Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Melvins @ The Casbah, 12/12/2007 & 12/13/2007

I hate that I'm writing about this two weeks after it happened, but life took over the past couple weeks, so I have some catching up to do.

So it goes that it was a Wednesday afternoon. I was sitting at work doing my thing, when Jake called and said the promoter for The Melvins show was looking for some help with the merch and would I be interested. It's something I've enjoyed doing in the past...I've now sold for Aqualung and The Lemonheads...but this was the best one yet, mostly because the bands were so laid back. When working with a manager there's all this counting (for the Lemonheads that meant counting and rolling 120+ shirts, stickers, keychains and pins), for the Melvins it was "do whatever you think will make it run the most smoothly." The bands soundchecked while I set up the booth.

The shows were phenomenal. People who arrived early were treated to a three song mini set by the Melvins, then a full set by Big Business. By mid set, the venue was full on both nights and getting in to see the bands was tough going so I didn't really get to take pics while the bands were onstage. We were selling these hand silkscreened posters and sold a ton of them, so I was kept pretty busy outside. Well, between that and monitoring some couple that had apparently gotten in plenty of preshow drinking. I think they were eventually escorted out of the venue as the dude almost spilled a whole shot on the posters. Fortunately I was able to see that coming and moved the posters before they could get damaged.

Anyway, Jake brought his camera the second night of the show, so these first two shots were from his camera.




I did get up there for a quick second, but from the side of the stage I could only snap a couple quick shots of Coady.



I hung out with Toshi from Big Business for a while on the patio. Such a fun guy to hang out with, by the way. After the show, he insisted I take a shirt.



And I suppose these pics are a little out of order, but Dale and I chatted for a while the first night on the patio as well.


And these were the posters I sold. These were selling like crazy, and it's easy to see why. They were absolutely beautiful.


This one below was the design from the original dates of the shows, the ones that were cancelled during the fires in October.



It was just really cool getting to work for such cool bands. Because I was going to the Sights + Sounds event at the Museum of Art on Thursday, I wasn't able to sell for the band on Thursday, but it meant I got to listen to more of the show and hang out with some of the guys I'd met the night before. At one point, I was in the back office chatting with the promoter when one by one, the Melvins came in from the stage before their encore. Buzz was really cool about letting me ask him random questions, and he talked about touring and playing and shows and how he prefers touring the states to Europe, because he said Europe takes twice as much work and pays half the money. It was just interesting to get a glimpse of a band completely natural and unreserved. The night eventually came to a close and after the band signed a couple posters for me, I had to call it a night. I'll get to Film School in a sec.

No comments: