Making It Happen

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Squeaky

Things That Must Be Said

It is not always easy being in a band. There are the usual difficulties: personality conflicts, creative frustrations, technical problems, etc. Carrying heavy equipment up a flight of stairs at 2 in the morning. That's a fucking problem. Usually, the problems are totally outweighed by the glories of playing music, either at practice or at a show. On the night of our last show, March 31st, the frustrations almost got the better of us.

We were going to open for Matt and Kim, an actual band that people like - they've been mentioned in Spin, have a video on MTV2 (what's the point of that? Is anyone watching?), etc. Whereas many of our shows are, shall we say, audience-challenged, this show was going to be a good chance to (hopefully) play in front of some people who don't know us. The day before the show, on my birthday, the promoter calls me to say that Matt and Kim have had to cancel, since Matt fucked his back up.
My first thought was "AAAARRGH! The curse continues!" For some reason, the big shows are usually disasters, while the little shows where we play to seventeen people are totally great. Then, we find out that not only is the headliner a no-go, the entire show is now canceled. Maybe you don't have kids, maybe you don't have a silly job, but for many of us in Squeaky, that show was sorely needed in our lives. And the thought of not playing a show was just... terrible.
We had practice that night, during which Danny hatched a plan to play a free show on the floor of Common Grounds, the site of the canceled show. Being old farts that we are, most of us had never heard of such a thing. A show on the floor? What? Uh, ok! Danny called the promoter, then he called his buddies in Laserhead (sorry... he texted them), and suddenly the show was on! Soon Facebook was positively aflutter with the news—Squeaky was playing anyway, for free. The next day, the day of the show, Steve and I made fliers and dutifully put them up all over downtown. How else would anyone know? We felt pretty good.

Until, that is, we rode home from work only to discover that all of ouf fliers were now covered over with new fliers from, you guessed it, Common Grounds (see my rant about flier ettiquette here). We were pissed. Our cell phones were hot with the expletives that were flying across the microwaves.
When I left my house for the show later that night, I was positively surly. I had had it with shitty clubs and shitty shows and I was already plotting the demise of the band. So was Steve. Until we got to the club, and it was set up really cool, everyone was nice, and... and... there were people there! We had a civilized dinner, got our attitudes right, and guess what? We had a great great show. There were a lot of people there, we played great, and I was really proud.
The lesson? Well, it might be that people don't really like our band, and that the only way to get them to come to a show is to not advertise or charge admission, but that's not the lesson that I took away from the whole thing. It was an affirmation of what I think is our band's demeanor and the fact that it really is fun to be a band and to play our version of the rock.
Smell you later,
H/SQ

What I Learned at Practice Last Night

Here's a complete run-down on how the members of Squeaky keep their armpits smelling fresh (or not):

Harry: Tom's of Maine, "Woodspice"
Karl: "old english? i think? i dunno."
Steve: Secret (Strong Enough for a Man, but Made for a Woman)
Danny: Has recently given up on wearing anything, as there's no point. He stinks no matter what he does.

Danny may have a point.

Please come see us sweat collectively, at Club 1982, Midtown Gainesville, FL, with Towers of Hanoi and Giuseppe, on Saturday February 21.

We Got So Welshed Last Night...

The band reconvened last night, after what seems like months, preparing for our upcoming show at 1982. Spirits were good, I think everyone was glad to be playing. Several times, we had to stop mid-song due to incessant giggling. Danny's Tama kit was back in action, it was awesome to hear his regular kit again.

Catchphrase of the night: Get Welshed (as in Danny Welsh, of course). Bizarre happening of the night: Karl suggested covering a Tears for Fears song and promptly began playing what we recognized as the bridge to "Head Over Heels." I was a little flabbergasted, it's usually Steve and I who are suggesting covering songs from that era, and I had no idea that Karl even liked Tears for Fears.

Also notable was Karl and Danny's pitch perfect rendition of the B-52s song, "Dance This Mess Around." They did it a cappella.

Anyway, we're getting ready to finally play a show, after 6 months off (!) from performing. It will be our first show comprised of three fathers and a Welsh. Saturday, February 21 at 1982, we'll be playing with Guiseppe and Towers of Hanoi. Come get Welshed.

H

The State of Flyering in Gainesville

When Squeaky was young, in our twenties and relatively free of responsibilities, we put a lot of effort into flyering for our shows. In the nineties, before myspace, before gainesvillebands.com, fliers were the main method of advertising for shows. Telephone poles were the main venue for these fliers. As you drove or biked around town, we'd check the poles to see which bands were coming to town, which friends of ours were playing shows. If the flier was cool, I'd rip one off and take it home, or put it up on the wall at the practice space. The Covered Dish and the Hardback, the 2 main venues of the time, printed hundreds of flyers and handbills for every show, and they were all over town, as well as top of pizza boxes. You could tell when it was holiday-time because there were hardly any fliers up. The number of fliers up at any given time was a good measure of what was going on.
It looked chaotic as hell, but there was a system, a "code", if you will. One never posted a flier over another flier unless the show had already happened. Or unless there were already a lot of fliers for the show already up. There was a general feeling that you had to be cool about how you put up your fliers, or else other bands wouldn't treat your fliers with the same respect.
The world of flyering changed around 2000, due to a lot of legal machinations. The Gainesville Iguana has a couple of good articles about the history here and here. I don't remember all the details, but the end result was the placement of several wooden "kiosks", strategically placed around downtown, attempting to create a clean, organized area for flier placement. And now, for better or worse, in 2007, bands and clubs generally put fliers up on the kiosks if they do it at all.
I don't want to get into the politics of this (although, I personally liked the way it was much better), I want to talk about flier etiquette here in 2007. People are fucking dicks about fliers these days! I went out to put up fliers for our show on Saturday, and I found a fucking sad state of affairs in flyeringworld. Kiosks were either totally empty or completely covered by ads for one show. I'm talking 40 or 50 fliers for the same show on one kiosk! I felt justified in covering over 5 or so of those fliers in order to put up some Squeaky fliers. I did find myself wondering where all the fliers were. Anyway, less than 24 hours later, all the fliers on all the kiosks were covered over by Common Grounds fliers. Fliers for the same show! And if they weren't covered by CG fliers, they were covered by fliers which were advertisements for a t-shirt company. I'm not against small businesses using the kiosks for fliers, but leave some room for other fliers, for fuck's sake!
Gainesville, know your history! Fliers are a time-honored system of informal communication, and they're important. Fliers are made by bands directly - they're a unique way to see how a band presents itself to the rest of the world. You can hold them in your hands, not like a mass email. Don't mess it up by being inconsiderate and ignorant.
Maybe I sound like a "it was better in the old days" crotchity old fart, but I really just think that some common consideration is in order. Maybe I should just be IM'ing and Myspacing everyone about Squeaky shows, but I still believe in fliers.
If you're covering over other people's fliers, fuck you.
H/Sq