Tonight we looked for parking, mostly. We also sat at the World Cafe open mic in Philadelphia, PA. We eventually played. Then we sat some more. It turned into a 7 hour commitment which made me a little grumbly. We sold a CD and lost the contest and in general could’ve probably found better uses for our time. Showing up at 4.30pm for sign-up (yeah, we were half an hour early, but only because the rain sort of screwed up our plans of driving to Shane’s first and walking from there), we still only beat the second person by about five minutes.
The second guy to walk in turned out to be another Rob. We talk for a while – he’s from out of town as well, meeting up with an old friend who Heather and I think has a pretty large crush on him (her quote of the day is “I just feel so short when I look at my feet!). He’s got Rage Against the Machine stickers on his case, so he goes in the Cool Pile. Slowly, the anteroom of WPXN fills with other guys with guitars.
For as individualistic and artistic as we’d like to be, we’re a pretty homogenous breed. We’re all wearing jeans. Nobody goes for light colours… one guy wears a hat. Which is wise, I suppose. I don’t recognize him immediately, but I do recognize his hat.
The hatman would be Kyle Justin from Philadelphia, PA. I remember he’s the laid-back guy with the Daniel Lee voice.
Anywho, the music starts at around 7pm, and we’re watching performers go by over calamari and duck quesedillas when a big hairy man walks up to us. It takes me a couple of seconds to recognize our Shane – we haven’t seen him in a couple of months and he has apparently used that time to focus all his energy into growing facial hair. He and his roommate Ian have come to watch the performers go by with us.
It’s nice to have the company.
Stand-out performance by a guy running a didjeridoo through a Boss loop station. Very cool. Very trance – Mark disappoints us all by not having a CD or even a website with music on it. Hell of a didj player, though. You should go to his myspace page and harass him about that fact.
I HATE sitting at competition open mics, because though you’re trying to be friends with everyone, and hope to see other good musicians, you also secretly hope they’re not TOO good. It makes me feel kind of dirty.
In any case, by 11.30pm the winner is announced and we head out into the rain to hunt for parking nearer to Shane’s new apartment. We sit and play all the new material he hasn’t heard before – it’s good to see him still enjoying our sounds – he gets Heather’s train song and “Simile Blue” and “Speaking Louder Now” and “Common Song” and “Crazy as a Good Thing” and “We Can Work It Out” and “Allergy” and “Drift”. A little mini-concert of stuff he hasn’t heard.
We watch cat videos and bitch about money and eat huge stromboli and sleep on the floor. Life’s finally okay after a long, rainy day.
