Monday, February 11, 2008

The "Battle" as it were, went swimmingly. Aside from lugging our gear up and down the street in the most Bitter Cold I can imagine, the setup and teardown went well. While my own playing was some of the sloppiest to date, [Note to Self: Playing sober doesn't really help my accuracy...] as a band we did quite well.

Once again, my fret markers completely disappeared in the dim stage lighting, and several songs suffered because of it. This will need to be addressed before the next live show.

The stage at the Dinkytowner was pretty small, but aparently not small enough, so someone thoughtfully hung a giant stage monitor about 4 feet off the ground, so inattentive bass players would hit their heads on it. It doubled as protective cover from gunfire and audience line-of-sight. The stage also had notches in the front for what looked like monitors, but were actually cleverly disguised traps, so that if inattentive lead singers tried to look cool and put their foot up on the monitor, they would certainly tumble to an un-cool pile on the dance floor. Since we only had three people, there was plenty of room for us to move around, oh, about five or six inches in any direction. The other bands with more people (all of them except The Blood Shot, in fact) had band members performing on the dance floor, because there wasn't room on the stage for all of them.

I announced that this was our third live public performance, more as bragging rights than anything else. Initially, I thought the contest wasn't very fair because there were other bands that had been playing out for some time now, and already had a fan base. But after watching some other bands that had been together for a while and still weren't very polished, I decided we at least have a shot at winning.

Few bands did "Thank You"s to the Dinkytowner and Jam Solid Produtions, and I was told after the show that doing so made us sound very professional. To be honest, I scripted the thank-yous into the set list so I wouldn't forget them.

What really made the show was the audience response. One thing we certainly aren't used to is having the entire house explode in applause at the end of every song. (Especially "God Hates Emo" which historically has gotten more quizzical looks than applause.)

Thanks to everyone who bought their tix in advance (Extra-Special thanks to those who bought tickets to support us even though they couldn't make the show!) Thanks to James for taking some killer pix, (which will be posted here soon...) and to Tyler for videotaping the event. Thanks to all of you who came out in the bitter cold to support us and local music!

-Zero

Labels: Concert, Jagged Live