Monkeys, Strippers, Oh My

We played at Bob's Java Jive in Tacoma last night. If you are not familiar with this establishment, it looks like a teapot. Built in an era when people built dog, dinosaur, and other various shaped establishments. Diversions for the road weary. The "Hey that teapot is way too big; we have got to check that out and get inside of it" type of crowd. Jared said that there used to be monkeys in this teapot. They would would throw feces and masturbate on the tables. Well, that is what he said anyhow.

The part we played in is not part of the original structure, but a rather unspecific shaped addendum to add more seating. The stage is rather high; this fact is apparent due to the low overhead when standing on it. There is a bar surrounding the stage that comes to chest height when in the audience; from the stage, it is around your knees. Devon says this is evidence that this place was once a strip club. I hope that this stripper speculation and the monkey story are true, and that these two states of lust and lunacy coexisted at a single point in time. The interior has a jungle theme with leopard patterned cloth behind the main bar, further adorned with various monkey cartoons (yes, the obligatory see no evil trio appears hear in full force). They have a couple of old videogames next to the pool table. Lucas tried to plug in Tetris, but that caused the circuit breaker to fail. Apparently, the stage is on a different circuit.

Like Le Voyeur, there is no sound guy. They provide a PA, some ramshackle microphones held up by some equally ramshackly mic stands. We got Stencil dialed in, and they were off to the races with Telephone Wires. It sounded surprisingly good in the audience. The addition of Brian's bass parts were definitely helping the sound. Everything about their set was a bit better than the previous night. The audience was mostly composed of people waiting for the last band, but was enthusiastic about Stencil's performance.

Our set seemed to be a bit better as well. The audience was also enthusiastic about our set.

At the end of our set, a woman approached me and told me that our music "was actually good". Apparently, there is a popular conception that our music is bad. I thought maybe this was a chance to sell a CD or a t-shirt, but before I could pitch our merch, she followed up her previous comment with an explanation. She was the drummer in the next band and was afraid that her performance was going to be rocky. She made this conclusion on the fact that she had only played drums 3 times before. When they started playing, I could have sworn that she had played the drums at least 4 times. Their lead guitarist was a bit innocuous -- simple riffs that were neither here nor there, but at least he put time into learning his instrument. Listening to the lyrics were a bit like eating broken glass. A desirable effect for a hard core band, but it was not working for this one. The singer kicked around the word "whore" in a few songs. Not in a playful or ironic way, but in the way you would write about your breakup in 8th grade. Their last song was a knockout punch of unintentional ironic sexuality. "What would your boyfriend say?" he asks in this song. "What would your husband do? I wrote the kama sutra all about you". He goes on to explain that he thought of the "lotus flower in the shower" and that he does a lot of thinking in the shower.

I was thinking it still smelled a little like strippers and monkeys. Bob, we love your jive.