Concert Countdown Week: #1 - Mainstreet, 2002
Considering all of the expenses over the years, we probably lost money being in a band. We were never doing it to "make it big" or sign with a label. For me, Okay Samurai was always an excuse to hang out with my best friends while writing, recording, and playing songs. I used to be a little kid singing into his Radio Shack tape recorder, daydreaming about being in the spotlight like any other 7-year-old. In Okay Samurai, I was fortunate enough to play out that dream many times. I miss performing so badly...I've tried to start things on my own, but it's never worked out without my fellow samurai. Maybe it's better that way.
The best concert we ever played, no question about it, was our first show at Mainstreet Bar and Grille at James Madison University on February 27, 2002.
Mainstreet was a deep venue with a great sound and lighting system. JMU and UVA aren't too far apart, so a large group of my friends made the drive down for the show. My girlfriend at the time borrowed a video camera and ended up taping the entire concert...I'll put some highlights online one day (and make Jeff Chin a DVD because he's been asking me for it for three years now). Don's future (and still current) girlfriend was even there, dancing on the speakers. The most important person in the audience that night, however, was our first bass player, Eugene Jung. Eugena was right in the front, rocking along the entire time.
We were headlining the show, and asked our friends Luck Be A Lady to open. They did an excellent job and got the crowd going strong. After a short break and the usual Okay Samurai backstage prayer session ("Lord, may we rock some freakin' pants off tonight"), we took the stage. The place was packed. The lights went down, and Don's guitar started emitting feedback through his Half Stack before we blasted into a full hour and a half of music. We had practiced this set for a month in preparation, and threw in everything we had ever wanted to do. Andrew wore a giant sombrero during South of the Border. Jeff played electric and I played bass for the premiere of Disregard the Trip on That. Dave Broussard repeated his performance from our high school CD release party by joining us for No Sleep Til Brooklyn. I played a fire extinguisher in Mosquito. We were constantly jumping through a thick, surreal atmosphere of multicolored lights and fog. We mixed the songs Angel in the Centerfold and Take the Money and Run together as one. A few things went wrong - both Don and Jeff's guitar straps broke during the concert (too much rocking out tends to do that) - but our friend Ben Markowitz was on hand to quickly fix them up.
At midnight, people in the audience immediately began to hold up "Happy Birthday Dave" signs. It was my 22nd birthday, and they had me completely surprised. Don led a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, I chugged a beer, and we went straight into Southern Cross. It was a great moment. We ended the concert with an encore, playing Springsteen's Glory Days with a little Born in the USA thrown in for good measure. When the lights went up, it took a while for reality to sink back in. As we were loading equipment back into our cars at 1AM, everyone was still smiling and laughing. We played a couple of more concerts after that, but Mainstreet really was the single best experience we had collectively as Okay Samurai.
Thank you so much for all the responses from this week's countdown; it was entertaining to put together and hopefully not completely self-serving. Being the only samurai outside of DC, I get nostalgic about these things pretty quickly and want to write stuff down before forgetting any details...these are our war stories.
Thursday, August 25 at 9:00 PM
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