Jason in the vast spoils of America

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:

• • • 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 Myself

      First Of The Gang To Die

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.