I’d like to apologize to everyone who’s been looking forward to a new posting to the KrakaTome, but I already did that at the last band practice. So that’s taken care of.

Since the last update, the biggest thing that’s happened to the band is that we actually played a gig. In public. For money.

I’ll pause a moment while you fix anything that might have happened to your computer when your jaw hit the keyboard.

Yes, Krakathoom rocked Mueller Park in Uptown Minneapolis on July 11. Overall, I’d have to say the gig was a success, despite my prophetic nightmare to the contrary (July 10 entry). But you don’t come here for the overall, do you?

Originally, we were planning to play on June 20, but the overworked and understaffed department that was putting together the “Bands in the Park” program wasn’t able to put that together. What was originally supposed to be a summer-long series ended up as “three weeks in July.” We were happy to account for one of those weeks.

We were also happy to see our name in print. A notice in the Wedge described us as a “versatile rock band.” That was kind of cool of them to say. I mean, our bio does describe us as versatile, but it was cool of them to believe us. Now that I think about it, it seems a little odd to describe a rock band as versatile without any context. We can rock the house! We can help you move! We can install a garage door opener! We can drink beer and play Nintendo for hours! All of these statements have been empirically proved to be factually correct, but they aren’t necessarily relevant to the discerning music fan who just wants to do a little booty-shakin’. Not that I plan to change the bio at this point.

We’d already spent most of June getting ready for what we thought would be a 6/20 performance, but getting an extra couple of weeks to polish the songs was actually a bonus. We decided to play all originals, and put together a setlist of nineteen of our best compositions. That setlist was the basis for all of our practices for over a month. Normally we don’t have a setlist until the last meeting before a gig, but this time we had plenty of time to get good and used to playing the songs in this order.

We had two rehearsals the week of the gig. We briefly debated about whether we should break down and pack up after our July 10 practice, in order to make it easier and faster to load everything into our cars before the next evening’s gig. Instead we decided to leave everything up and plugged in so we could have a brief warmup in the KrakaTomb immediately before the gig. So that’s what we did.

Before the warmup, I quickly put new strings on my bass. I didn’t want a repay of last December’s gig, when I unexpectedly broke a string in the middle of a song (breaking a string between songs would be fine, but how likely is that?). And since I’d been playing the same set of strings since then, it just seemed prudent. I worried that I’d cut my E-string a little too short in my rush to get new strings on, but I figured that it was wrapped around the tuner enough to get me by. Sure enough, everything went fine during our three-song warmup.

Then it was time to load out. Jeremy has bought a used van, so we have a lot more room for the stuff. We had enough room before, with Pete’s and my station wagons and Jeremy’s car, but just barely enough. Every since Jeremy’s pickup got totaled in 1999, getting everything packed into the cars has been like one of those three-dimensional puzzles where we have to figure out the best way to align the amps and speakers to maxmize available space while still leaving room for instruments and stands and various other clutter. Jeremy’s van really takes the pressure off. So much so, in fact, that we had room to bring a couple of extra instruments.

Mueller park occupies about half of a city block bordered by Colfax Avenue on the west, Bryant Avenue on the east, and 25th Street to the north. The friendly and helpful park employees hooked us up with power and extension cords and had us set up on a sort of circular asphalt plaza in the center of the park.

This was the first time we’d ever played outside in our entire career. We’re used to basements, dude. Even the many times we’ve played in open garages, we’ve still had three walls and a ceiling to funnel the sound out to the audience. Here, it all just kind of diffused. That sounds like a bad thing, but it’s not because there had actually been some concern as to whether we’d be too loud. Playing to the great, indifferent outdoors was exactly what our sound needed to stay within reasonable levels. Yeah, that sounds totally rock & roll, doesn’t it?

It was a little weird, though, because pretty much all we could hear were ourselves. And I don’t mean we could only hear the band. I mean that I could only hear my bass and vocals, Richard could only hear his guitar and vocals, Jeremy could only hear his guitar and vocals, and Pete could only hear the drums. So each of us thought we were totally overpowering all of the others, all the time. However, Rob (wearing a Dogma t-shirt—AAAAAH!!) stepped up unsolicited after the first song and assured us that the mix was just fine, which other spectators corroborated afterwards. So we just kept going as we were, each doing our best to hear the others over our own individual racket. Under these conditions, I have to confess that our vocal harmonies may have suffered somewhat, but our instrumental performances were tight as ever. If not tighter. Hey, shut up.

During the second song, my bass started drifting out of tune. This isn’t entirely unexpected with brand-new strings, so I tightened up the string abut during the song and carried on. Before the third song, I ran it through my electronic tuner again. Same deal. During the fourth song, it became apparent that the tension on my E-string was dropping like WorldCom stock. I’d cut the string too short after all. Since that song was Princess in a Jar, the one with possibly the most challenging bass line in our repertoire, I gave it up and switched to the backup bass that Jeremy had brought (thank God). I finished out the gig on the old Gibson Epiphone, the one I’d bought used in 1988 and hadn’t played at all in almost two years. Fortunately, I still remembered how to play it.

Jeremy also had a bit of difficulty, having rocked his D-string early on. “That’s what was missing at the end of that song,” someone commented later. “No “D.” Witty stage banter from Richard ensued while Jeremy made the necessary repairs in record time. Jeremy’s getting like the dad in A Christmas Story, but with guitar strings instead of spare tires. I keep expecting to hear SPROING! “Time me.”

Even that was minor, compared to Jeremy’s main problem: the fact that he was singing through a painful ear infection. Aside from the pain, it must also have been tough to sing with one ear totally plugged up. You woudn’t have known it from listening to him, though. What a trouper.

The audience seemed to have a good time. Of course, most of them were friends and family, but then we didn’t drive any strangers screaming off the premises either. Did anyone dance? Yes, but the dancers were all under ten years of age. So at least they were enthusiatic. One mini-mosher became chronically fascinated with one of our PA speakers, repeatedly leaning forward and staring into it as if to plumb its mysteries, occasionally putting out a tentative hand to touch it before a parent scooped him up. Even if we win a dozen Grammies someday, that achievment will pale in comparison to the way we resisted the temptation to bellow “GET AWAY FROM THE SPEAKER!” directly into the microphones.

So we went through the set with alacrity, occasionally pimping the website but generally concentrating on the music. Nineteen songs became sixteen, as we decided that the audience and Jeremy had had about enough. One six-year-old attendee may have put it best: “This is fun. And long.”

Our next gig is the wedding of the person who took our photos for the press kit. Remember the press kit? We have the photos back and should be putting it together shortly. The bio and the demo CD are done and merely need to be copied, after which we can send out multiple packages of pure Krakathoom goodness so that local club owners can start tearing and clawing at each other to book us for their venues. We’ll let you know as soon as that happens.