December 17th, 2005

WARSTARS
@
The Vinyl Club
Ashland, OR

* * *
With Josh (Eddy Warstar) out of commission, Andy and Jason (now Captain James T. Warstar) were a duo again. And just when Andy had been getting everyone to take on "Warstar" as a last name!

The next venue Andy and James T. decided to play was The Vinyl Club in Ashland. Back when the club used to be called "Daddio's" and was a punk rock dive, many great punk bands from back in the day had played there. Andy saw Nomeansno there some years ago. He had also noted, due to the low ceilings, how great the sound was in there.

Booking Warstars at The Vinyl Club had been a bit of a fiasco. First off, The Vinyl Club misprinted the poster for the show, having including photos of the previous drummer. Andy thought is was funny, and the poster stayed that way, although Andy also felt it might be some kind of omen.

Warstars was actually supposed to play The Vinyl Club the evening after the Lithia Park show. Andy had called down to the club the night before and the bartender told Warstars to show up around 10:30 pm.

So the night after the Lithia Park show, Warstars, with their first groupie entourage in tow, headed down to The Vinyl Club and loaded in. After unloading all their gear, the club owner says "Oh man! I'm sorry! I thought you guys were Warsaw! Oh shit. Oh yeah, and my partner says it's too late for you guys to play..."

Jacked.

Max, one of the club owner's down at The Vinyl was actually pretty cool about it all, and offered to reschedule Warstars for a later date. Andy then scheduled Warstars for about a month off. At some point during that month, Andy and James T. had a disagreement over rent or something (bandmates and roommates) and Andy canceled the gig.

After Andy and James T. patched things up, Andy re-scheduled the gig again. For this gig Andy and James T. planned on playing two sets of music: a clean channel set, and a dirty channel "punk rock" set. Warstars planned on modeling the Vinyl Club show after the Siskiyou Micropub show. Additionally, Andy Warstar took charge of printing out the posters for this re-scheduled Vinyl Club gig himself.

Andy and Captain James T. showed up at the Vinyl Club the night of the 17th at the agreed upon time with two very polished, well rehearsed sets of music. But no one was there to open the club.

After waiting around for a half an hour, Max shows up and says that the bartender was late for work, that he was supposed to let Warstars in to set up. He let's Warstars in to set up (now 45 minutes late). Then Andy and the Captain begin to rock.

The first set went exceptionally well. Andy had his friend Terry on hand filming the whole show, and doing an exceptional job. All the while, Andy had the creeping feeling that something else was going to go wrong. Throughout the show, Andy mentioned to the crowd (mostly Vinyl Club regulars) to "stick around for the second set", an omen in itself.

Then, right after the last song in the first set, the bartender announces "10 minutes guys..."
Warstars had no idea why they were being cut off and were quite pissed about it. Lugging around hundreds of pounds of equipment only to play for half and hour kinda sucks. Sometimes it's cool... This time it sucked. Having expectations often leads to disappointment.

So apparently, The Vinyl Club had double booked Warstars with some DJ from a radio station from Medford without telling them. Instead of playing for "10 more minutes", Andy made sure to stretch the last few choice songs out as long as possible.

And, as if to send the message to Warstars to finish up A.S.A.P., the bartender shut the lights off, and by doing so, ruining the last 10 minutes of Warstars video footage of the performance. That was really the icing on the cake, especially when Warstars forked out a chunk of change to have a professional camera man record everything.

Warstars finished off the show with four raging songs from their second "punk" set, including the debut performance of "U.S. Blues" by the Grateful Dead, done punk style. This show was also the debut performance of "Microwave Burrito" and "Two Thumbs Up".

The recording of Warstars at The Vinyl Club shows the tightness, versatility and professionalism Warstars exhibits when under pressure. Andy Warstar thanks Jen for showing up.

To see the concert poster,
click HERE.

SETLIST

Soundcheck:
U.S. Blues

1. The Wasp
3. The Wizard Of The Cardboard Tube
4. White Girls On Skateboards
5. Helpless
6. Microwave Burrito
7. Dangerous Hippie
8. Agenda
9. Ghengis Khan
10. Birthday Boy
11. Two Thumbs Up
12. Kill Yourself Now
13. Galileo
14. Virginia's Vagina
15. U.S. Blues


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