I fancy myself to be a somewhat responsible person. Yes, I fancy myself all sorts of shennanigans. I attempt to get between 7 and 8 hrs of sleep per night, which usually ends up at 7.5, which is Ok with me. I am lucky enough to have similarly responsible roomates (while clearly not as fancy as I) who do not party late at night, the beat don’t stop till the break of dawn, they ain’t leavin till Six in The Morn (six in the morn…) But last night, I took a turn for the worse.
The State Prison Surprise played our 2nd show, which began at midnight. Thats a little rough. On the plus side, I got to give my new car the FIT FIT test. I am not a car guy by any means, but I’m happy to be driving this zippy little bastard about the town. With the back seats completely folded down, we were able to make 2 trips. Has our guitar player not had a phenomenal amount of road cases, and 2 pedal boards larger than guitar flight cases….I’m convinced one trip would have done it.
It was the lowest attended show I have played in my 34 years of performance art, interperative dance, and free style poetry. We drew 1 person. It was midnight on a Thursday, I didnt even ask anyone to come. But, like the hardened road warriors we are, we drove the 2 blocks from our rehearsal space to the bar, and tore up the stage, like a Siberian Lumberjack, stripping the planet of its wonderful precious resources. All in all, the set went well. Rock and Roll in its purest form, If a tree falls in a forest, we still tore it up.
But the thing is this. As we finished precisely at 1am, the sound dude begins to break down things…and over the PA comes “Tango Till They’re Sore”. A drunken mismatched gem of out of tune piano and genius, by none other than Tom Waits. And we all (we being the 6 people in the bar) sing along with the first line with our best Waits accent. The first line has something about “The boys all go to hell and then the Cubans hit the floor” and its just plain amazing. With the hodgepodge happening behind it, you FEEL that line. listen to it, you will get it even if you hate waits. We continued to sing along with random parts as we packed up.
The rest of the album, Rain Dogs, continued to play into the night, and re-ignited my love for the Waits. Not that it was at all diminishing, but it just reminded me of how high the bar has been set. One time I saw him at a New Orleans benefit show, he played right before Dave Matthews- an atrocity. This stupid ass Abercrombie HoBag in front of me was talking to her friends the whole set. As I fought back tears during “The House Where Nobody Lives”, a gem of a ballad off the Frankenstein that is the album Mule Variations, she would not shut her filthy little pie hole. “Oh My God, I could like…Go to sleep to this music, who is this guy? when is DAAAAVE coming on?” she nearly got a Chuck Taylor to the face. Except I dont think I had Chuck Taylors on, conservative black loafer just doesnt sound right though.
Anyhoo, I’m severly tired. My wonderful doorman hooked me up with a secret parking spot last night as drove up to find a packed street at 3am, so he’s my hero for that. Thats all for now.