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2004-05-13 - 2:05 p.m.
in the midnight hour
After nearly a year of practicing and writing and practicing, Nick and Sean and Mike and I finally played our first Zuul show together on Saturday. Out of a combination of good luck, connections, and the fact that the Sidebar is a tiny place, we were actually the headliners of the show. Which, no matter how you slice it, is a lot to live up to for a first show, and we’d made ourselves nervous as hell about it the last few weeks, practicing as much as possible, sometimes 2-3 times a week, which is way more than normal for us. And once we finally put our whole set together, it still amounted to a fairly paltry 30 minutes, but it was good enough for us, we were ready. On Saturday I called Sean a couple hours before load-in to touch base with him and confim when we were meeting at the Sidebar. Over the phone Sean and Nick started telling me that Sean had broken his finger taking his amp down a set of stairs, but that he was going to try to play the show anyway. Now, I didn’t really believe them right off the bat, because those guys are real pranksters. Once a few weeks ago they showed up for practice announcing that they’d decided to rename the band The Ass Butchers, and went along with it for an hour until I started arguing with them about it and finally admitted it was a joke. So I was skeptical about the broken finger thing, although I wasn’t sure what to think when the phone call ended without them breaking character. I got to the Sidebar about 10 minutes after the meeting time we agreed on, and of course I was still the first one there. But the guy who booked us, Jeff, was there, and let me start bringing my drums in. A few minutes later, J.G. showed up. She’d had a final that morning, so she came straight down from school, and I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get to my apartment in time to meet up there, so I had her come meet us at the Sidebar. She was really excited about the show, because she’s never really seen me play drums, in the whole 2 years we’ve been together. Finally Sean and Nick and Mike showed up, and sure enough, Sean’s finger was fine, it was all a joke. What an asshat. We loaded in the rest of the gear, and then took a walk down to The Block for some food. I’m not sure who’s idea it was to get dinner across the street from the Hustler Club, but we walked into the most amazing place, it sold EVERYTHING, pain relievers next to blow-up dolls next to crackpipes next to butterscotch krimpets. There were even arcade games in the back, and Mike got sucked in to a game of Ms. Pac Man. There were 3 other bands on the bill before us, and one of them was a touring band from out of town, Buck 20, whose claim to fame is that one of the members is Scotty F-Word, an ex-member of the all-dwarf band LITTLE KINGZ, who I think were on Howard Stern and stuff like that. But when we got back from dinner, Jeff told us that he got a call and that Buck 20 cancelled. And since we thought we’d be going on real late and told all our friends that we’d be playing at 11 or 12, this meant we’d probably be going on earlier than planned and that some people might come late and miss us. So from the rest of the night out everyone tried to stretch out their sets and take their time breaking down and setting up, to make the show longer. The first band was called Devil’s Radio, and they were kind of old school metal band with a punk-looking bass player and a Donal Logue-looking guitarist/singer. In fact, for all I know it could have actually been Donal Logue, I don’t know how tall he really is in person. He introduced most of their songs by name in the brief pauses between songs, at one point screaming “PROM QUEEN”, before launching into their best song, which featured the hook “I’m gonna kill the prom queen”. They also covered “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. They gave away free CD’s, which disappointingly did not feature “Prom Queen”. The 2nd band, Misdirected, was a hardcore type thing, the singer had a lot of energy and they were fun to watch. They did covers of “Dust In The Wind” and “With or Without You”. It was during the U2 cover that Mat and Mike walked in, which was perfect because Mat loves that song. Some of our other friends also got there around that time and it was good that we knew we’d have a decent crowd there when our set started. There was no soundcheck or anything, we just had our stuff in the corner of the stage, and set it up when the band before us finished. The drummer from Misdirected was really friendly and asked me if I needed any duct tape, which was really cool of him, and fortuitous since I’d meant to tape up my snare head before show and hadn’t gotten around to it. Big props to him. Sean and Nick were still waiting on more friends to show up, so they really tried to stall starting our set as long as possible, and talked me and Mike into an extended ‘soundcheck’, where we fucked around for a couple minutes with White Zombie’s “Thunder Kiss ‘65”, a favorite of our loopier practice sessions. Later Mat told me that our first song was our weakest and I had to point out that it was just the soundcheck and not part of the real set, which confirmed my opinion that doing a soundcheck was a bad idea, people got the wrong impression and thought we just had a sloppy cover for our first song. That kinda pisses me off. Of course, this ‘soundcheck’ promptly got the attention of everyone in the room, so we decided to just go ahead and launch into our set proper. The adrenaline was really really rushing. I haven’t played in front of an audience in over a year, and in general haven’t done it that much. And I don’t really get that nervous, but I do get pretty hyped. I mean, I hit the drums pretty hard in general, but I was pounding the shit out of them once we got on that stage. I broke a stick by the end of the 2nd song, and the snare head I’d bought 2 days earlier got pretty dented up. I definitely favored power over precision, but I think it turned out alright. I have no idea how it sounded out there, I could hear just well enough to follow the cues and everything, but it was all a blur to me. I’m going to go ahead and post the setlist, even though most of our song titles are just weird in-jokes that will probably be changed later: He Shot Me / What Do You Want From Me? / Get Out / Rebel Yell (Billy Idol cover) / Fire / Weiner / New Song / Skulls (Misfits cover) / Fray Maybe I’m biased from where I was sitting, but I think we went over pretty well and got more spirited applause than the other bands. I don’t think any of our friends really knew what to expect of us, and I’m not sure what they all thought, but it was fun to play for them. It really felt kind of savage and violent, I was probably making all kinds of funny drummer faces without thinking about it. I was so dehydrated by the end that I needed a cup to spit into. When I got offstage I felt almost drunk, and I hadn’t had a single drink all night. I just felt messed up. By the time we got our stuff loaded up I had settled down enough to drive home but it was a weird feeling. What a rush. It feels good to finally have a show under our belt. I think it was important to rip that band-aid off and get out there, after the 4 of us playing to each other in a room for so long. Hopefully it built our confidence up enough to make this a stepping stone into playing more shows. Apparently we’ve already got another show lined up at the Sidebar in July, plus we’re doing our friend’s radio show in College Park on the 30th. Get ready, people. Zuul is here. -al
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