Scenes from the Scene
by Matt Jasper
Location: Pisces Café
Date: New Year's Eve 05-06
After eight, I walked into Pisces Café with my gal and brother in tow, a hand on a mike stand and a guitar case strapped to my back. As I set up my girlfriend?s notebook, with my USB mike perched upon a stand by the rear speaker, Scatterbrain started a sound check to the half empty Pisces. Scatterbrain is a New England band traveling south tonight having Steve and Craig of Zephyr Zodiac as their rhythm revue. After the sound check, Steve checked out the sound of the test recording, and decided to move the mike from in front of the PA speaker to the center of the room, to pick up the band a bit better. The mike was now placed towards the bar, rather than the stage, a fact unnoticed to all in the half empty quiet room. After another song, Steve checked levels again. ?Much better,? he replied. As I was set to go on at 9pm, Pisces started filling in and a crowd formed.
High school kids filled the back couch, talking to my brother, trying to determine his first name, who they had met once before. Kicking off the show, I had an extra squeal of feedback from the computer monitors during my only cover (Weezer?s Buddy Holly) and we soon corrected the problem. From there, I breezed through my set filled with new originals into the forty minutes, finishing to a strong appreciative audience.
Bill Jantz was up next, and played his combination of covers that ran the gamut from semi-known Stones songs, to Irish drinking dirges, with everything in between. My girlfriend kept the recording going, although she originally thought she was going to record only me. She continued through Scatterbrain?s playing a strong set of original keyboard heavy Brit pop via Providence, with Radiohead and Elvis Costello tunes thrown in.
As midnight approached, I figured out a scheme for dropping the ball. There was to be no big countdown, only a lull in the music. We took a couple of seconds out, but no one knew what time it really was. My watch was slow, someone else?s cell phone too fast. Jeff lowered the doorway?s disco ball across the stage into a cup with 2006 glasses sticking out. Girlfriends were smooched, and Zephyr went into song. Soon after, Bill would be wearing the sunglasses at night, drumming in the back of Zephyr?s set. My younger brother, so talkative during my set, was slumped over on a chair, half falling asleep by one AM. The girls who he was talking to had dwindled down to one, but I could tell my brother was too tired to do something about it. Leaving my girlfriend recording at Pisces, my brother and I made a quick trip, avoiding drunkards, driving home.
By two, I made the round trip back, and found Pisces sometimes waiter sitting next to my girlfriend, too close for my liking. Due to his overt innuendoes, she kept conversation revolving around myspace on her recording computer. Loud phrases like ?At a certain point, I don?t get drunker, I just stay drunk when I keep drinking? were bellowed from Jesse?s Andy Warhol lisp. Slipping between them, I cut off potential debauchery, Jesse soon shirking away.
Later, the final song finished, we hung around, packing cars, eating chips, finalizing the recording plans. I corresponded with the involved parties by email to figure out what we would end up doing with the recording. Two weeks passed, before I saw my girlfriend again, due to new, rotating colds. We spent the afternoon of my next gig working on the Pisces recording. Separating the meat from the chafe of New Year?s was long and time consuming, taking over 10 hours of time with the recording program that weekend, mainly edited by my girlfriend. When we listened back, my set was largely ruined by my brother?s conversation with the back couch teenagers. Steve?s set with Zephyr was similarly ruined, due to Jesse hitting on my girlfriend right next to the mike, which was moved to that point by Steve. I listened with my girlfriend to Jesse hitting on her, us both knowing who ended up with who that night. By that time, Craig and I worked out the details of the recording, and I offered to give them the 4 hours or so of audio recordings for a minimal price, largely selling my girlfriends work short, for a decent bootleg of the night.
That Monday, Craig worked out some of the details of picking up the recordings with me, at my open mike, which he was unable to get to. I still needed to burn some copies, but I left my good CD-R?s at the Cup gig that night, so I tried burning the Pisces show prior to getting them from the Cup, right before my Open Mike at the Grind. I arrived a bit late to the Open Mike, where Steve waited with an impatient look on his face. He ended up taking the Master recordings while I was frazzled, trying to get the Open Mike started late, and I soon after realized I didn?t even get the couple of bucks from him that I would have reimbursed my girlfriend for her time with. The irony of the whole situation was that the recordings he wanted were ruined by Jesse hitting on my girlfriend, which all three of us laughed about this past week, becoming the partial inspiration for this monthly column.
The New Year?s Eve recording will be available at Pisces Café in Babylon, a compilation of the best tracks conversations couldn?t cut through.
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