First Annual Club 1808 Double Elimination Battle of the Bands Recap!

hell yeah!

An interesting weekend. I guess some folks out there are only going to want to hear about the "controversial ending". I guess I could start backwards. I may write about the ending first and then write about the show chronologically.

I will say first the absurdity level of a "double elimination battle of the bands" (think about it...) was supposed to be a signifier that the purpose of the show was not about whos gonna win the $$$ ... the purpose was to have fun and to try and do something ridiculous. When is the last time you saw 16 bands fully electric in FOUR HOURS?? If you came to the Battle of the Bands, the answer to that question is "this weekend," if not the answer is probably "never." Sprinkle in projections, video art, oil painting, and DJs and its starting to sound like a special environment being created for the enjoyment of whoever chose to participate. Which it was . Sunday was a bit weak, more on that later I suppose, but I can't say I've seen a crowd in such an honest revelry as Friday night since, well, I can't remember the last time. It didn't feel like going to a show, it felt like being at a party, only way more awesome, and it was great to see so many of my friends having such a great time. If the small tired crowd of band members held hostage until Sunday at 2 AM when they probably had work the next morning is the opposite image, well, I've been there too, and if I had to take a night of one to get a night of the other, I'd do it every time.

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So about the show:

Friday was day one, and the best day. I got there at 7 I think and was feverishly setting up PAs, TVs, VCRs, DJs, soundboards, and drinking water out of sinks. 7:45 on turned into a band meet and greet and there was a 2 High Lifes for $3 drink special. We drew slots out of a sombrero at 8:15 which was super fun. I had no idea if the show was going to run as fast as planned for, and there was at least a moderate chance we would get fucked and the show would not end by Sunday night, something I'm glad didn't happen since I had absolutely no backup plan if it did. We made it through 9 matches Friday---all the first rounds plus Me vs. Dann to kick off the losers bracket in the second round, and a second round forfeit from Traffique. Diamond Minds made an appearance for the first time in a long time, it was good but they lost to Fearless Freaks in game one. I got pitted against some very good sounding youngsters Princess Ho, who have been around just a couple months but sounded very good already. They beat be despite the fact that I pulled out the 2 bathing suits gag as well as got the crowd engaged in a sing-a-long ("the world is one big house we are all just living in it / its my life, Im just living in it / its your house / you are just living in it / we are in different rooms of the house / we are in different rooms of the house"). Game 3 was won by Eets Feats, and lost by Traffique "one of Austin's innovators" as Eddy announced. Eddy was the MC and he was keeping the crowd pumped to the max in his Rowdy Roddy Piper Halloween costume. Hillarious. Traffique was feverishly talking into an echo box about some blonde with a spatula (...i say feverishly because Red came out despite the fact that he had been throwing up all day....what a trooper!!) We were all like wtf, this makes no sense, and then Alexandra came and started spanking him with a spatula and I just about died laughing. It was great. Next up Bird Call (Chris Wiggington and Ben's surprise project) brought a bass line to die for and ca-caws, taking Al Tiburon down, who to his credit had the crowd dancing to the Euro pulse of his jams. In the big upset of the first round, The Plutonium Farmers were felled by one man with 3 guitar chords and a willingless to rasp his heart out into the mic, Hayden Allen (felled into the consolation bracket...they would still go on to make the quarter finals). That one man showed up on day 2 complete with full band Twinklehoof, and they would eventually capture the Divisional Bye, and a spot in the Semi-s where they finally lost to Eets Feats. Machetti Mike, the last addition took down Casio Egypt, who took the E Squared award for most cables to hook up to play award. Their noise was quite excellent and enjoyable. Shittin Kittens had their first show, losing to v^v aka The Shane Wood Drone Extraveganza. The Shitten Kittens were aided in their first round by Nathan, aka The Shat Cat, who was hilariously dressed in some sort of sheep skin vest or something, banging on glass bottles, one of which broke (oops!) spraying broken glass across the floor. The droners did their thing, and the final match up was Waco Girls vs Young and Angry. The Waco Girls first round performance might have been their best, it was late at that point and most of the crowd had left, but it was excellent. I liked whenever they played War Pigs too, that was later. Ben Zinc was the DJ, and I later found out it was his first solo gig! So happy to have been a part of that, the dude held it down big time all night long.

Day 2 was pretty much the same shit, but different matchups and more of a known quantity factor. The crowd was less good, and we didn't have Zak Lloyd and Melanie aka vid kids running projections, or the face painting going on, so it felt a bit emptier. There was a time around 11:30 where the crowd thinned down to about 35 and I thought "oh boy, here it goes, this place is gonna be dead in 30 minutes" but the remaining crowd held until the end of the night and everyone seemed to have a good time. We went swimming afterward. It was nice that people hung around Saturday.

Sunday, the vid kids were back, and Mott the psychedelic face painter too, but it just wasn't as good a time. I felt bad for Faith Gay who came to DJ and did an admirable job, I really wanted it to be a better event for her. We were running on low staff...Shane came by and helped out for about an hour, but it was basically me and Eddy running the whole show. There was a bad oversight that I realized later....we never turned the TVs on when setting up! A shame, I think it had a subliminal dampening effect not to have them running. It was less bands, and less people, and folks sticking around not because they wanted to, but out of some obligation to be there for the end, at 2 AM on a Sunday night. That was my fuckup. I would like to run another 3 day event in the future, even if its too much for some people, I think there is a value in it, and a psychedelic tenement enforced whenever you fuck with time (one way being to have it be an extremely long show), but next time we would definitely do it a Thursday, Friday, and a Saturday. Sunday night is just too rough. I really expected because it was the finals that that would be as big as Friday, but it ended up being the smallest day of all. Still I am proud of what turned out. Because so long was spent working out the logistics, and because I was nervous booking a show I didn't know was possible, the booking didnt really start until 6 weeks out. To do it in the future, I think honestly, the next one we run will be in a format that can be completed in 2 days, not 3 for starters, and if booking is done more in advance it will be easier to get better bands, and thus bands that draw, and thus a better crowd, and that was the major difference between Friday and Saturday and Sunday, was the crowd. The less folks there, the gloomier it got, although that really makes it sound worse than it was, it was basically revelrous all of Friday, a lot of fun for whoever was there all Saturday, and Sunday kept moving, with the exception of 10:45-11:15 as we waited for the Eets Feats drummer to get into town.


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Well that was the show in a nutshell. I wrote what follows first cause I know folks are interested, but didn't want to lead with "the controversial ending", because to do that makes it seem like 95% of the show wasn't a hell of a good time, and it would be a misrepresentation to do that.

lets talk how it all ended. Some background for those of you not there...

For the 3 days of the tournament Eddy was MCing (in full on tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper, hilarious and spot-on). He was making the calls of who would advance to the next round based on crowd noise. When things got hairy as far as it basically being even on both sides over the course of the 3 days he would defer to me, and I came up with the system that when its about even and you can't tell, look with your eyes and visually count how many people are for each group. This felt fair because there was an element to the event that you were supposed to be able to win by bringing a crowd, AKA an incentive for bands to get people to the show. This proved to be a not very strong incentive when pitted up against "hey come see our band again at 2 AM on Sunday night" but we can safely file that under "mistakes we are not going to make again" so who the fuck cares at this point.

Well, it comes down to the ending. We've got 2 bands, Eets Feats and Fearless Freaks. They each play 2 songs, in a 1-1-1-1 format, with Eets Feats playing first. This ends and it is time to figure out who won. I announce that Gene will choose the winner and we are each holding up a fake giant check to be made out to the winner. Eddy says "cheer for Fearless Freaks." The people cheer (the girl from that band goes and hits the drums). Then Eddy says "or is it gonna be Eets Feats?" The people cheer, and multiple people hit the drums in their corner. Gene points to Eets Feats and tells me to declare them a winner. I go to Eddy and say "we have to do this again, its not fair for the people to be banging on the drums like that," which would have been consistent with how we were running the show up until this point. I will say, in my opinion as someone who was equidistant from both crowds, even without the additional volume from the drums, the crowd for Eets Feats was both louder, and wilder. If I had been smart I would have just told Eddy that Eets Feats won, and honestly for a while after the show I thought I did and that Eddy had overruled me (we were working as a team, and there were plenty of times in the 3 nights where I had told him something, and he said no, did something else and I ended up telling him "hey you were right, it was better to do it that way.") Eddy told me I did not say that, that actually I had told him that we needed to do it again. But if I had said that, perhaps there was a look on Eddy's face that said "any time its been this close we've always made each side cheer again, so let's do that while we figure it out." Anyways, I couldn't care less who won, and am confident that whatever happened in this confusion I was acting to the best of my ability. Furthermore, none of this has anything to do with Gene, who was only doing what he was asked to do, which was to come up at the end and make the call (which at that point he already had). He was not privy to all the little make-up-as-you-go tricks we had come up with to smoothly run the show over the past 3 days, because he had been busy running the bar, so from his perspective if we had asked both sides to cheer, one was louder, and he called it for that side, that ended it, and if me and Eddy had done a better job, it would have.

Anyways, we made people cheer again and reverted to the backup method of counting people. The final count was 12-10 in favor of Fearless Freaks. I got on the mic and announced that they were the winners, 12-10.

There was a moment, this moment where the crowd gave one final cheer and it seemed to be over with everyone happy, but Gene was not happy, because he was the owner of the club, he had just been trucked up there to call it, he called it, and then 30 seconds later I was up there declaring the other band the winner.

He had previously explained to me that this event was somewhat promotional in nature (it was his idea, which explains the large purse, which is in my opinion awesome, and is not something that could have come from me, meaning that the event would not have existed if not for it) and for this reason my initial tack was just to say "hey this is a promotional event, at this moment everyone is happy with the result, why not leave it at that?" but Gene was not about to go along with that, and at this point it seems obvious to me, why should he. He's the owner, he was asked to call it for the group that was louder, he called it for the group that was louder (because in this instance 10 screaming crazy ~21 year old girls managed to be louder and crazier than the 12 cheering for the Fearless Freaks) and he's the owner, so the fact that I went on the mic and announced it for the other band shouldn't change any of that.

Anyways, at this point The Fearless Freaks caught whiff that they would be receiving something less than the $500 they thought they had just won. Words were said, exacerbating the situation, and it is my opinion that it was only Gene's graciousness towards the concept of the Battle of the Bands that allowed them to walk with a check for $350, which Eets Feats also received (who btw had a member drive in after work and back from San Antonio 3 days straight...what that probably costed close to $150 right there. Nice dedication bros!)

And I do have a slight sympathy for The Fearless Freaks for one reason, which is that they were the one band on the bill I did not directly book, and they had no real onus to respect my position as the person who had been working for a couple months to create a good time for folks basically as a hobby (if you are wondering, had the event made money or broken even I would have been paid $200, which would have amounted to something well less than $5 an hour, but since the club lost a significant amount of money, as well as endured PA damage, I was happily compensated $30 for gas, as well as paid back for money I spent on hiring the facepainter, and $20 for Sam Sanford who had some art damaged during the proceedings.) But that said, I had to roll my eyes, when they finally left after receiving such a large check for bringing their 10 friends to a show for 3 days with a parting shot of "just wanted to let you know that was very unprofessional." Like where have you been for 3 days, all the bands were either improv, doing covers (*cough* you *cough*), made up specifically for the event, or house show bands with an average age of 20. If you had entered a professional event, chances are you would not have sniffed anything close to $350, so why not just recognize that the problem isnt that you just got wronged by the dude writing you the big fat check, its that you are not being a chilled-out-cool-dude at the obviously-geared-for-fun show. But I take this in stride, because I consider it related to a distinct personality type that in a necessary part of rock and roll, and a personality type I generally love to be around (Extroverted with something to prove for whatever reason.) If it weren't for these personality traits which I also consider myself to possess, humans wouldn't be driven to do such a thing like want to have a whole room full of people looking at them while they do something (play guitar I guess, generally, or ukulele in my case). People like this are people I enjoy being around to the point where I seek them out, but sometimes the taking-yourself-too-seriously aspect of this personality gets misplaced at the wrong time, and I understand the money aspect can serve as a red herring that makes it seem like its ok to act in a certain way in a certain situation, but without going into further detail, I thought before I jet out of here on 3 months of European adventure it was worth defending the good name of the man and space that made this all possible.

And further, I hope other people will continue to do shows at 1808 and recognize that its not something to be taken for granted that for whatever economic circumstances or reasons or whatever, there is currently a place where rock and roll / art / culture can exist in this town in what I would consider to be a comfortable environment, and for fucks sake, there's even a $2 beer there now.