Monday 31st of July 2000 09:56:48 AM
July 27: Grand Rapids, MI – show was okay. It was in all ages show in the art gallery, and the kids all sat in chairs around the edges of the room. It was interesting – they all paid $5 to get in, and as each band got up there, it looked like the kids in chairs were hanging out in their doctor’s waiting room. We went through a few songs, and we couldn’t take it anymore. We asked people to either stand up for the last few songs, or go sit outside until we were done. One kid left. It was cool. It’s funny how much better I feel at a show when people are standing – even if they look like they are standing in their doctor’s waiting room. The Jag-Offs came to the show in hopes of jumping on the bill, but there were already too many bands on the bill. It was cool to hang out with them again, though.
July 28: Pittsburgh, PA – I really like the city of Pittsburgh. The show was originally supposed to be in a warehouse, but they were having legal problems, so the show got moved to a bar down the street – free dinner and Iron City Beer for touring bands – YEAH!
July 29: Long Beach (Long Island), NY – This was a basement show with a whole lot of bands, but not a lot of people to watch the bands. People hung out outside until the bands played, so when we started, Bobby closed the door of the room we played in. When people opened the door to come watch us, I would give them a dirty look like they were intruding or something. It was fun. Mark (an original and kick-ass Thumb) and his cool bird Jessica came to the show, and it was great to see them. After the show – we drove home, listening to the tasty riffs of Tenacious D!!!!
July 30: Annapolis, MD – We played a house show at the House of Dave Voyles. We rocked it. It was maybe the best we played on the tour. Good to be home. Thanks for reading. EXPLOSIVO. --MIKE
Tuesday 25th of July 2000 11:01:33 PM
from Minneapolis... we are not a popular band.
MIKE
Tuesday 25th of July 2000 03:22:50 PM
Here in Minneapolis things work a little different. Mike and I are out hanging by the van which is parked on a bridge. The bridge runs over a set of railroad tracks which, while we are standing there, is overrun with policemen... I'd say about 50 of 'em. Me, Mike and a couple other curious onlookers notice what's going on and as we are looking over the rail one of the cops who is bringing up the rear looks up and asks "You haven't seen a guy running around here with a bloody axe have you?". "No." He casually shrugs his shoulders and turns to catch up with the rest of the squad. That's my 2nd favorite quote.
Tuesday 25th of July 2000 02:19:39 PM
Okay. I haven't done this for awhile, so here's highlights from some of the shows we played this week:
We played at the Civic Minded 5 House in Las Vegas on a Sunday night. I guess they lost the piece of paper that said the day we were coming. We called on Saturday to get directions. They played it cool, like they knew we were coming on Sunday all along. I guess they hung up the phone, called up their friends, and got the wheels in motion for the party. It went really well - had a good time. Roman won $25 playing blackjack, due in large part, in my opinion, to the Pocket 21 game that Heather gave us for tour. Well done, Heather.
Drove to San Diego that night, stayed with our friends Adrienne and Paulo. Went to the beach the next day - got really sunburned. Roman and Bobby rented Nerf surfboards and braved the waters with the locals. Played a show that night with Vena Cava at the Aztec Bowl. Bobby was marveling that the bar served drinks in these plastic martini glasses. Between songs, he bounced the plastic glass on the ground five times, at which time we realized that it was actually made of glass, which became broken glass. This outraged the soundguy, for some reason, who retaliated by turning the p.a. off so you couldn't hear the vocals. I retaliated by slamming the mike on the ground as we played the next song. I guess Corey from Vena Cava (Gay Navy) coerced him into turning the sound back on half way through the song.
Played at the Garage in L.A. with Mike Watt's band (the Madonna-bee's), Toys that Kill, and the Jag-Offs. Very fun show. Didn't get paid much...
Played at the PCH Space with I-Farm... This was the 3rd or 4th time we'ved played Alex's space. It's always fun, but this time there were a lot fewer people there. I think it's because we usually play with this local band called Left Alone, and they didn't play this time. Those guys are the Ace in the Hole, I suppose. Really nice guys, too.
Thursday - drove to San Francisco to play at the Bottom of the Hill. It was weird to play a big club again. They fed us til we were fat and gave us good beer to drink. This girl Carolyn who we met at the Gilman show on the last tour came up and talked to us before the show. She's really nice. After the show, she walked past Bobby and shook her head (from side to side. not up and down.). I'm not sure what we did, but it wasn't good.
Friday - A day to kill - no driving. We spent the night in Oakland with Jason from Adeline. Went and ate lunch, and then Jason took me to this music store his friend works at. They hooked me up with a Sun bass amp for $80 (my head caught fire the day before we left). Kick ass!! Romaine took the train into San Francisco to look around, while Bobby and I split up and hung out in Berkeley. I walked over to see what was going on at Lookout. They were packing everything up and getting ready to move to their new warehouse. They gave me a beer and let me check e-mail. Chris came down and we hung out for a while and talked about stuff. Played at this bar called Kimo's in San Francisco that night.Very cool place with lots of windows and a good view. We rocked it. Met Paul from No! Records. He would end up seeing us play 3 shows in 24 hours. That's too much, Paul.
Saturday - played a free matinee show in SF at our friend Chris's house. There were a million bands playing, including de la Hoya (from NY) and the Falsies (from Baltimore!!!) It was good to see those guys again. The Falsies have been touring their asses off, and it showed. They sounded really good.
Saturday night - This will probably end up being the best show of the tour. We played at Gilman Street with American Steel, the Enemies, and I-Farm. There was probably 350-400 people there. There was a cool atmosphere that night. It felt electric. It reminded me of going to shows in D.C. when I was younger. We played really well this night, and people were rocking. It felt good.
Saturday night - now begins the driving. We will be back in Baltimore next Sunday morning. Lots of ground to cover. We left after the Gilman show and started driving east. We stopped in Reno at 5:30 in the morning. When we were in Las Vegas, I lost $20 playing Roulette. In Reno, I won $25. Yeah. We got back in the van at 6:30 - We drove until 10 pm that night, when we arrived in Laramie, Wyoming. We unloaded the gear and played in Laramie Sunday night. We loaded the van and left for the next show at 1 a.m.... We drove all night and day again. We arrived in St. Cloud Minnesota at 6 PM Monday night. We unloaded the gear and played again. The show kind of sucked. There were these "punk" kids standing around outside that didn't want to pay the THREE dollars to see three bands, two of whom are on tour. One kid asked me (cockily) to put him on the guest list. I should have slapped him. I've decided that slapping someone in the face is just about the best way to beat somebody down. Anyway, this was a lame show, but we played with the Volumen from Montana, and I thought they were cool. We're in Minneapolis now, staying with Dan from Lifter Puller. We're on our way home.
-MIKE
Tuesday 25th of July 2000 01:40:49 AM
Hi... there was one funny thing that I remembered. We were in Greenville, NC and our van was having technical problemos. So we were missing the show... well, I was at the show while we were missing it so I got to hear the millions bumming. So before hand I'd been rolling on the ground fighting the van's spare tire (and losing!) so I looked kinda rough. As I'm sitting at the bar this guy looks at me and asks (seriously) "Hey man, have you been sleeping on the ground?" I said yes. It is the second time my personal style has been mistaken for a vagrant... and probably not the last.
All thumbs present and accounted for in Dan Mr. Lftrpllr's art house apartment... dreaming of "taco nights" and sex with multiple pounds of baked beans in the mix! That's all the explanation you'll get!
Romaine
check out the new and fashion conscious edition of the bmore gossup page here
Monday 17th of July 2000 12:38:49 PM
Denver-drove the day before and rolled in to soda jerk headquarters late-made some more tapes for listening in the van and motivated ourselves for activity namely "tubing"-one of the funest things i've done in a long time- you provide the tubes and head down to the local river along with everyone else in town and jump in and float down the rapids- the rapids however are shrinking by the second but we have a lot of fun regardless-i get all sraped up doing freestyle moves and almost drown two unsuspecting prepubescents-barbequed at mikes house and it was good-go to the show-the two other touring bands are late-and the show is supposed to end early-I hadn't heard of either band but finally they arrive and one of theirs strolls in and says"dude give me a minute" while he scratches his belly under the wifebeater- when we tell him that his band is on they reluctantly comply-i think it soured them for me-but once again i have to comment on how fast things are spiraling off track-the stereo was like journey, 38 special, and Rick Springfield's later stuff-competant as hell but fucking 80's rock/pop.-i don't understand at all- the kids liked it and that scares the shit out of me- we will find ourselves playing with a boy band by the end of this tour-where has punk gone in the last few months?-the guy who rubbed me the wrong way turned out to be a roadie and smashed a 40 bottle in the street in front of the club and jumped in the van as they scurried off undoubtably because he was a bitch-b.
Friday 14th of July 2000 03:33:44 PM
Last night we played Aberdeen, South Dakota. Bad Emo band played. Please someone put an end to the fad! We played to. Mosquitos were unbearable so we doused ourselves in skintastic and smelled like avon and body odor. MMMMMM! Went to a party. They took avantage of mike at cards. Roman did a beer bong of oduls. The humor was lost on everyone but us. The cops came. The kids wouldn't answer the door despite twenty minutes of pounding.That was tough as hell. Finally they came in. Half the place was underage. They went through the whole apartment . There was some bad ass kid hiding under a pile of dirty cloths in the closet. They hadn't found him by the time we left. They were trying to be the funny cops. Making small talk. Waiting for someone to slip. We got out of there after being searched and questioned about every thing we had in our pockets. Cooperate and everything will be fine. Nothing better to do for a cop in aberdeen on a thursday night. Apparently they had smelled something funny coming from the apartment. Probable Cause. It was a lie. After we left they did find something. Those kids are fucked and they weren't doing anything that any other kid hasn't done.We stayed at Angela's place. She will be going to jail because a few weeks ago while riding in her friends car they were pulled over for running a yellow light. They searched her friend and the car and found a tiny amount of marajuana and a pipe. They found nothing on her but she was arrested and forced to take a drug test- she tested positive. Guilty by association. She is going to jail for a minimum a two days. She was happy to get off that easy. I'm really diassapointed. All our friends are moving out of this town. I'm happy for them.-Bobby
Friday 14th of July 2000 03:14:44 PM
7/13: Aberdeen SD... This show was a lot smaller than our previous shows here. Went to the bar, then went to the show, then went to a party where Roman wow'ed the natives by doing an O'Douls non-alcoholic beer bong. Hi-Fives all around, baby. The cops came in and busted up the party (it seemed a little extreme, since the party was really a very small, fairly quiet gathering. Aberdeen-police-state! on to Denver. MIKE
Thursday 13th of July 2000 05:08:50 PM
Played last night at the fireside with Hunter Rose and some other emo-ish bands-even the emo kids who turned out for the show seemed utterly disgusted with all pretty little songs and lack of rock-I did get to see a particualrly funny simpsons episode in the bar-anyway as always thanks to Brian for letting us play, the Hunter Rose guys for standing in front while we played and broke strings, and Norah for her unending sarcasm without which the the thumbs would probably be very well adjusted rocks stars or at least not driving in the totally wrong direction following her advice. We did make it to El Cid for burritos and after a frustrating hour to Club Foot where she was dj-ing and she played an elvis costello song (yeah!) off his greatest hits album(boo!) and bought us a beer. Mike reigned tetrus supreme and then drove five of the twelve hours through the fog while i slept on my keys.-b.
Wednesday 12th of July 2000 12:03:26 AM
7/8: Played at Market Street in Gainesville. It's hard to live up to the kick-ass house show we did at the 911 House on the last tour -- it was good to see everybody again, but we played first, and people don't come to shows in gainesville until very late, so most of our friends didn't see us play. Nevertheless, Gainesville is a fun place to hang out, and we had a good time.
7/9: Chattanooga TN with Jack Palance Band. It was great to see JPB again, and refocus on the task of closing our minds. This was a house show with lots of drinking and singing along, etc. Bobby was as drunk as a chicken.
7/10: Huntsville AL - first time we ever played in Alabama - Stokes Street is a cool space for a show. We showed up late and got bumped to last, but we rocked it and had a good time. We had to drive after the show to get to Ohio.
7/11: Green, OH - at Joe's Skate Park... We got to play the "Grand Opening" for this skate park that just opened. Playing a grand opening for anything just rocks. One time a long time ago, we were supposed to play the grand opening for a new bridge in annapolis, but it rained. Anyway, this was a great show. Lots of kids skating, people hanging out and watching, etc...
MIKE
Saturday 08th of July 2000 06:22:14 PM
July 5, 2000: Day One of the All Lesser Devils tour. We've had some bad experiences in Richmond. The last time we attempted to play there, we drove all the way down to Twisters to find out that the owner didn't know anything about the show. We had called the girl who set up the show a few days before to make sure that everything was still cool.
We finally found a place we like in Richmond -- the Hole in the Wall... we played with the Remotes, who are some of the nicest guys in the world, as well as the Others. It was a great show -- free show (donations), and they fed us, and gave us an unlimited supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon (I love the cans!)... On top of that, we got to hang out with Randy Rampage, who is in Richmond for the summer... Erica and Meghan came down from Baltimore to see the show, that was very cool. I have renewed, if not slightly guarded, hope for Richmond.
July 6: We had a show in Greenville NC... We didn't have to be there until 10:30, so we headed for Hatteras beach -- hell of a way to spend a July afternoon. We got to Greenville around 9:30, pulled into a gas station, and our tire blew out... Not only that, but our spare tire was "stuck" under the van... we ended up having it towed, and, unable to find anyone with a vehicle big enough to get our equipment to the club, and faced with the prospect of a show where we were the only band, and nobody was going to be there, we ended up dropping the van off at sam's club and staying at the comfort inn.
July 7: We got a free replacement tire at Sam's Club.. Only problem was, it took forever, and we didn't get out of Greenville until 3... we got to Planet 10 in Valdosta after midnight, but were still in time for the show. Crispus Attucks (a great skate/hardcore band from our neck of the woods) was also playing the show. It was good to see those guys again. They rocked it. We had a good show - it was a bit of a stressful day, though.
-MIKE