Quite an interesting weekend. STS9 was in town to close out their summer tour by doing a two-night run at the Masquerade Music Park with Umphrey’s on Friday and Saturday night. Having had seen a fair number of STS9 shows, I did not make it out for Friday night but was able to track down a ticket for Saturday night, thankfully on short-notice. Having had a ton of friends drive into town for the weekend to go and see the shows, and being somewhat of a fan of STS9 I did feel somewhat obligated to show up one evening, everybody said Saturday night was the night to check out. Nobody I know is a meteorologist.
Saturday started off excellent; there was a pre-STS9 BBQ near Cabbagetown, with DJing by myself, Captain Crunk, and various 404 peeps. There was a grill, a keg from Sweetwater, a nasty couple of hands of Gin Rummy I was involved in, and a hot Atlanta summer in a large backyard with friends. We all endured the heat at the BBQ for a few hours, and I caught a ride up to the show around 6PM to go check out the scene and run into some friends who drove up. After being run out of the lot mingling with friends around 7PM, I started to make my way towards the venue. On my way up there, I got a call on the phone from a friend who was in from Asheville who saw me walking in as he drove past. We met up, and headed on in for an evening full of music… or so we thought.
About twenty minutes into walking into the Masquerade, grabbing a bottle of water because of the heat of the day, and a place to stand, the sky literally opened-up with one of the nastier rainstorms I’ve seen. We attempted shelter beneath a tree trying to avoid some of the rain, which seemed like a smart idea until it turned into one of the nastier electrical storms I have seen in a long time, possibly since the tornado back in March. I moved out from under the tree eventually as to not get killed, and by the time the rain subsided. Making it out from the tree it was clear that there was not much power in the Poncey-Highland / Downtown areas of Atlanta. There were no lights, no house music or anything going on at the venue, they couldn’t even get on a mic to tell people the show was cancelled. We sat around and waited for about an hour to see if the power would come back on but that quickly declined into laughing at people for sitting around and continuing to rage it despite the expensive cost of drinks and the lack of music or any other sensory input happening. It took some finagling to get back to my car over near Cabbagetown after all this happened; the late-nights were not officially cancelled, and to be honest after everything that had happened before I was in the mood to hear both Captain Crunk and Telepath. I waited around with the Captain to see what was going to happen and it seemed like things might happen until we saw a transformer explosion about 20-30 minutes before showtime a block away from the Masquerade. Unfortunately, I think we both knew at that point it was no-go on any music at the Masquerade that evening. So it was around 12:30 in the morning before I finally got home and got dry clothes on. Around this time some friends from out of town called me to drive back into downtown to hang out at their hotel, as much as I wanted to see people, after the fiasco that was Saturday evening I was perfectly content falling out.
No make up show, refunds through Ticketmaster. Awesome. End of Tour, doing it wrong.
Today was not so bad however; there was a Rock Against Cancer benefit with Collective Efforts, Dubconscious and STS9 at Sweetwater Brewery here in Atlanta, which means a second day of sitting outside and drinking IPA in the hot Atlanta sun. Unfortunately, not as I had planned, this was the only live music I was going to get to see all weekend and it pretty much made up for it. The scene was, as I expected, much more intimate than anything that would have gone down at Masquerade this weekend, the set was probably about as long as the set would have been last night, and I’ve always been partial to the Live PA’s — its nice to hear things stripped-down and reconstructed. Additionally, it was good to enjoy the show in a group of about a dozen friends who do not all get together at the same time until something like this weekend happens.
So yeah, a little exhausted but no worse for the wear — and totally bitter about paying for a ticket last night. Oh yeah, and I remembered how much I enjoy people-watching.
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