Sunday, March 18, 2007

Notes from the road...day sixteen

Conservatory show in OKC. Carol Bui
Esteban(Chavey or Chevey). maybe.


Easin on down the road with your boys Dan and Lee.
Yesterday started early as all get out for me. the first thing i remember is being angry at brian for snoring, then frightened at the torrent of profanity that came pouring out of a mouth that surely couldn't be mine. Homie SNORES. so i got up before the sun, took a shower and headed down to our continental breakfast, which wasn't happening yet, as it was LIKE FOUR OR SOMETHING. so i chatted with the desk person about the crappy coffee and then with my baby about everything else. she was still up from the night before and just thinking about it makes me mad at brian all over again. so eventually i wandered back to our snore chamber and laid down to wait for everyone else to wake up. it took forever. so wake they did and we proceeded down to deb's room, which was the de facto office for the epic summer blockbuster known as the sxsw project (working title). they fed us more and we got in the van to pretend to arrive at the party. again. me likey watch movies. me no likey movies watch me. so we did our best to be our lil lovable selves (not funny) and took pictures with our filmy friends. what approach do you think the filmmakers should take in regards to our performance lee? "use us as little as possible so the seconds of character shine bright enough for our true selves to..." this is going nowhere. so we left for real and headed to the conservatory in oklahoma city, or the OKC as alex and i would call it, if we were thug livin in the real OK town. what happenned on the drive there? we used the commute-ticator to great success, lee tortured brian with an hour or two of NRBQ and generally teased and taunted him for whatever came into his head that second. it was awful (funny). we arrived at the conservatory and immediately raided the record store next door and came up wif some pretty good stuff. we got$1 mojo mags,t rex!,roxymusic's first, a 2 disc curtis mayfeild retrospective, double album cds of tommy james and the beegees first, a trojan ska box set, saucerful of secrets and i got a sorrows record. jim hooked up the fat deals and we responded with some california love. so we played to a mostly empty bar full of enthusiasm. at least until we ruined it by playing for 3 hours. seriously, we dont know when to quit. two thirds of our fanbase was wiped out early in the night by a father-related emergency, but we soldiered on. oh yeah! the williez put their sticker over our name on the poster we sent out. i wanted to keep it but some lil girl swiped it and tore off the sticker before i could explain to her what irony is. it came right off. pussy ass sticker didnt even stick. so then the weirdness started. as we loaded out and sold some swag lorrie informed us that she was going into chemo the next day and prolly wouldn't make it...um....uh...umm... . And then we went to Britney's house! you may remember britney from the williez show a few years ago, no? well her parents were pleasantly out of town so we had full run of the place, giant toilets, dogbears named beauford and all. at least until Unkle Whitey (MARK to you!) stopped in for a chat. more like snuck-in for god knows what awful thing. he seemed drunk and edgy and strolled in bestowing golden nuggets of truth and wisdom like "you need a haircut" and "you really need a haircut". he told everyone that except me, and i wasnt even having a good hair day or anything. but i guess i just got it like that. thanks unkie whitey! so after our psychological beatdown, he hit us with a blaze of zen mastery commonly known as the riddle. "if animals south of the equator weren't grateful," said he "would christmas and thanksgiving be on the same day?" (dramatic pause). he was freaking us out. i had it in my head that this was an answerless nothing designed to pummel our minds into baby food. or worse, to distract us while the cops came. he then belittled sean's hair, which definately seemed to offend his delicate hair sensibilities the most. after that they stared at eachother with a painfully awkward intensity i will not attempt to convey. believe me, it was heavy. "don't get up" he said. but sean had made no pretense of up-getting and we were confused yet again. so he left, creepily as he came. i saw britney struggling to understand whatever hints he was dropping from behind me. it was not going well. what was THAT all about?! britney explained "he used to own a fancy restaurant that (oklahoma?!) celebrities would come to, but now he sells cars for my dad." it raised more questions than it answered. but yeah, i think i hate that guy. and britney's mom totally does! so we cleaned out the tiny amounts of hooch and spaghettios she had and watched lee bring shame on humankind with his sexual lee-ness (it involved beauford). i was too scared to sleep on a 17 year old OU football hopeful's bed so i opted for the floor. it was aight. this morning we woke up and got on the road and have been stuck in traffic ever since a useless stop for a record store in Denton. we got like nine hours to go and we're not moving. lee is enjoying our van's tinted window voyeuristic capabilities and i am not really enjoying colin blunstone's solo album. "he was working in an office when the zombies looked him up and wrote an album for him" sayeth sean. "that last one was kinda funky." sayeth alex. "this songs been the best so far"typeth i. "oh waaaooow!" sayeth huell howser. we just commute-icatored our way into some gum! for those of you who've spent your life trimming dinosaur toenails in the desert, the commute-ticator is a device used to tell fellow travellers of the road just what, exactly, is on your mind. with such endlessly repeatable phrases as; get a life, nice rust and lets do lunch, you know you'll never be at a loss for words. so we thingied the nice lady, and after turning down our offer of lunch by way of her ring finger, she gave us all a pack of gum! this is the best traffic jam ever (special thanks to esteban!)! so wish us luck, we totally are not making the show on time.
...PoP! culture currently listening to brendan benson, alternative to love!

notes from the road...day fifteen

Dustys Party
Good, good times
Tryin' to not notice
Apache rock'n
Party at sxsw





"Yo!" As Alf would say. Hi fellas and lil q-t-pies. Hmm..missing two days from the blog it seems. I'll be taking care of this right quick. I is Alex. Our day fifteen started with late night/early morning Guiness and jelly-filled pastries at Dan's brother's house. Mike! He is totally rad and has a picture hangin on his wall of him on an old tractor. I fell asleep before everyone for I am a baby when it comes to sleep. Eight 'o clock comes round and me wantie a pillow. From what i heard the next day, Dan caught up with his brother whilst others slept. Also, I quit the band. Did I forget that? These guys are like a bunch of mayors from different comically titled towns - Jerktown. El Jerkso. Jerkington, etc. Just kidding. But really, these blogs need some spicing up. Or at least some goofy pictures. Someone wake up Brian and tell him to get with the phototakings. This guy sleeps more than anyone in the band. I had to flip for the middle seat the other day. I lost. But! Luck-i-Lee had just stopped driving and stole it from both of us.
I'm quite off track now. Thanks. So, we departed from Mike's house heading for SxSw in Austin. I spent the three hour trip on the computer getting numbers to music stores for Lee so he could purchase a speaker for the bass amp. We rolled into town after finding out the show had been switched from a club to a house party. The day started to get more interesting as we met up with the Time-Flys/Apache/Cuts and company. We found 'em at a large party-tent show sitting on the grass not really paying attention to the bands. Rightfully so. Meh is a word used much so round this time in Austin. We greeted and then continued to hang out on a hill with the cutest damn puppy I've ever seen. Guy was as big as my fist and had a patch of dark hair round one eyeball. We then headed to the house party. I can't be the only one who forgot, but as we arrived there was a flurry of film crew surronding the van. "Oh yeah! We're shooting a fake documentary today." We met a few peoples again - Jerry( Kelly on camera) the man who would become our new tambo player for the show, Estabon (Chavey) our interviewer, Joe/Deb and the rest. Then we answered some fake-ish questions, unloaded, then rested for a few minutes before being hustled into the van for another shooting of our "arrival" to the show. Competely dorky and it made me giggle. Films are oh so funny sometimes. Afterwards we set up and played. Mr. J. Beam should receive our thanks from everyone but Sean. I'm quite sure I sped everything up about double the speed of normal. Fun stuffs. After us, Apache played. Really entertaining rock & rollers from the SF/oakland area. Go see em when you can. A few of us went to a burger joint following Apaches completition. I should have found out the name of the place for the burgers were amazing. Eight then rolled round, so I headed back and waited for the band to finish so we could get our mic back and go to another house party Dusty Rhodes had set up for us. We ended up taking two mics and should apologize. It was Brians fault everyone, blame him if you must. Next was Dustys lil friends place. We unloaded to a few guys playing four-square in a backyard. Texas is crazy like that fool. We played alright. Lee was captive in a beer soaked spiral of hilarity which is always fun for me. Dusty Rhodes and the River Band went on a bit after us. "They are a GREAT live band." - says Sean. The remainder of the night had looking for the right hotel, which the video crew had set us up in. Thank you much guys! Eventually we found it and everyone went to their rooms. That be the end of the night and the end of this post. rarh.
Whats Playing Today: The Salvation Army(Befour Three 'o Clock), the Bee Gees 1st, A Trojan Ska box set, and The Kinks Face to Face
ps should have some of the party pictures in a few days.