the van, and crazy frontwomen

First trip in the new van, down to L.A. to play at Pehrspace, a tiny little art gallery kind of place, that also has rock shows and whatnot. The van performed very well with its brand new shocks, and we had a good ol' time listing all the extra additions we needed to make to it, which included but were not limited to: an extra window, a plug-in cooler, a table upon which to place a laptop and watch movies, a plasma bigscreen to more comfortably watch movies, a sauna...

Anyway, the one luxury item we agreed upon as a must have was a better stereo. The van had come with only a radio, and anyone that's tried to use an iTrip anywhere near a city with a population above 5000 knows that the iTrip is basically a useless piece of crap. Pipe was so pissed he actually stopped at Best Buy on the way down, but we didn't want to wait 2 hrs to get it installed, and end up rolling into L.A. at 2 or 3 am. So it was the first order of business the next day. The nice boys at the Circuit City on Sunset also installed some extra speakers under the back seat. They also pointed out the nail in our rear right tire. Ohh, that's why it's going flat.

So within a couple hours we've spent another $750 on the van. Ouch. But at least we're big pimpin' now with the stereo and new heavy duty rear tires.

And since we're talking about the van costs, let's just break it all down for a minute:

• van: $7000 from Caspian Cars in Redwood City
  
• taxes, registration, etc bullshit: about $1000
  
• pre-purchase inspection: $100 from Precision Auto in Redwood City
  
• bench seat: $50 from a guy in Novato named Rick
  
• installation of seat, security grills, window tinting: $850 from Custom Auto in Oakland
  
• four new shocks: $350 from Express Auto in Oakland
  
• new stereo, speakers: $450 from Circuit City in L.A. (this was kind of a shocker.. we got the cheapest stuff but they nickle and dime you to death with charges for extra installation brackets and shit)
  
• two new rear tires: $300 from Discount Tire in L.A.
  

Total so far: more than $10K. Yeah, we're in deep now.

And that's not counting gas, which, at around 15mi/gallon, is running about $150 for a trip to L.A. and back.

Luckily, we are making money by playing rock music. Last night, for example, we earned $84. Which, you know, buys us enough gas to go crawling home to our day jobs.

Oh but what a time we had at this show! It was a BYOB kind of thing, since it's not a bar, so there we were mixing jim beam and cokes out the side of our new van, which took up a good third of the Pehrspace parking lot, and wondering if the drummer for the first band, Peel, is ever going to show up. Their singer has arrived, in red trench coat and apparently not much else, and has begun hugging, complimenting, and flirting with every boy and man -- and some of the women -- in her path. My goodness!

And that was before she got on the stage. The drummer finally did show up, about 30 minutes after they were scheduled to start (yay) and Peel got the ball rolling. After one song the red trenchcoat is unbuttoned, and by the third song the trenchcoat is off and we're all grappling to comprehend the reality that Peel's frontwoman is writhing on the ground while she sings, in a sexy bra-and-stockings getup, a la Fredericks of Hollywood. In the words of Mayor Quimby, That was unexpected.

Anyway, band #2 was the trio Divisible, fronted by the lovely and fully-clothed Shola, who sometimes played guitar through a fairly impressive setup of pedals and amps, and sometimes just sang, leaving the bass and drums to manage on their own, which they did quite well. They had a very nice Bison painted on the kick drum, which turned out to match the artwork on their very nice cd. Shola later told Cat that they are all planning to move into a $100/month garage together so they can start touring more. Or something like that.

The good ol' May Fire ended up taking the stage around 11:45, also fully clothed, and somewhat drunk, in front of a thinning but enthusiastic crowd. It was a loud, dirty 30 minutes of intense May Fire insanity. It's what we spend all that time and money for, to create those 30 minutes of whatever the fuck it is.

Where we're from

We often get asked "Where are you guys from?" This could mean a lot of things. Do they mean where we live? As in, where is this touring band from? This is especially confusing when we play in San Francisco. Maybe they think we're on tour from somewhere else, so we should say "we're actually from here." Or maybe they know we're from here but want to know where specifically we live, so we should say "we're from Albany", which is weird because Rob lives in Oakland, and actually Nachito lives in Berkeley now. And besides when you say "Albany" people often think you're talking about New York.

Of course, often it's a completely different story, and what happened is they noticed the accents and the spanish, and want to know what country we're from. But we're from different countries, so we always end up having to explain the whole thing. "well, cat's from chile, those guys are from colombia, and that guy's from connecticut." You always get the connecticut part thrown in, even though it doesn't really apply to the original question (which was really "why are you speaking spanish?") And sometimes when Cat's a little drunk she gets connecticut confused with iowa. But Rob understands.

Anyway, the point is, here's a handy map to help you understand where the May Fire is from:



I know it looks like the dot is next to Argentina, but really it's in Chile, which is sort of a thin country.