This entry does not start in a very rock n roll way. When I woke up, I mowed my lawn. It was the first day of summer vacation. I was going to spend it playing a legendary Chicago stage, albeit, a small festival slot – namely the Double Door. We've been talking about it to people lately, usually refering them to the movie High Fidelity. Its where Jack Black sings “Lets get it On.” (God bless Marvin Gaye.) They go, “Ohhh.” Anyway, I felt like this tourist, on a rock n roll fantasy cruise.
The weather was gorgeous, 75, cloudless sky, slight breeze. Everyone was out in the streets, expecially the female contingent of our human race. We did some innocent girl watching whenever we were in the car. It was silly, we laughed a lot. I like anytime the band shares laughter.
Of course, this was not a peachy day for all. As we were going up Lakeshore Drive, Monroe saw a person pushing a broke down car along the median. He said he felt really bad for them. At first we kind of chukled cos the mood was light and Monroe isn't always the sensitive one. But then we all stopped because it was apparent that he was in all sencerity. In my heart, I offered a little petition for them. He mentioned them two other times during the course of the day. It just goes to show you, just when you think you know your best friends, they surprise you. I liked that too.
The Double Door looked like the club in the movie, only dingier and less glamourous. But you could tell, when you walked in the room, it had a sense...THIS IS a legitimate venue, like... really cool things happen here, it hangs in the air. Our sound check was so smooth and fast. We had a side monitor mixer...Wow! Every venue should have one. We did our ticket meeting and I left the venue feeling very stable and confident about our evening. We knew we had no chance of adavancing to the nationals, we didn't sell 100+ tickets like some of the other bands, but we had nothing to lose. The pressure was off and that felt good.
Just like round 2 in April, we spent the afternoon at Monroe's friend, Cate's, appartment in Lincoln Park. It is a very pretty neighborhood, with very expensive town houses with microscopic patches of grass. Almost all the houses have wrought iron fences and gates, which may lead you to believe it to be a very unfriendly place. But the mature maple tree branches hang low which make it quiet. A lot of the properties had unique gardens and facades. This is the sort of place you want to walk, either alone or with someone.
When we got to Cate's she was getting ready for a dinner party that she was throwing, one which we had the pleasure of attending. Anyway her iPod was in her dock and was blarring Bon Jovi, not my favorite. Oh believe me, I'll take Bon Jovi over lot of stuff, but I was not in the mood. Infact the prospect of being in one place for several hours with nothing to do was making me feel uneasy. I don't know how to write about my deeply personal issues in this space, so I'm not going to. But for the sake of the plot, I will say that I've been going through a lot lately and it's all pretty cerebral. So after the commotion of getting to the city died down and I was left with myself, my brain started to go a million miles perhour. I wanted some time to think and be alone. I told the guys I needed some “Me time” and excused myself for a long walk. For a while in my walk I was able to forget my whatever and be in the moment. I even took a flyer off of a windsheild and a pen from my pocket and wrote a song about carrier pidgeons. As I got back to Cate's, I started to come down again and feel lonely.
The music had not lessened on volume, but had changed to U2 Bsides. It sounded like Life and Energy to me. I snuck into Cate's study, sat on the floor and pulled the Bible from the shelf. I opened it to a new favorite passage. Daniel 9, he prayes for Jerusalem, calling it a desolate sanctuary asking God to look upon his people with love even though we don't deserve it. When I first read this a few weeks ago, it really made sense to me, like I felt it resonate – the words crawled off of the page and went through me. It's hard to explain. So I just read them in that study slightly outloud. I've found that reading scrpture outloud is best.
All the U2 B-sides started to remind me of my wife. After I closed the Bible, nothing was happening except those songs. I was living in them. “Slow Dancing” took me back to UC appartments and slow dancing to it in '98 while those 2ton lyrics just kept hammering:
“no I don't know why a man search for himself in his woman's eyes
no I don't know why a man sees the truth, needs a lie”
A while later, but not much, Cate had some girl friends over for a dinner party. The food was AmAzing. Over dinner on the back porch, we all got into conversation about who we are and what we do. Sometimes when there are a lot of girls around, I find myself being the center of attention. But this time it was Barry whom the girls found fascinating. They wanted to know all sorts of things about his day job. I smiled.
Coming back to the double door at show time was very exciting. There were, I estimate, about 300 people in the place, that number growing moment by moment. We didn't have as many friends at this round as last time. But the ones who were there were a lot of fun. The bands were pretty good, all around. No one sucked, it was cool. When we took the stage, for whatever reason, I felt totally relaxed. We played an awesome set. I think we won over some of the other band's fans too. There was a great energy in the room. We got a decent number of votes, but not enough to adavance to the national finals. Still, it was a relief. This Emergenza process has been a LOT of drama. It was good to be done with it.
The drive home was long. Elizabeth and I left with two of our DeMotte friends, seperate from the band. Somehow, I got talked into taking the Dan Ryan back to Indiana. It was the middle of the night after all. Well, it was fine until we hit the junction with 57, then bam! Bumper to bumper. It was quite late when we turned in, but a long Saturday morning made it all okay.