It was Valentines’ Evening, 1987.

Another gig!

My band had had the worst gig ever – no, the worst. gig. ever. – about a month earlier, at the old “McReedy’s Pub”, in downtown Minneapolis.  We’d schlepped our gear in, set up, and played three sets of music.

Actually, the story of the three sets of music was better (much better) than the gig itself.  We’d absorbed our new guitar player, “Casey”, the hard way; we practiced four hours a night, four nights a week, every week from New Years on. 

And it wasn’t just covers, either.  We learned three hours of originals – mostly my stuff, but Casey had five or six tunes that people kinda liked, and Bill and Mark (the drummer and bass player) each contributed a song.  Out of thirty songs, we played maybe five covers – “Gimme Some Lovin'” (I could fake the keyboard parts really well back then), a badly-misbegotten rap version of “You Shook Me All Night Long” (which was a funny idea that we could never pull off), a country-western version of Prince’s “Erotic City”, a bad-jazz reading of “Bastards of  Young”, and – what doesn’t fit into this picture? – a very straight version of Badfinger’s “Baby Blue”.  The rest – 18-20 songs – were all mine. 

So we played.  To a house with maybe three people in it.  We didn’t bother charging at the door, naturally – why?  And the sound system – a creaking antique with a reverb tank possessed by demons – gave us hell.  In one song, I sang “you can be a very big fish…”.  As I finished the next line of the song, I could still hear the system echoing “fish fish fish fish fish” from the speakers.  We gradually got things squared away, though – so by the end of the night, near the end of the third set, as we were playing to one guy and his girlfriend, things came across well enough when we did “Baby Blue” that he stood up after the song, walked up to the stage, and handed us $10.  “That was my favorite song of all time”.

That was our take for the whole night.

But it was a month later.  We were a lot tighter.  A lot better.  We knew more stuff (the rap cover was gone, although “Erotic County” survived in our repertoire for a few more years). 

Tonight’s gig – “Fernando’s”, on 15th and East Lake Street. 

Things got off to a rocky start; the bar was supposed to advertise the gig in City Pages.  We’d opened it up the previous Wednesday, to see us plugged as…”TBA”.  (To be fair, Fernando’s screwed up the ad every time we played there, ever.  We thought about changing the band’s name to “TBA”, eventually).

We took the stage at 9:30, ready to go…

…and played to almost as bad a crowd we’d had the previous month.  Casey’s girlfriend Rachel.  Bill and Mark’s sister.  A couple of friends from college, who had agreed to help “work the door”, but quickly wound up as audience, since there was no “door” to “work”.  They left after a set.

And, by the end of the evening, one lonely, broke bartender who cheered gamely along (I ended up leaving a couple of 100% tips out of thanks and sympathy), and a couple of very drunk guys who yelled “Play Comfortably Numb” so many times…

…that we finally gave up and did it.

Who’da thunk – people not wanting to go to a ratty bar in a crime-infested toilet of a neighborhood?  On Valentine’s Day?

We loaded out at the end of the evening and wondered what we were doing wrong.  I resolved to try to get us into a better grade of crappy bar.

As a side note:  One of those college friends who gutted out the first set is not only an occasional reader of this blog, but in fact one of the purchasers of my classic old “What Would Reagan Do” bumperstickers. 

Hiya, Mike!