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2004-04-10 - 1:23 p.m.
you just have to join on this song
Well, my first gig with Zuul has been booked, and we’re headlining (!) at the Sidebar in Baltimore, on Saturday, May 8th. We’re hoping for a good turnout (come if you can!) and as the date approaches the excitement is mounting, although that hasn’t stopped the whole Zuul operation from continuing to be a somewhat shaky endeavor. Mike is still insistent on his eventual resignation from the band, and has been playing with another band that is already starting to book a summer tour. But he’s going to at least keep playing bass with us for this gig. After that, who knows. We have options if we do need to get another bassist, and practiced with one already at one point, but I like the way the band sounds with Mike, and I like playing with him, so I’m still hesitant about the whole change. I’ve already made him promise that he’ll teach his parts to whoever takes his place, because I’m worried about someone coming in and screwing around with what works for the songs we’ve already written. We’ve all discussed many times our need to step up our practice regimen to get ready for the show, but lately we haven’t had the chance to practice more than once a week, if even that much. We’re all just busy guys with conflicting schedules. I work a couple nights a week, and so does Nick, and Sean has night classes a couple nights, and Mike works late Monday through Friday. So usually Sunday is the only night that all four of us are available, and sometimes we meet on a weeknight without Mike. This past Sunday, we ran through the set, and for the first time, I started to feel a real confidence about the idea of us doing this onstage in front of people. Maybe it was just that I’d forgotten my earplugs so things were a lot louder than usual, but I got a serious adrenaline rush. I mean, not to sound conceited, but we rock. We can definitely stand to tighten up the dynamics and make sure everything sounds right, but the songs are all there, and we have pretty much all we need for the set. The venue told us that they’d like at least 30 minutes, so we’re making sure we have that much, although I’m hoping we can give people their money’s worth and play longer than that, maybe more like 45 minutes. But the guys are kind of worried about some of our less rocking material, and have stated that they’d rather to a tight, balls out 30-minute set than a 45-minute set with some weak spots. I understand where they’re coming from, but I’m hoping that we can at least keep practicing all the songs we have right now and maybe even write a couple new ones before then, and if we can afford to toss the weaker ones out of the setlist, then we can cross that bridge when we get there. Right now we have at least 6 or 7 originals ready, plus we’ll probably do one or two covers. I’m glad that Sunday night bolstered my confidence in the whole thing, because our attempt to practice later this week was really a mess. First of all, we’d talked about practicing Wednesday, and since I was on-campus working and taking class all day until 8pm, I tried calling Sean a couple times from campus to find out what the skinny was, but he didn’t answer his phone. Now, I’m the only member of the band that doesn’t have a cell phone, so it kind of annoys me when I’m the one making myself available and everyone else is hard to reach. My hope was to get in touch with Sean before leaving campus, so that I wouldn’t have to drive all the way home and then have to go right back out to campus. But of course Sean didn’t answer his phone until I got home and called him for the 3rd time that day. Nick was at work til 9:30, and so Sean had me get in touch with Nick and let him know I’d pick him up to go to practice. So I went down to Nick’s store, right down by campus where I’d just been an hour earlier, a little annoyed at all the runaround, which it turned out was just beginning. I got there around 9:40, and Nick was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed he just caught he got tired of waiting and just caught the bus home. And since I was already running late to meet Sean at the practice space, I just went ahead on my way, since Nick didn’t sound that enthusiastic on the phone about practice anyway, and there’s a lot that Sean and I can practice with the guitar and drums without having the singer there. So I drove down to the practice space, which took longer than usual because I decided to go through the city instead of around the beltway, and happened to get caught in traffic after an Orioles game. And when I finally got to the practice space, Sean wasn’t there. I waited and waited and waited, and finally gave up. I got home at 11:30, about 3 hours after I’d gotten out of class, so I basically wasted 3 hours and a lot of gas due to inconsiderate bandmates. When I got home, I was pretty angry, but also too exhausted to put a lot of effort into my anger. I talked to Nick, and we realized that we’d had some miscommunication, in that when I said I’d come pick him up, he thought I meant at his house, but I meant at work, so he went home and waited around for me to show up. And in the meantime, there was some whole personal thing going on between him and Sean which came to a head that night. They’re pretty close friends, and apparently Sean crossed a line and said something to Nick’s girlfriend that got Nick in trouble, and it was just a whole mess, which I didn’t really find out until later on. All Nick told me that night was that he was really mad at Sean for reasons other than him flaking out on band practice, and that he didn’t know whether he’d be able to continue working with him in the band. So for a couple days I was really wondering about the whole fate of the band and just kind of left it alone and hoped it would blow over, which apparently it has now, they worked it out. It was just such a mess, though. I’m definitely getting tired of being the proactive one, who always finds out when everyone’s available and gets them to agree on a practice time and calls people over and over. I shouldn’t have to be that guy, but I guess I’m the only one who cares enough and has their shit together enough to bother. But if we can just get it together enough to play this gig and have a good time, it’ll all have been worth it for me. -al
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