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It’s no big secret that I work at a club that a lot of loyal SLUG readers frequent.
I’ve already exposed to the world via SLUG what happens in the girl’s
bathroom there. In Leviathan issue #9 I revealed what it’s really like to work
the door. I recently started bartending and a whole new perception of the bar
needs addressing.
The first myth I’d like to destroy like Tiger Woods’ marriage is the one regarding
the quality of music being shoved into my fragile eardrums. It isn’t
always good. People say things to me like, “Oh, you work at Urban Lounge? I
bet you see so many awesome shows!” Quite the contrary. I’d imagine that’s
like saying to a highway trooper, “Oh! You are a trooper on I-15? I bet you
see so many awesome cars!” When the reality is that the trooper probably
sees so many mangled fenders and broken bleeding limbs he can’t even
care to remember the last time he pulled over Mehmet okur’s hot
yellow Ferrari.
I mostly bartend on Mondays and Tuesdays. I see so many musical car
crashes that it’s just as sad as a
twenty-car pileup on a pile of kittens.
I’d rather hear the sounds
of twisted metal and screaming,
burning car crash victims than
the sounds coming out of an
amplifier on a Monday night at
the Urban.
I can understand why people
think that I see tons of awesome
shows there. Those people go
there when they want to go. I go
there when I have to. I still like
the job, but last week there were
two bands that were particularly
shitty. The quality of their behavior
was as terrible as their
music.
These two bands were The
Magic Kids and Girls. Unlike
my band, The Fucktards, the
names of these two bands were
highly misleading. There was
certainly no magic in the bar that
night and there were no girls in
the band Girls, just a bunch of
hipster bitches.
The first thing I noticed that night
that made me think things could
go awry was the high amount of
Mormons entering the bar. Hey,
nothing against Mormons (although
most of you know how I
feel about attending their mind-numbingly boring weddings) but Latter
Day Saints in a bar is like me and all my friends in a church. It’s just not right,
but I still go when I have to.
How do I know when there are Mormons in the bar? Biggest sign of this is
the unusually high number of Diet Cokes I’m serving without getting tipped.
Please treat your Shirley Temples like your holy temples, Mormons. I understand
that you already tip your god ten percent so you might feel like you
don’t have to tip anyone else. But look at it this way, since I don’t believe in
god you should tip me extra. I don’t know why, but that makes perfect sense
to me.
Things went from bad to worse when the Magic Kids started playing. It’s
hard to describe how shitty this band is. But alas, more insight into the Mor-
(44) SaltLakeUnderGround
By Mike Brown
mikebrown@slugmag.com
mons in the bar phenomenon, the singer mentioned the Holy Ghost. I don’t
know if the Holy Ghost was the name of one of their songs or albums, because
I would never listen to this piece of shit band, but it suddenly explained
why so many Mormons were there. (I will ask SLUG’s resident Mormons
James Bennett and Rebecca Vernon to confirm the relationship between
the Magic Kids and the Holy Ghost, because my own research was lackadaisical
and turned up nothing.)
Since the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight, the Magic Kids were done
playing by said hour. But they weren’t done being jackasses.
Girls started playing and the crowd started doing the dance I
like to call the Hipster Shuffle. It’s where you don’t really move
very much: you kind of sway to and fro a bit with your arms
folded, looking up at the band and then your shoes. Make
sure you are ironically as offbeat to the music as you are to
your outfit. Oh, and the most important part of the Hipster
Shuffle is when you look around the crowd at the other
hipsters and make note of who
is looking at you. Each nod
equals three scene points.
Again it’s hard for me to describe
the terribleness that
was coming out of our monitors.
These bands insisted
on using their own sound
guy who clearly didn’t know
a soundboard from his own
butthole. There was so much
feedback that night you’d
think Helen Keller was doing
sound. People were actually
complaining about how shitty
the sound was, and rightfully
so. But that’s what those people
get for listening to shitty
music, in my opinion.
When these Girls and Magic
Kids got drunk, they turned
into the biggest wannabe
rock star fucks ever, yelling
at the bartenders for not getting
booze after last call, not
loading their gear until we had
to yell at them to do so, trashing
the green room and lighting
off illegal fireworks at 2:30
in the AM. I wanted to get in a
time machine and go back to
their junior highs and become
their personal bully.
I’m all for jackassary and whatnot,
but I have a theory about
acting like a rock star. The bigger
you and your band are, the bigger of a jackass you can act like. These
bands brought 200 people to the Urban Lounge on a Friday night. That’s not
nearly a big enough ratio for such behavior. Del The Funky Homosapian
smashed cookies all over the green room one time, and you know what? I
was OK with that. Because Del packs the motherfuckin’ joint and puts money
in my pocket. Girls just pissed me off and acted like fuckfaces, and Magic
Kids have Mormon fans, who don’t drink, thus not making me any money.
Stupid Girls.
Illustration by Jared Smith