October 21, 2006 "White People Do This"

10/21/2006 Irving Theater - Indianapolis, IN
Other bands: Theanti, Them Roaring Twenties & BIGBIGcar

Words do little to describe how much planning went into this concert, our official release show for our third offering for public consumption. Our second, long-awaited full-length album.

It started weeks before in Kansas City, in the massive basement entertainment center of Aaron's aunt and uncle. The idea struck me that it might be a good, or at least interesting, idea to go whole hog on the absurdity tip and make this concert a confetti-fest of Spoonful Weighs a Ton proportions.

So in our downtime, I scoured eBay for cheap confetti cannons and beach balls. I passed a small budget by the rest of the guys and went on shopping spree of sorts, buying up entire lots of balloons and beach balls. I found a case of 20 twist-to-fire confetti cannons, each about 2 ft. high and in the shape of giant champagne bottles.

I bought a shitload of those tiny confetti poppers that drunk people pop on New Years to pass out at the door, and I looked for a place I could rent those giant dancing air-filled balloon people that are always in the front of car lots but all the places I could find were out of state and too expensive. I thought it would be great to have those things spring to life at the end of Strange Days when Eric launched into his solo.

I bought pancake mix and borrowed a portable self-heating pancake griddle to fling pancakes at the crowd. I made muffins to do the same. (To be fair, I didn't invent the pancake gag. Everything, Now did it at their release show and I was riding their jock.)

In short, I was preparing for massive messy mayhem in a room full of sweaty, confetti-soaked kids floating dozens of volleyballs above their heads like enormous pastel molecules floating on a dark sea of hands. I was preparing for aural armageddon in a wash of bright blinking lights and the smell of fog and burnt pancakes.



Captain Mainwaring at The Irving Theater, 10/21/06.

The venue was an old historic building, an old 600-cap venue with a stage that once lived in Market Square Arena and that supposedly supported Elvis' fat ass a few decades prior. A local kid I'd never met but who was a friend of a friend of a band I knew made the connections to set up the show. He promised a massive flyering campaign all over the city.

We also partnered with a national Darfur campaign, who put our name on glossy promotional material and slapped our pics up on their smooth website right next to the likes of Sparta and Rise Against. We were one of only a dozen bands on the carousel, and because we had agreed to lay out some literature and say a few words between a song or two about the cause, our show was listed on the site in front of millions of eyeballs worth of traffic.

This show, by all intents and purposes, had the makings of greatness. Another stepping stone to The Storybook Ending and a monumental reminder that we were, in fact, still relevant and that good things come to those who wait and that Jesus Christ and Ray Kroc and John Wayne love us all.

So when the twenty ticket holders trickled in the door, including my wife, whom I had finally convinced to come to another show after nearly four years, all the while hoping she'd see the vast amounts of progress we'd made (only to leave early), I went backstage and got drunk on Canadian Club.


"Oh god, people actually listen to these guys." -written on a Brazil poster at the Irving. We think it was Bigbigcar.