I drove away from working knowing that I had made the correct decision. Newark, NJ to check into our hotel, and then Brooklyn, NYC for the show. I met Mickey at his apartment, we ate monster pizza, got pretentious coffee, then hit the road. 91 to 95 South for roughly 3 hours until we hit city style traffic around the GW bridge. We waded our way through the Escalade hoards and big rig lane blockers. 2.5 hours to the outskirts of the city is pretty damn good time on a mid-afternoon weekday. Another hour passes (give or take) and we arrive at the Days Hotel on Rt. 1 in beautiful Newark, NJ conveniently located across the street from The Newark International Airport. Newark is a pit; hot, decaying, industrial/airport landscapes bolster their attacks against your psyche. It's all too comforting after the chemical refineries of Englewood, Hackensack, and Seacaucus burn their way through your olfactory receptors.
Bodily waste is left, snacks are eaten, drinks are had, and we move our collective ass to NYC to see Merlyn. Afterward, we will be on our way to the Brooklyn Masonic Temple to watch Boris and Sunn 0))) perform. We work our way through a wrong turn in Elizabeth, and wind up en route to the fashion district via the Holland Tunnel.
We get through the tunnel and onto the island, but traffic is so bad that we decide to forego the Merlyn visit until the following day. We sit in traffic on one little loop of a city block for over 20 minutes, reprogram the GPS for our destination: The Brooklyn Masonic Temple.
The temple is an amazing building set in the confines of a Brooklyn neighborhood that feels like it's on the up and up. The 103 year old temple is to be our place of worship of 2 nights of loud, heavy rock 'n' drone. Tonight we are going to see Sunn 0))) & Boris play through the entirety of their aural assault Altar; tomorrow will be the almighty SLEEP who have re-formed sans original drummer Chris Hakius.
Mickey and I find parking roughly 2 blocks away, cover and hide items that might be tempting, then make the trek back to the lodge. We wait outside with the hoarde of metal fans who have come from all over to check out this evenings show. A nice gentleman and I strike up a conversation outside about the various music that we enjoy, as well as our excitement for the show. The bouncers are mostly jovial folks and we get in to the venue with no troubles. There are tons of hipsters, metalheads, and just plain jaded kids in black t-shirts with band logos that are barely decipherable. And hey! There's former Melvin Joe Preston looking very stoned and very lost. We walk through the black and white tiled front hallway, hang a right into the big open room where we will be enjoying the show.
The concert hall is a bit bigger than I would have expected. There is a big, open floor with a wrap around balcony, and a fairly large stage. It reminds of the upstairs portion of Pearl Street in Northampton, MA if it had seats around the top. As anyone who has listened to and/or experienced Boris and Sunn 0))) know they have a LOT of amps. HUGE stacks take up the back third of the left hand side of the stage. There are two drumsets, a whole area sectioned off that has a Moog synth, as well as a bunch of other synths and electronic gear. Towards the back of the room lies a huge mixing console, behind which are located the bar areas. We decide to wander around the building a bit, hit the bathrooms, and check the merch before the show goes into full swing.
The inside of the building is pretty much what you would expect from a Masonic lodge of this age. Black and white tiled floors, lots of Doric pillars offering structural (if not symbolic spiritual) support, and what appear to be marble stair cases. We head downstairs to the bathrooms, and I'm drawn to the room next to where the bathrooms are. On the wall that runs parallel to where the bathrooms are is a giant mosaic of deep Masonic symbolism. It's one of the biggest I've ever seen, and to say that it's awe inspiring is an understatement.
We head back upstairs to check the merch and mill about some more. There is a really great poster for the show, but it's sold out by the time we hit the merch table. All of the shirts have mostly been sold out or are too small for my frame. I didn't realize at the time that Boris/Sunn 0))) had already played through Altar at All Tomorrow's Parties in upstate New York only a few days before. There wasn't anything that I thought was worth purchasing, so we headed upstairs to get some seats.
We work our way up the rickety stairs, find some seats in the balcony, and plunk ourselves down stage left. A good friend of mine from NH is at the show, and I see him on the other side of the balcony. He runs over to our side, and we talk for a few minutes. We make plans to meet up after the first set to take a walk. He leaves just as Jessie Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter swing into their set.
I didn't know what to expect from them as I'm really only familiar with her vocals on Sinking Belle from Altar. Jessie has a beautiful voice that compliments the palpable longing of her songs. Her backing band is tight and they burn through the set with genuine intensity. The guitars have a twangy, reverbed-out quality that blend well with the emotions being conveyed by her vocals. It's only been about 40 minutes since the show started and I'm already starting to sweat like a pig. I'm really looking forward to getting out of the building for a few minutes.
We head downstairs and meet up with my friend from NH. We get blasted with cool air as well as a sea of black shirts and jeans. Right out in front of the building there is what has to be the smartest ice cream truck driver in the 5 boroughs. He's parked to the left of the buildings exit, and already has a line of people 20 deep. The guy must be making a killing off of Chocolate Eclairs, Rocket Pops, and Good Humor bars. We walk around the block, do the deed, and return to the sweltering heat of the lodge. BXI is just about to go on, and I'm very excited to see them play. I'm not a huge fan of the Cult aside from the albums Love, and Sonic Temple but after seeing a clip of Ian Astbury playing with Boris on youtube I'm very curious as to what they'll do.
I can honestly say that Boris is one of the best live bands I've ever seen, but my confidence in Mr. Astbury is not quite as strong. They start ripping through their first song, and it's then that I notice that, not only is he wearing sweat pants, but he's also got on a leather jacket. Hidden behind that dried and cured cow skin coat is a giant gut that I'm assuming he's CULTivated in the last 20 years of not really doing much (unless you count his jaunt out with The Doors 2000 or whatever the hell they called themselves...) Much to his credit, the man can still sing, and it winds up being a fantastic pairing. The songs flow fluidly together, intertwining the sonic abuse of Boris' Sunn 0))/Orange amplifier worship and the soaring, gritty vocals of Mr. Astbury to great effect. The end their set with a noisy, powerful rendition of The End by The Doors. Often times collaborations of this kind leave me feeling like it could have been more, it could have been BETTER. But this is a marriage of the best elements of all the performers, what any good band should be. The only disappointment I felt was when they ended their set after 5 songs.
It's getting hotter in the venue by the minute. The smell of sweaty, unwashed dudes, puddles of cheap swill, and the subtle hint of ozone from all of the electricity they must be pumping through the PA is hanging like a wet towel over a bathroom door. For some unknown reason we decide to stick it out upstairs despite the heat. There really isn't any setup between BXI and Altar as almost all of the same gear is being used. To say that we were ill prepared for what was about to happen is an understatement.
The set started 10 minutes after BXI cleared the stage; the house lights went down, Boris and the various members of Sunn 0))) walk out in their floor length hooded robes. The crowd lets out a triumphant roar as they take their positions and begin the set. The first waves of sound start to caress the audience like a spiteful tidalwave. The bass is thunderous to the point of being vomit inducing, the guitars are a screamingly loud wall of hate, and the drums tear through the mix like Summer lightning. At some point early on I realize that every part of my body is vibrating at the same frequency as the music and I start to question the integrity of the balcony seating. The waves of sound continue to crash over us for another 10 minutes or so. During the 2nd song bass player Bill Herzog is playing long, droney notes on a stand-up bass while drummer Atsuo scrapes his cymbals to create metallic ambience. The sounds are immensely unnerving and border on overwhelming. This continues for about 3 minutes until all of the lights on stage go off, half the amps cut out, and all of the sound goes out from the left half of the PA. They've been playing for under 15 minutes and they blew out the power to the left side of the stage. The crowd cheers it's satisfaction at the wanton destruction of the temple's fuse box.
There is a lot of scrambling going on behind scenes. I can see flashlight beams bending with the angles of the backstage walls, many distressed techs scurring about trying to locate the source of the problem. 15 or so minutes pass and Stephen O'Malley came out to pacify the crowd by letting us know that they just needed 10 minutes to figure out the problem. 30 or so minutes later they fully unleash the beast and lay waste to what remains of the Masonic Lodge. Jessie Sykes comes back out and sings an unbelievable version of The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep). As amazing as this show was, this may have been the highlight. My NH friend joins us on the floor and we all comment on how this has been more than a show. It has been a total body experience which I might never feel again. The hairs on my arms stood up as the frequencies rolled through my stocky frame. The drums pounded my soul into a new shape; the long drones re-defined my being. Cthulu and the Elder Gods may have truly been unleashed upon this unsuspecting Brooklyn neighborhood.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Graph/Bunny's A Swine Tour Beginning
I just got back from Graph's Rust Belt/Souther fall tour with Bunny's A Swine on Monday the 18th of October and I already miss the road. We started out with high hopes and a sparkle in our collective eye only to have those hopes (mostly) dashed by van trouble all along the way.
You see, the van we were supposed to take fell through for reasons that I'm not going to get into, so we had to scramble around at the last minute to find something, ANYTHING to get us around for 11 days. We settled on a local company that bent over backwards to help us out. Little did we know they were actually bending us forward so they could stick it where the sun doesn't shine, even if it was unintentional. Ok, maybe that's a little harsh, but we did get fucked so bad that we ended up missing 3 shows on tour, which is a lot when you only have 12 scheduled.
Problems started before we even left from Northampton after our show at the Sierra Grille. The trailer that came as part of the package deal didn't have any running lights. After Seth fixed a bad connection and the lights (mostly) worked again, we were able to rest easy. We drove through the night into the next day, stopping at the first Waffle House we could find for a greasy breakfast that included smothered and covered hash browns for everyone. We then set out for Dayton, OH once again without really realizing that we would probably have to stop for veggie oil during the day. We stopped in Oberlin, OH at Full Circle Fuels to fill up our 125 gallon trailer reserve tank.
Full Circle is set up like a regular gas station, but they specialize in selling bio-diesel and veggie oil. They also have a 2 bay garage where they modify diesel cars to run on veggie oil. They actually have a veggie oil pump which is pretty awesome, so we pulled up to it. The nice woman who worked there informed us that she was just getting around to filling the veggie tank so we might not be able to completely fill our reserve tank. Turns out the pump wasn't working at all and we would have to do it all by hand. The woman, whose name I've since forgotten, informed us that she had 5 gallon jugs of fresh (ie. unused) veggie oil in a trailer behind the shop. We all got to lugging these jugs over to the van, and Ry got to dumping them into the tank one at a time.
After we picked up our 100 gallons of SVO, we started back towards Dayton, OH for our first show away from home. We pulled into the club and noticed that we had a trail of something following us down the road and through the parking lot. After Ry put a cup under the leak we were able to discern that it was a robust gold color; a color familiar to fry cooks all across this great world. FUCK. We were able to suss out the problem: the line going from the veggie tank to the engine had sprung a leak and was pissing oil all over the place. Our representative at the rental company told us that he would work as hard as he could to find someone to fix it for us, but it was Columbus Day weekend so it might be hard to do. Until then we would have to run on diesel. Okay, well it's not what we wanted to do, but these things happen on the road, and it will get fixed in the next couple of days.
We played a show to a mostly empty bar; BiaS played a really great set and we played like shit because I was a little too drunk. I started off the first song wrong, and it was kind of a train wreck from there on out. We mostly played to the other bands, the girlfriends of the local band, and the largely uninterested barflys. The bands were not memorable, so I won't even try to give you any information on them. Dustin was able to get some beers and money from the bartender so we walked away mostly happy. Our Days Inn awaited, our hopes for Milwaukee, WI were high, and we had plenty of booze to drink.
After a night of abusing our innocent livers we get up, get dressed, scrubbed and showered, stuff ourselves back in the van after another battle with Waffle House breakfast and head towards Milwaukee, WI. Being that I'm probably the least hungover of the bunch, I get behind the wheel and settle in for some driving. 2 hours pass, and I notice that the diesel gauge hasn't really moved at all since we left Dayton. We're not running veggie anymore, and that gauge hasn't moved at all. Hmmm. We are just outside of Indianapolis, IN now, everyone needs a break, so we pull off to get some gas, leave some bodily waste, and get some snacks. I start pumping diesel, and after it pumps roughly $13 worth it stops. Weird. One would think that 2 hours of highway driving would eat up a lot more gas than that. It's at this point that someone, probably Ry, notices that diesel is now leaking out of the area that the tank is at. FUCK.
At this point I'm trying as best as I can to stay calm to try and figure out what we can do. Our representative at the rental place tells us to keep driving, keep an eye on the gauges, and note the mileage. He doesn't seem to be worried about the combustible fluids that are leaking from the bottom of the van, which worries me and everyone else in our crew. After calling all of the local shops, and AAA we find a place that is a 3 minute drive from the gas station. Cool. The only problem is that they close at 5pm, and it's now 4:45pm on a Saturday. We rush on over to make it happen.
Arriving somewhere around 4:55pm due to traffic, and pull the van up next to the building. The guy we had spoken with was incredibly nice and jokingly made a comment along the lines of, "So this thing runs on french fries, huh?" He was in his mid-20's, blond haired, blue eyed, and mid-western all the way. We detached the trailer and had him drive the van into one of the bays so he could take a look at it. It was at this point that Emerson, Dustin, Matt, and I noticed a giant liquor store about 500 yards away. Maybe things aren't as bad as they seem...
After messing with the trailer in traffic, we're off again, on the road to Milwaukee, WI leaking diesel and quite possibly veggie oil. As the day wears down, the autumnal gold spilling over the trees starts to fade, and we get close the end of Indiana. Gary is a hell-hole of bad industrial smells, but it's at least a change from the bad industrial farm smells that encompass the majority of the jaunt through the state. One of the prettiest things we come across on the entire trip is in the middle of Indiana when we roll through a stretch of wind farms. Gigantic blades are turned by the wind which generate electricity that is stored at a substation. The rate at which the blades move are sometimes in tandem with, and sometimes out of sync with other wind turbines. This produces a soothing backdrop to pass through as the sun glints off the silver blades.
We are very late to our show in Milwaukee, so we call the house where we are playing. They kind of give us the run around because no one has shown up to watch the party. We express our concern because it's almost 8pm, the time the show is supposed to start, and we're driving out of the way of our next show in Eau Claire, WI. We are reassured that it's no problem, we should continue our drive, and it's no problem for us to play. Good deal. I'm burned on driving at this point and I ask if someone else wouldn't mind taking over.
It takes awhile, sloughing through 45 minutes of shitty Chicago traffic, nearly constant farting, screaming, hilarious banter but we make it to a rest stop so I can take a break. I leave my urine, wash up, and walk out to Starbucks where I order a strawberry smoothie. It was well worth the hit to my wallet as I can at least kid myself that it's SOMEWHAT healthy. Onward and upward through Wisconsin we go, until we reach the cheap beer capital of the US. Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller are brewed right here! There isn't a lot to see as we're coming in to town in the dark. It's possible that the darkness is adding to this effect, but it looks DIRTY.
We arrive at the house that we are supposed to be playing at. It's in a decent neighborhood, and it looks like the kind of house I lived in when I was in my early 20's. Dirty, old furniture on the porch, lots of random ephemera on the walls, VHS tapes and DVD's skewed about, no less than 5 overflowing ashtray's, etc. There are roughly half a dozen hipster college kids milling about, ironically drinking cheap beer and something called "Joose". If the drunk hipster is any indication, Joose turns you into an ironic racist. They don't want us to play, and they say just as much. We are polite, have a couple of drinks, and head to our hotel about an hour away.
That bottle of bourbon that Dustin purchased, along with my 30 pack of PBR goes a long way for 6 people.
You see, the van we were supposed to take fell through for reasons that I'm not going to get into, so we had to scramble around at the last minute to find something, ANYTHING to get us around for 11 days. We settled on a local company that bent over backwards to help us out. Little did we know they were actually bending us forward so they could stick it where the sun doesn't shine, even if it was unintentional. Ok, maybe that's a little harsh, but we did get fucked so bad that we ended up missing 3 shows on tour, which is a lot when you only have 12 scheduled.
Problems started before we even left from Northampton after our show at the Sierra Grille. The trailer that came as part of the package deal didn't have any running lights. After Seth fixed a bad connection and the lights (mostly) worked again, we were able to rest easy. We drove through the night into the next day, stopping at the first Waffle House we could find for a greasy breakfast that included smothered and covered hash browns for everyone. We then set out for Dayton, OH once again without really realizing that we would probably have to stop for veggie oil during the day. We stopped in Oberlin, OH at Full Circle Fuels to fill up our 125 gallon trailer reserve tank.
Full Circle is set up like a regular gas station, but they specialize in selling bio-diesel and veggie oil. They also have a 2 bay garage where they modify diesel cars to run on veggie oil. They actually have a veggie oil pump which is pretty awesome, so we pulled up to it. The nice woman who worked there informed us that she was just getting around to filling the veggie tank so we might not be able to completely fill our reserve tank. Turns out the pump wasn't working at all and we would have to do it all by hand. The woman, whose name I've since forgotten, informed us that she had 5 gallon jugs of fresh (ie. unused) veggie oil in a trailer behind the shop. We all got to lugging these jugs over to the van, and Ry got to dumping them into the tank one at a time.
After we picked up our 100 gallons of SVO, we started back towards Dayton, OH for our first show away from home. We pulled into the club and noticed that we had a trail of something following us down the road and through the parking lot. After Ry put a cup under the leak we were able to discern that it was a robust gold color; a color familiar to fry cooks all across this great world. FUCK. We were able to suss out the problem: the line going from the veggie tank to the engine had sprung a leak and was pissing oil all over the place. Our representative at the rental company told us that he would work as hard as he could to find someone to fix it for us, but it was Columbus Day weekend so it might be hard to do. Until then we would have to run on diesel. Okay, well it's not what we wanted to do, but these things happen on the road, and it will get fixed in the next couple of days.
We played a show to a mostly empty bar; BiaS played a really great set and we played like shit because I was a little too drunk. I started off the first song wrong, and it was kind of a train wreck from there on out. We mostly played to the other bands, the girlfriends of the local band, and the largely uninterested barflys. The bands were not memorable, so I won't even try to give you any information on them. Dustin was able to get some beers and money from the bartender so we walked away mostly happy. Our Days Inn awaited, our hopes for Milwaukee, WI were high, and we had plenty of booze to drink.
After a night of abusing our innocent livers we get up, get dressed, scrubbed and showered, stuff ourselves back in the van after another battle with Waffle House breakfast and head towards Milwaukee, WI. Being that I'm probably the least hungover of the bunch, I get behind the wheel and settle in for some driving. 2 hours pass, and I notice that the diesel gauge hasn't really moved at all since we left Dayton. We're not running veggie anymore, and that gauge hasn't moved at all. Hmmm. We are just outside of Indianapolis, IN now, everyone needs a break, so we pull off to get some gas, leave some bodily waste, and get some snacks. I start pumping diesel, and after it pumps roughly $13 worth it stops. Weird. One would think that 2 hours of highway driving would eat up a lot more gas than that. It's at this point that someone, probably Ry, notices that diesel is now leaking out of the area that the tank is at. FUCK.
At this point I'm trying as best as I can to stay calm to try and figure out what we can do. Our representative at the rental place tells us to keep driving, keep an eye on the gauges, and note the mileage. He doesn't seem to be worried about the combustible fluids that are leaking from the bottom of the van, which worries me and everyone else in our crew. After calling all of the local shops, and AAA we find a place that is a 3 minute drive from the gas station. Cool. The only problem is that they close at 5pm, and it's now 4:45pm on a Saturday. We rush on over to make it happen.
Arriving somewhere around 4:55pm due to traffic, and pull the van up next to the building. The guy we had spoken with was incredibly nice and jokingly made a comment along the lines of, "So this thing runs on french fries, huh?" He was in his mid-20's, blond haired, blue eyed, and mid-western all the way. We detached the trailer and had him drive the van into one of the bays so he could take a look at it. It was at this point that Emerson, Dustin, Matt, and I noticed a giant liquor store about 500 yards away. Maybe things aren't as bad as they seem...
After messing with the trailer in traffic, we're off again, on the road to Milwaukee, WI leaking diesel and quite possibly veggie oil. As the day wears down, the autumnal gold spilling over the trees starts to fade, and we get close the end of Indiana. Gary is a hell-hole of bad industrial smells, but it's at least a change from the bad industrial farm smells that encompass the majority of the jaunt through the state. One of the prettiest things we come across on the entire trip is in the middle of Indiana when we roll through a stretch of wind farms. Gigantic blades are turned by the wind which generate electricity that is stored at a substation. The rate at which the blades move are sometimes in tandem with, and sometimes out of sync with other wind turbines. This produces a soothing backdrop to pass through as the sun glints off the silver blades.
We are very late to our show in Milwaukee, so we call the house where we are playing. They kind of give us the run around because no one has shown up to watch the party. We express our concern because it's almost 8pm, the time the show is supposed to start, and we're driving out of the way of our next show in Eau Claire, WI. We are reassured that it's no problem, we should continue our drive, and it's no problem for us to play. Good deal. I'm burned on driving at this point and I ask if someone else wouldn't mind taking over.
It takes awhile, sloughing through 45 minutes of shitty Chicago traffic, nearly constant farting, screaming, hilarious banter but we make it to a rest stop so I can take a break. I leave my urine, wash up, and walk out to Starbucks where I order a strawberry smoothie. It was well worth the hit to my wallet as I can at least kid myself that it's SOMEWHAT healthy. Onward and upward through Wisconsin we go, until we reach the cheap beer capital of the US. Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller are brewed right here! There isn't a lot to see as we're coming in to town in the dark. It's possible that the darkness is adding to this effect, but it looks DIRTY.
We arrive at the house that we are supposed to be playing at. It's in a decent neighborhood, and it looks like the kind of house I lived in when I was in my early 20's. Dirty, old furniture on the porch, lots of random ephemera on the walls, VHS tapes and DVD's skewed about, no less than 5 overflowing ashtray's, etc. There are roughly half a dozen hipster college kids milling about, ironically drinking cheap beer and something called "Joose". If the drunk hipster is any indication, Joose turns you into an ironic racist. They don't want us to play, and they say just as much. We are polite, have a couple of drinks, and head to our hotel about an hour away.
That bottle of bourbon that Dustin purchased, along with my 30 pack of PBR goes a long way for 6 people.
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