The mics weren’t turning on. Our guitarist called out for the help of one of the owners of the house, who first had to wade through several dozen sweaty bodies before he could assess the situation. I grew more anxious with every unsuccessful utterance of “check” into the microphones. It was our first DIY show in Madison, and a basement filled to the brim with anticipating eyes was watching us struggle to get our equipment working.
It goes without saying that an entire concert taking place in the basement of a house is going to have a few kinks to work out. I had to tiptoe to my drumset as to not disturb any of the cables that were scattered across the floor. But that’s the charm of the Spanish Mansion, a concert space situated in a house with an undisclosed address. The operation is run primarily by The Great Duck War, a band which has members currently living in the Spanish Mansion, or SpanMan for short as they like to call it.
The shows are semi-exclusive events, available to those who know the right places to snoop around for the address. Our band, Trophy Dad, was excited for the gig, so we handed out the address like sexual health groups hand out condoms on Valentine’s Day. In a basement that, at absolute maximum capacity, can hold about fifty people, you have to suppress attendance so that your fans aren’t hearing you while standing from the staircase of a neighboring hallway.
The basement had risen to sauna-level temperatures as we finally got the mics on. I could see the sweat on crowd member’s faces as they eagerly awaited our first musical notes. It was clear that nobody came to this show to be comfortable, and that’s exactly where the charm in DIY shows lies. It’s the beautiful union of concert and party, where people can wild out for the weekend while maintaining their artistic integrity.
I was already leaving quite the sweat stain on my drum stool, and the moment it was time to count off our first song I spilled all of the pent-up energy of pre-show anxiousness onto the drum kit. Just because we weren’t playing at an official venue didn’t mean that the show would be easy to play. Given how congested having fifty-something people in a room, coupled with the unbearable heat given off by dancing bodies, I had difficulty combatting lightheadedness as we went from song to song.
There was no border between band and audience except for the thin metal bar that separated carpet from linoleum tile. “It felt a lot more intimate knowing that we were dancing and being as much of a part of the show as the band was, as oppose to just watching them from a stage,” Darcy Kerrigan described about her experience at SpanMan. The feeling’s mutual from one of my band mate’s perspective. Watching our guitarist crossing over the carpet border and parading into the bulging crowd while maintaining tempo made me fully understand how interconnected everyone was.
Even when practicing in the same space a week before, there was no way for me to predict how the performance would go. The energy the crowd gave off was as important to the show as rehearsing our songs was. Due to the audience members unquenchable desire to mosh, our song, which sounds like a dreamy Real Estate tune in practice, transformed into a no-brakes, punk freak-out in reality.
By the time we ended our opening set for The Great Duck War, all of my senses had been assaulted in some way or another. I was hot, I could smell my armpits from a foot away, the taste of cheap, lukewarm beer dripped off my mouth and my ears were ringing from a combination of drum hits, unintentional mic feedback and the screaming crowd into which we just threw our heart and soul. I had no time to shake the congratulatory hands of friends approaching me—not that anyone would have wanted to embrace my dripping body. My only directive was to escape the heat-trap of our show, and to burst out onto the outdoor porch of SpanMan.
After the show, any degree below zero felt like room temperature to me. I stepped outside in just jeans and a T-shirt, most likely triggering an instinctive heart attack from my mother back in Chicago. There was such a massive trade-off of energy between band and audience that my circuits had fried. The basement show was a beast that had bested me, and the only thing I could think as we all piled into the basement for one last time that night was “I should’ve worn earplugs.”
Have you fallen in love with heat trap-like, claustrophobic basement concerts or parties? What is your favorite way to cool off after a crazy, packed concert? Email Jake at jakey.witz@gmail.com
