Autia @ Bobby Inkslingers (08.22.09)

"This is Fire's goat. He's fucking it but we're just holding the tail," said Treetop of Autia as they filtered in the door to Bobby's off to the side. The venue space and front step were suspiciously empty, a little ghost town of sound for an evening.

Ah, the horrors of a show not to be missed...yet the show was missed by everyone.

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Fast forward to a few hours later. The parking lot was still dead, the front step a ghost town...modern tumbleweeds in the form of a Wal-Mart bag rolled across the parking lot - but you couldn't tell from the sound coming from inside the building. Windows rattled and concrete walls shook from the force.

Does the music go on, even if no one turns up to listen? Of course it does. Music is like bears pooping in the woods and trees falling with no witness to their sound - it's going to happen even if you aren't there to hear it.

"They're too loud," said Bobby, "we've got people trying to work here." There was a nuclear explosion going off in the front half of the building, true, but the empty house was to blame. Souls absorb music and connection, but on a practical level bodies absorb sound. Without the bodies - goers to the show - the music ricocheted from the walls like a nuclear explosion.

"It's too loud," Bobby repeated, heading into the parlor portion after volume control.

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In the meanwhile, Mickey the floor mopper was not to be deterred. "I want some pussy!" was his mode of action for the evening, shuffling around the parking lot and talking to any chick in range. He tells me this because I am apparently off-limits - for what reason, I'm not quite sure, but that's cool - and goes into a discussion of his new tattoo.

"Check this shit out!" as he pointed to the Native American symbol that festooned the bulbous portion of his upper left arm. The shading work was magnificent, the lines straight and crisp, of an Indian packing a sword in one hand and a man's head in the other. This piece was the work of Bobby, head tattooist. "See, this was a pendent," he said cheerfully, "that a tribe wore around their necks, except it was sideways," as he lifted his arm to display the image how it was supposed to be seen. "Do you know why it faced sideways on the pendant?" No? "So when a brave was cutting off another's head, they could see the pendent right while they were chopping his head off."

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The music suddenly stopped. Apparently, all the speakers were set to "1" and the volume was still amazingly deafening - there weren't any bodies to absorb the sound! - and out of disgust Autia had stopped playing.

Could you blame them? It wasn't The Man telling them to turn it down, it was one of their own covered in tattoos!