Okay Samurai Concert Countdown
#5: King's Ridge Pool Party, 1998
Mosquito came up on the playlist today and I thought, hey, Okay Samurai has been apart long enough now for nostalgic VH1-style countdowns. So for every day through Friday, we'll be counting down the top five OKS concerts of all time. Any show from our ten years together is fair game, from Janine Mason's 16th birthday party to the final Mainstreet show at JMU. Dave & Russ performances, solo acoustic shows and WuTang Killa Beez concerts with Ferenczy won't count...only Don + Andrew + Dave + Asian Bassist shows do. It was relatively easy to pick these out; they remain as some of my favorite memories.
First up was the King's Ridge Pool Party from 1998. My girlfriend's family at the time was fairly involved with the local swimming pool across the street. They asked us to play a pool party concert to kick off the summer. We agreed, got a great turnout, and ended up playing two sets that lasted well into the night. Some of the highlights, if I remember correctly:
*Don's head was shaved, Eugene's glasses kept on shifting out of place from sweat, and Andrew and I had dyed our hair blond. The band was still called "Second Nature".
*We waited to start playing a song until a kid jumped off the high dive. When he hit the water, Andrew nailed the cymbals and we began.
*During the end of Third, I took my electric guitar and started rolling around on the ground while playing the heavily distorted ending. Don's Dad didn't like that very much.
*In the video of the performance, there's a great scene where a kid walks in front of the camera. When he realizes it's on, his eyes become as wide as a deer in headlights and he jumps out of the way.
*We played one of our longest versions of Hammock; everyone got a solo. When Eugene started his, Andrew left and jumped in the pool.
*Rusty Noesner must have done something funny.
*Carol Simpson came up and helped sing the song she wrote, Chlorine Girl.
The concert ended up being a family-friendly event: the neighborhood kids and their parents alike had a great time. Playing outside with a noise permit is always guaranteed fun. This concert barely beats out Ram Jam 1997, which would probably be #6 on the list, but got edged out simply because this was longer and we didn't have to share the bill with Bucket of Monkey or those two white kids who thought they could rap.
(Tomorrow: The samurai go to the Fairfax Government Center to talk business...)
#4: Wakefield CD Release, 1994
During our last year of high school together, we recorded a CD at Rolling Hills Recording Studios in nearby Damascus, Maryland. It was a great experience; hearing our basement practice sessions realized as studio-quality tracks was extremely satisfying. CD technology wasn't all that old, and most indie / smaller bands were still using the more cost-effective solution of cassette tapes. We pooled our resources together (thanks, Washington Post paper route) and went for it.
The band was never too business-savvy, but we wanted to throw something together for our CD release. Problem was, there weren't many places to play a gig in good ol' Fairfax, Virginia. Someone got the idea to call the Government Center and ask them if we could book a public venue. Before long, we were sitting in a posh boardroom with leather swivel chairs. A lady named Michelle Chapman Campbell was our contact, who was in charge of a county-sponsored (aka drug and alcohol-free) entertainment series called "The Zone". After some brainstorming, we decided to hold a full-fledged concert in the Wakefield Recreation Center gymnasium, with our friends the Boys of Skabinson and a solo act named Clint Coo opening the show (MCC said he was good). Thus the Wakefield CD Release Party at the Zone was born.
The turnout was unbelievable. Apparently "The Zone" had a decent marketing budget and the show was mentioned on the radio and in flyers around town. We played on a multi-tiered stage with an awesome backdrop of large windows looking out to a forest. The Boys of Skabinson (our high school was called "Robinson"...oh, those clever ska cats) rocked the place, and I remember lead singer Adam Crowley rocking out on the kazoo for one song. Clint Coo was...good at playing Duncan Sheik covers...but he brought in a small non-Robinson crowd. And then it was our turn, and we played straight through a full set. Everyone in the audience got neon glowing bracelets upon arrival. I can still remember looking into this dark sea of green and pink lights from the stage and thinking that this was the coolest I had ever felt. The show ended with our friend Dave Broussard and I wearing jumpsuits and doing rock versions of the Beastie Boys' No Sleep Til Brooklyn and Mase's Feel So Good.
Our future together in college was uncertain, but making the CD and throwing a release party capped off our high school days well. I've always disliked the business aspect of booking / promotion, but it somehow clicked this time around. In the end, we were just four high school kids spinning around in government-owned boardroom swivel chairs.
(Tomorrow: The bloodiest OKS concert ever...)
#3: Theta Chi Survivor
When starting my first year at UVA, I became fast friends with a guy named Russ Jenkins two doors down in the dorm. He had an acoustic guitar in hopes of learning how to play, and I, samurailess, wanted someone to rock out with. So we would sit in the hallway or out on the front stoop at night and play Dave Matthews Band songs together. If a girl walked by, we stopped whatever we were playing and immediately jumped into Crash Into Me. The ladies liked that. And we were shallow like that.
Anyway, fast forward two years, and Russ was now a brother at Theta Chi. At this point "Dave and Russ" had played a few acoustic shows together around Charlottesville, and we were still close friends...now we practiced guitar on the Theta Chi front deck instead of the dorm hallways. Russ was also the new event coordinator for his frat, and booked Okay Samurai for their massively hyped "Survivor" theme party. This was our first frat party, at UVA no less...everyone was very excited.
They went all-out with the theme: tiki torches, sand-covered floors, palm trees and palm fronds, and a kiddie pool filled with live goldfish...which the brothers would grab up and eat whole (usually followed by a blur of high-fives). We began the first of our two sets close to 11PM, and everyone's energy was through the roof. The acoustics of the room weren't that great, so everything seemed louder than usual. We did a cover of California Love and some of my female friends came up on the stage and started dancing with Eugene and Don. We ended the first set a little after midnight, and I took a deep breath and suddenly felt really sick. I could taste blood in the back of my throat from singing so loud; my voice was strained. As we got off the stage to head up to Russ's room for a break, Andrew revealed his blood-covered hands. He had been playing so hard that the friction from the wooden drumsticks was rubbing the skin off his hands. While we walked upstairs, I was uncertain that we'd be able to pull off a second set.
It turned out, in a semi-cliched way, that we persevered through the Survivor party. I silently gulped down bottle after bottle of water and regained my voice. Andrew wrapped duct tape around his hands as makeshift bandages. That's right, my little brother took a roll of duct tape and looped it around his bleeding palms in order to play more. Pretty soon we were back down on stage, churning out a heavily distorted electric rock version of Nsync's Bye Bye Bye (complete with Justin Timberlake dance moves, of course). When we finished, something new happened to us: ENCORE. ENCORE. ENCORE. This was our first encore; we didn't expect it and didn't know what to play. Don began the chords to Sweet Home Alabama, the quintessential southern frat favorite, and the crowd went crazy. We had never played the song together before as a full band, but all of us caught on to the simple three-chord progression pretty quickly and made it through. And hey, if we didn't, everyone was trashed out of their minds on beer and goldfish anyway.
(Tomorrow: Crowd surfing in a southern Virginia barn...)
#2: KA Melrose, 2001
Fraternities at JMU had a tradition of renting a barn 20 minutes outside of campus for huge BYOB parties. Buses would bring people back and forth from the event, so everyone was usually pretty toasted by the time they made it through the barn doors. This tradition was known as Melrose, and KA asked us to perform at theirs in 2001. Upon first walking into the barn one Saturday afternoon to set things up, I couldn't believe how cool of a venue it was. An enormous sawdust-covered floor. Several stairways that led up to a long balcony with a half-broken piano in the corner. Lots of smaller, secluded rooms connected to the main one. A large outside deck. It was the perfect open atmosphere for general debauchery.
The stage that we were playing on was a different story. It was long and narrow, giving us absolutely no depth. We looked like the band at Chuck E. Cheese, where all the animatronic characters are lined up in a row (it's usually nice to have the ability to see your bandmates for the purposes of starting and ending songs in unison). But whatever qualms we had about the stage disappeared that night when the buses starting pouring people in, creating a steady flow of newcomers that never stopped. The place was saturated with drunken college kids, a captive audience who wanted their pants rocked off.
And rock pants off we did. As soon as we started playing, girls flooded the stage...it was like straight out of a movie. They were dancing with us, singing with us, picking up a tambourine or drumstick and playing with us, and pretty much making the crowd even crazier. One girl in particular, forever known as "blue shirt girl", would pat us on the back with the rhythm of the music. The only problem was that she had no rhythm whatsoever. Jeff said he had a hard time keeping in time with this intoxicated, off-tempo metronome pounding his back.
My friend from a band called the Bureau, Jordan Brown, came down for the show, and played lead guitar on an extended version of Back To Blues. He couldn't believe the surrounding insanity either, and yelled at Andrew over the music "THIS IS SO (expletive) AWESOME!" We also did a rock version of the Dixie Chicks' Ready To Run, where the cowboy hat I put on my head was quickly snatched up and worn by several of the onstage dancers. Crowd surfing was omnipresent. I grabbed the wireless mic, ran through the crowd, up the stairs and onto the balcony to sing the chorus of 718 from above. So many things could have gone wrong...beer spilling on instruments or amps, people trying to take over the mic, fights breaking out...but miraculously, none of these things happened (I even got my cowboy hat back!) We played through two insane, full sets. So this is what it must be like to be a rockstar, I thought. It was a feeling that has never quite been matched since.
(Tomorrow: the countdown ends with the best birthday celebration ever...)
#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.
Friday, August 26 at 9:00 AM
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