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Rafael Lago - drums
Atsushi Murase - bass and singing Daryl Shawn - guitar and singing 4/13/2000 I-5, heading South. Lovely clouds to the, um, East, Sunny Day (Real Estate) in the van. There's something so beautiful about travel, about when the transportation takes over, and you're temporarily absolved of responsibility, completely, just carried by a current. MUNI buses in a haze of dust, in the nothingness 100 miles North of L.A. Escapees. Like us...funny how you always think this area is a blank void, but there's been so much to see. Black cloud meeting blue sky meeting brown dust haze meeting shocking green vineyards and orchards. Feels natural to be doing this, this travelling, so single-minded, focused. 4/15/2000 On a balcony outside the studio apartment where the three of us, plus hospitable friend, crashed at 3 this morning. L.A. is chilly today, a cold breeze blowing around the impossibly tall decorative evergreens behind all the houses in sight. We had a late start from SF yesterday, and a late start today too. Had breakfast at the Pantry, a slow ride in the wrong direction, but I felt so bad for gassing up at IHOP yesterday. I just had to take us somewhere decent today, somewhere not so, well, IHOP. International? Yesterday was a little ridiculous, and sad in a way at the end. Woke at 11:30...well, let's cover the previous night. The drive down turned out fine, I was stressed over leaving so late, and then we hit traffic of course, but Atsushi kept it at 90 the whole way down 5 and got us to Mr. T's at 8:30. Great music the whole way, courtesy At and his huge cd case, Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Dismemberment Plan now, courtesy me. At Mr.T's, Arlo told us we could do either 9 o'clock or midnight, although we were told originally the prime 10 o'clock slot was ours. (Passing a tour bus now with a fucking Harley strapped behind. I'm so glad I know that's not what we need. Not on my dime, not on my conscience.) Anyway, we chose the midnight slot. Which turned out to be 1 a.m., after Brother Weasel, the Mecolodiacs and Slowrider. Vince Meghrouni (occasional Mike Watt band member!) played sax with all three, Joe Baiza (Saccharine Trust!) played guitar with the Mecos..all groove bands, all sweet enough to mention us. I got a great torta from a taco truck, sat and watched all the music and ignored the clock as much as I could. Two friends of mine came down, troopers, they stuck around til we finished at 2. How'd we play? Hm, what did we play. Opened with For I So Love, blasting it out, making a space for ourselves and weeding out the more easily-offended groove types...we played a nice "Pennies" with harmonies...sloppy MHEL..everything felt a little sloppy then, but certainly energetic...a quartet of barely-legals were all into us because one of them was from Berkeley. I stupidly forgot to set out the mailing list, hate when I do that, there's always so much to worry about, but sometimes folks dig us but have to leave, and it's a great thing to be able to see people a second time. Arlo loved us, handed us way too much money after, talked much about setting up a better show next time and how the cd doesn't do us justice...nice to hear. A guy sweeping the floors kept saying "please come back...please come back." So nice to hear in our exhaustion. I'd have to say it was a success. Not in the standard terms, I mean we played to maybe 20 people and got a handful of names on the mailing list...but the money really makes a difference at this point, and the reaction was really really nice. Exactly what I wanted, really, to establish something with the booker and check out the place. Yesterday, then, to make an interminable story shorter, we woke at 11:30, one of us (I won't say who but it wasn't me) clogged the toilet, it took me an hour to get to Home Depot and buy a plunger, we had to launder the bathmats, then we ate at IHOP in my quiet desperation (I felt so guilty). I had to go to the hardware again to find another mop head, then I waited for At to return from Guitar Center, by then it was 5:30 and we didn't have time to do anything but drive a few blocks to Melrose, hit a few record shops, struggle through traffic back to our pad for guitars, and struggle some more to The Freeway. On to Sacred Grounds in Pedro then... I was probably expecting too much, even as we were setting up I hoped to see some more people around. We went to get sushi across the street, ordered a buncha fish, time was running out so I left $60 and said I'd pay, ran back to the club to set up. At and Rafael got there 10 minutes later, still no crowd, just a couple kids with girlfriends getting coffee. We started playing, to a near-empty room, although soon three friends showed up (plus a lawyer acquaintance of theirs who regaled us with grisly criminal defense stories afterward). We played badly. "Mississippi" was nice, "For I So Love" was great but felt too quiet, everything else suffered. No energy in the room...when it was over, the singer for the next band handed me a sticker without comment, as if passing out complimentary movie tickets for a film that already got panned...asshole, did I ask you for your merch? If I liked you enough to actually display your sticker, I'd come and ask you for one...I was in no mood. It just went nowhere, and was strangely over too soon, anti-climactic without a climax. But we sold a few cds, even to people we didn't know (always an unqualified cause for celebration), and the soundguy and coffee pourers liked us. Afterward, we hung out at a bar down the street. I ordered a double (!) snakebite and played 12 holes of Golden Tee (an addiction). We rudely awakened our host at 3, but not before the boys confessed that the sushi ended us costing $87. Great. And I only had three rolls. That's what you get for being responsible on-time bandleader. This morning, gave our host a t-shirt (we owe him big), and struggled to the freeway again, but on the way we turned around in an alley and backed into a car who pulled up too fast behind us, denting our back hatch. We continued on to the Pantry in gloom, had good food at last, at least, and cheered up a bit. Back at the SF airport where we rented the van, we returned the vehicle in fear, but by some foresight or damn good luck Rafael had got the insurance (which I never get) and we were fine. |