Orange Street Weekend

Ah, what a sweet weekend! If you're wondering how the gig at The Orange Street went, it went GREAT. If you're wondering what The Orange Street is, it's essentially a teen club in Akron. Like a normal run-down joint where local bands play, just minus the alcohol, and they finish up before midnight 'cause of the curfew on under-eighteeners. In other words, the perfect place for Pure Boss to play.

Basic chronology: I took a half day Friday, got to Akron at 2:45, we set up and practiced for 2 hours in the Chima's barn, then frantically packed up the cars, figured out our outfits and drove to the OS. Set up our stuff, finally the sound guy hooked us into the system, we sound checked, waited around, then played, then hung out and watched the 5 other bands play (minus the one we missed while getting dinner at Taco Bell). I go back to Chimas, we hang around and watch a movie, I play myself sleepy on acoustic guitar, we sleep till 11 or so in the basement, wake up and get moving, Steve comes over, we set up again in the barn, and then practice for hours getting ready for the YMCA concert. Lunch break (Yay Lance for bringing pizza!), set list creation, running through setlist, then yet another tear-down and load-up-car routine. Dinner with the band at Baja Fresh, then I'm on the road home, arriving at said place of residence at 11:04pm. Hard to believe that was all just 34 hours. Felt like a whole weekend!

The Orange Street is a great place - scroungy, dirty, beaten-down stage, dusty stacks of speakers reaching up to the low ceiling, bank of dusty orangey yellow lights glaring down on the stage (leaving mysterious dark corners behind the speakers), and a very disconcerting stairway at the back leading down into corroded bricky darkness. Gives me de jibbleys, as Strong Bad would say. Basically, it's exactly the kind of place you'd expect to hear loud, harsh-sounding pounding music from local bands. Honestly, though, it wasn't that hard core. Some of the bands were really mild (i.e. lame!), and most of the crowd was pretty benign.

We pulled up out front, parked, and just sorta walked in the door like, well, um, we're playing here tonight, but we don't know how anything works or who to talk to or what to do, so we'll just walk in and put our hands in our pockets and look at the emo music people around and try to sorta look cool and not clueless 'cause we're actually playing here in a real music place :-) There were already maybe 20 people mulling around, mostly groups of high-school/junior high friends, some of 'em mildly goth looking. Finally I saw somebody go up behind the sound board, and knew I had found the man to talk to. We were cool, talked about how it works and what to do, and then we started bringing our stuff in and setting up on the stage (since we were the first band playing). It's a funny dynamic when you have a bunch of band people around, all playing that night, all checking each other out, but not wanting to look like you are, and all wondering how good the other people are, and either being egotistical and thinking you're awesome, or feeling pretty inept and out of place 'cause everybody else is probably better than you, and I'm sure they're all real bands, and we're not a band, we're just me and Brian and Stephen.

So we set up, and then came a time of being told that we had done all we needed to, and the sound guy would set up his mics and such for the house system, and tell us what to do. He was nowhere to be found, and it was past seven, when we were supposed to start, and geez, where IS he? Hmm...maybe down in the undisclosed depths of the basement.... but ah, there he is now, and yay, he's setting up drum mics! Oh, and at some point everybody who had trickled in (maybe 40 people) were told to go back out side and come in again, and pay and get their hands marked. So we herded out the door like sheep and made a little crowd on the sidewalk outside. How sweet to say we were one of the bands playing, and get to go in for free :-) No $6 from me, baby!

Finally he said we were ready to go, so we sorta walked through the folks grouped up in front of the stage and hooked up our instruments. It was kinda funny because the "stage" was about 2 inches above the floor, and everybody was basically standing in a mass 5 feet in front of us. Lights were blasting down on us from the ceiling at the edge of the stage, so we really couldn't see the people out there very well, but they were like right in front of us. Definitely different from a big tall stage in a big room. Cool, though, and very personal. We sound checked real quick at the directions from the sound booth, and then I was like, "so, we're ready to go?" in to my mic, and he gave me the thumbs up. Then, to the consternation and amazement of all present, I got up, Steve gave me his bass, and we switched our instruments! One guy was like "WHAT?? What are they doing??" :-) Brian leans up to his mic and says "Hi, we're Coldplay." And he and I start jumping up and down in time(no music yet). Up to this point I really didn't know how things were going to go--if we'd be stuck with a bunch of depressed emo kids who were too *cool* to have a good time and rock out, or if everybody would hate us, or what. The group of junior high girls who'd been gaggling around all evening seemed ready to rock, though, and when I looked over to the left where they were clustered and saw them start to jump up and down with us, I knew it was going to be sweet :-) Brian started the F - C - Gm - Bb progression, and the gig began!

Folk were indeed ready and willing to rock out, and we had a blast. It was so small and close that we could hear everything quite well, and we were very tight as a band. Brian rocked out like I've never seen before, BUT BUT BUT he didn't just mash the strings and throw his guitar out of tune and break strings and all, so we didn't have dead time. Steve sang well and got into too, hopping up on the kick drum and doing guitar jumps and stuff. And I could feel the low end from the speakers every time I hit the kick drum, which gave me a feeling of solidity and power that bolstered my playing a ton. We were very well practiced up, and since this was only a 30-minute set we played the best of our songs and kept them coming. We rocked out, moved around a ton, and each new song came in snappy and tight. As 5 family members told us afterward, we played the best that night that we ever have. And the non-family non-church people who'd never seen or heard of us before loved us! We sold SIX CD's, signed a bunch, got in some pictures, signed some pants, and when we crashed out the end of one song I heard from somewhere "Will you marry me??" :-P Girls do make the best fans, 'cause they get into it and rock out and scream at the end of every song. They were a geat crowd, and I muchly appreciated their participation. It was a great feeling when we finished the set and knew that we had played our best and kept it tight and energetic. So sweet! It was basically the perfect concert, and now I'll stop blabbering about it :-) And I'm not being proud in what I'm saying, like we're something great or anything. It's just that we've been beating ourselves up about how lame we look while we're playing, and how much dead time we have, and how our songs are crummy and our music is boring and nobody will get into it and we're just totally not like a real band at all...but it actually went off like a good band! We were the second-best band there that night, and definitely got the crowd into it the most. It was very encouraging, and just a lot of fun!

Four of the other bands were quite lame in various ways, but it was still fun to hang out and watch them. The last band, Templeton's Zeal, was...well, they could easily be a pro band, they just haven't gotten their break yet. The drummer was stunningly skilled (and rip, too), and the guitar player was obviously immersed in the school of Hendrix and Zepplin and the likes, and was bested by them by only subtle points of technique and skill. Seriously--he was stunningly good. The few of us who hung around to the bitter end pretty much just stood or sat at the foot of the stage and watched them in awe, happy to sit there as long as they would play, watching something so much better than we could ever play or think of playing. Very cool, and they were really nice guys, too.

It was cool spending the night at the Chima's house and practicing there Saturday. I've wanted to get to know Brian's family better, and it was cool to go to Akron and not be at the Hoffman's house (no offense at all--it's just something different). Jake and Tojie are great dogs, big friendly black labs, and their house is sweet. We practiced in their barn, which is like an unused 2-car garage out behind the house with carpets on the floor and couches around, and record covers up on the walls and random speakers and drum sets and stuff laying around. The perfect place to practice, even if it was 40 degrees and chilling. I kept wiping condensation off my mic, and poor Steve and Brian had a deuce of a time playing with stiff cold fingers. It was a good practice, though, and by the end we were ready for the YMCA gig--all 1.5 hours of it. I got really ticked at one point, sorta building on the fact that my $400 effects pedal had crapped out on me and we were getting ear-piercing feedback for no apparent reason. It's weird--sometimes I just get in this realy ticked mood while we're practicing. I actually think it's related to having that much loud music pounded into me for so long. It just seems to aggravate me for brief periods, even though there isn't a clear reason that meets the level of felt aggravation. Practice and setup and teardown and concert stress are providing many many times to work on not getting angry at stuff. Ahh, how good of God to keep providing instances for me to work on this besetting sin (strained smile of exasperated faith) :-D Ah well. Still good times, definitely.

After practice I wasn't ready to just drive home, so we swung by the Hoffman's, I found my leather jacket and iPod (thank you Lord!), and we piled into Brian's sweet Celica for a quick dinner. It was a great time at Baja Fresh sitting at the high table by the fake tree in the cool eating room chomping down tasty burritos and talking. Dude, we're a band! We're brothers, we've been through sweat and stress and lots and lots of practicing and hard work together, and we're coming more and more into agreement and unison with our purpose and commitment as a band. We know our songs really well, and there is a special kind of connection with people when you are all so familiar with a common thing. I love it when we sit down and plan out a setlist--going over the songs, talking about stuff nobody else would know or understand. It's cool, and very "bandy" :-) I drove away that night quite curious about what God is going to do with this brotherly bond we've got goin' here. See shall we.

It was a nice drive home that night. I was comfortable in the seat, tired but not sleepy, happy to be gently rocked by the road. It was better when there were no cars around. Even though I missed people, I was happier alone. I didn't turn the heat on. For some reason it was better to let my feet stay cold. And I didn't turn any music on either. Any sound would have been a tasteless intrusion. Left hand on the steering wheel, head leaning to one side, legs stretched out--every limb laying in peace, yet not motionless. From deepest childhood, the many nights spent falling asleep and waking up in a motor home rolling down the highway, the feel of a steady-moving vehicle is a comfort. Time kind of becomes irrelevant, and you watch the lane markings clip by and the dips and turns come and go, and you feel the road under the tires, and the darkness all around you is a warm, benign companion. Eventually I sat up straighter, put on Elvis, and warmed up the car, but for a long time I was content with the stasis of the dark car and the spot of passing road in my headlights. I was sad when the city got closer and the darkness was broken by street lights and more cars. There is something restful about darkness, and when you're not drowsy a long dark highway is a pretty happy place to be.

And below it all there was my mind thinking about how ironic it was that my primary "experience" of this experience was in thinking about how I was going to write about it when it was over. Ah well. It was still a nice time, and I arrived home as mellow as a bowl of chicken soup, ready to quench my brimming somnolence with slumber.

As I am ready now. Good night.

--Clear Ambassador