theclubsinger

When I heard we finally scored a gig at ‘the Civic Center’, I was in rock and roll heaven … imagining throngs of adoring fans surrounding our humongous stage setup.  We couldn’t wait – it was to be a teen dance – the core audience for our repertoire.  We most definitely would have our entire band fleet with us – including lightman Bart, with his wooden control unit and all his additional fire hazards, and soundman/roadie Slim, sure to pack every possible amplifier and voluminator… we were all on Rock and Roll red alert.

It was the first time we were slated to play the Rock Creek Civic Center, located in the heart of the Jersey Shore – and unbelievably somehow, none of us had heard of it before.  Since we played more gigs towards the Philly area, we didn’t think too much of it that we didn’t know about it – other than it was a CIVIC CENTER!  A HUGE gig for us!

In our haste to bring every possible speaker, light, effect and instrument with us on that Saturday in July, we forgot to bring the directions to the gig. We had the Civic Center address and once we crossed the back bay into Rock Creek, we figured we’d see a sign or a billboard; maybe flashing lights in the distance … something.  We had to stop and ask for directions. This was way before the day of Nav’s or smartphones; sometimes we relied on paper maps and on this particular day we didn’t have a map, either. We were running uncomfortably late for our potentially biggest gig – not cool.

I knew something was up when the first person I asked didn’t know where it was. The second person didn’t know Rock Creek even had a Civic Center. Uh-oh.

We finally found a knowledgeable local, and he pointed us to the correct address just a couple of blocks up.  As our vehicles came to a stop, the destination of our future blowout concert was before us, and we all got out, collectively gazing at it, just speechless.  The ‘Civic Center’ was the size of a 7-11 store. “How on earth was this called a Civic Center?  What? Are you sure this is the place?  Nuh-uh!  Give me a fucking break, man!” 

Thinking that maybe it just looked smallish from the outside, we went in to scope out the situation.  It was a sensible, open and completely square room with several rows of folding chairs positioned near the front of a simple, elevated stage at the far end.  The walls were brick and glass, and the floors were made of a sturdy, planked wood. The entire space was bathed in light by banks of fluorescent ceiling lights. This place was the perfect setting for a Town hall meeting – not a rock concert.  Certainly not what any of us had envisioned (a friggin Civic Center- my ass) but we had to make the best of things.  After all, it was a teen dance, we were getting paid, our name was on the sign out front,  and there were already a few kids milling around in anticipation. We’d turn down the lights, turn up the volume and kick their teen asses.  That was the plan, anyway.

Since we were running late, we didn’t have any time left to do a soundcheck. Under normal circumstances, sound checks were thorough, monotonous, and required. Every room sounded different and required adjustments to speaker placement, equalizer controls and lots of other technical crap that I never understood.  What I recall is we just ran out of time. We ended up checking all the amplifiers, all the microphones and they all worked fine. That was just going to have to do.  Slim used the settings from a prior gig just to get us started for the night. We’d tweak the sound as the night wore on. Bart eventually tested his lights while we were all changing in to our gig clothes.

There was quite a commotion as we took the stage that night – for openers, it was incredibly loud. These were a bunch of rowdy kids, yelling, stomping around – undoubtedly excited by our concert, for sure.  But as I scanned the crowd, they really weren’t out of hand – it just seemed unusually loud for some reason.  Bart had the City Council lights turned off and had a couple of blue side fills on a low dim, creating an aura of rock grandeur.

With four clicks of a drumstick, we hammered them with the opening chords of Aldo Nova’s ‘Fantasy’ – sure to blow their minds!  Instead:  BAM!  We blew an electrical circuit. No sound. No lights. We were blowing them away, alright…

It’s really something to be on stage, in front of people, in a band where everything is electric and then the power goes out. Everything stops at once:  instant quiet and darkness.  You might be singing  for a second or two, the guitars sound like small banjos, the keyboards completely silent – it’s usually the drums that are the last to peter out – in this case, Tony went another ten seconds or so when he realized he was the only one playing– he finally opened his eyes.

There was a collective sigh from the audience, and Slim scrambled behind the stage, and yells ‘Geez guys, you blew a circuit! heehee heehee hee hee’!!!!  With a flick of a switch, Slim had the lights and sound back on within a minute.

‘Let’s give this another try, guys!’ I say, as we hear another four clicks.

BAM!

It’s all out again.

At this point, we all walked off the stage to recover from this mess, and figured we needed to take another ten to work out the technical difficulties.  Since there was no sound, I just yelled out in the dark, ‘HANG IN THERE – WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK!!!’

It didn’t take too long to figure out what the problem was.  The Rock Creek Civic Center had one electrical circuit. Um… ONE.  Oh, there were a few outlets and what-nots to plug into on stage, but all outlets led to the ONE CIRCUIT. We had like ten thousand watts or something.  This was definitely not good.  None of us were electricians or anything, but based on wattage alone, Bart and his light box got canned immediately. We figured without all those lights, we should be good to go. We would have to turn on those dreaded Town Hall lights – we had no choice.

We decided to try a different opener now, since we crapped out on Aldo Nova and his ‘Fantasy’ twice. We started Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock and Roll’…

Guitar riffs…. Drums… (okay…. 30 seconds… and so far, so good….) and then I sing:

Saw him standing there by the record machine

Knew he must’ve been about seventeen…. 

BAM!

Out – again.

This time the audience could really see the disgusted looks on our faces, since now we were generously bathed in fluorescent lighting.  What the fucking fuck?!

Slim turned off the remaining power to the amplifiers, so all we had for sound was guitar amps and vocal monitors. So with no front PA system on at all, we picked up the riff of I Love Rock and Roll at the chorus and started clapping and chanting:

I Love Rock and Roll, so put another dime in your jukebox baby,

I Love Rock and Roll, so come and take your time and dance with

I Love Rock and Roll, so put another dime in your jukebox baby

I Love Rock and Roll, so come and take your time and dance with me.

YEAH!!!

Now we were cooking: we got through a whole song without blowing the place up.

Well… perhaps not.  By the end of our second song, The Romantics’ ‘That’s What I Like About You’, many of the kids looked like they could have been in pain.  Perhaps it was the hands over their ears, the grimacing faces, or the steady stream of them making a beeline to the exits.  How could it be our volume?  We had no PA!  And then it dawned on me… the Civic Center, with all that glass, all that brick, those wooden floors – all hard surfaces for sound to ricochet off of…  an audio disaster. The Civic Center gig was officially going down the toilet.

Some of the kids were real troopers – they clamped down hard on their ears and hunkered in for the rest of the gig. Others went across the street to listen to us. You could see some kids were torn as the night wore on; they wanted to come back inside after some ear recovery time but discovered there was a stiff door policy at the Civic Center. No hand stamps here – the town officials charged a dollar for every entry, so the kids just stayed out. There was quite a group of them that had no problem hearing us a block away.

Disgusted by yet another disappointing gig from hell, I gazed out at the sea during our break, wondering how much more of this kind of crap I could possibly take…after a few moments of solitude, I heard a guitar tuning up and found my way going back in for some more Civic doody.