Amplified

Never thought the contact sport of making music would be so fun to watch, but about once every two months or so the SideCar Pub hosts a "band jam" competition and, like a good car wreck, it's just too hard to look the other way.

This past week the jam brought ten bands out to vie for the prizes: $500, $300 and $200 gift certificates at Evans Music City for first, second and third place. Knowing that .011 Ernie Ball electric guitar strings can cost in upward of $7 (!) nowadays, a little graciousness from a music store is manna.

At the request of Peron Einkauf, SideCar co-owner with wife Marybeth Moore, myself, Houston Press account manager Dana Crumbliss and local AMG manager extraordinaire Richard Cagle judged the bands. We looked for how long it takes the band to set up and tear down (efficiency), professionalism (not playing with their backs to the crowd), originality (not playing covers), sound quality (at least trying to enunciate the lyrics), promo packs (spell-check, please) and crowd appeal (cleanliness is godliness, etc.). A "1" on our score sheets was "bad." A "5" was good. We totaled up the numbers at the end and announced the winners.

The competition lasted two days, with five bands playing each night. And thank amber waves of grain Einkauf had given us judges an open bar tab and -- on the second night -- all the fried shrimp, onion rings and fries we could stomach. There were times we really needed it.

Which isn't to say there wasn't some great music. Crash Comfort, Feel, I AM I and Natives Are Restless performed terrifically. That some are regulars at the SideCar is no coincidence.

"I'd say we book about 70 percent of the bands that come out here," says Einkauf. "It's a great way for them to audition. They have a legitimate reason to audition. It's hard to get a band out during the week."

For further band pampering, SideCar provides a backline, 32-channel board with eight sub-boards and a sound man who will break his or someone else's neck trying to get monitor levels up high enough so a band can hear itself. Word has it high-enough monitor levels is a hot commodity round these parts.

Einkauf and co-owner Moore have been running the club the past three years. They took over a former bar in the building, at 11202 Huffmeister (about 25 miles from town), after returning from Belgium, where Einkauf worked as a mechanical engineer for Solvay. The longing for home and another way of life, a way of life with music at its center, prompted the move.

Moore had worked at the bar before she and Einkauf purchased and remodeled it. On returning to Texas in 1996, the duo brought with them lots of European goodies. And all these small touches together helped transform the SideCar, which seats about 300 max, into the weird-but-friendly place it is today.

There are the glasses, which hang over the hand-built bar. Nearly all are shaped specifically for a particular brand of beer. For, say, Duvel beer -- an abbey brew from Belgium -- there's the Duvel glass, which is tulip-shaped and elongated like a giant cognac glass. Having the right glass for the right beer is supposed to make the beer taste better, even though, in Einkauf's opinion, the effect is largely "psychological."

There's also the SideCar's 100-year-old-plus chairs, which are shaped like thrones and which Einkauf bought from a Belgium church at $3 a pop. They're valued here, says Einkauf, at nearly $100 each.

All this, plus the bar back, which Einkauf didn't bring from Europe but which is from 1878 Germany, 140 international beers, cigars, pool tables, dartboards and, yes, dart products help give the SideCar its unusual intellectual-blue-collar appeal. Pretty fancy for a club that hosts lots of original, predominantly local -- but most always Texan -- rock and roll bands six nights a week.

"We used to do about $800 a week," in dart products, says Einkauf. "We used to be a gaming place, but we gave that all up for music."

More than anything, Einkauf tries to make the bands as comfortable as possible. He knows it's hard to get quality talent all the way out 290 from town. ("If they make money, we make money," says Einkauf. "If not, we still honor them.") And he also knows it's just as hard keeping Cypress folk, who all live essentially next door to the pub, from traveling into town for live entertainment.

One thing that helps expose yokels to homegrown music is SideCar's jukebox. Einkauf burns his own CDs and fills them with acts that frequently play or have played the pub. Track 7003 is "Blue Texas Skies," by the Clay Farmer Band. Track 7012 is "Lost in Houston" by Loky. And Track 0718 is "Water" by I AM I.

The live version of that last song is what put the band in my top two the night of band jam No. 3 last week. It was I AM I's fourth and final song. (Each band gets about a half hour to play a handful of tunes.) The group was followed by Chrome, an inexperienced, sloppy band but one with a charismatic, green-haired lead-singer/guitarist, so all the votes were already readyŠ