Waking up on the morning of the 30th gave me a strange feeling. I did not know what day of the week it was. I knew it was the 30th, we were to be playing a gig in Mount Pleasant, but as to what weekday- no clue. I slept in as long as possible and then we went over to Spring Hill to meet with Monroe and Barry to practice at the chapel. We hadn't seen Barry for a while, it was a joyous reunion! We practiced about an hour then hit the road to Mount Pleasant.
When we got the the Central Michigan Campus, we drove right past the building. So instead of turning around, we pulled into what looked like a drive into the parking lot. It wasn't, as we rolled over it, we realised we were on a sidewalk, just for a moment. It was kind of funny. When we got into the building, many things happened very quickly. For one, we started to talking to Tiff and the guys running sound and we thought if the stage was set up in a different part of the room the acoustics and aesthetics would greatly improve. They said they were willing to try anything so we moved the stage off of the tile floor, up about three feet onto a stage/library. Ok, ok, let me describe this building. It had three main parts, and each could be separated with a folding wall. Two of the sections were on the same level-tile and off white cinder block. The third section was at the far end and raised up, carpeted and lined with books and late 60s early 70s furniture. And to top it all off, Monroe finally got his TV showing fuzz request. Tiff, our promoter and gracious host sent someone to get her old TV and we had 19" of static playing with us during our set. (Then the midget druids did a dance..j/k but more on that later..)
We had the honor of playing first and I think it went very well. For the first time in Bottle
Rocket, I did some classic "Tom performance artist" moves and the crowd and the band reacted positively. Ooh,
I'm going to back up a minute here, when we wrote our set list, I tried to write humorous subtitles
to the song names. I then took the subtitles and scratched them out. Take a look:
1. baby one more shot (heroin)
2. no gaurantees (justin wilson)
3. romeo and juliet (francis bacon)
4. dead passengers (abba)
5. eye to eye (mike and the mechanics)
6. we all make mistakes (practice makes perfect)
7. the difference (conformity)
8. firecracker (interstate explosives laws)
9. fake plastic trees (green party)
10. open (closed)
11. we're gonna make it (fornication)
12. oh holy night (black sabbath)
Now, I know that some of those subtitles are inside jokes and some are "inappropriate." But I think
the readers of this site can handle it.
The two bands we played with - "Eighty Eight Miles Perhour" and "Bent not Broken" were young, but friendly and talented. After our set, Barry and I stepped outside to talk about a lot scriptural of things. Our conversation was started by the variety to slogans and literature throughout the building. Our promoter had no connection to the Wesley Foundation, a non demoniational student ministry that is quite a bit more liberal than your "typical" college student ministry. (They were just using the building There were several anti war posters and things for free trade and gay pride. Many of the signs and magazines were cool, but some of it was a little too radical for me. Monoroe and I had nice talk about the concept of activism in the their little reading room and I took a free amnesty international sticker.
After the show all crashed at Tiff's apartment. Her brother and some other friends came too. Mel, one of Tiff's friends, rented Spinal Tap for us. Only, she accidentally got a concert film instead of the orginal film. But you know, it was a cool accident, because it was very entertaining all the same. A lot of the humor in it was lost on the guys from Bent not Borken, I'm afraid, their average age is 19. I got a kick out of Troy and Barry kind of walking them through the history of Chrisitan alternative music. A conversation sparked by the Tap film, I think.
Tiff had a pet snake that she inheirited from a friend. The snake's name was Lucy. Her room was decorated very originally in pink and christmas lights. She let Troy, Barry and I sleep there. We made a little joke about it being the "Botte Rocket harem." I also played minstrel that night for a while. Tiff had a guitar that everyone who has ever played it has signed the pick gaurd by straching their name into it. There were a lot of names on it. She, Barry, Mel, and I stayed up longer than the others. They wanted to hear me play slide guitar. I said my skills were very limited, but on I played. I started to tell stories and sing some songs- like "reagan's river","this autumn", and "breathing fire" ( a song I rarely play for people) We all started to loose it and Barry and I turned in around 4.
The next morning was sunny, balmy even. I went for a walk to downtown Mount Pleasant to look for a gift from the road for my wife, but all the shops were still closed. So I just milled about for a few minutes and recalled Lohren Deeg- an old friend from Mt. Pleasant. He had a hand in all of this band bussiness. By giving my sister cool music back in the day, like U2 and radiohead, which then found its way to me, he helped my rock education invaluably. I went with Barry to buy coffee for everyone. Mel and their friend Jessi came by to help. We all sat around and talked about records until we were done showering and what not. While all this was going on, I had a couple phone calls with my dissapointed wife who could not come up tonight like we had planned because over the past few days, Sam, developed pneumonia. I was a little sadder all day because I knew I wasn't going to be seeing the new year in with Elizabeth for the first time in 6 years.
We went to Tiffs work for lunch, a nice family restaurant in Mt. Pleasant. We made plans with a ton of fans from last night's show to come down to tonight's gig in Lake Odessa. That made the show seem less daunting because there were going to be familiar faces in the audience. On our way to Lake O, Barry played a lot music by a guy named David Wilcox. It blew me away, I totally dug it.
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