If y’all like this post, let me know in the comments or the LIKES! or send me a basket of gluten-free brownies shaped like Jessica Biel or Diane Lane (whatever your local bakery will do for you based on their politics).  “The Gig Files” will be recaps of shows I recently did from the perspective of the performer.  Yelp seems to be a sounding board for everybody’s gripes and very few KUDOS! which is too bad.  Then again, I think people want to complain, and a bad dining/entertainment/hash oil-making-via-Groupon experience seems to resonate more than a great one.  I’ve had so many dine-outs that could have been ruined because of something small that I just brush it off now.  Same thing with gigs; it’s been a while since I had 3 in a row like these…

NO MIC
Saturday night show, crappy sportsbar/roadhouse about an hour North of Seattle.  I’ve done 8 shows there and I’ve been happy with 4 of them.  2 were complete failures (back when I was about a year into comedy), 2 were “meh,” and this particular gig I actually rate under the Happy-Withs.

I brought a newer comic along as an opener, dude’s very funny, and is much more slowly-paced than I am.  That’s good because I won’t have to really go all-out to get the crowd to pay attention.  The bar holds about 80 people, speakers way up in the rafters, and you have to be eating the mic to be heard.  I have no idea what the transfer rate of lip-herpes via shared mics is among comedians, but it’s gotta be higher than, say, motivational speakers.

15minutes into my 45minute set, the mic stops working. Cuts out. Dead. I wiggle the cable a bit, it comes back.  Then blacks out.  Then it’s back.  2minutes later it dies again.  Staff kinda works on it, but then it dies again. Dead.  Done.  DOS(tage).  And then they tell me, “Sorry. It did that the last couple shows, too.”  Oh, okay then.  Happy I’m not the WHAT?

So I shouted the rest of my set into the air. And it was work. I felt like I had to project even more, and subtlety was out the window without being able to whisper.

And it was in those 30-something, unplugged minutes I really felt like, hey, I’m gonna make this a great show for the people who are here.  Nobody left, and it wasn’t THEIR fault the mic cut out, so it won’t be MY fault if the show sucks.  I was friggin’ exhausted afterwards.  It went fine.  But honestly, that kinda sucked.