Stardate 0217.01 [February 17,2001]
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Live at Sports Nutz
Sports Nutz is a fairly small bar that has been having live bands playing over the last few months. Prior to the gig I stopped by, and it reminded me very much of places like Club 65 - rows of electronic dart machines, and pool tables, and a real large screen TV in the corner - where we'd been fairly well received.
We we're in a for a bit of a surprise as our buddy Marc(drums) from Girth had built himself a drum riser and this was going to be it's debut gig. (Lucky us!!) It took a bit doing to fit the riser into the corner of the bar that we we're playing without blocking access to the bathroom, especially with the full lighting rig that Girth also brought --- but we did it.
First up though, was our pals in Shallow. Who setup pretty quickly and ripped through a blistering set of songs from their new cd "Dose". 
As usual, they're performance was tight and furious - even though they had just gotten back from a show the previous night.
These guys are a real pleasure to watch and to perform with and definately know how to put on a show. Terry (vocals) was even wearing his trademark whirlpool contacts for this show. They usually throw in a cover song or two - and tonight with no exception as they pulled out a slammin' version of "Sympathy for the Devil" in the middle of their fast paced set.
Shallow definately set the tone right for the evening.
Once they finished it was time to CUM FEEL THE GIRTH, as our death-metal buddies took the stage, and tore things up. It always amazes me what a tight band Girth is. Scooby (guitar) is an absolute speed-metal-monster. Since our last show together Girth has begun to beef up their vocals with both Marc and Scooby helping on backing vocals in support of lead vocalist, Jude. A lot more of the songs made sense, the words were much clearer, and the melodies for sharply defined than heard them. They're hilarious song "The Camel-toed Yoda" came through loud and clear.
Lastly came our turn, and Planet X took control of things. 
We had a shaky start on our first song ("Don't Tell Me"), which was quite odd since we practice it the most and never have problems with it. I'm not what it was but everybody was out of sync for the first 30 seconds, and then everything just clicked and we were off and running. Despite equipment problems with the guitar tuning and the monitors (when aren't there problems with the monitors?) the crowd reaction was very intense. Girth's regular sound man, Tom, was handling things and handle them he DID. As we played a good sized crowd of people gathered at the front of the stage for our performance, jumping up and down and screaming as we played - which is always a nice thing to have. We have a considerably more melodic sound than Girth, but still heavy -- and these guys seemed ready to just eat-it-up.
Equipment trials and tribulations aside - this was one of the more intense shows we've played in terms of crowd response. We haven't really had people this into it since we played with Girth at the Crossroads in Woodland, last year. A lot of our friends showed up for the gig, like Dan Worthley (whose name I embarrisingly forgot again when I first saw him -- actually, I don't think I'd seen him since one of our Crossroads shows, but I was glad to see him again). Dan is a PC/Computer wiz (and a damn fine guitar player) whose been helping Darryl (lead guitar) out quite a bit on the production of our latest CD. Also one of my downtown buddies - Yoshi - drove out and caught the show, and I think was very surprised at the change in our sound, particular as a twin-guitar band.
I even caught a glimps of Jeff Prince of local downtown band - Roy's Love Virus, who I guess were scoping out the venue for their own upcoming gig. (I don't think they stayed for our set, but then again -- with that train wreck of a beginning I'm kinda glad, even though it all smoothed out pretty quickly). Jeff had been MC at Old Ironsides when I had my featured performer slot at their Open Mike, a few months back and was nice enough to wave and say "Hi".
We played our usual set:
