Concert Review: My Messenger plays bad show but not the worst ever
After a rather bleak show a few weeks back, the other members of My Messenger and I stood in silent contemplation outside the venue.
“That was bad,” said guitarist Steve, “but not the worst show ever.”
I agreed. All I had to do was look across the street to see the site of one of my worst shows ever: the El Cortez.
It was the spring of 2005, and my band Red Hot Radio received a last minute offer to play at the El Cortez. None of us had ever been there. Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have played. We showed up excited, as always, and were told to go on first. About one minute into the set, it got bad.
The crowd was basically a bunch of dirty, rowdy punkers. The whole set consisted of us being heckled for being emo, though we’re really not very emo at all. We cut the set short and left quickly. I only ever returned there once and my friend claims he was roofied that night.
Shortly after I related this story to the members of My Messenger, I remembered a worse show. Two worse shows, actually.
The first occurred in Long Beach, Calif.
After trying for months to set up this tour, it finally was time to go. The day before the tour, after weeks of being incommunicado, our drummer called and said he couldn’t go. He had to work. So we kicked him out and decided to go drummer-less.
Luckily, for the Reno show and a show in Los Angeles, we were able to find drummers. But for Long Beach we had to be creative. We uploaded the drum tracks from our demo onto an MP3 player and we had a new drummer, even if he was just a small piece of plastic.
Fortunately, only about six people watched us, so the embarrassment of missing an integral part of the band was minimal. Though that stunt did help the sound guy remember us when we came through again this past August.
The last tale is by far the worst. This past summer in Las Vegas, we played at a bar called the Bunkhouse. We ended up playing last, a little after midnight. We had expected to play first, so the drinking had begun in earnest.
By the time we took the stage, our bass player was completely wasted. He was playing songs I had never heard and creating harmonies that weren’t supposed to be there. Our singer was obviously pissed throughout the set and our drummer was just disappointed and probably pretty mad, too. I was driving, so I was sober and fairly calm.
This set was also cut short and the band kind of broke up for a few hours afterwards. Plus we embarrassed ourselves in front of a band that is good friends with our buddies in The Higher. It was definitely the worst ever.
After I told these stories to the guys in My Messenger, they seemed to be smiling a bit more than they were before. Which was my goal. Bad shows happen and unless you’re some virtuoso, you’re going to screw up occasionally. So try not to get too down when things don’t go perfect.
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on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:20 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Concert Reviews.
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