BATTLES

Never assume placidity.


What a strange yesterday, which I summarized thusly in a personal email to my friend Dave. I started like this: “I'm having a horrible day, Dave.” This was before the day became much better. Normally I would keep my lengthy inter-personal exchanges away from this blooming public forum, but I made an exception, because this is a relevant tale depicting the less glamorous aspects of, well, being me. Here we go:

“I’m having a horrible day, Dave. We played a shit show at UC Davis. I knew it would be shit when, a week before, they moved the location from the center of campus to a far off corner of the school map that no one looks at, much less goes to. We played a half an hour in front of nobody until one of the troglodyte underlings that was "running sound" tripped over the one, non-grounded power cable that was providing electricity for all our instruments and the monitor-less PA. We were stopped mid song and thought, ok, that's enough. Also, we thought that whatever just happened to the sound (i.e. it disappearing instantly and completely) was not good for our gear.

“So, then, like 10 minutes later, this girl shows up with our paltry performance pittance ($100) in hand. The first thing that goes wrong is that she is here "on behalf" of the girl who booked us, an acquaintance of Nave knew from college who, you know, didn't think to come support the band she booked. So her doppelganger approaches and says, you know what guys I have your money but I can't give it to you until I find out why you didn't play for the whole hour we contracted you for. I'm so sorry, she adds, but we've taken a lot of heat lately for paying bands that didn't play for the contractually obligated amount of time (Girl Talk —who gets at least $5,000 per show and was flown into Davis to play in front of 200, maybe 300 people—is her example).

“Later that day I told Nave and Noah that while listening to this girl question why we didn't finish performing a set that she didn’t watch after experiencing the embarrassment of all sound stopping mid song by no fault of our own, I thought to myself: "I've never really lost it in public, but maybe now is the time, maybe this is it, maybe it's really going to happen right now." What I meant is that I’ve never just unhinged, started screaming murder and doing the bezerker dance, smashing shit and lighting valuables on fire just to see what everyone looks like under the spell of fear. No: usually just take it and make the most of whatever experience is letting me down; or I do what any good songwriter does: I internalize and save the real vitriol for what matters—the music. But I thought this was it.

“Somehow, this wasn't it. I said, look this isn't our fault; their gear failed and it's making us nervous and lunch is over now anyway. It's $100. That’s nothing and we could care less. That’s our side of the story. Tell your boss and send us some money eventually. Nave and Noah were pretty far away, but knew something was up. I thought it was handled.

“10 minutes after that, two more people that didn't watch our set show up and we had to go over "what happened" again, just so this girl knows exactly what to tell her boss. I basically walk away from this for fear of some sort of brain embolism. Nave and Noah take the reigns. This one guy that showed up tries to blame us for "not supplying the extension cord that one of his people kicked out of wall.” “You should bring your own stuff in the future," he says, like we've never done this before. "Did any of you even come watch us play?!" I blurted out from about 10 feet away. Achieving a tenuous level of calm that balanced a micro-fiber’s length from becoming a brawl, Nave and Noah explained again that we didn't do anything wrong. Finally the girl gave us our money, which was probably one ten thousandth of the budget of the event we were booked to promote: Picnic Day, which draws over 50,000 attendees and features, among other things, live kangaroos. I wonder what the kangaroo guarantee is.

“What a stupid, integrity-less situation. Lot's of additions to the list of people I'm sending 10,000 obnoxious copies of the (eventual) issue of Rolling Stone that features Brilliant Red Lights on the cover. (For every gloating copy of that magazine I'll also include a fortune cookie with the fortune: "Thanks for nothing." I know that's not a fortune, but that annoyance is part of the appeal.)”

That’s what I wrote to Dave, but then—post vent—my day got a lot better. I had some vocal coaching. I ran two miles, did some stretching and some crunches in the sun. I ate some catfish and some cous cous and the salad equivalent of a “Pimp My Ride”-ed vehicle: bleu cheese? Tomatoes? Avocado? Sprouts? Spring mix? Raspberry vinaigrette? It was all there for me. Also, I used a paid vacation day, so Schwarzenegger-sponsored the Davis disaster and the proceeding calm of a warm Thursday afternoon.










Right click-and-save to download “Race : In,” from the album Mirrored by Battles.


Right click-and-save to download “Race : Out,” from the album Mirrored by Battles.



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