Bands for Bernie

HOLY SHIT! The Bands for Bernie show went amazingly well! I'm actually dumbfounded at how well everything went. I guess I'll be getting to talking about that, but I'm a chronological guy and I'll try to see if I can remember just the other stuff first.

Well, I'll get real chronological and start with the thing that happened before my last post that I forgot to include: at Housecon Genie gave us a deck of Oblique Strategies cards that she printed. Really fuckin' awesome. Oh, and there's a dickbutt in there as well. What else? On Monday, I went over to Geoff's to practice with Foxglove as I'd been invited to play with them on their cover of "Burning down the House." So I brought my Moog over and played it was a lot of fun. There were meetings at work this week about the whole Paymenthub thing and it was decided that what we'd been spending all this time on boiled down to putting square pegs in round holes, etc. Throughout the week, some running around and collecting merch from some bands. Getting last bits of planning done. On Tuesday Mary Beth and I went to see Girlpool at the Hi-Tone. The opening acts weren't so great, but they were good. The scaled-down instrumentation reminded me of Young Marble Giants. Wednesday we went to Crosstown for the microcinema screening. This was of some of the Indie Memphis shorts, one of the groups that we weren't able to make it to, documentary shorts. There was some good stuff. Thursday and Friday, as the big day was approaching, I started getting really nervous. Really paranoid shit wasn't going to go right. Thursday I practiced the synth to "Burning down the House" (digging up a discman with the track on repeat). I started trying to play both the rhythm bass synth part and Bernie Worrell's more solo and fills part. So I practiced that a good while. Friday it was back to practicing with Foxglove. Jacques came over too as he was going to play on it as well. He helped me haul all my shit 'cuz I wanted to have a dress rehearsal. Monday I'd used a regular stand so the synth was lower than my waist but what I'd actually use on stage would be as high as my head. I also brought along the Prophet for the end part. Jacques played their Microkorg and learned the rhythmic bass part so I stuck to the Bernie Worrell stuff, making it less complicated for me. It was sounding really good.

Today Mary Beth and I had some Gus's and then went to see two sets of Oscar shorts. First was documentary shorts and they were ALL incredibly good. Body Team 12, about Liberian Red Cross workers on the ebola body-disposal team. A Girl in the River, about the attempted honor killing of a girl in Pakistan by her father and uncle and the aftermath of its legal proceedings (basically the men of the community pressuring her to officially forgive him so he could be freed). Last Day of Freedom, a man telling the story of brother suffered PTSD from Vietnam and ended up killing someone and how he dealt with finding out and how it was politicized so he got the death penalty even though he should have gotten mental treatment and just talking about his brother in general and a lot of the circumstances and fuck it got my tear ducts going. Chau, beyond the Lines, about a boy who's a victim of Agent Orange in Vietnam and how he aspires to be an artist. Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, about Claude Lanzmann' making the Shoah documentary. After that was the animal shorts and a lot of those were really good (only a few kinda stunk). We got to see that one, World of Tomorrow, that we saw in some other shorts collection last year (the little girl visited by her future clone). That's a good one.

Okay, the FUCKING SHOW! What can I even say? Jacques, Ryan, and Ben helped me move stuff. Ben has a car with a back so I was able to bring the bass drum in its case (which is so rare!). We got there at 5 and started to set up. The crew for the merch table came a little later and took care of all that shit. I brought an alarm clock I'd bought and signs for each band with their end time to tape underneath the clock. Cariflavor showed up (funny 'cuz we'd cleared parking spaces for them and as they start to back the truck up, someone drives up trying to park there and we have to tell him to park elsewhere then he spins out all angrily, turned out to be Paul). Joy Ride came a little later. The weather was also great for having an outdoor component. Unseasonably warm and spring-like. Really fortuitous. After a minute I realize it's only Jacques and me left from the crew, the others left, so I didn't know how we'd be able to sound check. Just after that Gail (of Nightingail) showed up and Buss was back at the merch table and he plays stuff so I had a rough crew able to help sound check. I was going to put more in this post, but I feel I'm putting up a bunch of space so I'll move to another post.

The Family Ghost Show #50 The Hi-Tone (Bands for Bernie)

Okay, I'll say it again, the entire show went amazingly well!

The Family Ghost is mentioned in the subject, but this is more about the show in generally (continuing my tradition here).

Well, avoided a potentially bad portent when setting stuff up shortly after arriving at the venue I could feel my jeans rip in the crotch. I just kept on and hoped it wouldn't be noticed. I found by the end of the night the rip had grown to pretty huge proportions. Luckily it was on the inside of my thigh and pretty well hidden. There was a bit of an ordeal in trying to get the Memphis for Bernie banner that was made for the show (freakin' hand-painted yet looking like it was printed up, awesome work from Emma with Michell and Inna). Well, we wanted it hanging behind the stage and there's a big thick curtain. Noticed two clips, but that wasn't enough. So someone went out to a dollar store and got a bunch of clips. We get to trying to hang it and the curtain just pulls really taut. It was difficult to get a fold out to clip and then it'd just try to straighten out and the clip would pop off. After much struggle, we found it clipped to the edge of the curtain easily and it happened to be the right size to clip to the end of another curtain. It wasn't centered, but it was still awesome. Actually even better 'cuz it was probably less obscured than it would have been in the center.

Okay, then it was just a barrage of fuckin' bands playing! I'd made a list along with the schedule for the Joel, the engineer, to know what additional instruments he'd need to mic or whatever but he didn't even need that shit. Just went up and asked the bands what they'd need when they got on stage and mic'd everything and set everything up right then and there quicker than the bands could put their shit together anyway. All in the ten minutes between each band with time to spare. Once everything was underway, I wasn't really doing shit. Just sat back and enjoyed the shows. My minor task was making sure the recorder recorded everything and swapped out batteries and sd cards. My main task was making sure the bands were on time. For the most part just making a simple gesture if they started to go over. The only time it was needed for me to REALLY step in was at the end of Zigadoo Moneyclips' set. They finished right on time, even better than some others. Well, a couple of their fans started calling for an encore. My thought was ha ha, but then after their time was up they started to go into another song. So I had to step up to the stage and make 'em stop. I mean, yeah, that'd've just been egregious. The singer was nice and apologized afterwards. But really everything went according to schedule. Bands moved along well. Everyone was positive and there was just a great feeling all around. I had multiple people compliment me on how well-organized the show was and how smoothly everything went. It was pretty nice. I did a small bit of mc'ing, but Charles from the campaign office stepped in and did a much better job for the most part. He only once made me come on stage to point me out and thank me and all that so I could shyly wave and step back down again. We also had John Merrick say a few things which is pretty cool.

Okay, I guess I'll hit on The Family Ghost's set for a second. It almost started with a disaster. We're setting up while The Switchblade Kid was playing (they were really good, by the way, hadn't heard 'em really) and I realize I left the cable for the drum machine at home and without it we really couldn't do "Battle Chant." Luckily Mary Beth wasn't there yet. I called her and she was only about to leave so I walked her through finding the cable for me and she brought it and fucking saved our asses! Our set went pretty well. People surprisingly seemed to be into it. It was short, we played:

Death Blow
Doctorate
Battle Chant

We ended up having to cut the last two short, especially the last one. Just being a little conscious of time. But it all went pretty well. Paul was being perplexing as I play bass on the last two songs and had some effects (just distortion and volume pedal) but he'd plugged directly into the amp and wanted me to use a different cable to make for some weird over-complicated shit. I heard there was quite a bit of surprise reaction when I started to sing "Battle Chant," haha, but actually in a positive way which is cool.

Foxglove were good. As I mentioned, Jacques and I did a guest appearance at the end. They started two minutes late, when there was left than five minutes to go I went on stage. Paul densely kept saying they had another one first (c'mon, the fuckin clock was right next to him with their fucking sign with their ending time on it). So they went into the next song while I awkwardly just hung out on stage. Then they went into "Burning down the House" I had to minimize overstay damage and made sure the end wrapped up quickly, giving the cut-it throat sign. It went pretty well all considered. They didn't go over too bad, and theirs wasn't the longest going-over, just a minute or so, and a few bands went over like one minute, not a big deal so long as they appeared to actually be ending. One went over two minutes. Oh yeah, and The Family Ghost was really saved 'cuz The Switchblade Kid ended early (so with the extra time we still only started just on time, thrown off 'cuz nobody set up the volume pedal while I was setting the synths up). Sorry, just trying to cram in all the little tidbits I can think of while I can think of 'em. While taking my shit down after Foxglove, I was a bit harried and ended up dragging the venue's di box across the stage with my keyboard stand. I also unplugged the next band's volume pedal (admittedly just like Ryan's that we were using). Doh. Okay. Finally was able to get some food! Cariflavor had left recently but Joy Ride was there til the end and I was able to eat some delicious Cuban fare.

The biggest compliment in terms of consequence was from The Hi-Tone's owner when I settled at the end of the night. He expressed gratitude and surprise when the show went according to schedule. He talked of the five-to-six band bills they have that ALWAYS go over. At some point employees expressed astonishment that they might be able to go home on time and he had to temper with caution and say it's not over yet. But we ended on time! My system worked pretty well and all the bands were agreeable and all that fun jazz. He said it was well-organized and would be happy to work with me again! Those were some pretty awesome words to hear at the end of the night. What else? I can't think of anything, but I'm sure there's a ton I'm forgetting. Anyhow, yeah. Great show. GO BERNIE!

...Oh fuck, that reminds me of something I almost forgot to mention! I finally early voted on Tuesday. Only two more days left of early voting right now. And Super Tuesday is coming up pretty fast!