School for the...Wait Who is This Now?

I had this chest cold, see? I had it for over a week. All that week, I'd been keeping an eye on my healing progress with the knowledge that School for the Dead had this concert coming up. When it was getting close, a day in advance or so, and my health wasn't improving at all, I asked Lesa if it might be possible for us to do a Fawns show instead. My head was so congested and my chest was so on-the-verge of coughing that I couldn't foresee being able to sing a whole set of music.

Saturday rolled around and I was as sick as ever. We confirmed with the rest of the band that this School for the Dead show was now a Fawns show.

The Diamond Junction Bowling Alley in Palmer, Massachusetts its a real peach of a place. It's incredibly friendly and welcoming. It's colorful and retro-cool without intending to be. It doesn't have that cynical cloud hanging over it that many venues in my home town have. The guys from The Shed, from The Olde Store, book shows there and they've developed a real symbiotic relationship with the place. Each band member gets two free strings of bowling.

The bands set up in a room that's slightly elevated above the bowling lanes. The "stage" is a corner of the room skirted by arcade games. A P.A. is set up and a few clip-on flood lights are aimed at the band and it's a nice little DIY rock club.

On this night there were three acts, Dark Oars, Leisure Colony, and us. Before the show started, six of us, bowled. Maybe "bowled" is too kind a word. We rolled balls into gutters and laughed. I was still in crazy feeling-sick mode and the whole game was a bit dream-like, especially with the crazy disco lights pulsing overhead.

Dark Oars filled the place with an ominous drone of dark music. It added to the surreal quality of the decor and I sat in the back corner watching the shadows move across the old tin ceiling. The Leisure Colony were peppier and fun with nice strange poppy songs and bizarre vocal effects. We played last and did a Fawns set with two SFTD songs thrown in: Periscope and Omnivore. I struggled through singing them and did better than I expected, but it was still pretty strained. My voice sounded very removed from the rest of me.

Our friend Debbie was kind enough to snap the pictures here. There are other pictures, too, that Sarah took, on Facebook. I bet each time that I see them, I'll want to go back and visit Diamond Junction.