Other bands: Say Anything, mewithoutYou, Piebald
Halloween last year was a raucous party in Seattle, yarling with good vibes and pozzy dreams of the medium-range future. Halloween this year was a drunken stopover in a tired LA suburb, a sleepy film scout location for scenes involving strip malls and aimless youth.
The Glasshouse never gave us no nevermind, it seemed. The room was big and vacuous. The crowds vapid. The onstage sound never quite right, as if it were coming from the building next door. It was Chain Reaction times two, and for a slightly older audience.
No one really dressed in costume for the occasion save James, who went in drag. Bender, mwY's tour manager, went as a boxer, and while I'm sure some of the other band members dressed as something, I never really cared to know what because I spent most of the time before and after the show in the labyrinthine backstage area drinking and staring at the wall.
James in a dress. Kinda hot.
2006 was the year of building walls. I didn't wander out into the crowd or hang out at the merchandise area trying to meet fans. Years of experimentation had proved that my time spent out in the lion's den was a disastrous source of anxiety. So I sat and built a wall of drunk. I stayed behind this wall from soundcheck to set time to load-out because it felt safe. It helped me think of one thing at a time.
At the Glasshouse we played and I walked out onto the stage, wrapped in tight fitting black leather and polyester and hair in my eyes. More bricks. New car caviar, four star daydream. Buy me a football team. The crowd was quiet and passive and not nearly as noisome as its size would indicate.
It was easy to get my brain lost in the songs now. I found the place where I could connect the words to bottomless feeling, that actor's reservoir. Body-consciousness had burned itself away like sun on fog.
Yet still, it was not lost on me that few bought merchandise and few sung along and few applauded, and so I kept my bricks in place and made a beeline for the dressing room to resume my position on the couch, sipping more beer, feeling the sonic pulse of the next bands playing outside. Numb to the sudden existence of loud applause to a band more familiar.
The show ended and I walked outside, keeping to myself in the alley and in the haze of half a dozen drinks. I wanted to leave this town and run along to chase the carrot to other locales along the itinerary. Or was it a retreat. A mad dash.
There was a small crowd of people at the end of the alley on the sidewalk adjacent to the main road. They turned to look at me and then became agitated, surrounding me, asking me for autographs and doling out gushing praise.
It took me by surprise and I felt just a bit remorseful that I hadn't made an effort to find these people sooner instead of writing off the entire evening as yet another day away from my two-year-old that I'd never get back.
It was all so exhilarating and confusing all at the same time.
