January, 1994
A Saturday in January was approaching the
time of concert and the large abode known as the Older Home was shimmying moment by
moment. Caitlin and I were supposed to leave the house at 7:24 - at 7:11 the whole house
rolled, as if an air mattress on waves. It sort of rumbled, like someone had dropped an
Oxford English Dictionary from about 4 feet. "What the hell is she doing?" I
asked myself -- as Caitlin was asking the same question about me from her studio.
"Hey," I thought, "it's an earthquake." Come to think of it, I must have gotten up rather quickly because I was in the hall standing in the obligatory doorframe before it ended. It only lasted about 30 to 40 seconds.
We shook hands to congratulate each other and ourselves for surviving our first noticeable tremor. None of the stations had anything to say about it when we left to catch the 7:24 bus.
"Did you hear the earthquake?"
The bus driver asked. I thought it strange to ask if someone heard an earthquake.
"Yes," I replied, "We felt it. It was actually quite polite." The
driver was listening to updates on his honest-to-god transistor radio with the mono
earpiece. I stared at it for a few minutes from our seat in the middle of the 30 foot AM
General. I mused that Radio Shack must still sell them. I thought it was amusing that we
sold transistor radios in the early 80s when I worked at Radio Shack. They came in
designer colors like cheap plastic green and cheap plastic pink.
The driver informed us on the epicenter -- 20 miles southwest of Seattle. By chance, that was where the people we were going downtown to meet lived. Caitlin wondered if they may have stayed home and told me that I should have brought my cel phone. I reminded her that they were having dinner downtown before the concert. The driver also told us the magnitude of the quake - 4.7, later revised to 5.0.
When we got to the King Theater, we found
Karrie in line. John had gone to check on tickets. We asked her if she felt the quake.
"What quake?" She replied. "There was an earthquake about a half hour
ago." "Really? We were in Borders Books."
Then John showed up. "Karrie says you didn't feel the earthquake about a half hour ago." "No," John said, "an earthquake?" "Yeah, it was centered on your house, actually, 20 miles southwest of Seattle, they said." "Oh, no we didn't feel anything. We were in Borders Books."
So when the big one hits Seattle, I'm going to try my best to be in Borders Books.
The concert was a lot of fun. Three local bands of varying styles -- more or less. The first one was the tightest - Kill Switch ... Klick. Sort of Joy Division cum Nine Inch Nails. But they started out with a sample from Bladerunner, the same one nicked by Gary Numan. Then they used another Numan stolen sample. Then their last song was sort of like a New Anger era Numan song. All in all, they were more like a neo-techno Joy Division than Numan, but the influence was certainly there. They had one preachy sorta rap song thing that was annoying, but otherwise they were impressively tight, well rehearsed and talented.
The second band was called Faith and
Disease and they were okay.
The third band was Diamond Fist Werny, a band that seems to be a current underground mainstay. Their equipment was interesting and fun to watch and listen to. The percussionist had a series of synpads and miked percussion that was used very very well. The lead guitar and vocals were done by Todd Werny, who has that kind of quintessential whiny underground singer voice. The bass was played by a bass clarinet through what I'm mostly sure was a lexicon Vortex. Some bass was also played by the percussionist who had synpads and a synkick hooked up to a few bass samples. They were very good, but their songs didn't end. They would end in that not-tight band style of a hanging guitar noise ending.
We had missed the last 17 back to Ballard, so John drove us home in the back of his pickup. We were just sort of lying loose back in the box, like leftover logs. We got home and watched TV for a few minutes, hoping to get a glimpse of the carnage and destruction left by the great quake of 1995, but all there was to see was an all-sports edition of Saturday Night Live.
The news on Sunday Morning was calling the
quake "A Wake Up Call for the Pacific Northwest", but it did little more than
jostle our sleep, apparently. No one really seemed to care about the polite little tremor.
The bands were enjoyable, though.
On Sunday we worked on the house mostly. I absentmindedly watched the Superbowl while Caitlin finished some boxes and stripped the paint off of a chair. We took a long and wonderful walk along the sound. It's only about 4 blocks from our house, so it's a nice constitutional. There was a fantastic sunset over the mountains, over the water, and between all the sailboats' masts. The walk ended in time to watch the last 10 minutes or so of the game. Sunday evening I retired to my studio and played the keyboard for a while. Last night I dreamed that Caitlin and I were in Drew's condo, there was an earthquake and the building fell over.
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