Date: Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Venue: Denim and Diamonds, cowpoke bar, Temple TX
Bands: Nautilus, Hexlust, Soul Slave
Well loyal readers, there comes a time in most performers' lives where they get the chance to strut their stuff in front of an audience of preferably more than one member in a venue other than their rehearsal place. Such was the case for me two nights ago on Wednesday, August 29. At least in terms of music; anyone who's listened to me babble longer than 10 seconds knows that I dabbled in theater in high school. So I'm no stranger to performing in public, I'm just not used to the lights being on.
But yeah, Wednesday August 29th, Hexlust's first show EVAR. An event almost two years in the making. Yes indeed people, two years. Pick a random band's MySpace and they'll probably say that they were together four months before they had original tunes ready and a string o' shows lined up. Not us. One year and nine months of lineup changes (both in terms of members leaving and us being unable to decide who the lead vocalist is), impeding school and work schedules, song and style changes, overall laziness, and IHOP putting fucking butter on Tony's chocolate chip pancakes passed before we finally took the stage at Denim and Diamonds and rocked the house. Here's how it all went down:
PREPARATION
James, J.T., and his friends Jen and... somebody else all showed up around the same time of about 6:20. After helping me load my Ludwig drum kit into my car, we took off for Tony's house, J.T. following James following me. Upon arrival we greeted Tony and Glen and got a nice little tour of Tony's hella sweet abode (a tour I took myself a little over a year ago and never get tired of taking again).
Then we're off!
Wait, no, sorry, Tony forgot his effects pedals. Halfway out of his neighborhood we turn around, park in his horseshoe driveway again, and wait. Tony comes back...
Then we're off!
We arrive at Denim and Diamonds around seven and immediately get to work unloading stuff. Back and forth, from the club to the cars and back to the club. Somewhere in all this my mom showed up. We set our stuff up offstage and started... waiting. During this time, I paced, greeted Dantrael, Stephanie, Kelly, and Warren, talked to my mom, and paced some more.
The sound guys didn't show up until close to nine (which was when Nautilus were supposed to go on, a harbinger of the hijinks we were to encounter with the Laurel-and-Hardy sound team with whom we were stuck). We launched into setting crap up onstage and getting everything mic'd, and finally, sometime after 9:30, Nautilus took the stage.
NAUTILUS
Problems from the get-go. They kicked things off with a cover of Napalm Death's "Scum", which started off awesome, but somewhere along the line started falling apart. Confuzzled, I went off to greet Remo and Sue and came back a couple songs later to find things consistently unravelling. John couldn't hear shit out of his monitors, Zach I guess was jumping ahead riffs or something, and everyone was overall confused. They took a break to figure things out with the sound and that just ended up being the end of their set. Befuddled, we in Hexlust started preparing to perform.
HEXLUST
After a quick sound check (we shared equipment with Nautilus) and a warm-up using the theme from a MegaMan game, I got some advice from Dantrael about what to ask for in my monitor, took a deep, nervous breath and went into it. "Wasting Away", "Chainsaw Gutsfuck", and "Evil Dead" went swimmingly, with pauses between songs to re-tune and allow Tony to check how we were doing as far as time (which started to get on my nerves but we've discussed this already). At some point inbetween songs, we relented to an audience request for "Raining Blood" and played the first thirty seconds of that oh-so-recognizable song. Hey, cheers are cheers, lol.
After a minute taken to unleash hair and change guitars, we kicked off our E-tuned songs with Possessed's "The Exorcist", which we somehow made it through but not without some confusion (that song's hard to play, lol). "Troops of Doom" merited us the first moshpit of the night, which I couldn't fucking see due to the fact that I'm hidden behind drums and cymbals. Another significance of this song is the fact that I dropped a stick twice and grabbed another without losing rhythm. Woot!
Our final song of the evening was "Sodomy and Lust", which was undoubtedly our finest performance of the whole set. Irony? It is not recorded. The battery on Tony's camcorder ran out, and my mom ran out of space on the disc in her camcorder. But yeah, speed, speed, speed, nice breakdown, flawless solos, fiery last chorus, and huge stinger. Then Dart falls over dead, lol.
Like I had fucking time. Immediately started breaking stuff down to make way for Soul Slave's stuff while talking to Sue. I even recruited her to help us lug my shit out to my car, about which she (jokingly) griped the entire way. Chicks.
WHAT-A-BURGER
As a way of showing respect to the band who gave us a chance, Tony stuck around to watch Soul Slave's set. I couldn't be fucking bothered; besides, I had no idea how to get home from the bar, but Stephanie did, so James, Remo, and I followed her (riding with Kelly and Warren) back to Killeen. We first were going to eat at McDonald's on 440, but their dining room was closed. So we went next door to What-a-Burger; they were closed for painting. Finally we made our way to the What-a-Burger by H-E-B, which was able to accomodate us. There we scarfed some food bought by the ever-generous Remo and talked about the show, among other things.
The night concluded at close to one. I went home, unpacked most of my drum kit, chatted with Tony, and passed out after a quick texting relay with Sue.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I'm very proud of us; after almost two years spent slaving away in my garage (and Tony's music room, and J.T.'s garage/barn thingy) full of false starts, unmet deadlines, basically us going "Ok, by this July we are gonna be ready!" and we're not, all culminating in one almost-totally awesome night.
Except. EXCEPT. Those fucking sound guys. Not only did they screw Nautilus over, but they fucked with us too by turning J.T.'s amp down (apparantly due to excessive feedback, a problem which I'm sure could have been fixed but no, they elected not to).
I'm no sound guy, and this is my first show, but I've been to shows before and I've observed sound checks. Sound people are supposed to ask the band members what they want in their respective monitors so everything can run smoothly; I had to ask Tony to ask them to turn down his vocals in mine. Hoargh. Thankfully this didn't turn out to be too big of a problem (although in the footage of the show, you can't hear J.T. solo) and hopefully in the future we have the good fortune of playing with competent sound people at the helm. Overall, though, I'm very happy with how the night went off. Hopefully our next one's even better!
I wanna thank all the people I don't know who came out, Soul Slave for giving us a chance to play at this show, Nautilus for being our friends and being kind enough to share a rehearsal space, and all the people I know who came out: my lovely mom, Dantrael (who was playing at the first non-Kritickill local show I ever saw), Stephanie, Kelly, Remo, Warren, and Sue.
I'd like to thank Tony and James for being the best friends and bandmates a guy could ask for, and I'd especially like to thank J.T., who has been officially with the band a scant three months, but not only picked up on the songs with a blinding quickness, but also fit in with us as our friend better than anyone else we played with. Here's to this show and the many more we shall hopefully play!
