as i said before, we completed another tour. i am going to try to be better about updating this in a timely way so that i am not still writing about last tour when we are preparing to go on another tour. anyway, ahead is our Appleton, Wisconsin shit. it contains death, disappearances, and a personal meltdown related to wordpress failing to embed a Helloween video. also, i am still writing for the Riverfront Times, the most punk weekly of the Village Voice series because it is based in the most punk place, St. Louis. here is an article i wrote about commercials terrorizing my fucking brain
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/rftmusic/2013/04/sixteen_songs_forever_ruined_b.php
minneapolis mainstay/our friend Mr. Empty recently recorded a set of ours at 7th St Entry, where i took a picture of our friend Sean Dail from North Carolina’s band’s sticker. you can listen to our set here if you want to hear us drunkenly fumble through nonsense music while i drunkenly mumble through nonsense words. seriously though, i am fucking annoying. but i’m used to it by now
http://www.emptystapes.blogspot.com/2013/04/brain-tumors-entry.html
but its a little sobering in that David Hasselhoff eating a cheeseburger kind of way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jGDc-v_Nms
well fuck, maybe not like that. but maybe if there was a crowd around Daveyboy when this was happening he’d be a one man punk band. i’d sure pay $5 to watch some slobbering hunk eat a cheeseburger while his kid berates him. speaking of which, someone oughta marry that girl. seems like a good egg. i think her name is Taylor Ann Hasselhoff and if you throw her name in Google, the fifth auto-complete entry is “Taylor Ann Hasselhoff feet” which proves that America is becoming more and more progressive in the way we objectify women
we woke up and threw all our shit in the van. while trying to rig up our donated CD/AUX player (thanks, Jared Total Trash) with some zip ties, i cut my finger open with a knife. so that meant tour had begun. drew drew first blood.
we picked up Rory, who was with us in the short midwest tour we did last may (?) where we went to Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Iowa City. Iowa City was the show where i tried to get Pat to play the Home Improvement theme and we all got mad at each other because we couldn’t hear anything in the basement we were playing in. and then i yelled at a bunch of people in the living room who were smoking weed and reading Adbusters or whatever real college people do.
i mean Vice. fuck.
after picking up Rory, we went and met up with our good friend, Mike (from Minneapolis band Despise), who texted us the morning we were leaving asking if he could come. we agreed because we felt it would be good for his mental health and he has at least one Aus-Rotten patch which would make us appear more credible as a punk rock band.
we drove next to some Monster Energy Drink decal cars and went to some stupid gas stations. dan told us his stories of the road (comments on various gas stations) and we ended up in some of the same gas stations as before, including the one where we had to ask a cop for directions, once. pat drove a lot and wore dan’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. hat. joel put on Helloween.
WHY WONT THIS FUCKING MOTHER FUCKING HELLOWEEN FUCKING VIDEO EMBED WHEN I FUCKING PASTE IT INTO FUCKING WORDPRESS. WHY THE FUCK DOES FUCKING TECHNOLOGY SPONTANEOUSLY STOP FUCKING WORKING THE WAY IT IS FUCKING SUPPOSED TO. I HAVE FUCKING DONE NOTHING WRONG TO THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT AND IT IS FUCKING ME. WHY IS IT FUCKING ME. WHY IS IT NOT FUCKING EMBEDDING THIS SHIT LIKE THE FUCKING DAVID FUCKING HASSELHOFF FUCKING BULLSHIT
ok
we got to Appleton late in the evening under shit weather conditions and went into the Maritime. after glancing around at the dimly lit towny bar, we unpacked all our shit an set it up at a table. Troy from Ratsak set up the show and arrived shortly after along with a ton of people. before any bands started playing, we sold merch to some young kids (who i dont even think stuck around and saw us). i overheard one of them say “you should have them autograph it” after his friend bought a 7″. we didnt have to autograph it, luckily. im not sure what any of us would’ve done if we had to.
the 3 piece known as Sandusky Kids played first. i wrote “great poppy garage shit, frail, gawky, perfect vocals – weird melody.” i liked it.
then Bag of Gremlins played, who we played with once in Minneapolis although i think all of us were blacked out at that show. they were good. and hilarious. i think they had a song about Garfield called “Mondays Suck” – but i could be making that up.
Cheep N Easyz were “competent”. i didnt have a lot of notes on them aside from that other than Dan said they sounded like Jawbreaker and Crimpshine and that the drummer was clearly on mushrooms. i asked him later and he insisted he wasn’t, but there was a fucking kid on the show who WAS on mushrooms and would come up to our merch table, mumble some weird shit, throw stuff off the table, then stomp away. and yeah, the picture is sideways and this blog is free so fuck you
there was another show going on that night that we all wished we could’ve seen – Tenement, Trauma Harness (St. Louis, members of Shaved Women), and Negro Spirituals. luckily, all those fuckers came out to the Maritime so we got to at least meet/hang out with ’em.
Ratsak played last, who i remarked as “great – moronic punk in the best way”. it features this dude we refer to as The King on vocals because i think last time we were here, he was wearing a Burger King crown or something. no one else in Appleton calls him The King. anyway, they tore the place up. i think they had a song about being raped by a dolphin.
i think we played last. i can’t remember. right before we were about to play, Pat started screaming obscenities and looked upset. he had just gotten a text that his friend/friends father/good dude in general, Dave, had died in the hospital. he had one of those out-of-nowhere heart attacks about a week earlier and seemed like he was going to pull through. so we played a very intense, emotional set. and i stole at least two shots of tequila from some girl at the bar who was not paying attention to anything. when i went to take a third, she pleaded with me not to.
i dont know if our set was good but the people in Appleton are so good and wonderful that they wouldn’t have told us if we weren’t. plus, i imagine pat was probably crying during our entire set so i can’t imagine it being an un-engaging show at least. a bunch of people bought merch from us and i gave some girl i didnt know some advice about her forlorn, unrequited love story.
i was also told that the owner/sound guy tried to stop the show and shut us off mid-set, which none of us noticed because half the time someone is unplugged or our gear is broken anyway. suckerrrrrrr
i bullshitted with some people outside a bit about how much Appleton changed since they produced Tenement before going to Shane and Erin’s house, lured by the prospect of watching Home Improvement. we drank and spilled wine and ate food. mushroom guy was there too, listening to Kreayshawn. i chased Briggs the dog around the house and watched a very sad and despondent pat sit quietly with Salt N Peppa’s “None Of Yo Business” playing before pat demanded Nirvana’s “In Utero” to be put on.
we stayed up very late.
when we woke up, we realized that our road-dog, Mike, had disappeared in the middle of the night and was not answering his phone.
Peter Steele from Type O Negative died on April 14th, 2010. he was the creator of the count off, “ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR – I DON’T WANNA LIVE NO MORE.” he also once casually swept the stage while Pantera played, as evidenced in that video above. and wrote xenophobic lyrics on some Agnostic Front songs.
i was lucky enough to see Type O Negative with my friend, Antonio, in Charlotte, NC on my birthday in 2007. Type O Negative opened up with a cover of “Magical Mystery Tour” by The Beatles. Celtic Frost and Brand New Sin also played. i dont think i saw Brand New Sin which is good because i’ve always hated them. i later threw up all over a bar countertop and the bartender made me clean it up. It was a great show. Antonio is much loved and currently has brain cancer.
