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2004-11-13 - 1:08 p.m.
smashing pumpkins
On two consecutive Fridays recently, Zuul played 2 different shows, which is I think the quickest succession between shows that we’ve done yet. The first show was on Halloween weekend at our old standby, the Sidebar. We got the gig because the last time we played there in July, one of the other bands on the bill, Stillborn, used to be a Misfits cover band, and they do a special all-Misfits show as Stillborn Monster Babies every Halloween, and they liked us and asked us to do that show with them. The other times we’d played there, we were either the last band to play or in the middle of the bill, but this time there were only 2 bands, and we played first. Since we like to wear costumes onstage in general anyway, we were definitely going to dress up for the Halloween show. Nick wanted to be The Bride from Kill Bill, he ordered a yellow jumpsuit and got a blonde wig and everything, so the rest of us decided to be the Crazy 88’s, and we got black masks and wore suits. We learned a bunch of covers for this show, including one from the Kill Bill soundtrack. I wrote a post on my blog (here) about all the songs we covered. Before we went onstage, we went downstairs and got dressed up. We had some fake blood capsules and we sprayed them all over our clothes. We must’ve looked so ridiculous. Somebody filmed it for us with Nick’s digital camera, I can’t wait to see the footage. J.G. and Chris and Landon and some of our other usual supporters were there, although we were bummed that Kelly didn’t make it. Apparently Nick gave her and her friend bad directions, and they got lost and missed our set. Damn. About a week before the show, Landon came up with the idea to explode a pumpkin onstage as part of our stage show. Mike and I told him it might be cool, but we’d have to think about it and talk to the rest of the band. But Landon just went right to work on it, and for a few days, he was constantly in the kitchen experimenting with black powder. Of course, when we proposed the idea to the other guys in the band, they were completely against it. Landon promised it wouldn’t make a big mess, but they weren’t having it. I kept warning Landon that they probably wouldn’t let him do it, but he was committed to making it happened. I promised him that if we weren’t able to do it at the show, we’d do it later that night somewhere outdoors. So on the way home from the show, Landon made me stop in a parking lot so he could detonate the pumpkin. He set it down a reasonable distance from the car and we watched it go off. It was kind of cool -- the sides of it blew out, but the whole thing didn’t blow apart, it was very quick and cool looking. But there was a TON of smoke, something I hadn’t anticipated. It really is a good thing we didn’t try it inside a crowded club, it could’ve been a Whitesnake level disaster. Still, a cool show even without the pyrotechnics. -al
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