Monday, May 2, 2016

Green rooms, rain and Robots

THERE'S A PRO and con to everything. It's all about how you deal with it - in our case, we just have a party.

The Dogwood Festival in Quincy is a tradition and a good time. I like the parade and the events surrounding it, especially this year since The District hosted the street party right in front of the store Saturday night.

The carnival I can do without. It clogs up traffic and kills our business on Saturday, normally our biggest day of the week. Actually you can still get within half a block of Second String Music, but some people drive up and see all the chaos and simply turn around. We did have some of our regular customers brave the closed streets and come in, and for that, we are always grateful.

It's all part of being downtown. There are certain weekends every year like this, and we make the best of it.

Saturday night, the Matt Roberts Blues Band opened and Super Majik Robots from St. Louis were the headliners. The huge Quincy Park District stage was placed right in front of our 505 Maine Street doors. Matt and the boys invited me to jam with them again, and we got excited as the 6 p.m. start time drew closer.

The sun was out about 4:30, but torrential rains arrived half an hour later. The start time got pushed back, and back again.

You can mope about the rain, OR you can open up the back room of Second String Music, call it the Green Room, and have a party. Can you guess what we did?

Victoria Kelley started it by asking if I knew "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. No, not really, but I can always try. Then Cori Lyssy started chiming in and suddenly we were playing "Purple Rain."

It's the Super Majik Pepper Prospect band!
Then, then, then .... the Super Majik Robots showed up. From St. Louis, the Robots are an incredible party band with amazing mashups and song choices. Dave, the guitar player, grabbed my Takamine acoustic guitar, and it was on.

At one point I looked up and Pete Magliocco and Matt Roberts were playing guitar, Adam Yates was smacking the cajon and everybody was hooting and hollering. It was still raining, and raining hard. Our friends were jammed into the back room (that's where the fridge is, naturally) and it was just an awesome mess.

The skies finally cleared and The District Street Dance was on. Matt was blasting away on the big stage, and people started flooding the streets for a party. Joining them to jam was a blast, just like last Sunday at the Club. At the end of the set Maine Street was a sea of people, and by the time the Robots started at about 10, the place was shaking.

The only downer was the drunk clown who walked onto the stage. Frank Haxel and I made sure he was safely escorted off, and security quickly took over.

Every gig has a story, right Frank?

Mike Sorenson of Bad Wolf Media chronicled the whole thing and shot this awesome video. I'm glad because the night was a blur, and just another notch in the Second String Music Green Room party list.

Geesh. I need to sleep until Wednesday. But I'll be ready to do it again, back room music store style.


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