For those of you who don't know Gary's Spot, have you seen those roadhouse movies where the rock bars always have bands blasting, girls dancing on the bars, bartenders blowing flames and lighting the bar on fire, Harley motorcycles, booze, women, pool, debauchery; fun?Well if you want to go to a place like that in real life then go to Gary's Spot. This place is up there with the top 3 bars I've ever been to in my life. (Saints & Sinners on Venice in LA would be another one.)
So we get there, and usually they only soundcheck the headliners, and we were opening, but since we were the only band there for soundcheck we got to get our levels set and A BIG PLUS, got to have Gabe's kit set up so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. I love the look on sound guys' faces when they try to figure out how they're gonna mic Gabe's drums. You can see the clogs in their mind slowly turning.
Now I had something very very special planned for this show, but because of rain and a few other mishaps I wasn't able to do it. I won't say what it is because I definitely will be pulling it out for a later show, but I will say this - it's special.
We were playing with Seven Perfect and Crimson Envy. Now Crimson Envy is a professional playing band, it's what they do for a living. Their biggest money earner is as a cover band, and they have this phat RV that they travel in. Now I was focused on keeping a clear head because we were playing a new song Mercucio's Revenge that night that's very difficult and I wasn't 100% solid on it. But I'm up there in CE's RV, they have a flatscreen, were watching 'No Country For Old Men,' 24 case of beer and they ask me if I want one.
Well, here's my mistake, I said, 'Man, I'm from Texas, I'll never turn down a free beer.'
I was just trying to be cute and one beer wasn't gonna hurt me, but as I slammed it down because it was like 5 mins to show time, I look up and he's passing me another one. And as I start to tell him, 'I can't, man, gotta get ready -" I hear the chorus of voices as everyone in the RV is saying, 'But you're from Texas, but you're from Texas.' I hit the stage a ruddy mess.
Somehow we got thru that one, but it wasn't pretty. Gabe and Jay couldn't hear Rick, I couldn't hear Jay and nobody could hear me. Mercucio's Revenge was an unmitigated disaster and Rick was still having problems with his guitar cutting out. But as our set spiraled more and more into the bowels of stinkiness, I got more and more daring, if you will. Gary's stage has a walkout (like what you see runway models strutting on) and at the end of the walkout is a stripper's pole. I'm telling you, Gary's is the best. I made that pole my personal friend and pulled off moves I'd only seen in movies. Not those kind of movies!!! Come on now.
When we got to 'Village of Seraphs' I was doing trigonometry calculations. Now with the group of ppl at the front of the stage if I could just clear 6ft I'd be over them and could run amok in the bar. Why not, I ran track and had drank alot of courage juice up to that point. So I dropped the mic, ran a dash and launched myself over the top of the crowd. I made it without knocking anybody out and finished the song climbing all over ppl and singing in their ears.
Rick was in a foul mood, because bad shows can bring you down, but I had fun.
But we did stink that night.
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