Tuesday night at Capital Garage is open-mic night. About a dozen or so musicians show up and perform pretty much anything they'd like to perform, and I do mean ~anything~. When I lived downtown, I would go out with my acoustic guitar and have performed at probably 60-70 open-mics combined at Capital Garage, the Press Club, Distillery , Old Ironsides, and the Blue Lamp. I've even performed at the True Love Cafe a couple times. Many of these open-mics have "featured performers" - which is to say, it isn't entirely open - but that there is one performer who is prescheduled for that week. Again, as a solo with acoustic and sometimes electric guitar - I've been a featured performer at Old ironsides and several times at Capital Garage.

However, I've always been frustrated by this - because what I can do alone on acoustic guitar is really only a pale shadow of what I and Planet X can accomplish together as a unit. For example, I can sing far better without the distraction of playing guitar -- and with the current lineup of PX, with Darryl and Sammy on guitar we can create a unique layered effect that I certainly can't do on an acoustic.

It's just not the same.

It's pretty common for full bands - to come out to Cap Garage's open-mic in between the acoustic folky singer-songwriter guitarists, quickly setup all their gear and play just two songs and split. Some that I've seen, like Mindriot (a rap-metal outfit from Galt), will drive 50-60 miles just for those two songs and do it every tuesday for weeks.

They do this because it's very difficult to build a draw in this town and get people to actually see you. This is something I'm pretty familiar with. I've been able to perform alone to packed rooms at open-mics dozens of times, but with PX we sometimes have to struggle to get friends and family out to see us over and over - while hoping to attract more "general" fans, who are there purely to see the band simply because they enjoy us - not because of any personal relationship, although having both is a cool thing - I simply don't think we can or should expect to rely entirely on friends, family and co-worker to support us forever. That just isn't reasonable.

Planet X together is much better than I am by myself - but oldly - I'm more popular by myself, at least in certain circles, than PX is. I've even heard people say they prefer me solo - and that's too bad, because my only reason for performing at *ANY* of these open-mic as a solo performer -- was to promote Planet X. I have no desire or plan to go solo anytime soon - in fact, I consider it a pain in the ass. My goal has always been to learn enough guitar to write songs that I could sing - while someone else did the *real* playing. I have that with Planet X.

Capital Garage has a built in audience for open-mic, so by playing it one has the potential to pull in *new* fans, which is exactly what we need. We can probably get booked into Capital Garage on a weekend - we have before - but they're booked months in advance for the weekend shows, and unlike open-mic, there really isn't a built-in audience. We have to bring the crowd ourselves, and although we currently have a consistent draw of about 30-40 people -- we would need about 50 for Cap Garage.

So, with all this in mind - I booked us in as a featured performer with Mike "Dobin" Shivley, a friend and talented musician who had even been in the running for Planet X drummer at one point, and who has been running Cap Garage's open-mic for the last few months since the previous host, another good friend of mine - E-Rock - decided to step down and relax.

I know how things can go at open-mics -- how the schedule can get a little messed up, so the week before our scheduled performance I stopped by C-Garage to confirm things with Dobin and he told me that we weren't featured performer anymore -- we were 2ND Featured Performer (performing at 10:30 instead of at 9:30). Now, I haven't been to C-Garage open-mic that frequently over the last few months, but they never had a "2ND" Featured Performer before. I told him that it was cool anyway -- but something in the back of my mind told me I should have known better.

Now I know, I should have trusted that instinct.

Still, we had high-hopes when the night finally came. Usually, for everyone except the featured performer(s), whose time is preset - everyone shows up for open-mic at 7:30 and their slots are chosen via lottery at 8:00. We arrived at about 8:30 -- and I immediately tried to figure out the schedule with Dobin -- at which point he said he wasn't sure if we were going to show up or not, so they basically booked himself into our slot at 10:30 - but that he could probably still "fit us in".

This was my second warning.

But again, I ignored it -- and tried to keep the other guys in the band in a positive mood by pointing out that the 50 or so people that were present were probably more people than we've yet played to in a single sitting (at least with this lineup) and that in all likelyhood - we would "blow them out the back wall once we got on" considering what they were used to at the open-mic. So we waited a very long and sometimes painful two hours for our slot to arrive, listening to performers of various levels of skill and talent who usually come through on a Tuesday. Some are good, some great -- some awful and some just leave you scratching your head and thinking - "What-tha-fuck-wazzat?" For example there was the group "Delayed Sleep" - who are Cap-Garage regulars. Their act is essentially to take two or three electric guitars and let them feedback for five-ten minutes while they play around with the reverb and delay settings on their effects.

I shit you NOT!!!

And they're popular too. Mostly. I did hear one person say "Those kids just took fifteen minutes of my life away -- I want that fifteen minutes back!" - but to each his own, I guess.

Then there's the group - "Hi-Hat Attack" - which consists of four of people all playing hi-hats (and one kick drum), more or less together - for ten or so minutes. They're actually pretty good, but I think people pretty much get the idea in the first five minutes.

Eventually, the "First" featured performer started up. They were a full band, five members with a female lead singer and two guitars. One was using a Line-6 Half Stack Amplifer. I recall seeing them before at a previous open-mic, and they're a pretty good alta-groove band, leaning a bit toward the sound of groups like the Cranberries.

Not bad. But they were running real late. I have to admit that people who have three minutes worth of song - who try to stretch it to six or seven by repeating the chorus five times -- tend to get on my nerves. Everybody at open-mic gets two songs, except for the features who get 30 minutes. It's amazing how some people can make two songs last for 15 or 20 minutes - then again, maybe they just FEEL like they last for 15-20 minutes. Plus, there had been a lot of extreneous setup time and frankly a lot of in between act B.S. going on. Things were disorganized.

Very.

Even before the featured act was done, as we began to load our gear into the back of the club in preparation for our turn -- Dobin comes over and says "It's 10:45 already", that Cap Garage closes at 11, and that Charles (the head guy - and weekend booking person) wasn't going to stay open late anymore.

This kind of thing is something I'd experienced previously - first hand. The very first time I was supposed to play Cap-Garage almost two years ago as a solo act on a thursday night when I'd been invited by local artist Bix, Cap Garage Closed promptly at 11 before I'd even had a chance to perform. There was no warning either. One minute somebody was performing and the next thing there's an announcment - "We're closed"! - and everyone had to file out. It was pretty fucked up, and it was happening again.

I should've known. Really I should.

As soon as Dobin told me we were "2nd" feature performer when I came by to check on things - I should have realized that he had forgotten that he'd promised the featured performer slot to me and had given it to somebody else. Rather than correcting the mistake with *them* by having them switch to another night, he instead banked on our friendship to let him screw us over with this "2nd Feature" B.S. I should've told him to switch us to another night right then and there.

But this isn't pretty much par for Dobin. I mean, we still have possesion of parts of his drum kit from when he auditioned with PX almost 7 months ago. All he had to do is call, to arrange to get it - or have us bring it to him -- but Nooooo...

Needless to say - Planet X is never doing another open-mic again, certainly not while Dobin is running things. I probably won't do anymore solo performances either, because I was already burnt on them and since i don't live downtown anymore and have to deal with public transpo since our car croaked, the inconvenience is just too much. The time and effort to haul all of our gear out, the gas (or in my case cab/light-rail fare) wasted - just isn't worth it when people can't keep their word, or their shit straight. I always knew there was a risk this might happen - but I had hoped that things could work out. They didn't. We gambled - we crapped out. Dobin did offer us another featured performer slot the following week -- but frankly, our hearts just weren't into it anymore. We really don't need to put up with this kind of thing and we won't. If and when we return to Capital Garage -- it'll be on the weekend, period.

But in the overall scheme of things - I think this is pretty minor event though. A simple lessoned learned.

Life had really been put in perspective on the way to this non-show, while my wife and I had ridden Sacramento's light-rail system to C-Garage. I was wearing my winter-camo pants, and on the train comes this older man in jungle-camos. He was scrapped up and scratched pretty badly - with fresh stitches on his skull. He reeked of cheap wine. For whatever reason, maybe because of my military looking pants, he began telling us his life story. He'd been an anti-sniper, who had infiltrated into north-vietnam and basically hunted other snipers by firing explosive shells into their eye as they tried, in vain to shoot through his body armor. He had three sons. All grown. All were in the military. None of whom he spoke with. Now he was homeless. He suffered from violent seizures - hence his cuts and bruises - and he would frequently black-out and find himself days later at the local VA hospital with no idea of how he got there.

This guy had had it *Rough* -- by comparison what we just went through was nothing.

Nothing at all.

The lesson, in short, is - don't sweat the small stuff - because it really doesn't mean anything in the long run. There's a lot more to life than one broken promise and one missed gig at a glorified coffee shop.

A lot more.