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There is New Music on the Radioby George Ziemann -- November 11, 2009 This past weekend, Hurricane Alley finally got to play two nights in a row. This put me in the Tucson area for a couple of days, allowing me to listen to KFMA, Tucson's "new music" radio station for a few hours. Manny had turned me on to the radio station at the end of my last visit. I didn't get to hear a lot that trip, with Muse being the only band I really picked up on. I was surprised at the number of cover songs, though. Coming into town this weekend, I heard a tune from an Australian band called Jet that I really liked. I'm going to have to look and see if they belong to the RIAA, or whether it's okay to buy one of their albums. Over the course of the weekend, heard some rap/rock which didn't do much for me, starting with terribly distorted vocals and moving on to a overly simplistic and repetitive dance beat. But it was interesting to hear a rock radio station pull it into the playlist -- I at least gave it a listen. There were a surprising amount of cover songs, but what was more surprising was that they were all pretty mediocre covers and these guys were still on the radio. Overall, there was good music to be found there, but nothing struck me as fulfilling the higher standard of "great." Maybe it's because I never heard any of the songs more than once. Friday night was Famous Sam's. I got there a tad early, as the annoying traffic issue that I left time for never materialized. In fact, I-10 has been under construction for several years now, from about 25 miles north of town and all the way through the city. Downtown opened up a few months ago, and this time, the entire southbound trip was smooth sailing, with extra lanes. The other potential delay was that I would be a moron and get lost, despite the fact that I lived in Tucson for several years. That didn't happen, either, although I recalled the Google maps image showing it on another location in relation to the intersection. Even though I missed it the first time past, I saw it, turned around and was there. The next pleasant surprise was that I could load in through the front door, around one table and be at the stage area. No steps, no repeated treks across the entire room. Almost effortless, except for the part where I have to lift my amps out of the car and put it on a dolly. The keyboard amp is the worst -- it's got an 18" speaker with an immense magnet. It weighs a ton, and seems to get a little heavier every year. Tim had already been there and had run all the cables to their obvious positions. This is something he likes to do just to keep that major cableage against the wall, behind everything else. By being there after Tim and before everyone else, this gave me an opportunity to stake out my "territory," check my guitar tuning, relax and look around. This particular Famous Sam's has 29 televisions that I could see, maybe a couple more that weren't visible from my vantage point. It also offered off-track betting, with a subset of the televisions devoted to that and a couple of old guys there, yelling at the horses, as if their urgent plea is going to make the horse run faster. Reminded me of Las Vegas for a fleeting moment. Pool tables were at one end of the room, we were at the other, with the bar and customers in between. I grabbed an order of wings, which showed
up at the same time as Carl. We deemed them the best wings ever,
as they were pretty awesome. The next night we tried wings at
the Branding Iron, which were almost exactly as good as Famous
Sams, so kudos to the cooks at both places. No one in the entire
Southwest knows the meaning of "mild," though. It was
halfway through the first set before my lips cooled off. On Saturday
I ordered them before the last set, but they weren't done until
after we started, which meant I had to stare at them in the kitchen
window for about an On Saturday, we also had the benefit of James "Frog" Ford, who is a local promoter that likes the band and will be helping us meet our monthly happiness quotient by handling some Tucson area bookings for us, much to all of our relief. Frog brought a fog machine made out of an ice chest that absolutely kicked ass, but it didn't act (or smell) like normal theatre fog. Not that it mattered. The crowd though small, was enthusiastic, got up and danced occasionally, and we played exceptionally well, finally moving into some improvised stretches and a few surprise (for me) departures from the list. Playing two nights made it a worthwhile weekend. Actually paid for the gas and put a few bucks in my pocket. And we sold two more CDs, doubling our sales and bringing our grand total up to four. The down side is that playing in two different clubs meant that we had to load or unload the gear six times. This was no problem when I was 22, but now that I'm an old fart, my back is still complaining about this weekend. I'm going to have to start Tom Sawyer-ing someone to help me get it in and out of the car and up and down from the stage. |
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hour.