Wednesday, October 12, 2005
The Mike C. College Tour Fall 2005, Part I
If you're a member of the Rutgers community, you can witness my debut as a Battle Of The Bands judge this Friday afternoon at SLAMfest.
Yeah, I was asked to be one of the "record industry executives" judging the competition in which five Jersey bands will each play one original song and one cover. We will have microphones and have been encouraged to make rude comments in our best faux British accents. The winner of the battle will get to play a short set before the headliners, New Jersey ska stalwarts Catch 22, who go at 6 p.m. There's also a fashion show and a screening of Batman Begins (to which I keep wanting to say, Batman Begins To What?).
It's all going down at the new Sport Club Field on Busch Campus. If it rains—a 60 percent chance as of now—the whole shebang will be at the venerable College Avenue Gym, a place where, as an RU student in the early '90s, I saw shows by the likes of The Replacements, Fishbone, Concrete Blonde, and Penn & Teller. It's also the place where I saw Radiohead open up for Belly, and if memory serves, I took a final exam there once. Get yer SLAMfest info here. As far as I know, this event is only open to Rutgers students, teachers, and administrators.
UPDATE, OCTOBER 13: Due to all the rain this week, the event will be at the College Avenue Gym. I feel bad for the RU Recreation Department because they clearly wanted to show off their new facility, but keeping this thing on College Avenue can only help attendance, not to mention affording an aged alumnus like myself more time to stroll around the grounds of the campus where I spent 99.44 percent of my time at the multi-campus university. I could probably count the number of times I went to Busch Campus on my fingers and toes; maybe I'd need one extra hand or foot.
On a perhaps unrelated note, the Playlists page is now up to date, including all four gigs from my recent "four gigs in eight days" run. Perhaps one day I will add more old playlists, but in the meantime, the page documents playlists from the vast majority (though not all) of the gigs I've done since 2003.
And oh, do I have gigs coming up. At The Goldhawk here in town, I'm doing two of the next three Saturday nights, Rocktober 15 and 29 (the latter is the second half of a doubleheader) plus Friday, Nov. 4. The first half of the Rocktober 29 doubleheader will be that afternoon at Tory Burch. And they're some weeks away but worth marking on your (or at least my) calendar pronto: three big Ding Dong dates on Tuesday, Nov. 1; Friday, Nov. 18; and Thursday, Dec. 1. Full details on the Hoboken Rock City homepage.
