This is one of my favorite stories, ever, period.
As many of you know, I used to be in a band called Agent 13. In case the reference isn’t familiar to you, Agent 13 is a character from the old TV series “Get Smart” who was always stationed as a lookout, in flowerpots, mailboxes, vending machines, you name it. (Apropos of nothing, my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I are currently rewatching every episode of the original series, and it’s just as gloriously stupid as it was the first time I saw it, when I was, um, eight.) (Apropos of another nothing, the name that came in second when we named the band? “Cone of Silence”. Again, from “Get Smart”.) (Apropos of a yet a third nothing, the name that came in third was “Tunnel Radio”, which, for those of you who don’t remember life before the Big Dig, was the special radio station that broadcast in, well, one of the tunnels.)
Where was I? Oh, yes. Agent 13. I thought of my old band one recent evening when I went out to hear some brand-new music. My crusade is underway, thanks to all you faithful correspondents – although this act wasn’t one of the ones you recommended. My pal Rachel, over in Holland, wanted me to go see her cousin, Orly, who was playing at McGann’s, downtown. And once you’ve spent six years of your life playing in smelly bars for audiences that consist entirely of the other bands on the bill, well, it’s pretty easy to have flashbacks, like this particular evening. And there was one evening I remember particularly well, because it was the evening we (almost) opened for Foghat.
It was at a club down in Quincy somewhere. We took the gig because it was, well, too good to pass up. Again, for those of you who don’t remember, Foghat was a uniquely American experience – a loud, cheap ’70s knockoff which was a staple of album-oriented radio, with a couple of noisy, forgettable hits and, presumably, several tons of Quaaludes. (Well, they were actually British, but I like to think that their brash crappiness fit right in, here on this side of the pond.) We had no idea what brought this gang of has-beens to a no-name club in Quincy – we assumed that it was just one of those rock-n-roll stories where somebody’s brother somehow became the backup sousaphone player and shafted everybody else out of the rights to the name.
So we show up at this club, all eight of us, and we unpack our stuff and await our sound-check. And as you probably know, bands sound-check in the reverse of the performance order, and so we found ourselves listening to Foghat do their sound check. And apparently there was a disagreement about the volume of the sound system – specifically, the auteurs who comprised Foghat felt that the sound system was not loud enough, that somehow, in a room somewhat smaller than an airplane hanger, almost completely devoid of people, they would be insufficiently deafening. And words were exchanged, and after something of a standoff (which we did not witness firsthand) Foghat apparently decided that its artistic integrity was being challenged, and they – well, they left.
We were dumbfounded, of course. And somehow, we and the middle band managed to fill the night, and the empty room, with an adequate amount of music. But it’s taken me decades to truly understand how mind-blowingly wrong this was.
You don’t leave. You never leave. Well, maybe if the room is flooded, or on fire, or your lead singer’s been shot. Then, maybe, you leave. But the idea that the show must go on isn’t just a movie cliche – it’s a badge of professionalism, an acknowledgment of responsibility. You don’t leave. If the sound system explodes – if the electricity fails – if the bartender faints – if you break half the strings on your guitar, or put a drumstick through the snare – you don’t leave. Your job is to play.
I remember, one time, I was in the audience at the Middle East upstairs, in a full room, listening to my pal James O’Brien, and the sound system made some sort of horrible noise and decided that its time on this earth had passed. And James unplugged his guitar, stepped off the stage, and waded into the middle of the dance floor, and finished his set, without amplification, smack in the middle of the audience. That, my friends, is how you do it. But apparently, it wasn’t good enough for Foghat.
Part of me would like to think that this was Foghat’s Wile E. Coyote moment – you know, the moment where you’re running and running and suddenly there ain’t no cliff no more. The moment where the Quaaludes and the years of creeping deafness finally pushed them over the proverbial edge. But, alas, life is never that fair. I imagine that somewhere, tonight, the members of Foghat are cranking up their ancient amplifiers, unburdened by their heinous record of professional irresponsibility, arguing with yet more sound men with the aid of their ear trumpets, reminiscing about the days when things were really loud, back before those pantywaists at the American Academy of Otolaryngology ruined the party for everyone.
But this is not for me to know. Time passes. My Agent 13 T-shirt moulders in my drawer, cheek by jowl with my other souvenir T-shirts, like Lynda Barry’s “Poodle with a Mohawk” and the New Yorker “Sunday afternoon carpenters” shirt a friend of mine gave me for helping him construct the largest dining room wall unit the world has ever seen. My evenings end a little earlier, the smoke dissipates a little faster, the stains on the venue floors trend from urine to coffee. And Orly, well, I managed to cast off my little wave of nostalgia to enjoy Orly’s set tremendously. And I’m pleased to report that the sound system was modestly employed, and that in spite of that insult, Orly – like the pro that she is – did not leave.