DOWNLOAD: Harry & The Potters and Uncle Monsterface, "Drunk in Athens Part I" (mp3)
Day seven:Someone forgets to tell the kids how to rock.
Paul: We take Uncle Monsterface around the UGA campus because he wants to meet some of his fans and pass out some flyers for tonight’s show. We find an arcade in the student center and Uncle Monsterface beats Dan in a round of air hockey. Eventually, we end up at Lori’s copyshop and Uncle Monsterface gets giddy and starts photocopying his face. He’s going to mail one to his mom.
Marty Allen: More and more we are learning that the ladies love the Monsterface. Michael Stipe was nowhere to be found.
Jesse: Probably our most anticipated show of the tour was to be at Athens, Georgia’s legendary 40 Watt Club. They sell a t-shirt there drawn by Jamie Hewlett, pre-Gorillaz, of his character Tank Girl -- herself wearing a 40-Watt t-shirt. A pretty ringing endorsement, if you ask me. The venue itself is a spacious but comfy room with a Tiki-themed bar off to one side, a high stage and lots of room for the band. The folks who run it are good people and very helpful.
It was arguably the worst show of the tour.
Marty Allen: Someone forgot to tell the kids how to rock.
Jesse: Nothing goes wrong, exactly. Uncle Monsterface isn’t booed off the stage or anything. But after the Uncle Monsterface intro, usually a big number where the crowd is encouraged to cheer the name of the band, it sounds like there might be a problem. This is a crowd that wants to sit back and listen to a show, not be dragooned into a lot of call-and-response. When we came in I saw the high stage and recalled a stage dive I once witnessed. A kid had jumped off and, like a drop of Dawn in greasy water, the crowd parted for him, and he took a nasty face-plant. It’s like that for Uncle Monsterface tonight, throwing themselves into the arms of an audience that isn’t inclined to catch them.
Marty Allen: Now, we realize we are a big, silly band. There are giant videos of prairie dogs dancing while we sing songs about ‘throwing your lion-fist into the air.' At this point in our rock and roll lives, we're used to winning a crowd over because we simply love what we do and it's fun to watch. But these guys, they were just utterly nonplussed. They sat still, they nodded their heads occasionally, they watched, they mustered some cheers. By the time we got to the finale with Lobster Building, where we invite anyone who wants to onto the stage to rock out with us, I had to make fun of them in order to get any participation at all, telling them how much more Raleigh ruled than they did in order to cajole a handful of people up with us.
Jesse: Maybe we broke the first of my tour rules; we had expectations. And the road doesn’t work like that.
