david taus

'Till the Morning Comes

music: Charles Lloyd- Forestflower Soundtrack

When was the last time anyone was literally at a party all night? I can only remember a handful of those since moving to Boston; the ragers at Skip’s house about a year back saw people out until the sun lumbered its way over Boston Harbor. Last night was one of those nights, except the venue du jour was the 1-2.

I was at a training all morning, but when I got back home things were in full swing: food prep, sweeping, beer runs, rearranging furniture, general bombproofing, and effectively turning the basement into a small music venue. The last feat was the most incredible part-in addition to throwing the double doors to the biosphere wide open we cleared out a good size of floorspace, enough for a legitimite crowd, and even threw together a “backstage” area.

There was music. Matt played a set with his band, and I played a set with mine-our first time playing in front of a live crowd. It was well-received, I think, and I have no complaints about how we played. My conclusions about the whole ordeal post-set were that we need to learn some more songs (with vocals especially) and that our single-chord jamming, while decent — good maybe — has hit a plateau and something new needs to happen. I found that the room itself swallowed some of the sound and it was a bit muted on the outside (a good thing considering concert-level noise level in a residential area would attract police) but all in all things came together nicely. Having one “gig” under our belts I think will make us realize some degree of maturity and legitimacy to this little project we’ve got, and give us some motivation to start to craft our musicianship.

The party itself was a very unexpected affair from my point of view and I spent the entire night walking through crowds of complete strangers. Not even one-off strangers, but people who had no connection with us or our friends or even friends of our friends. A good chunk of the crowd was people who say flyers that my roommate handed out and decided to come. Tmo spun our party pretty hard and as a result we had complete strangers in our basement, lounging on our porch, even crashing on our couches when the morning rolled around. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that there were strangers in my house; most people were considerate and positive and didn’t trash the place too bad, but when we opened things up for an open jam I got antsy. Whether it was carelessness or not knowing, my music gear got knocked around and abused and didn’t make it through the night in perfect working order. Considering we only had two outlets powering the entire Biosphere (2 bass amps, 3 guitar amps, pedals, mixer, vocal mic, lights) I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we didnt’ have any really bad electrical problems. But still. That room is a haven to me, easily my favorite room in the house, and to see people treat it and our musical equipment with such indifference and disregard knotted me up a bit. The Tragedy of the Commons in action.

I finally went to bed around 6:00 AM, about the time I usually get up for work. There were still a couple people hanging on, and the post-bar wave of people had come and gone. I could have easily gone to bed hours earlier, so I didn’t have much problem face-planting into my pillow. I woke up around noon very groggy and convinced that I was back in college. We spent most of the afternoon cleaning up, and amazingly enough the 1-2 looks better than it did before we started. Things are not only clean, they are put away and organized. We had a leisurely dinner tonight after all was set right again and played some table hockey, so it seems that things are back to what passes for normal around here.

It was a good time. For sure. The night turned to day pretty quickly, but upon surveying the mess in our kitchen and basement at first light I thought to myself that the days of the all-night ragers are not my speed anymore. The mess wasn’t it; my broken guitar amp wasn’t even it. I like hosting gatherings and I like bringing people together, but I’m less up on hedonism and overindulgence and staying up all night. Maybe if the function didn’t have alcohol I would have felt different (but if it didn’t have alcohol, sadly, nobody would have come.) I’m 26 going on 60 it seems. Fine. I now have a gig under my belt and had a chance to see some friends. As for now, though, the 1-2 is quiet and serene after the torrent of Saturday night into Sunday morning. I couldn’t ask for more.

Posted by davidtaus at June 5, 2005 11:13 PM | TrackBack