please, please let it die
So, I'm listening to the recording of our gig at the Brass Monkey, and I'm astonished by one thing in particular. I didn't know Dave's mic was so loud that you couldn't hear any of the other music over his vocals. Oh wait, that's just the blatantly poor mixing! Yes well, what do you expect for free? You get what you pay for. It was quite the interesting experience, however. It turns out that the Brass Monkey is somewhat of a metal bar, and we didn't exacty fit the mold (check out some of the archived songs from previous incarnations of Okay Samurai). By somewhat of a metal bar, I mean the other three bands played something akin to metal. The first band was a bunch of high school kids, doing their best, but coming up to not-quite-metallica standards, which is fine, because they'll improve, and at least they'll get their diplomas. The next band was pretty good. They played actual real music and they actually sang, unlike the high school kids, who did this sort-of-yelling/I-want-to-be-passionate kind of thing, and especially unlike the band who we switched places with and played right before us. For this band, "Let it Die," I will never forgive Nick. This band had pretty decent instrumentals. Their drummer and guitar and bass player were excellent. Where I parted with them were the vocals. The music was what I could only call Death Metal. As in, you want to die when you listen to it. As in, all our bands are named something like "We Kill Angels and Dropkick Small Puppies" or "Civilization Ending Evil Satan-like Creature." As in, the lead "singer" simply screamed the entire time. Notice the delineation between yelled (as in: the high school band yelled lyrics) and screamed (as in: the lead "singer" for the Let it Die screamed as if his eyes were being gouged out with broken CDs, and there were no coherent words.) We had to endure this traumatic, nightmare-inducing "music" for 45 minutes, all because our promoter/housemate/resident-sell-out sold us out for five beers, trading our coveted 11:30 time slot for the last gig of the night. So all our fans had to endure this band as well. I'm afraid we may have seriously smaller turnout for the battle of the bands on the 27th. And to top it all off this was not a four person band. In addition to the drummer, guitar player, bassist and lead screamer, there was a keyboard player slash backup screaming maniac man. As far as I could tell, he played six notes and some sound effects on the keyboard and spent the rest of the set screaming in tandem while facing the lead screamer, or filling in with some screams when the lead singer ran out of breath. At least their song names are good. I went to the website for Let it Die, and found a song entitled "Parasitic life spray paints her heart." Damn, that's deep.
So, we have the battle of the bands on the 27th, but I'm hoping that we can find a new venue, one that fits our style a little better.
"Poets" (The Tragically Hip), "Jurass Finsh First" (Jurassic Five), "Parasitic life spray paints her heart" (Let it Die) (Yeah Right...)
Saturday, February 15 at 11:10 PM
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