The City Veins

There is almost too much to say regarding the events of this weekend. If you are reading this blog, it is likely you were at Iota on Friday night. I don’t know many more people than those who were out at Iota. It was a ridiculous show. For the first time in this band we felt like rock stars. We obviously don’t expect that sort of support to occur all of the time (although most of the time would be nice). And now it’s Monday and I’m back at work (clearly only in physical body), made painfully aware of the fact that I am not a rock star. However, for about two hours (the show and the moments afterwards) last week we were rock-stars. If we can move that to about two hours every week, on average, I think we will be pretty close. You have to ask yourself what constitutes your existence. We all spend roughly 25% of our lives sleeping, but that does not define who we are. If we could up the percentage of time we spend “rocking” to an audience of many as we did Friday night, I believe that we could find justifiable support that we are rock stars. We are certainly very close in our own minds.

So yes, Friday went well. Because it easier to bitch than to bask in your own splendor, that’s about all I would like to say about Friday.

Saturday was also nice. There were some complicated situations that arose out of the night, of which I will spare the reader. But let’s just say that despite the fact that the sound system is horrible, the people at Lo-Fi Social Club are great. It is rare to find good people who run clubs that are genuinely concerned about the experience from the musician’s perspective, and I’m not just talking about on-stage. The ownership at the club—a young guy named Neil—generally treated us with respect and acted the way that humans should treat others. Sappy, oh yes it is. But in a business in which words like “respect” and “justice” are only used with a prefix, it is worth noting. We all agreed that we hated the sound system; it’s just a tough room because the drums reverberate like crazy. There is very little you can do about that, save for becoming an antiquary that specializes in tapestries. But I shall forgive them that, for though I hate the Baltimore music scene I quite like the Lo-Fi Social Club.

On a final note, I’d say the one telling moment to take from the weekend was in the last transition of our newest song. We currently call this song “Seashore” as a reference to Broken Social Scene’s 5/4 Shoreline because our song also is in 5/4. (Editor’s note: Shoreline by BSS is actually in 7/4, Aaron is just an idiot) Anyway, we fucked up the last transition. It’s hard to tell whose fault it was, but we were not on the same page. But it didn’t matter: we were having fun; we were playing hard; we were taking risks. We wrote that song less than a week before performing it in front of the biggest audience we’d ever experienced. And that moment signifies the sense of hope feeding off of risk that we can use both musically and mentally. This idea is not really as obscure as I’m making it sound. If we take risks, good things may happen or they may not (the song is good, but we fucked it up), but at the very least we can foster the hope that we can succeed.

And now I’m Tony Robbins.

Photo by Brad Diamonds.