Maggots!

Geez! We played a club in Palatine, IL called Dirty Nellies for this “Battle of the Bands” thing they were having. We knew there was NO way we were going to get any of our people out that far in the sticks, but we figured we’d rock the house and see how it went FROM there.

Turns out it’s a decent place, nice stage, good sound. The people there were pretty cool to us, too. So we finish our set. All goes quite well and we go sit down to watch the other bands playing that night. We watched the next band and drank some beers.

The last band gets up there, and by this time there’s only about fifteen people left in the bar. There were a bunch of girls sitting behind us that called for a waitress and they told the waitress they had maggots on their table. The waitress behaved as if this were no big deal and brought them another table. So this made us CHECK our table. Sure enough, on the TABLE with our beers — MAGGOTS!

We told the waitress that we, too, had maggots on our table. She apologized flippantly and brought us another table. We let it go. Well, about ten minutes later the guitarist FROM my band looks at the TABLE and says, “Guys, um, there are maggots on the TABLE again.” This means: There were maggots falling FROM the ceiling!

So everyone at our TABLE let out a scream. We all went running, high-step style, out of the bar, all the while vigorously shaking our heads to get the maggots, which could have been burrowing INTO our scalps, out of our hair, and shaking our clothes to get them out of there, too.

We stood outside the club, all of us breathing heavily and pale with disgust, looking through each other’s hair to see if there were maggots still there. Then we realized we had to go back in to get our gear, our jackets — it was cold out — and everything else.

May I stress that by this time we’d had a few beers and were feeling pretty loose. So we waited until the band was finished and went back in chanting “Who got maggots in they hair? Who got maggots in they chair? You got maggots EVERYWHERE!”

After loading up the truck, fighting back the urge to vomit and pissing off the management thoroughly (who wanted to keep hidden the fact their club had maggots falling FROM the ceiling, which would have closed them down quicker than you can say “larvae”), we were informed that, since we didn’t bring enough fans to the show, we wouldn’t be invited back for the second round of the “battle of the bands.” I believe we all went “awwwww” in chorus and resumed our chanting.