Last week, someone threw up in our office fan.
The airflow in the backstage area isn't very good, so we have usually a floor-fan sitting right outside the office door. Some time during the Mix Master Mike show, someone puked right outside the office door, and into the fan. (The office door was closed at the time, so it went un-observed and no righteous ass-kicking could be delivered.) Of course, this means it wasn't a customer: it was one of the promoters or their sycophants. Not that we hold them to a higher standard of behavior (they're just as bad, if not worse, than the customers when it comes to flagrant dumbassery) but, I dunno, I'd figure that if they had one thing going for them, it would be an ability to hold their liquor.
Another neighborhood casualty: Hamburger Mary's is closed (again.) Well, it hadn't been called Hamburger Mary's for a while now; it became "Harvey's", then "Mary's", then just "12th and Folsom", but now it's called "for lease."
There's been a lot of construction work going on inside the former 20 Tank space lately, but I've heard that they're just going to be a dance club, not a restaurant. It's like there's a conspiracy to deprive us of places to eat.
Lots of stuff this week! I've been spending most of my time sorting through the hundreds of pictures I took over the last few days...
- This show was fantastic, as it was last year. In addition to their usual set of geek tricks (a guy who shoved pins all the way through his arm, and the bait-and-tackle suspension show) they also had the plate-balancing Happy Chef, who is just hilarious; a pair of contortionists who did things that human bodies just cannot do; acrobats; and an aerial rope act. Fun stuff.
Oh, and again they would cook a star-shaped brand onto the body of anyone who wanted it (which turned out to include three of our employees this time.) We turned up the exhaust fan for that part, so the the club wouldn't smell like pork.
Tonight I'm giving away an absolutely free poke in the eye with a sharp stick! Just ask.
Crüxshadows + Sunshine Blind photos.
- Sunshine Blind were great, as always, and I think I finally got some decent pictures of them this time.
I got a kick out of Crüxshadows, but it took a while for them to grow on me. When they came on stage, the singer made this speech in a fake English accent that at first I thought might have been directly from Spinal Tap: "In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing..." Except it was about Aphrodite or something instead of Stonehenge. I couldn't stop giggling.
In addition to that, their music was, to my ears, mostly indistinguishable from VNV Nation (or any of the many progressive-house influenced neo-synthpop laptop bands who seem to be what most goths think "industrial" means these days.)
So I should have hated the show, right? But I didn't, I enjoyed it! This was because of two things. First, there were actual musicians involved: they had live guitar, electric violin, and one, sometimes two, people playing keyboards. And second, they had a couple of dancers, doing a synchronized routine along with most of the songs.
I think I've mentioned before that no matter what your band is like, it can always be improved by the addition of gogo dancers. Because then there's a performance on stage.
I was never able to decide whether they were joking about the Stonehenge thing, or they really were Just That Silly. But either way, they put on a good show.
St. Vitus Dance + System Syn photos.
- System Syn was yet another "Assemblage VNV" and did nothing for me, but again, they get some respect by actually having someone playing keyboards and guitar instead of having their entire act pre-sequenced.
I really enjoyed St. Vitus Dance -- they played really hard, metal-influenced industrial, which has been sorely lacking in the world lately. Live drums, guitar, and occasional keyboards. Also they had a really good lightshow: nice, dramatic use of backlighting and fog.
- Thursday was a dance night called Meat, which was fun, and had a pretty good turnout. Devon and John and crew put a ton of work into decorating the club with a slaughterhouse theme. Devon took one of my mannequins and painted musculature on it. Also there was some kind of visiting TV-claw-monster. They gave away home-made sausage.
I'd like to make the painted mannequin a permanent fixture, but I'm not sure where to put it where it wouldn't get instantly destroyed.
For the tuesday show, we got around 50 people, and for the wednesday show, around 25, which is pretty sad. The turnout for the Circus was ok, though it was about half what it had been last year.
Still, I'm glad we did these shows. I'm bummed that more people didn't show up (that's kind of the point, after all) but I'd so much rather be bringing bands in than doing house every night.
16 Responses:
Regarding safe places for your meaty mannequin:
The safest place I know for club decoration is to hang it from a ceiling well out of reach, though you'd then probably have to devote an actual light to illuminating it
Alternatively, depending on how lit your DJ area is, it could perhaps occupy a corner there, where it could be seen by staff-types and of course the occasional DJ scoper.
Ouch. Wow, I hope your branded staffers were bought lots of drinks afterwords. Yup, you're far from alone in believing Live shows are better than presequenced. Good luck on booking more and more. I wish I was in San Francisco to stop by and visit the club again for a show.
I don't much like Voltaire, but he hit the nail on the head when he introduced the Cruxshadows at Gothcon 2:
"This is Rogue. He's from London. London, Florida."
Now I have the curious urge to open up a restaurant and call it For Lease.
Actually there's a whole genre of music like Cruexshadows called Cybergoth. It's mostly based out of England, and the fashion and the look is consciously more important than the music. They all wear that same crap Kyron5 wears all the time. :) Probably my favorite in that genre musically is Sneaky Bat Machine (now called Goteki), but I'm willing to bet Cruexshadows has the best live show of the bunch.
Oh my god, they named themselves after one of the teams in Wipeout XL! That's even nerdier than having "bat" in your band's name.
http://www.goteki.com
Yeah, it's all kinds of silly. They're so bad, they almost make Kyron5 or the dude in Crying Game look straight in comparison!
Although I have to admit this may need to be a flyer.
At least you got some photos of Meat. I don't think there were that many taken. I took about 100, but they're still gone. My CF card is rightously fucked. Apparently there's a windows-only (bleech) recovery tool that I'm going to try when I get home tonight.
As far as the maniquein goes, why not fly the maniquein from the trussing or somethng? Noone can get to it there.
Yeah, but I'm not sure where to hang it, where it wouldn't be either in the way, or too high to see clearly (even if lit.) Maybe above the DJ booth.
The thing Jess is freaking out below is an idea I had a couple years ago of lining the wall of the pepto room with 4' diameter plexi tubes with mannequins inside, like cryo-tanks. That'd keep hands off of them, plus, hey, everybody loves a corpsicle.
Sounds pricey, though, which is why I never pursued it.
If you really want to do this, talk to miguel. He's really good at doing this sort of stuff on the cheap.
jesus, how many pleased little noises do i have to make to reinforce the value of your CRYOTANK idea?!?!?!?!?
soooooooooooooooooo cool.
also, WHERE WAS MY POKE IN THE EYE? WHERE??
re: really hard, metal-influenced industrial, which has been sorely lacking in the world lately.
Somewhere early in my set I played 2 relatively recent releases that fit that bill. I'd tell you exactly where in my set, but
Pigface - insect/suspect (from Easy Listening)
and
Schuldt - Stained (from First Error Code)
I am greatly enjoying both cds. They both feature a massive variety of songs, instead of rewiting the same song 9 times. I mean all over the map, which I find vasly preferable. hell, I could probably spin an entire set from those 2 cds, and anyone unfamilliar with the cds would not realize it was only 2 bands.
"Stained" is the one that had a beatless piano-only section in the middle. It was also the very loud song mitch played durring sound check.
Schuldt is the guy who did the Evil Playgound remix on FLA's Re-Wind.
the link for that cd has audio samples. tracks 1,6,12 are more ambient, but the rest is pretty aggressive.
Yeah, the new Pigface is really good. "Insect/Suspect" sounds a lot like The Damage Manual stuff (I mean besides Connelly singing.)
seriously check out the samples for the Schudlt album. I am digging it a lot these days.
I'd so much rather be bringing bands in than doing house every night.
and i am so glad you're doing this. there's already too much REALLY BAD house music in this city.