This Week in S1D Darketst Hour/Powerman 5000 Part 2 of 2

This Week in S1D Darketst Hour/Powerman 5000 Part 2 of 2

So this past Sunday we had the opportunity to open up for Darkest Hour/Veil of Maya/Periphery/Revocation and of course our good friends in Demilitia joined us. The show was held at Crocodile Rock in Allentown, PA. It was a Sunday show and we had to be there relatively early at 2:30PM and it was about an hour and a half drive their from my house. I got up early and grabbed the trailer, changed guitar strings, bought beer/Jaeger for the cooler and shaved my head. Bobby text me at 11AM to ask me what time to be at my house. I told him be here by 12 so we can be on the road by 1PM. Big mistake, you see singers are DOUCHE BAGS, its the only way they can write good lyrics. So he showed up at 2PM making us and hour and half late. MY man was 2 hours late and remember he is a singer, he has nothing to do. No strings to change nothing all he had to do was get to my house, which is max a 20 minute ride. Needless to say as I was passing the 2 hours by that he was late I was saying to myself, I am done with this kid I am firing him....He pulled up, like nothing happened, pounded my hand and we got on our way.
For this particular show, we were asked to provide the back-line which included 2 Guitar Cabinets, A bass cabinet and full drum set. Since I am such a nice guy, I agreed to this. I probably could of asked to got paid for providing back-line, but I didn't because the head promoter gave us the best time slot on the main-stage before the main acts, so I figure it was a decent swap...It probably would have cost him a couple hundred dollars to rent the equipment. BUt like I said Bobby was late so we had to be there at 2:30 PM to set up the whole event with our equipment. We didn't get there until 3:45 PM and the show started at 4:10 promptly and doors opened at 4:00PM.
When we got there we basically where running around frantically, trying to get all of our stuff on stage within 15 minutes. It was cool though because all the club's stage hands where like "Nice of you to finally show up" which was kind of funny. So we literally unloaded my trailer and loaded the stage within 15 minutes, I'm talking a whole concert ready to go. After we got our stuff in I pulled the car into the lot next to the venue and set up camp.
What's nice about a trailer is that it kind of automatically sets up a cool chill spot anywhere you go, because of its size and dimensions. So we set up shop in the parking lot, pulled out the cooler and started pounding beers, shots of Jaeger and this drink called 4 Loco. Bobby grabbed one at the venue and it supposedly has like the equivalent of 5 beers and like 2 red-bulls. It tasted nasty, we all tried to down it but it sucked. So we sat outside for like two hours and had a pretty good time, while I tuned guitars and warmed up. Speaking of warming up, I was trying to warm up on the guitar but it was like 40 degrees out so I asked Bobby's girlfriend Gio if she had those gloves where the finger tips where exposed and she did. Problem was they were hot pink. So picture this, wanna-be metal god warming up outside in all black and hot pink gloves on and I think we got pictures.
We went on about 6 PM and the deal was that all opening bands got 20 minutes to play and the main acts all had like 25-30 mins. Kind of weird. So I said to the promoter, " SInce you are using our stuff, would you mind if our set was like 22-23 mins. He said no problem, but he forgot to tell the stage hands. So we go on and start playing. And typically what happens when you are a band that no one knows of, most of the people basically stare at you very weirdly. They don't know what to expect. But this crowd was really not emotional. They just watched, but after each song they cheered really loudly with a lot of emotion. But during the songs, no headbanging, no bopping around, just statues. It could have been a lot of reasons or it could just be the way the younger audiences are. Because there was about 100 kids watching us during the show. But they where all very young....since it was all ages. I knew this because the place is sectioned off between 21 and over and under age by a gate and there was very few people drinking at the bar. And it seemed even the national acts where getting the same kind of response from them.
So we finish our second song and the stage guy says last song and 2 mins left. And I was confused. I said to the guy, "It is mathmatically impossible to have 2 minutes left. Plus the head promoter gave us extra time. I said we are only 12 mins into the set and we still have 2 songs to go, plus you are using my stuff for all the other bands. Anyway, that really through my game off a bit, I tried my best to not let it bother me but I HATE being rushed on stage. It messes with my playing. And now I have to tell Bobby to speed it up which is no fun. We did still play the whole set and I do think it went over pretty well because a lot of kids came up to us at the end of the gig and told us how well we did.
But they rushed us off the stage after we where done. So you can see the humor in this, we brought in 50 people making the club $750, provided the backline for the whole main stage event and where treated like ass. I would call that the typical respect in this business.
We never let things bother us....so we went downstairs to the second stage where our buddies in Demilitia headlined. They ripped it and a lot of kids really vibed with them. After the show us and Demilita met up by the Merch tables and hung out all night. We had a blast together. Funny story....we couldn't sell a t-shirt to save our lives....so I came up with the idea. How bout I offer people a Beer Funnel drink for $10 and they get a tshirt too. Well that seemed to work I sold like 5 tshirts like that. We went back to our trailer, everyone gave me $10 for a tshirt and they got to do one beer funnel from our cooler. Other than the fact I didn't check ID's it worked out really well.
That was basically it for the end of the night. Got to see some cool younger bands like Periphery and Veil of May whom had a much larger crowd then the headliner, Darkest Hour, which I thought was weird. I was not impressed too much by the crowd participation it was OK. I don't know what the reason was; but it is what it is. I have to say though after Periphery played and hung out at their own MErch table there was huge lines for them. They had a big following. One of the guitar players was nice enough to point us out and tell their fans to check us out. Totally cool so we gave him a free Slam One Down Beer Run Tshirt. Hopefully he wear's it on stage. All I got to say is thank God Demilitia was there or it may not have been as fun. Later, till the next one
J.R.