The Room That Doesn't Quite Rock

A few Thursdays ago we played our first dirty-ass-bar show.  Nothing special.  I think I go into these situations with expectations set way too high, at least most of the time.  This time I kinda figured it was going to be a flop.  We got asked to play last minute and the results definitely showed.  I had been in the bar before, it was a dive, but it seemed promising for our type of music.  Previously saw some acoustic and folk-type stuff going on.  Small crowd then, smaller crowd now.  

This place is basically two long, rectangular rooms.  One room is a long narrow bar on the left with a few tables and seats to the right of the bar.  Walk in the entrance, walk all the way back, go up some steps, and you have "the room."  The room consists of a few booths in the back across from a boxed-in women's room.  A pool table is pushed off to the side and a few more booths are along the same wall.  There's darts.  There's a few more seats and booths.  All on the opposite wall.  Cleared out center for bands.  So we load in, and the girl who promoted the show approaches me.  The other local band wants to play first, and she wants to throw the touring band on in the middle, so people watch them.  Eh... sure.  We'll play last.   Three bands, its late, but we should be out by midnight.  The other local band shows up and their singer tells me he has to set up the PA, in a "what's with this bullshit" voice.  Agreed.  So you can say it sucks being nice, but at the same time, we didn't have to set up the PA.

So this girl sets up shows at this bar pretty regularly, but for some reason she comes up and asks me how much she should charge for cover.  It's your show, I told people three bucks because I thought it was three bucks.  Whatever.  So she disappears and a girl who was sitting in the back approaches me and complains that she shouldn't pay.  She had been sitting there since eight, which was true, but this is along with the fact that she was one of maybe six people in the room who weren't bands.  "Ask someone else."  We're not getting anything out of her, anyway.

The people.  There's that drunk girl who had a lady who could have very well been her mom taking pseudo-myspace photos of her ass all night.  When she wasn't doing that, she was asking for photographs to be taken as she sat there and made out with her boyfriend.  A character that we met a few weeks before was there, but he was gone before we started playing.  And then, not to name names, but an older burnout was there.  Dancing to all the bands, telling everyone how awesome they are.  Out of this world, but enjoying the world he was occupying at the time.

Our group split before the bands even began to play.  Around 10, while the local band  was setting up, a few people who tagged along went their separate way.  I was hungry, and we were sick of sitting around, so the rest of us went over to 43rd to hang out at Josh's.  We watched Mitch Hedberg and had more fun than we would have at the venue.

We returned an hour later or so, and the touring band was just setting up.  The touring band - The Boss Martians - was interesting.  They played what I wanted - a quick set, no bullshit, very straightfoward.  Cool guys from what I could tell.  Original sound.  Hope they can make it back to a better place in Pittsburgh sometime.

We played to the burnout and a few other band members who claimed they enjoyed our set, but it was one of those nights.  The sound seemed off, broke some strings, nothing went right.  One of those nights where "nice set guys" seems oh so fake.