August 19, 2005
Columbus
Skully’s
w/ Zachery Allan Starkey
House of Cards
Debaser
This was our first and only show at Skully’s, a large dance club that’s a staple of High Street. It probably qualifies as a “mid-size” venue, but to me it feels like a big chasm of dance floor emptiness (at least when a bunch of bozos play there, haha). Zack Starkey, another staple of High Street, was kind enough to put us on, along with our buds in Debaser and a band called House of Cards (who I don’t really remember anything about). I remember we got big buckets of free PBR from TJ Steppe, another staple of High Street, who was running sound that evening. I believe it was the first gig we were on where the bands got that sort of treatment, and I felt like Jon Bon Jovi.
Debaser went on first, and by this time they had switched from a rock band format to a Depeche Mode format. Our friend Bryan was still singing, and he was wearing a sparkly shirt while grooving around on stage. At one point he joked while pointing to a spot on the mostly empty floor that “Right here is where I pictured a bunch of people dancing.” Later in their set, Miles Curtiss (who was performing with Zack that evening) burst into the club and started dancing like a maniac in front of Bryan, which I think cheered him up. I told Bryan afterwards that I now had a major crush on him because of his shirt.
House of Cards went next, but that’s been deleted from my memory, probably due to the free PBR. We went after them, and I remember being disappointed that we couldn’t better utilize the enormous wall behind the stage for projection. We were still doing a slideshow at this point, so it ended up being this comical juxtaposition where these small images were being projected on a tiny portion of this massive space, and a little slanty to boot. I sang along to the massive booming sound from the PA, and flailed about on the enormous stage. At one point during the set Zack and Miles took it upon themselves to come up and start dancing, and to also jam my butt with the microphone stand. About ¾ of the way into the set, TJ quietly dropped me a note that said they were running late and that we had time to do one more, and “sorry about that,” and I think that made me feel like Richie Sambora. Zack then went on with both Miles and Brian joining him on synth. I don’t remember much of what happened, except for some drunken dancing and Zack arguing with a girl at the bar (from the stage).
We never had much luck booking Skully’s ourselves, and by the time I was confident that we could make at least a small dent in their space, we didn’t really have any contacts there. But so it goes, just like the club, with its gaudy sign outside that demands your attention to this day. Dance on, Skully’s.