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| Exciting poster at the door |
At this point in my musical career, I think the place I've played the most is the Central. Good, bad, indifferent, a gig's a gig and the Central's always been fine.
This show was set up months ago by a guy named Will. He does some local booking of bands and is in tight with a band we've played with before called Purusa, out of Portland. The guys in the band are stellar dudes and the band is pretty awesome.
As always, early doors at the Central. I showed up around 6:30 and the headliner, My Next Planet, was setting up their gear. They are a 3-piece pop/punk band that also works with Will and they traveled heavy. I think they're local and they've been playing a ton of shows. On stage was what looked like an 8x12 cabinet, a couple Marshall cabinets, a huge-ass drum set and a bunch of MNP signage, lights and a banner. A little overkill, IMO, but they had a 4th member that seemed to be handling a lot of admin type duties (merch table setup, promo, sound check ears in the crowd, etc).
Isku ran sound for the night. He checked for Sunset Grooves a few months ago, then did our private party in July, and he'll do another for us in Sept. For Planets, it was comforting and we sounded good enough, I suppose.
First up was Purusa. Kris, Zach, Dave and Andy, and they are all excellent musicians. Tight band, Kris with golden pipes, and they just tore it up. A pleasure to watch and hear, I only wish there were more people there to appreciate it.
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| Purusa tearing it up |
Purusa finished promptly at 8:45 and we got setup to go. No sound check for us, just line check and play. We had no set list, but luckily I had an old one in my bag, so we used that. I only brought one bass (butter) and my pedals. I used the house GK 410 and it was fine. I did bring my IEMs but didn't use them. Maybe I should have after listening back. It's just so hard to hear some parts if the monitor mix isn't dialed in properly. The wedges were loud enough, but man, there are some moments that are challenging for me.
We had a bit of a trainwreck on "Sit and Spin" with Robb doing some improv and then getting lost at the instrumental bridge. It sort of worked, but it was sloppy and his note choices weren't great. If you didn't know the song, it was OK. There were other moments as well, but that was the big showstopper. As mentioned, my backing vocals were meh. Some good parts, some not so great parts ("Panic Attack" ugh). Even off the bat, with "Unraveled," it was pretty rough. Isku had me dialed in hot and though it's nice to hear in the recording, there's no denying it when they're off.
We slogged our way through it and we all felt pretty gross afterward. It was weird. I mean, I wasn't in my feels, but both Cass and Robb were pretty down about it (via text at least).
Rounding out the night was My Next Planet. They had a nice crowd, maybe 25-30 people? Don't know how they did it because the tunes were pretty bland. It was more pop emo than anything punk related. They were really good at it, but not my thing. Weirdly, they had some backing tracks that seemed to double some bass, even when the bassist was playing. I don't know, I don't think they were mixed all that well out front. No pix of them.
Good to hang out with Cass afterward. Robb jetted pretty quickly, but he didn't miss much. Saw an old Embers fan, Stephanie, and chatted with her for a few. Aside from that, it was a pretty uneventful night. We made $85 and that's that.
