My Belated, Yet Totally Fuckin' Awesome, Tour Diary Part I
The very first thing that ever made young David Duke cry like the little bitch we all know he is.
You know, the problem with most tour diaries is that they're written by musicians almost immediately after the events they describe take place. While this techniques tends to lend itself nicely towards the pursuit of things like "accuracy" and "totally not making shit up", it rarely allows the author/personal assistant masquerading as the author the chance to reflect upon and fully digest the experience before completely embellishing the living shit out of it. And this is why I typically pen my tour diaries anywhere from a week to a year after the tour has wrapped up and all previously pending lawsuits have been settled.
Wednesday, May 9th
We are flying on Virgin Airlines to San Francisco - plenty of leg-room, free WiFi, and decent wine. However, we will not be flying back on Virgin; we will be flying back on SouthWest. This is the flight-experience equivalent of losing your virginity to Olivia Wilde and then spending the rest of your life giving handjobs to vagrants outside of the Port Authority.
As the DNA Lounge is closed on Wednesday nights, I have decided (on the advice of several physicians) to take in "Bondage A-Go-Go" at the Cat Club. As I don't drink for 24 hours before a show (nobody's paying to see me drunk or hungover), this will be my only chance to cut loose before I can make it to the Lovecraft Bar in Portland on Saturday night.
We land, wait, wait some more, and then pile into a van (bands are always piling into vans. Next time, we'll enter the van in a quiet and orderly fashion, thereby sticking it to The Man) and head for our hotel, which we quickly discover is surrounded for three blocks in every direction what appears to be every cop, paramedic, and fireman who has ever served within 100 miles of the Bay area.
It turns out that there was a double-shooting which somehow resulted in a building being set ablaze, That's it? Seriously? 5,000 cops and the fuckin' cast of Emergency for a lousy little double-shooting and a tiny indiscretion with a Zippo? Back in Philly, that wouldn't even make the six o'clock news, let alone require the presence of the Mod Squad. And what's the ambulance for? Don't they have duct tape on the West Coast? I told ya'; they're a bunch of wimps.
We check in to the hotel with the worlds smallest elevator and I finally get out the door and heading towards the Cat Club around 11 PM Wimp Coast Time. Speaking of wimps, I make it down to Hyde & Turk before I run out of steam and turn back, opting for sleep over fun. In other words: Wednesday night is a washout.
Rant Number One: Earlier in the day I learned, via Coma Magazine that the miraculously specfabulwonderous band DarkDriveClinic had to turn to Kickstarter in order to raise money for a West Coast Tour. Would someone please beat the last horrid remnants of the music industry to death with a fuzzy pink slipper, for the love of fuck. Yes, fans came through with the cash, but clubs should've been tripping over each other to host this band. I'm talkin' offers of a deluxe deli tray covered in gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Let's see if we can take a few steps towards making things right. Please buy their CD and go see them live. The dates are below.
