Half-way and still truckin'
If I can keep myself from getting distracted by the Ali G dvd playing behind me, I'll try to give a rundown of the past week. Portland, Seattle, Idaho Falls, and Madison shows were really good. Minneapolis and Rapid City weren't as well attended, but still fun. PDX and Seattle were our last two shows with Imperial Leather. We were all sad to see them go: Cap'n Dan and the Profane Existence mini-mall, Matte the drummer, whose bandmates say he looks like the little wooden boy on a Swedish tv show, Kristofer the bassist who memorably drew a "new" Swedish flag on a small piece of paper (crude, thick male genitals with "Sweden" written underneath), Kanko (guitar/vocals) who told me I could borrow their drumset at the Gilman show only if I took off my clothes and played with the Imperial Leather banner wrapped around me like a cape... I could go on. Hopefully we'll get the chance to rendezvous with them in Stockholm if we make it over to Europe next summer.
Quick rundown of the shows...
PDX: Good show, good turnout. Matt got loaded and puked on himself. In the van. I whacked my knuckle on a cymbal, and it swelled up pretty good.
Seattle: The show was at a house on the outskirts of the city, and we didn't have time to wander around downtown. Which bummed me out...I like Seattle, and who knows when's the next time I'll be out there. Good show, great vibe. The first actual basement show of tour, and it was a true punk basement. Lots of people hanging out in the backyard, which featured a makeshift bar, the massive PE distro (of course), and a barn that houses a bike shop and a metal shop. The show ended late, we got to bed around 4 and planned to get up at 7 to make the haul to Idaho Falls. We woke up at 9.
Idaho Falls: We knew we were looking at 10-12 hours at least but we weren't exactly sure. Three hours into our drive we called our contact in Idaho Falls, and he all but told us we wouldn't make it on time. We checked in again in Boise at 6pm. We were told we were still four hours away, and that probably wouldn't cut it. I had been driving all day and moving at a pretty good clip, but we positively burned it from Boise to Idaho Falls. We got there in three and half hours, right on time. We set up really fast and played to a good crowd. We were all operating on just a few hours sleep, but we decided that it would be best to leave for Rapid City as soon as possible. We hung out in Idaho Falls for a few hours (at a farmhouse that some kids rent for ridiculously cheap) and then hit the road.
Rapid City: We were going to drive through Yellowstone Park, which is the most direct route between those towns, but when we got to the entrance, we learned that a) it costs $25 to drive through the park, and b) we were there at 6 or 7 in the morning, and parts of the road weren't even open yet. So we detoured north into Montana to pick up I-90 there. We got into Rapid City with time to spare. Got an oil change, and made use of the free car wash coupon we received. We were supposed to play a bar (oh man...wait till you all see the posters that the bar owner made for the show...wow). It looked like turnout was going to be far too low for the promoter to cover the cost of renting the bar, so the show was moved to Storybook Island. Cute, huh? There's a park in town, part of which is specially tailored for kids with things like an old-woman-who-lived-in-a-shoe shoe to climb in, etc. We squatted a park pavilion a played to 15 people with no vocals.
Minneapolis: In retrospect, we may have made a bad decision by choosing not to pay the $15 to take the scenic loop through the Badlands on the way from Rapid City. I would have liked to see all those craters where the aliens landed and gave birth to L. Ron Hubbard. Oh well. We played a basement show that had been set up late in the game at a house that doesn't normally do punk shows. Low turnout, but a good time. We stayed with Skell, who's an uber-punk-looking dude who put out our second 7". After the show I hung out with Michelle Lee, a former District resident whom some of you know (she's doing very well, busy with four or five different jobs plus activist stuff). She gave me a midnight driving tour of the city, which I had previously seen almost nothing of. She explained that activism there tends to focus on long-term projects rather than protest-y stuff. While not without drawbacks (a radical/punk community that tends to segregate pretty seriously along project lines), this approach has produced and sustained an amazing number of collectively run institutions. I need to spend more time in this city at some point.
Madison: Great show. We played in a frathouse that wasn't a frathouse (not sure exactly what its deal was) somewhere on the UW campus right on a lake. Pretty scenic. It was a diverse show (metal, thrash/powerviolence, and us) with a diverse crowd, and everyone was pretty into everyone else. So to speak. Oh yeah, and Iron Lung played and they rule! After the show we drove to Milwaukee to stay with our friend Zack (which is where I was when I started writing this thing, though I'm far away now).
Quick rundown of the shows...
PDX: Good show, good turnout. Matt got loaded and puked on himself. In the van. I whacked my knuckle on a cymbal, and it swelled up pretty good.
Seattle: The show was at a house on the outskirts of the city, and we didn't have time to wander around downtown. Which bummed me out...I like Seattle, and who knows when's the next time I'll be out there. Good show, great vibe. The first actual basement show of tour, and it was a true punk basement. Lots of people hanging out in the backyard, which featured a makeshift bar, the massive PE distro (of course), and a barn that houses a bike shop and a metal shop. The show ended late, we got to bed around 4 and planned to get up at 7 to make the haul to Idaho Falls. We woke up at 9.
Idaho Falls: We knew we were looking at 10-12 hours at least but we weren't exactly sure. Three hours into our drive we called our contact in Idaho Falls, and he all but told us we wouldn't make it on time. We checked in again in Boise at 6pm. We were told we were still four hours away, and that probably wouldn't cut it. I had been driving all day and moving at a pretty good clip, but we positively burned it from Boise to Idaho Falls. We got there in three and half hours, right on time. We set up really fast and played to a good crowd. We were all operating on just a few hours sleep, but we decided that it would be best to leave for Rapid City as soon as possible. We hung out in Idaho Falls for a few hours (at a farmhouse that some kids rent for ridiculously cheap) and then hit the road.
Rapid City: We were going to drive through Yellowstone Park, which is the most direct route between those towns, but when we got to the entrance, we learned that a) it costs $25 to drive through the park, and b) we were there at 6 or 7 in the morning, and parts of the road weren't even open yet. So we detoured north into Montana to pick up I-90 there. We got into Rapid City with time to spare. Got an oil change, and made use of the free car wash coupon we received. We were supposed to play a bar (oh man...wait till you all see the posters that the bar owner made for the show...wow). It looked like turnout was going to be far too low for the promoter to cover the cost of renting the bar, so the show was moved to Storybook Island. Cute, huh? There's a park in town, part of which is specially tailored for kids with things like an old-woman-who-lived-in-a-shoe shoe to climb in, etc. We squatted a park pavilion a played to 15 people with no vocals.
Minneapolis: In retrospect, we may have made a bad decision by choosing not to pay the $15 to take the scenic loop through the Badlands on the way from Rapid City. I would have liked to see all those craters where the aliens landed and gave birth to L. Ron Hubbard. Oh well. We played a basement show that had been set up late in the game at a house that doesn't normally do punk shows. Low turnout, but a good time. We stayed with Skell, who's an uber-punk-looking dude who put out our second 7". After the show I hung out with Michelle Lee, a former District resident whom some of you know (she's doing very well, busy with four or five different jobs plus activist stuff). She gave me a midnight driving tour of the city, which I had previously seen almost nothing of. She explained that activism there tends to focus on long-term projects rather than protest-y stuff. While not without drawbacks (a radical/punk community that tends to segregate pretty seriously along project lines), this approach has produced and sustained an amazing number of collectively run institutions. I need to spend more time in this city at some point.
Madison: Great show. We played in a frathouse that wasn't a frathouse (not sure exactly what its deal was) somewhere on the UW campus right on a lake. Pretty scenic. It was a diverse show (metal, thrash/powerviolence, and us) with a diverse crowd, and everyone was pretty into everyone else. So to speak. Oh yeah, and Iron Lung played and they rule! After the show we drove to Milwaukee to stay with our friend Zack (which is where I was when I started writing this thing, though I'm far away now).
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