Posts Tagged ‘brain’

Slug in the Northwest 3

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

Here we are at the Seattle gig

I think this is the only coverage of the whole Seattle show I got honestly. I am bummed about that but I guess I wasn’t feeling too great when we first arrived. I remember we got into Seattle and drove around for about 30 minutes trying to find a spot close to that same Thai place we went to a couple years ago with DP. After a while Conor and I had to jump ship to pee. Their bathrooms are just as gross as ours, which made me feel right at home. We ate some food and exchanged some stories and made our way to the show. The space (shown in the video) was quite cool. Reminded me of the old Silent Barn in NY. The first band was pretty tight.


We either played second or third.. can’t remember, but I do remember it getting kinda packed in. Then there was that thing where people may have heard of you, so they want to watch you, but they haven’t heard you so they keep their distance. I was determinded to win those fuckers over and I think the combination of me building tension and Drew staring them down got the kids moving a bit, which is all I wanted. We sold some shit, hung with some rad folks, and had a decent time. Some of the other bands sucked real bad, some were pretty good. Usual show shit.


One of the plusses about playing in Seattle was that we weren’t far from a friend or two of Bo and Joe. Their friend Chelsey came out the the gig, hung out with us and offered us her apartment that was about 15 minutes away. She stayed elsewhere, probably with her boyfriend I guess, and just gave us the keys. Sweet deal. First issue was finding it. It was under a dentists office, but also located on one of those five road intersections. We circled around a while and eventually got their in the wee hours of night. It was a basement apartment so it was pretty pitch black in there during the night. I slept pretty well I guess?

The next morning we had a bunch of Seattle shit to do on the agenda, which was something we were looking forward to. The next show was in Olympia, but there isn’t much to do out there so we opted to hang in Seattle until later. The Olympia show was technically an after show to Rain Fest as well, even though it was in a different city. With a 10 or 11 start time we had a lot of hours to kill.

We were all waking up slowly, but the need for nourishment and coffee started to hit us

We left Chelsey a punk thank you note

Joe had some dinosaurs as per usual

I decided to take some serious portraits of everyone under the morning light

check out Bo’s vibrant new tattoo

Andre’s phone is burning a hole in his pocket

Drew got the bitch seat in Joe’s car, which we decided to take around Seattle for ease of parking

Joe – looking sad – even though we had a fun day ahead of us

We first headed out through the hills and down into a little farmers market to meet Cece. She brought the local farms stuff out for the day to sell to the Seattleons (is that a word?). Not quite as huge a spread as the time Pockets helped out, but obviously this was a different time of year. They had some other bangin food out and I got some dope Indian food mixed into a giant naan. We eventually went off to check out the rest of Seattle.

couldn’t help but think of my homie in Capital after seeing this sign.

Conor had some weird kinda head shop/tourist trap thing he had been recommended to check out. The coolest thing in there probably was these glasses

I mean they certainly make you look bugged out

I would’ve bought them but I feel like that tag hanging in the middle would’ve eventually got on my nerves day after day

We walked down to the Public Market (which is a famous spot I guess, I dunno) and there was this giant Judge – Bringing It Down statue. I took video footage but I can’t find it. It was sick. The arm was Bringing the Hammer down every minute or so.

Here’s the market. I think it’s famous for the fish trade they do down there, sort of auctioning of the best catches of the day to restaurantors. I wasn’t really that impressed by the fish thing, but the rest was ok. It reminded me of South Street Seaport.

Hey look, it’s Bo and Bo. The Deep Pockets response shirt to the Conor So Adult shirt.

We checked out some map school that was pretty awesome. I can’t believe they manage to stay in business but it seems maps are enough of a trend that they are fully doing well.

Andre in the heart of it

The views by the water are always the coolest thing to mee. Because when we look out on the water out here we just see water and occasionally a cruise liner. They have land masses to look at. I don’t event know what those are.

There was also a big ferris wheel like it was Wildwood or something out on the water.

Seattle dudes laying with hats on their heads like normal

We ended the day at a sick record store where I scored a few things. The guy that owned it had some great stories, but the best was about this flier he posted all over every city he ever moved to. The fact that people call with serious responses is mind boggling to me.

I wanted Joe to cover the “for” in this, but it didn’t pan out. You get it though.

After eating some pretty ok Mexican food at some restaurant we were headed back to Chelsey’s to get the van and head South of here to Olympia

Slug in the Northwest 2

Sunday, July 20th, 2014

after a night on Bo and Cecelia’s lovely couch I woke up to Tibbs framing herself up in the window. What a perfect post for a cat. The night before we had made plans to meet Joey O for breakfast in town. Drew of course opted for a long solo Yoga session in the bedroom that he and Conor shared.

Joe took us to this semi-diner like place that had vegan options on it’s menu. I can’t remember the name right now, but I remember the waitress was a friend or acquaintance of his. That seemed to be the case last time as well, we couldn’t go far in Bellingham without running into a buddy of Mr. Olmstead.

The food was really good, I got some fancy waffles I think and maybe some hash browns? I don’t remember but I loved everything on the plate. The conversation was exactly what I’ve come to expect from Joe. A rant on a topic I would never spend a second thinking about, yet he had so much to say about. Joe told us about his experience at Disney recently and how he strategized his trip. How it’s necessary to plot which ride to hit when in order to have a successful trip. It all made perfect sense, but was not ever something I’d think up myself. He’s quite a dude.

We drove back over toward the main strip to hit the record store Every Day Music. This time I didn’t luck out in the slightest. Instead I opted to walk to get a donut from Rocket Donuts. That shit was proper.

On my way I stopped into a bagel place to pee and saw these awesome period photos from Bellingham’s history. Obviously their history on the West doesn’t go back as far as in the East, but this was still a while ago.

And then for some reason they had this photo of a Bike store in Williamsburg with a bunch of locals out front. Odd.

After we all got back together, Bo from work and the rest of us from our respective pass times, we made our way to Canada. For me it would be the first time in almost ten years. The last opportunity I had to do so my passport had been expired. We had a little bit of a worry that one of us wouldn’t make it over, due to some “unpaid parking tickets” on their record, so we approached hopeful, but cautious. The fella, Tom, who was nice enough to set up our show hit us up with some paperwork ahead of time.

Back a couple years ago bands from the states would have to lie their way across the border, pretending they weren’t in bands, because with out a visa in order, playing a show in a different country and collecting money is considered illegal. Well it seems someone combed every legal paper in the Canadian system because therein lines a piece of legislature that let us right over without a fuss. This was my first view of the Western side of Canada as we happily crossed the border. The law itself has to do with playing a free show, and collecting a portion of money for gas reimbursement only. Perfect. The girl at customs must’ve looked at our passports for about a split second and handed them back to us. Because if she had looked a bit more at them in detail she may not have let these serial killer look-a-likes through.

Seriously, I mean Drew looks like he’s stabbed more than a few people, I look like some kinda mobster that fashions cement shoes, Conor like he’d been on the run and living on the lamb until being picked up in a sewer, and Andre straight up looks like a young Pablo Escobar.

Anyway, she asked us where we were headed, when we were coming back, and how much promotional merchandise we had on us and said “enjoy your stay” or something like she was a concierge at a hotel. Wild. So we had some Vancouver traffic to make it into the city, but there was a ton to look at…. and at least it smelled real good on the highway…. WAIT, I’M REMEMBERING WRONG. Eh well the only cool thing was this wacky ass tire sculptor outside of a mall complex. And it smelled like cow shit the entire length of the highway before.

Nah but at least the drive wasn’t too long. Oh yeah and the famous “Jazzy hip-hop awl DAY” shirt made an appearance. Refer back to the So Adult / Deep Pockets entries for that story. Bo had just gotten back from a European vacay right before this trip so he regaled us with stories from the HR Giger museum to pass time while we headed further into the city.

We here headed to play the Alf House. This is the flier, though if my memory serves me correctly the line up was almost totally different. Tom, the show booker, plays in Snob and they couldn’t make it due to the drummer or something. And I think Kaiten dropped too?

The house was tight. Apparently they were going to do the show in this backyard… seems normal to me. We ended up playing basketball for a few minutes until one of us sent the ball straight over the fence to the neighboring yard. Although this was not a “knock on the door and run back and get it situation.” The neighbors were a factory and clearly their doors had been closed for hours. Yes, we brought the dick.

The rain started to kick up so the show was moved into the basement. That’s a little more like it. Each band that played was really awesome. Apparently there was another gig up the street that some of the potential crowd might’ve been at, but if you ask me this shit was packed in enough. I got into conversation with a lot of people out front and I was surprised to learn how much they knew about our scene back home. It was funny answering questions as well, like I was a gossip reporting things to the local rag of a paper. I get that Brooklyn is what’s happening, so it wasn’t completely out of left field. But what I was incredibly happy to see was that after they got a sense of our relationship with what goes on in NYC they started to spit the real comments. Like how from the outside it all seems like a big fashion show, and how it seems overtly cliquely, and more of a who’s who than a united scene. Surprising how on point these people from another country, and across the continent could be.

This was Oaf, I think?


Their set was tight… wanted to get some footage of the space and this was what I could get from the very back. During their set I went up to find the bathroom in this punkhouse. I only mention this because there was like.. a gardening spade in the open top of the toilet. After ten seconds of staring at it I realized that it was a necessary tool to flush the toilet. You sort of dug under the suction cup to release the water. Weird, wild stuff these kids think of.

Anyway, we eventually set up to go on and blaze through on of the hottest sets of my life. I had so much fun at this place though.

Here’s your boy, along with Bozart by my side. It was so cramped in there I could hardly breathe. The bass amp at my back I had vibrations running through my spine. Never the most flattering shots of my when I drum as I’m hunched over and angled live a cave man.

The Canucks out there knew some of the songs and were pumped on the ones they didn’t.  It was truly a blast.

Here’s some of the crowd getting down. The dude is the Vacant State shirt in the homie that hooked the whole thing up, thanks Tom.

These up close and personal shots are brought to you by the photographer Ryan Rose, thanks for taking them dude.

After the show

I don’t know what this wacky ass, side ways video is but we this was after the gig. Bo had to be back at the lanes the following morning so we couldn’t really hang too much in Vancouver. Not that there was a lot going on. I mean earlier in the evening we ate massive plates of authentic Chinese tofu, what more could you want out of a city? How about Canadian candy from a gas station? Yes, please! That and some weird flavored Doritos and we were on our way stateside. We did a little loop of the downtown area and eventually decided to head back from B-ham.

The following morning as our hosts headed for work we either slept in or took a hike. Me and Drew did the hiking. It was cool and wet, as it often is, and we hiked what I think they called “the green mile”. By that I mean we walked along a pathway that was parallel to the roadway. It wasn’t much to behold, but it was well worth it. Very lush and green, mossy and overgrown, but kept in check enough to make it a clean and safe place to run, walk, or bike. Drew and I rapped about the new home he was purchasing, and the ins and outs of working in our respective industries.

We were on our way to the Co-op, which was like a mini heaven for Drew. He spent a great deal of time sniffing out new products to stock back in Sayville that might not have hit the East coast yet. I bought some apples and headed over to say hi to Bo. He wasn’t super busy, despite the rain, and hipped me to the Super Mario Salvadorian food truck. Bo suggested a burrito but I opted for a few papusas. I tried to get Andre over to enjoy the food and company of his native land’s people, but he wasn’t bout it. He basically said if he wanted to eat Salvadorian he’d do it in his own damn kitchen. Makes sense. When in Rome, I suppose.

I headed down the road a bit to scope out the thrift store/record shop. I didn’t have anything in mind that I wanted to find, but I did find some cool shit. For example, a pair of military binoculars for Charlotte (since we’re always trying to cop a closer look at NYC’s birds of prey) and a pristine copy of Master Of Reality. Both were unexpected finds, but money I was happy to spend.

This place, who’s name eludes me, had tons of cool shit in it. Like these old reels of monster movies.

Or these collectable Batman slippers.

I wanted to but this copy of FF49 just because but $30 wasn’t worth it to me. I

I headed out and walked back toward camp and for a second felt the wind get a little warmer, maybe a little more humid and looked to my left… oh I was transported back home! Ahhhhh, nothing like New Yoke pizza! Amirite??

I walked the green mile thing again and tried to have a whistle conversation with this bird. He/she was kinda feeling it actually. I got some quiet whistles back. When I got back to the residence it was now fully sunny and clear. Cecelia asked if we wanted to go for a hike and me and Andre happily obliged.

She started her own sort of “hiking club” with a close friend in an effort to get out and enjoy the trails more often, and she took us to one she thought we would enjoy. At the base were hundreds of tall but slim trees stemming  from the side of the hill. Their bases curved just slightly giving them a warped sort of optical illusion.

After we hiked a bit of the way up Cece admitted this wasn’t the trail she intended, but me and Dre insisted we didn’t give a shit. We just wanted to check out the land. Andre hadn’t ever seen anything of the sort, and I was eager to see a bit more than we had last time.

Everything was lush and green, completely alien feeling to me. Our forests out here may be lush but for the most part are dry.

The mists was literally rolling through the hillside maintaining the mossiness of the hillside. Aside from a few sporadic bird calls, there wasn’t much wild life to be seen.

It was a very isolated feeling forrest, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was more on the peaceful side of isolation.

It certainly felt like some LOTR elves were aiming their arrows right at our heads without us even knowing.

We hiked a ways up and had to stop multiple times to catch our breaths like we were Life’s Blood. It was surprisingly steep for its appearance. Looking at the photos now it doesn’t look like an incline, but that is only because the forrest floor was so overgrown. If you took a dive you’d be bumping quite a ways down.

The higher up we got I started to notice more and more downed trees (trees are down, people) and then noticed the other trees that set up shop right on top of them. It’s like they were wrestling and after one was knocked down the other put it’s foot on top like “what?!”

A lot of the trees were much thicker than they appear as well. Whatever ripped these suckers from their roots had to be some strong ass gusts of wind. Either that or a really angry Sasquatch was just flexin

We reached a sort of plateau and decided to make our way back down. Cecelia hadn’t hiked that path before and wasn’t sure how much longer there was to go. Add that to the fact we eventually had to meet everyone back and head for Seattle to play a show and we decided to head back. But before we did we headed down the other side of the hill, toward the water.

The view was amazing. Here we had some of the islands off the coast of Washington I guess, and just below us out of view was the railroad that ran around this body of water. Must be an amazing rail to ride.

Here Dre gives you a slight idea of the drop below down to the water. Out in the middle of the agua was a diamond shape poking out. I couldn’t make sense of it, because it couldn’t been a former dock, or maybe some kind of fishing traps. Pretty weird lookin.

The trees down here were really cool  too because they seemed like the only ones in the area that actually got touched by the sun, so they are a little more sun baked.

Cece was driving me crazy because right behind her is about a 40 foot drop and she didn’t seem to care.

Heading back to the car I was amazed by the sheer magnitude of this tree. My photo did not do it service, but Andre’s did.

Though I’m not standing in front of it, I am standing on the same plane. It was wider than my wingspan, that’s for sure.

We headed back to town, got some really dope ice cream and went back to Cecelia’s to gather our things and meet the boys. We were on our way back down to Seattle.