:: Music As Social Agitation Records::

:: Sunday, September 12, 2004 ::

sitting in the greyhound station here in springfield, MO. looks like we are not gonna be playing the house show tonight and instead will be high-tailing it west to denver (6am arrival tomorrow morning). we really need to be getting that way at this very moment. i think we are gonna try to pick up a show/gig at a coffeeshop tomorrow morning or evening. i want to be playing tomorrow somewhere. i added it up yesterday and though we have 10 of the next 11 days booked, we have had 11 days off. five for the convention. four missed shows. three our fault or the NYPD's and one greyhounds. and two scheduled days off for the last three weeks. huh. not as busy as i would like to be and i am for sure a little pessimistic about how effective or how much we have been successful getting our music out there. lots of fun shows for sure, and nothing to horrible overall happening, but... i dunno. for how taxing this whole greyhound thing has been, and for how much of normal life and normal productivity we are missing right now, i am not sure if it has been worth it. i am eager to do another greyhound tour, but i am thinking the 21 day passes are probably the perfect amount of time. from here on out, i want to be touring at least 60 days a year. maybe two 21 dayers and two week longs. i want to take eli out before the end of the year... so last night was st louis and the infierno room. downtown STL, on washington. an odd area that seems stuck between run-down, urban ghost town and aspiring young, professional gentrification. tons of empty first story spaces right next to ritzy sushi bars and shit. apparently this is the second time in the last decade they have tried to re-vitalize the area. it was kind of like a beautiful GQ-ing model person you might meet and then they laugh and you see there teeth are yellow and they are missing a few. BUT i was excited cause as we approached downtown from our walk from the greyhound, i realized that i had read/looked through a book a few months ago in the library all about urban st louis and its history and development of its architecture through the last century. there really is some beautiful architecture downtown, nothing too flashy but just these huge impressive structures with subtleties. what is most impressive is how all the buildings are packed up tight and right next to each other along the blocks, too the point where it just looks like a massive cube, flat-faced yet striped every quarter-block since there are actually four not one building. tall, high-rising massive wall of concrete and almost forgettable windows. overture. overdeparture. anonozine. more later. the show was fun, the 3-4 people working there were nice considering there was no one else on the bill and about 15-20 patrons over the course of the five hour night. there was obviously a little miscommunication between me and elvis, the owner/booker, which sucked. me and tim made the best of it though hitting up the dollar tacos ten times over and taking in a few of the dollar pabsts and getting replay on the cowboy pinball game 6 times in about 12 plays. we each did two short sets. tim, me, tim, me. things picked up towards the end of the night, we met some nice locals and talked about our scenes and our cities. no offense to you bham and seattle, but everywhere we go, be it rural wisconsin or scary urban downtown areas people are so much friendlier and open-minded than you. sorry if it hurts, but you should really try to smile and listen more often. we all should. (steps off high-horse). we had to catch a 3am greyhound and to get to springfield for our show here tonight, which we cant make.

friday night in chicago was a lot of fun and jaime and his posse were really nice. foxtail kicks ass and you should all check them out, as does the bees knees. the show was at this pizza place in south suburban chicago (blue island) and susan, the foxtail drummer, grew up there. her friends and family came out and there was a good amount of people. rays pizza was good. before the show and during my set (onlY) there was this really obnoxious drunk dude. it didn't bug me much at all, i was just having another rough set, but everyone else seemed to be getting pissed at him. during bow interrupted he was talking loudly on and about his cellphone and 1985 cemented its first commercial plug for verizon. the bar tender gave me a sympathy pint, which was nice, but i think she was annoyed about us hipster looking young kids coming in and taking over and scary-ing off her locals. it kind of annoyed me too, how these kids were looking down upon and getting disgusted by the hometeam when they were the out of towners. i have been hyper-aware of suchness, this notion of being an alien in an unfamiliar system and not just cause me and tim are constantly the foreigner on tour.i think alot of it had to do with the RNC and how NYorkers felt invaded and taken advantage of both by the republicans and by the protesters. anyways, after the show we went back to tim (foxtail and PAL bassist) house which was a nice pad above an old, now apartmented cornerstore. john tosch was staying there and we were hoping to bump into him. we then went and got some beers and went over to jaimes house to check out his studio and his place, he was interested in recording us in the morning as seth (PAL'er and bees knees singer/guitarer) was interested in having me and tim be a apart of this free music series he was doing. he essentially recruited artists and friends and then made 100 copies of a recording of theirs and passed them out. me and tim are gonna try to record one of our NW dates to use for it. should be awesome. seth was awesome. he gave us one of his zines and three of the cds in the series. after jaimes we headed back to tims and passed out in the niceness. woke up, got to hang out with them and tosch for a bit and then finally had a chance to experience the chicago l train and mass transit as we made our way back to the chicago station for like the 5th time.... getting ready to bus out of here in springfield, i will try to finish off the RNC shit soon. oh there was this crazy ass bar/repair shop made of wood paneling down the road from here called joes. tons of auto signs, shoes hanging up everywhere (kind of like the peanut man in bham). wednesday night stareting at 8pm, pay five bucks get free beer on tap till closing. fuck. saturday. bikini carwash from 10am till??? whoa. -matt

:: brs 2:23 AM [+] ::
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