Show Journal 2002-09-06
Back up in that ass with the resurrection! Hands down the best show in Richland ever … possibly the best 800 Octane show ever! Everyone else in the world missed out. The following items rocked my world tonight … Midnight Thunder Express, Dan’s drumming, Dustin and crew, the loose shoe that Dave threw out the window, and most importantly the crowd who made this so much fun to play for us. Seriously, it was a perfect ending to what has been the best string of shows we’ve had in ages! Thanks to everyone in attendance!
Show Journal 2002-09-05
I was a little skeptical of playing a matinee show but I would dare say this was the most fun I’ve ever had playing at the Meow Meow. Lots of new faces, plus lots of old faces (i.e. – Rob The Stalker). We had a great time playing, Tsunami Bomb kicked ass and we want to thank King Banana. Word.
Show Journal 2002-09-04
Everything was a little crazy tonight but we’ve come to expect it from Longview. Highlights include the police barging in during CTL’s set and threatening to arrest everyone under 21. Long story but thankfully it didn’t happen. Also while the cops were there someone on a very big and very loud Harley drove it inside the club. Yes, inside. Very strange. CTL sounded great tonight. I missed Days Away because Dan and I went over to Jack In The Box. We got our food to go so we could eat it at the club but when we got back there it was already time for us to load in. That means I missed Days Away and my dinner. In fact I think my chicken pieces and fries are still out there on the street. Perhaps a homeless person will salvage a free meal from them? More realistically perhaps Dave happened upon it and threw it at someone smaller than him. Setting up took forever because we had to go straight from the van onto the stage. Thankfully the set went great. Fill in drummer #2 (you can call him ‘Dan’) played great. All in all it’s safe to say I had a lot of fun playing tonight. Up last was Tsunami Bomb and my god they sounded great. They were good before but they can totally work a crowd now. Very impressive. Looking forward to seeing them tomorrow night. Thanks to all who stayed late, all our guest vocalists, all our equipment loaders and of course TJ and Chris.
Show Journal 2002-08-09
If a band plays a song at the Paris but no one is there to hear it did they really play a song? The attendance was pretty sparse but we did have a few people who road tripped from Eugene and Bend which kind of made up for it. If our calculations are correct the flyer to person ratio was about 180 to 1. Big thanks to The Civies for playing on 6 hours notice. I would comment on their set but I missed it because on the way to Burger King I drove through a yellow light and was given a $175 ticket. What a lousy way to start off the evening. I can’t think of any other moving violation that is less glamorous than driving through a yellow. I once got a ticket for doing 71 in a 30 with no proof of insurance. Now that’s the kind of ticket you can be proud of – a real man’s ticket. The kind you can carry with you and take pride in the fact that you gave modern traffic law the middle finger. On the other hand this driving through a yellow stuff is almost embarrassing. I’m whining aren’t I? Girls don’t like whiners. In fact nobody likes a whiner. I will stop now. Back to the show. The .44 Caliber Heroes sounded great … definitely worth checking out. Compact 56 was amazing. Seriously … best I’ve ever seen them play. They sounded tough as nails. The full speed rodeo flip by Chris onto Attom’s back was quite a sight to behold. Our set was fun, Justin got drilled in the head with a beach ball, I spit a mouthful of water on Rick, Dave broke a bass string and briefly sang without an instrument, Justin did the Mick Jagger dance for me, and most importantly David played great. Thanks to Larry and apologies to Mocephus.
Show Journal 2002-07-30
My god … what a bad ass show! H2O rocked the house tonight but more on that in a second. Our set was good, dare I say very great. This was the first show with David also known as “the borrowed drummer from Rhythm of ’84” and he totally rocked. Dare I say he even “represented”? We had warned him that if he screwed up too badly we were going to destroy his drum set when we were done playing. Luckily we didn’t have to resort to such measures as he played great. Authority Zero was up next and they were definitely entertaining to watch due to their endless energy. Madcap was third and good lord they sounded good too. Catchy songs, a thick sound and they just ripped through each song as if it was their last. Last but not least was H2O and good grief they were good tonight. The crowd was really small tonight (because Bad Brains cancelled) so H2O threw away their set list and took requests all night long. They busted out some old ones that I’ve never seen them play live, they played a ton of covers (including an Ice Cube one) and they even played 3 new songs that have yet to be recorded. There was a ton of people stage diving and the band seemed to be having a blast. During one encore song Toby jumped out in the crowd and led everyone in a massive circle pit. For their last song it got even more bizarre … they had everyone in the crowd get on the stage and the band went out the floor and played up to the crowd. It’s very weird sounding, but somehow it just kind of worked. Very cool set by one of the best live bands around. Big thanks to the following, Rick Emerson and Clyde Lewis from 1080 KOTK, Lara, Sarah (and roommate), PJ and Chrissy, Mike F., Mike T., Wookie and to the other bands who were all very cool to hang with.
Show Journal 2002-07-19
Super fun show this evening. Our van is still dead on the street in front of Dave’s house so we ended up renting a trailer and taking Dave’s car to the show. No big deal but we ended up running way late because of it. In fact we totally missed Point.Blank and only saw the last few songs of Spare Lead. Backwash was up third and it was nice to finally play with them. From what we saw the crowd seemed kind of subdued the whole night but when we played thankfully everyone seemed to wake back up. One odd thing about tonight was that all of our amps were powered by a surge protector that was located at the front of the stage. It was a pretty rowdy crowd so every few minutes the thing would get knocked loose and our amps would turn off. That might sound annoying but the cool thing was that whenever it happened everyone in the crowd would sing along for a few seconds until someone plugged the power back in. Other random show highlights include Dave making an inappropriate joke about “pussy fingers” on stage, Jon commanding everyone to “wang chung tonight” from the merch table, and the realization that someone in the crowd had most likely crapped their pants. Good times. Thanks to Chrissy, PJ, Spare Lead and extra thanks to Jon for coming along for the ride and helping with our merch and power issues!
Show Journal 2002-07-17
Today was Jim’s birthday. We were supposed to play a show in Govt. Camp with the Civies tonight but sadly we were stopped by a broken water pump somewhere in Gresham. Not only did we miss tonight’s show but we were forced to cancel tomorrow’s Redding show as well. I hope my birthday is better than Jim’s.
Show Journal 2002-07-16
Oh … my … god … Strike Anywhere was incredible tonight. Easily the best band performance I’ve seen in ages. Absolutely amazing. As Ice-T would say I am completely and totally on their jock. Seriously if you like hardcore/punk/emo or anything in between go look at their website and see if they are playing near you. I promise you will not be disappointed. Speaking of amazing bands … Rhythm of ’84 … I don’t even know where to start with these guys. They are so spectacular live it’s almost discouraging to watch them play. So talented and so good. Thirty 3 sounded great tonight as well. The pink sailor outfits were a little unorthodox but we’ve come to expect the bizarre when it comes to Thirty 3. We played third and since we are the greatest band on Earth every one was humbled by our presence. Hardly. Truth be told I’m not sure if our set was good or not because I was so traumatized by facing the public with my disgusting leper-like sunburn I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone in the crowd. All in all a great show. Thanks go out to Crys, Mocephus, Lee, Ashley, Michelle and her cookies, the anonymous Huffy riders, all the assorted members of local bands who came out and especially to everyone who was respectful of the Eagles Lodge.
Show Journal 2002-07-14
We finally got to play the Warped Tour and you know what … it was actually pretty cool. We left on Saturday afternoon and drove straight to S.F. through the night. We did see a pretty large wildfire which was kind of cool. We arrived to the venue around 5:00 AM but they weren’t allowing extra vehicles in the lot so we were instructed to park outside the gate along the street. After about 2 hours of sleep we woke up to meet our Ernie Ball contact person and load in our stuff. Since we were playing on the Ernie Ball stage we were given special “Ernie Ball VIP passes” which kind of equates into being a second class citizen at the show. You can’t go backstage, you can’t park in the band lot and you have to use the main gate to go in and out. Kind of a pain the ass for an all day event but I kept reminding myself it was free. The venue was totally cool … it was on a pier on the water beside the Bay Bridge and you had a perfect view of the city. The first few hours of the show were cool, Justin and I wandered around and watched tons of bands. I think the highlight was seeing Hot Water Music … after seeing them live I have a new found appreciation for that band. Awesome place to hang out! Around 2:00 we went to set up and play. Oddly enough we ran into a group of people from Portland there! They were following the Warped Tour for a few days and were just as surprised to see us as we were to see them. Quite a few people stopped to watch us which was very encouraging. Some people even moved which was very nice to see. We sold quite a few CD’s despite not having a merch booth and felt good about our set. We watched a few more bands (most notably The Line) and after an hour or two we were all pretty burnt out on seeing bands so we decided to pack it up and head back. (Speaking of ‘burnt out’ I have never been so sunburnt in my entire life. As I type this I have a bright red face with swollen blisters. I am not happy.) All in all the day was good but the drive home totally sucked ass. About 30 minutes outside of S.F. we decided to stop at In And Out Burger. We couldn’t find it and ended up driving on a road parallel to the interstate for a few miles to a Burger King. We got some food, started driving and after about 30 minutes realized we could see the Sacramento skyline. In a cruel twist of fate it turns out the turn towards I-5 was at the exit where the In And Out Burger was. There is nothing as discouraging as starting a 11 hour drive and realizing you just added an extra hour to it. The rest of the drive was grueling … we kept having to stop to take naps because we couldn’t stay awake. Thanks to my sunburn I was driving with swollen eyes. Well, despite the miserable drive the whole experience was great. Thanks to everyone who traveled to see us including Stephanie from Redding, Angela from Portland and extra huge thanks to Kevin, Sam, Al and Chris for traveling from Seattle!
Show Journal 2002-07-05
Yet another good Longview show for the books. We finally got to hear The Laxatives which was cool since those guys ALWAYS come to our shows! The Amazombies were up next and they were awesome. Jim and I listened to their CD on the way home and determined that it is also awesome. The Daryls were up third. Fast, funny, catchy and clever, you just gotta love those guys. Last was Dirt Bike Annie and holy mother of rock … they were awesome! They have elevated the art of synchronized rock star moves and poses to the greatest of heights. They sounded huge too. Our set was fun as usual. Guest vocals, crowd singing, what more could we ask for? The quote of the night was overheard outside the club and goes like this “my love for you is like diarrhea … I just can’t stop it.” Thanks to all the Longview regulars, Darin and crew, TJ, and the guys from Shoot For Friday and Countdown to Life.
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