Planet X at the G Street Pub

Planet X first performance at Davis' "G Street Pub" was certainly and interesting affair. Davis is a college town and somewhat different in tone from Sacramento. Quite often the G Street Pub is filled to the rafters with people regardless of who the performers may happen to be, and the crowd has a tendency to stay until the end of the night. With all this in mind we had fairly high hopes for an exception show to occur.

But the fates were not so forgiving.

Little did we know, but that week at another bar just down the street from the Pub, a young man had drank himself literally to death. In addition to this, the very day of our show a young girl had been stabbed and left for dead, barely surviving the entire ordeal with a punctured long.

Clearly these are incidents of greater import than a simple rock show, yes?

Heck, the entire town was in Deep Shock - because this type of thing is NOT normal for Davis in the least. L.A. maybe - but not Davis.

So as it turned out, almost as soon as we started playing - before the vocals in the first song had even begun - about 10 or 15 people who had been at the pub having dinner got up and left. Sure, there were more people there, like our friend and former Twist of Fate member Dan who had come out to Davis specifically to see us - and others in the back playing pool. But the club was still fairly empty after that group left and it was more than a bit unsettling considering everything we'd heard about G Street Pub usually being packed.

We couldn't help but speculate what the reason for people's abrupt departure. Was it the music? The Volume? Or was it the "Melanin Issue" as one our friends put it? (Which is a subject we really don't want to assume or crutch on as an excuse for anything...) Still, we honestly didn't have a clue - and since this happened on the very first song, we couldn't help but wonder what the heck was going on all the way through the set.

In addition to this distraction was the fact that G Street's stage is the size of a crumpled postage stamp. We had to stand the keyboards up on a pair of chairs and duct tape them into place to keep it from falling. They do have a P.A. and monitors at G Street, but their monitors are extremely directional, which means that if you step a foot to the left or right of the monitor -- you can't hear what your doing.

The entire situation was just plain -- frustrating.

And I have to admit, we didn't do our best show either - at least not by our standards. We've changed some of the vocal harmonies on the song "Run" and we didn't quite pull them off -- which was largely my fault. We'd even been having some internal tension lately in the band to the poiht that some of us we're hardly speaking. I fully expected this might the final performances for some of us...if not all of us if things continued to disintegrate.

Needless to say, we were under a lot of pressure.

However, there is a silver lining to this tale of woe.

The people who bothered to stay -- really liked us. Especially Tom, the owner. He promised that he would have us back at some later date, hopefully not when someone else dies or is attacked down the street...but then again, you never know...life marches on and intrudes with it's own issues inspite of ones desires to have a nice LOUD evening of simple Rock N' Roll.

Next time we'll be better reheased and prepared for the stage and sound system.

As far as everything else goes... we can't control or foresee those things.

All we can do is accept life's situations as they present themselves and keep striving to push forward and survive.

Tommy Mill's Oil Kan went on after us and had a good show, their new drummer Lance is fitting in well and the entire band is starting to sound better. They played till nearly 2am and toward the end of the evening had things really Rockin' - which is the way it should be.

Peace - Out - And be Safe.

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