Anthony’s (Atlanta, GA)
w/ Pat Walsh
Let me share with you a small portion of my rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
So, the show was at 9pm. We’ve been having the air conditioner and furnace replaced in the house, so downstairs there were a lot of scraps on the floor, since they had just finished the job at around 6pm. I started loading out for the show at 6:45. At 6:50 I stepped on a piece of wall trim. Nails up. Not wishing to disturb any viewers I’ll just say, yes, but not all the way through the top. But the nail was very rusty. I spent 5 minutes or so while cleaning the wound debating whether I should go to the hospital or the show. Thanks to the Kaiser this decision was made for us, because they said I either go right away, or I go later to the emergency room and they won’t cover it.
So, at 7pm I head out with my equipment to the urgent care center. I wait around, they finally examine me, they give me a tetanus shot (which I have to sit for twenty minutes afterwards to see if I have a reaction) and then I’m on my way.
At 8:55 I make it to the show. Already I’m a little out of it, but I set up and start right in. Things are going relatively okay, I feel a little iffy about how it sounds but it doesn’t seem to be any big deal. Then Pat’s band comes up to start playing with me, and halfway through the first song (we had decided to just play Slumberland from start to finish) I break a string and things go downhill from there. I’m not playing very well to begin with, and I start missing chords (once I’ve restrung while Pat came up and played a song) and missing lines and it just becomes messy. It felt very amateurish and I felt like just any guy with a passing ability to play up on stage with two other people who could play and were carrying the show.
I’m sure the pain and all that colored my image of the show, but either way, I haven’t felt that way about a show in a while. I recently hit a stage where I felt confident that at the very least I can always play a good show,and the nervousness I used to fell was pretty much gone. Shows were no big deal. And it’s still a measure of how far I’ve come that afterwards I was a little embarrassed by how it went but it wasn’t really too big a deal.
Still, what a mess. I hope that was an aberration. Maybe I’ve become a little too cocky about shows. Well, for me anyway. I certainly didn’t do much rehearsing, although that had a lot to do with the lack of A/C in the house.
This morning I expected my arm to really hurt, since that’s what they kept warning me about after the shot. But instead I ache all over and feel really stiff, like I turned 80 years old while I slept.