Show Journal 2001-01-12
Holy crap, what a rad show! We arrived late and walked in the door only to find about 350 kids absolutely going off to No Excuse. It’s so cool to see so many people going crazy for smaller local bands. That doesn’t happen it too many towns and I always think it’s so cool when a small town like Bend has a good music scene. So anyway, we’re walking in and No Excuse announces they are playing their last song. We ended up setting up right away and were on stage in a few minutes. Our set was amazing … definitely one of the best we’ve ever played. There were so many people with so much energy, it was great. People were just mashed against the stage shouting along with the words they already knew or could figure out. Stage diving, circle pitting, knocking stuff over, you name it. I am actually kind of surprised we lived through the set though. The entire right hand side of the stage was made of 3 sheets of dry wall with carpet on top. I jumped up during the second song, came down and sank about a foot down into the carpet. After the song we looked under the carpet and sure enough I put a 3 foot wide hole in the stage. By the end of our set the entire right hand side of the was broken through and I was playing on a suspended piece of carpet dangling over the floor. It was like playing on one of those moonwalk things. The drum riser was also a spectacle of modern engineering. It was a wide flat piece of wood with supports in the middle, meaning that it wobbles and leans when you get near the edges. In a practical sense that means if any of us stand on the drum riser for more than a few seconds you can spill the entire drum set onto the floor. We has 3 close calls tonight, including one where the drum set lurched forward, tapped Dave in the back and fell back into place. Justin had some stage issues tonight and ended up toppling over onto the ground after tripping on a monitor. Of course his side of the stage was solid and functional, he’s just extraordinarily clumsy. All the broken stuff just made the show that much better and seriously it was one of the most fun shows we’ve ever had. After us the Secludes came up and showed Bend what’s up. They got the same energy as us and the first band and I think they probably had as much fun as we did. After that we packed up and drove through the blizzard like conditions and unplowed roads on Mt. Hood to get home. Super big thanks to No Excuse for setting up the show, the hall, the stage and the PA … it’s hard not to have a good music scene with people like that setting up shows.
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