Man it's been a long time since I've been awake for a drive down the 5.
Quickie recap:
Seattle was good but kinda tough. Showbox is nice to play but this was the third time in three shows that the sound onstage has been, erm, challenging. Just a weird room. Makes it hard to get fully into your work. We managed.
Vancouver: Mellow border crossing into Canada, small-ish but not unpleasant venue, bad sushi, great show. Day or two after the hockey riot, much handwringing in the papers but we didn't see much in the way of actual aftereffects. Bouncer at the club even had a Bruins flag hanging off the back of his Harley. "I'm ten feet from my bike all night," he said by way of explanation. "Hey, it's my team, I can't take it off now." Border guards crossing back into U.S.: the worst kind of state-sanctioned power-trip dicks.
I hate the government.
Portland: Dinner at bar next door to venue, giant HD flatscreen five feet from my head tuned to Palladia with the sound down. LCD Soundsystem performing in familiar festival setting. Yes, I know that stage: we played on it last fall at ACL, an event that I negligently failed to chronicle in these pages. (It happens.) No matter. Next up: the Flaming Lips, who Patricia and I
watched from stageside for a while before heading out into the crowd; then Spoon who we saw a bit of too, then some other stuff, and then ... Sonic Youth! The song is "Mote"-I can tell from the first chords even without hearing it-and the camera angle at first is from exactly where we stood for the entire set, just off stage right, closest to Lee. Song goes on for a bit, cutting between shots, and then, about halfway through, sure enough, there we are in the darkened wings, Patricia with arms folded in front of her and me rockin' out like a total dork. Whooooo!
So yeah, I don't know if there's actually any footage of the Mountain Goats playing at that thing, but you can see me anyway. Too funny.
Portland show was freaking great. Fun night. Next morning wandered towards Powell's after breakfast and stumbled into the Portland Pride Parade instead. Spent an hour and a half laughing, cheering, and getting beads and candy thrown at me. Good times. Then sat in the Sprinter for eight hours to dry, hot Redding. Dreamt that Jerry Brown was governor again, like we were still kids. Weird.
Not much to be said about San Francisco last night other than maybe the best full-band Mountain Goats show ever. If it seemed like we didn't want to stop playing it's because we didn't. The stage at the Fillmore might be the best-sounding I've ever set foot on. It makes it so easy to be good. You hear everything, everything sounds great, every song is getting the best performance it's ever gotten, and it's just impossible not to get swept up in the joy of playing. Add a typically awesome SF audience and the result is a night we'll remember for a long time. So great.
En route at the moment, hilariously, to Costa Mesa. Costa Mesa where my old band DiskothiQ used to play shows for like three of our friends. This was before John and I even knew each other, which means I'm talking, yes, twenty-plus years ago. I know that I've either played or gone to see shows at a former incarnation of the venue we're playing tonight, but I can't for the life of me remember which of the innumerable weird random Orange County venues I frequented in my misspent college days it could be. Going to be a very weird night. Kinda stoked for it.