The day before this gig was scheduled - all hell broke loose. Literally.

Ok, first of all - the Hogshead had planned for us to play, but had never really contacted any of us. The only reason we knew about the show was because I noticed that we were listed on their website. We tried contacting them, but we really didn't get a solid answer that the information on the site was correct until we played a show a block away at Scratch 8 on the June 15th. In the meantime I contacted Jeffery Prince from Roy's Love Virus, so they could play the show with us - and the plan was to have Warren Bishop, formerly of Mojo Filter do the sound.

Well...

...a week before the show I'd sent out a note about the show on our mailing list - on which Jeffrey is a member - and there was no reaction, either positive or negative, but when I sent out another note just a day before the show on the Sacto mailing list - I got an email from Jeff saying that RLV couldn't do the show. Their guitar player was out of town. Not only that - but he'd hadn't contacted Warren either. "We just figured - you found some other band to play it", he said.

If I had, I would have said so - explicitly. Part of the reason I'd contacted RLV was because a) We'd never played with them before b) We'd had a very hard time getting bands as heavy or heavier than us into the Hogshead, so a "pop" band like RLV would be much easier and a big change of pace after 5 shows with GIRTH (Who I still like, btw) and c) They're hilarious on stage d) Jeffrey is a good guy, who I've gotten to know via the Sactolist.

` Looking through my own email - I figure this was basically my own fault. I had told Jeff "I need to check on some things with the club before everything is locked in. I'll get back to you A.S.A.P." That was on the 5th, we didn't get anything out of the Hogshead until the 15th, and I didn't send out the note to confirm things until the 20th, and the crucial portions of that note (indicating that we expected RLV to play with us) was coded in html format, not plain text.

I figure that Jeffrey simply didn't read it (I could've mentioned RLV in plain text, but I had just had to get cute with the Html, colored text and background graphics, yknow? I just looks so much cooler) and a result not only did we not have another band to play the show, we didn't have a P.A. either.

Oops.

Just to compound things, not a couple hours after this I received another email listing the line-up of bands scheduled to play at the Distillery in July. Almost three months ago, Jim (who handle's booking at the Distillery) had promised us a show on July 13th. But when I read the Distillery schedule and looked at July 13th, did I see us listed?

Nope.

Tenfold was playing that night, but not us. Ok, so while I'm already in emergency email and phone mode to find another band to play with us in 24 hours - I shoot Jim a note - and he's was like -- "Ooops".

ARRRRghh!

If you've been reading any of the previous Starlogs about what it's been like to get a gig at the Distillery (one band I know hasn't been able to get in there for nearly a year - we had been waiting three months since our last show there - and we had even turned down a gig at the Roadhouse for this particular show) you probably know what I was thinking when and Jim went "Oops".

Sh#T!

Obviously - I understand how people can mess up - I just had myself, but to lose two gigs in one day? It was a little much to take. At least he offered us a replacement show in early August, which was nice. Hopefully, I won't get another "oops" email in August.

Anyway - my email frenzy by this time had borne some fruit. There was a chance that Brand X Savior would be able to play the show with us, and that would've been cool. They had a reheasal that evening and would confirm things - and so did we.

I - we - were going to wait until after we heard from BXS to decided on whether to cancel the Hogshead show, but after all of us talked we decided that most of our Hogshead shows had been a huge headache so far and that they simply weren't worth the effort. So we basically, decided to cancel.

As it turned out - BXS couldn't make it either and none of our other leads came in by that evenning anyway. When morning came around I sent a note indicating that we were cancelling to the Hogshead.

About two hours later I got a note from my pal Kenny (The Mighty KC) of One Pump Chump that they were willing to do the show.

Oh, no they didn't!!!.

Yes, they did.

Yet again, it was the phone and email scramble to contact everybody in our band and the Hogshead to let them know that the gig was back on again. I didn't have confirmation back from Darryl and my wife that we had reached everyone - including Treno - so that I couldn't tell Kenny "OK" until almost 5pm, just a few hours before the show was supposed to start.

I swear if it wasn't happening in front of my eyes - I wouldn't have beleived it.

There was just one final detail - which band would play first? Naturally, Darryl wanted to play first because of the tendency in this town for people to walk out after the first band. This is a fact that Kenny and I have discussed at length - and knowing this I asked OPC to play second, because my honest feeling was they they would be able to bring more people at this stage than we would with all of this thrashing back and forth. The other guys in Kenny's group of course, didn't want to wind up playing late into the evening - so I promised we would be done pretty early and everything would be cool.

Well, when I walked into the Hogshead at 8 O'clock -- there was OPC's gear already setup and ready to go. Oh, NO they didn't!!!

Yes, they did.

Fine, it really didn't matter -- we were pretty lucky that there was going to be any show at all - thanks to these guys. As far as I was concerned they could go first and enjoy it - and even Darryl agreed.

OPC started up around 9pm. I'd actually been looking forward to doing a show with them, because not only are they a kick-ass band - the combination of them (the funky white-boy band) and us (the metallic black & brown boy band) always struck me as pretty hilarious.

Ok, ok.... I'm easy to amuse.

OPC includes Kenny Cuozzo on bass, Sam Hines (formerly of Hollowstone) on guitar/vocals, Glen on drums and Nick on guitar. I did a review of them for Underground City a while back, and they were every bit as good during this show as they had been at the Roadhouse show that I had last seen them. In a weird way, I had a slightly unique insight into the genesis of OPC. Back in the days when I used to hang out for open-mic night at Cafe Paris (about a year ago), there was a period when Sam and the other members of Hollowstone were running things there. Sam and Kenny (who spent most of his time as lead singer of his own band Proon then), would jam until late into the night. Sometimes I'd get up and join them on songs like "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog. Even back then it was pretty obvious that Ken and Sam had chemistry, and that their voices blended really well. Apparently, they noticed this themselves and eventually Sam quit Hollowstone and OPC began to take shape.

I think I was probably at one of their very first shows - at Cafe Paris, naturally.

Since then, they'd come a long way. They were much tighter, much more confident, goofing around on the mic - playing off of each other both personally as well as musicially - throwing in extended jams, and selections from classic funk such as Chic - they're an absolute party band, and a lot of fun. At one point in the show as they played their final song (Doublefunk) they had nearly everybody in the place up on their feet and dancing - even Sam's dad who had come out for the show. Kenny doing the funky-white-boy-butt-twitch dance was a crack up - especially since he was shaking his butt at a web-cam, courtesy of SacClubCams.com which broadcasts a live feed from the Hogshead 24/7.

Mike (bass) and Treno (drums) especially liked 'em - since they, like me grew up on funk and dance music.

Our turn came up next.

We had a few worries that yet another crisis - cops busting in to stop the show due to excessive tounge wagging - a peice of satellite falling through the ceiling - would pop-up out of left field to interrupt the show.

But nothing went wrong.

Not a thing.

We actually had a great show - probably the best we've had to date. We've learned from all of our past experiences and cleaned up our act quite a bit, streamlined our set - replaced flaky guitars, tightened up our between song banter. Too bad there was practially no-one there, except for OPC and their girl-friends. There had been a couple tables of people during OPC's set eating dinner, but they left before we even began our set. Still, we didn't care -- we had friends on the web who were watching, including one friend of mine from England (Matt), who stayed up until 6am (Greenwich time) to watch us. Unfortunately the sound didn't really come through on the webcam, and Matt mentioned that the Hogshead looks a bit like a McDonalds -- (ok, that's kinda true...but it's a PUB what else would you expect it too look like?) -- still he was there and saw the show as did others.

The only people who probably didn't enjoy the show, was an elderly black couple who came in during a improptu blues jam we seen to through in during our Hogshead shows. The clearly liked the music -- but we were "Just, too damn loud".

Thanks - that's generally the idea since we're a Metal band.

We finished up pretty early -- about 11:30 - and the only member of OPC to stay until the end of set was Kenny. Of course, he'd brought the PA and had to stay -- but he told me to tell the rest of you guys --- what the heck is up with running home at 11pm on a Friday night -- it's not like you gotta get up for WORK the next day!!!.

There - I told them.

Ah, my heart really isn't into giving OPC a hard time since they saved our butts on this show -- but I tried.

After the show we walked over the Scratch 8 to find out what the deal was with live music over there since our last show at Scratch was broken up by the police. And would you beleive that Tenfold was playing and the place was packed?

Ironic, no?

The show was inside instead of outside on the patio - and apparently the cops weren't giving them any hassle at all. Supposedly they had their dancing permit now -- although I have a hard time imagining anyone really dancing to Tenfold, it's still possible. We're supposed to play back at Scratch on July 22 -- and I expect it should be interesting, although I doubt it was going to be interesting as tonight had been.

Then again, I've been wrong before - stay tuned.