8/13 – Fargo, ND at Slabafuca House w/ Fuck Detector, Brother Nature, Cruddy
8/14 – Minot, ND at Pangea House w/ Mr. Dad, Chapstick, Japaniel Flatzen, Max Paxtner, Opposition Out
8/15 – Bozeman, MT w/ The Funeral and the Twilight
8/16 – Total Fest, Missoula, MT
8/17 – Total Fest, Missoula, MT
8/18 – Total Fest at Ole Beck VFW Post 209 w/ Walls, Dreamdecay, Big Fiction, VTO
8/19 – Seattle, WA at The Rendezvous w/ Totes Brutes, Botherations
8/20 – Olympia, WA at The Voyeur w/ White Walls, Nudes, Gag
8/21 – Portland, OR at The Know w/ Organized Sports, Bi-Marks
8/22 – Salem, OR at Val Cave
8/23 – Arcata, CA at The Big Tree w/ Komatose
8/24 – Davis, CA at Douglass Ave w/ Yi, Dreams Dean
8/25 – Oakland, CA at The Swamp w/ Stressors, Hunting Party
8/26 – San Francisco, CA at The Fortress w/ Coma, Caged Animal, Reckless
8/27 – Reno, NV at Ryan’s Saloon w/ Otis
8/28 – Salt Lake City, UT at The Underground w/ Gnawing Suspicion, Jawwzzz
8/29 – Denver, CO at Mouth House w/ Nose Bled, Negative Degree
8/30 – Omaha, NE at West Wing w/ Gag Reflex
5/20 – St. Louis
i can’t remember where i left off but it doesn’t matter. this is a tour blog, and a poorly kept one at that – not some academic paper. so i’ll start with the first interesting thing in my notebook, likely uttered by Dan, our drummer:
“i was just upstairs smoking weed and watching DMT: The Spirit Molecule”
then we talked about how there was a menorah in the van and some butterfly knives.
we went back to Outer Space (R.I.P. for code violations) and lazily threw our gear in the van, which has now become standard practice. play, then throw gear in the corner, hope your shit is there in the morning. we left some warm beer at Outer Space and recovered a Sucked Dry shirt, then left to go to a place downtown called Gillis Sandwiches or some shit. we all seemed to get a sandwich called “The Hog” which had a bunch of pig meat on it. it was good. we sat outside in the nice weather while i stared at a periodical vending device thinking about how everything in america now has a green color scheme and sharp, Apple-inspired design and lettering. like it’s not too late. like we haven’t ruined the entire world.
i don’t know if i covered this or not but we had taped a cover on the top of the van where the roof thing blew off. lot of gorilla tape (which of course, we instantly lost) and some plastic bags from auto zone. but the cover flailed in the wind and weeks later would prove to provide no safety from the rain as the ceiling leaked all over dan’s drum cases.
we drove to St Louis to our show at Bonerville listening to a variety of Total Control, Nihilistics, Nightbirds, Ivy Green, Kraut, Sparks, Wild Child, Leather, Spacemen 3, BGK, Void, and Hostages of Ayatollah. along the way, some shitty semi truck tailed us within feet behind us and when we got out of the way, proceeded to tail to car in front of us in an exceedingly dangerous fashion. yes, we are the guys smearing blood on people and throwing microphone stands, but we are sincerely dedicated to road safety.
seeing what a menace these hick clowns were, we took down the truck number and i used my million dollar phone to look up the source of the trucking company. somewhere in canada. hauling seafood. and we fired off an Email declaring these guys as fucking pricks. if i’m not mistaken, the person Emailed was named David Foley.
we passed time yelling at each other with the megaphone and making inside jokes about shaking babies, listening to The Authorities, Channel 3, Avon Ladies, and talking about the unironic love for 311 that people in Kansas City had. we stopped at some dumb tourist stop called OZARKLAND, which was not filled with alligator skin dresses and shark teeth necklaces but sandals and other assorted Made In China goods. it was the place where the crap you find at thrift stores starts, brand new.
i watched a mentally retarded kid wearing suspenders and gym shorts count out change while his mom or social worker angrily stood behind him.
we stood outside afterward where i listened to Dan give a detailed list of things with wings that he hates.
“I mean, i like raptors. eagles and shit. and things that are food.”
we continued to the sounds of Culo, Deadbeats, Condominium, The Dicks, Nirvana. we drove into St. Louis where i instantly noticed some vandalism that said RATFAG on a building, followed by the local flavor of plump bodies with single bad tattoos, plodding along the sides of the run down city, where the sprawl is deteriorating and falling apart in almost a charming manner. i watched a man water plants with Mountain Dew on his doorstep.
we got to Bonerville, which is located in what some people would call an “urban” area of town, which is just white peoples way of saying that there are black people there. however, the cool part about areas of st louis is that really, everyone is in the same shitty area. so you seem to realize that where ever you are, no matter what the person next to you looks like, they probably have as little money as you do.
so we banged on the door of the Bonerville mansion and this younger girl with dreadlocks answered and asked us if we were Brain Damage. We said we were and she introduced herself as Megan, then started apologizing for the mess of Bonerville, a punk house. evidently they had gotten pranked – their floor was completely covered in rubber bands, all their light bulbs were thrown in the toilet, and many of their appliances (including fans) were plastic wrapped. i think they also had their sink filled with m&ms, which to me, just seems like a weak consolation gift.
we met a dude named Tre who lived there who was drinking a large handle of vodka from one hand and washing it down with gatorade on the other. there also may have been drugs on the table. there was a basement and a backyard filled with beer cans, show fliers for our friends bands – basically, Bonerville is the St. Louis version of Minneapolis’ Rathole. Tre started talking about how the last time we played in St. Louis, everyone was pretty shocked because i guess all we did was fight each other. instantly, we realized we had a reputation to live up to.
“so yeah, this show should be pretty cool, ” Tre said. “Overdoser is playing tonight – they’re CHAIN PUNK so it should be pretty fun.”
“oh yeah, chain punk,” i said, having no fucking idea what that meant.
see, i assumed that CHAIN PUNK was just dorks that weather leather and chains or something. and it kind of is, to a lesser degree. i didn’t find out what CHAIN PUNK was until we got back from this lackluster mexican restaurant, where we sat on the patio and watched a crippled Vietnam veteran smoke crack on the street after buying it from a Jamaican. but as Tre was giving me a tour of his room, he held up a GIGANTIC fucking chain – a boat chain.
“what’s that for?”
“dude, its chain punk. we throw them around.”
“you what?”
“yeah, we throw chains around during shows.”
that is the point where we realized that we were dead. that we were dad.
The legendary Ben Ozzbbbouurrnne showed up, who plays in every band in St. Louis, as he was the one putting the show on. i’ll spare you from the rest of my notes, which read like this
“Sneeze Winwood”
“Steve Winwood’s Higher Love”
“Miley”
“Rob Hawaiian Shirt”
“Stove Brooms”
“Overdoser Drummer”
but here’s what i remember of the show:
Rob Ruz from Cardiac Arrest was there and he brought us beer. A new band called Gluebag played, who threw a bucket of glue filled with fake plastic flies at the crowd. the bucket hit the girl in the head and then they dumped the glue out. also, afterwards, i realized that whenever i was talking to a member of Gluebag, they were pouring glue everywhere all over the basement.
There was a mattress on the wall of Bonerville for idiots to bounce against.
Who Fucking Cares? played, who were intense and weird.
Overdoser played and people threw chains, smashed things with sledgehammers, and whipped around a bowling ball tethered to a chain. the singer spray painted “FUCK YOU” on his chest during their set, and later threw the microphone at me. after they played, i saw the word RATFAG scrawled somewhere else and talked to the singer of Overdoser about supposed identity of RATFAG, which still no one knows.
Then, feeling pressured to top that which was impossible, we played a weird violent set and at one point i ran around with a garbage can over my head, which eventually turned into me wearing a trash bag. i also sang half the set into a beer can after breaking two microphones, then went outside and talked shit about my own band to people who were standing outside. they agreed that we sucked, not knowing i was in the band. but they looked like nerds.
oh, also, i made a mask out of the back of a beer box and a Miley Cyrus poster which i forgot to use during our set.
so after the bands played, i watched some dude clean the floor with a stolen NO TURN ON RED sign and the drummer of one of the bands, named Martin, tried giving us a dirty diaper he was wearing to give to our friend Andy. Maybe he or someone else was in Sweet Tooth, because i wrote that down for some reason.
More notes:
“My pick was literally glued to my balls”
“Leon – Cross Examination, 11 Concussions”
“I got a head, you can punch it”
“Andrew WK show”
Then somehow we ended up at a bar where the DJ was playing Terrible Feelings and I saw with Rob and talked for a while. some Occupy dude tagged along that people were sketched out about. Rob told me a story about Hoax playing in St Louis that went like this:
“the drummer from Hoax beat some dude with a patio umbrella here once. Diaz and Tim were smoking weed in the corner, then Diaz threw gravel at some long hair who was calling them out. Tim from Hoax ran across the stage and beat him up and everyone was upset because they thought he was beating up a woman. then someone turned the guy over and yelled, “ITS A DUDE” and no one cared. then their van got broken into and their passports got stolen, some random drunk challenged everyone to a fight in front of a gay bar yelling, “I’ll fuckin fight you, I’m from Massachusetts!” Beat that dude up, then hung out and broke 3 microphones.”
i have absolutely no idea what actually happened but this is what i wrote down. then according to my notes we got kicked out of the bar by someone i called “Rockabilly Batman”. then i met Paris Bennett from American Idol’s Uncle, who was moving to Minneapolis. Then something else happened and I imagine we slept, and Rob texted me saying he saw a car and a school bus rolled over and was the first on the scene. or something.
fuck, i need to write these tour blogs when they happen, right?
i don’t remember where any of us slept but it was near or in Bonerville. we woke up and i spent the entire morning helping a really nice, cute, kind puppy with its’ neck cut up from a collar for a few hours. i got some woman to give him a pork chop and a can of beans and some water, and he just followed me around the block for hours while i waited for animal control.
then we walked around while Rory told me a story about how at the bar last night, he almost picked a fight with some dude who kept making racist jokes to his buddies about a black girl he was trying to pick up. so he went and told her i guess. Dan ran into a guy named Drew from a band called Humanoids and i guess the hug he got from him cracked his ribs. I went to an antique store run by a crazy as fuck Ron Paul supporter who turned out to be pretty cool, talking about how there was rat poison in blood thinners. and i hung out with a half-german shepard, half fox. i also hung out with a silly puppy. the woman also sold fur coats and model boats.
we went to Apop records and saw Agitate, Gnawed, and Cock ESP patches and records.
then we went to the City Museum, which is a great place. then we left. and ate at Jack N The Box and when I asked for mustard for my shitty burger, he gave me three large containers of it. and i saw a juggalo with a Monster Energy Drink tattoo on the back of the neck.
then the muffler fell off our van and we tied it back on. then i met some dude named Vaughn at a gas station who wanted to give me a job as a fertilizer salesman with a $50,000 base pay. and we got an email from the dude who we reported, saying he would fire those truck drivers. we listened to Pink Floyd’s Saucerful of Secrets and drove to Iowa City.
we tried to play the theme from Home Improvement at the Iowa City show, which was not a good show for us. but it was a good show for Los Voltage, who were great, and Big Box, who were great. but the rest of the people who were at the show sat upstairs and smoked weed and rolled their eyes at us when we tried to talk to him. i yelled at a bunch of them and called them assholes and they continued rolling their eyes. basically, there were a lot of posers there although the bands were fucking great and anyone who stuck around downstairs was cool.
i cant remember the dude’s name but he was a ridiculous asshole moron, wearing a hipster scarf in 90 degree weather, and he had white plugs. he was being a piece of shit to us, whining about how we had to leave because he had to go to bed even though he didn’t fucking live there. i feel like his name was Tyler. hey Tyler, we don’t like you, stay in Iowa. Rory also almost got into a fight with some dude because he didn’t want to give him a beer.
we went and ate pizza and tried to sleep at this dudes house. i had no place to sleep and tried sleeping in a weird place and freaked out and ran away, making myself puke pizza on the way back to the van because i had eaten too much and had horrible heartburn.
we woke up, went to a co-op and ate. on the way home we saw a sign that said
OBAMA BIN FIBBIN
then went insane because there are no gas stations off the Waterloo exit. then went to a casino and gambled some of the money we made on tour. i won, pat won, dan won, joel lost. end of tour.
we are going to come back to iowa city and take all the cool people and good bands and just move them to Minneapolis. shitheads don’t deserve those bands.
