Coma Show – Wool Warehouse

The Coma Recovery played tonight at a venue I’ve never been to before called the Wool Warehouse. I expected it to be a real warehouse with a bunch of wholesale stock wool, but it was much more like a hotel ballroom.

The headliner was Earth Crisis. I think around 10 bands played. This show had a clever theme; half of the bands were deemed as “Good” and the other half, “Evil”. Basically every band was placed in the “Good” category unless it was a hardcore band.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a show like this. The kids still hardcore dance. They still swing the arms. They still punch the ground. They still kick the air. It’s all fun and games until a security guard gets punched in the face and bleeds, which of course really happened.

Blue October

I worked another show tonight.

I remember seeing Blue October when they were playing the duck pond at UNM. I remember they played there an awful lot. And despite all of the criticisms shared among Jake Tittmann and me between classes, this band still “made-it”.

But what does “making it” even mean with bands?

I work these shows at Sunshine, I get to see the bands pre and post-show, and… I see the fans they have to deal with.

There is a distinct boundary between each fan-demographic, from show to show. After tonight, I’m not sure I’d ever want to be Blue-October.  I also realize that I’m not sure Blue October wants to be Blue October either.

I remember working at the radio station (103.3 The Zone! FM). We used to do these things called “sound check parties” where a group of listeners were entitled to show up early enough at a show to watch the band “sound check” some special songs for a select group of “contest winners”.

Apparently another pop-rock FM radio station called “The Peak” did the same thing for this Blue October show, only the singer and the band didn’t appear to like doing it at all. They douched around playing whatever they felt like, including a half-assed cover of the oldies classic “Blue Moon” while the singer kept his back to the “winning crowd” of 20-or-so gawking radio contest winners.

It was sad, but reasonable, because…what would I do in that situation? Clearly, being a one or two-hit band means performing a lot of mini-concerts like that to “contest winners” who see you, not as a human performer, but a prize that was won for a “rare exclusive group” of “lucky” people.

Admittedly, I have certain aspirations for a rockstar-like status. But it is strictly (I hope) for reasons that isn’t a stigma to being a “rockstar”. So seeing this kind of stuff makes me want to re-evaluate what it entails to be a popular musician at all.

Of course, it all depends on the demographic. Clearly these guys felt that being a simple pop-rock band was the answer. But when a group of these fans (drunk, asinine human-beings) howl nonsense from the stage and drown out a piano/pizzicato violin solo that took you years to master, have you ever questioned what-the-hell-happened along the way?

The answer is compromise. The universe smells it on your band, and so shall ye receive its due audience.

The Dead Weather

Finally, a Sunshine show I was stoked to see.

I didn’t go to Coachella after all. Of course, William let me know about how enlightening, inspiring, and beautiful the 3-day festival was. I tried to ignore the fact that I spent most of the weekend focusing on non-enlightening things. I also got a temp staging job setting up lighting rigs, unloading ungodily heavy equipment from a truck.

The Dead Weather is Jack White’s newest project with chanteur de femme exquis, Allison Mosshart of the kills; Guitarist/keyboardist of Queens of the Stoneage; Eccentrically fat-toned bassist of the Raconteurs.

The best part was the sound check, involving them practicing jams from the new record, plus not-yet-recorded jams.

And just because I’m pompous and music-righteous, I’d like to add that this is the first show where I didn’t have to deal with the low-intelligent results of drunk humans who spew fluids from both ends, putting the cherry on the top of their night, as well as mine. So, my egotisticality likes to point out the inverse relationship to the amounts of bodily evacuations with the level of intelligence to be found in the demographic, and hence, the intelligence of the music.

Cheerio, mates!

There’s a load of vomit, and we’re all out of shovels.

My mom once told me that my Grandpa was trying to become a boxer until the traumatic day he punched an opponent in the stomach, causing him to vomit spaghetti all over the place.

The story was told to me when I was probably 8 years old, but it came back to my memory with such vivid splendor tonight as I was told to clean up a full stomachs-worth of spaghetti on the balcony at Sunshine Theater.

The smell of stomach acid, although consistent in aroma from person to person, is a smell that I’ll never get used to. This wasn’t a simple pile to be sopped up by a mop and bucket, but a series of massive splashes that started on a table top, slapped to the floor, and lubricated the foot steps that had trafficked through it, leaving a slippery 10-foot radius of fun and fragrance.

Tonight would have been the first night working at Sunshine that I didn’t have to deal with bodily ejections, and I almost got away with it.

Sidenote: Killswitch Engage played. I care about that kind of music as much as I care about seeing McDonald’s on roadtrips… but the drums sounded super good.

Coma Tour – Albuquerque

We reunited with Hellas Mounds tonight, pre-show, to eat a delicious culinary chili dish that Tommy made. The Mounds were super happy, because they had been living in the parking lot behind the Launchpad for 12 hours in the cold with no food.

The Launchpad gives drink tickets to bands, 2 per person, every time we play. The good thing is, I had saved up a lot of them from previous shows. So did Dustin. Whiskey tonics for all. Here’s a video from the Albuquerque show brought to you by Paul Dackiewicz:

The Coma Recovery – Illuminator (Live 1/7/10) from Paul Dackiewicz on Vimeo.

Gwar

I worked the Gwar show tonight. Never seen Gwar before. Go see Gwar.

Highlights of the show:

- Bringing out a tortured soul on a vertically positioned medical table and sawing him apart, eating his entrails.

- Tearing off Obama’s head and having his jugular decorate the crowd in red fluid, all with accompanying metal riffs, like so:

Yo-han Sebastian must be rolling in his…

Tonight I worked a show for a hip-hop crew called Tech 9 (click for photo), of Insane Clown Posse’s Psychopathic Records.

Lots of fans with clown make-up. Lots of wicked clowny aggression. Lots of parents dropping their kids off.

A good movie idea? Juggalos vs. Trekkies. With Braveheart-style battle footage. But no weapons, just slapping, pushing, calling names, etc.