12:46 p.m. - 2005-09-07
you can't spell CALAMITY without CaLAM
Our third Yid Vicious CD, the Seventh Schlemiel (In stores now!! Buy, buy, buy!!!), is being sold under the impramatur of our own label, Giant Clam Records. Not a real business entity of any sort, Giant Clam was just the logo we decided to slap on the package where a real record company logo would have been had a record company decided to release the cd. Here, then, is the Giant Clam Story.
We chose the name Giant Clam because of a t-shirt I have and the band lore that surrounds it. Once, a couple of years ago, YV played in upper lower Michigan, and afterwards Kia and I decided to drive back to Wisconsin via the Upper Peninsula, crossing the Mackinac bridge and taking in the splendor of several Great Lakes. Driving toward the bridge on I75 we began passing ominous billboards: "GIANT CLAM, TWENTY MILES AHEAD", "BEWARE: MAN-KILLING CLAM!" and so forth. Our interest (and horror!) piqued, we decided to stop at the subject of these chilling advertisements, Sea Shell City USA. Actually it was less a city than a cheesy gift shop that sold sea shells. There was indeed a GIANT CLAM on display, but it was a little disappointing after all the billboards. Nonetheless we bought a t-shirt and a refrigerator magnet and continued on our way.
A couple months later YV was playing in a local coffeehouse. Every thing was going pretty normally, until we played Hasidm Tants, which has a drum solo, and it was going well until after the drum solo, when I did something really screwy that somehow got half the band a beat off but not the rest of the band and it came really close to a full-fledged train-wreck. We finally ended together, but I was shaken. You see, that day, while committing a giant clam, I happened to be WEARING THE GIANT CLAM SHIRT!
(Addendum for those who may not speak musician talk: A "clam" is a bad note. If you play a really out of tune note, or miss the obvious high note, or play a d flat instead of a c, it's a "clam". If you do a lot of these things in succession, it's a "clam parade" and you're really "clamming up the joint".) It's not that I never fuck up, but this instance was pretty out of the ordinary. I decided that the t-shirt was cursed, and resolved never to wear it to a gig ever again.
When I told the other YV members about the Curse of the Giant Clam Shirt, someone suggested that the shirt could function as a sort of scarlet letter: whenever someone fucks up really bad, they have to wear the giant clam shirt until someone else fucks up worse, at which point THEY don the giant clam shirt, etc. We never put this into practice, but the giant clam shirt has haunted us nevertheless.
I steadfastly avoided wearing the giant clam shirt to gigs for two years, until this past Monday, when I happened to be wearing it but didn't think to change out of it before my gig that evening. I think the Curse is still intact. Granted, there weren't any truly "giant" clams. But there were enough smaller clams that they surely added up to at least one giant clam. I know, philosophers have argued since medieval times over how many normal clams constitute a giant clam, and this isn't something we can ever truly know. But deep in my soul, I know it to have been a giant clam night, the absence of a single giant clam notwithstanding.
Now the question that we didn't think to ask months ago is: Is our nascant label itself CURSED?
Only time will tell. Time and sales, speaking of which: Yid Vicious will be playing the Willy St Fair on Sept 18 and donating the monies from any cds sold to the Red Cross for obvious reasons, so if you're reading this and live around Madison and have been curious about this new cd I've been blathering about, this would be the event to slake your curiosity. Plus, you get to hear us play live and bask in the company of Madison's dwindling Freak community. Check local listings for time and stage, and thanks for using Clamblog!
