The Mardicrawl was what I would describe as a failure of monumental proportions. But I predicted that weeks ago, so I reserve the right to give the others in the band plenty of "I told you so's." This event was held in a dead mall, St. Louis Centre, and had bands playing in empty stores spanning all four floors of the place. But, because of the shit condition the mall is in, the escalators weren't working. So patrons had to hike up multiple stories to get around. But that doesn't matter too much because there were only about 20 people in the entire mall and most of the people walking around were from bands who had already played.
We were scheduled to play stage 218, but when we got there- there was no PA. So after standing around, discussing how much of a poorly planned event this was, after about an hour we decided to leave, as there were no people of authority to tell us what to do. Before loading our shit back into the freight elavator to leave Tim found Daniel and got things straightened out and got us a stage with a PA. I keep saying stage, but there were no stages. We ended up playing in what used to be a Walden Books store.
Much to my dismay we set up and played a short set. The shorter the better because both Heather and I were sick and just wanted to go home. Thankfully it appears the few people there didn't actually pay for tickets, we gave them tickets for free and in John's case- he was helping us move our gear and he was given a wristband for free. I'm glad we didn't take anyone's money for this event, if we did- I say you should get a refund.
There were only a handful of moments worth remembering the whole night. One such thought is that while we were playing some song, I don't remember which, all three people in the Walden shop started tearing the place down. They were pulling down ceiling tiles, pulling down shleves, smashing shit up... it was really funny...they were destroying the place. Another funny moment was when we were leaving, pulling out of the parking garage, when we heard this woman screaming. Apparently she took a swing at some security guards and they took her down. They were beating on her and Gary and I just watched in astonishment.
The mall was nearly as vacant with us in it, as it would have been without us. There were more people there because they were playing and in a band, than there were patrons. In all seriousness this event was poorly concieved; trying to get a large amount of people to come downtown on a thursday night and hike up and down 4 floors of stairs was a huge error in judgement for this event. Originally posted in the Mardicrawl website, they expected 50,000 people (or some figure like that according to Gary) and in reality, there were less than 50 people there, probably less than 30 people there.
Note this show has been moved to Saturday Feb
