Arcane Addiction

=== 02.03.2008 ===

I probably should not have booked this show. The strain and stress together was enough combined with the fact it was superbowl sunday. When a bunch of people worldwide get locked into a sport event like this, there’s a very slim chance that you will draw any crowd of any sort.

That was the situation with this show. There was like 40 people maximum in the bar, and yet what’s funny is nobody took a copy of the album on the CD to get the music out there. They had to be passed around. Probably some people took the CDs later and smashed em or threw them away.

The biggest pisser of the evening was that not only was I a few minutes late enough to see Soul Distraction, I was almost a bit into The Sudden Death Squad by the time I got there, and Heather was like “you’re late!” and I knew. When you’re low-budgeted and can’t really speed up certain processes, it kind of becomes a reflex to get things done the best and fastest you can. The second part of this pisser was the fact that out of the entire evening, I had two choices: to walk home or take the car ride. I took the car ride because in Portland, public transportation is awesome before 11pm or 12am. I don’t like being associated with “green” exactly, but then again, Portland is one of the greenest cities and it’s mass transit is one of the top in the USA. And so being it was about 1 in the morning, I took the car ride. On the way out of the venue, Heather comes out copping an attitude like I just booked the show to show up, do my thing, and get out of there. I’d have stayed longer, but I couldn’t if I didn’t want to walk for like 3 hours.

Because of this ordeal, I refuse to play Ash Street for awhile. The scenario itself taught me enough. All Ages venues will be the better way to go for awhile too, considering there’s a lot of people in the underground market who are ages 13 and up who go to these shows because they want to discover new talent and so forth. I can’t do that at a 21+ realistically. So later this year, after a few things are clarified, I may wind up doing what a few people have asked me to do. Book a show at an all ages venue. Fuck the bars-only for a bit.

Lesson Learned: Book shows at all ages, promote the shit out of the show, never book during a sporting event or when a major event is coming through town that might rob you of the fans for that evening.