Prior to last night, I felt that having two shows on the same night made Red Dahlia seem like a bunch of pretentious jerks. I mean--who do we think we are to do that? It's not wise. Booking managers tend to frown on bands that over-book themselves in one market. Plus you piss-off other bands trying to get a show of their own on that night. Gigs are a limited resource and booking two shows in the same night is the musical equivalent of letting your 8 MPG Hummer idle while waiting on the queue at the McDonald's drive through. In plain English: it's like hogging a precious resource. Truth be told though, it was a hard situation to avoid. We're not going to turn down an opportunity to open the show for a national band and the Union--one of our favorite venues to play--asked us to do them a favor (in reality, they were doing US the favor). So with that in mind, I made peace with the situation. However, I'll never do it again.

My band is funny. The last time we played an ACRN event, it was at the Front Room at Baker Center. So for some reason, that's what they were expecting. I kept telling them that this show was going to be a big event. I mentioned terms like "video" and "professional sound system" and "Ball Room" and somehow it didn't settle in. The night of the show Felix was still debating whether or not to bring in the sampler because my band mates still thought we were playing the FRONT room. I was like, "Okay guys, this is in the BALL ROOM... it's a big venue!!!!"

Since we were up first, we did our sound check to a completely vacant ballroom. We were all impressed by the amazing sound system. For the first time ever I could hear my guitar in the monitors better than I could hear my actual amp. It was sweet. Still, there was some doubt amongst the band that anyone would show up before Murder By Death actually hit the stage. We left the stage and took the service stairs up to the third floor. Which reminds me--Baker Center is a complex place. There are the public stairs, the service stairs, the public elevator, the service elevator, twists, turns, secret rooms. Kenny and I got lost while trying to find the "band room" on the third floor. We started laughing because it reminded us of that scene in Spinal Tap when the band got lost while trying to find the entrance to the stage. Yep, it was a blast.

We all eventually found the band room and Joel Andrel was kind enough to let me have a bit of whiskey from his flask. I mixed it with some Red Bull (my favorite energy drink) I had two Red Bull and some tall-boy style beer / energy drink Kenny brought called "4." I've never been so freaking hyper in my life. I think I may have even had some minor heart palpitations. 8:30 rolled around and the band took the service steps down to the Ball Room kitchen. We stepped into the backstage area and were all struck with awe with the amount of people who were in the Ball Room. There must have been 175 to 200 people there already, a bunch of them were pressed right up to the stage. Obviously, the folks up front came early to secure a good spot to see Murder by Death. So while the sight was impressive, we all knew it wasn't all for us. In fact, it was a little bit intimidating to play to a bunch of people who thought of you as an obstacle they had to endure before the headlining act.

We started playing and immediately there were some issues. Kenny had disappeared from my monitor mix, Felix's sampler was no longer in the mains, and Felix couldn't hear much of anything in his drum wedge besides himself and the vocals. What had previously been a prefect sound-check had changed on us in the last half hour. I think that perhaps the sound men moved some stuff around on the mixing board to accommodate the DJ who was performing between sets and then they forgot to undo their changes when our show started.

We definitely had our work cut out for us. I was face-to-face with a solid wall of indifferent looking college kids who had never heard of us before--or who had heard of us but didn't care. We started off with two of our more rockin' songs and yet there was no movement. I immediately thought of that Dismemberment Plan song "Doing the Standing Still." It wasn't until the third song that we saw people starting to enjoy themselves. Perhaps they were still adjusting the sound in the mains? Ironically, it was our cover of Roxanne by the Police that finally got the audience to acknowledge our existence. I hate to stoop to cover songs, but hey, they can have their uses. My internal "sellout-prevention-meter" tells me that you're not selling out as long as you only do one cover per hour and you play the cover in YOUR style to make it your own. Someday, hopefully, we'll go on a tour and have people show up to hear our stuff and only our stuff. That would be neat.

Unfortunately, since Felix couldn't hear what he needed in his wedge, all of our songs got INCREDIBLY fast. I would start off in one tempo for "High School" and "Needs Not Wants" and by the end of the song my hand couldn't strum any faster. At the end of each verse or chorus, the tempo would jump up five beats per minute so that a song that started at a 140 bpm tempo was 170 by the end. I felt like turning around and saying "Hey, slow the heck down!" But... what are you going to do? It would have only pissed everyone off and made us look unprofessional and it wasn't a problem on most of our songs. So I just tried to keep up. At times like that, it would be cool if we all had an ear monitor with a click track. All-in-all, it was a decent performance. People definately started to get into it, some folks even started to dance when we played "N-File." I just would have liked to have done better. I always do.

Jodi and I chose to play some scenes from the movie "Spirited Away" on the giant video screen behind us during our performance. It starts off in the night time and it's kinda trippy looking. I later learned that night that Kenny hates Anime! Man... Oh well. I've got another video that I'm working on for our next Red Dahlia show. It's original material that I'm designing in Macromedia Flash. I just need to find some way to rent or borrow a video projector. All these bands I see around town who use them have connections to Ohio University some how. They either work for the big OU or have a fan who does.

After the show, we sold approximately 20 CD's in five minutes. About 20 people signed the email list too. We could have sold more CD's... but we forgot to bring them! Damn, that was a huge missed opportunity. Or not. Who knows how these things work out? It sure seems like it though. We had to pack up after the show, so I only caught the last half of Joel's set. The crowd seemed to really get into him. He's a big self promoter-type with a good head for the music business, so I'm sure he got the word out. We also stuck around for the first half of Murder By Death before we had to get ready for the Union. I really liked Murder By Death. They play that form of high energy art-punk that indie radio stations love. However, if you missed Murder by Death, check out Denovo from Columbus. They basically sound just like Murder by Death but without a cello player. When we left, we estimated that there were 250 to 300 people in the Ball Room to see Murder by Death. It was standing room only from the stage until a little past the sound man tower 3/4 of the way across the ball room. It was an impressive sight.

We headed home, burned 8 more CD's, and headed back out to the Union. I found a parking spot RIGHT IN FRONT of the Union. Damn, that was lucky. So you can imagine my disappointment when, with 15 minutes to go before our performance, I hear that Jodi wants to drive home because she forgot to bring the lyrics for our new song. ARG! I ran out of the Union to stop her when I realized that I was carrying a FULL BEER BOTTLE IN MY HAND! Just when I realized what I had done, a cop car came around the corner of Congress and Union street and headed my direction. I slowly put the beer bottle down on the sidewalk and stepped away. It was too late, Jodi had gone. So, when the cop went around the corner on to Court Street, I picked up my beer bottle and went back into the Union. I fully expected Jodi to make us late, however she showed up with 5 minutes to spare AND she managed to get the same parking spot!

I have to say that our performance at the Union was probably our best live show in that bar EVER. While we gave our all at the Baker Center Ball Room, that show was a de-facto warm-up for the Union. Since we had two shows on the same night, we played an entirely different set at the Union. It was a lot of our old stuff, some brand new songs that weren't rehearsed enough for the Ball Room, and we had re-arranged the set list so everything out of the usual order. I think people really liked it. We ended up playing TWO encores. However, truth be told, everyone before us that had either started on time or shortened their sets. As a result, they were AHEAD of schedule. That's a first. People wanted us to keep playing so that they could enjoy more live music--it wasn't just for us. Still, it's nice when people want you to play more.

Thanks to the energy drinks that I drank at Baker Center, I don't think it was possible for me to get drunk. I had four beers and felt nothing. When we got home, Kenny brought in a documentary video of the Red Hot Chili Peppers making "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" and we watched it for an hour. I had one beer at home and still felt nothing but tired! I went to sleep by four and now I'm here at work. I bet Kenny is still crashed out on a makeshift mattress on my living room floor as I write this.

And that was that.

I'll have to check the schedule, don't think Red Dahlia is playing again in Athens until May.