Whew, long week. But it's barely ended and the next one is
already set to begin.
My friend Rabbit visited from D.C., arriving on Tuesday. We
promptly went out to the "Trannyshack" (a fun drag show on
Tuesday nights in SF) with Walt,
Rupe, and a few other people.
Greg was feeling sick and couldn't go (which would prove to
be an ominous sign). The show was great! Possibly the best
one i've seen. Afterwards we usually just drink another
beer or two and leave, but Rabbit got the dance bug and
basically danced and chatted people up until 3am. It's
funny, he gets really extroverted when drunk, and will just
run up to strangers and start talking to them. Finally we
went by the Rusty Penny for sobering up and got home at 5.
The next day i felt really light-headed and sleepy, but i
figured that was just from staying out drinking the night
before.
Yakk and i talked about
say2 for a while at work, and he
got me psyched to do the next major chunk of work on it
(splitting the channel server from the registry server),
even though i knew i wouldn't have time that week. He and
Mike are the only Eazel
people who have expressed any interest in what we're doing,
so it's encouraging to get feedback.
Since Rabbit is the only bassist
Dead Dog
has ever had, we
always try to play a show while he's in town, so this time
was no exception: Matt hooked us up with a two-night gig at
the illustrious New Hack City on Friday and Saturday. So
that night, we started practicing in earnest, even though we
all suspiciously felt light-headed and sleepy. I was a bit
nervous about the number of songs we planned to play, but we
got it trimmed down pretty well and started to make real
progress.
By Thursday morning, it was definite that we were all
starting to get the dreaded Greg plague, so we pumped
ourselves full of medication, and Matt handed out liberal
doses of hippie vitamins, and slept a lot, and tried to
practice. Finally our drummer (Orange) showed up -- first
practice with any drummer ever! I was extremely nervous
that having a drummer learn the songs the day before a show
might be a disaster, but we plugged through each song one by
one, and by the time we finished with the set, i felt a lot
better about it. Orange didn't impress me much at first,
but he caught on so fast and threw out so much energy that i
started to think, "This is going to work!"
Friday morning i felt better. Probably better enough to go
back to work but i decided to recuperate instead and live
with the guilt. It was either sleep + practice or work +
practice and i decided to let sleep win a round for once.
Once i was rousted, we packed up, drove to SF (horrible
traffic -- i could never live in that city) and set up in
NHC. We got through another practice round (that's two!)
before people showed up, and then played a somewhat
satisfying but fairly sloppy set. By sloppy i mean that i
messed up a lot (probably everyone else was playing fine).
This crowd was mostly friends of Matt, including
Strick, who had just arrived
from his most recent trip to Asia.
Afterwards we went to a cool nearby bar called "Pow!" and
then drifted toward the End Up, which has changed so much
since i was last there that i was fairly disgusted by it.
Of all the weird coincidences, while i was there, a guy came
up to me and said "Robbie?" I thought, this is probably
another eggdrop kid who has only seen my name in writing and
doesn't know how to pronounce it, so i corrected him.
He said, "from Tennessee, right?" (Huh?!) "It's Bradley!"
Whoa!! It was one of my best friends from high
school! He was the one who first dubbed me Robey. He moved
out here a while ago but didn't know how to contact me! I
invited him to Saturday's show, which must've been a trip
for him. He's also apparently dating a member of the
Killkenny Cats (an old Athens band) which just completed the
360 degrees of absolute weirdness.
Saturday we chilled and then played another set, much
tighter and more together and far fewer mistakes by me
(though still enough). K8e (a girl we met the night before)
did a few opening songs for us, and we're hoping to include
her as "part of the band" (as much as there's any meaningful
membership here) next time we play or record. Matt got it
all on Minidisc, so i'm looking forward to hearing how the
show
came out, when listened to in the cold light of day. This
night the crowd was mostly yak people and some of my
friends, including a fairly perplexed Bradley.
That night we drove back down to Mountain View, picked up
food at Jack, lamented about the lost hour, and then stayed
up to watch varying amounts of Meet the Feebles (if
you
haven't seen this movie, go watch it now!) -- most of us
fell asleep before it was over. I think i managed to watch
almost 100% of it, though. Early Sunday morning, Rabbit had
to leave to fly out to D.C. again. I wish we could play
with him and Orange more often now.
I have typed far too much for even the most patient person
to read, so i'll stop now.