Show Journal 2001-12-15
What a weekend. The Deviates called us up a few weeks ago and asked us to play the last show of their tour in L.A. with them and The Line. Given the sad state of our last L.A. shows combined with our admiration of the Deviates we happily agreed to play the show without hesitation. The reality of it was that we would drive just under 1000 miles for one show. 18 hours in the van for 30 minutes of playing. Was it worth it? Hell yeah it was! With the company of Nate Dogg (who roadied our first tour) the drive down was actually a blast. We installed a VCR in the van before we left, so we just kicked back, watched movies and played Nintendo the whole way down. We joked around, ate junk food and the day flew right by. Plus, Portland has had over 30 straight days of rain so we were just excited to see the sun and clear skies. Periodically Jim would turn on the windshield wiper fluid to remind us of home. Nate decided that Justin’s new nickname was ‘Slim Shaky’ because of his often erratic driving. One cool thing was that we stopped in Redding to eat and there was a van in the parking lot with 2 of our stickers! We ended up sleeping at a truck stop somewhere near Bakersfield. Before sleeping Dave decided to watch one more “movie” in the parking lot. I’ll skip the details but rather than a “recreational vehicle” our van is now classified as a “procreational vehicle”. (Dave would prefer that all females reading this immediately forget the previous sentences and try not to draw any conclusions about his movie collection.) It was really cold in the van that night and to complicate things we had forgotten to crack the windows and woke up with condensation on everything. After a truck stop shower we drove on to L.A. and basically just hung out for the afternoon. We ate lunch outside at a little Mexican restaurant where a bird flew in, grabbed a beakful of my nachos, and then flew off. Little bastard. After that we cruised around L.A. for a while. Nothing quite like rolling down Rodeo and through Beverly Hills in our incredibly dirty and enormous white van. At one point we happened across the “L. Ron Hubbard Winter Wonderland” complete with choir and Santa Claus. Experiencing a Scientology Christmas was very strange indeed. On to the show … the show was a ton of fun for us but a little weird. Stranded was up first and I thought they rocked. Heavy, fast and good. They got a very lukewarm crowd reaction which was surprising since we were all so impressed with them. So we played next and here’s where it got weird. We played really well. Really, really well I would dare say. As hard as we played though, no one really got into it. A few people started a pit on a few songs but just like the first band the crowd just never really got into it. Some people cheered, some people clapped, some people booed but on the whole it was just a very apathetic reaction. No matter what the reaction we had a great time playing and were totally pleased with the way it turned out. The sound system was incredible, the stage was huge and it’s always cool to play for 500+ people! The Line and the Deviates said they enjoyed our set which was flattering for us. Since it was the last show of their tour and a big night for them we were stoked they liked it. I would have hated to suck on their big show! Speaking of not sucking The Line and The Deviates both played so well I can’t even put it into words. They both had endless energy and played each song faster and better than the one before it. The Line … my god they can rock. I had never heard them and was very impressed. The Deviates were on fire at this show. It was great to see them in their hometown crowd and their set was bordering on inspirational. So much so that we ended up listening to their CD 3 times on the way home. After the show we had to bail to start the haul back to Portland, so we said our goodbyes and headed out. We made it about 2 hours out of L.A. and slept at a truck stop that we have stayed at on two previous outings. It was really cold damn cold that night and we could see our breath in the van. The drive home was long. There were two snowy passes we had to cross and it rained for the last half the drive. I think we watched about 4 or 5 movies on that drive. Nothing too noteworthy to mention except that we learned a) the back seat causes people to have gas and digestive problems and b) when someone needs to go to the bathroom Justin is very slow to get out of the way. Thank you’s go out to The Deviates for asking us to play and making this so easy for us, The Line for being cool guys and rocking so hard, the staff at the Troubadour for being cool, Ty for coming our early, Robert for the chicken wings and the Doggfather for coming along for the ride and being part of the fun.
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