Trick or Treated?

Dormition's Journal.
November 2, 2009:

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, and this years can best be described as interesting. The day started off as any other day. Woke up, did the usual morning ritual, then headed off to the mall with the lady. I'm not much of a mall person, so going there was on the bottom of my list of things to do. But alas, we ventured off in search of a new phone for the apartment. After roaming the mall for about a half hour looking for Radio Shack in the elusive concourse level, which is in itself a bitch to get to, we eventually found Radio Shack. Not a second goes by when we enter that one of the employees asks us if we need any help. We tell him that we're in need of a phone, so he guides us to the area of the store that has all the phones we could possibly ask for. While searching for a phone, he notices my hoodie and begins a conversation about it, referencing the band that is labeled on it. The said band is Between The Buried And Me, so he begins to talk about how he has a tattoo on his back that is from one of their designs, which just happened to be the design on my hoodie (hence, how the convo started in the first place).

To cut the story short, we find a phone to our liking and proceed to the checkout and he is still going on about music and the hardcore/metal scene, mentioning bands like Code Seven and whatnot. I knew the bands he was talking about, so we went back and forth for a few minutes after the initial purchase was made discussing bands and shit like that. Mentioned to him I was in a band and he was just going on about stories from the past. I'm still surprised that they play BTBAM in their Radio Shack from time to time, def not the kind of music I would expect to hear walking into that store. I always find it hard to disengage in a conversation without being an asshole, especially when we're on a deadline with time and need to get a move on. But we parted ways with the Radio Shack guy and from there, we proceeded to Urban Outfitters to pick up a few nick nacks and then we were off to Whole Foods to do some grocery shopping and a quick Ikea run to pick up this.

After our outing, we returned home, I put together the locker and afterwards relaxed a bit before I headed off to play a Halloween show with the band. Now this is where it's gets interesting. We were asked to play a Halloween show at The Broadway (formally VPS) in Amityville. It was our first show since July and we were excited to play live again. As we arrive at the venue, we discover that we entered some kind of cruel joke, the kind of joke where the punch line is not as funny as you would hope it would be. The band before us could not have been any older then 12 or 13, and all they seemed to play was cover songs (Pantera, Metallica, Michael Jackson), it was a little ridiculous, funny, but ridiculous. Parents everywhere, kids everywhere and us stuck in the middle of it all. Why were we asked to play a show like this? Did Broadway think it was a show suitable for us, playing for minors and their parents? So we just put on our game faces and got on stage to set up. My brother showed up, a buddy of mine I used to work with back in the day came to the show, a fellow co-worker surprised me at the show. They couldn't have picked a better day to come and watch us play.

Other than the initial vibe we were getting from the start of this show, we did our sound test and all seemed to be fine, until we got to our lead guitarists amp/head. Somehow one of his tubes blown in his head and the whole damn thing wouldn't work. So after about a 15-20 minute delay, we got a replacement head, but it was to late, we we're doomed from the start. We sounded like shit, we got off track and just went downhill from there. Our lead guitarist was pissed his amp sounded like shit with the replacement head, it threw us off and just killed any hope of playing a decent show. But the troopers we are, we continued on, barreling through our short set, taking no breaks and just giving it our all to a crowd that had no idea what the hell was going on. Candy being thrown about from our drummer, pelted in the back of the head, my girlfriend hit in the face and chest by a plastic pumpkin. It was chaos, a blur of moments that we all wanted to forget. This was not the show we expected to play after a few month hiatus. Oh well, at least our demo is close to being finished... finally. I will get into that very soon.

Another Halloween, come and gone. I think it's best to say I was tricked this time around. We'll see what happens next year.

Until next time...