TOUR VIBES
Kind of stupidly forgot to take pictures for the tour's first few awesome days in LA and SF/Oak, hopefully Nadav will Flickr his much more complete account soon or whatever? ANYway, my notes + fotes in a bloggy mess:
7.19 - LOS ANGELES, THE SMELL - We ate at In-N-Out before returning to the scene of the harsh finale of our last west coast tour, where our van was broken into! Awesome vibes all around this time tho, lotta GAUCHO while driving around, quietly thrilling/smooth, Rajiv and Jenna came out from Santa Barbara! Lily flew in from Hong Kong to catch the afterglow! Foot Village, the all-drums+vox brainchild of Deathbomb Arc's Brian Miller, was intense, the crowd did this awesome 'ring around the rosie'-esque circle dance which rly blew me away; drums sound AWESOME in the Smell, and lots of drums sound REALLY awesome in the Smell; super atmospheric-seeming Aa set, I was into it!; past and future tour-buddies and Smell mainstays HEALTH ('hello'd on Paper Thin Walls, more on PTW's imminent slaying of the Pitchfork dragon soon! etc) closed powerfully, after which we jammed hard on their track "Crimewave" for some video mag or something? Sound is mucky on this but trust me it was nice 'live'!
These guys are good AND cool, was a pleasure to play shows/brunch with!
7.20 - SAN DIEGO, SCOLARI'S - Chilled at Sean's house during the day and swam in the Pacific! Dinner at awesome old school Italian joint where they've known Sean since he was a kid and still took forever to bring us our food! Service on the west coast seems less urgent in general, know mean? It makes sense. Anyway, Scolari's was rad, though super low ceilings made the drums sound kind of flat, esp compared to the Smell! Opener Vaginals were seriously amazing, one of the weirdest awesomest bands I've seen in a hot minute - was kind of... avant-exotica cabaret goth? FAR OUT. HEALTH = bangin. Matt McAndrews and Miranda in the house, totz randomly!
7.21 - SAN FRANCISCO, 12 GALAXIES - Drove all fuckin nite to get to SF at around 11, I managed to cunningly avoid taking a shift at any point! Show was in "the Mission" so of course I went to the ChrisCo-recommended La Taqueria on 25th for a mind-bendingly good carnitas burrito (actually my second, grabbed one as my first meal off the plane with J-Schwartz). Curtisss! Paul Barnes! Missed meeting Owen, 893 associate and creator of genius happy hour-centric Google Maps hack! Party was for the imminent departure of local booking mastermind Michelle Cable! Who booked this tour for us, and will continue to save us from our own bad booking choices in the future thx to her moving to Brooklyn! Her friend and our future brunch hostess Debbie belly-danced! The lights were a li'l bright, less than ideal vibes! DWYER IS AN AMAZING DRUMMER! Thx Leslie for hosting us! GNOME BOOK!
7.22 - OAKLAND, 21 GRAND - Brunch at Debbie's w/Health, Michelle, and friends! RESPECT. Jon Schwartz made the drive down from 'stoga, RESPECT. BEN HOWELL. BUTTS UP in the parking lot, me vs. Dav vs. Dalton from Robin Williams on Fire (RAD PRESS PIX), raw Oak kids bringing high octane screamy truth, Ewing/Kemp/Rodman triumvirate, pants WERE dropped. And FWIW our set sounded and felt incredible, one of our best shows ever no doubt I thought - Emily got this on video I think? CROWD SURFING.
Shout-out to BLEACHY BLEACHY BLEACH, screaming AND shouting AND haircuts, LOOK OUT! And local bro-core closer BATTLESHIP's last show ever began with whiskey shots for all and ended with a fucking epic, 20-minute cola-soaked closer, I moshed/danced so hard I could barely walk the next day! OAKLAND = TRUTH
7.23 - KJFC on-air performance! Los Altos-area Foothills College's well-regarded radio station ! THE PIT. Extremely pro job by the sound engineers, hoping to have some audio from this sesh soon! Though my voice was totally fucked up by this point! Seems like I usually lose it about 4 days into a tour before bouncing back - I don't know why, that's just how it works! Funtimes with Laura and Tim, our awesome hosts twice over! ZEITGEIST, the bar, not the Smashing Pumpkins album ("Billy Corgan has clearly done a lot of thinking over the past seven years. And the results are weird." ) - I saw David from one of the Real World's there with J-Schwartz my first day in San Fran, then chilled again in force with Bay Area buds for a chill night out, our only night off!
7.24 - SACRAMENTO, FOOL'S FOUNDATION: GALLERY SHOW. They call Sacramento "SACTO". This gallery had this awesome exhibit called "40 miles of masking tape" or something, or at least that's what it was, a huge awesome installation made out of masking tape, F'REAL -
The first band, WOMAN YEAR was a crazy but def occasz inspired noise/rap/electronic/folk/free/country HOT MESS! The second, CHANT OHS (sp?) was a couple of dudes from Hella's current band-sized incarnation playing the most fucking violently primitive/sophisticated drums/organ caveman/sci-fi shred-skronk I have ever seen, srssly primal yet video-gamey and beautiful! The sound was fucking great for our set, people were dancing awesomely, some dude was doing backflips apparently?? Sacto seemed full of shy yet passionate stoners! BUTTS UP IN THE PARKING LOT
7.25 - SANTA CRUZ, BLUE LAGOON. Santa Cruz = best day vibes! BOARD.WALK. Also, MOHAWKS, easily the most! Awesome mohawked kids on the beach! We rode the wooden roller coaster and bought pictures! Stupidly missed the MYSTERY SPOT, only b/c thought we were going to catch the similarly LOST-esque CONFUSION HILL the next day? O WELL - BEACHY BEACHY BEACH -
Note Nadav's awesome olive tree tattoo, easily one of the best tattoos of anyone I know! RESPECT.
MOST IMPORTANTLY - in Santa Cruz I played hold 'em in a real CARD ROOM, srsly Rounders-style, my first time playin out of the house! Kind of quakin a little, but my horoscope said I was in some kind of period of transition or something - TRUE - and that I should take advantage of the situation to go outside my comfort zone to learn more about the workings of the universe etc. TRUE^2. After initial jitters, didn't do badly at all, was actually prob up a couple hundred at one point, f'real! But had to leave to play, so lost a bunch of it (not all of it!) back before cashing out. Mom and Dad etc don't worry, I'm not going to make a habit of it - BUT IT FELT REALLY GOOD -
SHOW itself was pretty meh, sound-dude/b-day boy/scene guy was drunk and having a blast, lots of feedback! Josh's drum fell apart, he smashed a couple pieces at the end, which was kind of awesome! PVT. SHERIDAN DOWN FROM MONTERREY, SALUTE! Girl has the Army situation on lock -
7.26 - EUREKA, ACCIDENT GALLERY: Awesome Pacific coast-y drive up to Michelle's home jawn, Eureka - missed Confusion Hill, ahhhhh next time!!!
- ANYway Eureka was small, gritty, weird, awesome - maybe the most atmospheric vibes of anywhere we played and stayed? INTRIGUING, made me want to watch TWIN PEAKS (I've never watched Twin Peaks!). Clean, damp air, and everyone seemed pretty chilled the fuck out Humboldt-style (except for the meth zombies!). GOOD SUSHI. Some kind of erotica art show was up, kind of an intense performance environment! Show sounded great, rad if small crowd! Great bar nearby where me and Dav faced off for three closely waged, intense, well-vibed games of outdoor ping-pong - all of which, inexplicably, Dav won! Excellent hostessing by Chris and his g/f whose name I sadly can't remember rite now, their house was a wonderland of black velvet posters and DVDs dubbed onto VHS tapes!
7.27 - PORTLAND, GROUND KONTROL. This was in an arcade/bar! Lotta classics, tho kind of a disappointing selection of more recent games! Me and Dav faced off/skanked off on Dance Dance Revolution to the tune of the Specials' "Little Bitch" - MORE ON SKA IN AN UPCOMING POST! He won this one too, frustratingly! This show was pretty good but frankly lacked the serious intensity of our last stop in PDX, a houseparty which I think is the only show we've ever had shut down by the cops, I was playing/climbing on the landing of this mansion, man I will remember that show forever, one of the best! All the arcade machines kind of get in the way of crowd vibes, as you might imagine. WHATEVER. Thx Caley for hostessing!
7.28 - SEATTLE, COMET TAVERN. CAPITOL HILL BLOCK PARTY! AESOP ROCK! AGAINST ME!! And then us at the Comet afterparty! Seattle was fucking rad, great thrifting at Atlas Clothing, walking around the hills at sunset, MT. ST. HELENS, seeing the Pacific one last time - ah man and we got SERIOUSLY and awesomely called out by these drunk frat dudes for our conspicuous lack of a 'rock star mentality', drinking diet soda and reading gossip magazines in the van before the show. "Do you realize there is like this big block party going on?? IS THIS HOW YOU GET PSYCHED TO PLAY A SHOW??" Harsh but true, we have a LOT of work to do in the party department! Though it was awesome to take this amazing picture of Aron while hanging out and shooting imaginary guns, it's hard to describe how fucking cartoonish and awesome Aron's behavior gets after a week on the road, it is really entertaining!
Show was seriously awesome, so annoying that they had to clear out the bar afterwards, wanted to chill with Sam Mickens and wifey (!) and the transient drunks we had improbably made friends with during our pathetic van-bound 'pregaming', other awesome Seattle folks, big respect to Westin for hosting post-show hangage and him + friends for putting up with my incessant questions about the "Singles" soundtrack. Westin is in a Creedence cover band called Revival Revival, genius, no? CREEDENCE. Let's not even talk about what a pain in the ass getting home was or how uncharacteristically depressed I was to have to come back to the NYC!
BIG BIG THX to Asif for getting us the GPS at Thrifty! "I'm a computer!" To SEAN for playing with us, was awesome to have the original big A in the house, missing dude's presence on stage has been officially renewed! To KATIE B for taking time from her good work defending the public to sell record-shattering amounts of Aa merch and generally keep us from spiraling too deep into dude-insanity for the first few days of the trip! ALL gracious hosts and hostesses! ALL bands, esp HEALTH now and in the future! MICHELLE for making this easy and cool! All Aa dudes for being such excellent and chill, if somewhat party-averse, travelling companions. ALWAYS A PLEASURE -