my bloody valentine- 9.27.08- aragon ballroom

here is my recording of the my bloody valentine show. i have it all in flac as well, but i am housesitting at the moment and they are on the back-up drive at home so they haven't been uploaded to megaslowload just yet. until then here are the mp3s. it sounds pretty good considering how awful the sound is at the aragon. there are times where they overcame the cavernous nature of the place, but occasionally it creeps into this recording. hope you like it- i'll repost the links once i have the flacs done.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BTPT23Y7

and finally, some artwork culled from stolen photos off of flickr. i wish i could credit them, but their names escape me at the moment-

o, the last three days...

we just got back from my bloody valentine. it was fucking awesome. not a huge surprise, i guess. it was indeed quite noisy. i recorded it. the people searching my bag even found my recording shit and let me in with it anyway. our tickets were not at the will-call window at all, but then the woman who had the guest list let us in anyway because for some reason the woman from will-call sent us to her. she just looked at my email printout and then just said- 'go on in!' wacky. i was a bit worried she wouldn't let us in at all, but i guess that she had the virtue of common sense (and perhaps distaste for ticketmaster). so it was really good. i'm fairly satisfied with my recording of the show- i'm burning it to cd right now so as to record nick cave tomorrow nite. i'm paranoid that i'll get my minidisc recorder confiscated and then that would be the worst thing in the world to have that happen and then have a my bloody valentine show recorded that i couldn't get off of the minidisc.
the drive home. never. again. not surprisingly it was quite excruciating and frustrating. i was aware that summer time was construction season, but i figure in september it would be fairly safe. this did not prove to be true. in nevada alone we encountered miles and miles of closed lanes a total of about eight times. i quit counting in nebraska because it took so fucking long. holy shit- seven and a half hours in the same fucking state. i thought it would be nice to be back in a midwestern state, but it just felt like we were in a time warp all day. you know what i mean- when you keep moving, moving, moving and time seems to just crawl and the mile markers start to repeat themselves and your destination only seems to be getting further and further away. i think i had about three or four meltdowns. i almost started crying at one point in nebraska because traffic had come to a complete stop at one point on the highway for about forty minutes and once we got out of it there appeared to be no clear reason for this delay apart from contruction. none at all. reaching omaha was quite the chore. after that i was listening to the jesus and mary chain for several hours while stefanie was asleep and as we were pulling in to davenport it was all foggy and this gas station was putting off this bright green light during that last song on 'darklands' which i believe is called 'about you'- it's a beautiful acoustic number. painfully gorgeous in fact. in the fog this green light was gigantic and incredibly beautiful. i got this feeling that i felt incredibly happy all of a sudden. thirty minutes later i had an excruciating acid reflux episode brought on by drinking one of those starbuck's energy drinks with espresso, guarana and vitamin b. this episode lasted for at least an hour or so- possibly longer. i had difficulty keeping track. it was during the last three hours of the trip- i do remember that.
all told we finally got home at 4:30 am- 30 minutes earlier than expected. if we hadn't been delayed for two hours in california right after leaving, and then delayed for another hour in nebraska the who trip would've only taken us about 31 hours. it ended up taking 34- which wasn't too bad honestly. i figured it would end up taking at least 35. two 17 hour driving days back to back. never. again.
today returning the rental car was the ordeal. i got about six hours of sleep, but i was so out of it today i was practically worthless. taking the car back to the rental place took about three and a half hours alone. yipes. stripes.
finally we got to see my bloody valentine and naturally it was everything i'd hoped it would be. there were a few songs they didn't play that they had been playing before that i was a bit bummed were missing- i.e. 'blown a wish' or even 'sueisfine'- but fuck, i got to see my favourite band ever and they did a 30+ minute 'you made me realise' so that was worth my money. holy shit was it loud. i actually wore the ear plugs. i listened to a few songs without them in just to see how incredibly loud it was. the music was pounding against my chest- it's quite a physical spectacle. the lighting was amazing too- sometimes i would close my eyes and the lights would kind of create cartoon like movements behind my eyes. at one point during the noisy part of 'you made me realise' they had these flickering lights going that caused strange shadowy patterns to dance around them when you watched them- i'm quite sure that they weren't physically doing that and that it was an optical illusion that these lights produced naturally. holy shit though- the noise section is pretty much a feast for the senses that must be witnessed to be believed. it was quite transcendent. at first there's a strange sense of panic and then after a few minutes it melts away and becomes something else- kind of calming and then finally it just makes time and space pretty much cease to exist. it could go on forever. it was a bit jarring when they went back into the song actually- it made me lurch.
i recorded the show and it sounds fairly decent so i'm looking forward to hearing it on my ipod. i will probably share it on here. i might put it into audacity and try and doctor it a bit to clean it up and make it sound better, but it already sounds quite nice. strangely the bass is very quiet but at the show it was incredibly hard hitting. my one complaint is that the bass was a little too low in the mix. everything else was perfect. it just was a shame to see debbie googe pounding the shit out of her bass and not be able to hear it. she is clearly a valuable and overlooked key to their sound. i think that 'to here knows when,' 'cigarette in your bed' and 'soon' alone would've been worth the price of admission. wow.

sing me to sleep

the last show at mama buzz cafe was cancelled, which i'm a bit bummed about. at first i was kind of relieved because we wouldn't have to drive back up the shoreline highway at night and that we'd be able to join my parents at dinner, but now it's a bit sad that we didn't get to play that last show of the tour- there's just no closure. it makes me wonder why we didn't just drive our sorry-asses back to chicago from portland. being here has been restful though and definitely has done us some good. we did get to venture in to berkeley and oakland and get some quality stops in- the amoeba records in berkeley and article pract in oakland and mama buzz cafe are all on the same street, so we were able to hit each one with just enough time. at amoeba i bought the first rolling stones record (finally), the first vetiver album (which has colm o'ciosig and hope sandoval on it) and the j spaceman guitar loops cd, which i just discovered was re-released. at least i get to hear it now. then we got to mama buzz and were told that the show was cancelled, which was a bummer. no closure. i was actually looking forward to playing there- hoping to do a repeat of the seattle show- same style but i was hoping we'd get to play a little bit longer. god knows the next time we'll ever get all the way out to california again- i'd say two years minimum. minimum. even then we aren't going to do this again unless we have at least three college shows set up. at least we know what the price tag is now and the best way to do it. here are some photo highlights. stefanie shot a decent amount of footage as well for the 'on the bridge' video, which we initially just wanted to be shot in portland, but there've been enough beautiful driving shots out here that we just kept shooting. i think we'll have enough for the video now. i'm going to get to work on the video immediately as well as the james eric instrumental- which i'm super-psyched to get started on. to the photo highlights-

just so you know...

...this is where we are currently-






and, as a little tidbit, i took this from where i am currently sitting (no shit)-



i would also like to mention how much i fucking HATE california. that said i really like this house- it's very restful and it's not too big. being right next to the ocean is wonderful.
today we went for a walk on the beach and then we tried to find something called a 'latte' somewhere. my parents drove us to bolinas, which i would describe as a stand-offish hippie town. only in california. we tried to ask a really old hippie where we could get coffee while he was preparing his pipe with some really smelly weed and at first he didn't answer us, then told us in the snottiest and most patronizing tone where to get some coffee and then barked 'do you want me to walk you across the street?!' yup. grumpy hippies. stefanie then replied, in the sweetest tone, 'could you? that'd be great!' it was quite strange. i guess i understood where he was coming from- perhaps he was being so rude because he thought my parents were yuppies who wanted to buy property in the area, thus driving the price up etc. etc. but of course that wasn't the case. we were just a group of people called 'midwesterners' who were looking for something called 'manners,' 'politeness' and 'common decency.' silly us.
since everything was closed we headed back to the stinson beach downtown. even the cashier at the market was a little short with my mom when she asked him if the coffee cart was only open on the weekends. aren't californians supposed to be so laid back? i guess that it's tough to be laid back when you're being snobby. perhaps i'm just imagining all of this. i dunno. it's just the sense i'm getting.
driving into town was no small feat- route 1 is about 11 miles of pure curviness that must be taken at 20mph. we did see three deer on the way in that night- that was kind of cool. it's making me dread having to leave tomorrow to go play the last show of the tour. hopefully oakland will fare a bit better. i'm not going to get my hopes up, though...
it is entirely possible that we will never return to california ever again. we wouldn't be here now if it weren't for the fact that my parents are staying at this amazing beach house.
on the plus side the lights of san francisco are visible from the beach here at night and the house is incredibly beautiful. free wifi is a bonus as well. it'll be nice to have another full day off here before we head home on thursday...

one show left

we have one more show to go. we are almost officially broke as well. woo hoo! if we only hadn't taken that kansas city trip we would've had enough money to get home, but that's how you learn lessons, i guess. that's the fun of being an adult and doing something like this that you really enjoy doing. it always has a price tag. what it is is variable even if it's successful. at least that's what i've heard anyway. i am listening to the recording from the rererato show and it sounds pretty nice. it's the first mono recording on my minidisc recorder. a training run for my bloody valentine. on we go tomorrow to california. it should be a nice three days- my dad called me today to let me know that the house is stocked.

welcome back to dreamland

we've been in portland all day today. we got in at about 4:15am after a brutal drive from seattle after our show at the office of doctor glorious. the show was an unexpected surprise that went quite well. what we ended up doing was playing without a p.a. but still incorporating the noisy elements of our sound. it's kind of something i've been fascinated with for a while. when we booked our show at mama buzz this was the kind of set i was envisioning and i really liked the way that it worked. so basically the show in the seattle was the first really good show we've played on the tour- of course it is only the third of six shows. we could've stayed at the house, but we decided we were too excited to get back to portland, so we just left immediately afterwards. we figured we wouldn't be done until much much later, but then we ended up leaving at about 1:30am. we got into town at about 4:15. stefanie's sister wouldn't be up to let us into their house until 6, so we went to voodoo donut, drove around and sussed things out to see what was still around and what was gone and film a little bit of footage for the proposed. we could've filmed more today, but of course i forgot the digital camera. oopsies...
going back to spokane we didn't do anything at all the second day- we just sat around and watched a marathon of 'punk'd' and some episodes of 'will & grace.' yeah, it was that good. i say that only half sarcastically because by the time we left we were fully unwound and being stuck in a town with absolutely nothing for us to do ended up getting us ready to play again. we did eat at dick's hamburger stand. that was fairly sweet.
not much else to say- eastern washington is very similar to eastern oregon- it's a desert. the snoqualmie valley drive was incredibly breathtaking- we were listening to spiritualized the whole time just to add to the effect. we got lost in a strip mall in issaquah looking for a qdoba. we got so far off the path that we ended up in a giant prefab duplex complex up on a mountain. good stuff.
the office of doctor glorious was really nice. one guy there bought all of our cds and a t-shirt- the first t-shirt we've sold to anyone so far. people are very broke. i think that everyone's monetary woes begin and end there. but we made enough money for a tank of gas that should get us out of portland at least. we can't quite figure out if we need to give our rental car an oil change as it has an oil life measurement on the dashboard that started out on the low side. i'm not getting an oil change for that thing unless i'm getting reimbursed for it. noooooo way.
being back in portland has felt like visiting some kind of dreamland. it almost feels completely unreal now. there are so many things that i miss that we used to do all the time here, but somehow the pull of the place has been completely stripped away. it's pretty much a mystery to me that there ever was a pull in the first place. a most unusual feeling that i've never had anywhere else...
so here are some faux toes-

a full day off- one of three

we are in spokane right now in a coffee shop. i am slowly uploading the photos to my photobucket account so as to hopefully have some pictures up.
bozeman was a lot of fun- john (the guy who set up the show) was a super nice guy. it was about what i was expecting it to be like. most of it was played to just john. that's just fine with me- what we ended up doing was playing a bunch of new songs that we'd never attempted before. it was pretty good- kind of like getting paid $500 for a dress rehearsal. nothing wrong with that. we didn't drive anyone away at the beginning- so that's about as much as you can hope for. people left while we were playing but they just were leaving to go to class because a block of classes started at 12:30.
after that john got us some pretty tasty stuff for lunch and then we stopped for coffee and headed off for spokane. we got a bit punchy by the time we got to the idaho border. a small tidbit that no one had ever mentioned to me- couer d'alene and the surrounding areas are fucking GORGEOUS. the lake was incredibly breathtaking- we drove over it while the sun was still going down. beautiful. wow.
other than that there's not much to report. we're looking forward to the seattle show tomorrow and obviously we're looking forward to getting back to portland. it is very odd to be back on the west coast for me- i can't quite get used to it and it's been tying my head in knots. it's going to be even weirder when we get back to portland. we are going to make a video for 'on the bridge' while we're there. it's been something i've wanted to do for a long time- pretty much since i wrote the song. so that's kind of fun- a new video is coming up. stefanie was talking about doing a 'voices in the air' video (which is a song we haven't attempted to play live so far). i've also been thinking of doing a 'narcoleptic' video at the conservatory. as in we were going to bring our instruments there and film ourselves there.
otherwise it's been very nice to have a full day off. we can't really think of much to do here in town- stefanie went to a knitting shop and we might go to a burger place (dick's) where you can buy a bag of burgers. obviously that's just a concern for me, but nevertheless. we drove around downtown and couldn't find a coffee shop to hang out in. i can't believe that we get to sleep in the same town again tonight and then have the shortest drive so far ahead of us tomorrow.
right after we get done in seattle we're heading down to portland. the goal is to get there at 6am. on to the first photostream-

boze knows

pardon the awful pun. yikes.
we are in our hotel room in bozeman. it's a reasonably decent day's inn. there is a free wifi connection from which i am broadcasting at this very moment.
today all we did was wake up and drive. and drive. and drive. and drive. for about fourteen hours total. i think we might have stopped a handful of times to eat and get gas. what really helped was that i ate a hearty breakfast this morning. i've found i've been eating much less throughout the day. i got a burrito at qdoba in moorhead and ended up eating only half of it for lunch and eating the other half for dinner. i don't even think i was able to finish it. in the hotel room i am having some small snacks. i'll probably get the free breakfast in the morning because i've felt pretty good all day. i ate a frosty at wendy's and it kind of fucked me up- brought back my dry cough to an extent. driving through montana there wasn't very much to do or think about or look at (it is extraordinarily flat in the eastern part).
one of the highlights of today was stopping at painted canyon in western north dakota. it was something that kind of brought to mind that whole idea of 'the sublime and beautiful' that shelly was so concerned about in 'mont blanc.' good stuff. very unexpected at that point in the day because i was completely overwhelmed by the amount of driving we still had left to do. or i guess i should say i because stefanie hasn't been driving because i'm the only one with insurance.
driving through montana i got freaked out because my old friend phil told me some ridiculous story about something like pagans in white robes who project images of themselves blocking the highway lanes on a stretch of i90 (i believe it was supposedly a forest reserve or something that is nearby) causing people to stop and then said people who stop disappear and are never heard from again- their cars found destroyed and gutted. thanks phil- i was white-knuckled for about the last two hours i was driving once we finally made it to billings. strangely enough these white-robed pagans did NOT make an appearance like every montana native i've ever met (who i've told this to) has said in response to this ridiculous story. naturally since it was dark and creepy all i could think about was waiting for said event to occur.
our show in seattle is finally totally firmed up. we were worried it was going to be a repeat of the minneapolis show, but a nice flier has turned up and was made by one of the people in st. rainbow (one of the bands we're playing with). have a look-

i'm sorry minneapolis, but...

we will never play in the twin cities ever again. we're used to being the odd ones out, but last night was ridiculous. no one seemed to dislike us or anything and we did sell about four cds, but we found out we were never officially added to the bill, it was kind of a to do for them to let us play (which they did) but we only played two songs. it went fine, it was just a really weird night. kind of a crappy way to start the tour. we got lost on our way to the venue. we probably shouldn't have bothered really, but i guess that selling some cds and making some money is justification, so really it could've been much worse. people were pretty nice at the venue. it just wasn't our kind of crowd at all. i think that the show at the empty bottle really spoiled us.
james sent me an instrumental that he wants me to contribute to and i'm pretty excited to hear it.
we are staying in a hotel in st. cloud. we couldn't find a motel 6 so we ended up staying in a holiday inn express and got a room that was way too big for us (two queen size beds). that's what happens when you pull in at 3am.
yesterday was a bit of an ordeal all told. if you live in chicago and tried to get to o'hare yesterday you know what i mean. tons of flooding. so much so that roads to the airport were closed. i woke up at 7:30am and rode the red line down to downtown, switched to the blue line, rode that until irving park when they kicked us all off and crammed us into a shuttle bus that went to jefferson park, got back onto the train, went to rosemont and then ended up stopped there and they told us to get off of the train because water from the highway above had flooded the tracks at o'hare. after waiting for 30 minutes for a shuttle that they said they were arranging someone came out and told us the shuttle was cancelled because the roads were closed. none of the cabs were going to o'hare. there was just no way to get there. fortunately for me i called the rental car shuttle that was supposed to pick me up at the airport and they picked me up at rosemont and took me to get our car for the next two weeks. it's red chevy cobalt. i had my doubts, but it's not too bad. it gets more than 30mpg on the highway (i think it got us about 320 miles at least with tons of city driving at the beginning) so it's already twice as good about that as big momma was.
so today we are just driving and driving and driving. we are staying at a day's inn in bozeman. that will be nice. the plan is just to get to the hotel tonight and then sleep and then drive straight to spokane after we play. hopefully the show in bozeman will be better. if no one's there it'll serve as sort of a nice practise session- we have a few songs we haven't attempted live yet that are ready to go. we meant to play one last night, but well, you read...
anyway, see you later.

my bloody valentine 'surround'

finally, here is my bloody valentine- 'surround' which is from a show in detroit at st. andrew's hall in june of 1989. this is my favourite 'isn't anything'-era live bootleg. the sound quality is decent and the performance is quite solid. the axis bootleg might be a touch better, but this one is entirely worth a listen. i particularly love 'cigarette in your bed,' 'lose my breath' and 'sueisfine' on this one. enjoy-



http://www.sendspace.com/file/ij15ep

spiritualized live at the metro

flacs-
part 1- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LE3QDR9C
part 2- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VYNHU7I4

mp3's- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PRM0TR31

the covers came courtesy of this fine gentleman.

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

yes, we are leaving for tour tomorrow. i have to get up at 7 in the morning and go all the way out to o'hare to pick up our car. kind of a pain in the ass, but at least we got a good deal. kind of apprehensive at the moment. everything so far has been finished that needs to be done before we leave. we got the t-shirts done yesterday- nick helped me out and everything was finished. they look really good. the design on the blue shirts is a little tiny, but that's okay- i think it'll be fine.
i'm also a bit distracted because i just got harassed outside of my building. probably just someone who hasn't taken their meds or something. or some kind of misunderstanding. he started calling me 'motherfucker' and telling me about how he was going to bash my 'fucking teeth in' etc etc. weird shit seems to be afoot today. i saw someone honk at some guy who opened the door to his car to get in and he went up to the person inside the car and started getting upset at them. i guess it's just in the air or something today. freaky. the dude was yelling about how he was going to call the police and such. i really don't understand it- he just asked me if i lived there and then when i said i did he started yelling at me calling me 'the internet motherfucker' or something to that effect. at one point i just said 'what?' and he was like 'oh, you don't know what i'm talking about?' and i said 'nope.'
i guess that that's all there is to say about that really. i'm a bit nervous that he'll still be there when i get back, but if he is i guess i'll just call the police. there's usually a cop car around in the neighborhood anyway. i wonder why that is...
anyway, i'm a bit freaked out about the tour. yesterday i had to charge about $400 to my credit card because for some reason the charge didn't go through on stefanie's card for the igo balance, so i kind of own her now. it's probably better if the igo charges to my credit card. who knows how many charges have gone by the wayside from me. i guess my only source of anxiety is if we'll make any money and not have to go into the red buying gas. i'm also a bit concerned about the aftermath, but i'm sure it'll be okay. things have been so hectic for the last couple of months- we've been so busy my current view of how things are going is very skewed. after the tour we can kind of hang back a bit and not be so busy all the time at least until christmas.
i varnished my pedal board last night and let it dry on the windowsill. when i woke up this morning and checked it it still wasn't fucking dry. i guess i'll give it until the end of the night.
i finally got the spiritualized show uploaded, which i recorded. it turned out pretty well- better than the pitchfork recording. the show was astounding. i didn't think it would match the pitchfork set, but holy shit- it was even better. they played 'ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space' for fuck's sake! it was wonderful! it will be posted in the next entry. i also recovered that my bloody valentine bootleg that i had been lamenting all those years and years. it's a pretty solid little recording as well. as it turns out ironically i was correct and it was in fact a copy of the show that the guy had traded me for. it was right when the degradation of the sound started. it only shows up on one or two songs. i still haven't listened to the last two songs so i can't rightly say if it's affected those two or not. on to the next entry and let's forget about weird creepy little dudes in sunglasses calling you 'the internet motherfucker.'

the rain

yesterday was heavenly. i loved it. if you're lamenting the end of summer, i'm really sorry but i don't feel your pain. i am beyond relieved that fall is beginning to return. i am prepared for a few more hot days, but today is the second day i was able to wear long sleeves.
as i've written here many a time summer is quite the endurance test for me. since there's been some evidence of the coming of fall it feels like a massive weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. what i will say is that it was really quite a mild summer- i'm very relieved. we managed to tough it out- i think we slept on the floor in the living room with the a/c on for only one night. i slept a second night with it on by myself. every other night we slept in the bedroom and just trained an army of fans onto ourselves. so at least it wasn't too terrible. we got another one of those really beautiful and temperate junes. i have to say that i do enjoy those quite a bit. they are an unexpected surprise. so i am looking forward to winter. i love it. last winter was one of the most beautiful times i've had in a really long time. i loved all of the snow. i loved all of the ridiculously cold temperatures. i had to keep it to myself because at the coffee shop i had so many people complaining to me about how miserably cold it was while inside i was thinking 'man, i could take another three months of this- i love it.' it actually snowed in kansas city over christmas time. i can't remember a time that it's done that since i was a little kid. i didn't like landing in a blizzard- that was a bit scary- and the ride home on the highway with stefanie's dad driving was harrowing to say the least (most of it wasn't the way he was driving but the way other people were), but i think it was worth it. we had a great time.
this year at christmas is going to be kind of different. we're not going home for as long and we're flying in on christmas eve again, which is kind of a bummer because there's no lead-in to christmas. you land in the evening, go home, eat dinner, go to sleep, wake up and it's christmas and then it's over. i'm a big fan of the lead-in, but that was the cheapest deal- flying out on christmas eve. it's nicer at the airport too because no one really travels that day and people are very quiet and calm that day.
the tour starts a week from tomorrow. i have managed to not save a dime from last week's tips. amazing. not a dime. we made some money at the show- about $45 or so (i think). that's half of the igo charges. good enough for me. for a while i didn't think that we were going to get paid at all because the place was anything but packed, but we still made some money anyway. we sold a few cds, which is always nice. mostly the new one. i get very excited when people buy it because i'm so proud of it. it's incredibly gratifying to see how well it's turned out. i lived with the record as an idea for about ten years. to have been able to make it and have it turn out so well on practically no budget is amazing. i'm excited for what's coming up next. we're going to record some strings for the ep on thursday evening. exciting. i might try to get some recording done next week before we go. it'd be really nice to have the ep wrapped up or nearly wrapped up before we leave. there isn't much to do. i think a few days of work would probably get it incredibly close. the rest of the strings will have to wait until october when i go to visit kc again.
i'm also getting to the point with the whole money situation where i am not too worried about how things will turn out. even if i don't get to go back to chase then i think that i'll be able to manage. there won't really be anything to save for for a few months. the ep will be fairly cheap to do, so it shouldn't be a huge problem to get it done and out by hopefully christmas time. if it gets put on hold until next year that wouldn't be the end of the world either. with everything we've gotten accomplished this year it amazes me that my debt isn't bigger. once we're back it'll be good to get back into the swing of things how they normally go.
i'm going to try to be optimistic. i think that we'll be okay for the tour. so many things have been very pleasant surprises along the way, so hopefully this will follow suit. hopefully. either way we'll get through it. we always do.
next year will be a bit less about doing more things. we're going to try to do less things i think. we have a record to finish, after all, so it might be a repeat of 2007- where we hardly did much of anything. i'd like to get my debt in order. i know that i say that every year, but dammit, i'm going to do it. i must.

empty bottle take 2

we played at the empty bottle last night. we headlined. we played the best we have ever played too. as always there were a few teeny mistakes, but isn't that why live performance is so fun? but holy shit, it was soooooo fucking gloriously loud. excellent. at one point we were playing and the floor was just shaking from all of the sound- i think that was during 'angels floating on the head of a pin.' i am extremely proud of how we did last night.
as if that weren't enough people responded incredibly well to it- better than i expected. it always makes me laugh when people yell out at us during the show- as in good encouraging things. as if that weren't enough we played for about 45 minutes and then we actually did our first encore. we didn't leave the stage, but one dude was asking us to play one more and play one that stefanie sang and we did 'to the sky' and it sounded absolutely perfect. the monitor mix was a bit low for our vocals, but it's not really a complaint that you can make when you go for as much volume as i did last night. wow, it was really fun and wonderful and inspiring. a good way to get started before we head out on tour.
we are in peak form right now. i can't imagine a better time for us to go out and tour. i was worried about playing for an hour at the show in bozeman because i didn't think we could do it and be entertaining but i'm not so worried anymore. we even did the 'sloba'/'down to sleep' switch where we just play one and then go straight into the next song without a break- i almost called it off and then when i was making noises for 'sloba' and i had it all sampled and going i was just thinking 'fuck that- we're going to do it- it's going to work' and it did. it was awesome! my manager wasn't able to make it because a good friend of his was in town playing a house show and he was going to try to swing by to catch us, but he didn't make it. i get to give everyone that i work with crap because they missed us at our very best.
the other three bands were all fantastic as well- a tundra were super nice and we are going to go see them again. it'd be fun to play with them again as well. jim's band were fantastic too. they have a residency at the horseshoe lounge for the month so i'm going to go to a few of those shows- one of them is when we'll be gone, but the other two are doable i think.
the waiting around wasn't so agonizing either. i figured having to wait that long to play would be awful, but we just hung around, had a few drinks and talked to our friends and watched the bands. they were all so good that the time went incredibly fast. by the time we'd gotten all of our stuff off the stage it was about 1:15 and we played at about midnight.
i'm so excited for tour now. it's going to fantastic. i think we're going to try to rehearse a few more songs on saturday, which will most likely be our last practise before we leave. we'll have a well of about 20 songs to draw from, which doesn't sound like much, but we can rarely fit in more than 5 songs in a set, so it's a pretty generous number really.
today i am going over to nick and nadine's space to do some screen printing on t-shirts. hopefully they can help me with the problems i've been having. i've ruined about 10 shirts already. kinda bad. yipes. i ruined one of my screens as well because so much ink dried inside the screen in the design and while trying to get some of it out i scratched off some of the dried emulsion and ruined some of the designed parts. it was kind of a crappy screen anyway, but it still sux.
that's all for me. tour here we come!

mazzy star/hope sandoval love

o hope sandoval- where are you?