Once in a Blue Moon by George Ziemann -- January 1, 2010 Unless I get to play a gig, I never go out on New Year's Eve. Last night we, (Hurricane Alley) did a Tucson show, drawing me out into the world on drinking's amateur night. As it's been several years since I was called out to play on December 31, it was only fitting that last night was a blue moon. The afternoon was sunny and warm, erasing the first possibility for problems, namely bad weather for the trip from Phoenix to Tucson. I left a little early, which still put me in rush hour traffic, but it still wasn't that bad. It was after I was actually headed south, past the outskirts of town, that I noticed the full moon and remembered that this was December's second one, making it a blue moon. One minor delay, as the interstate exit I needed to take was closed due to an accident. But I lived in Tucson in the 80s, so finding a new route wasn't much of a problem. We were playing at the Bashful Bandit on Speedway Blvd., which has at least two distinctions. First of all, the place is almost 50 years old, so it's got a lot of bar character that only comes with age. The second significance is that its reputation is that of a biker bar and, while it's got that feel to it (and parking spaces at the door reserved for motorcycles), the weekend (and New Year's) crowd is well-mixed and always seems to have a good time. It's not like we were playing someplace where the entire crowd is bikers. We do that next Wednesday. They're our niche audience, I think. They never tell us to turn down and almost everything they request is already on our playlist. Here are a few highlights of our evening: Even before we started, we determined that we had a problem with the monitors, mainly that if we turned them up loud enough to hear, the power amp circuit breaker would blow. This would plague us all night. Eventually, we more or less turned the monitors off and went by what we could hear from the mains. Carl gained several new fans, one of which used the word "phenomenal" several times. Stage power blew out, but only Carl's circuit. It was in the middle of a guitar lead. As it drew closer to midnight, everyone whipped out their cell phone (bar clocks are intentionally never right), and one guy had a super-duper Jack Bauer-style global communication device. Every damn one of us had a different time, even people on the same network. I thought ahead enough to bring lyrics with chords for "Auld Lang Syne." We let people come up to the stage to sing it and they started singing -- in a different key. I hate it when that happens. My t-shirt, a Christmas present, was a big hit as well. It's got a working LED display of a graphic equalizer (see image at right). There's a little pocket with a battery pack, and on/off switch and a sensitivity adjustment. I can tell you where to get one (ThinkGeek.com), but as one guy told me last night, "I've never seen anyone wearing one of those, much less a musician while they were playing, which is probably the only people that should be allowed to wear one. But just know that you were first. Anyone else that wears one now will be copying you." So now I'm a rock fashion icon. For the first time in my life, I'm ahead of the curve -- because my wife bought me a cool shirt. She's got good taste in stage clothes. She used to make shirts for Jerry Riopelle in the 70s. That One Guy -- People came to the stage all night to tell us how awesome we were, usually a prelude to making a request, people bought us drinks. I met a vet who came up to talk about my shirt and stayed for a while to chat while I was tuning my guitar between sets. Everyone was really great, except this one guy... He came up to the stage a few times, starting in the middle of the night. He spoke to me a couple of times, but I never quite understood what he was really talking about. At the end of the night, we were loading out and he was hanging around outside. First, he was hoping we would get him high in some manner as he was "not stoned enough." The guy was obviously not aware of the correct protocol, which involves the fan providing the herbs in exchange for the privilege of hanging out with us for five minutes. Then he wanted a ride. The bar had arranged with a taxi service to provide rides for the drunken, but this guy had somehow missed out on it, although the minivan being used for that purpose was still parked at the end of the building. In fact, I had to wait for it to move before I could back in to load up my car. Carl had brought his motorhome, which was taking up all the prime loading space, but he had more gear to deal with, including the drums. He asked me for a ride. "It's just a few miles," he said, pointing in the opposite direction than I would be heading. "I don't think so, man," I replied. "I'm going the other way and I have to drive back to Phoenix tonight." I also wasn't too thrilled about the idea in general. This guy was bigger than I was, I didn't know him, he was drunk, and he was already getting a little pushy. He walked away from me saying something about me being selfish and that he was a better musician than I was, thus sealing the deal. Then he went to ask Tim. Now you must understand that when Tim is doing things like loading and unloading, he likes to just get it done. He has a system that he follows and doesn't like it when people mess with it. Tim's initial response was something like, "No, I can't do it." The guy must have argued with him, because the next thing, Tim is screaming at the guy, "Look, when I'm finished loading this car, there won't be any room left for a squirrel, much less your ass. It's not our job to drive you home. Now fuck off!" Suddenly, the taxi driver appeared, and our problem child was whisked away to an unknown location. But I was left wondering when it became the band's responsibility to ferry the audience home. We can barely keep track of each other. Then came the point I dreaded, driving home on New Year's. This is, of course, the reason I stay home on amateur night. It was about 2:15 before I pulled out of the parking lot. Saw a couple of cars pulled over in Tucson, but once I got on I-10 going north, there were few cars on the road and less police than a normal weekend night. Further north, there was almost no other traffic all the way to Phoenix. I had fully expected to run into DUI checkpoints, which wouldn't have been a problem since I didn't drink. Despite that, I still don't enjoy the brief interrogation by the po-po in the middle of the night. I'd seen them rolling out as I was leaving town at the beginning of the night, but now they were nowhere to be seen. I guess hitting the road an hour and a half after the bars let out lets all the drunks get cleared out of the way first. They're already either home, in jail or in the hospital and the DUI task force has called it a night. Overall, I thought it was a really good night. Then again, any night I get to perform is a good night.