According to Hoagie, apparently no such phenomena occured, so for now I'll assume the following did truly happen, though I do leave open the possibility that the entire band was collectively waylaid by forces we don't understand.
We were excited at the prospect of our first out of state show. We'd heard good things about the club, and had already played with headliners The Misfats in Seattle. Seeing as we had a three hour drive ahead of us, and feeling groggy from the previous nights revelry, I figured I'd rather drive down myself. I hate the passenger seat on long trips, espescially if I'm a bit wounded. So we loaded up Hoagie's and Greg's rides, and the four of us lit out for Portland - me in the lead car, Hoagie and Dan in the middle, and Greg pulling up the rear. The reasoning was that Greg and I had cell phones, and should any trouble arise we'd be in contact from both ends of our ragtag convoy.
About ten minutes down I-5, my phone rang. It was Greg. Apparently Hoagie's Vanagon was spewing black smoke. Assuming that Hoagie and Dan weren't deciding on a new Pope, Greg implored me to swing back to their current coordinates. The night could have ended right there. It didn't.
We transloaded the gear in Hoagie's van to the other two rides, leaving behind only the "Gabba Gabba Hey" sign, which is way too big to fit in either vehicle, even if empty. I called AAA, and we waited on the side of the highway for help to arrive. We looked like the kids in "South Park" waiting for the bus, except way older and dressed in matching biker jackets. Help arrived within the hour, and Kenny didn't die.
1234 goes to Portland, take 2...
Two Alice Cooper albums and a few crossword puzzles later, we rolled into Portland at 7 pm. We quickly found the club thanks to some last minute directions phoned in by the lovely and talented Marci Smith. Upon our arrival, we saw posters in the club windows loudly proclaiming the nights lineup - The Misfats, "the 1,2,3,4,5s" , and Stallion, a Ween cover band.
I can understand people sometimes getting our name wrong and calling us "the 1234s." Yeah, its fucked up, but its an easy mistake to make. We normally correct them, and all is well. However this was either a case of utter stupidity or a wiseass dickhead. I mean, come on - the 1,2,3,4,5s? There is nothing that logic could possibly ever dictate to suggest that as a name for a Ramones tribute.
We loaded our gear into the club and let everyone know our correct designation. Someone inquired about a room to change into our outfits, and we were led upstairs to the "backstage area." At the top of the stairs was a landing. To the left was the sound engineer's area. To the right was an old brick fireplace. The "backstage area" was a closet sized room with a couch and a mirror accessible only by crawling into the fireplace. I wish I were kidding. It was like "Being John Malkovich," except you were still stuck in this shitty little closet. Plus it was colder than fuck!
As we had a lot of time to kill before we went on, we decided to walk around the city for a while. We stopped at a local coffee shop to warm up, perk up, and enjoy a clean place to take a dump. I sure as hell wasn't pooping in the club's nasty litterbox. At some point, Dan spilled his coffee all over me. Actually, launched would be a more apt description of the Kramer-esque maneuver that left me soggy and smelling like Juan Valdez.
Upon returning to the club, Stallion did their thing. As I'm not into Ween, I'll reserve judgement regarding their performance. We retreated to the fireplace to chill out. Literally.
After Stallion's set, I noticed Dan spending an inordinate amount of time tuning his guitar. The rest of us were wigged up and ready to go, and Dan was still twiddling knobs. Apparently his tuner shit the bed at the most inappropriate time. After briefing one of the Misfats on the correct placement of the sirens in "Psychotherapy" we finally hit the stage. From the first note we could tell something was wrong. Dan's guitar was horrifically out of tune. Adding to the cacophony was the well intentioned, but totally misplaced sirens popping up seemingly at random.
Dan switched axes after the first tune, while I informed the crowd of our proper name. The next few songs felt like sweet redemption, as we blistered through them at an alarming pace. Unfortunately, the moment wouldn't last, as now Dan's amp started acting the fool. His amp has a gremlin in it somewhere that usually only shows up in practice. It's never reared its ugly head at a gig before. On this night, it was like a friggin debutante party for amp gremlins. At this point Dan is so distracted by the sea of bullshit cascading around him that he starts missing cues and stuff. Shit - who wouldn't? So let's tally the score for Dan at this point; he's riding in Hoagie's van - it blows up, he brutally murders an innocent cup of coffee, splattering its guts all over me, his tuner croaks, his guitar refuses to play nice, and now his amp has just told him to go fuck himself. All of this on top of the incorrect band name on the posters and the surreal dressing room. All of this would send most musicians hurtling towards the first sharp object or mind numbing substance they could find. But Dan, like the rest of our intrepid little tribe, soldiered on with a tenacity only matched by the sheer ridiculousness of the evening's proceedings.
Our sheer refusal to back down when faced with a tsunami of bullshit won the crowd over. The mostly female (!) crowd sang along all night long. Upon surviving our set, we were greeted by a warm and thankful crowd that stuck around for the Misfats brutally fun set.We were offered a place to stay for the night, but decided to head back to Seattle. Dan had made a new gal pal, a tall drink of water in pasty fright makeup, who along with a friend invited us to an after hours party. Upon arriving at the "party", the friend asked us to wait on the porch for a minute. Turns out she had to tell her brother, kid, and husband that company was arriving. "Oh gee, look at the time! We gotta get back to Seattle! C'mon Dan."
The trip back was as harrowing as the rest of the night. It began to snow, and we hydroplaned half of the way home. I finally started to wilt, and had to pull off the road for a power nap. Upon arriving home, our beloved Capitol Hill was blanketed in snow. I dropped off a punch drunk Dan, and skied the rest of the way up the hill to my place.
At the end of the day, 7 am Sunday for those of you keeping score, I collapsed in a heap on the couch, still not convinced that all of this had really happened. Hell - who could make this shit up? All in all, I'm really proud that we all hung in there in the face of adversity, and had a good laugh about it to boot. Now about those amp gremlins...