Hope it was worth the wait a concert story by Kevin Seibert
yeah yeah i know the show was a long time ago but i figured it would be a
very appropriate feature article with the joy electric: unelectric album so
close to release date. i apologize to everyone who has been waiting for a
new feature of the month (i apologize to britney most of all) but i've got a
good excuse! i just regained my ability to type after 14 stitches in my
finger! woohoo!
the place: my house cafe, milton, pennsylvania
the year: 1999, april 18th to be exact.
i'd been looking forward to this date for a long time because my friend
justin had booked joy electric at our small local cafe (about a 10 minute
drive from my residence)
i arrived at my house cafe 2 hours before the show started because i wanted
to be able to get a parking spot. of course i forgot that the shows at this
cafe never ever started on time. the show was supposed to start at 6 (with
kind of like spitting, a rock band), then house of wires who was touring
with joy electric was supposed to come up next. after that joy electric
would play followed by the late indie rock band braid.
well by 5:00 i was sick of sitting around (none of the bands had even showed
up yet) so my friend marc and i went to his trailer to get a magazine
featuring the at that time upcoming star wars: episode one. when we
returned to the cafe a half hour later, the bands were all there. i saw
justin on stage with ronnie martin and jeff cloud and some other guy i
didn't recognize (who turned out to be caleb mannan) trying to figure out
the sound equipment.
so some of my friends and i sat around and waited for the show to start. by
8:00 the show still hadn't started. apparently the sound equipment was
having some problems with joy electric's and house of wire's sound equipment
making it necessary that they play all their songs on guitar. justin called
around to many different places and finally found a business who had the
right speaker system and who were willing to loan it to us for one night.
so kind of like spitting played (can't say i was too into them) and i
started talking to some guy at the house of wires merchandise table who
introduced himself as jon sonnenberg. after that house of wires, comprised
of jon sonnenberg and rob gutschow, played a shortened set of 3 songs: busy,
where is my mind?, and mother. after that joy electric came up on stage. i
guess at that point jeff and ronnie had decided they WANTED to play an
acoustic show. so ronnie borrowed a guitar from the lead guitarist for
braid and jeff cloud set up one of the synthesizers.
the show started off with an acoustic performance of analogue grand diary
(cloud tastefully added bleeps from the synthesizer ) which was followed up
by the north sea. drum machine joy and a very slow sugar rush were also
played. at one point ronnie played taking over and cloud filled the end
with a synth solo which went on and on and on. it got pretty ridiculous at
the end because cloud just started pushing random buttons and ronnie turned
around and stared at him and cloud got this goofy grin on his face. it was
pretty funny.
after that ronnie played an acoustic version of i'm ok you're ok and then
said he was going to play a song from the upcoming christiansongs, the voice
of the young. he played an incredibly long guitar intro which kept getting
longer and longer before he stopped playing and admitted "i forgot the
words! that's really bad because it's a new song!" and since the cd wasn't
out yet no one in the crowd could help him out. after that ronnie closed
with a couple old favorites like the girl from rosewood lane.
-kevin seibert
