September 24, 2006 "Mr. Totally"

09/24/2006 Soma - San Diego, CA
Other bands: Mutemath, Shiny Toy Guns


Soma.

Now and again, as always, luck would take a sideways glance in our direction and we'd find ourselves on an actual stage worthy of 6 years of work and in front of crowd that, though still not ours, satiated at least briefly, a band's universal and desperate need for attention.

We pulled into the SOMA loading docks, the only van amidst a caravan of buses, still a complete unknown. The place looked like it was carved out of a relatively new movie megaplex. Covered with flyers, but still carpeted and not yet dingy enough to feel like a true musical swingers lair.

Both Mutemath and Shiny Toy Guns were bands that had thus far remained outside the ping of my radar, yet were building enough simmer to attract pricey tour budgets and stage plots with, admittedly, pretty amazing lights and fog. Indie cred be damned, I would have given my left leg to have a bus with enough room to lay longways in without having to be six inches from another members foot.

The bands were nice (unlike the house manager who told Bryan our mix sounded like shit) but aloof as the five of us were scooted onto stage for a quick soundcheck. I say "five" because Nic caught a plane home to participate in a lengthy bout of court ordered therapy due to an arrest a few months earlier. He was popped by the local 5-0 leaving a local bar and apparently blew just enough to get him a night in the drunk tank.

This stressed me out more than it should have - one, because it meant he would be leaving the tour at some point and thereby throwing our fragile (in my head) existence into tumult, and two, because for all Nic's quiet, pensive genius, I sometimes worried about his excesses, even though they were really no more excessive than any of the rest of us. I could not escape being a protective brother.

So we spent the few days off at Johnny's parents rearranging our setlist to primarily include songs with the least amount of piano and to make sure I could play and sing on the songs that we did play.

I won't say I pulled it off magnificently, but the diminishment of our life show was marginal at best. Nailed the break in The Vapours but gave up singing during the break in Breathe entirely. Regardless, the crowd of several hundred stood and stared, motionless, politely clapping at the end of each tune. I played to the front, escaping my binding nerves as I was increasingly able to do, even thought the front was a wall of text-messaging girls and their coiffed boyfriends.

And we sold no merch. Despite the lines out the door. Despite the nearly sold-out 1000-cap venue and the draw of the other bands. We were invisible, an inconvenience on the way to ninety minutes with the nu-prog rock darling of the fiscal quarter, which wasn't us.