The Family Ghost show #48: Hi-Tone 2015/09/18

The show went pretty well. Not super crowded (though we WERE playing against Godspeed You! Black Emperor...*sniff* *sniff*). The first act was this country singer and her stuff was pretty bland. We had a discussion about whether the guitarist was playing "hot" or "cool" blues licks alongside her strumming and singing. Jack's band played in the middle (...a little strange considering it's HIS cd release party...but the kind of thing Jack would do). He actually said before a song, "I didn't mean to rip off 'Werewolves of London' when I wrote this" and then proceeded to play the song that did in fact sound EXACTLY like "Werewolves of London" (I mean, how is it possible to write that part, chord for chord in the exact rhythm, on accident!?). His last song was a rip off of "Modern Love" though he didn't acknowledge this. We played last. Not a whole lot of people at the end but I think we played pretty well. Here's the set:

Lost Year
Fall Behind
Cameras
Histrionics
Safety Corridor

Paul got too fucked up once again. I mean, I had some shitty playing on "Lost Year" but Paul was behind on EVERY hit. I fucked up 'cuz I started with the correct rhythm but immediately thought I was going too fast so I did it half as fast, then I realized now I really was too slow so I corrected it. I don't know where my brain was. I'd gotten a little discombobulated 'cuz I had to set up all the electionics (and I brought extras) and then there was an issue with the pa where the line inputs weren't on and I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and had to get someone from the Hi-Tone to correct this. Anyway, then the other guys forgot how to set up some of the drums so I had to do that so I was feeling a bit spread thin like I was setting up fucking everything. I think I even got a little snappy at them, which I didn't mean to. But hey. I played "Cameras" pretty fast, and while I kept the tempo pretty steady, I wasn't getting those double hits very well (especially towards the end). Paul couldn't realize the synth was way too loud on "Histrionics" to turn it down some. I guess that's fine, gives it something of a chaotic feel. But still. (I crank it up at the very end of "Fall Behind" so my single note cuts through.) I brought my eurorack and the Taurus so that was fun. Don't usually bring those live, but had enough songs to make good use of 'em. And it's always fun to have the modular. The real musicians in Jack's band seemed pretty impressed with how my equipment wrought such unmusical sounds. I know "Safety Corridor" tends to drive people away, but it often brings in like ONE person who wasn't there for it before. I saw a Hi-Tone guy come in by the door during it. Then the cute bartender afterward said she thought we sounded "cool" and her face even lit up in this genuine way when she said it. Overall a pretty good and fun show. Would've liked to have seen Godspeed especially right here in town (since that level of band doesn't come so often) but hey what cans ya do? Also, been a pretty crazy awesome past couple of days. I'm saving all the other non-show-related stuff for another post.

Cooper, Young, and Sanders

Thursday night Mary Beth and I went to see The Wolfpack at the Brooks and it was really good. Friday was the day of the show so there was getting ready for that. I think I provided all of the essential details about that in my last post! Was sure Saturday (yesterday) was going to be pretty horrible. 'Cuz it was a late show night and then I had to do stuff early in the morning. Cats to the vet and then Memphis for Bernie stuff at Cooper Young. I woke up early and tried to wake Mary Beth up but she was too tired and just kept angrily mumbling at me to stop and leave her alone. So I just had the chance to exhibit my expert cat wrangling skills. I managed to get Horace and Trudy both crated with minimal time and effort expended! Shut 'em in the bedroom while I got the crates from the closet. Even turned the radio on to hopefully cover up the noises some. Also carter was in the foyer with his bike or whatever so maybe some of those noises helped too? (The closet the crates are in are right next to the door to the foyer, there's a detail for you.) So one at a time I got 'em and took 'em out and put 'em in the upturned crates and voila. The actual visit to the vet was pretty routine. The receptionist checking us in said she liked their names: they sound like an old married couple. After that grabbed stool samples, brought 'em back, and was off to the Cooper Young Festival. We had a table set up over in front of Jim's house (who lives right behind Black Lodge, or what used to be Black Lodge). We did pretty well in getting people over. I mostly stayed at the table. We had teams canvassing the actual festival and getting people over to the booth. We had a petition to get him on the ballot in Tennessee. (The law is either the secretary of state can put him on or he needs 2,500 signatures.) I think we got over 300 that day. So that's over 10% in one city (Memphis) in one day. Pretty good work. We also got a whole fucking stack of voter registration forms. That felt really good to me, helping all those people to get registered to vote. And we gave off a few who'd forgotten things like their social security number. There were a lot of young people you could tell were barely of age. A good number of people had moved and needed to change their address. Alright! One girl who'd registered to vote liked my shirt (Mr. Sparkle) and so she showed me her tattoo: Everything's Coming Up Milhouse! Foxglove played in front of City Market (about across the street from where we were set up) so I left to go watch them. I left a little early ('cuz I'd gotten the time a little wrong) and wandered about before texting to find out where it was. We'd had pretty steady traffic to our table, but going from there to the full-on festival was like that scene in THX-1138 where they leave the white expanse of prison through the door to the crowd in solid movement. There was this one booth that sold these metal mugs that you could get free refills on the remainder of the day with cane sugar sodas. So I was on that shit. I got some Makeda's cookies for later and some fish tacos (tried to find another food truck but wandered halfway down Cooper and saw nothing so headed back to it). Mary Beth walked over and showed up just before Foxglove started. Their set was really good. They played kinda an acoustic thing. Ben had a snare and cymbal but mostly played this pump organ he'd brought. It was funny 'cuz they just started without Paul (he was inside the store). I guess they've stopped bothering to put up with that. I had to text him to let him know his band had started without him. Then he walks out a minute or two later looking confused and came up to the little tent and set up mid-song. Then Mary Beth and I wandered about the festival some. We went to the Planned Parenthood booth (only had enough cash for one shirt for her). A couple art booths. At one I bought some card-sized bits of art that were really aweosme. Opera Memphis had a booth and if you sang for them, they'd let you spin a wheel to get a prize (the big prize being a t-shirt). Well, I sang (and held the high note to the point they asked me to stop), spun the wheel, and I won the shirt! That was really fuckin' awesome. Okay some more time at the Bernie booth. I'll throw down a couple of amusing things I heard earlier in the day. At one point someone asked a younger guy walking buy if he was "feeling the bern" and he replied "not in particular." Cold. Then someone asked an older gentleman if he'd heard of Bernie Sanders and he said, "I've heard of all of 'em." We left a little less than an hour before the end of the festival. I had a great time and had stopped even feeling tired once I was active (in spite of my scant hours of sleep). We went grocery shopping. Then back home. Well, at this point it fucking hit me and I just passed out with clothes on (was woken up to take them off a little while later, and I was awake just long enough to brush my teeth and drift right back off). So yeah I slept like 14 fucking hours. I needed it! Feel pretty damn good today. Today was the coordinators meeting. Soi that was pretty productive. Made some minor fixes to some bugs in the website. I also figured out how to edit at least the html on wordpress so that's good. Maybe I can figure out some more helpful stuff later as well.