The first Hippeaux gig ever. We met at 10 am at the pad to load up the van. We missed the 505 to Lodoga by many a mile and had burgers at Eppie's somewhere nowhere in Sacramento at exactly the time we were scheduled to hit the "stage": 12:30 pm. After backtracking and hitting Maxwell, our patience and gas were running low. It was actually an interminably long distance yet, after touring the scenic hillsides of Lodoga (trees! gates! oh my!), even after finally, finally finding the East Park Reservoir. We trudged at ~10 mph on several miles of dirt roads, following paper plates scrawled with what looked to be chicken blood as signposts. Unbelievably, we found the Geekfest, after 4 hours of driving, searching, and frowning. I guess we were just happy to find the place, after all.
The weather was somewhere between 100 and 200 degrees, but fortunately we were right near the water. Of course, no drinking water was left, so in my wisdom I started drinking beer until John reminded me that alcohol dehydrates you. Oh, of course.
There were a handful of geeks still around, but they were all in the shade-- understandably. After a slight delay while the boys waited for me to return from the little boys' shack, we ripped and stumbled into the Mary Margaret O'Hara tune and loosened up a little bit. Blissed out Senseless went pretty well, er, I guess. Next came Dead Weight, which was really fast (but still) sounded good, I thought.
By the way, the whole time we were staring straight into the sun, I couldn't really see anything cos of the glare, I couldn't hear John or Eric, they coldn't hear themselves. (What?) We did surprisingly well considering we were burning our faces off and about to die from heat exhaustion.
"867-5309/Jenny" was probably our best received number (Eric: "Okay, we're taking requests for any song with a phone number in it."), and later the drugged out soundman asked us if we really wrote it! Of course we did, don't be ridiculous.
Then came the magnificent Chinese Puzzle Box/Watchdog, magnificent especially for the drumming (of course!) The geek crowd reacted enthusiastically by not moving. Afterwards came the evil ska song, during which fortunately the Head Geek nourished each of us with cold water. I messed up and Eric giggled like a school girl, but who cares, it was the ska song. The death metal/chicken sandwich song was well received I hear, but only for the first minute or so. Again, the crowd reacted enthusiastically by not moving.
We had to wait a little bit for John to re-tune up, negotiated for two more songs, which were Carolina and the Larry Blake's Samural Country Shitkicking Poseur Yngwie song. Carolina went off with barely a hitch. Probably the highlight of the show was Eric yelling "Yngwie!" and hearing it echo through the canyon. It was so funny he laughed til the "I love Yngwie!" part, then promptly forgot that the chorus came next. And of cousre I forgot the half-time part at the end, but whatever. By that time I was ready for some water, which of course was unavailable.
Pictures from this show:
