Tour Blah Blah 3: Can I Even Remember 2 Weeks Back Anymore?

Chances are no… I can’t. Or rather maybe ‘ve lost the focus or desire to finsih this. But in keeping with my promise to myself to finish what I start more often I will.

 Sleeping on a recliner and then hardwood for 4 hours after 7 hours of straight drinking rarely leads to cheery mornings but actually other than a scratchy throat from breaking my 2 1/2 weeks of non-smoking I felt fine. We went back to the teahouse in the morning and tried various teas that we were forbidden to pay for. We loaded out and helped Penny get the space back in order before heading back to Charlotte.

 The ride flew by for the most part and we didn’t take a break untill we spotted a giant music store/barn in the shadows of this monstrosity.

Of course when I say monstrosity I mean it in the most loving way. Right before we came across the Peachoid I was thinking to myself what a letdown I-85 is as far as roadside monuments. At least 95 has South Of The Border.

 So we popped off 85 and stopped by the store so Emmanuel could raplace his broken sticks with more from teh “Neil Pert Series”. The store was not too unlike any Guitar Center in a major metropolis but it had an unmistakably weird vibe that can only come from being located off a major higway in a feild under a million gallon tank shaped like a peach in South Carolina. There were hints of familiarity… like the Izzy Stradlin looking cool guy that calls everybody bro and asks if you’re in a touring band in hopes that it’s someone he can pass a demo off on. There were no surprises when he followed this stereotype to a T when he approached us. But istead of a strung-out whiskey soaked voice his probing questions as to where we were from and if we were on a label were delivered with a thick Carolina drawl.

 The rest of the time spent in the store was the same as any trip to the instrument store when you have no money. Run around a bit find the weirdest keyboard and poke it a few times as if to make sure it’s still breathing, laugh at a few Parker guitars and their corresponding price tags… and so on. Haleta grabbed a $100 multi-effects board off a table and asked one of the employees if he could try it, the following scene provided much amusement. 

 MH: “Can I try this out?”

 Employee: “Sure Thing! What guitar would you like?”

 MH: “uh that’s ok, i just need a loose 1/4″ cable”

 E: “?????????ummmm…????? ok…. here ya go”

Mike then proceeds to slam a combination of pedals while hitting the open end of the cable with his thumb while the employee looked on utterly confused. After about one minute Mike looked up and said “Great! I’ll take it. Can you throw in the cable?”. The employee still scratching his head decided to swallow any questions in favor of moving the sales along so he could collect his $2 commission.

 Back on the road we went at a good clip until about 30 minutes outside of Charlotte when we ran in to a harsh rainstorm. We were forced to move along at a snails pace for the next 20 miles or so. I daydreamed about seeing Kate while I tried to make out taillights in the distance. We fought through it and true to form the clouds disappeared as we pulled up to Kate’s place. We all unloaded and prepared to stuff Kate’s little apartment full of stink band dudes. Kate had made us a great meal and surprised me with a birthday cake! We were in good spirits when we headed off and remained in good spirits even after realizing the P.A. didn’t have much to offer and we probably weren’t gonna see any money.

 Actually the lack of P.A. forced us to use More Dogs’ amps and the new configuration led to our first good show of the tour. More Dogs were again amazing and we stuck around for Cannons who I like alot. However it was so loud I had to watch most of it from outside the store. We were all feeling antsy by the end of their setand decided to head over to the bars rather than watch he final band.

 One of the things I like most about Charlotte is there are liquor stores with outdoor seating. whay people drink at bars there is beyond me. We had some drinks and headed back to Kate’s. Her friend and our new friend Stephen surprised us by bringing two Atari computers for Jeff and I. We chatted and drank a bit more before settling into bed to get a weeks worth of snuggling in.

Tour Diary Day 2: Dirty Deeds

I had fully intended to keep up with this "Tour Diary" as some sort of right of passage thing, but sometimes things down't workout as you like. Tour on the other hand turned out to be quite a blast.

After leaving Charlotte on Saturday morning we headed for Brad Hurst's house in Hotlanta. Most of the drive down is through the dirty anus of a state South Carolina. So I spent 3 hours drifting in and out of sleep with the waking hours staring at strip club billboards and firework stands that look like they are made of popsicle sticks.

Things picked up when we entered Georgia as Shaun, Jeff and I pulled off to get some Jamocha shakes from Arby's. Shaun asked the pimple faced yo who handed over the shakes what the dirtiest of the dirty hip-hop stations were. He turned us on the 107.9. We knew we had the right station when the DJ muttered the word DIRTY 20 times in 2 minutes. So with no-name southern hip-hop as our soundtrack we pulled into Atlanta to meet Brad. We found it easily and were amazed at how well manicured his lawn was. Turns out Brad has an adult house. I'm taking sweet back porch, gas grill, dining room WITH A DINING ROOM TABLE, house plants that aren't dead, surround sound… basically the kinda place you don't ever get to stay at on tour.

We rolled over to the 11:11 Teahouse after dumping our bags and met our delightful host Penny. The teahouse was gorgeous and sort of reminded me a bit of a Frank Lloyd Wright house with two of the main room's walls made of slanted windows. When we got there the More Dogseseses were already chillin'. We did some quick catching up before going on a beer and pizza run. At the beer store Steve Santillian and I decided to make it a High Gravity night. I'm new to the world of High Gravity Malt Liquors but learned really quickly what it was about when we split a can of H2 in the parking lot of the hipster pizza joint. We made our way back in time to see Mexcellent which is Brad and his friend Kristin. I thought it started off good but not too long after I stepped outside to take a call they stopped. They both seemed pretty bummed and apparently had some technical difficulties. I tried to tell them that it wasn't so bad and they weren'y having it… i can understand this.

More Dogs came on next and killed it. Their new songs are completely sick. Emmanuel broke 12 strings throughout the course of the set(wtf?). We hobbled up afterwards and stumbled through another iffy set where we couldn't hear each other and things never really gelled. I set up by the window actually facing out and watched a teriffic thunderstorm as we played. Again despite how of I felt it was people seemed to dig it so I tried to fake like I felt good about it.

We hung out for a bit and Penny said we could pick up our stuff in the morning which was a relief. We rallied everyone up and returned to Brad's house briefly before a small group of us left for the grocery store for beer and food. Michael Bouyukas and I explored the Kroger together mostly flipping past turkey and cranberry sandwiches and jalapeno subs before choosing a $3.99 bag of 8 pieces of fried chicken. Word was Brad had burgers back at the house so everyone else bought fixin's and chips. Shaun was already passed in the living room by the time we got back potentially ruining our plans for Guitar Hero action. We discovered the burger were gone but there were veggie burgers instead. We sat on the back porch or awhile eating chicken, drinking beers smoking cigs and talking shit on the Atlanta and Baltimore indie rock hierarchy until I decided it was time to hit up Guitar Hero.

Everything is sorta foggy after that but I remember playing GH with Emmanuel until 5am and soloing on a sleeping Shaun. I fell asleep on a recliner for awhile before being awoken by flipping it over and the ensuing laughter of everyone else in the room.

"That's not good" I belive was my reaction. I picked up the chair and stumbled into the room Haleta was sleeping in to crash on the floor thuse ending day 2.

Tour Update 1: The Nerdy South

Hey, I have a moment here so I thought I'd pop in and you know… blog with you kids. a tour blog even! whoa!

we took off at 1pm towards Chapel Hill for our show at the Night Light. I was pumped because it's just nice to get away and even though the C-Hill show was panning out to be the sketchiest of the southern shows I still love visiting there.

 The ride was smooth and quick with really only the smallest of inter-band squabbles. The weather was top notch and I have the one arm tan to prove it. 

 Tunes we rocked on the way down:

*Polvo – Exploded Drawing

*Chrome – Half-Machine Lip Moves

*Ariel Pink – assorted songs

*Red Krayola – Fingerpainting

*Plans Plans – Moby Dick

*Loop – The last album

*T.I. – King

So we rolled into Chapel Hill, got a tad bit lost before finding the Night Light. It was early-ish and the folks their(Ryan and Daniel) told us to come back at 9pm. We used our extra playtime to head over to CD Alley so Mike could consign some Zbiginew Karkowski CD's he put out. After that we trucked on to Carburrito for a mashed potato and carmelized onion burrito… oh man, that couple with the half bottle of hot sauce i dumped on it caused problems later but that's day 2.

 after downing one really, really strong margerita we decided to kill our remaining hour drinking at the Reservoir which I haven't been to since it was Go. The stage was gone and it had been turned more "rock" but it was still agreat place to grab a $1.50 glass boot of PBR while killing time.

 After a couple of boots we went back to the Night Light and loaded in after a few little spats about wether we should play or not. We knocked back $1 Yeunglings while we waited for the 8 people that eventually showed up. When everyone was present we hopped on after an interesting set by Chapel Hill's Planecrash (Stuart…nice guy!). We struggled to get momentum and our mix was a bit chaotic but bits and pieces came together and some good moments popped out. All in all it was an iffy performance but people seemed into it. We were asked to play the No Future Fest in June which I believe  we'll do. 

 We chatted with new friends for awhile and then loaded up to make a 2 1/2 hour drive to Charlotte to stay with Kate.

 late night tune were:

*Nirvana – In Utero

*Moondog – honest Jon comp.

*Pita – Get Out Track 3 

Power 98FM!

We snuck in at 3:30am and wI got to wake Kate with a kiss. A few minutes of hangout time passed before we passed out… a great first day and waking up to Kate's face was a perfect way to start day 2! 

Brothers From A Different Mother(land)

vs. 

 

thanks to White Denim Matt for catching the similarity

It’s an Inside Job

Anyone who already knows me is probably aware that I have and always will have a deep fascination with indigenous booty musics. Miami Bass, New Orleans Bounce, Detroit Ghetto Tech, Crunk Hip-Hop, Chicago Ghetto House, Dancehall, Baltimore Club(obviously!)… at some point I've been unnaturally obsessed with all of these sub-genres.

So of course my interest was piqued when I heard about Favela Funk(or Baile Funk, whichever you prefer) a couple of years back. It was first described to me by Skiz Fernando who had just returned from a 2 month long trip to Brazil as an unholy marriage of Miami Bass and Baltimore Club with kids rapping in Portuguese over it. I was not let down by the 2 CD-R's he burnt me of some of the stuff he had collected while down there. Soon after Essay dropped the "Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats" compilation.

I dove right in, eventually meeting a DJ from Rio on Soulseek with whom I swapped my collection of Baltimore club .mp3's with his stockpile of Favela tracks. All in all it was about 10 hours worth, enough to realize unless there was a major stylistic shift within the genre I didn't really ever need to search out more.

Favela Funk started popping up on the blogs and net magazines as soon as the Essay comp. and Diplo's Baile Funk mix dropped. It seemed inevitable that a bastardized watered down hipster version of the sound would pop up. Would it be from LA? NY? Would Diplo himself, who had been credited with "discovering" the genre by Rolling Stone do it with the release of the M.I.A. album he helped with?

Surprisingly no, while Diplo has continued to mine the sound for his productions he's kept the urgency of the sound in tact while cleaning it up for North American and European audiences.

So it was a surprise to me when scrolling through the last few months worth of blogs, Pitchfork articles and what have you for what I have missed out on that I saw it. I stumbled upon the name Bonde Do Role on the list of performers for the Pitchfork Festival this summer. A little research into it and I had discovered that it was a Diplo pushed act from Brazil.

I found the Myspace page and was immediately off put by the photo.

These didn't seem like the favela kids I had imagined when told about the origins of the music, they looked like art school kids. But it said from Brazil so I reminded myself not to judge a book by it's cover and gave it a chance.

I wish i hadn't bothered. How much of the music was created by the Brazilians and how much by Diplo I am unsure of, but it was reminiscent of much of the bad art school takes on hip-hop, bass music and club that populate many a warehouse across the US right now.

Melo Do Tabaco opens with your standard Favela rhythm and the vocals are, well Brazilian, but before you know it an Alice In Chains sample comes in. Ok, yeah.. har har. Pretty unimpressive despite the chuckle I let out when Lane's voice popped in the first time. It was the second song Melo Do Vitiliago that took it too far. A sample of Salt-N-Peppa's Push It is mashed with AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long and comes across as a third rate Too Many DJ's mix. And much like most of the mash-up genre the joke is old halfway through being told.

The only thing I've taken away from checking these guys out was that while this may signal the end of the relevance of a genre that never quite became relevant at least it is self-imploding before our hipsters could ruin it.

It Could Happen To You

So let's give this a shot!

I'm 28, a week away from 29 and I've made it thus far in life without ever having a diary… errrr, wait scratch that. I do recall spending part of a weeks allowance in junior high on a small hardcover journal. I made an attempt at an entry before abandoning it mid paragraph in favor of using the blank pages to compile stats for the baseball game I had invented by flipping my baseball cards to decide outcomes of "games."

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. I'm still not much on spilling my guts in a public or even semi-private forum, but I do like to run my mouth. Mostly i run it about music, occassionally about other things. I even feel if you can deal with the poor grammar and my 150 word vocabulary I have some interesting opinions.

So that said, this is my "blog" or "journal" or whatever you want to call it. Check in occassionally I may even make a second post.