NC Nanotour Rundown
New work is going well, I think. It's like that new show where they downloaded a whole mess o' information into that kid's brain, only I'm not the target of assasination attempts. I am getting more paranoid about credit cards by the day though! Yesterday my trainer/peer was squeeing with delight because I understood a bit map quickly. This is a double-edged sword, I suspect. I have already dreamed about payment processing. At the moment I feel free to compose a post only because I am busily printing things out and my eyes are crossing a little bit from reading specs.
Right now I am, if not flooded, then trickling with relief. The NC nanotour is done!! Lord knows I get nervous enough about shows when I feel like I a) don't have great material (not the songs, but the drum parts to the songs very specifically, which are really my responsibility) and b) don't even do that material artistic justice. But add to that c) playing someplace I don't know about and d) to a bunch of people who are barely legal to drink if they even are and e) hoping to hell I can use someone else's drums and it all just gets me uptight.
That said, there were plenty of ups as well as downs to this rock and roll weekend. Traveling was entirely pleasant, and as I have noted many times, I love the scenery of the rural eastern seaboard area. I love the farm houses, I love the communities, I love the fields, the whole thing. I have vivid fantasies about what it's like to live out there, totally based on a suburbanite's naive knowledge of course. It doesn't help that lately I've been reading Crowley's Aegypt which involves a writer moving out of the city. But anyways, we got there in plenty of time.
Way plenty, because as it turns out, never believe what anyone tells you about when to be somewhere for a show. Jeez. There was alot of sitting around. We went with Chach's friend Andy to have dinner at Beef Burger. Andy was a nice kid. he reminded me of several thousand dudes I knew in high school and college and at the time probably would have been trying to con into dating me despite my obvious imbalances. (Bonus points: His "another man against violence against women" bumper sticker.) So, dinner safely digesting, we headed to the performance space. You can't call these things clubs, because they aren't really, they are just empty storefronts where kids can bring their cheap beer. We went on third, so I could share drums with the last band. The last band who sang a song about stupid sluts! But I digress, and weirdly those guys were really nice. First I should say: our set was mediocre and my grip kept slipping and people kept walking out. I believe this was justified and I was immediately over it, but noteworthy lessons are: don't beer it up before a performance, it doesn't actually help; only use the dipped sticks (props to badapples for trying to teach me that in advance); you are safe to assume that guys in pipecleaner skinny jeans are douchebags. Some nice people danced and none of our stuff got stolen and no one got shot in the face (not the best part of Greensboro) so yay.
Chach went out to party, but the Old People Bus went back to the hotel (Side note: people kept saying "oh you didn't have to get a hotel! I have a spare [couch/mattress/hammock/floor]!". Someday, they too will have disposable income and back problems and healthy fear of other people's housekeeping.) We all checked our internets and read books. Rock and Roll lifestyle, indeed. Then precious sleep. In the morning: Biscuitville! I guess it's a fast food chain that hasn't made inroads this far north, but damn, is it good. Even the Church's Chicken mascot thinks so. We hit the local guitar center for more sticks and headed to Greenville.
Greenville on the whole was even more of a rollercoaster. My confidence was slack since the previous night's show (why do I care? It's freaking garage-pop-punk-whatever.) so I was kind of dreading the potential second failure. As the night wore on, more and more reports of some sort of onslaught of drunk kids were rolling in from the co-manager of this night's "space". "Wow, you guys are already wasted!" she would drawl into her cell phone, each time, filling me with more trepidation. (I should note: she was really nice and I don't say drawl to be a hater, I love a fine southern accent and hope I have removed from myself any prejudice I might have learned - I say it only for local color.) We waited for almost 3 hours for these kids to roll in. The other bands were very nice; there was a local group, a band from Athens called the Vinyl Strangers who were exceedingly kind, a soul-metal (!) trio from south carolina, and a california (!!) band who was doing their best impression of whatever-it-is-kids-like-today-new-wave-80s-rehashing. (They had brought along a cheerleader/merch girl who won points with me by her self-mockery of the fact that they had printed thongs on cafepress to sell for merch. "You play an all-ages show and you know someone is going to buy these...")
At any rate, it took about a million years before we went on, but man!! I was wrong about every single thing. The drunk kids were fun, we played a terrific and loose and energetic set, no one was a jerk. We tried, very hard, to stay awake through the rest of the sets but left somewhere around the second faux-killers song. By this point I'd smoked the whole pack of cigarettes I'd bought to get me through this ordeal and was ready to kill everyone, but still dancing. You know, to support the other bands. The last straw was 3 military/frat looking guys who came in with a GIANT bottle of whiskey: to me, their look said "maybe we can beat up emo kids" all over it. We said our goodbyes (Mason, the door guy: you are so nice!) and that was that.
Then it was time for the long, long, seemingly neverending drive home. By the time we got to Franklin's to see Tom & Carla off to their new life in Cali, I was almost in tears. Those of you who know me probably think of me as a social butterfly, someone who performs well in social situations, or maybe even overperforms. Well, if you give me three straight days of new people intensity without interruption on top of new people at a new job, and things begin to break down. Just trying to shake hands and say "nice to meet you" was sort of intense. So I tried to get it all out when I got home, around 11. I turned off my phone so I wouldn't have to answer it if the tutoree called. I was just done. I'll have to face that tonight.
When I got home there was a rock camp DVD waiting for me! So those of you who wanted to see about that, it's finally here! I'll have to dredge up last year's as well.
Last night we had our peril_book_club meeting; sadly everyone was so busy that only one person finished the book. I'll have to post about the next book when I get a chance. Something about the Hellboy guy Mignola and demon bats and world war I. Needless to say, my suggestion of Italo Calvino lost. :) After the meeting we watched Heroes which was Parkmantastic.
Which brings me to: I HAVE FREE TIME!! Dear god. I have free time. What is that! I can do whatever I want with my weekend. I want to visit the Solar Decathalon houses on the mall. Saturday. Who's with me??? Tiny green houses on the mall!! Come on!!
Right now I am, if not flooded, then trickling with relief. The NC nanotour is done!! Lord knows I get nervous enough about shows when I feel like I a) don't have great material (not the songs, but the drum parts to the songs very specifically, which are really my responsibility) and b) don't even do that material artistic justice. But add to that c) playing someplace I don't know about and d) to a bunch of people who are barely legal to drink if they even are and e) hoping to hell I can use someone else's drums and it all just gets me uptight.
That said, there were plenty of ups as well as downs to this rock and roll weekend. Traveling was entirely pleasant, and as I have noted many times, I love the scenery of the rural eastern seaboard area. I love the farm houses, I love the communities, I love the fields, the whole thing. I have vivid fantasies about what it's like to live out there, totally based on a suburbanite's naive knowledge of course. It doesn't help that lately I've been reading Crowley's Aegypt which involves a writer moving out of the city. But anyways, we got there in plenty of time.
Way plenty, because as it turns out, never believe what anyone tells you about when to be somewhere for a show. Jeez. There was alot of sitting around. We went with Chach's friend Andy to have dinner at Beef Burger. Andy was a nice kid. he reminded me of several thousand dudes I knew in high school and college and at the time probably would have been trying to con into dating me despite my obvious imbalances. (Bonus points: His "another man against violence against women" bumper sticker.) So, dinner safely digesting, we headed to the performance space. You can't call these things clubs, because they aren't really, they are just empty storefronts where kids can bring their cheap beer. We went on third, so I could share drums with the last band. The last band who sang a song about stupid sluts! But I digress, and weirdly those guys were really nice. First I should say: our set was mediocre and my grip kept slipping and people kept walking out. I believe this was justified and I was immediately over it, but noteworthy lessons are: don't beer it up before a performance, it doesn't actually help; only use the dipped sticks (props to badapples for trying to teach me that in advance); you are safe to assume that guys in pipecleaner skinny jeans are douchebags. Some nice people danced and none of our stuff got stolen and no one got shot in the face (not the best part of Greensboro) so yay.
Chach went out to party, but the Old People Bus went back to the hotel (Side note: people kept saying "oh you didn't have to get a hotel! I have a spare [couch/mattress/hammock/floor]!". Someday, they too will have disposable income and back problems and healthy fear of other people's housekeeping.) We all checked our internets and read books. Rock and Roll lifestyle, indeed. Then precious sleep. In the morning: Biscuitville! I guess it's a fast food chain that hasn't made inroads this far north, but damn, is it good. Even the Church's Chicken mascot thinks so. We hit the local guitar center for more sticks and headed to Greenville.
Greenville on the whole was even more of a rollercoaster. My confidence was slack since the previous night's show (why do I care? It's freaking garage-pop-punk-whatever.) so I was kind of dreading the potential second failure. As the night wore on, more and more reports of some sort of onslaught of drunk kids were rolling in from the co-manager of this night's "space". "Wow, you guys are already wasted!" she would drawl into her cell phone, each time, filling me with more trepidation. (I should note: she was really nice and I don't say drawl to be a hater, I love a fine southern accent and hope I have removed from myself any prejudice I might have learned - I say it only for local color.) We waited for almost 3 hours for these kids to roll in. The other bands were very nice; there was a local group, a band from Athens called the Vinyl Strangers who were exceedingly kind, a soul-metal (!) trio from south carolina, and a california (!!) band who was doing their best impression of whatever-it-is-kids-like-today-new-wave-80s-rehashing. (They had brought along a cheerleader/merch girl who won points with me by her self-mockery of the fact that they had printed thongs on cafepress to sell for merch. "You play an all-ages show and you know someone is going to buy these...")
At any rate, it took about a million years before we went on, but man!! I was wrong about every single thing. The drunk kids were fun, we played a terrific and loose and energetic set, no one was a jerk. We tried, very hard, to stay awake through the rest of the sets but left somewhere around the second faux-killers song. By this point I'd smoked the whole pack of cigarettes I'd bought to get me through this ordeal and was ready to kill everyone, but still dancing. You know, to support the other bands. The last straw was 3 military/frat looking guys who came in with a GIANT bottle of whiskey: to me, their look said "maybe we can beat up emo kids" all over it. We said our goodbyes (Mason, the door guy: you are so nice!) and that was that.
Then it was time for the long, long, seemingly neverending drive home. By the time we got to Franklin's to see Tom & Carla off to their new life in Cali, I was almost in tears. Those of you who know me probably think of me as a social butterfly, someone who performs well in social situations, or maybe even overperforms. Well, if you give me three straight days of new people intensity without interruption on top of new people at a new job, and things begin to break down. Just trying to shake hands and say "nice to meet you" was sort of intense. So I tried to get it all out when I got home, around 11. I turned off my phone so I wouldn't have to answer it if the tutoree called. I was just done. I'll have to face that tonight.
When I got home there was a rock camp DVD waiting for me! So those of you who wanted to see about that, it's finally here! I'll have to dredge up last year's as well.
Last night we had our peril_book_club meeting; sadly everyone was so busy that only one person finished the book. I'll have to post about the next book when I get a chance. Something about the Hellboy guy Mignola and demon bats and world war I. Needless to say, my suggestion of Italo Calvino lost. :) After the meeting we watched Heroes which was Parkmantastic.
Which brings me to: I HAVE FREE TIME!! Dear god. I have free time. What is that! I can do whatever I want with my weekend. I want to visit the Solar Decathalon houses on the mall. Saturday. Who's with me??? Tiny green houses on the mall!! Come on!!