Nurse the Hate: The Hard Earned Shared Gig Philosophy

 

In the early days of bitter struggle, contrasted by today’s “current days of bitter struggle”, we would take gigs playing with almost anybody.  It seemed like audiences were more open minded in the 1990s to other genres than the ones they identified with as an extension of their sense of self like how you would wear a specific brand of shoes.  This might be an illusion because maybe I was more open to new influences in my youth as opposed to being the codger now that watches a band and connects the dots to their influences like it’s a carnival game.  I remember seeing Of Montreal in a sold out Beachland room when they first really started getting traction and within 7 minutes I was bored after I concluded, “Oh, this is mid 1970s David Bowie with some early 1980s New Wave in a re-package”.  Thanks for coming.  See ya later. 

 Look, I don’t know if I was on target with that assessment, but I do know I shut the door to that band in about seven seconds.  There was a roomful of people losing their minds with excitement, so I’m the guy that was clearly missing something.  Yet, despite my snotty half assed assessment, I fully expect anyone seeing our band to patiently watch a full set to “get” what it is we do.  Is this hypocritical?  Yes.  Am I aware of it?  Also, yes.  Am I powerless to stop it?  Again, yes.  I am just trying to be a realist here.  I don’t know if this is my own personal failure or if society as a whole has swung that way into little tribes.  Regardless of how we got here, back in the 1990s, we’d play with anyone as we were sure that we would convert them over to our skewed vision of what rock music was supposed to be. 

 It was a Henry Rollins article I read when he discussed the early philosophy of Black Flag.  Play as often as possible, anywhere, to anyone as the only path to getting better and gaining fans.  It made sense to me.  How else can people like your music if they don’t see/hear it?  This led us to jump in the van and play anywhere I heard even the rumor of a good club/show.  We decided to go to Florida to play with the Hate Bombs as they were A) a great garage rock band and B) very fun guys we liked hanging out with in general.   I am not 100% sure, but I think it was the two of us and a “big local draw” at a place called The Rubb in Tampa FL.  Those Hate Bombs guys drove around in an old camper that topped out at 55 mph.  We drove a newish Chevy van which enabled us to get off the highway, get snacks, and get back on the highway to easily catch the Hate Bombs camper.  We would slowly pull next to them and Bobby Latina would pull his scrotum out of his pants while creepily making eye contact with Dave who was driving the camper.  I think we did it to them like four times between Orlando and Tampa.

 When we got to the club, “the big local” was already setting up to soundcheck.  The term “set up” is sort of loose as they were debating where to place their oriental rugs to max out their groovy vibe.  This was not a good sign.  They were a standard hippie jam band set up with two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard.  Their soundcheck lasted longer than any I have ever heard of including a couple nightmare accounts I’ve heard about with Donna Summer and Genesis (sadly, not the same bill).  The guitar player was concerned about the midrange on the monitors.  Then the keyboard player wanted to further dial in the monitor mix they had just tweaked 11 times.  They played five full songs during soundcheck.  By this time, we had gotten into the backstage beer like raccoons.  We started to get ornery.

Our soundcheck lasted 90 seconds because doors were scheduled to open in 92 seconds.  We plugged in.  We made sure we would hear ourselves.  We played a verse/chorus of something.  The Hate Bombs got no soundcheck.  We sat backstage for an hour and drank beer.  We went out to see a slim crowd when we climbed onstage.  We jumped around and played some of “the hits”.  We received almost no reaction whatsoever.  No one cared.  In retrospect, if I was going out to see my groovy friends play hippie jams and some drunk filthy Ohio guys in cowboy outfits were singing about objectionable topics, I’d probably not be super excited either.  They were probably thinking “Oh, this is some Beat Farmers meets Stray Cats thing”.  They probably weren’t wrong.  They hated us, and then after we cleared the stage, they hated the Hate Bombs.

 After that show, I then realized that Henry Rollins didn’t know as much about realistic touring advice as he thought he did.  It is open for debate if Rollins truly meant “play anywhere/anytime”.  The “Get In The Van” book is not filled with stories about playing with Flock of Seagulls or A-ha, so this could have been my misinterpretation of a more macro point of view pounded into our little rock situation.  Thus, this October we will be playing a couple shows with Southern Culture on the Skids as opposed to Mt Joy.  

See you there.