On Saturday, the band in which I play guitar won the "Best Vocals" competition in the North Wilkesboro (see footnote 1) Battle of the Bands. It was a mixed blessing on many levels.
We had to leave from our singer's house at 8 am (3 of us hung over, yours truly wickedly so) to make it to North Wilkesboro (yes, it is smack dab in the middle of BFE, NC) by noon to draw the time slot in which we would be playing that evening. We arrived early, despite the fact that I was so hung over that I misunderstood (for lack of a better term) my alarm clock, and didn't wake up until just about when we were supposed to be getting underway. We drew 10:00 pm, which meant that we would be in "Historic Downtown North Wilkesboro" for at least another 11 hours.
The drawing happened significantly late, and several of the bands still hadn't shown up by the time they finally got around to it. This seemed to me to be an incredibly bad sign for an event that had to be finished by midnight (as per N. Wilkesboro city ordnance), and had 12 bands slated to compete in the professional division, which was scheduled to begin at 6:00.
The "venue" was the upper level of the Historical Downtown N. Wilkesboro parking deck, whose concrete paving you could feel buck and flex if someone nearby you jumped. It was built into the side of a hill, and one side had a nice, if bucolic, view, while the other had a concrete retaining wall, and slightly above and beyond that a row of brick buildings. The stage had been set up with its back to the view, facing the retaining wall across the parking lot. Some guys from a redneck metal band (or possibly several bands, I never found out, most likely for lack of trying) were milling around onstage, setting up the sound system and spending way more time showing off their chops on the "house" drum kit than they spent setting it up and checking it. Every time they would whack a drum, you could hear it a fraction of a second later as it slapped back off the retaining wall, sounding like a complete rhythmic nightmare.
With time to kill and a desire to distract ourselves from the ulcer-inducing soundcheck, we decided to go have lunch at the Main Street Cafe, which was staying open on Saturday specially for the event. The service was surprisingly friendly considering that this was the kind of place that served my "turkey and cheese" sandwich with american cheese (see footnote 2), and I was wearing a florescent pink camoflauge shirt.
The guy running the event (a very short man by the name of Jason who should have way outgrown his boyish exhuberance and hall monitor attitude, and who also posessed the most utterly nondescript haircut I have ever seen) told us that he was optimistic about audience turnout because there was absolutely nothing else to do in Wilkes county on a Saturday. I wondered what the hell there was to do on all the other days of the week, too, but diplomatically refrained from asking. I was (as I mentioned previously) wearing a pink shirt, have a pretty faggy haircut, and the redneck count was high (and rising).
Jason was right, on both counts. There were quite a few people in attendance, including us, for the entire time. There WAS nothing else to do, except watch the amateur band competition, and then later on check out our competion in the "professional" division.
As I stood around, trying not to check out chicks whom I was pretty sure were far too young for me to be checking out, I noticed a good deal of extraneous apostrophes. This, in itself, is nothing new, but what amazed me was multiple instances of a single sign or display showing both correct and incorrect pluralization. For instance, the portable shed selling cold drinks had two signs, one of which read "slurpies" and the other "latte's." Likewise, one of the bands had a sign at the merch table listing prices for "t-shirts" and "CD's" (see footnote 3).
The amateur competition was experientially pretty awful. The sound started out awful, and remained awful, the faces on the huddle of redneck metalheads under the sound tent sporting calm looks of we've-got-it-under-control-ness. Eventually I fortified myself (see footnote 4) enough to have a very tentative word with them. It got slightly better, but the metalnecks didn't seem to care much one way or the other. Even though it sucked to sit through, the outcome was satisfying, as Eyes to Space, a band from Chapel Hill that defies accurate descrption at this late an hour (see footnote 5), won, much to LMM's collective delight.
As the sun began to sink, the professional competition started with another mammoth sound check. It was the same guys as before running sound, and the same drum kit. I don't know why they decided to check again, except that when the first pro band started, the sound was so much better. It wasn't that the band was so much better, it's just that they did the sound right the second time. Why they ran sucky sound for the amateur bands, but decent sound for the pro bands is beyond be, although I think they were probably assholes, and that might have had something to do with it.
Yes, metal was the order of the day, but it wasn't really metal. it was that sort of forcibly angsty, post-Alice-in-Chains hernia-inducing growl, wall of crunchy guitars that saturates the rock airwaves these days. In fact, I believe the offical radio format name for that is "Loud Rock." At least half the bands were their own completely forgettable version of modern Loud Rock (see footnote 6).
There were a couple of refreshing exceptions. My favorite was the Honored Guests, another Chapel Hill band who were also a little nervous about getting beaten to death so far from civilization. I was also somewhat fond of Fishing for Your Girlfriend, who were tight as hell, and had the Tallest Guitar Player in the World (see footnote 7).
I think we honestly did a fairly mediocre job, but it was hard to tell. The sound on stage was staggeringly awful, and I felt sloppy as hell. I was pretty surprised, though, by a gaggle of teenagers up front who were rocking the fuck out. They made my night. When I got up on stage, they were, like "ohmygod I love your pants," and when I embarrassedly admitted under my breath that I thought they had come from Hot Topic, the most interested girl shook her head and said, "no, I shop there all the time!" "But you're embarrassed about it, right?" I asked, still skeptical. "No," she shook her head, her eyes wide with honesty. I don't think she understood the irony of the counterculture store in the mall. It was so cute. One of the guys even enthusiastically chugged a Diet Rockstar (see footnote 8) for a free CD. I rocked my ass off just for them. I was sloppy as hell, by my heart, thanks to them, was at least in it.
Fortunately, the opinion of the audience was only worth half of each band's score (the other half coming from a panel of judges), because most of the kids had already cast their ballots and left by the time we played. The few kids who liked us, though, really liked us. I signed more autographs that night than in the rest of my life put together (see footnote 9). We tried to encourage them to all start bands of their own.
So, yes, in the end it was one of the constipated bands that won "best band." Honestly, there wasn't much competition for "best vocals," especially from the grunt-rock crowd. Charlotte was very apologetic, feeling kind of guilty towards us for winning an award pretty much aimed at her, until we told her, "yes, we know, Charlotte, that without us you'd just be a woman yelling angrily on a stage by herself."
We came home. It was a long day, as evidenced by this journal entry, which was about six times as long as I'd intended it to be.
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1. Not to be confused with Wilkesboro, a nearby by completely separate town, and the closest place you can buy an alcoholic beverage at noon on a Saturday.
2. Admittedly, the sandwich was less than three bucks, so I can't really complain about the american cheese, but only use it to characterize the place.
3. The event's t-shirt, while hideous, at least did not commemorate a "Battle of the Band's."
4. By thinking very hard about beer.
5. I will say that the singer was playing one of those guitar-style keyboard controllers, sometimes referred to as a "key-tar," except it wasn't actually a key-tar. It was a regular keyboard nailed to a board with a couple of other devices, and slung on a strap around his neck.
6. Although the first band had this singer who was wearing a Ritchie Sambora-style cowboy hat, a long-sleeve mesh shirt, leather pants and leather chaps. I will remember him, if only for the discussion we had about how fucking hot and steamy it must be inside those two layers of leather leggings.
7. He was pretty good.
8. When we went to Cincinati for the MidPoint Music Festival, we discovered an energy drink that's actually called "Rockstar." I got drunk and eventually tried one. It tastes like Smarties. I have no data on the diet version.
9. Special thanks to Stacy for buying me that silvery-pink pen on a whim the day before when we staggered up the street from the bar to the office supply store. It came in handy.
We had to leave from our singer's house at 8 am (3 of us hung over, yours truly wickedly so) to make it to North Wilkesboro (yes, it is smack dab in the middle of BFE, NC) by noon to draw the time slot in which we would be playing that evening. We arrived early, despite the fact that I was so hung over that I misunderstood (for lack of a better term) my alarm clock, and didn't wake up until just about when we were supposed to be getting underway. We drew 10:00 pm, which meant that we would be in "Historic Downtown North Wilkesboro" for at least another 11 hours.
The drawing happened significantly late, and several of the bands still hadn't shown up by the time they finally got around to it. This seemed to me to be an incredibly bad sign for an event that had to be finished by midnight (as per N. Wilkesboro city ordnance), and had 12 bands slated to compete in the professional division, which was scheduled to begin at 6:00.
The "venue" was the upper level of the Historical Downtown N. Wilkesboro parking deck, whose concrete paving you could feel buck and flex if someone nearby you jumped. It was built into the side of a hill, and one side had a nice, if bucolic, view, while the other had a concrete retaining wall, and slightly above and beyond that a row of brick buildings. The stage had been set up with its back to the view, facing the retaining wall across the parking lot. Some guys from a redneck metal band (or possibly several bands, I never found out, most likely for lack of trying) were milling around onstage, setting up the sound system and spending way more time showing off their chops on the "house" drum kit than they spent setting it up and checking it. Every time they would whack a drum, you could hear it a fraction of a second later as it slapped back off the retaining wall, sounding like a complete rhythmic nightmare.
With time to kill and a desire to distract ourselves from the ulcer-inducing soundcheck, we decided to go have lunch at the Main Street Cafe, which was staying open on Saturday specially for the event. The service was surprisingly friendly considering that this was the kind of place that served my "turkey and cheese" sandwich with american cheese (see footnote 2), and I was wearing a florescent pink camoflauge shirt.
The guy running the event (a very short man by the name of Jason who should have way outgrown his boyish exhuberance and hall monitor attitude, and who also posessed the most utterly nondescript haircut I have ever seen) told us that he was optimistic about audience turnout because there was absolutely nothing else to do in Wilkes county on a Saturday. I wondered what the hell there was to do on all the other days of the week, too, but diplomatically refrained from asking. I was (as I mentioned previously) wearing a pink shirt, have a pretty faggy haircut, and the redneck count was high (and rising).
Jason was right, on both counts. There were quite a few people in attendance, including us, for the entire time. There WAS nothing else to do, except watch the amateur band competition, and then later on check out our competion in the "professional" division.
As I stood around, trying not to check out chicks whom I was pretty sure were far too young for me to be checking out, I noticed a good deal of extraneous apostrophes. This, in itself, is nothing new, but what amazed me was multiple instances of a single sign or display showing both correct and incorrect pluralization. For instance, the portable shed selling cold drinks had two signs, one of which read "slurpies" and the other "latte's." Likewise, one of the bands had a sign at the merch table listing prices for "t-shirts" and "CD's" (see footnote 3).
The amateur competition was experientially pretty awful. The sound started out awful, and remained awful, the faces on the huddle of redneck metalheads under the sound tent sporting calm looks of we've-got-it-under-control-ness. Eventually I fortified myself (see footnote 4) enough to have a very tentative word with them. It got slightly better, but the metalnecks didn't seem to care much one way or the other. Even though it sucked to sit through, the outcome was satisfying, as Eyes to Space, a band from Chapel Hill that defies accurate descrption at this late an hour (see footnote 5), won, much to LMM's collective delight.
As the sun began to sink, the professional competition started with another mammoth sound check. It was the same guys as before running sound, and the same drum kit. I don't know why they decided to check again, except that when the first pro band started, the sound was so much better. It wasn't that the band was so much better, it's just that they did the sound right the second time. Why they ran sucky sound for the amateur bands, but decent sound for the pro bands is beyond be, although I think they were probably assholes, and that might have had something to do with it.
Yes, metal was the order of the day, but it wasn't really metal. it was that sort of forcibly angsty, post-Alice-in-Chains hernia-inducing growl, wall of crunchy guitars that saturates the rock airwaves these days. In fact, I believe the offical radio format name for that is "Loud Rock." At least half the bands were their own completely forgettable version of modern Loud Rock (see footnote 6).
There were a couple of refreshing exceptions. My favorite was the Honored Guests, another Chapel Hill band who were also a little nervous about getting beaten to death so far from civilization. I was also somewhat fond of Fishing for Your Girlfriend, who were tight as hell, and had the Tallest Guitar Player in the World (see footnote 7).
I think we honestly did a fairly mediocre job, but it was hard to tell. The sound on stage was staggeringly awful, and I felt sloppy as hell. I was pretty surprised, though, by a gaggle of teenagers up front who were rocking the fuck out. They made my night. When I got up on stage, they were, like "ohmygod I love your pants," and when I embarrassedly admitted under my breath that I thought they had come from Hot Topic, the most interested girl shook her head and said, "no, I shop there all the time!" "But you're embarrassed about it, right?" I asked, still skeptical. "No," she shook her head, her eyes wide with honesty. I don't think she understood the irony of the counterculture store in the mall. It was so cute. One of the guys even enthusiastically chugged a Diet Rockstar (see footnote 8) for a free CD. I rocked my ass off just for them. I was sloppy as hell, by my heart, thanks to them, was at least in it.
Fortunately, the opinion of the audience was only worth half of each band's score (the other half coming from a panel of judges), because most of the kids had already cast their ballots and left by the time we played. The few kids who liked us, though, really liked us. I signed more autographs that night than in the rest of my life put together (see footnote 9). We tried to encourage them to all start bands of their own.
So, yes, in the end it was one of the constipated bands that won "best band." Honestly, there wasn't much competition for "best vocals," especially from the grunt-rock crowd. Charlotte was very apologetic, feeling kind of guilty towards us for winning an award pretty much aimed at her, until we told her, "yes, we know, Charlotte, that without us you'd just be a woman yelling angrily on a stage by herself."
We came home. It was a long day, as evidenced by this journal entry, which was about six times as long as I'd intended it to be.
-----
1. Not to be confused with Wilkesboro, a nearby by completely separate town, and the closest place you can buy an alcoholic beverage at noon on a Saturday.
2. Admittedly, the sandwich was less than three bucks, so I can't really complain about the american cheese, but only use it to characterize the place.
3. The event's t-shirt, while hideous, at least did not commemorate a "Battle of the Band's."
4. By thinking very hard about beer.
5. I will say that the singer was playing one of those guitar-style keyboard controllers, sometimes referred to as a "key-tar," except it wasn't actually a key-tar. It was a regular keyboard nailed to a board with a couple of other devices, and slung on a strap around his neck.
6. Although the first band had this singer who was wearing a Ritchie Sambora-style cowboy hat, a long-sleeve mesh shirt, leather pants and leather chaps. I will remember him, if only for the discussion we had about how fucking hot and steamy it must be inside those two layers of leather leggings.
7. He was pretty good.
8. When we went to Cincinati for the MidPoint Music Festival, we discovered an energy drink that's actually called "Rockstar." I got drunk and eventually tried one. It tastes like Smarties. I have no data on the diet version.
9. Special thanks to Stacy for buying me that silvery-pink pen on a whim the day before when we staggered up the street from the bar to the office supply store. It came in handy.
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*That would be my Grandma. My Mom makes her cry all the time and she's still going to wherever awesome people go when they die.