Tape architect / Don’t ruin it, we’re playing that next
Okay the tour story in one sitting, now or never, here goes.
In DC I was five seconds away from standing in Mike’s friend Alan’s toilet when his roommate Jacob knocked on the door and stopped it. That was the beginning and end of the zine Toilets I Have Stood In though I have threatened to resurrect it many times since. It is useful, too, to stay at someone’s house and for them to think that this is a thing I will do while I am there. I haven’t tested this theory at all, but I vaguely suspect that those who have heard of Toilets I Have Stood In have made an effort to make their toilets as presentable to the camera (and ultimately to the pages of that publication) as possible.
We got back from band tour this morning at 6AM, after leaving Poughkeepsie around 2AM. What a lame drive. Some blown out weird pop was playing for the first while and then that faded and I dialed into some good afterhours rap show. Mike slept through Bahamadia and I almost made a hundred wrong turns.
There were fifty million amazing characters on this short trip. We listened to bootleg Brawlers + Bawlers + Bastards instead of the usual Jay-Z and usaisamonster. It was a more cerebral tour, instead of the previous bacchanals – there were no real hellion moments. On two possibly-related notes, our shit was way more together, and we actually broke even. Thanks for the donations dudes!
We fought traffic for seven hours in New York and ate taco bell only once the entire tour. When we got to Amherst, a couple of dudes came up to me while I was finishing loading my stuff into the Hampshire cafeteria.
“Hey man,” they said. They were big hoodie dudes.
“What’s up dudes?” I said. I was wearing a peace sign shirt and a stupid hat.
“Do you know where we can get mushrooms? We’re from U-Mass and we heard this is where we can do it.”
Awesome. In the cafeteria we made secret sandwiches and drank pabst blue ribbon beers from a 30-pack out of little coffee cups, incase security were to show up and yell. Cats from Providence played a five minute song and Etienne’s fuckin band Cave of Time ruled it. Total Mainliner destructo blasts and booming string whacked out psycho shit. After the show, Etienne said to John and Matt, “Dudes, what do I keep telling you, I need more solos, I only got one tonight, I need at least three.” The dude ran the show so hard John couldn’t switch to electric sax, and god knows what the shit that would’ve been like. I want to watch these dudes play twice weekly. When we went back to their house I asked if we had to bring in the amps and they said, “Nah man, you’re in Massachusetts, it’s cool.” I watched Flesh Eaters and fell asleep and in the morning me and Mike ate at a diner in a traincar in Northampton where the proprietor cooked the food on the greasiest ranges right in front of you and right under a huge, booming exhaust fan. You should eat there if you aren’t strictly vegetarian.
Then we drove to Burlington Vt. In Burlington our show was cancelled but the promoter Joseph said on the phone to Mike, “I try my best to make everything awesome even when the situation is the absolute worst.” He said this while I was outside taping a mirror that fell off of my car back on with painter’s tape and when I got in and Mike told me that he had had this conversation the mirror thing felt like a metaphor. Also I was hung over. Have you ever driven to Vermont? It is the most beautiful of the northeast states and it has wicked mountains.
Joseph met up with us after we walked around for a half hour in the cold trying to find him. He bought us sushi and gave us money and took us to a show where a woman sang a cover of You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’. I was super bummed all night and wanted to lay down serious jams but our show was cancelled. Back at Joe’s place we caught up with Susy’s old roommate Jake and eventually went back to his place, where we slept. In the morning we made zines and waited in line for an hour to get into the only diner in town. We listened to Bawlers and went to the Magic Hat brewery and got growlers and drank them.
We loaded into the death metal show we were “invited” to play on and the dudes said, yeah, you can play, but nobody will be here and you won’t get paid. We got paid and we played to maybe 25 people, so it worked out well. We drank whiskey from coffee cups, again in case security came to yell, and played pulsing fever music in front of an intense mason logo. Our drummer needed more direction than we were able to give. He asked me if I wanted fills, and I gave him the come on man, just do whatever answer because I didn’t know what he meant. Someone leave a comment with what fills are please. Other bands that night were of a more technical or seriously metal variety. The promoter Frankie’s band Portugal Towers was tight and somebody bought a pile of Domino’s and a slice of the sausage pie made me sick. We sold some CDs and one dude said “I was surprised by your band, it was interesting, but I’m not sure if I liked it.” Also, apparently nobody knows what metal riffing fingers are, up in the northeast? We went to a party after this show instead of going to Jake’s. There, a girl said to Mike in response to our band and general behavior, “I want to start a noise band where when I play people [do metal riffing fingers],” and that was the only good thing that happened. We had a convoluted, terrible time finding a place to sleep and ended up letting ourselves into Joe’s apartment at 5.30AM, after a guy woke me up and kicked me out of his house, the dirty floor of which I was sleeping on while Mike was drinking his way through about a liter of vodka. Also after trying to sleep in the car and after two people who offered us places to stay reneged. Shittiest night / funniest morning: special thanks to Joe’s roommate who didn’t want us there when he inexplicably found us in the morning, but didn’t feel strongly enough about it to kick us out. When we were rolling into Joe’s we got out of the car tired and smokey and ruined and across the street fifteen frat dudes were strolling down the street with cups in hand, still rolling hard.
Montpelier was amazing. Everything there was perfect. We ate more sushi at a by-the-piece joint and overheard a woman from the DNC talking to the proprietor about how Kerry was going to be running for president, but not anymore. Heavy election worries. We walked on train bridges and up a crazy hill through the woods (where a guy named I think Andrew had carved “I am the ruler of my domain!” on a lot of benches) and there was a castle at the top. Go to Montpelier, everything there is exactly like that, you go to do something fun and it turns out even better than you’d have thought. Mike scheduled us a show at an open mic night at Langdon St Cafe and I was more apprehensive about this show than any other. Nutty Steph rollerbladed right up to us when we were sitting down inside and said, “Oh hey, are you guys OSPREYS? You’re staying with me tonight” and that was that, we knew we’d be good. The Cardboard Tech Institute people were there too – Thor + Brian + Amy. Amy took pics. We had breakfast with them the next day and Nutty Steph gave them jobs. Bo screened Michael Franti’s movie, said a million hilarious things, and gave us presents just because we were touring and he thought we were good dudes. Montpelier! Our set was bad-feedback-laden at first and I had serious problems getting my mics to work the way I wanted and it took a while to clear the crowd of hecklers (first ever time we got seriously heckled, and by old dudes who played real guitar, so funny), but it was cool. First piece was a nine minute Glass Throats creep jam for staring into windows at 3AM. Second song (Mike introduced it saying “Okay we have one more short one”) was supreme two-note plodding doom sinister for perfect opium sickness. Slit throats bleed distorted bass, fucking shit, man! This was so inappropriately loud and barked into my little mic the recording is so shitty and I still way feel the level six hundred sixty six head nod vibes relistening to it. Afterward the Cardboard peeps cheered enthusiastically and everyone else was gone and I was liquified adrenaline lightning rod FUCK man! playing shows! …!! and we went back to Nutty Steph’s. She wasn’t home and when she got in at 12.30 she said “Oh man I don’t have much food, only cucumber and tomato and feta sandwiches!” MONTPELIER!
Mike claims I said “Play scrabble with me… PLEASE!” toward the end of our night in Worcester. We played with Jake‘s band Phonebook who were the best shit rock duo of them all. Mike has pictures of this show that he will undoubtedly never show me. A dude there was telling us about his band RIFFTIDE, the funniest all time band that will be remembered through the ages. The premise is “I will riff over your project.” Stay tuned. Forbes St trickiest hill most baroque system for regulating how co-op members are accountable for their dishes. Thanks Lilah for trading me a six pack of Wachusett Blueberry for zines! Thanks Kelley for cooking us delicious food for dinner! I accidentally got very beer drunk at this show and don’t super remember it. Our set was plagued by the same problems – contact mics breaking at a sad rate, little chirper barking too hard, shit just generally not working – but our second song was an ultra-heavy melter. Mike claims I played on for a good two minutes after he stopped, and then he decided to start back in again, and I stopped thirty seconds later. I told him I need more solos. Andrew made us waffles in the morning and we wandered Worcester for two hours looking for falafel in the afternoon, and the dude who provided it showed us his pictures of him with Gwen Steffani and Al Pacino and he told us a bizarre story about Limp Bizkit. Beware: in Worcester, the Mediterranean Foods Market only sells Italian, and the Italian place only sells falafel.
We stopped at Susy’s mom’s house but this is the tour blog so I’m not going to get so into that. She made us provisions and we watched Kung-fu Hustle and I was very glad we punctuated our tour with this stop.
Victory lap and happy returns in Poughkeepsie, last show. Spent most of the day on the couch zoned out wanting to play super bad. Interneting but my email wouldn’t send. Wandered campus, deja vu’d, got totally Box Eyes. Slept on the smallest couch and woke up to Brawlers. Mike went to look out a telescope at ships vanishing behind the sun, with Ellen who has access to these things, but I stared out the window for a full hour instead. Growler hangover + tour ending tear brushed away. We loaded in and played in Ellen’s living room for twenty or thirty people – totally awesome show, perfect tour conclusion. Little chirper gave me total hell by reacting on the super strange to my distortion and amp settings, and I was sure my amp was blowing at certain points. Once feedback was harnessed we stuck with the same set, but worked in a whole lot of triple space guitar bloom. Second song was a huge departure, big melancholy opener, slooooow beautiful birds singing hell-song. When we ended people clapped and asked us to play more for the second time ever. Ellen joined on electric violin with Zach who had played drums and Christina who took over the mic. We played one long, long jam, true sky-cracking and blood-pouring-in end to it. So good. Tour.