Johnny Rollerfeet's Echo Chamber

We were always getting the opening slot for some up and coming recording band that was traveling through promoting their new release. They were typically defined as “New Wave’ whatever the hell that was. We were drawing astonishingly well for a band that didn’t play any “covers’ so the agent was making a mint putting asses in the seats and giving us a whopping $100. Suckers ‘til the end. It was fun however to play for that many people and take the challenge to blow the more successful radio played band off the fucking stage. Such was a band out of Canada called “The Kings”. Admittedly this was not The MC5 mopping the stage at The Grande with Cream but it fun none the less.

City Limits held a good thousand people. I used to have one of the first wireless guitars and would do lengthy solos, leave the stage and parade up to the owner’s office where he would cut lines of blow the size of La Guardia airport which I would snort, all the while playing my solo and head back to the stage “rejuvenated”. I’m sure if Red Bull had been invented I would have been a choir boy. It was also a great place to take ceiling tiles out with the headstock of your guitar. Made for a great show.

The Kings seemed chockfull of attitude which was a bad stance to take with both us and the crew. We were hometown boys but more importantly we were on a mission. This was mortal combat. They had worked too hard on their haircuts and poppy radio hooks to leave the venue unscathed. We hit the stage like an invading army, game face intact, taking no prisoners, making every move, chord and lyric count. This was blood lust. Sweating so much that it looked like someone had fire hosed the stage and your Chuck Taylor’s squeaked like you had worn them into a swimming pool. The rhythm section played and swung like a well oiled machine, and I took the liberty of working the crowd into a frenzy, getting each half of the room to compete with each other in terms of singing along, shouting along, laughing along, and rocking until they could take it no more. And then we turned up the steam. The piano player who was the best musician in the band could play while he climbed the wall behind him with his feet so that he was ultimately standing upside down from the ceiling while he played. The other guitar player and I had worked up a couple of solos where we would play each other’s guitars at the same time. Then I’d fall to my knees in a simulated stance of exhaustion only to get up and turn it up a notch one more time. It was a sure fire crowd explosion and in front of 1000 people it was deadly. In a good way. A bit of stage diving, a few jumps from the P.A. stacks, some smashing of some gear and its goodnight friends. I watched as The Kings turned white from the side of the stage. I’m sure they redesigned their set list so they could play there “hit” “Slip into Glide” (or some fucking thing) at the beginning of the set. I think they might have actually done it three times throughout the evening as the crowd got sparser and sparser. I didn’t mention this to anyone but one of the strippers that I was “entertaining” up in Canada was the girlfriend of The Kings lead guitar player. I had to hear about how successful they were, usually as foreplay. I sent that boy back across the border with his tail between his legs. I bet I fucked her better too. When the promoter gave me the $100 I slipped it back in his shirt pocket and said, “You obviously need this more than I do.” It was time to get back to The Roadie House, get drunk and celebrate.

This showed up in my feed reader, but I don’t see it on Hamell’s official site. Sometimes RSS feeds go wonky and Google’s Reader can’t tell where a post came from. This may be one of those, or it could have been pulled from his site for other reasons. I’m (probably illegally) copying it here so that I have it at hand. Hamell’s a great story teller, and his stories are always worth being told.