The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 566
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 248: JLHS Part Two 21
Sun., Oct. 7, 2007
… They had enough drums and that was the main thing. That’s the hardest thing to lug around. All Geoff needed was some cymbals and it’s a good thing he had the hi-hat cymbals there because I’d told him that he didn’t need the hi-hat, not realizing that the cymbals separated from that thing. I thought it was all one piece. But he’d left them in the car and so I had to retrieve them from the parking garage where he’d put the car. That was down on the street that Delancey turns into, It was about five blocks below Houston and one block west.
It took from about 4:30 to about 5:30 to get set up. The sound guy didn’t show until five and he had to set up mikes as well as the monitor speakers. There were three of them, one in front of each of the two vocal mikes and then he put a third next to Geoff when Geoff said that he couldn’t hear Greg well enough. As we started to play to check the balances, there was a volume problem. We wanted to play much louder than the sound guy (whose name I can’t remember) wanted or was able to handle so he was turning Greg and me down. Edward had his amp pumped all the way up but that still wasn’t enough even for that small room. Everything was being put through the P.A. so we were getting everything through the monitors and he was able to balance things considerably from up there. His perch is located about 10 feet up and on the right side just behind the seating area. He was about 25 feet from us.
But we were having fun with the sound check. We played mostly From Now On but must have done a couple of other songs. Most of the people who were going to show up were already there and we had given out the $200 in free drink tickets that Greg had obtained in the deal to have this place. That’s what it cost us - $200 for the hour but we spent more than double that or triple that if you add in the rehearsals and all of the peripheral expenses like parking, driving into the city, moving the stuff around using cabs, buying water and other things for various people. Greg estimated that we spent about $600 and he handled most of the expenses so he has the best knowledge of that.
I finally asked about the time. Edward looked at his watch and saw that it was six o’clock on the nose. We knew that our movie was going to be exhibited first and we knew that it was only eight minutes long and so we knew that if they started on time - and CJ had assured us that they would because they had a tight schedule - we would miss it because it takes about 8 minutes to walk the block from 3rd Ave. (Bowery) to 2nd Ave. Nevertheless, we gave it a shot, leaving Greg behind with the equipment and, sure enough, we walked in there at five bucks a head just as the second movie was starting. I’d thought that it was good that ours was going to be shown first since that was going to leave time for us to get back to the Bowery Poetry Club. As it turned out, it would have been much better if he had been played later because there really was nothing left for us to do back there anyway other than wait for our time to play.
We watched a 15 minute movie about a Jewish family after which Edward and Geoff took off. Patrice, Kristy and I hung around for another movie about Greek diners and then a fictional story about a couple in a small apartment and a guy downstairs running a laundry business and lusting after the girl that was fairly interesting. That lasted about 15 minutes or so also after which the three of us headed back. The idea had been for us to hand out the free drink tickets to people there who knew CJ but that was never practical because they weren’t going to be coming out of there until almost seven, which was too late for us to be hanging around there. In the end CJ didn’t bring along more than a handful of people but that was still better than no one.
So we just waited around for our time to come. Geoff disappeared and then reappeared and that was when Michael, who had not gone to the theater with us, followed Geoff onto the stage in order to make an announcement about an internet chase of a shot glass. No one had the slightest idea what he was talking about, but he later showed me a website that looked like some sort of chain letter to me where people sent puzzles around to be solved, the reward for which is the “shot glass”. I don’t know what this could possibly mean other than that you come into the awareness of anyone who happens to be chasing this shot glass around the web. It’s very possible that it is only people like Michael who are doing this, i.e., nuts. That was Keely’s immediate assessment of him as he took his leave from us as we headed for Ben’s car and she was right on that one.
Greg hit the opening for From Now On as soon as Michael was finished with the shot glass, which didn’t take long and that was a good thing since none of us had any idea what he was doing or why we were letting him take up this time. It was 7:15 and we had our set timed down to the minute. We’d timed it twice at the Jam and it had come out to 25-26 minutes both times. We wanted to get our stuff out of there before eight o’clock and that meant leaving a little time for that at the end.
I had to play and sing by myself at the beginning of this song and I had never learned to play the acoustic lick that I played for the recording. So I strummed it as best I could while concentrating on the singing. I wanted to focus on the singing rather than the guitar playing and you can tell that I did that better on From Now On than on the second song, It’s O.K., where, for example, I lost concentration on the phrase “our sad song” and didn’t sing it well. But I think I sang the first song well and everyone did their thing, except that Geoff didn’t play that great drum build up that we have there in the studio recording. Listening now, that silence jumps out. But Greg hit the solo pretty good and came through especially on the higher licks and we got a good amount of applause at the end. It’s hard to tell how few people are there from that.
Then came It’s O.K. with a cell phone going off during the bass intro. I played the chords pretty hard and heavy. My guitar sounds like a guitar; Greg’s sounds like a crashing airplane but it makes for a good contrast. He didn’t quite land the plane on the right runway at the end of this but otherwise it came off pretty good. Then came the experimental part of the evening. Lily. Greg had sung a lot of open mikes with me but he had never sung with the band either in front of people or even up in the studio. We’ve yet to get a complete vocal take from him and he’s supposed to be singing five of the twelve songs on the CD. He has made a couple of attempts but it has always been left to the end and there has never been enough time. So this was the moment for him and he brought it off very well.
The group at the bar cheered as he sang the first line. He had sung this song in a half shout at the studio and that is how he did it on the Bowery. He sang to my guitar for the verse and then we all kicked in on the chorus. We played it hard and fast and the thing rocked. I think he wrote it as a ballad but we’ve never played it that way. The first time we did it, Geoff hung back and kicked in the drums only on the chorus and I don’t think there is any other way to play this song. I gave him the CD yesterday and haven’t heard from him today so I don’t know what he thinks of it yet. I hope he’s okay with it. He should be and I like the idea of having two contrasting voices. The only glitch that I can hear is where I almost dropped the pick toward the end of the 2nd verse so there is a slight hesitation in the guitar going down from the C# to the A. I was strumming pretty good on it and my thumb got slippery. It was a warm day and we were all sweating.
Greg launched immediately into We Can Never Know with a much heavier guitar tone that we usually have on the song and he kept it up right through the first verse where I thought he should have dropped out or turned down some. Turning down is not something we do well, although I did it on Lily. I had practiced going down for the verse and then up for the chorus. Greg played loud all the way through We Can Never Know and when it came to the second half of his solo, he played the first line fairly cleanly but then degenerated into pure grunge. I think I sang it decently. I was trying to raise the level at some point in each song and did it here on the last line of the bridge (I think).
None of us had noticed if CJ had come into the place. I had noticed nothing about what was going on out there. The lights were not overly bright and I could see Luz and Patrice sitting just below me but I wasn’t looking much at the crowd. I glanced out at where Sally was a couple of times but mostly I was just thinking about the next vocal line and if my hand was in a position to hit the next chord. I was also completely unaware of what Kristy was doing with the camera. I don’t know how close she came but I had told her that it was her thing and she could do whatever she wanted. I wanted her moving freely. All decisions were hers and she was making them. I even gave her the CD at the end of the night so that she took it home and was the first to hear it. She got it back to me a few days later. Then I gave it to Geoff who tried equalizing the low end some and gave that back to her. The edited version is maybe slightly better but it’s hardly noticeable ….
Note: See yesterday’s chapter for the first song from this night, From Now On.