Dear diary and bored to the bone readers,
This entry is about guitars and averagionality, sandwiches and cheese pies, 7 year old notes, thoughts of giving up and mental slaps.
Our performance in last night's gig was below average. Mistakes were made, barely anyone showed up and all we managed was to sweat, embrace an embarrassment, spend 21 euros at the bar for 3 double southern comforts and celebrate after wards with sandwiches, beers and cheese-pies.
The owner of the bar was a major dick. If he had a whip I bet he'd use it to make us play. It was 11:30 or so and everyone was outside having the last sips from their beers. I was on stage making the last preparations when he said “alright start playing already”. I look around me and I was all alone. I look up and say, “play? I'm the only one here, everyone's outside...you want me to play alone?” He says, “yeah play already!”. So I just strum my guitar up and down and say “there you go I just played...”.
He starts yelling at my friend who was at the bar saying that he's going to cancel the gig if we don't start playing and he won't take no irony from a guy who's half his age. All his panties were in a twist at that point. I put my guitar down and go outside to tell the 10 or so people to finish their beers and come in cause the owner is going crazy, when the door man says “don't bother the gig might get cancelled.” I laugh a little and walk back in.
We get on stage and start playing. There are 4 or 5 people in the bar apart from us. During the second song the rest of the people walk in. Now we count around 15 or 20 people. Hip hip hooray. Our first three songs come out alright. No mistakes but still not perfect for us. During the third song my guitar goes off. We continue playing. We finish the song and I change the cable. The guitar goes off again and I disconnect my delay pedal completely.
We start playing the next song in the list. “Atrophy”. I start playing it a tone higher. I get pissed off and anxious as it sounds crap and in all that confusion I try to find out what's wrong. Finally I realize I'm being a major moron and I correct it at the first chorus. Then we play some covers. “Gin and Juice”, “Anarchy Camp”, “Backyard” with “Heat of the moment” as an intro. Mistakes keep happening, like playing the songs a little bit faster than we should. I'm still let down and pissed off. We finish our set.
A guy shouts “play one more song!” My friend says, “that's all we had...”. The guy says “play Anarchy Camp again!” My friend says “sorry but we can't cause we played it terribly anyway...” Then the guy says “PLAY GIN AND JUICE!” The rest of the band have started packing their stuff on stage and I just stand there confused not knowing what we're going to do. The guy looks at me and says “play the beginning of GIN AND JUICE!” I play the beginning of that song and remind everyone that we might suck but we sweat and we did it for them. Some how that joke seems to get some approval.
We get off the stage, pack our stuff and I go to the bar. I start thinking that maybe we should just call it quits. That was a hard slap on the face and maybe this isn't for us. A friend of ours from another band comes and comforts me by saying “you played alright, but shit happen, don't worry about it, I know you can play way better”. That felt nice but only for a couple of seconds, but much appreciated all the same. Never thought that nice guys like him existed. Meh, you learn something new every day.
The other band finishes playing and we head off. The clock shows 2:30 am and everyone's heading home. Me, my best friend and another friend of ours talk about getting something to eat and then head to a bar. We sit at a sandwich place and start eating and talking. At this point I start over thinking of how much we sucked and sympathy and excuses do nothing but make things worse. “maybe we should just call it quits”
I eat one sandwich, one cheese pie, a slice of pizza and ham-cheese and bacon pie. My friend eats a cheese pie, a meat pie and a sausage roll. The other guy eats a cheese pie. The clock by now shows quarter to four and we decide to head off to a bar.
We get in the car and start driving. We drive down a road where prostitutes hang out. One of them was BEAUTIFUL so me and the other friend of mine make my best friend drive down that road once more to check her out before we go to that bar we were planning to go. He moans and whines but we manage to convince him. Her face was beautiful. She didn't look worn out or tired or like a junky like some of the street prostitutes. If she was standing alone dressed less slutty she could easily be mistaken that she was waiting for someone to pick her up. But she was doing that already, but with the only difference she was waiting for anyone to pick her up.
Anyway, we drive to that bar. We get in. It was crap. We leave. We go at our friend's cafe place which he had to open it at 6 am. At this point the clock shows 4:15. We're all relatively tipsy and tired. We say the stupidest of jokes and do the stupidest of things that only a tipsy guy with no sleep would laugh with. Once again I keep thinking that maybe we should quit.
At that point I think, “fuck it. We shouldn't quit. We should try harder and yeah shit do happen. Maybe that's all we needed to wake us up and start taking things seriously.” This mental slap made everything look better this morning. I was looking at notes and lyrics written 7 years ago and they sucked hard in comparison with the notes and lyrics I have now but I kept doing this cause most of all, as much as cliché as this sounds, I do this for me. It makes me happy, plus it's one of the things that I suck less at and these are the things that everyone should hold on to and keep honing.
We're not going to become millionaires, we may never fill a bar/club, but at least it makes me happy and it makes me smile. Plus another friend of mine today told me that whilst on the bus going through his ipod he wished he had some of our music on it after being at our last night's gig and he didn't even know how much I thought we sucked cause he had to leave to catch the last bus at 12:15 a song before we finish. I want to believe he was honest and if our music makes some people smile and dance then that's all I want.
Moral of this story, is apart from, you have to find what you suck less at and keep honing it and never quit whatever gives you happiness, also, sandwiches and cheese pies and ham-bacon and cheese pies after beers and southern comfort is one of the best pleasures in life.
I love you all the same, till the next time, bababooee and always wear condoms...no matter what you do.
P.S: Can you pay a prostitute for a 15 seconds hug without fucking her? Or is there an unwritten rule that says that that's wrong? Meh...if any of you alpha males out there tries it or has tried it and know, get back to me.
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