First

Here's the first blog entry (obivously).  I figure that it will be good to have a sort of feelings archive that I can look back through once we get a bit further a long in what we're doing with our lives.  No doubt I'll laugh at these entries because most of my thoughts about the band are based on hope but decorated with worry and anxiety like sprinkles on some bizare cupcake.  Also like a cupcake, the band situation is sweet, beautiful, and makes me happy.  Alex maintains that most of the things I say are nonsequiters and I'm inclined to agree so I offer an apology in advance in that habit travels into the blogging.

We played our first show on the 13th (Monday) at Geno's.  It was very strange but felt very right.  At that point, we had been a band for a month.  We'd spent that month being a whirlpool of ideas and music and somehow it all worked- everything we throw into this whirlpool blends in perfectly.  The night before the show I didn't sleep, partially out of fear, partially because in the summer I feel there's too much to do to sleep (by the end of everything I'd been up 35 hours, which is a new record I hope to not break).  Alex and I practiced for a while but then decided to go for lunch.  After a fairly healthy Whole Foods cafeteria lunch and some questionable gelato (we initially were going to share some Turkish Coffee gelato but once I tasted it I realized that it was basically black pepper tasting and Alex fronted me some money to buy a cookies and cream gelato instead and he ate the black pepper one) we then left to go and practice.  After that, though, I started to feel the crunch ("you know nothing of the crunch!") as the time drew closer to soundcheck.  We went for a walk, which turned into a drive, which turned into us driving around Cape Elizabeth and Portland talking everything out.  It did calm me down a bit.  He's played shows before, even been on tour before (granted, he has a good five years on me age-wise) but until the 13th my only singing in front of a large audience was in middle school when I sang solo in front of the jazz band (the song was "S'wonderful," if you're curious).  This is different, though-- it's my lyrics, my clothing choices, my personality and it's so much more risky than parroting a Gershwin song.  That's something I'll have to cover in a later blog, the band-as-inseperable-from-product idea.  I believe in it, or at least my own version of it, and knowing people are buying us as people as well as our music is a very odd thought.

Soundcheck went smoothly and by 8pm we were let loose to go get some food.  While I was the one who had been wanting food I didn't want it once we got onto the street, partly due to nerves, partly due to the realization that anything open that late would involve dairy of some sort and that wouldn't do favors for my vocals.  So I watched Alex eat a sandwich and we talked more, mostly about how weird it was to know we were about to experience a moment we'd remember for the rest of our lives regardless of whether or not the band became anything after that first show.  We walked back to Geno's around 8:50 and ended up going on around 9:45pm.  In between that time I flitted around hugging and thanking friends who had come to support us and talking to my mom who had come to live vicariously through the experience (it was odd to see a professional, clean-cut looking 50 something woman sipping water at a rock club, but she's devoted I guess).  Alex was more calm and chatted with some of our friends, occasionally telling me things would be okay when I bounced over to the table and then bounced off again like Tigger on speed.  

The show went remarkably well.  Alex's friend had been telling me that the Geno's crowd will hate you no matter what, but we got aplause after every song and my friend Vanessa told me afterward that some people who had been ignoring us prior to the music starting up came down from their perches by the pool table and watched us.  A good sign indeed.  We started with a cover of the Zombies' song "She's Not There," which I think was the right move.  For future reference, this was our first set list:

1)"She's Not There" 2)Backstabber 3)Teeth 4)Joy Comes Down 5)News to Me 6)Colour Scientist 7) My Next Love 8)Blood of the Girl 9)Dresden

Alex broke two strings by the time we'd come to Blood of the Girl so Jake Lowry , whose band Huak was playing right after us, was nice enough to loan Alex his guitar for the last two songs if he promised to be careful with it, which he was.  Thank goodness for that loan, though, because Blood of the Girl went perfectly and Dresden even moreso.  People loved Dresden, which is funny because it's our only song in a major key and our first collaboration.  That bodes well, I feel.  Once we got offstage there were two comments people kept saying over and over: 1) "I can't believe this is your first show!" and 2) "You guys don't sound like anything I've heard before."  The first one I was glad to hear, the second one worried me.  Once I was re-assured that it was hyperbole or an empty compliment I began to wonder how one can market a band no one can directly categorize.  I'll figure it out, mostly because I know there are bands out there we sound similar to, just not in Portland.

That's all there's time for for now.  I must get to practice and everything and I'll try and write more later.

-Aubin