but he loaded them in too. It was super sweet.

Assembling the drums was baffling. I took a long time and even once I thought everything was in place, it really wasn't. Good god. The fucking snare drum moved every time I hit it! Ditto for the wimpy fucking crash cymbal stand. It inched away slowly. Hm. I wanted it raw and brutal, didn't I.

The snare and hi-hat were interfering with each other. The snare mic kept falling off the little clippy stand thing. No one noticed. The hi-hat cymbals were just flappy & loose pretty much the whole time. And the tom mics blocked the heads! Shambolic.

Good god. And remember how excited I was about all the new arrangements we've been working on? Feh. Forgotten. Almost entirely. I played my old old old drum parts when I could remember them.

Marshmallow got off to a decent start. I'm getting ahead of myself already though. Gourley has worked at Ravari Room for a couple of years now, I think. All the people who work there (it's a small army) just know him as this nice, quiet, calm dude. So they all went APESHIT when they saw him with devil horns and no shirt on. He was already running through his repetoire of opening lines before we even started playing. WE ARE DEVILCAKE! FROM COLUMBUS OHIO! The audience was very drunk but happily so and very um dancey. I haven't seen such disgraceful moshing and shoving between Devilcake audience members in decades, it was excellent.

Okay, so Marshmallow. I remembered to play it slow as shit. After that... I was lucky to finish a couple of the songs. Ha. Wienermobile, my new nemesis - due to the tempo & the fiddliness - I accidentally took that one at full speed. It was a mistake to play it that fast. Oh well. It kicked my ass but I only missed a couple of beats. Salad Bar Man was a clusterfuck, apart from our injection of Black Sabbath's "Rat Salad", which we've rehearsed to near-perfection. Rat Salad Bar Man. The Salad Bar Man part of the song was a clusterfuck. Um, we played Steve's new anthem okay. Carmel Knowledge. I Can't Believe It's Not Satan... I don't know, I was bored by the second verse but I think the audience was still shoving and bickering among itself. Gloriously.

Pizza Party feels increasingly pointless for some reason. I was tempted to yell my old backing vocal bit but I was frankly lucky just to be keeping time by then. I had enough plates spinning in the proverbial air as it was.

Chicken Nuggets Of Sin was okay. I mean, I don't know if it's musically relevant anymore (or if it ever was), but we kept it spinning pretty well. Fribble went over nicely. Too bad I could only hit the toms at like 40% strength due to them being blocked by fucking microphones. Hands Off My Oreos was okay, nothing to write home about.

Last call was called. We played a couple more. The audience - mostly Gourley's drunk-ass coworkers - went NUTS. I mean truly insane. Someone stole all of our setlists! Everyone was high fiving Gourley and saying they didn't know he had it in him etc etc.

I was frankly embarassed by my shitty ass drumming. I thought I really fucked the pooch the entire time. And yet... that's the biggest 'pit' we've had in, as I say, maybe ever. (Which, how come no one ever danced when I was playing bass? All I ever wanted a small cluster of people to yell at/with!)

Since the set was so short & I'm not drumming at full capacity, I was still somewhat energetic afterwards. Relatively, I mean. Plus Gourley took my drums back too! I didn't have to lift them once. How awesome is that shit.

I want to complain about the set but frankly if people are DANCING, then there's nothing to complain about. It reminded me of the first time we played at High Five way back in the 1800s. Lots of drunk people there too. Not in a bad way, strangely enough.

MAY 2006 PIX

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