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Fri., Jan. 9th, 2004 - Rabbit Hill Music - The First Gig
Billy Rabbit Hill Music was a little guitar pawn shop on Goldsborough St., the same street Coffee East is on. They would have bands come into the tiny store to play. The music was never really my cup of tea, so I never paid to get in. I would opt to hang out on the sidewalk with my cohorts. Rabbit Hill had now moved a block or so around the corner. Jake and I had gone into Coffee East the previous Saturday night. We had heard that they were trying to have bands come in there every Saturday night. We investigated and discovered that Mal’s [Malley Hester - ed.] father and brother were performing. Sam Vannest was there. Yay! Jake and I eventually wandered over to Rabbit Hill to check it out. The new location was far superior. There was plenty of space for performances. We knew the owner, J.Guy, and started conversing with him. He asked us if we were in a band. Jake and I looked at each other. “Yeah. More or less.” We told him that we approved of the new set-up and asked when he was going to get some bands in the re. “I’m pushing for this Friday. You guys wanna play?” And so, we had our first gig..... Luckily, we had started to jam at Shea Stadium [Shea Springer of Red Eyed Five fame’s house - ed.]. Shea was going to play lead guitar for us and sing on a few numbers. Cody Finkner was going to fill in wherever he was needed. We also recruited the help of Ray Remesch and Sam Vannest of Becca & The Smashing Young Men. They were going to sit in on “Ape Man” and “Lola” by The Kinks, but we would only do one of these songs and only Sam played. I had also heard that Ray O’Mara [also of Red Eyed Five fame - ed.] was going to play bongos. I don’t know why that didn’t happen. Anywho, we had a supergroup forming made up of members from some of the local bands. We decided to credit ourselves as Supersnazz!, a name I got from a Flamin’ Groovies album. This name would lead to confusion, as many people thought we had changed the band name from The Mayo to Supersnazz! and insisted that we change it back. We decided that we would credit ourselves as The Mayo or some variation of that in the future to avoid confusion. Our first performance was going to be interesting. We were unable to devote as much time as we would have liked to practicing due to a number of factors. That meant that we had yet to learn the entire set. Nearly half the performance was going to be by the seat of our pants. The show was at 8, so we arrived at 7. We had hoped to get in early, set up, and do a run-through. That didn’t happen due to the construction of a high-rise for the drum kit. When the equipment was finally set up and we were ready to tune up and practice, people were arriving. We would just have to hope for the best. Keef [my brother Keith - ed.] filmed the performance. It actually came out pretty well. We had rough spots, but it went over well and we all had fun. Our set consisted of “Seven Nation Army,” “Danger! High Voltage,” “Black Magic Woman,” “Ape Man,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Champagne Supernova,” and “Date Rape.” Red Eyed Five and Becca & The Smashing Young Men played after we did, respectively. I spent the rest of the night dancing with and rubbing my butt on attractive females...and some males.....That’s unimportant. Yay! Attractive females! Finally, being in a band was paying off. Plus, we got paid for our services. I spent my earnings on a book about The Who. Rock’N’Roll: The Gift That Keeps On Giving! Sam I have to say, I really didn't think we could pull off our first gig. I heard that we were playing while I was lying in bed with two wads of cloth stuffed in my mouth and percosets messing with my head. I had my wisdom teeth out earlier that week and I was drifting in and out of sleep. Anyway, Shea Springer called me and said that it was pretty cool that Red Eyed Five would be playing with The Mayo. I had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained to me that Rabbit Hill Music was holding an inaugural show for their new location on Harrison St. "Oh. That's cool," I said. Then I went back to sleep. By the time I managed to pull myself out of bed, we only had three days to learn our entire set. Fortunately, we had practiced for All Day [all the important holidays in one day!- ed.] the previous summer, so we had a vague idea of how to play "I am the Walrus" and a few other songs. Shea was kind enough to let us use his house to practice and we prepared as much as we could. I began to have a very bad feeling about our show. I felt even worse when we arrived at Rabbit Hill to find that a drum riser was being built, and, after seeing the initial stages of it's construction, I began to fear for my life. Much to my surprise, the riser held out through the whole night, another testament to the wonders of modern construction. Throughout our set, I struggled to keep on playing because my hands were shaking with nervous energy. I've never played in front of a large crowd of people, and it didn't seem to agree with me. When we finished I wanted to run around the block and throw up at the same time. I did neither, but I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to play in front of an audience again. Then Billy handed me twenty dollars, and my whole outlook changed. The next day, all I could think about was playing another show. Keep on rockin'! To the rythm!! Sat., Jan. 24th, 2004 - Rabbit Hill Music - The Second First Gig Sam Okay folks, here's the second show overview: First show as The Mayo. Practice from 11 PM on Friday to 4 AM on Saturday, the day of the show... Ugh. But a good kind of ugh. Shaky start. Awesome finish. 'Love Rollercoaster'!!! Special thanks to Cody and Shea for playing with us on several songs. And that's about it. We pulled it off again. Cool. On another note, the 'Nutrition Facts' page is almost up and running, so that meaningless text at the top of this page will soon become a link. Dump it, uhhhh. Josh Well, this was my first gig, because I wasn't at the first. I was nervous as hell, but I knew I had to keep it together because I was playing bass. Aside from Sammy, I was the backbone of the set. I thought we did pretty well for only having 4 practices before hand. We were all nervous through the first 3-4 songs, but after that we settled down and personnally, I thought we rocked. The last three songs: I Am the Walrus, Champagne Supernova and Love Rollercoaster sounded really good. I did the rapping part of Love Rollercoaster. I didn't think I'd remember all the words, but I did. I heard that people had said they thought I wasn't really singing, that it was a recording, but I was. That's an awesome feeling to know that it sounded that good. I can't wait until our show on the 21st! Sat., Feb. 21st, 2004 - Rabbit Hill Music - The Mayo Hit The Radio Waves Sam I have never been more excited about a show than I was about this one. Not only would we be playing some of the best songs we've got, it would also be recorded and broadcast on the radio. But as the show approached I once again grew very worried about our ability to get all our songs together before show time. Since Jake is now off at college, we didn't have a chance to practice with him until midnight on the night before the show (or midnight on the morning of the show, depending on how you look at it). Then we practiced "Kick Out the Jams," and all my worries were gone. Jake jumped all over Shea Stadium (That's Shea Springer's room to you newcomers- ed.), rolled around on the floor, and generally went completely nuts while singing that song, and I knew that there was no way that we wouldn't rock. I was very happy with the performance, especially since two of my personal favorites in our set, "Runaround Sue" and "My Generation," went off without a hitch. So even though I messed up several times througout the course of our set, I was too busy having a good time to really dwell on it. Special thanks go out to Rick Willis for giving us the idea for incorporating "Back in Black" into "My Generation." On another note, Marcy Groman was kind enough to take some promo pics for us before the show, so hopefully we'll have those up on the site pretty soon. Thanks, Marcy! Josh I have to agree with Sammy, we were all pumped up for the show. Before we went on, we all Flair Chopped* each other right before we went on just to get even more pumped! The new stage was teh-awesome. That got me even more psyched for the show. You could see the entire crowd from up there, as opposed to before when you really couldn't see past the first row. Plus, as Sam said, Billy was much safer. As far as our playing goes, I can't wait to get a CD of what was recorded. Aside from a few minor missed notes (I think I got lost a bit in "I Am the Walrus," but I added some bass fill on the spot and it made it sound that much better) we sounded really great! I'd also like to congratulate Jake on being able to pull everything together the way he did without much practice with us. I wasn't sure he could do it, but I'm glad I was wrong. When I watched the footage of the show, "My Generation" got me riled up again just from hearing us play it. I think we did a hell of a job and I can't wait to get practicing for the next show in 2 weeks. It's going to be even better! Anyone who missed the show really missed out on some great music. *Flair Chops and all its likeness' are copyrighted by 16 time World Champion himself, Ric Flair. Sat., Mar. 6th, 2004 - Rabbit Hill Music Josh Ok, we had better slow down or else someone might think we're a real rock band here. The way the show went Saturday, things are looking up and up. I'd like to thank Tater for his PA that he got set up over at R.H., it sounded great. I think vocals, guitar playing and drumming leveled up (you know, gained some power, got stronger), but most importantly we got into the music more. That's what it's about, you have to feel the music, and I think we did that. Also Cody was spectacular. I really enjoyed the solos and fills and everything else he did Saturday. We added "Hate to Say I Told You So" by the Hives to our huge kind of colage of "My Generation." So gives us "My Generation," "Back in Black," "Hate to Say I Told You So," PLUS the jam at the end, all in one song!!!! It was da coolest. And like I said, Cody did a bang up job on lead. It's funny cause during practice, we weren't quite nailing everything. But when we got to the show, bam!... on point. We're definatly getting better with each performance. So I look forward, and so should you, to The Battle of the Bands. We're going to attempt to outdo ourselves again... if that's possible :) By the by, I was running on about 45 minutes of sleep over about 35 hours at showtime. Sam Well, that was fun. I was happy to see that the crowd was actually energetic at this show, even though there weren't that many people who showed up. I loved watching everyone sing along to "Hate to Say I Told You So" when we threw that into "My Generation." "Time Bomb" was a lot of fun to play, too. Mad props to Cody for his great singing debut on that song. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot about "Cold Hard Bitch." That was an awesome song to play, and I was very happy that we nailed all the transitions. We have definately improved on that since we first tried to play it way back during the Second First Gig. Now, on to SSPP to rock out at the Battle of the Bands! Make sure you check that out because we'll be playing an awesome song by a new British band that has been getting quite a bit of airplay recently... Also, congratulations to whoever ended up with the Spiderman toy at the last show, you have won LUNCH WITH THE MAYO! So if you've still got the Spiderman, email us and we will buy you lunch. But whether that means fine dining at Out of the Fire or dollar menu at McDonald's remains to be seen. Sat., Mar. 20th, 2004 - Saints Peter & Paul High School - Battle Of The Bands Sam I'm STILL pumped from the SSPP show! I don't care if people thought we rocked or sucked, cause that was THE most fun I have ever had playing music. I actually smiled through just about the entire performance, which is certainly a first. When the audience started marking out for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" I thought that it couldn't get any better... Then someone yelled encore. Now, anyone who has ever seen The Mayo perform knows that I'm a pretty stiff guy when I'm playing. But I got so pumped during our encore, "Kick Out the Jams," that I started rocking out and headbanging like never before. I'm sure that with my poofy hair, this probably looked pretty funny, but I don't give a shit cause I've come one step closer to rock and roll. And on another note... Being in a Band is Crazy; Vol. 1 Man, being in a band is crazy. Some time after we got done playing our set, some girl that I've never met walked up to me and handed me a Vanilla Coke and a condom. She then seemed like she was trying to explain something to me, but I couldn't really hear her over the music and I was pretty surprised at what had just happened. So, I'm really still not quite sure what happened. I tell you, being in a band is crazy. Oh yeah, and special thanks go out once again to Rick Willis for giving us the idea to play "Real American" (Hulk Hogan's theme for all you non-wrestling fans) during "My Generation". Josh 3 words: Best. Show. Yet. I have to agree with Sammy, that was most fun I've had playing so far. I also enjoyed playing for a new (for the most part) crowd. And it's not that the Rabbit Hill crowd isn't totally awesome, i'm just glad to see that other people liked hearing us play. We also got to meet some of the other bands around the area, particularly a band by the name of Large Mouth Bass, which we we'd like to get to come play a Rabbit Hill show with us. I'd like to say that I personnally thought that Expungo should have taken the Battle, but The Rest is History won, and I'd like to congratulate them on that. I think my singing on "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" went well, at least that what people have been telling me. Maybe we'll play it again on the 3rd at Rabbit Hill. And like Sammy-boy said, hopefully we'll have some originals to play then too! I'm looking forward to our show! Sat., Apr. 3rd, 2004 - Rabbit Hill Music Sam Ok, here's the deal. I had a really long, involved post detailing our last show and the upcoming shows, but my computer froze and I lost it. So instead of rewriting it, I'm just going to give you the cliff notes. Top Hat, Slop Cat Duo- They played "White Wedding", they are awesome in my book. Red Eyed Five- I love "500 Miles" even more than I love Presidents covers. The Mayo- It was the "Summer of '69"... The Crowd- Larger than average, but COMPLETELY UNENTHUSIASTIC! So, I want to see everyone who came to our last show at our shows on the 17th and the 24th rocking out hardkore style. The 17th- Travis!! Red Eyed Five!! The Mayo!! Fun fun happy time! The 24th- Large Mouth Bass-tards' first show at Rabbit Hill!! Downbound Train's first show!! I've heard them practice and they will rock your socks off!! The Mayo!! Ok, I think that covers everything. The Mayo is good, The Mayo is clean, The Mayo hopes you come back again and again. |
