Thanks to everyone who made it out to the Station 4 Concert last night.

Riverbottom Suckerfish played first, and they were amazing in more ways than one. Their drummer Nicole is positively insane, and the Station 4 sound guy told me she reminded him of “Animal” from the Muppets. Their lead singer Christine is a great player and singer with killer taste in guitar tone. No wonder they don’t need a bass player!

Jagged Spiral played second. It was a good-but-not-great set. I’ll take the blame for our less-than-stellar performance. Or I could chalk it up to the round of Jagermeister shots SBI bought for us. Sabotage!

Deathroned had to cancel, so we got to relax a bit between songs and not setup/teardown so quickly.

S.B.I. played last and kicked ass with their best show I’ve seen so far. I tried to sabotage their show by buying them a round of Jagermeister shots, but it just made them better! Not fair. I’m glad they went last. I am jealous of Tony’s bass rig, especially the wireless. I notice Mark now has a wireless mic. They were really tight. Sounds like they’ve been practicing… curse them!

Speaking of curses,The St Paul Police Department were also there, and did a stellar job of placing a parking ticket on my car. The ticket was for parking after 2:00 AM. It was placed at 2:10 AM with all the precision craftsmanship one would expect from St. Paul’s Finest. It couldn’t have been easy to place the ticket on my car between my trips back and forth from loading gear out, (seriously, my dome light was still on!) but I have a feeling this must have been a Special Ninja Parking Ticket Officer, trained in the arts of stealth and speed.

Legal matters aside, we had a fabulous time with Riverbottom Suckerfish and S.B.I. lots of fun people and good times. Station-4 is such an awesome venue. They have a great stage and sound system, I just wish they had a parking lot.

Firstly, thanks to everyone who bought tickets and came out to support Jagged Spiral last Sunday in the 2009 Battle of the Bands. We had a great time, and hope you did too.

I just found out the winner of the battle ended up being The Company Don’t trust the songs on their myspace, they put a lot of Energy and Fun into their set.

I got to speak to them at the battle of the bands (as they were tearing down and we were setting up) .

“Thanks alot,” I said wryly. “You guys coulda sucked!”

But Xtna put it into perspective for me. I said, “How can we compete with that? Those guys were great!”

She looked at me sternly and said, “Your job is not to beat them, your job right now is to go up there and Scare the Children.”

So we did. I’d say we decimated all other bands that night on several levels. The Richter Scale would be one of them. A spiritual scale would be another one. I guarantee you some of the fans of The Company are still huddled under the stairs, shivering with fear. And Jagged Spiral drank more than the other bands and their fans combined. (…mostly because they weren’t old enough to drink.)

But we couldn’t beat them in ticket sales. Ah well, like Sun Tzu says; choose your battles.

Thanks to Mark, Tony and Justin from SBI for showing up and supporting the Spiral, and thanks to Kim, Nancy, James, Teresa, Dan, Boog, Fast Eddie, The Fox, Jess, Jenn, Xtna and anyone else who made it or bought a ticket for the show (Saveau reported that he was present at the show in spirit, and from the symptoms he described, no one would have wanted him physically present…)

Thanks to the blazing-fast response time of the Jagged Spiral Internet E-mail Gig Retraction Service, disaster was averted for many loyal Jagged Spiral fans, when it was announced that their Nov 29th performance at the Terminal Bar was canceled.

Not so much canceled as…well, let’s be honest: we got fucking canceled. My understanding is that because of the (former) booking agent at the Terminal Bar, the show was double-booked (technically octuple-booked), and many bands had to be dropped. SBI and Pygar performed as scheduled, but Jagged Spiral and Gedwik were pulled off the bill to make room for a cover band.

No, I’m serious.

No hard feelings towards SBI or the Terminal Bar, but we do hope that their former booking agent has a 140lb Ampeg 8×10 Bass Cabinet fall on her.

Meanwhile, the number of sound mixers for the show was strangely underbooked. In fact, there were none. Random members of the crowd were pulled out and forced to work the sound board at gunpoint. Josh bravely volunteered himself and myself to mix sound for SBI. (Colin did not make the show, choosing to stay at home instead and get laid.)

So while Jagged Spiral did not actually *play* at the Terminal Bar, we certainly did make the walls shake when Josh managed to turn SBI’s kick drum up to One-Hundred and Eleven.

Props go to my good friend James, who made it to the show because he didn’t get the notice that the show was canceled. His diligence and dedication to the Spiral has awarded James the dubious honor of being at more Jagged Spiral shows than Colin.

We’re trying to get SBI and/or the Terminal Bar to feel sorry enough for us that they offer up a sympathy gig, and we’ll keep you posted on how that works out.