West Coast Tour Motherfuckers!
Ok, after 16 days and something like 21 shows, I'm back, and badder than ever. The tour was fantastic! It was nothing but a blast from beginning to end, maybe with a bit of a downer in Eugene and Spokane, but 98% was awesome and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm expecting this'll be kinda long, but well worth reading, so I'll LJ cut it. There was some funny stuff, some freaky stuff, some hairy stuff (literally), and some sad stuff. But mostly funny, freaky, and hairy. Enjoy.
Day 1: Los Angeles: We left Philly I think around 11. The flight wasn't bad, considering it was Southwest. There was this guy in the airport who was jacking off in the terminal, and then on the plane he kept insisting we were going to band camp (!?). Then he threw his shirt over his head and went to sleep. LAX was turmoil, our luggage situation was crazy. We all had messed up luggage tags, so it took a while to sort through them, but we did it, and all our stuff was there. The marimba got packed up in 2 things: 1. A Big cardboard thing held together with duct tape and 2. A blanket held together with duct tape. Thank god for duct tape. We weren't going to have the bus for a few days, so Paul rented a van to put all the guitars and shit it. It took a few trips to get everything and everyone to the Hostel where we were gonna stay. We got to drive through LA for a while though, and lemme tell you: If you think Philly is dirty, you ain't seen nothing. You can barely see a few blocks in front of you there's so much smog. We never got to see the Hollywood sign clearly our whole time in LA. Anyway, we got to the Gershwin Hostel, which wasn't as nice the pictures made it out to be. Our room assignments were messed up so I roomed with Paul, Dylan, CJ, and Mike Connor. We just hung out there for a few hours until we went to Kelly Crimmin's (girl who went to Rock School) house for a pool party. All the guys went in. We had chicken fights and dodgeball and stuff, and it was fun. The hot tub was in a perfect position to be used as a diving board, so it was. Me and Lou did a double cannonball off of it, and practically emptied the pool. Nobody really got in the hot tub, since when you turned it on, all these crazy fumes came out and choked you. Oh yeah, and before Kelly's party, we walked out of the Hostel and there was this crazy guy in the street screaming "BAH! NO! STOP!" and hitting coconuts on a string. Then we heard a whistle, and thought it was a cop coming to get the crazy guy out of the street....but it wasn't! It was another crazy guy with a shopping cart and a whistle barking orders at the first crazy guy in crazy speak. So naturally we gave them a round of applause. If psychos in Philly interacted with each other, how cool would that be? So that was the first day.
Day 2: LA Still: The second day was when we got all the equipment we'd be using from Guitar Center. The tradeoff was that we had to do a show there. The show was a total mess, to us, but to everyone else it was awesome. The 2nd keyboard we picked up was awesome, but it was monstrously heavy (it was a full range Motif 8 for anyone interested). Then we headed right over to the LA Knitting Factory, which is much nicer and more commercial than the New York one. We played the bar area, which was pretty cool, except that almost no one came. But the people who did come were really into it, and we put on an awesome show. The sound system there was among the best we had on the tour. After the show ended around 10:30, we still had the problem of getting everything back to the Hostel. So we took a few seats out of the van, and loaded it up as much as we could, and it still took 5 trips to get everything back. It also took forever, because for some reason, LA has a lot of traffic in the middle of the night, on the same streets that are desolate during the day. Anyway, when we got back, we just hung out on the ground floor of the hostel, watching TV, talking, and playing pool, which ended up being a bad idea. The hostel was in a really artsy district of LA, and around 12:30 the transvestites began to show up. Some were funny, some were foxy, some were, well, guys in dresses with their balls hanging out. CJ got physically ill and one of the parents got molested by some weirdo with a skull. All in all, an interesting night.
Day 3: San Juan Capistrano/LA: My mom's cell phone was stolen out of her room in the morning, but we got it back later. But this day we actually got the bus, so we loaded everything up into it and drove off to San Juan Capistrano with our bus driver, Abel, who over the course of the tour, was the man. He drove us around the sights of LA first, and then took us to The Coach House, which is where we'd be playing. We got there really early, soundchecked, and left to get some lunch. I discovered Carl's Jr (yes, thats right CARL'S Jr., not Carl Jr.'s) which is a lot better than McDonalds to say the least. We went back and found out that we were 2nd out of 4 groups playing. The first group, a band named Prizm, sucked so much ass that I'm surprised they got any reaction. They were pretty energetic, but clearly sucked. The sound guy didn't help either, the only thing you could hear was the vocals and the drums. The same crap sound carried on through our show, except you could additionally hear the bass, keys, and one guitar, but the other 2 guitars were hopeless. The crowd also talked through our whole show. Too bad we were actualy good. That pretty much wrapped up that day.
Day 4: Monday off: On our solitary day off of the tour we visited Intercontinental Absurtities (ICA) otherwise known as the offices of Gail Zappa. She was actually a lot nicer than I expected, but she was still a bit of a bitch about copyrights and such. We also met the so called Vaultmeister, who's job is to run the Zappa vault, which contains thousands upon thousands of hours of recordings. He was a pretty cool guy. We watched a documentary by a dutch filmmaker on Zappa as a composer. It was unfinished, but pretty good. Insanely awesome bus driver Abel then took us to Venice Beach where we had a few hours to roam around. I'm telling you guys, fuck Jersey. That beach was the shit. It was clean, and the water was actually blue. Then we continued on to Phoenix. Around 7:00 we took a rest stop in the desert, and the heat hit us like a truck. The bus was cold, so a lot of us had our sweats on, and lemme tell you 120° and sweats don't mix. So we ran to Del Taco and In-N-Out Burger, otherwise known as the best food chains on the planet, because they're really good, and REALLY cheap. Then we got back on the bus and got to Phoenix around 1:30 AM.
Day 5: Phoenix: I woke up early since a couple kids were on Good Morning Arizona playing The Rain Song. They did pretty good. I got to walk around Phoenix for a while, it was a total ghost town, and the breeze made you even hotter. Our show was at this place called the Paper Heart, which was a nice little club. We did an extra long soundcheck, only to have about 10 people show up, but hey, it was cool. Matt Rothstein and Cameron Sima tried to bring a cactus with them, and they got stuck up pretty bad. A lot of the needles transferred to Stevie when she tried to get them out. But they laughed about it, so it was cool. The show was awesome. I got a big solo in I'm The Slime, since I only had 1 other song in the show. It was great at soundcheck, but only decent at the show. It was still cool though. As soon as the show was over, we boarded our bus for an overnight trip to San Fran.
Day 6: San Francisco: When I woke up at 6, we were in LA again (no!), and my mom bought everyone breakfast at IHOP, which was cool. Then we continued on to SF. The club, Cafe du Nord was in what Abel called "the rainbow district" of the city. We got a good 4 hours off to see the sights. I didn't get to Fisherman's Wharf or see to Golden Gate Bridge (the famous mist totally covered it), but we did walk around the downtown area. When we got back to the club, Ike Willis was there (he used to play with Frank Zappa, he's a bit of a drunken crackhead) and he was surprisingly lucid. Until he found out our show was at 10 PM, then he started pounding the brewskies double fisted. So he was good and drunk when we did our show, but he was still really good. There were a lot of people there, and we sold 1000 dollars worth of merchandise, plus we got a lot of ticket money, so we made up for the previous shows. The show was a bit sloppy though, and we lost our chance with this hot shot manager guy (then again, he manages Aerosmith, so how great can he really be?) and the people loved the show and we had a lot of fun. We had to load up the bus real quick again though, since we had another overnight drive to Seattle.
Day 7: Seattle: It took forever to get to Seattle, partly because we had to stop for 4 hours in Oregon to get some sort of liscence. It was almost show time when we got there, so we set up, met Napoleon Murphy Brock (another former Zappa member who'd be joining us for the rest of the tour), did a quick sound check, and played. It wasn't a bad show considering we didn't really get to rehearse with Napoleon, but it was the worst Zappa show of the tour. When we were loading up the bus after the show, this crazy guy came up to me and started singing Who songs, so I sang with him and he gave me a tin can. That guy was awesome. The hotel was sweet too. All the rooms had balconies that faced each other. So me and Branden King (BK) mooned each other and everyone else from across the buildings until Kenny Luu cornholed us both. That was nasty.
Day 8: Portland, Oregon: Another Zappa show with Napoleon at this place called Nocturnal, which was really, really nice. Another great sound system, and we were right across the street from this Greek deli which gave us some awesome food. Everybody was really at their best in Portland, and there's really not a whole lot more I can say about that place. It was really cool.
Day 9: Eugene, Oregon: We had double shows in Eugene, one classic rock in the afternoon and a Zappa at night. Our hotel was right across from the venue though. The place was called WOW Hall and it was really nice. I think the whole town came out to see the shows, both of which again, were awesome. I got to walk around the town a bit and it was a really nice small town. Everybody was real friendly and they all wanted to hear about the tour and stuff, and a bunch of people got conviced to come out. After the shows some shit went down though, I'm not going to go into it here, but it was some pretty fucked up shit. I'll just say it ended up with an almost total mutiny against Paul that lasted a few days. I didn't know everything that happened, since I wasn't there, but it was still kinda fucked up. I didn't care as much as mostly everyone else did though. One funny thing happened though. BK and I think Matt Manser found a way onto the roof of the hotel and were skipping around the perimeter.
Day 10: Spokane, Washington: We played a huge club called the Big Easy, which easily had the best sound system of the whole tour. It was also the most crowd pleasing of all the Classic Rock shows. We decided to go totally over the top with everything, so there was lots of jumping, dancing, pelvic thrusting, etc. Tons of great pictures from that show, and the lights there were amazing. This local kid who played harmonica joined us for Ramble On, and he was really, really good. Later on, Paul reignited the mutiny by asking us if we thought the kid should join the tour. Naturally, Joey said yes, because he's a good guy, and the rest of us didn't have the heart to say no, because we thought the kid was right there. It'd be way too weird to have a 10 year old around who we didn't know, who didn't know us, and who didn't know our songs. Plus it ended up that he had Tourettes, which made him say "Yeehaw!" a whoooole lot (no joking, I'm dead serious). So, since no one objected Paul said the kid could join. Thats when the shit hit the fan. When the kid left, we all objected and Paul took it back. He didn't care either way, he just thought we wouldnt mind since no one said anything against it. The kid understood. And we didn't have to hear "Yeehaw!" on the bus at random intervals.
Day 11: Boise, Idaho: We played another Big Easy in Boise, which was the deadest town yet. The show wasn't as good as the night before, but it will forever be remembered as the show where BK finally got some play. And by play, I mean 3 fine Boise young women. We gave him 45 minutes to do his thing after the show, which unfortunately wasn't enough time. But we all learned our lesson: Boise girls are hot and willing. And by we, I mean Branden, because that was the only play anyone got on the whole tour. Then we had an overnight drive to Ft. Collins
Day 12: Ft. Collins, Colorado: We played a Zappa show in this club called the Starlight. It was a nice little place. We had plenty of time to kill so everyone went out to dinner and came back and had an air hockey tournament. Joey was the champ, naturally. This show was significant because we added the third vocal harmony of Carolina Hardcore Ecstacy (really nice song with 3 parts). The more interesting part was that the third harmony was me. Napoleon and Fil Smith, who were the 2 who were already singing it, overheard me and taught me the third part. I sorta fucked it up in the show, but it was still good. We ended the show early with I'm The Slime since it was running really late. The hotel in Ft. Collins was the best on the whole tour, with an indoor pool, hot tub, excercise room. Its too bad we were there for like 8 hours. But nobody slept. By this point I hadnt shaved in 2 weeks so I thought it'd be funny to carve some mutton chops into my face. So I did, and walked around like that for about an hour. I was walking by the girls' room when they saw me and broke out laughing. Then Eric walked up and laughed too. Then I gave him my razor and he shaved my mutton chops partially off, then he shaved my back. Thank you Eric for carving a decent sized square out of my back! It was really funny though. Then I went and totally shaved my face.
Day 13: We left the hotel around 12 and went to Dever, which was about an hour drive. We got there super early, and the club said there were plenty of presold tickets (which mean guaranteed people). So we took off for a while and went to the 16th Street Mall. I finally bought Live After Death (live Iron Maiden CD) and then went back to the venue. By this point it had begun to pour. A bunch of kids missed out bus and had to run back to the venue, which was a mile away from the mall. They were totally soaked. But we amused ourselves by giving Joey 10 dollars to drink their sock juice. It was totalyl disgusting and green and shit, so naturally I videotaped it. The show was awesome. We nailed the harmonies on Carolina. Napoleon started being a dick at this show though. He took Dave Hardison off of one of his songs for no reason at all, and started correcting people on things that they were doing correctly. We all decided that he could be a cool guy, but he has to remember that he isn't really as famous as he thinks he is. Oh yeah, the show. Well, remember how I said we had a bunch of presells? Nobody showed up. It was all parents and us. In the torrential downpour, the street the venue was on broke a sewage main, and a fountain of shit sprang out of the street. Now, I wouldn't want to walk through six inches of god knows what, so I can't say I blame them. After the show we carefully boarded the bus and drove overnight to Salt Lake City.
Day 14: Mormonville, USA: We were supposed to do 3 shows in SLC, but as we woke up, the first show was in jeopardy. Our bus driver took a 2 hour stop in the night to rest, and it looked almost impossible to get to SLC by noon for our first show, an outdoor classic rock gig in a plaza. So we gunned down the highway at 80 mph, and pulled up just in time. 200 people were there, and we rocked them. Then we brought our stuff to this little coffeehouse for the evening gigs. We did 2 one hour shows there, just splitting the Zappa show in half. Napoleon wore a muffin costume for one song, and it was ridiculous. Speaking of Napoleon, there was some drama with him in SLC. Someone overheard him saying "After this, no more kids", and within 20 minutes, everyone knew, and it was mutiny against Napoleon. But it ends up it was a misunderstanding, and the kid apologized, and Napoleon really reamed him out and practically stripped him of all his Zappa songs. So we still mutinied against Napoleon. The shows were awesome though. Afterwards, some of us were really hungry, so me, Allie, Lauren, and Dave walked around trying to find an open food place at 12:30 at night. We gave up when we weren't allowed to walk through the drive in at Wendys. Open late my ass!
Day 15: Las Vegas Part 1: The final Zappa show of the tour was at the fabulous Wild Wild West Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. What a shithole. It wasnt just a shitty hotel for Vegas, it was a shitty place in general. We set up, soundchecked, and played for a bunch of hippies. Which made everything awesome. It was easily the best Zappa show of the tour, and a great way to end Zappa in general, since it now looks like we're putting it away. Afterwards was kinda sad, since it was the last Zappa show with Branden, Louie, Julie, Teddi, and Gina. A lot of people got upset and I got really moody and flipped out at a bunch of other people. I cooled down in a bit, but no one else knew, so I scared a bunch of the guys by running down the halls screaming at them. It was great fun.
Day 16: The Final Show: Vegas: The last day of the tour we had some free time to see the strip, which lemme tell you, is nothing special if you can't gamble and don't have 1000 dollars to see all the shows. The outsides of the casinos are pretty nice sometimes, but the insides are like Disneyworld, only much much tackier. The show was something special. The energy was there, all the performances were great, every song was at its best. For Rock Lobster we dressed up full 80's style, except me, I donned a bathing suit and did suntan lotion warpaint all over my body, and jumped around and screamed like a monkey the whole song. Then everyone in the song stormed off the stage and jumped into the pool. When the whole show ended everybody got on stage and cheered, because we lived through a 20+ show 16 day tour. Almost 6500 miles of driving and hardly any sleep or decent food. Then of course we ran of the stage and jumped into the pool, with Paul in tow still wearing his three piece suit. Then we were joined by crowd members, hookers (its Vegas, what can I say), and even Abel our bus driver (still in his clothes). I can't think of a better way to end the tour. We didn't really party the night away, opting instead for a calm heart to heart talk in the hot tub, which was a really nice moment. A lot of people spoke their minds about how much the other people meant to them and how they'll never forget the tour. I didn't get a chance to speak my mind, but I'd do it again in an instant. I can't think of 25 better people to spend 2 weeks on the road with. I know they probably won't read this, but thank you Eric, Julie, Louie, Teddi, Amy, Madison, Grace, Gina, Joey, Mike, Matt M, Matt R, CJ, Stevie, Julia, Lauren, Allie, Dan, Kenny, Haffy, Fil, Max, Dom, Cameron, Jeremy, Dave, Paul, Aldo, and everybody else for 2 of the best weeks of my life. Lets do it again next summer!
And thats that. You motherfuckers better read it, because it took me the better part of 2 hours to write it all from memory! Its gonna feel weird to live a normal life now.
Day 1: Los Angeles: We left Philly I think around 11. The flight wasn't bad, considering it was Southwest. There was this guy in the airport who was jacking off in the terminal, and then on the plane he kept insisting we were going to band camp (!?). Then he threw his shirt over his head and went to sleep. LAX was turmoil, our luggage situation was crazy. We all had messed up luggage tags, so it took a while to sort through them, but we did it, and all our stuff was there. The marimba got packed up in 2 things: 1. A Big cardboard thing held together with duct tape and 2. A blanket held together with duct tape. Thank god for duct tape. We weren't going to have the bus for a few days, so Paul rented a van to put all the guitars and shit it. It took a few trips to get everything and everyone to the Hostel where we were gonna stay. We got to drive through LA for a while though, and lemme tell you: If you think Philly is dirty, you ain't seen nothing. You can barely see a few blocks in front of you there's so much smog. We never got to see the Hollywood sign clearly our whole time in LA. Anyway, we got to the Gershwin Hostel, which wasn't as nice the pictures made it out to be. Our room assignments were messed up so I roomed with Paul, Dylan, CJ, and Mike Connor. We just hung out there for a few hours until we went to Kelly Crimmin's (girl who went to Rock School) house for a pool party. All the guys went in. We had chicken fights and dodgeball and stuff, and it was fun. The hot tub was in a perfect position to be used as a diving board, so it was. Me and Lou did a double cannonball off of it, and practically emptied the pool. Nobody really got in the hot tub, since when you turned it on, all these crazy fumes came out and choked you. Oh yeah, and before Kelly's party, we walked out of the Hostel and there was this crazy guy in the street screaming "BAH! NO! STOP!" and hitting coconuts on a string. Then we heard a whistle, and thought it was a cop coming to get the crazy guy out of the street....but it wasn't! It was another crazy guy with a shopping cart and a whistle barking orders at the first crazy guy in crazy speak. So naturally we gave them a round of applause. If psychos in Philly interacted with each other, how cool would that be? So that was the first day.
Day 2: LA Still: The second day was when we got all the equipment we'd be using from Guitar Center. The tradeoff was that we had to do a show there. The show was a total mess, to us, but to everyone else it was awesome. The 2nd keyboard we picked up was awesome, but it was monstrously heavy (it was a full range Motif 8 for anyone interested). Then we headed right over to the LA Knitting Factory, which is much nicer and more commercial than the New York one. We played the bar area, which was pretty cool, except that almost no one came. But the people who did come were really into it, and we put on an awesome show. The sound system there was among the best we had on the tour. After the show ended around 10:30, we still had the problem of getting everything back to the Hostel. So we took a few seats out of the van, and loaded it up as much as we could, and it still took 5 trips to get everything back. It also took forever, because for some reason, LA has a lot of traffic in the middle of the night, on the same streets that are desolate during the day. Anyway, when we got back, we just hung out on the ground floor of the hostel, watching TV, talking, and playing pool, which ended up being a bad idea. The hostel was in a really artsy district of LA, and around 12:30 the transvestites began to show up. Some were funny, some were foxy, some were, well, guys in dresses with their balls hanging out. CJ got physically ill and one of the parents got molested by some weirdo with a skull. All in all, an interesting night.
Day 3: San Juan Capistrano/LA: My mom's cell phone was stolen out of her room in the morning, but we got it back later. But this day we actually got the bus, so we loaded everything up into it and drove off to San Juan Capistrano with our bus driver, Abel, who over the course of the tour, was the man. He drove us around the sights of LA first, and then took us to The Coach House, which is where we'd be playing. We got there really early, soundchecked, and left to get some lunch. I discovered Carl's Jr (yes, thats right CARL'S Jr., not Carl Jr.'s) which is a lot better than McDonalds to say the least. We went back and found out that we were 2nd out of 4 groups playing. The first group, a band named Prizm, sucked so much ass that I'm surprised they got any reaction. They were pretty energetic, but clearly sucked. The sound guy didn't help either, the only thing you could hear was the vocals and the drums. The same crap sound carried on through our show, except you could additionally hear the bass, keys, and one guitar, but the other 2 guitars were hopeless. The crowd also talked through our whole show. Too bad we were actualy good. That pretty much wrapped up that day.
Day 4: Monday off: On our solitary day off of the tour we visited Intercontinental Absurtities (ICA) otherwise known as the offices of Gail Zappa. She was actually a lot nicer than I expected, but she was still a bit of a bitch about copyrights and such. We also met the so called Vaultmeister, who's job is to run the Zappa vault, which contains thousands upon thousands of hours of recordings. He was a pretty cool guy. We watched a documentary by a dutch filmmaker on Zappa as a composer. It was unfinished, but pretty good. Insanely awesome bus driver Abel then took us to Venice Beach where we had a few hours to roam around. I'm telling you guys, fuck Jersey. That beach was the shit. It was clean, and the water was actually blue. Then we continued on to Phoenix. Around 7:00 we took a rest stop in the desert, and the heat hit us like a truck. The bus was cold, so a lot of us had our sweats on, and lemme tell you 120° and sweats don't mix. So we ran to Del Taco and In-N-Out Burger, otherwise known as the best food chains on the planet, because they're really good, and REALLY cheap. Then we got back on the bus and got to Phoenix around 1:30 AM.
Day 5: Phoenix: I woke up early since a couple kids were on Good Morning Arizona playing The Rain Song. They did pretty good. I got to walk around Phoenix for a while, it was a total ghost town, and the breeze made you even hotter. Our show was at this place called the Paper Heart, which was a nice little club. We did an extra long soundcheck, only to have about 10 people show up, but hey, it was cool. Matt Rothstein and Cameron Sima tried to bring a cactus with them, and they got stuck up pretty bad. A lot of the needles transferred to Stevie when she tried to get them out. But they laughed about it, so it was cool. The show was awesome. I got a big solo in I'm The Slime, since I only had 1 other song in the show. It was great at soundcheck, but only decent at the show. It was still cool though. As soon as the show was over, we boarded our bus for an overnight trip to San Fran.
Day 6: San Francisco: When I woke up at 6, we were in LA again (no!), and my mom bought everyone breakfast at IHOP, which was cool. Then we continued on to SF. The club, Cafe du Nord was in what Abel called "the rainbow district" of the city. We got a good 4 hours off to see the sights. I didn't get to Fisherman's Wharf or see to Golden Gate Bridge (the famous mist totally covered it), but we did walk around the downtown area. When we got back to the club, Ike Willis was there (he used to play with Frank Zappa, he's a bit of a drunken crackhead) and he was surprisingly lucid. Until he found out our show was at 10 PM, then he started pounding the brewskies double fisted. So he was good and drunk when we did our show, but he was still really good. There were a lot of people there, and we sold 1000 dollars worth of merchandise, plus we got a lot of ticket money, so we made up for the previous shows. The show was a bit sloppy though, and we lost our chance with this hot shot manager guy (then again, he manages Aerosmith, so how great can he really be?) and the people loved the show and we had a lot of fun. We had to load up the bus real quick again though, since we had another overnight drive to Seattle.
Day 7: Seattle: It took forever to get to Seattle, partly because we had to stop for 4 hours in Oregon to get some sort of liscence. It was almost show time when we got there, so we set up, met Napoleon Murphy Brock (another former Zappa member who'd be joining us for the rest of the tour), did a quick sound check, and played. It wasn't a bad show considering we didn't really get to rehearse with Napoleon, but it was the worst Zappa show of the tour. When we were loading up the bus after the show, this crazy guy came up to me and started singing Who songs, so I sang with him and he gave me a tin can. That guy was awesome. The hotel was sweet too. All the rooms had balconies that faced each other. So me and Branden King (BK) mooned each other and everyone else from across the buildings until Kenny Luu cornholed us both. That was nasty.
Day 8: Portland, Oregon: Another Zappa show with Napoleon at this place called Nocturnal, which was really, really nice. Another great sound system, and we were right across the street from this Greek deli which gave us some awesome food. Everybody was really at their best in Portland, and there's really not a whole lot more I can say about that place. It was really cool.
Day 9: Eugene, Oregon: We had double shows in Eugene, one classic rock in the afternoon and a Zappa at night. Our hotel was right across from the venue though. The place was called WOW Hall and it was really nice. I think the whole town came out to see the shows, both of which again, were awesome. I got to walk around the town a bit and it was a really nice small town. Everybody was real friendly and they all wanted to hear about the tour and stuff, and a bunch of people got conviced to come out. After the shows some shit went down though, I'm not going to go into it here, but it was some pretty fucked up shit. I'll just say it ended up with an almost total mutiny against Paul that lasted a few days. I didn't know everything that happened, since I wasn't there, but it was still kinda fucked up. I didn't care as much as mostly everyone else did though. One funny thing happened though. BK and I think Matt Manser found a way onto the roof of the hotel and were skipping around the perimeter.
Day 10: Spokane, Washington: We played a huge club called the Big Easy, which easily had the best sound system of the whole tour. It was also the most crowd pleasing of all the Classic Rock shows. We decided to go totally over the top with everything, so there was lots of jumping, dancing, pelvic thrusting, etc. Tons of great pictures from that show, and the lights there were amazing. This local kid who played harmonica joined us for Ramble On, and he was really, really good. Later on, Paul reignited the mutiny by asking us if we thought the kid should join the tour. Naturally, Joey said yes, because he's a good guy, and the rest of us didn't have the heart to say no, because we thought the kid was right there. It'd be way too weird to have a 10 year old around who we didn't know, who didn't know us, and who didn't know our songs. Plus it ended up that he had Tourettes, which made him say "Yeehaw!" a whoooole lot (no joking, I'm dead serious). So, since no one objected Paul said the kid could join. Thats when the shit hit the fan. When the kid left, we all objected and Paul took it back. He didn't care either way, he just thought we wouldnt mind since no one said anything against it. The kid understood. And we didn't have to hear "Yeehaw!" on the bus at random intervals.
Day 11: Boise, Idaho: We played another Big Easy in Boise, which was the deadest town yet. The show wasn't as good as the night before, but it will forever be remembered as the show where BK finally got some play. And by play, I mean 3 fine Boise young women. We gave him 45 minutes to do his thing after the show, which unfortunately wasn't enough time. But we all learned our lesson: Boise girls are hot and willing. And by we, I mean Branden, because that was the only play anyone got on the whole tour. Then we had an overnight drive to Ft. Collins
Day 12: Ft. Collins, Colorado: We played a Zappa show in this club called the Starlight. It was a nice little place. We had plenty of time to kill so everyone went out to dinner and came back and had an air hockey tournament. Joey was the champ, naturally. This show was significant because we added the third vocal harmony of Carolina Hardcore Ecstacy (really nice song with 3 parts). The more interesting part was that the third harmony was me. Napoleon and Fil Smith, who were the 2 who were already singing it, overheard me and taught me the third part. I sorta fucked it up in the show, but it was still good. We ended the show early with I'm The Slime since it was running really late. The hotel in Ft. Collins was the best on the whole tour, with an indoor pool, hot tub, excercise room. Its too bad we were there for like 8 hours. But nobody slept. By this point I hadnt shaved in 2 weeks so I thought it'd be funny to carve some mutton chops into my face. So I did, and walked around like that for about an hour. I was walking by the girls' room when they saw me and broke out laughing. Then Eric walked up and laughed too. Then I gave him my razor and he shaved my mutton chops partially off, then he shaved my back. Thank you Eric for carving a decent sized square out of my back! It was really funny though. Then I went and totally shaved my face.
Day 13: We left the hotel around 12 and went to Dever, which was about an hour drive. We got there super early, and the club said there were plenty of presold tickets (which mean guaranteed people). So we took off for a while and went to the 16th Street Mall. I finally bought Live After Death (live Iron Maiden CD) and then went back to the venue. By this point it had begun to pour. A bunch of kids missed out bus and had to run back to the venue, which was a mile away from the mall. They were totally soaked. But we amused ourselves by giving Joey 10 dollars to drink their sock juice. It was totalyl disgusting and green and shit, so naturally I videotaped it. The show was awesome. We nailed the harmonies on Carolina. Napoleon started being a dick at this show though. He took Dave Hardison off of one of his songs for no reason at all, and started correcting people on things that they were doing correctly. We all decided that he could be a cool guy, but he has to remember that he isn't really as famous as he thinks he is. Oh yeah, the show. Well, remember how I said we had a bunch of presells? Nobody showed up. It was all parents and us. In the torrential downpour, the street the venue was on broke a sewage main, and a fountain of shit sprang out of the street. Now, I wouldn't want to walk through six inches of god knows what, so I can't say I blame them. After the show we carefully boarded the bus and drove overnight to Salt Lake City.
Day 14: Mormonville, USA: We were supposed to do 3 shows in SLC, but as we woke up, the first show was in jeopardy. Our bus driver took a 2 hour stop in the night to rest, and it looked almost impossible to get to SLC by noon for our first show, an outdoor classic rock gig in a plaza. So we gunned down the highway at 80 mph, and pulled up just in time. 200 people were there, and we rocked them. Then we brought our stuff to this little coffeehouse for the evening gigs. We did 2 one hour shows there, just splitting the Zappa show in half. Napoleon wore a muffin costume for one song, and it was ridiculous. Speaking of Napoleon, there was some drama with him in SLC. Someone overheard him saying "After this, no more kids", and within 20 minutes, everyone knew, and it was mutiny against Napoleon. But it ends up it was a misunderstanding, and the kid apologized, and Napoleon really reamed him out and practically stripped him of all his Zappa songs. So we still mutinied against Napoleon. The shows were awesome though. Afterwards, some of us were really hungry, so me, Allie, Lauren, and Dave walked around trying to find an open food place at 12:30 at night. We gave up when we weren't allowed to walk through the drive in at Wendys. Open late my ass!
Day 15: Las Vegas Part 1: The final Zappa show of the tour was at the fabulous Wild Wild West Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. What a shithole. It wasnt just a shitty hotel for Vegas, it was a shitty place in general. We set up, soundchecked, and played for a bunch of hippies. Which made everything awesome. It was easily the best Zappa show of the tour, and a great way to end Zappa in general, since it now looks like we're putting it away. Afterwards was kinda sad, since it was the last Zappa show with Branden, Louie, Julie, Teddi, and Gina. A lot of people got upset and I got really moody and flipped out at a bunch of other people. I cooled down in a bit, but no one else knew, so I scared a bunch of the guys by running down the halls screaming at them. It was great fun.
Day 16: The Final Show: Vegas: The last day of the tour we had some free time to see the strip, which lemme tell you, is nothing special if you can't gamble and don't have 1000 dollars to see all the shows. The outsides of the casinos are pretty nice sometimes, but the insides are like Disneyworld, only much much tackier. The show was something special. The energy was there, all the performances were great, every song was at its best. For Rock Lobster we dressed up full 80's style, except me, I donned a bathing suit and did suntan lotion warpaint all over my body, and jumped around and screamed like a monkey the whole song. Then everyone in the song stormed off the stage and jumped into the pool. When the whole show ended everybody got on stage and cheered, because we lived through a 20+ show 16 day tour. Almost 6500 miles of driving and hardly any sleep or decent food. Then of course we ran of the stage and jumped into the pool, with Paul in tow still wearing his three piece suit. Then we were joined by crowd members, hookers (its Vegas, what can I say), and even Abel our bus driver (still in his clothes). I can't think of a better way to end the tour. We didn't really party the night away, opting instead for a calm heart to heart talk in the hot tub, which was a really nice moment. A lot of people spoke their minds about how much the other people meant to them and how they'll never forget the tour. I didn't get a chance to speak my mind, but I'd do it again in an instant. I can't think of 25 better people to spend 2 weeks on the road with. I know they probably won't read this, but thank you Eric, Julie, Louie, Teddi, Amy, Madison, Grace, Gina, Joey, Mike, Matt M, Matt R, CJ, Stevie, Julia, Lauren, Allie, Dan, Kenny, Haffy, Fil, Max, Dom, Cameron, Jeremy, Dave, Paul, Aldo, and everybody else for 2 of the best weeks of my life. Lets do it again next summer!
And thats that. You motherfuckers better read it, because it took me the better part of 2 hours to write it all from memory! Its gonna feel weird to live a normal life now.