the passion of the dave

We had a pretty bizarre gig last night.

Glen is from Westboro and has known this guy Dave since he was a kid. My best description of Dave is that he applies the Red Sox fan mentality to every aspect of his life. Being a dyed-in-the-wool masshole, he is a New England sports nut. He has midnight opening day tix to see Revenge of the Sith (not that there's anything wrong with that). He has also been known to write entire novels about girls he dates after only dating them for a month or two (more on this later).

I forget when / how it happened, but at some point he became a fan of my band. And, in keeping with his approach to everything else in life, he became an obsessive fan of my band. I am not saying that's a bad thing at all-- if anything, a band wants all fans to be as vehemently band-crazy as possible. (At least my band does. So ronery...) So he started coming to our practices, learning how to play guitar and learning our songs on it, yadda yadda. He makes custom t-shirts with our logo on it that he wears to every gig. He even followed us to Pittsburgh.

At one point in Dave's life- his freshman year of college, I found out last night- he found alcohol. Again, not to be one to shy away from his personal inclinations, he went all the way with that dreaded yet delicious spirit. Over the next two years, he went through an epic battle with the stuff. His addiction was so intense that he had to force himself to quit when he was 21. This brings us to last night, which was a celebration of 10 years of Dave's not drinking.

Dave thought it would be a lark to have some bands play his party. Since Dave has earned the title of #1 Fan in the Great Book of Focusin, we couldn't turn down this gig. So Dave rents the Knights of Columbus Hall in Westboro for a night. My band and our drummer's other band- whose lead singer was apparently once romantically involved w/ Dave (and is now a pending protagonist in an upcoming Dave novel)- filled the bill for the night. Ha, knight.

The KofC, as far as I understand, is an organization dedicated to... basically supporting the Bush administration. Words that come to mind when I think of them are "Family Values", "Christian", "Conservative", "you don't get your Communion if you vote against our endorsed candidates"... you get it. (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.) Being a fairly liberal Jew I was tempted to show up wearing a yarmulke and rainbow coalition shirt but the shirt's at the cleaners so no inflammatory quasi-political statements for me last night. Anyhow, I showed up around the same time as Dave and found our stage area- directly under a big ol' crucifix. (is 'crucifix' supposed to be capitalized?) This was gonna be fun.

Eventually my band mates trickled in and we unloaded our gear... at which point we realized our drummer had forgotten his cymbals and somebody had forgotten to bring mic stands. Band drama ensued; Glen and Meekus got all worked up and Goss, who had to arrange for someone to bring the gear out to us (Westboo is about 45 mins away from where we practice), got all defensive and angry. Dave wanted to play an acoustic set before us so we fashioned a makeshift mic stand out of a tripod and some hockey tape and root marm... and eventually the rest of our gear was delivered and the night went off without a hitch. I may have a hernia now from carting around all that heavy equipment, but that's the price you pay for coolness.

And now I'm off to buy a dozen lobsters to keep in my bath tub for my girlfriend's birthday party. Real kinky shit.

Party on, evil Wayne.