It is always a pleasure to work with people that you like, and who are professional. The venue known as Bigwig could have just as easily have fallen into the wrong hands — some stupid fucks who would have shows that didn’t come off properly and been littered with other problems. Luckily for us, and every other band with an opportunity to play there, this is not the case.
I would gladly do whatever Charles and/or Weber from Ratbag Hero tell me to do. They call the shots around this place and I couldn’t think of any better people to deal with. True class acts. I could praise them all day but allow me to talk about the actual events of the night. I’m sure that in doing so I will end of praising them more so its all good.
Weber offered me this show a few months ago and we snatched it up immediately. This is my favorite place to play in the entire world. Some aspire to some fucking arena or other garbage — I don’t need anything more then that which is laid out for me at the fabolous Bigwig. I got a ride from my dad to the club to prevent a DUI related crash later in the night. Got there way too early and chilled outside with my gear. I was the 2nd person there — the bartender was the 1st (I am a fucking asshole for not knowing his name, I admit it). He was working with 3 tall boys of ARizona green tea. I find that stuff repulsive (I’m a black tea man myself) but I respect his decision in beverages for the night because I myself consume many gallons of tea, soda and juice everyday. He asked me to watch over his cans of tea which he hit up the adjacent Pizza Hut to score a pazone. In the meantime, Hilger and Lisa showed up. Charles was the man with the keys so we were all way too early and waiting on him. The bartender came back with his food and just then Charles and Weber showed up. We loaded in a chilled the fuck out. I got my 3 complimentary drink tickets and saved them for later in the night. That is until the bartender comped me a Pabst for no apparent reason. But who am I to argue with a free drink. I swilled it down and then he came back with a Miller Lite bottle and a Long Island Iced Tea that someone had ordered and then not wanted or something. Me, Weber and the bassist from Break of day were all sitting together drinking and we all had a bit of an aversion to the Long Island Iced TEa. I started to pound my now 2nd Pabst as fast as possible in hopes of scoring the Miller Lite. Then Weber, man of extreme passion that he is, made the recommendation that the 3 of us share the Long Island Iced Tea 1950’s soda shop style with 3 straws. We all jumped in and gave it a go and I thought I was drinking straight Tequila at one point. I pulled away gagging and saw that the drink was barely dented. Then we got Mike from Break of Day to snap a pic of us fagging it up with this drink. We sucked it down and I had to drool a bit into a nearby garbage can, as my taste buds don’t agree much with the foul liquors in a Long Island Iced Tea. The 2 beers and that which was consumed in about 15 minutes provided a nice buzz and I felt quite relaxed.
Joe and Rhyno from Squared Off showed up. (Heres a nice pic of Rhyno, Lisa, Hilger and Rob completely relaxing in the confortable couches.) Frank and Will from Rocky Denis showed up to see Replacing Sydney. Things were looking very very good to me at this point. Charles threw a little ‘Return of the Dragon’ on the projector and I thought maybe I had died and gone to heaven. Replacing Sydney took the stage and I was unsure of what to expect. They all certainly had top-notch equipment. Hoping not to sound like a sexist asshole, I must admit that the 2 female members of the group were very cute as I had been told far in advance by friends who had seen the band before. I was very surprised by their sound — they had only female vocals which creates an interesting texture over distorted gutiars. Both guitarists worked the hell out of their footpedals as well, clicking from clean to distorted very often. Very interesting to me was the keyboards — the keyboardist used the same tone the entire set, kind of like an electric piano sound. I expected just from other bands I’ve seen who had keyboards to hear organ type tones and whatnot, but this was a very mellow tone that melded well with the other insturmentation and certainly the angelic female vocals.
Next up was Break of Day. I had worn my brand new Last Man Out shirt which I had just scored from the band a few weeks earlier. The drummer of the band had told me that he used to drum for that band! Small fucking world. Mike, the 2nd guitarist, recognized me from Columbia College, where we had attended together years before. I didn’t remember him but he said I was trying to sell him on Pie in the Sky at the time, my my, that MUST have been a long time ago! They took the stage as a 5-piece band with a frontman (who even provided his own cordless mic, nice!). Their sound was decidedly not emo or sensitive. Although melodic, they played plenty fast and made good use of the 2 guitars. Unfortunately, their set was scattered with technical difficulties. This worried me that it was a jinx and we would have probelms too when we played — I had just gotten my cordless system the week previous and tested it at rehersal just before the show. I crossed my fingers.
By this time there was defiantely a good amount of people there and many were plenty drunk. I was very anxious as always to get the show on the road. Hilger and I duct taped our cordless packs to our straps for each other (only 1 of many ‘things’ we do for eachother…). Of course, after that it becomes a blur. Not a drunken blur, for I had had only 3 of 4 drinks over 2 or more hours at that point, but an adrenaline type of blur, as it is at any show we ever fucking play, anywhere.. As I type this the next day my neck is pretty stiff and only after a huge shit and shower do I feel less drunk and ‘with it’. Some highlights included (those I can remember): Me and Hilger ran out of the room into the bar where I started up the ‘King of the Hill’ theme — Hilger was standing on a barstool (and nearly falling) and I was back by some tables scaring people. We had rewritten a new set just before we played, and after we went through all those songs, we just kept playing and playing…after numerous requests from Rhyno we jumped into ‘Attitude’ by the Misfits. I just stepped away from the mic at that point as Joe and Rhyno from Squared off were screaming the lyrics into one mic and Will from Rocky Denis even got inspired to grab Hilger’s mic and sing as well. (He even had the balls to apologize for doing that. Please dude! Sing away! By all means! How dare you even ask!). (Here’s me and Rhyno singing the ending to the song.) We jumped into ‘Green Corn’ by NOFX and the guitarist from Break of Day watched me intently. (it was Joe’s request, so of course he sang it) So of course I had to blaze the fuck out of that solo. He even had the respect to bow down as I ripped it. I repaid him later with a nice Peach Stoli/Redbull.
Right after the show I ran down the block and ordered up 2 delicious steak tacos with everything. Total=$4.25. Total time to wait for order=approx. 35 seconds. I brought ’em back to Bigwig and chowed em down, fucking fabolous. Then I commenced to drink about 6 Peach SToil/Redbulls. I highly recommend that everyone go on a Redbull mixed drink bender at some point, the effects are very odd. I was swillin’ em down and buying em for everyone in the house in my drunkeness. I sat with Weber and he told me tales of working his Kung Fu stylings on gangstas on Morgan street in his south side hood. ‘Return of the Dragon’ ended and Charles threw in ‘Enter the Dragon’ — fucking awesome. Of course, by this point I was deeply inebriated and felt my body sinking into the confortable Bigwig seating. Charles reacted quite violently to someones claim that ‘the Bigwig was dirty’ — he threw a caddy of straws and napkins on the floor in a true mess. That’ll show em! Weber was on his upteenth PBR and we had a conversation something like this:
Weber: “Yeah, I’m going to call into work tomorrow”
(he has many times told me of coming into work after a Distortion Sunday at Bigwig half drunk on 1 hour sleep, or just calling in altogether.)
Me: “Good deal dude. Fuck it, you deserve a day off”
Weber: (without skipping a beat) “Yeah, I’m going to go into work tomorrow”.
Then he described how he woudl just go into the bathroom and ‘chill out’, or maybe even take a nap. Hope your monday wasn’t too harsh, bro.
I wished the night would never end. I drove home and scored some White Castles and then slept for about 11 hours. I know I’m missing something in here but hopefully Hilger will remember.
–satan165
Low Profile live at Bigwig
Sunday July 6th
with Replacing Sydney and Break of Day
First off, I had a great weekend. But when Sunday came around, I was dragging my ass, not very excited about the show or even leaving my apartment. It would have been a great day to just stay inside. But of course my mood totally changed once I got to the club.
I showed up with Lisa at about ten to 7. Williams and the bartender were chilling outside and the doors were locked. So we waited and then Weber and Charles showed up. I wore my Bigwig (the band) shirt in tribute to the place we were playing. I got many compliments on it. =)
Right away we had Charles throw on some old AFI. The same album that was playing the first time I walked in this place. Then they later thru on some Bruce Lee flicks for us.
All the bands showed up. Rhyno and Joe from Squared Off showed up. Jessica showed up and took pics of us. Props all around. It was much fun just chillin and hangin out. Bigwig is such a laid back atmosphere and then after Replacing Sydney start up, Williams gets the urge to go and completely drop the set list and wants to bust out some more of the hardcore shit we play. So we sat at the bar and wrote a sloppy ass set list on some paper. It looked good though. We ended up adding a bunch more songs off the list of course. But now I wanna talk about the other bands.
Replacing Sydney were fucking awesome. Very rocking. Melodic and noisy. Great female vocals. And very cute chicks at that. The bass player chick was definately awesome. Didn’t use a pick. Reminded me of Kira from Black Flag a lil. U go girl. They had 2 guitarists. They both rocked and played a lot of lil lead parts. The other girl played keyboards and sang some songs by herself and did a lot of backup parts with the beautiful melodic chick voices. I luved it. I dug this band a lot all around and had a lot of fun watching their set and heckling back and forth with them a bit. I put your sticker on my bass case already. I’m a fan fo sho!
You’ll be hearing from this band sometime in the future. They could definately go big and get on a label. So do it! Put that cute bass player chick in a video on tv and you’re goin somewhere.
Then Break of Day set up. These guys were cool all around but their set was sloppy as fuck. They stand around for like 10 mins and then the guitarist is like, whoa, I gotta tune up. Give me an A. Everyone was ready for them to start and get the show going and it was just sloppy. Be fuckin prepared to rock guys. I was pumped to see u guys and then was blown away by the unprofessional shit and mishaps and had to go outside. Actually, I can’t even say that much cuz I watched the first 2 songs, or lack thereof and went outside for a session of some supers. So I can’t say much more cuz I didn’t give u guys a fair listen. And why r u against bands having CDs and websites and tshirts and stickers and shit? I didn’t get that comment at all. It had me totally stumped. Thats part of being in a band. Thats all good though cuz we give that shit away for free. Ya heard me???
We were up last. Both Williams and I rocked the wireless systems with no problems at all. We both duct taped em to each others straps which is going to become a new custom right before each show. Fuck playing with a cord.
So like I mentioned before, we totally scrapped the set list we originally had and didn’t play one song off of it. To the best of my memory which is pretty cloudy from a long weekend of partying, our set was sumthin like this:
Zamboni
The Limitation
Walter Mander
Figure It Out
Grudge
En Guarde
Attitude (originally by the Misfits)
Green Corn (originally by NOFX)
A Date with Destiny (originally by Guttermouth)
King of the Hill Theme Song
Breakin the Law (originally by Judas Priest)
Folsom Prison Blues (originally by Johnny Cash)
Spreading Yourself Thin (originally by Pie in the Sky)
Hot Mom
I think that was everything. Rhyno ran up and sang Attitude. Will also ran up and grabbed my mic. It was great. Good crowd participation. Then we had Joe come up and sing Green Corn. Many people sang along to Folsom and Breakin the Law. Those both went across real well. I think, the more u drink, the better we sound. Hahahaha. So I’m glad we played last.
We gave out a bunch of CDs, stickers and tshirts. We played a great set. Both Williams and I ran thru the audience a bunch of times. I was jumping up on the booths and barstools jamming. It was awesome.
I chilled for a lil while after our set and pounded down one more redbull/vodka and then loaded out. Stood outside Bigwig for like 20 mins and then drove Lisa home who lives kinda far.
What a night. I had a ton of fun. Thanks to Charles and Weber and the bartender. Thanks to Joe and Rhyno, Lisa and Jessica, Will and Frank, Replacing Sydney, and everyone who watched and sang along.
I think thats it. Much of the night is kinda blurry. Crazy long weekend. I luved it. My crazy life…………
-ERIK
