first of all, we got voted in the big city newspaper as 8th best live act in the city along with the Minnesota Orchestra and this vile hippie band, Trampled by Turtles. Or as Pat called them, “Trampled by Turds, yo”. it would be a shame to neglect our renaming of local dork band Wookiefoot as Dookiefoot. so that’s weird.
also, more apologies in the usual fashion for not updating this. i started working again at my old job from many years ago at Frightprops. you should click that link. i also drank too much coffee at my restaurant job this morning so i’m a little edgy which is never too good for writing.
i’m one of those people that has a scant ability to regulate my intake of things due to the fact that i’m either immersed in what’s going on or lost in thought to the point where i don’t seem to recognize normal signals my body gives me. i’ll drink coffee until i start shaking, eat until i feel like throwing up, and up until the last few years, drink until i pass out or black out. so bear with me while i tremble and fumble through another chapter of this poorly documented experiment in musical stupidity.
we left Arcata, CA and drove for forever to Davis, CA. i was a little unclear on the show details – one of those iffy situations where you suspect you’re going to end up playing in someone’s storage shed for four people. but, seeing as how it’s the logical place to go from Arcata, we went for it despite hearing we were sharing a bill with four other touring bands – Nancy Drew Pentagrams and Dreams Dean from Olympia, WA along with Tiny Lungs and Colossal Rex from Long Beach, CA, both on Mountain Man Records – a label i dont know shit about.
we almost dropped off the show but our dude told us we’d get priority over the other bands as far as getting paid goes. so we shrugged our shoulders and went with it. glad we did, especially after seeing such a killer flyer. same for the Arcata flyer, too.
on the way to Davis, we stopped at the Bigfoot Museum. it was free and truthfully, not a disappointment for even a casual sasquatch enthuasiast like myself. strangely, i found out recently that i have met the man who claims to have designed the sasquatch costume in the 1967 bigfoot video. he owns Morris Costumes. i think i ate dinner with him.
we also stopped at a gas station and talked to some burnout moron in a tie-dye who actually ended a conversation with “namaste”. we stood by an abandoned looking building, making this a very superficially authentic NorCal experience. the moron kept talking about how long he had been homeless which coming from a 20something dude in a tie-dyed shirt, means he ran away from home because he couldn’t smoke weed in his parents house. i hated this person. we also saw more people that i hated.
we drove through Mt. Shasta, terrified, while listening to Possessed to ensure we went to hell after tumbling down a hill in our shitty brown van. driving through Whiskeytown, we passed a man laying in a inner tube on a beautiful lake in a city called, receiving oral sex from a lady. he gave us a hearty thumbs-up as we passed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdXBJL6rMxY
we drove, we drove, we drove, we drove. who cares.
approaching Davis, we stopped for gas. there was a small red car with two uncharacteristically “cool” looking young women in it. there was also a fenced in area with a bunch of cats laying around with a shed nearby. in the shed, we heard a man screaming angrily, which scared us despite our inherent closeness with screaming angrily. as we drove down the highway, the girls in the red car flashed a notebook at us that was a picture, or a word, or something. it sent the freaks of the van into a frenzy until we all realized they were probably going where we were going and now it looked like we were following them and they were likely regretting their decision to flash an innocent notebook at us.
and sure enough, they arrived at the same house as us. they identified themselves as Nancy Drew Pentagrams and explained that Dreams Dean could not come for some reason.
we were also informed by our dude, Hatem, that Tiny Lungs and Colossus Rex also dropped. or maybe they told us that earlier over Email. doesnt matter.
Dan and I left to go get beer. on the way out, some dude in a building next door to the liquor store came out and started yelling at us for drinking in the parking lot. he calmed after realizing that Dan was drinking a Diet Coke. after that, we deemed everyone in Davis to be an idiot.
back at the house, we all stood around and immediately started drinking. the house was devoid of furniture (that we could see) and there was a wipeboard in the kitchen and not much else. as i recall, our hosts were getting kicked out/moving out of the house very soon. i do remember an issue of Maximum Rocknroll laying around which was reassuring me as i wondered if the show would be a bust.
i also wrote down the names of two bands for a reason i cant recall.
The Astronauts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UcXnfh6Tqo
and The Secret Prostitutes:
the house place did eventually fill up a bit as everyone piled into the living room to watch the first band, White Hole. i believe were the band with a projector that displayed weird cartoons on a loop and warmed up with part of a Wipers song. i wrote down that they were very good at times and other times, just okay. that still puts them ahead of 98% of all other bands.
Nancy Drew Pentagrams played. i deemed it as “too Evergreen College” for me. i think it was noise. nice people, but i did not care about whatever they were doing. maybe i’m a square or maybe it’s because i’m 29 and have had to suffer through a lot of people’s two-person keyboard meanderings. or maybe i was drunk and bitter. didn’t write that part down. i also likely said “hey good job” to them so if theyre losers like me who google their own band name, i am sorry sort of a little. but not that sorry.
Max missed all of this because he was sitting in the van traveling through time, thinking everyone knew about him and was talking about him. he had a bad time in there.
we played a very fast and nihilistic set. Dan set up on one side of the room and the band set up on the rest, creating a very tense scenario for a bunch of small town people who probably weren’t there to see “confrontational hardcore”. i rolled around on the ground and kicked a few people, occasionally dashing through the hallway near the bathroom to upset the folks that were struggling to get away from whatever else was going on. it was really fun.
then a band called Lotion played. they were…covered in lotion. they sounded like Pissed Jeans and played for way too long which is what i imagine Pissed Jeans doing. i am not a big fan of Pissed Jeans because i used to be a noise rock nerd and got strung out on the stuff, but I like this song.
isn’t someone from Leather in that band? isn’t someone from Leather the brother of someone in Paint It Black?
regardless, we went to In & Out Burger and went back to all sleep on the floor. in the middle of the night, some pop-punk band from Arizona showed up with a dog and kept us all awake. the floor was densely packed with losers. here is a picture of the guy who was snoring:
all in all, a good show, despite a goddamn donation hat being passed around to pay bands. i think we ended with $30 or $40 after splitting it with Nancy Drew Pentagrams, which we were all salty about in that way that you get salty about after you’ve been on tour for nearly two weeks, driving a gas guzzling van, carrying guitar and bass cabs through every sort of unimaginable bullshit scenario
…then you have to split money with the two college students driving a fucking Honda Civic. but who knows, maybe they only got $10 out of the deal. either way, we’re happy we played there and had a good time.
but dont do donations at shows where bands drive from far away
we woke up the next morning and went to the downtown area. we saw a lot of posh looking joggers and somewhere i heard someone say:
“it’s sanskrit for ‘fearlessness’ “
Namaste.