I didn't know they were playing again this week (last night) until John told me on Wednesday, and he only knew because he lives with the lead singer, and THEY only found out on Tuesday.

I made a post about their show last week (and not much since then so scroll down to read it) and posted a bunch of pictures to Flickr. Last Thursday Club Octopus was pretty busy, a lot of people came down to see the return of Ratskyn. There were little blurbs on the radio about it during the week, I think there was an ad in the paper, too.

This week there was nothing. No radio, no newspaper, and not enough word of mouth. The bar was practically empty. The usual suspects were there... close friends & roommates (and former roommates) of the band, but very little “outside public”. Part of that is that the whole island is dead right now. We were at Coconut Joe's for a bite to eat beforehand and they were dead. Aqua Beach was dead, Lone Star was a ghost town... but I guess that's what happens when you only have 10% of your hotel room stock available.

Being in an empty bar listening to a friends' band took me back a bunch of years. In the early 90s there used to be this bar called The Lunatic Fringe on East Broadway in Vancouver. It changed names a bunch of times since then, and last time I bothered checking it was a karaoke bar where people kept getting shot in gang warfare. Some friends of mine were in a band back then called The Neurotics, and they were the “house band“ and played there every Sunday night. Every Sunday night a bunch of us would go down there and fill seats and support the band, but usually the only other people in the bar were hookers who were coming in out of the cold to take a break. We still had fun, and The Neurotics are still playing together at gigs in Vancouver. I keep an eye on their website for schedules hoping that one of these days I'll be in town when they're playing a “public“ gig.

Ratskyn really played a tight set last night. They were even better than they were last week, but no one was there to hear it, which is a shame. Club Octopus should have made SOME effort to publicize it a little. I've got a bunch of flyers to start papering windshields with this upcoming week, (yet ANOTHER resemblance to $imdb(Rock Star)) and hopefully I can drive some traffic to them from here, too.

If you're coming to Cayman in the next few weeks, make sure and put Club Octopus on your “To-do” list on Thursday nights.