In the last installment of my Cheesy Fuckin’ Funtime Pages I talked about the hardest Thing I Ever Did, which was organizing a big 2 week festival of Heavy Metal, and Stoner Rock called Premature Emissions. At that time, I was still in the middle of the planning, booking, scheduling, and the general madness of dealing with more than 60 bands, promoters, sponsors, venues, and (shudder) booking agents, but the actual fest was still months away. As of this writing the festival has happened and I’m very happy to report that it was a big success! Woo hoo, and Phew!
We had some glitches, and a couple of bad nights, and had to cancel one show, but considering how much we had going on, it all went killer! Our biggest show, and arguably the best, was eyehategod, with Akimbo, Sweet Cobra, and If He Dies He Dies. The house was packed, and the bands were killer, especially eyehategod who gave one of the most intense and LOUDEST performances I’ve ever seen / heard in my life. Great guys too. We smoked about a thousand joints with them before, after, and during their set. Being a NOLA band, ehg lost all of their equipment in the floods that came with Hurricane Katrina in September, so I wish them well, especially Mike, who is still missing as far as I know.
Another great night was the YOB show, with another packed house and another kick-ass performance from these total fucking GODS of Doom who came to play for us all the way from Eugene, Oregon. Our local heroes Indian also tore it up that night, and so did brazenly awesome new-comers Trifog, who played the HELL out of their first show ever. To top off that night, we blatently stole Weedeater from another venue down the street and tagged ‘em on to the end of our night, which at The Note (always our venue of choice) goes until 4am in the muthafuckin’ morning. Muthafuckas.
There were other great shows, and every single band, local or from far flung places, played the livin’ shit out of our humble fest and really blew us away.. The only lameness was in crowd sizes for some of the nights, which can be mostly attributed to audience burn-out (c’mon! Can’t you pussies hang out in a bar aal night, every night of the week for half a month? Whaddaya have jobs or somethin’?), or competing metal shows in other venues (I’ll never forget one band asking if they could leave their own show to go see another band across town!), or my own promotional skills (which could always use improvement!), and the obvious fact that the music I love and chose to feature is also loved by other stoned-ass, anti-social, people-hating misanthropes who don’t dance, sing, or otherwise display any outward approval of events beyond their own smoke filled heads. In other words, we tend to AVOID large crowds, rather than comprise them. But I really have to hand in to my people, who supported the whole thing as best as their psychotic distaste for other human meat-bags would allow!

THE HIGH AND THE LOW
In addition to the great music, we had other performers, and one of my favorite moments was when T2: The Human Cyclops took the stage.
We had an unfortunately small audience that night for a bunch of REALLY killer bands, some of whom had traveled pretty far to play for us. We fed them plenty of free beers and marijuana cigarettes, and the folks who were there to see them were all VERY enthusiastic, so the bands didn’t grumble too much, but I could tell that they were slightly disappointed. Until I grabbed the mic, called everyone to gather around the stage, and introduced my friend T2, who lifted off his sunglasses to reveal the GIANT HOLE where his left eye used to be (cancer got it long ago). That made people a little uncomfortable, but they were enraptured once I started rattling off the prepared leading statements, and T2 proceeded to blow cigarette smoke out his eye socket, then spit beer all me from his eye socket, then (as we dimmed the lights) he put a flashlight in his mouth, and it streamed out of his eye socket, and as a finale, everyone got REAL close, and he waved goodbye to the happy people with his tongue, poking through his eye socket. You’ve never seen a group of metal heads more impressed or satisfied with an evening’s entertainment than we did that night. It was a highlight of the entire fest.
The lowlight of the festival for me was my own damn fault in that I missed the Belly Dancers that we had booked on the Yob night. Hips From Hell did a very erotic dance to an Electric Wizard song, and I heard from everyone that there were naked titties involved. Arg!!! Damn my luck!!!

EH? WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY?

Speaking of missing things, ya ever notice that I seem kind of spaced-out sometimes? That, especially in night-clubs, restaurants, and crowded bars, my eyes tend to glaze-over, and it’s not entirely clear if I’m paying any attention to you, or comprehending what’s being say to me at all? I might even give nonsensical answers to simple questions or just smile and nod blankly when a verbal response would be more appropriate. Ya ever notice that about me?
Well, children, that’s because I have something called Tinnitus, and it’s pretty bad. It is a condition in which a person “hears” noises in their brain that are not really there. For me, it’s a constant “shushing” white-noise, combined with a high-pitched squeal, and a thudding low-end sound that I sometimes think is my own pulse. I say that these sounds are in my brain and not my ears, because that’s the latest theory in medicine, which still has no cure for this very annoying disorder.
Apart from the obvious impairment to my ability to hear other things over these noises, there are other side-effects of Tinnitus, including the above mentioned space-outs and inability to concentrate, as well as depression, claustrophobia, anxiety, and a general feeling of being packed in a cottony material that surrounds you and obscures the rest of the world. Causes of Tinnitus include head trauma, infection, disease, blockage, or exposure to loud sounds such as gunshots and explosions, or as in my case LOUD FUCKING MUSIC. While the cure still eludes science, treatment includes psychiatric therapy, hypnosis, electro-magnetic therapy, and a method called “masking” in which an electronic earpiece produces a noise that counteracts the noises that the individual subject is experiencing.
I myself had a strange sort of masking experience during the eyehategod show, when all of a sudden the band must have produced the exact noise to counter those in my skull, and like a shroud being lifted from me, everything was clear. I could hear people. People! Talking in a club! Oh, Joy! Oh, Wonder! Oh shit, it’s over. It was weird. The mud that usually encases my head was gone for a second or two, and I could hear as clear as a bell, but the moment was fleeting and as the band moved on to some other sound, the mud quickly oozed back into place, and has been much worse ever since.
The bottom line is that my ancient ear-holes just can’t takes it any more, and I’ve decided to semi-retire from live music booking. I haven’t even gone to more than three shows in the months that have followed the Festival, and even then I hid way far away from the loudness. My extremely loud-music days are over folks. Sad but true
So, that’s the wrap-up on my adventures in festival making. It remains to this day the hardest thing I ever did that I didn’t really have to, and I’d still totally recommend that people try doing something similar in their own hometowns. My extra special thanks go out to Ronnie, Dave, Cara, and especially Sean, with out who’s help I never coulda done it It was totally fun as fuck, and despite my ringing ears, I might come out of hiding to put on a show here and there in the near or distant future. Something quiet, like Space Rock.


HERE ARE THE BANDS/PERFORMERS THAT WE SCHEDULED

AKIMBO
AMERICAN HERITAGE
AMPLIFIED HEAT
ARCH
A THOUSAND KNIVES OF FIRE
AUDIOBON
BEHOLD! THE LIVING CORPSE
BLACK COBRA
CHAPSTIK
CHOPPER CHICKS
COFFIN LIDS
CONIFER
COULDRON
CRISCO FIST
DARE DIABLO
DARK FOG
THE DEALBREAKERS
DECIBATORS - cancelled
DELICIOUS
DEVIL TO PAY - cancelled
DIXIE WITCH
DOVE
THE DUTCHMEN
EARTHRIDE
18 SPEED TRANNY
ELDEMUR KRIMM
EYEHATEGOD
FALLOPIAN DUDES
FOURGOTTEN FOUR - cancelled
GATES OF SLUMBER
GRAVITRON
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
HELLZ FUNK
HIPS FROM HELL
IF HE DIES HE DIES
INDIAN
JOHNNY VOMIT
KING VALLEY
KNIFE OF SIMPSON
LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR
MANHANDLERS
MELK THE G6-49
MINSK
MURDER JUNKIES - cancelled
NEGATIVE REACTION
OCEAN
THE PB ARMY
PINES
PLAGUE BRINGER
ROADSAW - cancelled
ROLLO TOMASI
SALT OF THE EARTH
SLEESTAK
SOLACE
SUPERCHRIST
SWEET COBRA
T2: THE HUMAN CYCLOPS
TEST SITE
TRIFOG
URINAL MINTS - cancelled
WAR INJUN
WEEDEATER
YAKUZA
YOB
ZAIUS - cancelled