Gig Report - Life is Drama @ Sullivans/Boobens

This past weekend I played 2 gigs with the band LIFE IS DRAMA!!! Friday night we were @ Sullivan's in Midlothian. Sullivan's is a HUGE room decorated up like an Irish pub & I've played here a couple of times with different bands. On Friday night they had a “pro wrestling” event in the back beer garden and we were to start playing after that event was over. When I arrived and started setting up the owner recognized me & came up to me and shook my hand saying “Welcome Back!!!” That was pretty cool!!! :D We talked a little about how the crowds have been and he said its been going well except for the past 2 weeks b/c the kids are all going back to school. Unfortunately our night was more of the same...the wrestling event drew about 20ppl and we had about 20ppl up front :( On a positive note we did have the “ring girls” hang out w/us and they danced & sang along and the owner said that everyone “really liked us” and they want us to come back :D which is a better response than the previous band I played with here back in April when there was no mention of a return gig. Mindi (singer) forgot the starting words to Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance” & she stood behind me with her head on my back saying “I don't remember how it starts” :oops: so we helped her out with the first verse and she was on her way by the chorus. The band played well and we had a lot of fun interacting on stage!!! One of the girls at the end asked if we played more Lady Gaga (not yet) and we closed with AC/DC's “Dirty Deeds” which we changed to “Done w/Sheep” and “Baaaaaaah” which kept Mindi (singer) cracking up during the song :D . We played for a guarantee plus a (%) of the door but we only made the guarantee since the crowd was so thin.

On Sat night we played at Booben's in Dwight IL. This place is out in middle of farm country and the town only has like 3 bars and 2 of them have live entertainment. One of the patrons said the other bar “JT's” usually has bands that play “alternative” music but he really liked our band b/c we play a lot of 80's tunes. It was Booben's (1 year) anniversary so that drew some interest Sat night. I thought this was a bar attached to a bowling alley so when I drove down the main drag and I saw the place I was kinda like “whoa”, it looked like a hole in the wall bar at the end of the drag where it stopped being popular to hang out at. In the window it had a barbers chair (for doing shots) so I thought to myself “well...maybe this place has some promise to it after all”.

I was the first to arrive and I walked in and it was a medium size room w/a nice size stage and a drum riser. After the rest of the band got there and we loaded in I got all set up and turned my rig on and it was “hissing and popping” like if you were playing a vinyl record. We we're just looking at my rig trying to figure out what could be causing it & then it just stopped...then it started up again. What the hell??? So I tried a different outlet, nope. I started disconnecting cables trying to figure out which unit is causing the problem and NOTHING was working. Then the bass player went out the back door for a smoke and he (being an electrician) noticed that the outside security light was flickering AND WHEN I IDID my amp was “hissing & popping”. When it turned off (reset) then silence. So it was a bad ballast in the outside light causing the problem I was having which was on the same line as the other outlet I tried. So I plugged into another outlet on the other side of the stage and everything was fine. Then the other guitar player turned on his amp and it was whistling something fierce and I'm like “now what??” His was cause by a bad guitar cable and was quickly rectified. So we did a quick sound check, waited 10min and got back up and started.

We played the first song and THEN...I can't hear my guitar...I turn around and I'm thinking that one of the plugs in the back of my rig might have fallen out (it's happened before), but everything's lit up so that's not it. So I'm back by my rig twisting knobs trying to figure out if its my rig or my guitar...then I notice that my amp light is not on. Huh??? Ok, no time to change the fuse now so I run out to my car and bring in my backup amp (Marshall DSL401) and I set it up on the drum riser plug it in and by song #4 I'm back in business. My plan was to go out to my car where I put my guitar case, (I have spare fuses in there), and I'll just change out the fuse between sets. We finish set #1 and I open the back door and there's just SHEETS OF RAIN coming down outside. No way in HELL am I going out there, get soaked and THEN work on electrical equipment so I just used my backup amp the rest of the night.

We had a GREAT time Sat night!!! The owner came up to Mindi before we started and asked her if he was getting his “dance” tonight. I guess they had an arrangement that “next time” she'd dance for him (lap dance) during “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” and he didn't forget. He had a couple other girls there helping her out too so that was fun to watch and it went over well with the crowd!!! At the end of the night (we went longer than planned) after we loaded up the owner said he was going to take care of our “bar tab” and he gave us each a shot for a job well done. We're scheduled to play here again for their Halloween Bash (10/29) so that should be a lot of FUN & he said he wanted us to play there again next summer when they have the yearly festival right outside the bar. LIFE IS DRAMA played here last summer during the festival and they drew 200-300 ppl from the festival to come in...That would be AWESOME!!! :D

My next gig is THIS SAT 8/27 with SLIGHTLY OFFENSIVE @ Fat Sam's (159th& LaGrange Rd, Orland Park). We'll be playing all your favourite “PARTY RAWK” anthems you like to sing along with and dance on the bars too!!! Party goes from 10pm till the cops shut us down!!! Kids are back in school so come on out and CELEBRATE that w/us!!

Thanks for reading and all the great comments & KEEP ROCKIN' !!!!

Tommy Gunz