Ramblings From Justin Penney

Last night I was running sound for Johnny Switchblade and the K.C. Crooners. They were playing at this place called thea peanut in Gladstone. This is apparently not a loud rock band kind of venue. They had a reasonable P.A. but the board was behind the band and there were no monitors. I brough a little wedge monitor and a snake so I was able to pull the board out in front. So I'm setting stuff up and one of the waitresses comes up and is super concerned about the noise. She's all, "Can you make sure it's not loud." I tell her that the only thing running through the P.A. is vocals so that's all that I'll have control over.

After the first few songs things are going good. All the amps are at good levels, I've got some decent sound on the vocals and everyone is happy except we haven't seen our waitress forever. My sister goes and finds another waitress and asks her for a beer and to put it on her tab. Well, this waitress was sloshed! She comes back empty handed telling Jocy that she doesn't have a tab with her but she has one with the other waitress. So Jocy is like well... do whatever and bring me a beer. So this damn waitress comes back again saying the same thing. So my Jocy finally says, "Can I open a tab with you." Then the drunk-ass waitress says with a big drunk smile, "Oh yeah..." So Jocy gets beer.

Johnny Switchblade takes a break and Jon Stubblefield does a solo set. This was a solo acoustic set. So when Johnny Switchblade went back on and it was obviously louder our original waitress all of a sudden shows back up! We hadn't seen this chick all night and now she's hounding me about the sound. I explain, again, that I can turn down the vocals but no one would like that. She smiles and drunk-ass smile and says, "Oh, O.K." So i order a bloody mary from waitress #2 and Jocy order another beer. It takes her 3 trips again because of the whole tab confusion. So finally my bloody mary arrives... or so I think. The damn waitress looks at me, smiles and walks right past me two table up to where some friend of the badn are and sets the drink down there. I'm watching her the whole time and she turns around and get sby me and I'm looking at her with a puzzled look. She looks at me and it's like a great epiphany to her that she realises that I had the bloody mary, "Oh... yeah, bloody mary" and she points at it two table up. I give a disapproving look and she finally goes and gets it. It wasn't very good either.

So it's late we're getting close to done and Jocy asks the waitress to settle the tab. So the waitress comes back with two more beers. We explain to her that we didn't order them. So she goes around the room asking everyone if they ordered two beers and then comes back to us. Jocy tells her again that she didn't want beers just to settle her tab. The waitress is like freaking out about these two beers. She asks us again and is getting kind of mad. We tell her that we didn't order any beers. She finally goes away. My sister goes and tries to find a waitress and finds one and asks, "Do you have any waitresses that aren't drunk?" The lady then helps her out, she apologises but then says, "Well, that's what the Peanut is like." What the hell? Drunk waitresses the freak out on everyone? Good reputation there.

So a little while later someone comes out an apologises to my sister and gives her some $2 gift certificates. Just as she leaves the waitress (drunk-ass and the missing one) are all standing around pissed off looking and yelling and crap. Drunk-ass then procedes to freak out yelling at all the other waitresses and freaking out. This is the most rediculous scene I've seen from the staff at a bar ever.

# posted by Justin @ 12:47 PM