Show #49: July 16, 2006

Columbus

High Five

w/ Blue Eyed Gunslingers

The Moops

All the Day Holiday

We were invited to perform at this show as part of a “Sunday Showcase” or a residency of sorts that the Blue Eyed Gunslingers (or maybe the venue?) were doing. I can’t say for certain, but they for certain met us at an Andyman’s show. A band we would play with later called the Rosehips was also supposed to be on this bill, but I believe they dropped off that day because a member was sick. (I was the one who added them, so I recall getting the cancellation call. Remember calls?)

All the Day Holiday was a band of youngsters from Cincinnati, who I did a little research on and found out that they were signed to an “Artist Development” contract, which made me want to throw up. To their credit though, it looks like they made a “Breakout Band” list in Rolling Stone a few years later before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2010. (As time progresses we begin to experience the egos and seedy underbelly of the business, and I don’t want to be a dick about stuff, but I need to strike a balance here. So if anyone in that band ever wants to take a swing at me, my name is Ron and I run a venue called Carabar).

I was excited to see The Moops (of course named for the Seinfeld “Bubble Boy” episode) because I thought they would be like-minded based on their name, but not especially. I was trying to find a picture of their logo on a sticker because it was all over the city at the time. I can still see it clearly in my mind, it said “The Moops.”

I realized just now looking at our show list that this was the last show we ever did at the High Five. Memories are a little fuzzy, but I believe there may have been a management/policy change there that kept us away. I think they may have gotten into having people rent out the room for private events. Eventually they closed up shop and it became a joint called "Circus." One night I went with Mary Alice and our friend Tonya to do karaoke at Circus, and they wanted to charge us a cover just to get in. I was really drunk and mad, so I spat on their window. Mary Alice got really pissed at me, and I think that marked the end of our relationship with the building. If anyone who worked at Circus ever wants to take a swing at me, see above. 

Show #48: June 24, 2006

COMFEST 2006

Columbus

Goodale Park

The Off-Ramp Stage (11:15 AM)

According to Wikipedia, “ComFest is a free, non-corporate, music and arts annual festival currently held each June at Goodale Park in the Victorian Village area of Columbus, Ohio,” so if you don’t know, now you know. When we first started doing shows, I never pictured Electric Grandmother as being a Comfest act; I didn’t think our brand of wackiness would fit in very well, but mostly that we used visual projection that either needed to be indoors or in darkness, and night time slots at this outdoor festival were hard to come by. But people kept encouraging me to apply, which I eventually did, figuring I’d shoot first and ask questions later. I remember rationalizing out loud one night at the Treehouse that the thoroughly wacky Gil Mantera’s Party Dream had performed at Comfest (“Yeah, but they suck!” - Quinn), and people kept encouraging me to apply, so I eventually did, figuring I’d shoot first and ask questions later.

Lo and behold, eventually came the email informing that EG had been accepted for the festival. A committee member named Mark Fisher had seen one of our shows and dug it, especially our song “Sick Little Boy in Scotland,” which is about a letter writing campaign hoax that I was unwittingly a part of in second grade. Our buddy/committee member Ryan Jones, the manager for The Lab Rats who were on the verge of exploding (and who were EG fans), put us on the cool band “Off Ramp Stage” as openers on the same day The Lab Rats would be closing (sweet hookup dude), with the idea of us being like “Saturday Morning Cartoons” for the attendees, which was pretty neat.

The preparation for the show was pretty taxing for Mary Alice, as she was trying to format the visuals for our show onto a video iPod, which we planned to run through a television that we were going to prop up on the stage. She spent an entire day doing this only to find out that the iPod jack was fucked up and wouldn’t connect properly to the TV, and I thought she was going to lose it and beat me into oblivion (remember that EG is still mostly a solo project at this point, and these are all thankless tasks). It then dawned on us that we could just use a DVD player to do the same thing, and I tried to calm her rage by noting that at least all her work had led us to a solution, but it didn’t help.

I was skeptical about anyone coming out to see us at 11:15 AM, but I guess I didn’t know Comfest too well, because people were there. I don’t recall if I was able to get a famous Comfest beer (see above cup) this early, but I think I might have. We performed with the TV, some traffic cones, our bubble machine, and rocked out in the morning heat to a smallish but solid crowd. We got good feedback, then probably had a funnel cake.

Actually, we probably went home after that, because I had signed up to volunteer later as part of a “quid pro quo” (just kidding, sort of) for performing, and would have wanted to shower and change. Mary Alice had gotten a pretty bad cold, and was content to stay at home the rest of the day to watch episodes of Lost on iTunes. I'm not sure when exactly I came back to the festival grounds, but I was certain to get my beer on before my volunteer shifts began. I also don’t entirely remember what I did as far as “volunteering” went, but I imagine I was pretty ineffective at doing it. I do recall working at the Gazebo stage in the evening trying to set up equipment and sort of stumbling around, and this lady was like “Ok Pete, you’ve had enough beer,” so I guess she was in charge? As the night fell, I lamented to this older volunteer guy that I wasn’t going to be able to see The Lab Rats at the Off-Ramp Stage, and he was like “Just go!” I explained to him that I couldn’t because I was still doing a volunteer shift. He laughed at me and said, “Man, this is Comfest. Do you think someone is back there writing down your name that you skipped out on your shift? Just go.” With that, I bolted off through the darkness in drunken glee towards the writing sea of humanity watching the band. I’d estimate there were at least 500 people spilling out of the tent, people crowd surfing, total topless chaos.

Mary Alice came to pick me up around the time they were finishing their set, and she had begun to feel much worse by then. She was in no mood for my merriment, and nearly killed me when I asked if she wanted to after-party at Andyman’s.

A few days later I got an email thanking me for my volunteering, so I guess they forgot to write my name down.

Mary Alice: I definitely had a funnel cake for breakfast that morning but it was so hot in that tent and I just remember feeling sticky and miserable the whole time.

Now I will reveal something I’ve never told another soul: my mom passed away the previous December and we inherited her fancy little laptop, which we used for shows for several years hence. I hadn’t signed out of her iTunes account and at the time the most current season of Lost was only available to purchase and as we were both still in school at the time, I didn’t have $40 to spend, so I used my mom’s still active iTunes account to buy it. I can reveal this because I would NEVER do this now (not just because our financial situation has changed but also because I’m a lot less depressed and Machiavellian than I was at the time) AND I had to miss all of the fun because I had bronchitis but I do feel that this is still one of the worst things I’ve ever done.

Finally, I hate that I come off as such a grumpy asshole in this story but cannot deny that every word is 100% true. It was—a very different time.

I still drink water from my Comfest cups every day.

Show #47: June 10, 2006

Graduation Party Show

Columbus

Andyman’s Treehouse

w/ Southeast Engine

Paper Airplane

This image here is not the flyer from that show, it’s a crummy approximation that I did just now, the real one is lost in time and outer space. The original that Mary Alice did used that sepia-toned version of the Belushi poster as the background, but it was a more robust presentation. I recall it prompted someone on a message board to slyly reply, “What do you mean ‘again’?” I booked the show in advance because I thought it would be a hoot, but I had not decided on who to contact for support when I got this odd message on MySpace. This guy named Ryan wrote me something along the lines of “I see you have reserved the night of June 10th at Andyman’s for yourself. Ha ha, well played sir. But perhaps you will rue the day for this dastardly deed, etc…,” something weird like that. He was in a band called Paper Airplane, and was interested in booking the same night for himself and the band Southeast Engine, so I figured what the heck.

And yeah, this show was in honor of my receiving my undergraduate degree from Ohio State. My parents were coming into town the next day for the actual ceremony, so we figured we’d have a huge kegger the night before. “But I thought you dropped out of high school?,” I hear you yelling. It’s true, but it’s amazing what getting your GED and completing two years of community college can lead to. It’s kind of the story of my life; I take the long way in. We decorated the Treehouse in a bunch of generic Graduation Party motifs, stuff like streamers and cardboard cut-outs of mortarboards and signs that said things like “You did it!” We got a bedsheet so that we could make a toga for me to perform in, and let me just say, don’t ever try to perform in a toga. More on that soon.

Southeast Engine went up first, and I recall the singer at one point looking around the room and saying “Is this someone’s graduation party?” After Paper Airplane performed, we began to set up, and I realized I was missing an important adapter. I asked on the mic to blank stares if anyone had “An ⅛ plug to anything at all,” and then we made that painful and somewhat familiar decision to head the short distance back to our place to get what we needed. When we returned the crowd was miraculously still in the back area where the once mighty tree penetrated the roof, but we had to work quickly to keep them there. We assembled my toga, which lasted about three songs before I thought I was going to die of heat stroke. Through gasps I begged our friend Shaun to go into the back and grab my t-shirt so I could change back into it. Maybe some other people can pull that sort of thing off, but holy shit. I’m not one to normally ditch a gimmick mid-show, but it felt like my body was engulfed in flames.

As the night wore on, the somewhat unfamiliar crowd dissipated, but I remember one dude who was steadfast in enjoying the show, doubling over in laughter. It didn’t make the whole thing worthwhile, but I remember we became buds with that guy for a little while. It was actually one of those gigs that made me want to quit, which seemed to be happening more and more around this time. But I pulled myself together and graduated the next day at the Horseshoe, while guest speaker John McCain made timely jokes about students joining Facebook.

Show #46: June 2, 2006

Columbus

High Five

w/ Infinite Number of Sounds

Ocean Ghosts

In my mind, there was a black and white flyer for this show with the Infinite Number of Sounds “Radio Whales” logo, with the other band names typed out below, but I either made it up or it was something I threw together. Either way, I made Brent look for a non-existent flyer (sorry dude), but he did remind me of the photos that are still up on the old INS website. Above are two pics David (Dave) took, one of the exterior of the club and one of the unruly crowd. There we are on the left, telling the band they’re #1, and a few friends are also scattered about.

This is one of those shows I think I remember little about, then after some thought I find I remember quite a bit. For one, I remember seeing someone wearing an INS shirt at the show, and I thought that was so cool, seeing that the band was from out of town. That’s something that still gets me; If I see someone wearing an EG shirt at one of our gigs, I think “Tee-hee, really?! That’s so weird! Tee-hee-hee!”

INS and Ocean Ghosts were always great. During a specific point of the INS set, Dave used to do this crazed faced/intense flapping thing with his tongue, and it drove the dames wild. Mary Alice warned this girl we knew at the gig when it was about to happen, and everyone shrieked with delight. The girl shouted out to Dave between songs “I like your beard!,” to which Dave yelled back “I like yours too!,” which caused her to giggle and turn to me excitedly saying, “He said he liked my beard!”

As for the EG set, I remember screaming and shouting the words over the music, which I feel like is something I used to do to overcompensate if I was feeling insecure. There was a video on the website cringe.com of the last part of “Doogie’s My Friend” (no longer there) that I remember made our setup look so low-fi; We were trying to use a new program to show the images, and it had the buttons visible on the screen (Play, Fast Forward, etc), and there was me yelling and laughing while singing the outro. Par for the course back then. This also may have been the show where I accidentally kicked a full beer off the stage causing it to shatter on the floor. I remember going out back of the club for a cigarette and being greeted with applause, and that was certainly good enough for me.

INS stayed over at our place that night, and we were laying there quietly in bed when Dave came to our bedroom door and scared the hell out of us. We had been talking about different things to do for the EG set, and he had come to our bedroom to tell us an idea he had. Neither of us will ever forget the image of Dave mysteriously standing in the shadows like a vampire to softly tell us his thoughts, while we stared back in horror.

The story of this show continues shortly after the fact. For a short time I had a work-study position at Ohio State where I was a “Gallery Guard,” meaning that I sat outside the student art gallery to make sure no one fucked with the art (I mean, come on). I had a young guard mate there named Andrew who was a talented singer-songwriter, who we’d eventually gig with. A friend of Andrew’s had come into the gallery to talk with him, and somehow the subject of Electric Grandmother came up. “Electric Grandmother?,” the friend said, “Isn’t Electric Grandmother that one horrible act with the guy who (assorted insults describing the show that I don’t entirely remember)?” He had seen the show at High Five, and I piped up with a smile and asked what he didn’t like about it. He started explaining what he didn’t like about EG, then paused for a moment, and said “That’s you, isn’t it?” That itself was worth the price of admission, but then he went on to do what a lot of people did back then, which was basically ask me to justify my existence. “I thought you were being horrible on purpose?,” he said. “I felt like I was on this strange acid trip.” I know enough now to know those last two statements are basically compliments, but I did offer that I was not trying to be horrible on purpose.

Andrew got defensive on our behalf, telling his friend that it wasn’t cool to say those sorts of things, which was very nice of him, but it wasn’t something I hadn’t heard before. In fact, I told this story on a blog that was part of our old website, and someone who saw EG in Cleveland commented something along the lines of “I agree with that guy, what’s your problem?” I’ll say this about the concept of being “horrible on purpose”: In the recent documentary about the late great cult sensations Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, a friend of theirs who was in an early incarnation of the group offered that they set up their first show (under a different name) to entertain their friends and be “the worst band imaginable.” As GMPD grew in popularity, there were many out there who still found them objectionable, but they legitimately got better at what they did, and with this a lot of fans felt they had lost part of what they loved about the band - the charming inadequacy of it all. The problem was that they were in fact very talented, and if people fall in love with the “inadequate” version of you, they won’t allow you to get better. With that, the band eventually dissolved, because there was nowhere to go. The same thing has happened to an extent with us, with some people loving the more naive and semi-clueless version of EG, but I assure you we’ve never been “horrible on purpose,” the show was just horrible accidentally, thank you very much.

Now that EG has been long been a duo and looks/sounds much different, I usually try to leave any questions or requested justifications to Mary Alice, because I really don’t know why we do what we do, I just know we’re on an unexplainable and occasionally joyless Black Flag-esque mission to get it done, and saying that totally makes me sound like a fucking badass.