Go Sailor! Lois! Heavenly! What a great line-up for the October 3rd show at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. I was so anxious to get to the show that I arrived at the club an hour and twenty minutes before it was scheduled to begin. It would have been devastating to be told at the door that it had sold out! The show of course was destined to sell out, and in time, it did. Oh, those poor souls who missed it...

Arriving at the show desperately early turned out to be quite a rewarding move, as it featured the best sound check in my memory! About a half an hour before the show was scheduled to begin, all of Heavenly appeared on the stage. Amelia read some information on new album releases, embarrassed and giggling about how the crowd should just ignore her because she was only testing the microphone. But that was a steep request. Her voice was absolutely beautiful! She then topped herself by singing "Dig Your Own Grave," and soon after, the band performed short versions of both "Starshy" and "Tool!" As Amelia later confessed, the band probably broke a major rock-star rule by not hiding out backstage and then making some grand pompous appearance.

The first band to officially take the stage was Go Sailor. They came on a half hour late, probably to allow the club to completely fill up with the late arriving popfans. This was my first experience with Go Sailor, but since I knew that this band was one of the new ones that Rose Melberg from Tiger Trap sang and played guitar for, I was extremely anxious to hear them. The other two members of Go Sailor are Amy from Henry's Dress on the drums, and Paul from Take A Day fanzine on the bass guitar. As I was hoping, their set turned out to be quite poppy. Rose sang as sweetly as she did in her Tiger Trap days, and Paul's bass work was quite sensible! For a fun guest star appearance, Rose Melberg's Softies bandmate Jen emerged from the audience to join in the vocals for a full band version of the Softies' "Love Seat." Popmania!

After Go Sailor's set, Lois appeared. Or rather, technically, The Lois, since ex-Tiger Trap member Heather Dunn's presence on the drums made this a band performance, not a mere Lois Maffeo solo excursion. The set was brill throughout, even considering Lois' curse of having guitar strings break on her. Or perhaps, it's more accurate to say "especially considering..." Her first breakage didn't cause much of a song performance problem, but after the song was completed, it did lead to an especially classic-feeling indie-pop moment as Heavenly guitarist Peter Momtchiloff hopped out of the crowd to replace Lois' guitar string for her. It was a real cool sight, and after replacing the string, Peter proceeded to watch the rest of the set quaintly sitting on the back of the stage. It was one of many little events at this show that exemplified its remarkable atmosphere of pop camaraderie. The breaking guitar string also gave Lois one of many grand opportunities to launch into one of her trademark Loisisms. Throughout her set she shared plenty of sly anecdotes, and provided generous amounts of spontaneously clever witticisms. Her stage presence was truly stunning! Another string breakage towards the end of the show rendered her guitar a bit useless, but she did not miss a beat! (Well, give some credit to Heather, of course) She smoothly transferred from guitar accompaniment to drums-only accompaniment, and though the song lost much of its power, her handling of the situation was a wonder to behold. Lois had it all together that night. Her voice was in fine form, and she played a fine selection of quick and nifty pop numbers including "The Trouble With Me", "Staring at the Sun", "Strumpet", and "Evening in Paris". And just as in Tiger Trap, Heather was perfection on drums.

Heavenly took the stage last, and they rocked it up in the most endearing way. Their brilliant initial set began with "Sacramento," the surfy bouncy instrumental from their new album. Amelia dedicated it to the Sacramento punks in the crowd, which there were likely plenty. Two songs later they launched into a nearly California-related song: "Modestic." Quite interestingly, Amelia noted that the song was written in oblivion to the fact that a town in California had the name Modesto. Just recently this came to their attention, so Amelia dedicated that one to Modesto punks, which judging from a small block of applause, there were actually a few in the crowd. The remaining songs in their first set of music were: "Dig Your Own Grave", "Starshy", "So?", "Atta Girl", "I Fell In Love Last Night", "Me And My Madness", "P.U.N.K. Girl", "Sperm Meets Egg, So What?", and "So Little Deserve."

For their encore, Amelia began by calling out for a "Calvin", and lo and behold, Calvin Johnson himself shortly made his way through the crowd and onto the stage, sparing Cathy from her usual assignment of filling in for him during the classic song that was to come--"C is the Heavenly Option." And for the song, Calvin acted the part of a madman! He was gettin' down like it was his once in a lifetime opportunity to show all his groovy moves on some bad television dance party show. In doing this he missed a bunch of his lines in the duet, but, wow, was it wild! What a spaz! After this bizarre spectacle, Heavenly finished up with "She Says", and "Sort of Mine." Unfortunately, no songs were performed from Heavenly's debut LP. But at least the presence of "I Fell in Love Last Night" shows that the band isn't completely unwilling to play early, pre-Cathy tunes.

-Scott Zimmerman