The Donna’s, Hot, but not on fire.
What was supposed to be a perfect music weekend spent in Minneapolis almost five years ago became an almost near death experience (maybe, I wanted to sound all Fox News and shit).
Something that rarely happens when you get to be over 30 and still have a thirst for live music in a club is planning a trip to a major city to take in as much live music as possible in a short period of time, more gas money bang for your buck. It happened, two close friends and I went to Minneapolis on a Friday afternoon. That night we saw The Donna’s at the Quest, on Saturday we saw The Pretenders at the State, and for Sunday we were slated to see Link Wray at the Fine Line. The first two shows were great. The Donna’s have an amazing stage presence. They found a way to capitalize on Joan Jett’s and Patti Smith’s sexiness and sound like AC/DC. The Prentenders great moment was when lead singer Chrissy started bitching about the Iraq War and GW Bush from stage, most people applauded her, but one jackass decided he was going to put her in her place. Chrissie responded. “Shut the Fuck Up and sit down, nobody cares what you have to say.” In which he did, because people booed him and clapped for Chrissie. He eventually left. Nice gesture. But most of all we were excited about Link Wray. He was 75 at the time (I think) and lived in Europe. Though he toured quite a bit, it was mostly in other countries. This was a rare appearance, and we knew, probabaly the last time to see a legend. Link virtually invented surf rock and the power chord, he also was the first to experiment with guitar distortion, something Kurt Cobain praised about Wray and claimed to be heavily influenced by his guitar work (accept for the fact that Wray was a 100 times better geetar player then Kurt.)
Sunday night started out good. We ate at the club in the balcony and watched the opening band. They were ‘ok’ but more on the punk / rock-garage rock side, not like Wray at all. I found it interesting that the whole band was pretty much emo-punk rock kids accept for the drummer. He had buttrocker long hair and a huge Peter Criss drumset (which probably would have gave Mike Rounds a boner). The drummer didn’t fit in. Shortly before the set ended I went to the bathroom for a #1 (thank gawd it wasn’t a #2!). As I was in the John the band played their last song in which Peter(head) on the drums decided to shoot off pyro and complete stupidity.
Mistake.
It caught the entire ceiling on fire within seconds. The ceiling was steel with a spray on insulation (that apparently was not fireproof). My friends literally had to crawl down the stairs of the balcony to get out. I was in the pisser, licking my balls or smelling my armpits, who knows. As I am standing there drying my hands, under one of those stupid hand dryers (BTW, You SUCK!) I hear a guy in the hallway yelling, “Get here NOW! My building is on fire!” I run out into the hallway, and he says “Get the fuck out.” Well duh. The bathrooms were in the back of the club on the main floor. He pointed me to the front, which was kinda dumb, considering I could have ran out the back door thru the kitchen (which is my point of all this). As I am running across the dance floor to the front door, I look up and see the ceiling engulfed in flames. The whole damn thing. And if you have only seen something like this in movies, seeing this in person is a whole nutter ball of wax. Luckily I got out right away. One of the main reasons was that most of the hipsters hadn’t showed up to the show yet (sold out). There was probably about 200 of us in a club that could easily sit 800. To this day, I say that is the only reason no one got hurt and the ceiling was steel and never collapsed.
Ironically a week later The Great White club fire occurred.
I wanted to say something after hearing about the Bangkok club fire today.
Always check the EXITS when entering a club you unfamiliar with. To this day, the first thing I do when entering a club or other entertainment facility is walk around and find all the exits.
Okay, now back to being a sarcastic jerk.