Expired ID, indoor dust storms, and surprise benefit shows
When we last left our intrepid noise punkers, they had been accepted into the waiting brazos of Madre Mexico. No exciting border shootouts or anything, sorry. Anyway...
We hung out at a home in Mexicali for a couple hours before the show. There was what appeared to be a citizen-run checkpoint at the entrance to the neighborhood, just to keep tabs on who comes and goes. The salsa flowed like hemophiliac blood and the beer flowed like...beer. Actually, there was a keg, so my bandmates got a little loosey-goosey. Beer was in no short supply at the venue either, which was really nice and had this crazy Floyd-themed lounge area flecked by dancing laser lighting. Apparently our show was only the second one that had been staged there (after the Warcry/AI tour). The first band didn't start till after 11, and when we played last, three bands later, we actually had to cut our set a song short. Which was annoying. I don't remember the first band's name. Coaccion was good; we had played with them at Gilman last summer. Bumbklaatt blew everyone, us included, off the stage. I think I've heard the 10" Alan put out for them, but I didn't have any expectations before they played. Holy damn, they tore it up.
We stayed at a different house than the one with the lunch party earlier. Everyone was really friendly. The guy who lives there kept trying to get me to drink (I told him a couple of times that I don't), as well as my bandmates, who had imbibed impressively all night but who were ready to be done by the time we crashed out at 3:30. Well, actually Forrest gave in and partied for a little bit. I can't say how many neighborhoods in the US would put up with a bunch of kids rolling into a neighborhood after 3am, unloading a keg, and blasting metal out of a car stereo. But our hosts did it like it was no big thing.
We drove through Mexico to Tijuana the next day, stopping only at a "Routine Military Checkpoint." Love that phrase. Apparently there is one route to TJ that features a vertiginous cliffside drive, complete with old cars piled up below; but there's a new toll road that we took that was less exciting. Still plenty of winding through mountains though. We've been in pretty mild weather almost the whole tour, but we basked in AC for that whole drive. The guy who set up the TJ show hooked us up with cheap burritos when we got there, then we went to the venue (a bar/pool hall) early and Forrest and I played two of the longest, most incompetent games of pool in the 6,000 long years that the universe has existed. Turnout for the show was pretty low, and, just like last time we played TJ, most people stayed seated. Tijuana: the City That Never Stands. We got payed the equivalent of about $50 total for both Mexico shows.
We decided to cross the border right after the show to avoid daytime lines. In the 15 minutes we did have to wait, we watched squeegee kids, a carpet salesman, and a one-legged man walking on his hands, all trying to squeeze a few last pesos out of the departing gringos. Now, I had noticed on the second day of tour that my passport expired three months ago. "Uggggh. Oh my god," I said when I realized my passport had become an ex-passport. "Fuck. God fucking dammit." I probably said some other things that I won't repeat on a family blog. But Alan assured me that at worst we'd get hung up at the border for a short while. This did not keep at bay jokes about what the border guards were going to do to my virginal parts.
So, here we are, sitting in the slowest line back into the US, run by a woman who seems to take her job rather seriously. We pull up, and Alan hands her our passports. I'm riding shotgun; Shravan and Forrest are in captain's chairs in the back. She asks us how long we've been in TJ and what we were doing. Alan tells her we're a band and we just played a show. She walks around the driver's side of the van, tapping here and there either to check for drugs packed into the frame or because she just can't stop the primal rhythms that can bubble up inside a person, demanding to be released as audible manifestations of defiant hopefulness in the face of a godless, meaningless existence. While I can identify with the latter, I believe she was doing the former. She arrives on my side of the van and opens the back door. "Who's here? What do you do?" That is, what do you do in the band. She sounds stern but friendly at the same time. "Shravan, I play guitar." "Forrest, bass." She looks at me. "John. I play drums." "It's always the drummer," she says as she walks back to her station. Always the drummer who does WHAT, I'm thinking. Always the drummer who HAS AN EXPIRED PASSPORT AND NEEDS TO BE DISCIPLINED WITH HOT IRONS...?
But she just meant it's always the drummer who rides shotgun. I figured it wasn't worth explaining to her that, actually, Shravan almost always rides shotgun because he has control issues around music selection in vehicles, and that Forrest and I don't mind because we don't have these sorts of control issues. We were at the border for three minutes, tops, and now we were waved across. We spent the night in Chula Vista, a short drive from the border, in a garage attached to a home owned by the parents of one of the Bumbklaatt guys. Apparently Alan's used it as a post-border pit stop for years. The next day we drove back to Long Beach so that Alan could run some errands and I could pick up some new sticks, having left my stick bag in the thieving manos of the aforementioned Sra. Mexico. Then it was on to Isla Vista, on the coast next to Goleta, about halfway between LA and SF. We played at the house I had visited on tour five years ago with Kadd and Rachel and Rasmus. Low turnout, but at least playing in a living room made it feel like there were actually people watching. We had a good time. Listened to the locals complain about the Irish summerers who descend on the area every year. Before we took off the next day, I wandered down to a cliff-studded beach three blocks away. Very scenic. I saw a dead ray in the sand. It's really, you know, it's kind of a shame. A shame about that ray.
Our San Francisco show was at the same spot we played last summer, then the Balazo Gallery now called Sub-Mission. I met up with Derrick B. before the show at Aquarius, where I picked up various records they were holding for me and of course grabbed a few more of the shelves. There weren't a lot of people at the show, but for whatever reason I really like that place and was happy to play there regardless. I think we ended up getting over $100 from the door, which is a good night for us, and both of the local bands were excellent: Suicide Bomb, which includes members of Condenada, Born/Dead, and Artimus Pyle, and Morpheme, the young crasher band with a Japanese singer. They've got an ep coming out on Prank, but the singer's moving back to Japan, so the band's done after one more show, I believe. We spent the night at our always hospitable friend Matt's house.
Arcata: good show, good turnout. We played with a crappy PA, which basically meant no vocals, but the kids went crazy anyway. First show where that had happened. There was so much dirt in the carpet in the room we played, sent airborne by the attendees, that when we finished playing, the drumset looked like it had been sitting in a basement for five years. Got fed pancakes the next morning. Excellent.
Eugene: lousy show at a tattoo shop made worse by the fact that the people who work there unbeknownst to the bookers had turned it into a benefit for their friend who had put his hand through a window (under not entirely unreasonable circumstances, I'll admit, having heard the story) and fucked up tendons and nerves and stuff. So we got zero money from the door and left for Portland right after we played. That was a day and a half ago, and I'll have to leave it at that for now. I've got a van to Seattle to catch.
We hung out at a home in Mexicali for a couple hours before the show. There was what appeared to be a citizen-run checkpoint at the entrance to the neighborhood, just to keep tabs on who comes and goes. The salsa flowed like hemophiliac blood and the beer flowed like...beer. Actually, there was a keg, so my bandmates got a little loosey-goosey. Beer was in no short supply at the venue either, which was really nice and had this crazy Floyd-themed lounge area flecked by dancing laser lighting. Apparently our show was only the second one that had been staged there (after the Warcry/AI tour). The first band didn't start till after 11, and when we played last, three bands later, we actually had to cut our set a song short. Which was annoying. I don't remember the first band's name. Coaccion was good; we had played with them at Gilman last summer. Bumbklaatt blew everyone, us included, off the stage. I think I've heard the 10" Alan put out for them, but I didn't have any expectations before they played. Holy damn, they tore it up.
We stayed at a different house than the one with the lunch party earlier. Everyone was really friendly. The guy who lives there kept trying to get me to drink (I told him a couple of times that I don't), as well as my bandmates, who had imbibed impressively all night but who were ready to be done by the time we crashed out at 3:30. Well, actually Forrest gave in and partied for a little bit. I can't say how many neighborhoods in the US would put up with a bunch of kids rolling into a neighborhood after 3am, unloading a keg, and blasting metal out of a car stereo. But our hosts did it like it was no big thing.
We drove through Mexico to Tijuana the next day, stopping only at a "Routine Military Checkpoint." Love that phrase. Apparently there is one route to TJ that features a vertiginous cliffside drive, complete with old cars piled up below; but there's a new toll road that we took that was less exciting. Still plenty of winding through mountains though. We've been in pretty mild weather almost the whole tour, but we basked in AC for that whole drive. The guy who set up the TJ show hooked us up with cheap burritos when we got there, then we went to the venue (a bar/pool hall) early and Forrest and I played two of the longest, most incompetent games of pool in the 6,000 long years that the universe has existed. Turnout for the show was pretty low, and, just like last time we played TJ, most people stayed seated. Tijuana: the City That Never Stands. We got payed the equivalent of about $50 total for both Mexico shows.
We decided to cross the border right after the show to avoid daytime lines. In the 15 minutes we did have to wait, we watched squeegee kids, a carpet salesman, and a one-legged man walking on his hands, all trying to squeeze a few last pesos out of the departing gringos. Now, I had noticed on the second day of tour that my passport expired three months ago. "Uggggh. Oh my god," I said when I realized my passport had become an ex-passport. "Fuck. God fucking dammit." I probably said some other things that I won't repeat on a family blog. But Alan assured me that at worst we'd get hung up at the border for a short while. This did not keep at bay jokes about what the border guards were going to do to my virginal parts.
So, here we are, sitting in the slowest line back into the US, run by a woman who seems to take her job rather seriously. We pull up, and Alan hands her our passports. I'm riding shotgun; Shravan and Forrest are in captain's chairs in the back. She asks us how long we've been in TJ and what we were doing. Alan tells her we're a band and we just played a show. She walks around the driver's side of the van, tapping here and there either to check for drugs packed into the frame or because she just can't stop the primal rhythms that can bubble up inside a person, demanding to be released as audible manifestations of defiant hopefulness in the face of a godless, meaningless existence. While I can identify with the latter, I believe she was doing the former. She arrives on my side of the van and opens the back door. "Who's here? What do you do?" That is, what do you do in the band. She sounds stern but friendly at the same time. "Shravan, I play guitar." "Forrest, bass." She looks at me. "John. I play drums." "It's always the drummer," she says as she walks back to her station. Always the drummer who does WHAT, I'm thinking. Always the drummer who HAS AN EXPIRED PASSPORT AND NEEDS TO BE DISCIPLINED WITH HOT IRONS...?
But she just meant it's always the drummer who rides shotgun. I figured it wasn't worth explaining to her that, actually, Shravan almost always rides shotgun because he has control issues around music selection in vehicles, and that Forrest and I don't mind because we don't have these sorts of control issues. We were at the border for three minutes, tops, and now we were waved across. We spent the night in Chula Vista, a short drive from the border, in a garage attached to a home owned by the parents of one of the Bumbklaatt guys. Apparently Alan's used it as a post-border pit stop for years. The next day we drove back to Long Beach so that Alan could run some errands and I could pick up some new sticks, having left my stick bag in the thieving manos of the aforementioned Sra. Mexico. Then it was on to Isla Vista, on the coast next to Goleta, about halfway between LA and SF. We played at the house I had visited on tour five years ago with Kadd and Rachel and Rasmus. Low turnout, but at least playing in a living room made it feel like there were actually people watching. We had a good time. Listened to the locals complain about the Irish summerers who descend on the area every year. Before we took off the next day, I wandered down to a cliff-studded beach three blocks away. Very scenic. I saw a dead ray in the sand. It's really, you know, it's kind of a shame. A shame about that ray.
Our San Francisco show was at the same spot we played last summer, then the Balazo Gallery now called Sub-Mission. I met up with Derrick B. before the show at Aquarius, where I picked up various records they were holding for me and of course grabbed a few more of the shelves. There weren't a lot of people at the show, but for whatever reason I really like that place and was happy to play there regardless. I think we ended up getting over $100 from the door, which is a good night for us, and both of the local bands were excellent: Suicide Bomb, which includes members of Condenada, Born/Dead, and Artimus Pyle, and Morpheme, the young crasher band with a Japanese singer. They've got an ep coming out on Prank, but the singer's moving back to Japan, so the band's done after one more show, I believe. We spent the night at our always hospitable friend Matt's house.
Arcata: good show, good turnout. We played with a crappy PA, which basically meant no vocals, but the kids went crazy anyway. First show where that had happened. There was so much dirt in the carpet in the room we played, sent airborne by the attendees, that when we finished playing, the drumset looked like it had been sitting in a basement for five years. Got fed pancakes the next morning. Excellent.
Eugene: lousy show at a tattoo shop made worse by the fact that the people who work there unbeknownst to the bookers had turned it into a benefit for their friend who had put his hand through a window (under not entirely unreasonable circumstances, I'll admit, having heard the story) and fucked up tendons and nerves and stuff. So we got zero money from the door and left for Portland right after we played. That was a day and a half ago, and I'll have to leave it at that for now. I've got a van to Seattle to catch.
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