I arrived at Zen’s Bistro fashionably late for the last-minute show featuring Klipspringer, a band the Ark- er, fuck- Napier boys met on tour in Nebraska. As I was exiting my vehicle JD pulled up with daughter Fiona in tow. After a few quick ‘Hellos’ we headed off towards the sound of music. The few people lounging around the front of the building eyed us intruders suspiciously as we looked for the source of the noise. Going through the side door, then to the back room, we found Klipspringer, a four-piece extravaganza of sound. Besides the all-too-common guitar/bass/drums trio, Klipspringer included a large, throbbing pianist, who rocked his cock off on an interesting dual keyboard arrangement. A small lighting situation was created by the setting sun, but it was quickly remedied to my dismay…for then I could see the members of the crowd attending the concert.

Being the elitist fuckhole that I am, I always feel vaguely uncomfortable around the people at Zen’s. I feel it is my duty to look down on those poor sods who are somehow dorkier than I am, seeing as that it is such an amazing feat.
Besides a few friendly, familiar faces (Chad, Kevin, Ameron), everyone in the room was at least slightly odd in some way. From the hippy girls hiding in the corner, not enjoying themselves one bit, to the members of the ‘I wear black pants and a black long sleeved shirt in August’ army with optional goofy haircuts, everyone was somewhat disconcerting. One of my favorite characters was the kid in the jeans and white tee shirt who crouched on the ground in front of us for the majority of the set smoking a pipe. Not the type of shady implement you’d expect, but a full on Sherlock Holmes pipe. I mean fuck, I thought those things had a minimum age requirement of 65.

Klipspringer played a song or two while people shuffled in and out of the room. Nothing really caught my ear, but maybe it was because I was distracted by all the people looking in through the window behind me. Then a tall, hippy-looking man with long gray hair stepped in to exchange a few words with the band.

“You’re too loud,” he said, “you’re drowning out the guys up front.” Klipspringer looked at each other confusedly and agreed to turn it down a bit. The band played a couple more of their rock and roll songs while a variety of people roamed about. Girls with pounds of jewelry, bandanas matching their outfits, and necks littered with hickeys would walk in the room, stare at the band for a minute or two, then leave while muttering some comment like, “It’s too damned hot in here.” I’m sure you all know Nelly’s advice for such situations…thankfully, however, they did not. During one of the songs, the old hippy man, Thomas is his name, came back and stood around looking very disgruntled until there was a lull in the music.

“You’re still too loud.”

“Sorry, we’ll turn it down some more.”

“The other act was booked for tonight first, you know.”

“Are we really that loud?”

“These are just thin sheet rock walls, they don’t insulate.”

“Ok, we’ll turn it down.”

After Thomas took his leave, the band questioned their ability to play any quieter, but turned it down whatever notches they could. Their drummer was then reduced to softly tap, tap, tapping his tom-toms, while their guitarist’s distortion lost all of it’s intimidating punch. The audience was on the band’s side about the sound issue, but it mattered not. Shortly after that, Thomas paid us another visit, simply to ask if the band was able to continue playing at that volume, because it was now acceptable for the people up front. At least he was being a nice guy about it. So Klipspringer picked through their set list, playing only the songs they could work with at low levels, their schoolboy voices ringing out over the meager sounds of the instruments. Fiona seemed to be the only person enjoying herself thoroughly, dancing and waving to the cute guys in the band. When they neared the end of their list of songs they were able to play, Chad made the valiant suggestion, “If it’s gonna be the last song, rock it out.” And that they did. Raising the decibels to an acceptable wail, they tore through one last song, free of incident.

This was far from the end of the night, however, because Zen’s is such a fun place. For some reason, when Klipspringer announced the availability of their shirts and CDs, the question was raised, “Will you accept cheques?” When they said that they gladly would…five, six, seven, eight chequebooks were instantly whipped out of pocket and purse. Others dashed to their vehicles to retrieve their personal forms of payment. In all the commotion, JD pushed his way to the band to make his five-dollar donation, but was unable to return empty handed. In return for his generosity, he was rewarded with a CD and a “titty shirt” for Fiona. Seeing as we were both famished, and the food at Zen’s sucks really bad, JD and I decided to go to Wendy’s. I’m all about the Spicy Chicken Sandwiches (with honey-mustard, of course), and we were going to get Chad an ice cream as well. After waiting in the line at the drive-thru for several minutes, we bumbled through our order, so distracted by the Wendy’s employee’s hatred for us, that we completely forgot about Chad’s ice cream. After driving 2 blocks back to Zen’s, we pulled around back to a pleasant place, under a tree near a dumpster. We were happily engorging ourselves with food, talking some shit about both Zen’s and Wendy’s, when one of the waitresses from the Bistro came out the back door and told us we couldn’t eat pizza in their parking lot. I guess she assumed that since JD had a Domino’s sign on his car, that we couldn’t possibly be eating anything other than pizza, but she didn’t press the issue any further at that time. When she came back later, JD asked if she was a waitress, and offered to tip her so she would leave us alone. She explained to us that if the owner saw us, she would get yelled at, so any remaining attempts at logic were lost on her. We then decided to see if the atmosphere in the front of the building was a little less crappy.

We had no problems loitering in the car in their parking lot, bullshitting the night away, but apparently there were some problems inside. A couple of people started yelling at each other, as people often do, one of them an older bald man, the other a younger kid. The man had just removed the kid from the restaurant for some reason that probably doesn’t matter very much, but the kid wasn’t very happy about it. Words were exchanged, as were a few pushes. Things would settle down for a while, then flare up again. Eventually the kid popped the old man a good one right in the head, and everything exploded. They were pulled apart after no more than 10 seconds, and the younger one left angrily.