brandon's10-08-2003, 05:05 PM
Catholic Carnival
So here is an interesting tale of a bizzare gig that didn't quite come to pass.
The gig i will tell you about actually occured prior to my joining but they were all my friends so i was along for the ride.
a little background about the band because it's necessary to understand just how bizzare the situation really was:
the band name is Shitting Glitter, an all queer band fronted by a lesbian with songs about such family topics as strap-ons and mustache rides.
After a performance at the first ever Los Angeles valley pride parade a gentleman approached a few members and asked them if they'd be interested in playing a catholic church carnival. would we be interested in playing your church carnival? of course! sounds like a great time!
contact information was exchanged and the man was on his happy church going way. the band had a great chuckle about this... "shitting glitter live at saint mary's catholic church carnival"
after the initial gut laugh wore off a few questions began to pop up...such as did you tell them our name? do they know we are a bunch of athiest degenerates with drug habits?
no one was really ever able to come up with an answer to these questions. theories abound that maybe they were trying to lure us in to perform a group exorcism, or maybe just a neat old fashioned group stoning, but an actual reason why a band such as ours would be booked to play a catholic carnival never came to light.
a few days later the contact for the church called and left a message with the time slot and date on the singers voicemail. she later called back and confirmed.
saturday of the show arrives and shitting glitter decends upon the catholic carnival. it was held in what appeared to be a school parking lot complete with booths, carnival rides and a rather small stage. security was extremely lax so we were able to bring in plenty of beer, hate to pay those inflated sin tax prices! the evenings entertainment seemed to be of a rather diverse nature because the act on before us was a nice young man singing karaoke! he was explaining to the audience how he'd be prasing the lord this summer from the deck of a cruise ship that was kind enough to hire him as entertainment.
we carted all the gear (and hidden beer) to the side of the stage and began searching for our contact. at the sight of us the cruise ship karaoke boy grew visiblely nervous.
the contact was located but there was a slight problem. upon spotting us he trotted over. "shucks guys, to bad you missed your slot last night." he said looking at his schedule paper.
"last night? you told us tonight."
they insisted we had been scheduled for the night before, dissapointing really, as they so badly wanted to see shitting glitter perform.
we offered to play them the message they left on our voicemail, but they would have none of it.
my guess is they thought about it a little bit or maybe ran our name past the priest. i would have loved to see that meeting...
"father benson, we have a great evening of entertainment lined up for you. we have the choir to kick off the festivities, followed by father thomas playing the spoons, then young jeremy performing uplifting karaoke, and then to close the evening we have a band of degenerate queers from hollywood! it's going to be a wonderful day father..."
no amount of arguement from shitting glitter could force the good catholics to honor their word and allow a performance, but the band refused to take the day as a total loss. equipment was carried, compensation must be reached. the singer amy has a brilliant idea. she pulls the stage manager aside and tells him it will be accepted as a mis-undestanding provided they kick down a few hundred carnival ride tickets. seeing a way out the good man jumps at the oppourtunity and tickets are presented.
shitting glitter being a good fun loving band was off to the carnival portion!
the evening almost ground to a halt when the guitarist and i accidently had a beer over flow from the top of the ferris wheel. apparently a small amount of the foam over landed upon the operator. rather then kick us off he stops the car when we are on bottom, looks at us, makes the drinking symbol with his hand while tilting his head back and then sternly shakes his head and finger "no"...
eventually the tickets ran out, probably a good three hours after our welcome and we went home feeling spiritually fufilled.
i still don't understand what the guy who booked us was thinking
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