The Night Of The Warning Signs

Entry posted by Nukaya January 4, 2011

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My New Year's Eve (aka, the night of the warning signs) was spent at first in a venue with three of my friends. One of them had suggested the venue as it was all ages and one of the bands had graduated in the same high school class as us and they had been pretty good then so we figured it'd be cool to see them again. This was quite fine and dandy until the guy who took our money said:

"Yeah, just head down the stairs to the basement. Careful, the stairs are slippery!" (warning sign #1)

We proceeded to head down to the basement to find a small stage, two '70s era couches, three other people, and the band, who was setting up. We quickly claimed a couch.

And then, we waited. It was supposed to start at 8, but 8 quickly passed as we watched the band set up, and the occasional person wandered downstairs. Then, (warning sign #2), a guy with an electric guitar pulled on a plastic wrestling mask and started to play. His friend joined in quickly on the drums, and proceeded to help his friend create what sounded roughly like a continuous car crash with the occasional melodic rift, complete with large amount of frantic, fish-like flailing on the floor from the guitarist (warning signs #3 and 4). This eventually ended, and while we tried to figure out if that was the first band of the night, the other band (who we presumed was the band we knew from high school, as all of the people on the stage were the ones we knew) decided that it was about time for them to start playing. One of the guys walked out wearing a three piece suit that nearly matched the couch we were sitting on, while the other three members pulled on Halloween monster masks. After the bassist taped the paper chain links that were hooked to giant cardboard dollar signs around his wrists, he yelled a few things into the microphone while hitting some effects pedals, angrily ripped his arms out of the paper chains and they all started playing (warning signs #5, 6, and 7).

This band continued the trend by mainly making lots of noise with the occasional melodic rift, but with the addition of the bassist singing while mashing his 10+ effect buttons (warning sign #8). They made it through their first song as more people trickled in, and after some prompting, they played a second song. Throughout this, the drummer looked like he was about to cry, possibly out of anger of having to play a second song or because he kept having to switch to different wigs that were hanging on his cymbals (warning sign #9).

The band ended and started packing up their stuff and moving it to their van. At that point, we were thoroughly confused on what we had just seen and starting to wonder if those really were two of the three bands we were going to see that night. More people continued to file into the basement, bringing various "mysterious" bottles of liquids hidden in paper bags with them (not really a warning sign for us, but I guess for most others, warning sign #10).

The friend who had originally suggested going to this venue and was sitting on the opposite side of the couch texted me:

Him: These bands suck. Does this make me uncool?

Me: No..? I thought you'd been here before though? Also, if that was band 2 of 3, I will be very angry at this venue.

Him: I've never been here before, I was just picking out all-ages shows. Hopefully it will get better...

Me: The CD of filler music has been better than anything. (it was. Even if it was the same five songs on repeat, one which included a part where a man repeated "JAMES BROOOOWN. JAMES BROWN. JAMES BROOOOWN. JAMES BROWN" for several verses)

A half hour passed. Still no band graced the stage. One friend pulled out her iTouch and the four of us played Trivial Pursuit on it for another 45 minutes. At that point, the basement was full of people and the next band was nowhere in sight (warning sign #11). The time was nearing in on 10pm, and at that point, we said "we're gone", sealing the act with the couch promptly being claimed by several other concert goers the moment we stood up.

We then decided to go to a place downtown called The Roxy, an 24/7 diner, that (as it was first described to me) was a place that had very good food and was covered with framed autographed photos of drag queens with the occasional photo of Oprah or Bill Clinton tossed in. The friend who had suggested the venue said he felt awful about the whole ordeal, so he offered to buy us all drinks, in the "aw, only one out of the four of us is 21 and this place doesn't serve alcohol. Coffee and hot chocolate it is!" sense. We celebrated the New Year while eating pancakes, discussing the merits of a mystery grocery (where all the food would be hidden in plain boxes, leaving the items you bought to be a mystery until you opened them), debating whether one of our friends who was out was dancing on tables yet, listening to the people in the bar next door sing karaoke (they were quite good), and watching people joyously stumble by the window in fancy clothes and high spirits.

We left shortly after a drunk man several table away threw a fork at us. We're still not sure why, and we didn't stay to find out, lest the spoon and knife he still had followed.

It was a really great New Year's Eve.