Almost Almost Famous...

Again, I apologize for the lack of recent updates, but things have been a little crazy in my world the past few weeks. However, now I am on a flight from Denver to Tampa, so I will work until my computer dies to blog about the last 8 or so shows.

Anaheim’s House of Blues happens to sit right in the middle of downtown Disneyland. Thus, bus security is about as tight as border patrol. Well border patrol on the 8 East coming into California. Nonetheless, we had to check Sergo (the bus) in with a security guard well into his 8th decade of life.

This was the band’s first HOB experience, and say what you will about promoters, this group took care of us. They even had chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies fresh from the oven for our enjoyment. After counting in merch with the venue and ensuring that Casey had everything he needed to perform an excellent sound check, I wandered downstairs and met up with Brent (aka. Big B). B had gone to great lengths to avoid LA traffic, and thusly ended up at the venue bar about an hour and a half before I was going to be ready to hang out. So, I sat down and had a beer with my compatriot and the runner up to 2005’s American Gladiators of the Knolls competition. We bantered for a while, and it felt great to catch up and make hi-larious Almost Famous references.

I also got the pleasure of meeting up with two fellow What’s the Download alumni, Joy and Bahareh. We spent some time chatting before the music started. When the Bots finally got on stage, we encountered a few sound problems (who knew the batteries in the wireless mic would crap out?) and a few other problems (who knew a girl would sneak onstage and hand Jamie a CD of “beats for peace”). All in all the show went well though, and I got a chance to hang out with some long lost friends.

AND! I didn’t have to sell merch!

As we go along through these shows, merch is rapidly becoming the bane of my existence. This group of musicians happens to have a group of fans that are more than willing to shell out dollars and dollars hand over fist to get anything wearable that bears the Bots’ name. My time during the shows is largely telling patrons that we do in fact have men’s and women’s sizes, and that I cannot guarantee that the band will be coming out to sign anything. This is not really a problem or an inconvenience, but the counting, ordering, and general tracking of shirts is not necessarily something I dreamt of doing. I will be thrilled when we can bring someone along whose job it will be to cover this portion of the tour (ahem…Skram?). Until then, I will just be a friendly face at the table with all the information about the band.