First, a disclaimer for the band... We had never played a "Corporate" type show before, and frankly had no idea what to expect. The booker was paying us well to do what we love to do, so we planned to just go with the flow of the evening. Ah, but the night's river had many an exciting eddy.An unexpected e-mail from an events coordination company asking us to play at the launch party for Microsoft Explorer 4.0. Someone had put together "surfing the web" with "Surf Music", done a Yahoo search and found us. Simple as that. Now, all the Pollos are Netscape users, and 3 out of 4 are Mac users, but should we let that bother us? After about 2 minutes of deep soul searching and a glance at the contract, we decided not to worry about it.
Sound check at 10AM in the morning, because the hall must be cleared all afternoon in preparation for Bill Gates' presentation. Yeah, that Bill Gates. When we arrive, there is a celebratory air as Bill has just been declared the richest man on the planet.
The show is in the Concourse Pavilion at Ft. Mason Center. The room is about 800 ft. long and 100 wide, and has been divided in half, one side for the software presentation, the other half for the party. Jumbotron monitors, multimedia light and slide shows, huge sound systems and high-tech kiosks abound.
At 5:30, we return to the Ft. Mason Center and find that the software presentation has already started. A dressing room has been made available to us and we do a little pre-show tune-up. This is the first time that we have ever had a real dressing room, so we take advantage of it. (We get dressed.)
We have to cross the presentation room where about 500 bored journalists sit staring at the jumbotron screens displaying Internet Explorer 4.0 grand capabilities. We are supposed to start playing at some unspecified moment after all the speeches, so we hang out on the stage, waiting for the cue.
From our stage, we can see that Bill Gates is delivering the first of his two speeches. He finishes, and then decides to take a tour of the party area during the next presentation. Suddenly he appears next to our stage. Sensing the chance of a lifetime, Pollo bassist Jeff walks over to Gates, and displaying heroic courage says, "Mr. Gates, Would you mind having your picture taken with our band?"
A very stunned Bill agrees, and walks over to where the rest of us are standing, nearly as stunned as he. A Kodak moment, something to tell the grandkids about someday... 20 minutes of shock and recovery follow, as we congratulate Jeff on his nerve and gall. The stage crew is just laughing, no one can believe what just happened.
We get back on stage, still waiting for our cue, which may come at any second. Jono lets out a loud, accidental whang on his guitar. An uptight Microsoft rep comes over to ask the obvious: "That won't be happening again, will it?" Later, we find out that a great sigh of relief was released from the journalists, because Jono's whang meant that the endless speeches would be over soon, and the party would start.
The cue arrives and we launch into Teleport. The crowd flows in as we run through Death Valley Daze, Playa Pistola, Take You Clothes Off and Penetration. Then we are asked to stop for a few minutes while Bill does interviews. Bummer. We play five more songs to finish out the evening.
Back in our dressing room, a feast has been set up, complete with wine and beer. We stuff ourselves, then head back down to the exhibition floor for more free cocktails.
There are about 40 computer kiosks set up, each sponsored by a different online company: Wired, Yahoo, Disney, Better Homes & Gardens, etc. The company reps are showing off how they have used IE4. But as the reps wander off to get a drink, or just abandon the kiosks all together, the increasingly toxic Pollos move in and reset the browsers to the Pollo Del Mar surf page. By the end of the night, we have logged on to our homepage from about 25 of the computers. This is the late '90's equivalent of trashing your hotel room. Big fun, we laughed for hours. You should have been there.
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