Dear Chuck,
At the Roxy you sang very very very well I could go on and on about how good you were.
Ice Fairy
xoxo

Ice Fairy is Angel's nine year old daughter, who I took out for a birthday lunch exactly a month ago. She's like a little sister, which is why I know she'd never lie to me. A shitload of people told me my voice sounded incredible last night, but it meant nothing to me -- I always hear that from people -- "people" in LA will inevitably say exactly what you're longing to hear. When Ice Fairy tells me, I know it's true. And this makes me feel very very very good.

I exited at Coldwater Canyon Boulevard, one of a few roads that cross the mountain between the LA Basin and the Valley. I threw five bucks in the tank at an ARCO station, and headed uphill. At 4:30 I was crossing Mulholland. By 4:40 I was in Beverly Hills and turning left on Sunset Boulevard. Free and clear on Sunset, four blocks from the West Hollywood border, and seven blocks from the Roxy. I rounded a curve, and traffic stopped dead, five blocks from the club.

Trapped on Sunset. In my sideview mirror, I saw a ninety year-old woman with a walker, ambling down the sidewalk, and gaining on me. She passed me thirty seconds later. I felt like abandoning the car and walking to the club. Walking would have taken me about five minutes. In my car, it took me a half hour to drive those five blocks.

Luckily, the club was running a bit late as well, and they opened the stage doors just as I got there. We loaded the equipment in and hung out for a while, watching the other bands' soundchecks. Finally, it was our turn. Since we were on first, we got to soundcheck last, and leave our equipment on stage. It was all so professional. We played through a couple of tunes to the empty club, specified our individual monitor mixes, and took pleasure in the largest stage we've ever been on in our brief band history.

At 7, we made our way upstairs to the dressing room and changed. By 7:30, I was getting nervous and started pacing. The ghost of Jim Morrison was talking to me or something (maybe it was Kurt Cobain, and that's why it was such a bad vibe). I started thinking about all the famous people who had played on this stage, in this shithole of a venue. So much history. I looked through the little window overlooking the clubroom. The place was filling up. People were waiting. I snuck out back for a final cigarette.

(at our previous gigs, the band would just hang out at the club before the show, and then just meander onto the stage when it was time. here, there was so much separation, a _real_ backstage, no interaction with the audience until you come down the stairs and through the backstage door ... and that whole thing added to the intimidation I felt)

Finally, at 8 sharp, we took the stage, and I started to relax. It was a very professional show, if not our best groove-wise. Lots of room to move on the stage. Mojo had a wireless guitar pickup and I actually got him to come over and hang with me during a few songs, sharing my microphone for backup vocals. The feedback we got most was that the band seemed to be really tight, really animated, and really enjoying themselves.

The final headcount was at somewhere just over 200 people. Consider me shocked.

The song that was playing ended, and then I heard the DJ say "So, we were at the Roxy last night ..."

I don't remember any more of it ... twenty seconds later I heard our song coming from the speakers. I nearly crashed the car. I was laughing hysterically, and tears were streaming down my face. It is impossible to describe in words what it's like to hear yourself, your music, on the radio for the first time. I kept catching myself looking at the stereo display to make sure I wasn't listening to a cd, that it was really a radio station, something being broadcast all over southern california. I didn't even care that they chose the "wrong" song to play (in my opinion, of course). Nothing mattered at that point.

And the song ended, and another one came on, and I reflected that I had absolutely no-one to share the experience with. Leave it to me to turn euphoria into instant depression.

So I'll share it here ... in a rather huge .wav file which is still of questionable quality. Just click on the link below to hear "Cool It Out," which was played tonight on 106.3 FM at approximately 11:30pm. It's 10.5 Mb, so be prepared to do some waiting if you're on a phone modem. I'm too damned lazy to do any compression right now. Here's the song.