[drumming diary] It Was A Cheap Trick, But It Worked

Last night at Cubby Bear was just weird. It wasn't the late start, necessarily. Diver had done one of these post-headliner deals before, and it's nothing a well-placed nap couldn't take care of. No, this was just destined to be one of those nights.

First off, I have nothing against Nice Peter, whose set revolved around a song called "Cover Bands Suck Dick." We've all been there, wondering why the likes of Maggie Speaks and Elevation -- those are the bands name-checked in the song -- get paid big bucks to play other people's songs while the true artistes toil away in obscurity and meager percentages of meager doors. It's an apples and oranges thing, and not a debate I want to get into here. And the consensus on the night was that it would have been much funnier had Anto been with us last night. At the very least, he likely would have called Peter a wanker from stage.

While you could make a case for this creating a somewhat hostile environment in which to take the stage with nearly two hours of covers, that wasn't the problem. I've always been a big fan of the sound on stage at Cubby Bear. It's one of the reasons I enjoy playing the room. Last night was sort of the exception that proved the rule, as I had absolutely no sound coming out of my monitor for the first four or five songs. And let this serve as a lesson to anyone out there in the sound engineering field. If you've got no level at all, please do NOT crank it up and then try to figure out why it's not working. I played half of "She Will Be Loved" with a hand over my ear, and then had to be asked whether it was too loud? What was the first clue?

Later on, all the guitars dropped out of all monitor mixes. At the very end of the show, the same for all vocals. In the middle, Tony's amp decided to fuzz things up of it's own accord. Probably a dirty connection somewhere, and not a blown speaker or anything, but it forced our hand away from playing anything with a clean tone. This actually made us think a little harder about what the next song would be before we ended whatever we were playing, and once the remnants of the crowd took the dance floor in front of us for Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me," we found a groove and maybe even redeemed what had been a pretty uneven set up to that point.