Saturday, August 23, 2008
Northgate Music Festival 2008
performed with: "a bunch of different bands, including The Toadies, who headlined the festivities"Setlist:
Downstrokes
Indecision
Nicolette
Pennsylvania
Dock Of The Bay
Cry, Cry, Cry
Ashes
The Nail
See You Again
Please Baby Please
Don't
Victors
God On Our Side
Review:
In this episode of "You Know You're A Rockstar When...", Paul and I took door number Super 8 and won, "you know you're a rockstar when you finish playing a show at 1:30am, tear down your equipment and drive 4.6 miles (according to Matilda, the wonder GPS) to your hotel, have to unload most of your gear into the hotel room because the humidity alone is enough to melt lead and you may not be in the best part of Tulsa, finally get to bed around 2:30am, have to get up at 7:30am so you can leave by 9:00am just to make it to the next show in time to play the gig." And what a great prize it was.
So at 9:00am, we checked out of the hotel, and hit the road, which lead us three blocks away to the Carl's Jr. I was very excited by this because Carl's Jr., or Hardee's as it's known in Nebraska and on the Moon, has the most delicious breakfast menu of any fast food restaurant ever. Yet, only one remaining Hardee's exists in Omaha and it's about a fortnight from my house. Plus I'm rarely up early enough to make it before the menu changes over to lunch...damn that switch in the mid 90s to stop serving fast food breakfast at 10:30 instead of 11:00! Long story short, I made Paul take me through the drive-thru so I could get the omlet biscut sandwich, or as I like to call it, heaven on a biscut with a side of tator-tots. Then we hit the rode.
At this stage in the trip, the NCAA Football '07 Dynasty on PSP has become the center of attention. It's just inevitable that when you drive down to College Station and have access to any type of NCAA Football video game, this is the point in the trip where it's all you think about. And the best part about it is that you play one game and you're an hour down the road. Two games, it's almost time for lunch. Three games, and you're passing the porn store that denotes you're entering the great state of Texas. (Seriously, it's river, border, porn store, welcome center.) And seven and a half hours later, your season is almost over and you're pulling into town.
It was pretty crazy pulling into College Station in the middle of the day. Devotees will remember that last time we played Northgate, we drove the 13 1/2 hour marathon straight through and pulled into town at about 11:30 at night. Once we hit the main drag, we were all like, "I remember playing with a bouncy ball at that Sonic," and "I remember this tattoo parlor having a hilarious sign last year too," and "I remember that sherriff riding around on a horse with a shotgun last year," and "I remember that not being a sherriff, lets get the hell out of here." We were planning on staying at our old stable, the Super 8, but when we stopped to get a room, though there were only 6 cars in the parking lot, the place was apparently booked. So we left and headed across the street to catch a magic show at what we thought was the Gothic Castle, but turned out to be just a hotel called the Knight's Inn. So, with nowhere else to go, we got a room. And seeing how there business model is more of a pricing by floor thing than actual business model, we got said room on the third floor for $20 cheaper than one on the first.
We had just enough time to hang out at the hotel for an hour and talk about our day before we had to go check-in at Northgate...so we watched TV. I also called our so called fans, who were going to make the trip over from Austin, but apparently some volleyball girls had come into town, so they decided to have a party at their place instead of drive over to see the two-man version of TOS. Honestly, it was their loss...it was the move-in weekend for Texas A&M so there were college girls and their frightened dads everywhere.
Heading back to the Northgate district was like seeing an old one-night-stand...nerve-racking and familiar all at the same time. It also made us remember how long of a walk it was from the hotel to the Northgate district. Needless to say, we didn't walk this year. We actually just pulled up to the back parking lot at Fitzwilly's like we owned the place, parked in a place that we were obviously not supposed to park, and went to the band check-in tent. After we got our packet of stuff and moved some orange cones so we could pull into the parking lot, we went looking for the people in charge at Fitzwilly's. We got word that we could start unloading and then the sound guy came over and started chatting with us. Nice guy, and once he found out we were a two-man band, well he was so happy I thought he was going to kiss Paul on the face right then and there. It was awkward.
So while we set up, we were chatting with the sound guy who gave us the lowdown on the night before and then offered to have his friend, who was the sound engineer for the entire festival, to come sit in on bass with us. We were all for it because we weren't about to tell the festival sound engineer he could play with us, but it turned out he was sitting in with some other band over at O'Bannon's. (a.k.a. Connealy's favorite bar from '07 because he thinks he's Irish, but we just think he likes booze.) After the setup we had to figure out where to park because there was a lot of construction and a tiny map that we had to follow to get to the Bank of America parking lot. The first attempt was unsuccessful, as we ended up in a dorm parking lot. So we went back to the beginning and started again. 5 minutes later, we realized that the band parking was right across the street from the dorm parking, so you could say we found it twice.
We walked back to Fitzwilly's, not quite knowing what to expect for the upcoming show. The Tulsa gig was a good warm-up, but we didn't have the street team we had the previous year, so who knew how many people would show up. But first things first, I was on a mission to get a 2008 Northgate T-Shirt. Except all the t-shirts that they were selling appeared to be from previous years. When I asked, the t-shirt lady, we'll call her Tim Francis, said that they were selling the new t's over in the mainstage area. So we went over there and only saw a stand that was selling "Save the Planet" t's and the Toadies merch table. I figured Tim Francis was lying, as she always did, so instead of continuing the quest, we just decided to go get our free meal from Fitzwilly's, which could have been an appetizer since we had 5 meal tickets.
The food was good, and the Vikings were playing a pre-season game making it that much better. But our set time was rapidly approaching and it was still 93 degrees out. Ged's nerves were getting the best of him, and he kept heading to the bathroom to do whatever it is he does when he's nervous...I figured it had to be one of the big three...#1, #2, (not #3...God no, not #3) or voming. And once we finished dinner, we went to check out The Orange on the mainstage. The Orange was definitely a Killers influenced band, and we stuck around for a few songs, but I was still looking for the t-shirt stand. Damn that Tim Francis!
And now, the time was upon us. It was time for the lead guitarist and drummer from Ten O'Clock Scholars to play one of the biggest shows TOS has had without a bass, lead vocals, or rhythm guitar. But don't worry, we explained the whole situation to the audience.
posted by Stein # 11:24 PM
Friday, August 22, 2008
Exit 6C (Tulsa, OK)
performed with: "Klipspringer"Setlist:
Don't
Indecision
Nicolette
Ashes
Pennsylvania
Dock of the Bay
Cry, Cry, Cry
The Nail
See You Again
Please Baby Please
Ball & Chain
Review:
Our first stop on our mini-tour as the two-man band version of TOS took us to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which in August is apparently as humid as the bayou. But the day started back in non-humid Omaha. Paul and I decided to leave about 9am, but after staying up late doing some equipment surgery on my drums two nights prior, then practicing late the night before, we ended up leaving Omaha at about 10am. Still, we had some give and take room with the alotted travel time, so we weren't worried about getting to Tulsa on time.
After about an hour and a half in the car, we were slightly bored so we came up with a super-fun car game that you all should try.
The rules are simple:
1)The person riding shotgun gets out a video camera.
2)His job is to spot something, start taping, and then say the name of the thing he is taping.
3)The driver's job (or any other occupant) is to come up with a hilarious catch phrase/advertising slogan for said thing.
Simple, and great for honing your improv comedy skills. There is video of this which will end up on the website in a few weeks.
After a lunch debacle in which our new toy, a GPS system nicknamed Matilda because of her shotty british accent, took us 4 miles out of our way to a fast food establishment called Captain D's that we thought we wanted to eat at, we pressed onward with the trip. At this juncture in the trip, the PSP became the savior and we started playing our band trip Husker dynasty on NCAA Football 2007. The PSP also became a downfall because we stopped paying attention to how much gas we had. At some point in the middle of Oklahoma, we realized that gas was necessary to continue with the scheduled tour, and, using Matilda, we quickly re-routed to an alleged gas station 12 miles away, which was our only shot at not getting stranded in the middle of a nowhere.
It was at this time that something magical happened. Something that only happens to magical people in magical books about magical journeys to magical lands. Matilda started showing some blue on the map, and though our cartography lessons told us that this should be water, there was no way that there was this much water in the middle of Oklahoma...plus all we saw were fields and trees. Thus we deduced that the blue on the map was land. Then we turned around a corner and to our amazement it appeared that we had reached either the ocean or the Great Salt Lake, none of which should be located in the middle of Oklahoma. It was seriously crazy...water everywhere, small white caps forming because of the ocean breeze...we half expected to see One-Eyed Willie's pirate ship go sailing by in the distance. So we did what any band on a mini-tour would do...we kept driving hoping that there was a gas station on the other side of the ocean.
There was and we arrived in Tulsa about 6:30, found the Blue Dome District of downtown Tulsa (which downtown Tulsa is pretty damn big...I'm not sure how big, but pretty damn big), and made our way to Exit 6C, which was the name of the venue, not the name of the exit we took to get there. The doors were locked, but we knew we were playing because our name was on the marquee...which is totally badass! Before load-in we decided to try and find a hotel, so we left our prime parking spot in search of one-night dwellings. And then Matilda pissed us off. She started telling us to go every which way expect the correct one. And when we didn't follow her orders, she just yelled, "Recalculating...recalculating...recalculating." So we beat her into submission, then went back to the venue, got the same kickass parking spot, unloaded the gear, went to a hotel a few miles down the interstate, ate some Wendy's, went back to the venue, got the same kickass parking spot again, and waited for the opening band to take the stage.
Originally there were supposed to be three bands on the bill, but one backed out so we just shared the bill with Klipspringer from Norman, OK. They were really cool guys who were heavily influenced by the Clash and sounded a little like Fountains of Wayne at times. There were probably 15 or so people there to see them kick off the show at 10:00. The venue itself was actually reminiscent of the Ranchbowl...stage to the right of the door as you walk in, bar to the left, a big hangout area in the back that connected this venue to the all ages venue next door. Nice place to see a show. But because there were only two bands and bars stay open until 2am, we didn't take the stage until midnight and were scheduled to play the remainder of the evening.
The show started off on a weird note, when some girl (I think her name was Chrissy) came on stage and wanted to do an impromtu jam with us, but she didn't want to sing into the mic...she was looking for something more like you would do at your camp site at the 10,000 Lakes Festival with some fellow stoners. And after attempting to figure out what she wanted and then attempting to get her off stage, we ended up playing one verse of "Dock of the Bay" so she could sing to her heart's desire. After dealing with that, we started the show with a few Scholars songs and then got into some other new stuff...mostly Death Of A Taxpayer tunes with a PG-13 jam thrown in there.
The set was going pretty well, and though there weren't a whole lot of people there, some people were sticking around and really into it. Then the drunk guys with the camoflauge started creeping people out and enjoying the music by banging on the tables in a different time signature than the music and breaking candle holders. As you can guess, people started to leave if for no other reason than to not get punched and r'd at the same time. At the very end of the evening we were playing for the other band, one of their buddies, and the bartenders. Then during the Social Distortion cover of "Ball and Chain," they kicked on the house lights. Needless to say, that was our last song, even though we had three more scheduled. But I have to be honest, I felt good about it. People throughout the evening seemed into it...good amounts of applause for some of the songs and hey, you can't expect a packed house in a town that you've never played before. One of Klipspringer's buddies came up and bought a CD afterwards and said that he couldn't believe how weird the crowd was tonight...even weird by Tulsa standards...and that he really dug the music and could aprreciate pressing on as a two piece band. And after we packed up and traded discs with the Klipspringer boys, we headed for the hotel.
At the hotel, Paul had to clean the large quantities of blood off his guitar. Did I mention Paul rocked so hard the skin came off his fingers and made his Tele a cespool of blood, sweat and stank? Well, that's what happened.
Be sure to tune in for the next installment of "Mini-Tour" for the stunning conclusion to "Mini-Tour."
posted by Stein # 11:54 PM
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Connealy's Graduation Party
Setlist: (to the best of my memory)Virginia's Waiting
Indecision
Cheap Shot
Tonic
Sit Down
I Say
1:52
Don't
Take Me Back
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
See You Again
American
Wave Goodbye
Please Baby Please
Laid
April
Run Away
Can't Quit
Smile
Omaha
Me And My Girl
Satisfied
Rockin' In The Free World
Review:
Connealy finally graduated...after 6 long years of education, he made it. Now of course we had to see the actual diploma to make sure it was legit, and though it didn't seem suspicious, well...you never know with the crew he hangs out with. We played the set out on Connealy's back porch, though oddly, we didn't play the Carolyn's Mother song Back Porch. Actually, we played pretty much every song we know how to...only left off Follow, Drive Just To Sleep, Midnight, Pennsylvania and then a few covers that we haven't played in years so I don't really think they count as songs we still know how to play. (ie: Back Porch, Betterman, Dock Of The Bay and that one Everclear song we learned that one time)
And for all Connealy's hard work over the years, his graduation present was to get his drums back. That's right, no longer will a Scholars set include the white Pearl drum kit...it's time to go with the old drum set, so I'll now be back in black...which, consequently, is Connealy's favorite song! Oh snap!
It'd be more of a burn if it wasn't true...
posted by Stein # 11:56 PM
Friday, August 01, 2008
Barley Street Tavern
performed with: "The Ground Tyrants" and "Two Drag Club"Setlist:
I Say
1:52
Tonic
Don't
Smile
Virginia's Waiting
Cheap Shot
Wave Goodbye
Please Baby Please
Me And My Girl
Indecision
American
Take Me Back
Review:
Fresh off our Knickebockers show/practice the night before, we were ready to rock the Omaha crowd into a frenzy. But we didn't need to because Two Drag Club took care of that when they opened up the show, and the already drunk people got even drunker. Can't thank TDC and The Ground Tyrants enough for playing the show with us. Those two bands are made up of some of the best musicians in Omaha, and like always, they didn't disappoint.
Our set went very well, probably because of the tequila and whiskey.
