My friend J is feeling a little bit homesick. Actually, he's feeling a lot homesick, so when a musician that he likes that used to play all the time in the town where he went to college, Cory Branan, came to town last night, we all agreed to go with him to see Cory play at this small local club.
The club is sort of a funny place. Downstairs, it is a bar, a kind of activity hall with a pool table, a fooz ball table and a bunch of video games and also a laundromat (although I hear that the laundry leaves something to be desired).
Upstairs, there is a small music venue with mismatched chairs and exposed brick walls. Kind of reminds me of The Living Room in New York. That's where Cory Branan was supposed to be playing and he had an opening act named Alex who is, I guess, local.
When we got there, the opening act's opening act was playing, a girl who lives in town who has lots of tattoos and apparently likes her boyfriends to give her black and blue marks (don't ask me how I know this, it's just that kind of place). But she was singing a horrible cover of a love song. So that was just too freaky for us to handle. We got drinks and went back to the bar/laundromat.
In the bar/laundromat, they were getting set up for what they call Heavy Metal Bingo. You may be thinking, "ASB, what IS Heavy Metal Bingo?" Never fear, I will tell you.
What Heavy Metal Bingo is is this. Everyone gets a bingo card and a marker. They play heavy metal on the sound system. Then, a guy in black shorts and a metallica t-shirt and a head that was entirely bald except for a spike of hair coming out from his forehead gets up on the stage and calls some bing numbers. Then someone wins. None of us won.
After we were basking in the glow of post-Heavy Metal Bingo, my friend J looks at his watch and is like, "I wonder if he's playing yet." He went upstairs to check and returned to inform us that CB was indeed playing. We went upstairs. When we got upstairs, though, Alex the local was playing. J shrugged his shoulders and said, "He was playing when I came up here a minute ago."
So, we got more drinks and listened to Alex the local pick away at his guitar. Slightly painful, but we figured it was all leading up to the main event. After a few songs, CB came up to the stage and played some great tunes including a love song and Skateland South. He's a great songwriter and performer.
But then, Alex came back up. But BEFORE Alex came back up, he encouraged another girl in the audience who was wearing a kind of white kimono with blue dragons on the back of it to come up and play HER music. "She's really great," he said. She was NOT really great. She played this sappy, pseudo Christian lite rock song on the synthesizer that was also way too long. We were like, "This is supposed to be a real music show, not an open mic or amateur hour." Alex played another bad song and then Cory came back up and played a fun song called Wayward and Down and this awesome song called Jolene about a girl he once saw in his audience who was dancing and having a great time. But THEN, Alex came back and brought with him a girl who DID NOT KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE PIANO to (you guessed it) play the piano. First she did a horrid solo and then tried to back Alex up on his song. It was embarassing. We had to leave. I couldn't believe that this was being tolerated by the audience (and it wasn't really), but it kind of was.
Ok, so this is kind of a long way to say that I went to basically the most unprofessional music show I have ever seen last night. The conclusion was, like Cory Branan and clearly he is in no way an egomaniac because he let all these amateurs take over his show. But on the other hand, I wonder if he ever comes back here again with all the shenanigans that are clearly going on.
Most of all, I feel bad for my friend J, because I think that this night made him even more homesick than less homesick. So, let's all send good vibes his way.
