Filed under: America
My priorities probably aren’t in the right place, I don’t care. I got a written warning at work tonight about my attendance. I think people who I don’t want to read this do and people who I want to read it don’t. I’m thinking of making a big, stupid decision, you’re only young and dumb once. I’m content with at least one thing in my life right now. The perfect album to accompany this night of overthinking and hating where I am in life:
If you can set the pace I can use the change. let me know when you want to go.
The last week and a half has taken me to Chicago and New York, both were great, it’s depressing coming back to this city. It’s depressing going back to my job. My gameplan involves a city far away, dogs, pizza and getting hit by a car.
Filed under: America | Tags: Eating Glass, let down, moose lodge, stelton church, trash talk, war pigs
This weekend Eating Glass ventured into the USA for the second time. Everything went great, America rules for playing shows, I can’t wait to go back. This is probably going to be a long post so hold onto your butts. Note, photos from Doylestown show taken by Danielle and photos from Edison show taken by Rich.
Friday morning, I’m frantically making my way around the house, making sure I have everything. I packed really light because (I thought) we were only going to be in the USA for a day because we had a show scheduled in Toronto on Saturday. I finally was confident I had everything, killed the last bit of my Dr Pepper and headed to Meinekee for an oil change.
Sitting in Meinekee, this guy walks in dressed in a business suit, sits down next to me with some sort of religious scripture (not sure if it was the bible printed in a different language, or what) but he decides to sit next to me when there are like 7 open chairs with no one around them. He doesn’t say anything and I feel uncomfortable because this dude is huge and in my space. Anyways, few minutes later and my car is ready to go so I bail to Burlington.
Smooth ride, some dong in a Volvo SUV who was driving too fast got bummed out when I pulled out in front of him, he yelled at me as he cut past me so I blew him a kiss, more bummed. Got to Spencer’s, loaded gear up and headed to the music store so he could get sticks. Right before we leave Burlington I ask Spencer and Jeff if they have their IDs, stupid Spencer doesn’t so we have to stop off again at his place.
The border was good, didn’t even get searched which was surprising with visible guitars. We met up with the other car and spent far too long in some shitty little town. The drive was fairly uneventful, Spencer spent most of the time sleeping, Jeff spent most of the time listening to his iPod and I spent most of the time listening to the radio. The only really enjoyable part of the drive was singing along to jams on the radio, not knowing the majority of the words to them and just repeating the lines that we knew. The stand-out jam was I’m Walkin’ by Fats Domino:
We ended up getting a little off course and drove up some sketchy, winding hill thanks to Spencer sucking at navigating but pretty soon we were back on the right course for Doylestown. Within the last stretch of the drive, Dion from War Pigs sent me a text saying the promoter of the Trash Talk/Let Down show that was happening the next day that we had been trying to get on messaged him telling him one band had dropped the show and we could play if we wanted to. Spencer, Jeff and I all agreed that this would be better than heading back to Toronto so Spencer called the dude doing the show in Toronto we were supposed to play to let him know we couldn’t. It was sort of a shitty move but this was a pretty cool opportunity for us.
We arrived in Doylestown at around 7:00, my first impression was that it was a quaint small town. I’m still not sure how big it is but it’s a pretty well kept city with a small town feel. We made our way to the venue and as soon as we got there we saw Drew and Justin from Let Down. We loaded in our gear and everyone bailed for food except Spencer and I. I stuck around because I wanted to see Bongripper. They’re a stoner/doom band from Chicago who had the stage packed with amps. The one guitarist was playing out of two Sound City heads and a Laney, all pumped through Emperor cabs, the other guitarist had an 800, another head and two cabs. The bass player had an Orange head and an Ampeg 8×10 if I remember correctly. Needless to say they were loud. Sure, being loud is cool and all, but make sure with that volume you can still sound good. The band was pretty boring (after being awake for 24 hours I definitely wasn’t in the right mood for that) and their tone sounded pretty shitty overall so I regretted not going to get food.
We played next I think (again, up for over 24 hours at this point, pretty hazy). Our set went over well. A few mess ups but nothing too obvious. We got a good reaction according to Justin. I can never tell as I usually face my amp instead of looking at the crowd, most of the time it’s better looking.
After we played I zoned out and listened to Layin’ Waste’s set from the merch table. Met Dillon, the dude whose house we were staying at. He introduced himself but I’m a deaf retard and couldn’t understand that he was saying “hey I’m Dillon, you guys are staying at my house tonight” until probably the forth time he said it. He lives at the house Equal Vision Records bought for Circa Survive, pretty cool I guess. I wish someone would buy me a house.
War Pigs closed the show and tore the Moose Lodge apart. They opened with the We Gotta Know intro which had 3/4 of the room going off. Played through a good set mixing stuff from their new CD and stuff from the “No Hope…” 7″. If you haven’t listened to them, they’ve got the whole new album streaming here. Check it out, hopefully they’ll be coming up to Toronto in the near future.
After the show we packed up the cars and went with Justin to a diner to get some food. First he took us to a place that took 15 minutes to get to which turned out to be the wrong one. Eventually we got to the right one and hung out with some locals. I couldn’t get a veggie burger because they weren’t vegan so I settled on curly fries, I bathed them in ketchup in hopes of making them a little more filling, they were okay.
The highlight of the diner was this couple who were making out in a booth near us (how romantic). We all laughed at them, Bob from Let Down started yelling shit like “gross”, “he’s fingering her” and “that dude’s got a boner”. Eventually they broke it up and kept awkwardly looking at us thinking we thought what they did was cool. We didn’t, it sucked.
Once we finished paying and left I’d been up for over 30 hours. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and it was evident. I caught myself slowing down to around 25 in a 40 zone a couple of times then eventually someone else caught onto this. We were within 5 minutes of Dillon’s house when I saw sirens flip on behind us. The cop talked to both Rogers and I. I explained my situation and that we were less than 5 minutes from where we were staying and the cop was very understanding. He gave me a breathalyzer anyways to make sure I wasn’t bullshitting about being up forever. It was my first time ever getting a breathalyzer, fun. Apparently he was making fun of me to the dudes in the other car, and when he came back to my car he addressed me as Jay, I guess we were bros? We got back to Dillon’s and I crashed hard on a couch right away.
We woke up and basically had to leave right away because Dillon had to go to work. He gave us all Gatorade and we headed to K Mart to pick up some stuff then spent the majority of the next 3 hours in the parking lot of the Doylestown Center, eating food, skateboarding and just hanging out. The weather was awesome and it was the perfect day to spend outside.
Once that spot got old we went back down to State St. where the Moose Lodge is. Spencer forgot his shirt there the night before so he was hoping to get in and grab it. The doors were locked so we walked to Siren Records, where Dillon works. On the way there we passed a garage sale that had a camping grill for sale. Not completely sure why but Alex bought it. I got sucked in as well and bought a lawn bowling set. I figured it was such a nice day out, hopefully we could make it to a park.
At Siren I picked up Blink 182’s Cheshire Cat on vinyl for $5 and a Record Store Day Obits 7″ with a couple of unreleased tracks. Wish I would have picked up the Jay Reatard/Sonic Youth split because it’s already selling for stupid amounts on eBay. Once we were done there we headed over to a book store and I bought a Doylestown postcard (trying to get a postcard for every US city I play in) and a book about movies and how they impacted famous people.
After the book store we headed back towards the car. By then the Moose Lodge was open and Spencer got his shirt. It was getting late and we wasted too much time sitting around that we had to leave for New Jersey so we couldn’t go to a park/lawn bowl.
The ride was a little under an hour and a half. We were the first ones at the venue aside from the promoter and sound guy. We loaded all of our stuff in, set up the merch then Spencer and I left to get food. I chose to get hummus/pita to save money and Spencer got Subway. The girl working cash at Subway asked “what cartoon is this”, talking about the tattoos on his arm. He replied with something like “it’s original”. She asked “you have this everywhere?” She wanted him, hard.
Anyways, I dropped Spencer back off at the church and went on a waste of time search for an Edison postcard. I went to like ten different places, all of which were puzzled about why I’d want an Edison postcard. I guess Edison isn’t the kind of place people are proud of visiting? With no luck I headed back to the venue. I’m still on the hunt for an Edison postcard, we’ll see how that goes.
We were third and played a much better set than in Doylestown. We were received well, we covered Integrity and kids went pretty nuts. Justin said that was a great reaction for a first time in New Jersey so that was cool. There were also a lot more kids at this show, Doylestown had around 75 and Edison had over 200.
Next up was Let Down. These guys are going to stop playing shows at the end of the summer which sucks because they’re probably the best edge band going right now. Bob is a great frontman and I’m excited to see his other band, Mother of Mercy when they play with Floorpunch in July.
Following Let Down was a local band called Disaster. I guess the point of this band is to just be as ignorant as possible. Dudes were punching people in the face and moshing like wangs for ther 7 minutes of this band’s set. I don’t really get the tough guy shit but whatever.
Trash Talk closed the show, I sort of stopped listening to them once their S/T LP came out, although the production on it is amazing (Steve Albini), the tracks were pretty boring. I downloaded it again after this show, we’ll see if I can get into it now. Kids went crazy for them, there was some shitty dickhead stuff going on in the pit so I took my lawnbowling pins and started throwing them into the crowd for entertainment. Lee, the singer, said he was glad he finally got to see us, which is always a nice thing to hear from someone in a band you expect has never heard of you.
Once the show was done we pawned off as much merch as we could for cheap, stopped at Burger King so everyone could eat garbage then drove back to Canada.
The highlights and lowlights of the long ride home were: Dr Pepper, Cherry Coke, Nutter Butter cookies, funny sex stories, pissing a BK cup while driving and throwing it out my window, subsequently covering the side of my car with piss, a lot of bad classic rock, sleeping in a rest stop parking lot for two hours, Rogers getting a speeding ticket, the border guard asking if we played “the old stuff, the good stuff” when I told him we were a punk band and finally fucking getting home and sleeping in my own bed.
Until next time, America…..
Filed under: America, Music, Records | Tags: Chicago, Iowa City, Morrissey, Skinwalker, Slipknot, The Mill, The Mountain Goats
This past weekend Andrew and I travelled to America to see our respective favourite musicians/bands, The Mountain Goats and Morrissey. We travelled to Iowa on Friday to see the Mountain Goats then after the show we started driving to Chicago.
Friday morning I was stressing hard. I was finishing up my last night shift for the week and doing final preparations for the weekend. Initially I just wanted to head to Andrew’s right after work and leave from there for our 12 hour drive to Iowa. Not long after I got to work with my backpack of clothing for the weekend, snacks and water I realized I’d forgotten the tickets at home. I wrote myself a reminder so I wouldn’t forget it again when it was too late. At around 5:45am I decided I should write out the directions since I didn’t want to kill batteries on my phone using the GPS, also I’m sure my bill is going to suck from all the roaming charges which would have been worse had I kept it on the entire time.
Anyways, while I was doing this (on the clock I should add, since I had a meeting to be at in 15 minutes) I went to the Mill’s site (the venue where the Mountain Goats were playing) and read that all the advance tickets were sold out and that the tickets that were available at the door were going to be sold starting at 6:30 (the show started at 8:00). As mentioned, Google Maps said the drive was going to be 12 hours, so basically we had to drive above the speed limit if we wanted to make it in time.
We had a plan b though, if we didn’t make it to Iowa City in time we were going to take an hour and a half drive west and hang out in Des Moines (home of Slipknot) and watch the new Fast and the Furious movie, hopefully with Slipknot, or Slipknot fans. Either way, it was going to be a good night.
As it turns out we didn’t have to resort to plan b. My car is very good on gas so we only had to make two stops, the border was quick and easy and we maintained a good speed the entire way, despite it raining almost non-stop from Ontario to Illinois. Made our way through Detroit and saw Shady Lane, directly followed by 8 Mile, hard.
Passed over the Mississippi River after the rain passed. We didn’t have time to raft down it, maybe next time. 
We arrived in Iowa City at around 4:00 central time, so we did the drive in around 9 hours, suck it Google Maps. We explored the area of town where the show was since we were so early, checked out a book store, from which I bought a book on Freemasonry and a book with iconic movie posters from the 1960s, a record store which I refrained myself from spending money in and an art supplies store that Andrew bought a couple small sketch books from then headed back to the venue. RAD.
We had a good spot in line so we managed to secure our spots at the show which was a relief. After doing so we got some awesome burritos at Chipotle then explored the mall it was connected to. 
The mall was fairly dull and I couldn’t find any vegan pop tarts so we headed back to the venue and found a long line of people waiting at the side door, but since we had already been in we were able to go through the front door and walk right in.
Simon Joyner was the opener. I enjoyed him but he played far too softly for a room full of people, most of which were more concerned with their conversations than his music. I would enjoy seeing him again in a quieter setting and will probably check into his music soon but he didn’t really stand out too much.
After Joyner was John Vanderslice. This is a name that I’ve heard for a long time now, basically ever since I’ve been listening to the Mountain Goats but for some reason I never bothered to listen to him. He played a great set and mentioned Shakey’s Pizza, which got me stoked.
Vanderslice and Darnielle put out a split 12” that had only been available for 3 shows as of Friday, a concept album (well 7 song EP) about harvesting human organs on the moon called “Moon Colony Bloodbath”. Most of the songs were played between the two of them and all of them sounded great, the 12” is sitting near my record player waiting to be listened to soon. Also picked up a copy of the Black Pear Tree EP that Darnielle put out with Kaki King, a record that I wasn’t huge on when I first heard it but now really enjoy.
After Vanderslice played the Mountain Goats took the stage. Unlike the majority of the shows in the last several years where he has been accompanied by at least Peter Hughes, occasionally a drummer, John, who has played under the moniker the Mountain Goats since the “band” was formed, played alone. The tour was called the “Gone Primitive” tour, John and John were both playing their music alone. This made for a pretty refreshing set, a lot of oddball songs from earlier albums as well as a lot of good ones from the last few albums.
This was my second time seeing the Mountain Goats and I think I enjoyed this time better. John had lived in Iowa for several years so it was in a sense sort of a hometown show. The venue’s stage was only around a foot high compared to the three or four foot stage at Lee’s Palace, making it more of an intimate show, and the song list was better, even though, as always, you’ll never hear all the songs you want to hear. Favourite song of the night was probably Color in Your Cheeks, which he sent out to Iowa for recently allowing the right for homosexuals to get married.
Once the show was finished, I grabbed my copy of Moon Colony Bloodbath from the merch table where John Vanderslice was helping out the merch guy. He was also signing everyone’s records, I would have felt awkward to have declined an autograph since he was giving them out to everyone but I felt awkward with him signing one to me. Afterwards I wished I had got him to make it out to Shakey’s Pizza, but my wit isn’t sharp enough to come up with something on the spot.
We got in the car and got everything ready for our next leg of the journey. We were going to drive for a couple hours, stay the night somewhere on the way and finish the trek in the morning. During the car ride shit started to get weird. First off, not really out of the ordinary, my iPod transmitter fucked up and we were forced to listen to the radio. That was fine, I enjoy singing along to shitty pop and classic rock jams. It came to a point where I felt it was time to call it a night, we both agreed that if we could find a hotel room for under $50 we’d stay there as opposed to sleeping in the car, comfort and a shower were more appealing. We pulled off at some exit that had several hotels in northeastern Iowa. We decided we’d shop around for prices, the first place we pulling into was a Motel 6, nearly every room looked like this:
We figured it would probably be cheap so we made our way to the main office. On the way there we saw a security guard and he asked us if we had a room reserved, to which we responded no, then he told us they were all booked for the night. I guess they neglected to turn on the NO vacancy sign. I don’t know how they managed to rent out all the rooms in that dump, but oh well.
We then headed to a Holiday Inn and it was basically like that one song, Holiday Inn by Chingy. Remember that song? No? Good, it sucked. We showed up and a ton of cars poured out of the parking lot, sketchy. Anyways, we went to the back door, made our way to the office and there was no one working. It was then I realized that there was rap music BLARING upstairs. We called for assistance at the main desk, letting the phone ring for about 2 minutes with no answer so we just bailed.
Last stop we made before giving up was another one of those chain hotels that was connected with a dance studio or something, it took us a while to find the entrance and when we finally did the woman at the front desk said it would be $100 for the night, fuck that.
So we continued on, decided to get out of that shitty strip of motels. My next thought was to just pull into a rest area. We came onto one, the Illinois Welcome Center several miles later. We followed a road that led us through one of those big electric gates down about half a mile until we finally saw this welcome center, which at night time wasn’t too welcoming. As we reached the end of the driveway we saw something that shocked us both. Some sort of canine like creature ran across the road, only it was bi-pedal. It looked like a fox or a coyote but it was running on two legs, terrifying. We brushed it off and pulled into a circle at the welcome center. We decided being this far away from the highway wasn’t a place we’d like to be so we continued on through the circle and back around. As we were leaving Andrew noticed that there were over half a dozen sheds on the side of the road, one of which had a man standing next to it. Keeping in mind this was around 1am so we got the hell out of there as fast as we could. As we came back towards the gate we were worried that for some reason it would be closed. Fortunately that wasn’t the case and we continued on our journey towards Chicago. 
Maybe an hour later we were driving and Nirvana’s Come As You Are came on the radio. Jokingly, I don’t even know why, I said “wouldn’t it be awesome if they played a four shot of Nirvana?” After that song finished, All Apologies came on, weird that they played a double shot, not out of the ordinary. Once that was over, Lithium came on. Holy shit, did I actually predict a 4 shot of Nirvana, no way, who the fuck plays 4 songs in a row other than stations that play full album sides? Apparently this one did because Smells Like Teen Spirit came on. Apparently I can predict stupid, irrelevant shit. With that I decided it was time to stop for the night. We found a town just off the highway and pulled in behind a Walgreen’s and called it a night. I had the bright idea of taking my shoes off and Andrew told me he didn’t need a blanket. Both of us woke up cold as fuck but for sleeping in a car I was pretty refreshed. We stopped in at Wal Mart so Andrew could buy some socks, at the gas station to fill up and continued towards Chicago.
We arrived in Chicago at around 9:15, headed to my uncle’s street to secure a parking spot and walked to the Chicago Diner, waiting for it to open at 10:00. This was my second time being at the Chicago Diner, for those who don’t know it’s a vegetarian diner, one of Chicago’s most well known veggie eateries. I got a Philly cheese steak that ruled and Andrew got a bacon cheeseburger. I’m pretty sure my homemade baconator would have been better. Anyways, after we ate we went to my uncle’s house, relaxed for a while and figured out what we were going to do for the day. My uncle and his girlfriend were kind enough to lend us their bus passes, making travel easier.
The first thing we did when we left was walked to Deluxe Tattoo because Andrew wanted to buy a print from Tim Biedron, one of the artists there. Unfortunately he was on vacation so Andrew was unable to get a print, but one of the girls there took down his contact info and said she would try and get ahold of Tim and if he responded giving the OK to sell the print, she’d email Andrew.
From there we headed to Millennium Park, followed by the Art Institute of Chicago because my uncle has a membership there and recommended it. A lot of amazing art there, which I won’t talk about because obviously I know nothing about art (hi Kyle). On the way there our bus got a flat tire so we ended up walking some of the way and catching a later bus. We got off the bus a block before Millennium and grabbed slurpees. Slurpees in America kind of suck compared to Canadian ones, they’re almost foamy and are similar to Icees. They’re still good I guess. We hung out at Millennium Park for a while, giving people who were taking pictures of/in front of the bean the finger, staggering levels of maturity. After the AIC we walked around trying to find the 151 bus back to my uncle’s but got really far away from it, which was cool because we stumbled upon a park that was surrounded by condos that had a bunch of dogs, dogs rule.
Eventually we caught the 151 and went back to my uncle’s. Not long after we headed over to Lou Malnati’s pizza joint for some deep dish. For some reason my uncle thought I wasn’t vegan anymore so he thought I could eat pizza but I explained to him I still don’t eat cheese and he felt embarrassed, either for himself or me, most likely me. Anyways I got a pretty decent salad and Andrew got to have deep dish so it was alright.
Once we were finished at Lou Malnati’s we took a brief guided tour of Chicago courtesy of my uncle and his girlfriend. This was just a few blocks while we made our way towards Lakeshore Dr. on the way to the Aragon.
We arrived at the Aragon to find a huge lineup, both of us had to crush a piss pretty hard so we went into the Starbucks across the street. It was probably in my top 5 pisses of my life, only one other one sticks out in my mind.
We headed into the Aragon, I was hoping to pick up the Years Of Refusal tour LP (apparently they were limited editions for each show) but seeing the price the 7″s were ($15 usd. - barf) I’m glad they weren’t available when I checked. My uncle’s girlfriend described the Aragon as a small place, I should have taken that with a grain of salt since her perception of small was my perception of huge, I guess I should have expected something of this size for Morrissey. We arrived just as the opening band was finishing. They weren’t anything special so it was no big deal. Bassist played a Jetglo Rick, good for him.
Morrissey played next and I thought it was a great performance. It was definitely quite a contrast from the show the night before, from the crowd size, to the type of people, to the performers themselves (Darnielle and Morrissey are obviously two very different people.) I’m still not sure which show I enjoyed more, both were really great and Morrissey played a good variety of songs, played for the right amount of time (for someone who’s not a HUGE Morrissey fan at least.) The setlist looked like this:
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This Charming Man
Something Is Squeezing My Skull
Billy Budd
Black Cloud
How Soon Is Now?
Irish Blood, English Heart
How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?
Ask
I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris
The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores
Death Of A Disco Dancer
The Loop
I Keep Mine Hidden
One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell
Seasick, Yet Still Docked
Best Friend on the Payroll
Let Me Kiss You
Sorry Doesn’t Help
When I Last Spoke to Carol
I’m OK By MyselfFirst Of The Gang To Die
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After the show I met up with Andrew and we headed back to my uncle’s place. His girlfriend had told us the area of town we’d be walking through wasn’t one we’d want to walk through at night but we decided it would be better than trying to take a rammed bus so we made the 2 mile trek back to their place with a stop for slurpees on the way (duh.) The show was over relatively early so we were able to make it back to his place and caught an episode of South Park (one of the things I’d hoped would be on) and then called it a night.
In the morning we had some fruit for breakfast and then headed out down Broadway to do some quick record shopping. Before we left I got Andrew to check his email and he had received a response from the girl at Deluxe Tattoo saying that Tim Biedron had given the OK to sell one of his prints. That got Andrew stoked so he was cool with coming along to the record store with me. I picked up the new Hatred Surge 7” on Painkiller, the New Lows 7”, Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s Young Friction, The Ergs!’ last record, Breathing Fire – Years of Lead and Ben Weasel’s first solo record. After we finished at the record store we headed back to my uncle’s house to say goodbye. We packed all of our stuff and headed to Deluxe to pick up his print. Followed that with a quick stop at Whole Foods and we were back on our way to Canada.
Nothing really eventful happened on the ride home so I’ll sum it up quickly, if you’ve made it this far I’m surprised. We saw a school bus with it’s muffler dragging along the highway behind it, pictured below. 
It rained even more than on the way down, it probably wasn’t raining for about an hour of the 9 hour car ride. We stopped in at the Lion’s Den, they had a $5 butt plug, should have bought it. No fleshlights, bummer. (Is he serious?) These shops are always retarded, people willing to spend money on porno should learn about this thing called the Internet. Hopefully in reading this my mother won’t be so proud of my blog.
Soon afterwards we witnessed a weird chase between a truck from Quebec and a BMW from Illinois. Not sure what was up but the BMW was riding the truck hard and swerving behind it, eventually we had some fun, cutting between the two, slowing down in front of them and other things. We never figured out what happened to cause this because they turned off on a different highway about 20 miles after we noticed them.
We stopped at Taco Bell and I contempated bombing some hick dudes and their slampigs with Wild Cherry Pepsi for no reason other than me being an asshole. Andrew and I had some deep conversations that made the time fly by and pretty soon we were in Detroit. Even though we weren’t able to make it to Des Moines we were able to get a healthy dose of Slipknot in the form of a giant decal on the back of a car. 
Border crossing back in was smooth and we were home in no time. The end, back to real life. Sorry for the lack of pictures from Chicago, my camera is too bulky to carry around in my back pocket and I forgot my fannypack at home.
Derrick, Payson said he will sell me his Burning Fight tickets, let’s go.
