DEN O’ PRETENTION ™

Short version: We go back to coffee house to do two newer songs. We discover new reasons we don’t like folkies.

Why? Why the hell did we do it, again? Human weakness I guess. In all of us we find ourselves in the middle of something and end up saying “Oh hell not this shit again.” Once again you’ve gotten yourself in a mess. And it’s the same damn mess every time. We drink too much when stressed, we are careless with money, we don’t always listen to the other person in a relationship, we fall for someone who’s already attached to someone else, we all have that one something that we keep screwing up time after time. You can call it our Charlie Brown moment. That moment when we are in mid-air right after Lucy has pulled away the football yet again. It’s not like we didn’t know that was going to happen. It had happened every time but nooooooo, rather than face facts we were sure, sure that this time it was going to work out.

And then WHAM! You hit the ground. And not only are you hurt, but you are embarrassed as hell because you knew this would happen. How could I be such an idiot? AGAIN? How? And what the hell am I going to do about this tattoo?

Well that is a long way towards going to explain what the hell happened last night.

We went to the coffee shop again. The scene at O’Hanlon’s is running dry and we figured we would go play at the shop again – live performing before the gig. We picked a couple of songs and went in to sign up. Then we got two overprice beers and waited for the event to start.

Okay now we signed up to be 3rd up let us and the crowd warm up. But no – we ended up first.

“I thought we had signed up to be third” I said.

“Well you did” the host said, “but you’re on now.”

Oh great I thought, one of those. I’ve been to my share of open mikes and baby the worst of the lot is when the host or the guy running it just tosses out the sign up sheet and puts people where he wants. Nepotism, cronies, playing favorites what you will. The In crowd out crowd thing.

It just sucks.

Well we played – first song went over well, it was the brain eating song, followed up by Ode to a Glock which for some reason makes some people nervous. Which is what happened – which is good.

Truth be told we wrote both songs cause we both have a problem with der volk and the songs are not subtle parodies of the style of song you get at coffee shops.

Anyway we were discomforted after our singing and grabbed another expensive beer.

What made it worse was The Insect girl had shown up and she wanted to play. She’s not quite the ham/attention whore I am so playing in front of people is a white knuckle moment for her. But we encourged her and she signed up.

As the evening wore on and we were exposed to a lot of covers (even one of a Duran Duran song– karmic payment I assume for making a joke about them yesterday.) and off key singing (I know I sing flat but lordy at least its almost musical) and just holier than thou attitude.

Everyone seemed to assume they were the hippest most sensitivest folk in the room. One guy said before he launched into a cover “this is a Bare Naked Ladies song, if you’ve heard of them.”

Jack I’m so out of the loop I’ve come around to the cutting edge and I’ve heard of the Bare Naked Ladies – I don’t have any of their albums cause I’m broke these days but Jesus don’t assume folks don’t know. And if they haven’t heard of them, don’t make into an I’m hipper than thou moment. Lot’s of people have no bloody clue about Robyn Hitchcock but when I find that out I’m like “Hey he’s great you should check him out.” I’m not trying to score cool points at the coffee shop.

Anyway as the evenningworeongandonandonandon the Insect Girl was getting angrier. Her temper snapped when this guy walked in and was plopped down in front of the mike because he had someplace else to go.

Well hell don’t we all? Why assume I don’t have something else to do? You know I could have two beautiful Asian woman waiting for me at my apartment wearing nothing but baby oil and… well no…not really, I mean if I had that waiting for me I wouldn’t be this lame ass open mike right now would I?

So the Insect Girl, after speaking to the guy, got to sing (doing a damn fine job the way)and we got the hell out of there.

We will be back next week, but we promise to sing them a pair of our most deranged and evil hearted songs. Their wounded dove act brings out a dangerous wildness in me and makes me want to hold a broken bottle to their necks (metaphorically) just to jar them out of their head up their ass narcissism.

(sorry about the constant editing but I am a bit dislexic and letters that I knew I meant to type aren't there - same thing again and again yes?)