images above: xbxrx live at the smell, photographer George TapiaThis year we have really worked at scaling down the size and weight of our gear for efficiency. We've also done the past few tours as a trio instead of a quartet. One big perk is this has allowed us to rent a full size car instead of a van for the past few tours. Each rental company has a different type of vehicle they consider "Full Size". We ended up being stuck with a red Magnum this time. I don't know if you are familiar with these vehicles but they are one of the most hideous looking cars ever made. You can't avoid looking like a jerk riding around in one of these things! It's kind of like an SUV with a lower roof. A funny thing is just last night I was working on a mixing session with my friend John and he was telling a story about seeing someone in a well-to-do neighborhood casually cleaning up a Magnum riddled with bullet holes. I have to say I fully understand someone having the urge to shoot one of these cars on site! It's nice to imagine no one was in that Magnum when it got shot up and that the incident was purely about the car.
One of the biggest drags about touring is figuring out how to fill the many boring hours of waiting around. You see, most of a tour day consists of sitting in a car for 4-10 hours or so and then sitting in a club for about 7 hours once out of the car. To help occupy our six hour drive down to LA from Oakland I started reading Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks-- a book all about music's relationship with the human brain. One of the first sections of the book focuses on musical hallucinations and how head trauma (like that which happens to sports players) in one's teen years can cause musical hallucinations to happen in one's later adult years. These hallucinations often end up being endless loops of nursery rhymes or patriotic songs which sound like they're happening outside of you, not like hearing music in your head. Since we are on our way to Los Angeles as I read about this it gets me to thinking about some teenage head trauma I endured at an LA gig several years back. I was crowd surfing during our set and was thrown head-first back on to the stage. My head hit the monitor and then my guitar bounced of the stage to hit me in the head immediately after. It's the only time I remember blacking out from head trauma and I ended up dazed for a while after our set, scared to sleep on the overnight drive home in case I had a concussion. So damn, what if this little moment of good-times-gone-bad causes a torturous, endless loop of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "God Bless America" forty years from now!?!?
Our show in LA was so much fun! The bill was amazing: Abe Vigoda, AIDS Wolf, and Health. The room was 50 over capacity and everyone was in good spirits. Luckily, there was heavy documentation of this inspirational evening. There were multi-camera video crews shooting a documentary based around the venue (The Smell) as well as for the website Stick-AM. We ended up doing two video interviews for documentaries being made about the Smell. It's interesting how much attention this place has been getting lately from the press. I have to say it is one of my favorite venues in the country so it's great to see it gain some recognition. But it does seem a bit weird when some bands start feeling like they need to play a certain venue in order to be accepted or to say they are a part of something in press releases and things like that.
Here is a clip of us performing a track from our "7 songs" aka "clear" cdep which was also originally released as a european tour seven inch
Before heading to San Diego the next day, we got a chance to go see our good friends No Age play a guerrilla show at the LA River put on by Arthur Magazine. WW made a prediction that the cops would shut it down in 15 minutes and he was right on with that prediction. It was funny to see the difference in how LA people handle renegade shows as well as when the cops show up. It seemed like more of a novelty to the scene people there whereas it is a pretty frequent and normal thing in the Bay Area. Everyone also seemed way more afraid of the cops- most of them pretty much ran away the second the pigs showed up.
The show itself at the Che Cafe in San Diego was pretty good but we as a band were kind of a train wreck! Our first two shows/sets at this venue were great and the last three have all been pretty rough for us. We had a guitar amp that, for the entire set, did not fully work for any one full song. It would be on for the first 30 seconds, cut off for 20 seconds, someone would shake it, it would come on for 10 more seconds, and then it would cut off again. Further blame is placed on a guitar being reduced to two strings for a large portion of the set as well as not being able to put together that "why does my guitar sound so weird!?" was due to my pedal being on the "detune" setting for all of the set. Supposedly someone yelled out "Amateur Hour at the Che Cafe!" while we performed. These types of mishaps occur maybe once every 10 shows for us and are very very frustrating at the moment they are happening but we can't help but to laugh at it the next day. One cool thing about this show was that the bill had much variety amongst the bands. There was the sense that several different "scenes" came together for the night.
The Oakland show was with AIDS Wolf, Calvin Johnson, Monotonix, and DJ George Chen. It was at 21 Grand, this art space that has become the only consistent all ages venue in the East Bay for progressive and interesting styles of music. The turnout didn't seem as good as it should have been considering we were sharing the bill with so many rad bands but there were still a good amount of people who came out and most of them were prepared to have a good time. Last time we played here, these big shirtless dudes threw me around like a rag doll the entire set and scared the crowd in to a U shape. This time we encouraged people to huddle around and they did at first but then everyone got spread around a little more once all the moshing and wild dancing began. It can be a bummer sometimes to feel like people see us or our audience as being violent when I think for the most part that it is more of a joyous explosion. 2/3 of us had a great time and the other one interpreted it as being a disaster similar to our San Diego show. This likely had something to do with the fact that the guitars were actually functioning this time around but parts of the drum kit were falling apart almost every song. It can sometimes happen that a performer can only focus on one thing that's not going right when so much else is going great-- even if the thing that's going wrong is something no one else minds or notices happening.
We had an off day between Oakland and Davis where we got some much needed rest. AIDS Wolf recorded in Oakland and our drummer produced it. The rest of us checked out a gamelan performance at Mills College, took a stab at improvising a salsa recipe, and things like that. We got a call from the venue in Davis saying that they just changed the show time for tomorrow from 9pm to 7pm. This left us a little worried about if anyone would show up for the show 2 hours early with almost no notice and if the bay area rush hour traffic would be killer.
We decided to get rid of the Magnum and drive WW's ancient Mercedes. The exhaust pipe came off about 5 times on our drive. After a failed attempt at keeping it attached to the car via guitar string, the strap to a bookbag finally did the trick. We rolled in to Davis at about 8pm, the local band had already finished up, and we immediately loaded in to the performance area and played. After the last two shows, it was such a relief to make it an entire set without gear malfunctioning. The space was pretty cool---just small enough to guarantee tightly packed goodness. AIDS Wolf tore it up. It's a shame we didn't get to do more gigs together.
