most hostile audience ever

MMS and NAMM were overall pretty cool. on friday afternoon we walked the floor at the NAMM summer session. that was fun; we saw lots of interesting booths and i picked up so many free magazines that the large roland shopping-style bag i'd picked up broke. we saw one "new" really cool band, the goodhands team on friday night. and we had a bunch of nice meals at various downtown restaurants (as well as the original pancake house in norgate).

saturday night we had a nice dinner at the claddagh, but things didn't go quite so well at the show:

showed up at the pub and was informed that there was no stage manager, no soundman, no monitors, and no backline provided. not too big a deal; my gear is compact and easy to hook up and i don't need a backline (though a couple other acts that needed the backline either had to play solo or didn't play at all). the other musicians i talked to were extremely friendly and helpful.

jennifer appelquist (who was supposed to go on before me) apparently didn't show (or maybe she did and left instead of playing?). so i had plenty of time to load in and set up (which was pretty easy), but i didn't go on until my slotted time of 11:30 because i had a feeling the crowd wouldn't want me to play long.

i had only been playing a couple minutes when some blond boy in a baby blue golf shirt started heckling, to the dismay of his table-mates. a couple minutes later, he came onstage and started asking me "what is this? what are you doing?" unsatisfied with my answers, he went back to his table and continued heckling, yelling things like "check please!"

most people in the crowd were polite enough to just ignore me, but others started heckling too. my favorite line came from a guy who yelled "i'm a professional dj! what the f*ck are you doing?!"

another guy, with curly hair and an MMS badge, came onstage to give me respect for doing "my own thing" in the face of adversity. "this takes balls," he said. "i'll be honest; it doesn't sound that good, but..." he wasn't into it, but he was cool.

clearly this crowd didn't want me to continue, and even without the heckling, hearing what i was doing was tricky without monitors, so i threw on a remix of the teenage mutant ninja turtles theme and ended my set early (after about 15-20 minutes).

when i was walking out to go get my car in order to load out, i heard one or two guys say "that was awesome", but they were sitting suspiciously close to the "professional dj" so i suspect they might not have been sincere.

apparently the band that was supposed to play after me, dark house sweet, didn't play either.

i knew this would be a weird show as i was added at the last minute and everyone else on the bill was a singer/songwriter or light pop-rock act. still, i got my money's worth just from all the free magazines i picked up at the NAMM trade show. free magazines! lots of 'em!

update: i posted most of this story on IMN... some of the comments are entertaining, like this one from derek of lunar event: "next time ask the professional DJ what strip club he works for."¶