Guilty Conscience

Mr. Dinsdale:

This is your conscience speaking. Yeah, it’s been awhile. You’re probably wondering where I was during the egg-beater incident at that brothel in Guadalajara. And why, you ask, was I nowhere to be found during that situation with the salad tongs and canola oil at the orphanage in Baton Rouge?

My bad.

But let’s not point fingers. This isn’t about who dumped the body of that cocktail waitress in an irrigation ditch in the Nevada desert and who didn’t. This is about you and me. And I’m here for you now that it’s time to discuss the 2004 Pitch Music Awards show.

I know you want to pat your employer on the back and tell everyone that everything went swimmingly. That it was a roaring success. Now move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

But that’s where I come in. I won’t let you deceive the fine citizens who read the Pitch (or at least use it to sop up canola oil) or the musicians you write about. You must be brutally honest with your self-appraisal. You may be a self-indulgent misanthrope and a demon in the sack, but you aren’t a hypocrite.

Tell the people that the awards show was a complete train wreck. A freight engine jumping the tracks and careening down an embankment toward a Christian Coalition picnic.

Granted, this was your first PMAs. Maybe the night normally devolves into a chaotic, drunken mess (although not exactly the good kind of chaotic, drunken mess). Or perhaps it was the lunar alignment, Friday the 13th, the death of Julia Child, or something in the tap water at the Uptown. But it wasn’t lack of effort. A lot of time and energy were dedicated to making the night special.

It also had nothing to do with the awards themselves — readers controlled the voting — even though there was the usual this-thing-is-rigged grumbling when powerhouses such as the Get Up Kids took home multiple awards or when exceptional bands such as Salt the Earth snagged top honors in seemingly ill-fitting categories. But all the winners (see page 59 for a complete list) were entirely deserving.

You can tell the people that things began with a rousing performance by the Marching Cobras. Tell them that the thundering, whistling, dancing troupe — fresh from a performance at a recent John Kerry appearance — earned three standing ovations before back-flipping off the stage and into the night.

And that’s when the wheels came off.

Live performances by Abileen, Wild Women of KC, Descarga KC, Silver Shore and Ad Astra Per Aspera were solid, if lethargic compared with the explosive Cobras. But if you’re going to blame what happened after the Cobras slithered away on anything, blame it on alcohol. Too much for some. Not enough for others. And expensive for everyone — $8 for a Bud Light? — except those swilling the sauce for free.

Which brings us to Shawn Edwards.

Edwards is a likable guy. But either the former Pitch writer and current Fox-TV movie gadfly/quote whore deserves Oscar consideration for his convincing portrayal of an obnoxious drunk, or he was two sheets to the wind well before joining cohost (and Hurricane manager) Stan Henry onstage.

To be fair, you would have needed to chug a diesel tanker filled with Bacardi to build up the nerve to get within 100 yards of the stage. But that didn’t make Henry’s awkward racial jokes less painful or Edwards’ belligerence less annoying as he stumped for Kerry, accosted winners, gave frequent shout-outs to Descension, threatened to dive off the stage (and regretfully failed to follow through), and thanked Marquee wine for “getting me fucked up.”

It wasn’t long before the “You suck!” and “Sit down!” catcalls came. And that was just from the Pitch contributor sitting next to you. Admittedly, the hosts had dead air to fill because several winners were no-shows, but the absence of James Dewees did allow members of the Ssion to memorably race to the stage, grab Dewees’ Best Live Act award (for Reggie and the Full Effect) and smash it.

But much of the crowd had filtered into the smoking lounge by the time the truly bizarre final moments occurred. Tech N9ne commandeered the stage with the latest bastard faction of “rappers” clinging to his shoelaces before Ad Astra Per Aspera played a fiery finale, Dandercroft guru John Bersuch pinballed off the furniture, and Edwards punctuated his performance by chugging vodka straight from the bottle.

Wait … on second thought, that all sounds like fun.

Maybe you don’t need me after all.