14. Not So Much a Band

How irksome is this music to my heart!
——Henry VI, Part II, II.i

On Sunday morning, August 22, the members of Loudmouth arose early for our first church gig. It was at St. Andrew's, an English-speaking evangelical congregation that serves mostly diplomats and expatriates. St. Andrew's was the venue where Q. had claimed to have a confirmed booking with Loudmouth, Jimmy & the Pullet Pluckers, and Mob Barley on the following weekend. He even had that concert posted on itickets.com for a while.

St. Andrew's meets in two locations. The early service was in something like a school auditorium on the north end of Athens; the later service was closer to central Athens in a former Lutheran church near the French embassy. Accompanied by E., we carried our gear to Thissio Square and took the Metro all the way to Kifissia, its northern terminus, where some guys from the church met us and drove us to the auditorium.

The first time I lost my temper in Athens was while setting up for that morning's concert. I had just learned from Steve, the pastor, that I couldn't plug in because he had no more cables long enough to reach the input box, which was permanently mounted in a room backstage. "Then I might as well take a walk," I snapped at Steve, and stepped away for a minute so I could cool off.

The problem could have been averted if I'd borrowed a long XLR cable from Athens Christian Center, but of course I hadn't known I would need one. (When we got back I went ahead and borrowed that cable, and kept it for a few days until I had the chance to buy one for myself.) Later I mentioned the incident to Q., who immediately got defensive and claimed that he'd told Steve all about our audio needs. However, given Q.'s general ineptitude with sound and technical issues and his habit of vague communication, I'm inclined to believe that what he had told Steve was neither precise nor accurate.

Eventually we solved the problem by plugging me, along with the guitars, into a keyboard amp that had a couple of extra channels, and I guess we ended up with a decent mix—or if we didn't, no one said anything about it. I apologized to Steve and we played a few songs, which still sounded pretty ragged and amateurish.

While hanging out after that service, I saw my first copy of the Loudmouth demo CD, which Holly had managed to obtain from E. I don't have one myself, and never heard it, but Holly later listened to it and said it sounded pretty much like our last practice CD, bad mixes and all. This embarrassed her, since it hardly represented the best efforts of anyone in the band. But what intrigued me most was the blurb in the liner notes:

Loudmouth is not so much a band, they are more a community of artist [sic] that desire to encourage each other to use their God given talent to its fullest extent and intended purpose.

"Not so much a band" was certainly true. But "community of artist(s)"? For that to be accurate, we'd have to know each other, wouldn't we? How could we be a "community" when half of us had barely met before coming overseas? And there were credits in the liner notes for musicians I'd never met. Bands can be manufactured; communities can't. Furthermore, although "not so much a band" represented how most of us felt about our situation, that's not how we wanted to feel. I know I wanted us to be a band, and was frustrated that we hadn't been allowed the time to become one. Neither did "not so much a band" seem to line up with the festivals-and-radio-airplay marketing plan Q. and E. had presented us. Or were we on the "no exposure until you have a CD to sell" marketing plan now? I forget.

Before the second St. Andrew's service, at the former Lutheran church, the small black bag containing all my cables and other gear turned up missing. It had been left in one of the cars that brought us down from the auditorium, and fortunately it was found before I freaked out. This gig went a little more smoothly, thanks in part to a better sound system, and a couple of our songs seemed to have improved over the morning renditions—an encouraging sign. The rest of our fearless leaders showed up, along with the U4ic girls and Sarah, now in her second day of babysitting duty with Logan. Remember, she came over to be an on-camera coach for TV. Instead she was changing diapers. She had tried to set up a babysitting schedule with Barbie, Hannah, and Desiree, but those parties flaked out of their appointed times almost immediately.

After lunch at a sidewalk café near Thissio Square, we returned to Athens Christian Center, where Q. insisted that everyone take a nap. Sarah and I weren't tired and wanted perhaps to do a little sightseeing, but we couldn't get any coherent information out of Q. about when he might need us to come back. So we sat in the courtyard, played cards, and basically killed time until Q. gave us our marching orders: gather our gear and carry it to Hope Place, the tiny basement outreach center near Omonoia Square operated by Elias. We donned the T-shirts we'd bought from Elias on Friday and packed ourselves into Hope Place along with the German and French kids, where we spent about an hour getting fired up for that evening's outreach event.

This concert took place at Eleftherias Square in Koridallos, a suburb west of Athens. (It ain't on a lot of maps, but it's on this one.) The square is a picturesque spot surrounded by shops and restaurants. We set up right in front of a fountain. Because of the distance, we sent all our instruments and gear over in cars, and took a bus to get there ourselves. When we arrived, my black gear bag was missing again, and I lost my temper again. This time I snapped at one of the German King's Kids who was helping to set up sound. When B. finally located the bag, it had again been left in a car. I resolved (1) to keep the gear bag inside a bigger bag I was using for instrument stands; (2) not to let my stuff out of my sight again.

I wish I could say everything else went fine that night, but the opposite's true. We suffered through the worst, most disorganized sound check I've ever witnessed, followed by an embarrassing introduction from Q. ("Are you ready to PARTY?!?!?!?") that seemed to puzzle the small but curious crowd. He didn't bother to make sure Loudmouth was ready to play before introducing us—I, for one, wasn't finished setting up. It was our sloppiest performance yet, and U4ic's was even sloppier. The choreography teams did their thing, Elias preached between sets, and team members handed out CDs when they weren't performing. And on and on it went, getting uglier and uglier. I guess Elias kept asking Q. for more music, and Q. kept ordering us back onto the stage, ready or not. I think I played four times that night: two Loudmouth sets when we didn't yet have enough solid material for one, plus me trying to play along with U4ic on stuff we hadn't rehearsed at all, plus me, B., and Ben Dally on his djembe in another unrehearsed set—I don't even remember what songs we did. At such events, the music is meant to draw a crowd for the evangelist to preach to, but this night the music was so bad that people left every time we played. The King's Kids did better at attracting spectators.

When we finally got back to Athens Christian Center, it was midnight. We were tired, discouraged, and determined to find more practice time, to prevent future embarrassments. Most of us were also hungry, although it was too late to do much about it. Q. hadn't provided any dinner, and some of us hadn't managed to grab anything for ourselves in Koridallos. I'd been afraid to leave, even for a few minutes, because I never knew when Q. might tell me to play another set. Brian and I were among the lucky few: He'd managed to grab some souvlaki sandwiches and gave me one of them. Holly invited us all to get up early the next day for a band meeting, which struck me as the best idea I'd heard all day.

Since Youth in Action were out of town, Q. had given Sarah and me our own room for a couple of nights, which he jokingly called a "conjugal room." We didn't think this was funny. One, it denoted a prison environment. Things were bad enough at Athens Christian Center, but it wasn't quite a prison, and we were hoping it wouldn't become one. (More later about that.) Two, having our own room didn't mean there was enough privacy to, uh, conjugate.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: Part of what made our sound check so bad was Q., who sat down at Ben Dally's drum set and started banging clumsily on it while I was trying to tune my violin. I had to yell at the top of my lungs just to get his attention. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: What are you doing? I'm trying to tune here.
Q.: I'm trying to get the crowd pumped up.
Me: Right now I think it's more important that I be in tune.

Consider, dear reader: If Q. thought he could pump up a crowd with his lousy drumming, what did he need a band for?