weekend?

the bad brass lantern taste continues…

found out over the weekend that one of the folks i had expected to come out had called the club to find out what time we started and were told that there was no music that night.  that, in addition to nothing being in the paper listings or on the website.  also talked to todd this morning and found that he’s been pulling the same song and dance with some of the other bands that have played there.

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

on the wall where we rehearse, we have a super-sized, blown up copy of an article from the hamburg item newspaper – the headline reads “back door at jack d’s closed”.  it was a club we played once, where we ran into a similar situation with a whining bar owner who tried to renegotiate the bands’ guarantee after the show.  we got everything straightened out that night, and decided we weren’t going back, to everyones’ satisfaction.  a few weeks later, though, we got an email at the bands’ website from a girl who had taken over booking for them, saying that she really wanted to have us back.  so i brought it up at rehearsal, and barry flatly quoted a price that he didn’t think they’d pay.  for whatever reason, though, when we went back to them with the price, they didn’t even flinch. so we booked another date at our new price for a couple of months down the road and put it on our calendars…

so on the way to the gig that night, i get a call from darryl on my cell phone – they’re all starting to arrive at the gig, and the owner..the one who’d given us a hard time on the first booking…tells us he has no intention of paying us what we’d committed to playing the show for.  so we drove out to the venue and everyone met on the sidewalk outside the door and we put it to a vote…and the result was a resounding thumbs down.  we weren’t even gonna set up.  we decided instead to take our not-yet-surprise-birthday-party for wendy over to the vfw in hamburg.

somehow, word got out that we were there – the cell phones were abuzz that night – and we got a call from the club owner on the vfw phone, and i ended up speaking with him personally.  that was waaaay more fun than it should have been…i wasn’t rude or belligerent, i just told him that we committed to playing the show for a set fee, and that it didn’t cast him in a very trustworthy light to start rearranging the terms the night we showed up.  it seemed the calmer i was, the more hot under the collar he got, until he finally hung up on me after making some remark about how we’d never play there again, blah blah blah…

justice in this case has been served via the reality that we’re still here and he’s not.

my gut tells me that someday i’ll be able to say the same thing about the brass lantern guy.

we have rehearsal tonight…and i’m not really looking forward to it, for the simple and solitary reason that i’m not very well prepared.  i haven’t had much time of late to set aside for homework, and it bums me out.  the days are getting cooler, though, and i do see myself spending a lot more time upstairs than i have this summer.  one of my projects for wendy’s trip to florida (filed under “what i’m gonna get done while she’s gone”) is to completely unplug/replug everything in a manner that makes sense and try to initiate some sense of feng shui up there…that’s a pipe dream, i know, but i need to get somewhat close to that.

i’m also considering undertaking the Great Guitar Shelving Project…remains to be seen.  haven’t been very energetic lately, and that will definitely require some energy.  but i’ve arrived at a point where i just have this sinking feeling when i walk into my house, because i know what’s gonna be waiting for me there…chaos and disorder.  and the more stuff i manage to sort through and liquidate, the more shit materializes out of thin air. it’s really pretty pathetic.

but i will…repeat, will…get on top of this in the coming weeks.

as soon as i learn steve gaines’ guitar solos for “that smell”.