So here's the deal. I've spent a lot of time with a blog I maintained for about 1o years and was surprised at how much anecdotal and biographical information I'd allowed through what tiny filter I may have had back in those days. Intimate stuff, like the goings on during a night on stage with the band (Mad Laugh, if you want to know) and the events of the afterparty. Like the true tale of Mike Watt's sympathy.
I was the opening act for the band and I did about as well as could be expected. I didn't get hit by any flying vegetables (or the more potentially realistic risk of being beaned in the noggin with a billiards ball or a sucker punch from another bands bass player). Mike was playing bass for Mad Laugh at that time, as he had joined up with them immediately after I stepped out. He's a solid bass player, though his frenetic onstage demeanor sometimes resembled Sid Vicious on speed. This never took away from the music, the songs and performances of which were well polished by then.
On this particular night...remember, the gig I opened for them at (LiT in Brickton, OKC if you must know)...It was a great show but the club owners only paid the band $20 each and were not paying for the opening act, which wasn't expected.
So we get back to the house, a party in the works, Mike walks up to me and starts in with how it's too bad the manager fucked me out of what I deserved. Then he pulls his twenty dollar pay day from out of his jeans pocket and hands it over to me. "You deserve this, man".
I tell him I'm okay, I'm not broke but he insists, saying it's the principle of the thing. No one should have to play for free unless they have to and you're too good not get paid". Now I realize that sounds as if I'm being a tad immodest to suggest that he looked up to me as a bass player but he was very much impressed with the first time he heard me play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Of course how can you not love a fan when you're not even in a band, maybe he was hoping to make an impression with the outpouring of generosity in what I understood to be was his last cash money...
He poked that bill into my shirt pocket and walked away, what's done is done. Never turned back...
...until about 2 hours later just before I was about to get in the car and leave. Apparently the need for cash money had presented itself to Mike Watt because here he come swaggering towards the doorway to stop me. I will not divulge my personal opinion of why he needed CASH money now, but damned if he didn't and damned if he didn't feel like a total ass coming back to ask if I'd let him have that 20 dollar bill back, "Something's come up".
I knew the score. It didn't bother me, after all, I wasn't broke, I didn't need cash. It was SO typical of the impression I'd formed of him over the year or so that I flew by his radar. I had to laugh and had no qualms in returning it to his possession, no hard feelings, would have done the same for you, right? Well I could have told him I'd spent it during the party or just flat out made a scene but not for that amount of money...
TL:DR... I don't get paid. Dude I know gives me his pay. Dude I know hooks up, needs cash back. Asks and recieves from generous author of this autobiographical essay.
I spent a long time in those old blog posts and they inspire me to write about the banal things in life that age like wine and good music, things forgotten and interesting to know were happening at the time I was writing. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but certainly in 10-20 years will become fascinating? And if to me why not to someone else? I get views on some of those pages all the time... The idea of blogging was fascinating to me back then, I think I might just have to give that muse the reins again cuz I'm bored as fuck over here... just kidding. Trying to be edgy. Failing.
Later Folks
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