The bad news is, the Pads were swept at home by the Cubs. The good news is, all the other NL West teams were swept at home this weekend except Colorado (and even the Rox dropped two out of three). Is it annoying that the Padres didn’t pick up any ground on the Dodgers? You better believe it. But it’s not the worst thing that could have happened.

Coverage of our Cal League tour will continue in the next few days. Meantime, I’ve been assured that the occasional band story is okay in this space. With that in mind, here’s one from the vaults:

The year was 1995. Or maybe 1996. My old band, Ten Ton Pug, had landed its first gig outside of someone’s house (for our first gig inside someone’s house, we’d followed a stripper and folks were generally less enthusiastic about a bunch of guys playing musical instruments than they were about a naked lady shaking her thang about the place, but that’s a story for another day; hey, at least we weren’t upstaged by a puppet show).

We played at a place called the Boiler Room. At least, that’s what I think it was called. It was on University near 30th. Or was it El Cajon near 40th? The details are fuzzy now, but it was in that general part of town, adjacent a tiny parking lot that served a 7-11 and a laundromat of no great stature. The bar was on the left, the stage on the right. In front of the stage there was a "lounge" consisting of several couches, love seats, and the like. We opened for a couple of local acts: Pure Milk (a sort of post-punk band that did a killer, if unexpected, cover of Van Halen’s "Panama"; years later I saw them at the Casbah‘s old Halloween show and they played as KISS, complete with makeup) and Trippin’ in Polyester (who came on long after we’d departed).

The first thing to know about Ten Ton Pug is that we were an underground band. I mean, way underground. Our motto may as well have been "six shows in six years," but to be honest, even that might be giving us too much credit. On this particular night, the place was packed. I’m guessing there were somewhere in the range of 100-150 people there, easily the largest crowd we would ever play for.

One problem with original bands is they almost never get paid. We didn’t know that yet, and we didn’t really care. We had songs and were ready to bring ‘em to the people. Our take for this night was supposed to be two beers each (there were four of us in the band). Upon further investigation, it was two domestic beers in a bottle, no Sam Adams didn’t count as a domestic beer (presumably because it didn’t taste terrible), and if you were asking for your first beer this late in the night you must’ve already had it so this is your second.

Our set was supposed to last around 45 minutes, which is time enough for roughly 10 songs. We kicked off with a couple of our more boisterous tunes, then moved into a moody piece called "The Water Song" (the tune was a lot better than the title, which our singer eventually started announcing in French because it didn’t sound quite as lame).

The song begins with me plucking, all by my lonesome, a riff based on arpeggiated E chords (E, Esus4, E7 if you must know) through a clean channel. The notes ring and overlap in a way that kind of suggests the movement of water.

I quickly learned something important about sound and the way it travels in different rooms. We had run through all of our material hundreds of times in our bass player’s 8 x 8 spare bedroom and it sounded great. Only now, at the most inopportune moment, did the limitations of my amplifier become evident.

The trouble with trying to fill an entire bar with sound (we weren’t using a PA, just amps and whatever the heck our singer plugged his mic into) is that it’s hard to do at low volume. I was running an old Gibson Les Paul through an even older Fender Twin Reverb. To this day it is, under the right conditions, the best sounding amp I’ve ever played.

But the Twin was an old-school tube amp from the early ’70s, and it needed work. I didn’t have a lot of available cash at the time (and I was lazy), so the work didn’t get done. The practical implication of this was that any time I dialed the volume knob much past 2, the amp would start to smell like smoke and, as we discovered, make horrible popping noises. Neither of these is a desired effect when playing in an overcrowded room.

In our bass player’s house, I seldom had occasion to turn the volume past 2. Why it never occurred to me that this might not be the case in a gig situation I’ll never know, but needless to say, the opening riff bore more resemblance to static electricity than moving water. It sounded horrible. The beginning of a song is supposed to hook the listener, make him want more. This particular intro demanded clarity of sound, and instead got snap, crackle, pop.

So I did what any self-respecting wannabe rock star would do in that situation. I panicked. Worse yet, I stopped playing. The one thing you’re never supposed to do in a live situation is stop playing. To this day (save once, when the sprinklers went off at a backyard party and we were in danger of being electrocuted if we didn’t stop and turn everything off immediately), it’s the only time I’ve ever done that.

I hadn’t been on stage in front of people in several years, and certainly not before that many people and so many that I didn’t already know. I wanted the spotlight? I had it. Everybody was just kind of staring at me, wondering what I was going to do next. I was wondering what I was going to do next.

As it turns out, what I did next was start the song again. More crackling. This time I just played through the whole thing (eventually it kicks into a distorted frenzy which drowned out any unintentional noises coming from the amp). After the song was over, I stepped forward and thrust my left arm skyward like Derek Smalls when he finally breaks free of his cocoon at the end of "Rock ‘N’ Roll Creation."

Folks seemed to like this gesture, and the whole episode served as kind of an ice-breaker for us. After that, we played a lot looser and made it through the rest of our set without further incident (unless you count my forgetting to switch pickups during the solo for Cream’s "Sunshine of Your Love," which nobody seemed to notice; I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted).

All things considered, the gig went pretty well. And by the end of the night, I’d come to realize a few important truths: playing in front of people, despite any initial anxiety one might feel, is an absolute blast; I desperately needed a new amp; and domestic beer in bottles is about the worst form of payment there is.

Obligatory Baseball Stuff

• ‘Dream’ might wake up Portland (Oregonian). Talks about Jered Weaver and Tim Stauffer. Incidentally, Stauffer was promoted to Double-A Mobile last week.
• Inside the Draft: Kevin Towers, Part I (MLB). Towers touches on a number of items, including college vs high school players and signability. Quotable: "Picking 1-1 is actually good. You get the chance to pick the player whom you feel is the best in the country and nobody can snag them in front of you. It’s a tremendous position to be in. Hopefully we’re never in it again."
• Inside the Draft: Kevin Towers, Part II (MLB). Towers notes that draft philosophies change from year to year depending on the needs of an organization at a particular point in time. Quotable: "It sounds as if there might be more organizations going with college players. If that’s the case then we might be fortunate enough, without a second-round pick, that there might be a very good high school player for us in the third round just because people are going to be drafting so heavily with college."
• Wells stays home after suffering hand injuries (NC Times). "Towers said Wells’ replacement in the rotation will come from Triple-A Portland, but that the club hasn’t yet decided who it will be." Right-handers Justin Germano, Dennis Tankersley, and Brian Sweeney are mentioned as possibilities.
• Left-hander Wells severs tendon in right wrist (U-T). In addition to three pitchers listed above, veteran Joey Hamilton is also mentioned as a potential replacement.
• Beavers Progress Report Through 32 Games (PDX Beavers). Jonathan provides a solid rundown of the goings-on at Portland thus far.
• Squiggy is in the house: ‘Laverne and Shirley’ star now M’s scout (Seattle Times). David Lander works as a scout in the Cal League. How cool is that. [Thanks to Jeff for this one]

Other Stuff

Things pile up on my desk. I give them to you. Now they are your problem.

• Beatallica Like the Beatles? Like Metallica? Why not try Beatallica…
• Googlism Entertain yourself on the Web for hours, minutes even.
• Readability. Ducksnorts tends to be written at about a 9th or 10th grade level. [Also via Jeff]

Padres at the Pirates for three. We’ll get back to the baseball tomorrow. Thanks for indulging me today. Let’s go win some games…