Today we got a chance to play during the Rio Linda High School - Battle of the Bands. Sammy (rythm guitar) had setup this gig for us, he had attended RLH during his senior year, and we were looking forward to it since it ment playing to a room packed full of kids. (A definate rarity, not simply because of the general difficulty in getting people out to see live shows -- but also because of the lack of all ages venues in town, especially since we'd recently been informed that Maui Pizza was no longer having live shows)

Rio Linda is an interesting area. It's a town on the (north-west) edge of Sacramento - quite a few of it's areas are completely undeveloped -- lots of open grassland -- horse ranches and small farms -- but also plenty of the signs of full-on industrialation and suburban sprawl abound. Brand new homes being built -- McDonalds -- Blockbuster Video. Still, it's very much a small town - it still has a water tower. You don't see that many places with a with a yard big enough for a reflecting pool (complete with marble statues) and a rusting ford pick-up on blocks, all at the same time.

Anyway. We eventually found the Rio Linda High, which had the unique distinction of having it's Football field on the other side of a fairly major road from the main body of the schoool. I'm sure that proves very interesting during mid-day track practice - since everyone has to wait for the light to change in order to get to the field. I can just imagine the procession that creates.

The contest was being held in the Cafeteria, which has been cleared of chairs and had a full stage installed with a nice looking P.A., monitors, and a back line of amps for the bands to use, plus a HUGE banner from local retailer Skip's Music behind it all. It only cost $2 to enter, but it looked like the school got their money's worth - as about 150-200 kids eventually showed up. More than had been at our Maui Pizza show.

I don't recall the name of the first band to play. Comprised entirely of teenagers, they really didn't have any complete songs -- just song riffs that they would play for four or five minutes and then stop - more or less together. They had plenty of energy and enthusiasm and had a good time onstage, though. They finished with a definate bang, smashing a guitar and destroying the drums - while the bass player jammed along.

The next band was called The Delinquents (I think). They only played three or four songs, mostly Green Day sounding songs. They were pretty loose, but again - they had fun.

Next up was Shane's Band, who apparently had put in a considerable amount of practice. A five peice with two guitars - they did three different Green Day covers, including "Long View", as well as a Cars cover, "Just what I needed". The lead singer was a pretty small kid with curly red hair, but he had a nice touch on guitar. These guys finished even bigger than the first band had... they smashed two guitars. (Cheap broken ones they had brought with them just for that purpose - not the guitars they played their set with). When they were done there were guitar fragments all over the floor.

At this point is was pretty clear to us that all the bands were going to be comprised of kids, and that they were all basically beginners. We've clearly had a lot more practice than they had - plus besides Sammy - most of us were much older, so we didn't really think things were entirely fair for us to accept the first prize (assuming we won it) - but we figured we'd cross that bridge if we got to it.

Forth was Rampage Edition, who were pretty tight three-piece Ska band. A horn section would have fit right in.

Things were running way ahead of schedule. We were supposed to play at 3pm -- but we were also up next, right after Rampage Edition - who were just finishing up a little after 2pm. There was only supposed to be ten minutes between each band, but Mike (our bassist) hadn't arrived yet. He had to work that morning (even though it was Saturday), and we'd been told that we (and he) didn't need to arrive until 2:30. The rest of us, yes - even Treno (drums), had arrived early - but although we'd called him a few times and left messages -- it looked like Mike wasn't going to arrive until twenty minutes after we were supposed to be onstage.

When Rampage Edition finished (at 2:15) a couple little meetings were held with the Stage manager - Matt. Would we swap with the last band, or have a 20 minute intermission? We went back and forth a few times, he wanted us to start putting up our gear, but if Mike didn't show up and we decided to swap that would have been a lot of wasted effort -- eventually we decided to wait until 2:30 and if Mike didn't show up by then, we'd play last. If he did, we'd start setting up.

Mike drove up at 2:25.

Whew!

We got our gear up and going pretty quickly. I had brought an extra guitar (a new Yamaha) just in case there were problems with the others. Mike had been gone for a couple weeks (vacationing on tour with his cousin Frank from Tesla) and all of our gear had sat in the reheasal room (which had easily reached temperatures exceeding 105 degrees). When he came back we had had one reheasal before this particular show, and none of the guitars would stay in tune. Not one. Not even the brand new $800 Jackson that Sammy had traded for three of his other guitars after our last show. So, after that reheasal, the guys had replaced the strings and worked on the guitars so that by the time of the show -- everything would be fine.

And it was too. Sammy's guitar stayed in tune perfectly. Darryl had to make adjustments after a few songs because his strings were new, but it was no big deal. Certainly nothing like our last two shows.

We did an abbreviated set, including only our "C" tuned songs - (since after sitting in the 100+ degree heat for two weeks, we still couldn't get our "D" guitars to tune up - plus we only had 30 minutes and switching guitars always kills a lot of time) so we skipped all the songs that required those guitars - ("Lies", "Savior", "TV") as well as and our ballad "Far Away", just so that we could keep the energy high. As a result our set was fast and furious. We even had a couple of the younger kids moshing up front -- tossing and smashing the remaining fragments of broken guitars on the floor. I jumped down a couple times to help them with the destruction during instrumental sections of the songs. We played good and sounded good. (I'm sure of that - they gave us a cassette of our show afterward)

Because of the youth of the crowd - and that fact that in order to play this show we'd had to submit our lyrics to the school for their approval - I did makes some minor adjustments here in their in our lyrical content. But it was nothing major, we'd don't have a lot of incessant cursing in our songs -- although our newest song is called "Curse", there isn't any cursing in it.

When we finished we had tons of people telling us "you guys ROCK!" - which was cool. That was all we wanted to do. Unfortunetely we hadn't brought any CD's - but oh well.

Last up was Matt, the stage manager's three-peice band - Third Limit. Matt's a killer guitar player, and he had another kid on drums who was totally top notch. Both of them were apparently alumni of the the Skip's Music "Stairway to Stardom" program, which is sort of like a mini version of "Musician's Institute" where young musicians are touch the basics and trained on their technique and stage presentation. In other words...these kids were freakin' GOOD. Somebody mentioned to me earlier that his band had played with Papa Roach over a year and a half a go (before they were signed) at Big Shots, so they were young - but not amatuers. (Matt has since posted on our message board and said this wasn't true - ok) They did a couple Metallica covers, one instrumental from one of their earlier albums and "Enter Sandman". There was also another song that reminded me pretty strongly of Candlebox, if it was an original, it was a good one. Also, Matt had all of Kirk (Hammet's) guitar leads down cold. Note for note, and with feeling too. I'm not a fan of Kirk's tone and wah-wah abuse, and even though couldn't Matt really handle Hetfields vocals to the same degree as the guitar work - he was still very good.

Finally, some real competition - or so we thought at the time.

Well, after a short intermission -- they announced the winners, and first place went to...

Ok, cool. They got a choice of either $100 or studio time for making a two song demo. I forget but i think they took the studio time. Second place got what was left and that went to...

The third place prize was a few sets of new strings and that went to...

By this time I noticed there was some puzzled sounds coming from the crowd. Forth place, and a set of "Skip's Music" t-shirts went to...

At this point, I figured they'd basically disqualified us for being -- well, old. Even if Sammy is only 18. But then fifth place - and a set of egg-shakers - went to...

Fifth out of a crowd of Six? Doesn't that just pump up ones ego, eh?

I think only a few seconds had gone by after they announced we'd won a bag of egg-shakers (with "Santana" written on the side - classy) that one of the judges came up to explain. He said we were basically -- "Too Good" -- and that the main focus at least for the contest portion was for the kids, and younger bands. I told him it didn't matter to us, we just came to play and have some people hear us -- that's all, and we accomplished that. We were just happy that we had played well, put on a good show and had a good time - which we did. Hey - a bunch of egg-shakers were a bonus, and pretty freakin' funny IMO.

I, for one -- shook mine proudly. "Look ma, I'm a winner". Shaka-shaka

Sure, I think they could have just let the actually scores be the actual scores -- even *that* judge had said he'd scored Third Limit first and us a second on his sheet. It could have been a real competition if they'd let it. Eventually all the judges came by - one at a time - to explain. As my wife said, they could've used this oppurtunity to teach the kids something about fair-play, and not to expect hand-outs or special treatment instead of changing the rules in the middle of the game. Even a few of the kids from the crowd said - "*I* still think you guys Rocked".

But no... we got sandbagged. Maybe they should have taken a poll from the audience?

Ironically, this had a real deja vu feeling to it considering what had happened the last time we were involved in a Skip Music sponsored contest. The kids and Skip's students had gotten special treatment then too - and Skip's has given Darryl a helluva time over the "year's supply" of strings he won from them back then. Matt had practically done an infomercial for Skip's and "Stairway to Stardom" (It costs $250, that may seem like a lot - but it's worth it") during Third Limit's set.

Hmmm... whatta coincidence.

Anyway, none of that really matters. We had a good time - the kids had a good time. At least of few of them are likely to remember our name, and recognize who were are in the future. There were even some adults, (parents) who had recognized us from some of our shows at the Road House (which is also in Rio Linda) - so as far as we're concerned it was all good.

And we got some free egg-shakers, too. I was laughing all the way home.