Thursday, Aug 22 2002
Hotel Utah - San Francisco, CA

Hmmm....such a good night, but a little too much drama. A mix up about the show's starting time put us on earlier than scheduled. Which made us sad, cuz we had told all our friends that we'd be playing at 10:00. Not 8:45. And it made the barstaff unusually surly, so they decided, as we were setting up, to ask us about every 5 minutes if we were ready to play yet. Glaring looks from the doorgirl, nervous fellow bands and the fictitious angry mob that had read in the paper that the show was at 8:45 all made for a less-than-pleasant start.

Whatever. Par for the course, really. I don't know why this shit still manages to surprise us.

So we played. Sweat. Pretty. Loud. Thrashy. Fun.

Then Virgin Mega Whore went on. Thanks to Taly for setting up this show for us! Dispite this rant, we really did have a good time.

Ok. But the highlight of the evening was the 1 hour and 30 minute setup of the last band. Yes, that's the SETUP time. Not the playing time. Good thing they made us go on early. Good thing they cut our set down to 38 minutes. By our calculations, we played our entire set in one third the time it took Shakelgrind to set up their gear.

And let's talk about the gear, shall we? (yeah, I'm bitter. What of it?)

Did they make a run to Guitar Center before the show?

1 guitarist
3 guitars
10 guitar effects pedals
1 bassist
3 basses
10 bass effects pedals
1 drummer
1 drumkit
1 singer
4 in-ear monitoring sytems (is this the Shoreline, or the Hotel Utah?)
1 Macintosh laptop

Ok, so I'm thinking this could be a electronica thing. Sequences on the laptop - band plays along - monitors needed to follow along with the computer. Makes sense.

But then they played, and I couldn't hear anything that sounded like it was coming from the computer. WHY was it there? Were there scrolling lyrics on it, so the singer could follow along? Was it there to look cool? Was this really all necessary???!!

Let's step back for a moment. All in all, they could have been a pretty cool sounding Portishead meets Clinic idea. Rock steady drummer chick - very cute - laid down the beat. The guitar wanted to be a wall of gorgeous lush and almost had it, but was too quiet and indistinct to have the proper impact. Tthe bass player - well, it sounded like a bass player...playing bass. Don't know where the 10 effects came in. And the singer - had the effected midrangey vocal thing going. Couldn't hear the words, but it sounded cool like an early, early Peter Gabriel. And she was another hip lookin' chick in that very styled L.A. way.

So the formula was there, but they fucked it all up with too long a setup time, too much shit on stage, too bored of a look on all the band member's faces (except for the bassist), and then a damn shitty way of badmouthing the other bands on stage. "We have to stop, because the first band started too late". Hmmm....that's interesting. How 'bout realizing that if you had taken 20 minutes to set up like every other band in the world, you would have been able to play for almost two hours!!??

I pick my battles. And dammit, this is one of them. GRRRRRR....

I don't know why I care. Why do I care, Mark?

But thanks of course to everyone who came to the show to see us. Hope you had fun. And sorry to the folks who missed our set.