So, off we go. Friday, August 2nd. First stop: Home Sweet Home in Manhattan, home base to my old friend Jonathan Toubin's New York Night Train dance parties.
So, the set up was this: Jeff and Patrick flew to BWI airport and went to Max Jeffers' place in Annapolis to pick up his van, along with some equipment for our dates (drums, amps, etc.). Cody had already gone up on Tuesday to hang with his girlfriend in NYC. That left Rice, Tom, and yours truly bringing up the rear, flying into La Guardia and on to the gig. Of course, as air travel is unpredictable, our connecting flight in Dallas departed late, about 45 minutes.
Still, we made it to La Guardia only about 35 minutes late, but that still meant we had to hurry to get to the gig. The music needed to be done by 11, and we were getting into the airport about 8:15. So , the only workable solution was to take some sort of Uber/taxi directly to the gig. A gentleman near the airport exit doors asked if we needed transpo, and I immediately said "yes," figuring it would be overpriced. I didn't care - let's get there. And we did. He hustled us over there quickly. I won't write here what the price was, but we got there just in time.
Luckily, our borrowed van was parked in front of the club, so our luggage could be stowed quickly. The opening band, Teenage Cave Girl, had just finished. The drummer playing with Animal Show (a two-piece this night for some reason) was struggling with setting up our borrowed kit (from Bob of Western Star), and I knew nothing of it, either. But we got the kit set up after a bit, and the makeshift Animal Show played about 30 minutes.
As we were getting set up. Rice discovered the bass rig didn't work, so he had to be patched into the soundboard directly and sharing a channel with Patrick. We couldn't hear him, he couldn't hear himself, and yet, audience members seemed to hear him fine, from what I heard later.
We didn't start until 11, but we were allowed to go 'till midnight. Crowd response was fantastic, and I thought the gig was a good start, although Rice obviously didn't think so. It was fun being able to play in front of my old friend.
Immediately after we finished, the dance party began, and people crowded every bit of the room, including the stage, making strike and load out a challenge, to say the least. Hard to complain, when everybody's dancing and in a fun mood. A couple of our folks weren't in the best frame of mind, but we got it all in the van. And then it was off to Atlantic City.
Uh, let's see....how do I put this? We were staying in the Harrah's casino in what were admittedly very nice rooms. But the clientele there is something almost unbelieveable. Take your average Jerry Springer Show guest and factorialize that by ten. Seriously. Dudes strutting around, bumping into you without a care (and almost knocking you over)....women stuffed into revealing dresses at least three sizes too small....and at 4 am, which is usually when we'd return from a gig, swarms of them. My jaw was probably open during every long walk to the hotel room. Wow. Many of these specimens probably voted, too. Jesus. I'll pick up with tomorrow's activities in the next post.
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