The Death of a Chinese Booking

As mundane as my musical career has been--I have never lit myself on fire and have only been mildly electrocuted, but willfully on my part. So tomorrow is easily one of the highlights. I'm performing at a Chinese restaurant. Again.

My Chinese restaurant performance history boils down to one year in college. We convinced a run-of-the-mill eatery in Chinatown in Philadelphia to allow us to bring 2 kegs of beer into their restaurant and make a scene; while casual diners sat around us. I guess there were about 30 of us.

Anyway, they moved us into a private room the following year, and I played 'The Rainbow Connection' for a private party. There was something about how the garlic sauce hitting the water chestnuts that brought out the flavor in my acoustic guitar that night, and if Kermit's frog brethren hadn't been butchered and served to us as 'pork lo mein' that night, they'd have been proud of my rendition.

Well tomorrow night, there's a real band situation happening. Me and the Misanthrope are sitting in with Via Skyway, our pal George's ongoing project, at M Shanghai Den in Williamsburg. We are going to eat the bejesus out of some Chinese food (9:30) , take in a set by Hype of the States (10:30) and then crash the stage like braised duck at 11:30. I don't know about the acoustics, but the food looks really delicious.

Between now and then, I'll be coming up with all kinds of stage banter. But for now I'm excited that Rob has agreed to play the entire set with chopsticks, and that the chicken wire that separates the band from the fans will still have chickens hanging from it.

See you there!