Saturday night I went to the Dark Horse. This is the club that recently was rumored to be closing and becoming a dance club. But now, apparently, they are remaining a music club. This is a good thing not just because there are few enough clubs in town as it is, but also because it’s one of the very few clubs in town that has actual walk-in business. Most clubs in town if you don’t bring your own crowd you aren’t going to have one, but at the Dark Horse people actually come in from the bar upstairs, and you have an actual chance to garner new fans. Radiant City was playing there roughly every 6 weeks on the weekend and it was the best run we had, in terms of getting new people and selling CDs.
The problem has been the same, though, that I have suffered everywhere else, which is that, in booking terms, Radiant City may as well have happened 20 years ago because no one knows who the hell I am anymore. So, I have played one show so far at the Dark Horse since the Million Box started. That show was thanks to friends of mine in chain poets. They were playing there Saturday night so I went out to see the show and also to join them for ELO’s “Telephone Line.” After their set Greg (singer/guitarist) introduced me to the new booking person at the club, who they are friends with, and she had actually seen the show we did there back in August and is a fan of… well, me, I suppose. So, that was damn good news. It would be great to have a club I can count on getting booked into regularly, not to mention the possibility of forming a good enough relationship that the overall idea of creating a night and a community for pop bands in town might actually come to pass. Right now, of course, I’ll just settle for a show (Sunday she offered me a tentative date in March, and actually an acoustic date in February as well, so it looks like things could go really well).
Greg and I also talked for a long while about music in general and the Beach Boys in particular. So, let me take a moment to mention something just to disturb a number of people reading this, I suspect.
I have never been a fan of the Beach Boys.
Oh, I get what Brian did, and I grant him a great deal of respect for it. But it’s just never done anything for me. Anyway, Greg made a very hard sales pitch for Pet Sounds and so I have a copy right now. Sometime this week I’ll give it as fair a listen as I can, I mean, sit down, focus on it.