Gary-fest
Originally published at The Null Device Blog. You can comment here or there.
Man, I’m STILL tired.
Saturday was eventful. Well, the gig was a capital-E Event, after all.
A little backstory - staurdya was a benefit gig, for Gary/DJ Garz, who has been an ardent supporter of a lot of local and international niche talen over the years. He’s one of the kind of promoters who brings shows to clubs because he loves the music, not because he’s hoping to turn a profit. Industrial, synthpop, rockabilly, noise, whatever. It’s an eclectic bunch. and years ago, when we were just starting to play live and hungry for gigs, he pretty much just handed us a huge gig on a silver platter, no questions asked. A few months ago, Gary’s family home caught fire, and they lost pretty much everything, so a few kind souls decided to put together a benefit gig - a bunch of the bands Gary’s booked, a venue he’s booked for, DJs he knows, friends, colleagues, well-wishes - everybody just stepped up. There was music. There was food. There was booze. There was a raffle of odd and unusual donated gifts, from art prints to an autographed broken guitar hero controller to $100 in Taco Bell Bucks signed by members of I:Scintilla. I don’t know if the whole gig made much money for Gary’s recovery, but at least there was a lot of goodwill in the air, and gary was grinning like a maniac most of the night.
Anyway.
The day began with McKenzie gaslighting me a bit by pretneting he was just waking up and running really late, when in fact he was in his car a few blocks away. Bastard!
Everything got loaded, we hit the road, and promptly encountered road construction which delayed things somewhat. Ooops.
Wasn’t hard to find the theater, and we got unloaded and set up with little difficulty. The next band to soundcheck was also running late, so we had plenty of time to get everything tested, plugged in, and running. I even got my crock-pot running, filled with a stew of red-braised beef with daikon (I should’ve used more toban djan, though).We ran a few more things than normal, the soundguy seemed pretty nice, we had a surprisingly spacious backstage area, and things looked good for later. We were set to go on sometime after 11:30.
Elizabeth had some prior commitments so she parted from us to drive home for those. Chuck, Jill and I grabbed some chow at a middle eastern place across the street (pretty good falafel, too), stopped in the little persian grocery next door for some ingredient-oogling (and if I wouldn’t've had to have let it all sit in my car for 14 hours, I would’ve totally pciked up some persian yogurt and some of the frozen lavash dough. Alas, another trip). Neither Chuck nor Jill had been to the Milwaukee Art Museum before, and I have a membership that gets 2 in free, so we wandered around there for a bit.
That’s when Dan, in his capacity as stage manager, informed me that there was a problem - the show had to be finished by midnight, not bar time. Meaning everything was pushed up. A lot. Yeep. A few panicked phone calls later, we were able to make sure that Elizabeth was back in time, and that we’d be ready to go when the curtain rose, so to speak.
Back at the venue, there was a lot of sitting around. DJ’s Josh and Ryan started spinning warm up tracks, which sounded really odd because a channel phase was swapped on the board. The Stromkerns showed up, so I said hello to Andrew and Ned, neither of whom I’ve seen in months. The I:Scintalla crew was also there, so I chatted with them for a bit. I met the new members of the Dark Clan, (well, one of the new members. I already knew the other, just not in a clan-like capacity). Sensuous Enemy was there, and I walked in on a conversation that ended up with everyone talking in a northern-WI accent. I busted out my classic lines about muskie fishing.
The doors opened, and people started streaming in. Some I knew, a lot I didn’t. Always a good sign.
First up, The Dark Clan. I think they’ve had a different lineup every time I’ve seen them. They’re stripped-down to a four piece now. and I think it’s a pretty decent setup for them - the end result is very clear and direct, and of course having 3-part harmonies on the vocals makes me insanely envious. And they played “New London” which made me happy, because it’s my favorite track of theirs. As I had hypothesized, the whole show was really just a build up to a wild solo in the last song that allowed Dan to play guitar behind his head.
Up next was the new linup on Sensuous Enemy. I was never really aware that anyone could rock out on V-drums, but MAN Chris really wails on those. And he seems to enjoy doing it, too. Seems like a good fit for them.
I:Scintilla really blew me away. Aside from sound FOH sound issues, it was still obvious that they’ve really honed their stuff on the road. They sounded really tight. Also: glowing blue keytar.
We followed I:S. It was really fun - probably the most fun I’ve had onstage in a while. We pulled Dan up onstage to do some guitar rock on “Footfalls”, and as expected he Brought The Rock. We were hoping to close on a brand spankin’ new track, one we’d just finished writing, but as we were about to start it up, I got the panicked “cut cut!” motion from Dan, who informed us that things were running too late. D’oh! For sad, it woulda been a good track to go out on, instead of the one we did go out on, where I boned half the lyrics.
After us were Ned and the Ned-tones, er, I mean Stromkern. They took off in grand arean-rock style, despite the fact that a rather inebriated Gary wandered onstage to introduce them *after* they’d begun playing. I missed a lot of their set while I was cleaning up our gear, but what I did see was impressive as usual. Those guys are pros, after all.
Everything wrapped up pretty close to on time, people filed out to go to the afterparty, and we packed up and prepared to head back. The drive wasn’t that long, but at 2am it still feels like it.
Fun gig.