What Stays in Vegas Happens in Vegas

First of all, what's going on with all this singer illness? A few hours before the Elbo Room show last Weds, we learn that the headliner's singer has laryngitis, so they're cutting their set short, and aren't drawing a crowd. Then one day before the Silverlake Lounge show in L.A. we learn that the headliner's singer has the flu and they are straight up cancelling. Gah!

Good thing we are professionals in Making The Best Of A Weak Situation, because that's what we did, and the shows turned out alright. Not ideal.. but fun anyway. But no matter what, nothing can ever prepare you for Las Vegas.

"Well, you guys can do of two things at this point," says Woodstock Paul, the bartender, after we return from dinner to find the Art Bar still absolutely empty. "Play a show, or sit here and get fucking lit."

"Playing a show works," says Larry the owner.

"Uh yeah.. playing a show works," says Woodstock Paul.

"Alright, I'm leaving," says Larry the owner, "have fun, see ya. My guy will be here soon to take care of you." At this point, I'm not sure if he's talking about a sound guy, an Elvis impersonator, or both. But then he stops himself and turns back around. "I'm lying. I don't think he's coming. Have a great night."

When we first booked the show, Larry mentioned that he'd prefer we don't drink before the show. Which seemed strange to us. But it makes sense when you remember they basically give the booze away for free in that town. As long as you're either gambling or entertaining, you can drink all you want, whatever you want. And this is the night after we played in L.A. to an actual crowd... and they gave us each two Budweisers (and no, you can't upgrade to a better drink with two tickets plus cash so stop asking, jerkoff). Though what's strange is how hard it is to actually catch a buzz on all that free Vegas liquor. Or maybe it's not that strange, hmm.

Bottom line, there's just more space in Nevada. Physically and mentally. When your entire state isn't choking itself over miles of hot coastline property, you get a more relaxed kind of people.. people that don't make you wonder "is that their cool face, or are they really that pissed off?" Vegas exists solely to entertain and serve, thus the people are very friendly and very freaky. One minute they're helping you load in your equipment with a smile (holy fuck, in SF or LA you're lucky to get someone to TELL you WHERE to load in without making you feel like a retard) and the next minute, with that same big smile, they're telling you how glad they are to finally get a divorce from that damn stripper, along with a mysterious story about getting kicked out of Arizona.

Whatever. We gotta give the Vinyl Clouds credit for setting up and playing an enthusiastic set for twelve people (including the bartender and the four of us). We did a five song quickie, crazy mad punk style, which actually sounded pretty good even without the Elvis impersonator sound guy. But Vegas Jay was there, and he liked it, which kept our spirits up. Plus, later that night, Johnny told us that if you pour coca cola on raw pork, worms will come out of it. Which summed up the trip pretty nicely, I thought. Apparently there's a video of this on YouTube, you can look it up.

But really, the worst part about it is that we left our video camera at the hotel. Crap! It wasn't a great night for rock and roll, but it was a perfect night for shooting a movie. But I guess that's why what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Cause you forgot your camera.



Don't get us wrong, we love Denny's. It's a reliable staple of life on the road. But what's up with these sweet and tangy bbq turds on the placemats? We had to turn the placemats over so we could eat without looking at them...

8 dias en 1 minuto y 1/2

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Here's what happened on our little tour with Zoe

A couple days after the first two shows with Zoe at the Red Devil, we got up in the early-ass morning and drove down to the Ford Amphitheater in L.A., had a sound check, did some random filming for LATV, played our set from 7:30 to 8. Unfortunately, the time printed on the tickets was 8, so we played to maybe 20 people in a super nice 1000+ capacity venue. Felt and sounded fuckin sweet on stage, but then had to skip the last two songs when rob broke an e string. doh. Then we went and stayed at Jamie and Jason's house, where they always treat us like the poor innocent street children we are.. they pimp us out with beds and showers and liquor and water and quiche and internet access and vegetables. They even dried our bath towels for us! Plus, across the way from their kitchen window it looked like their neighbor had hanged himself, but he was just drying a pair of pants, so there's that.

Then we checked in at Frankie's place and picked up Frankie and drove out to the deep burbs of Los Angeles: Moreno Valley. There was a sports bar that was starting these club nights, see, with loud DJ dance music, and swirly lights, and a band, see. And they did it once and it was pretty good, so they did it again and it was packed, so next they're ready to offer us a few hundred bucks to play there. So we go play this shit and only like 20 people show up, to dance to (all of) the smith's greatest hits, and to have a cigarette break outside when the band played. Luckily the club was honest enough to pay us our guarantee anyway, and we booked it back to Frankie's. Frankie showed us a really bizarrely funny short video he had written and produced. Then he showed us the alternate version, where he plays all but one of the roles himself. It was far fucking out, hehehehehe... The next day, Nachito noticed that there was a surveillance camera in a corner of the bathroom. But it wasn't real it was just a prop, which was a relief.

In addition to all this, Frankie had some shifty neighbors.

Anyway, Sunday was a day off and Cat had decided we were going to the beach. Which sounded like a nice thing, except with all our dawdling (long showers, breakfast, packing up, picking up this and that at the store) and with Frankie not really living anywhere near the beach, it was past 5pm by the time we got there. But we had a nice big meal of seafood appetizers, but then regretted all the fried food on the bumpy road back, some of us getting a little nauseous, everyone agreeing that we really had to get the alignment fixed tomorrow cause it makes the van rattle worse.

Monday morning we woke up in Odette's beautifully remodeled apartment with not much to do. So we went to get the alignment fixed. Other than that, we had already bought some food for breakfast and lunch, and there was no internet access, so it was time to lounge around Odette's and do some serious TV watching. There was a reality show with Hulk Hogan, there was the part of the Emmys where they stand around talking about what all the actresses are wearing, and lots of great cooking and small claims court shows. But we gave it all up to go play at the Echo, which is a pretty sweet little place. There were like 4 or 5 bands playing, and even on a monday night the place was packed. Unfortunately it didn't really fill up until after we played -- we got bumped to the first slot after the promoter discovered we had played at the Ford three days earlier. The logic being that we would be spreading our crowd too thin. In other words, the price we paid for our extra-early set on Friday was an extra-early set on Monday. There you go. But still, the most fun show of the trip so far.

We stayed with Sr and Sra Rana that night in their beautifully designed and immaculately kept house. We have some of the nicest goddamn friends! With nice houses! And then, a short drive away, his beautifully designed, immaculately kept recording and production studio! Hijo de la madre, we are seriously impressed. Also with his almost complete feature length film "The Cook", wherein a bunch of sorority girls sit around doing drugs and playing May Fire records, until they get systematically murdered. Good stuff people, good stuff. The May Fire gives it 10 thumbs up (two from Maria, who basically raised all of our gas money by selling fine May Fire products to oodles of satisfied customers).

Oh but we hadn't had oodles of people in the place since the Red Devil, but things got better at this point. So we're in San Diego now, getting settled in at Danny's sparse but effective apartment with a ridiculously tiny trash can (the May Fire has a lot of trash, ok?) and a pool right in the middle that nobody ever goes in, as far as we can tell. We bought a ratty blanket at the salvation army next door and stuffed it in the springs of the back seat of the van in a meager attempt to make it less bouncy. We got some good sleep, some reasonable food. We watched "Art School Confidential". Eventually we went to play at the beautiful San Diego House of Blues, again opening for Zoe, but this time just the two bands. And here Zoe's fans like to get there early and get a spot up front, so we had a captivated and receptive audience.. which of course is fuckin fantastic and a lot of fun, so we had fun. And we would have sold a whole ton of merchandise, except somebody pulled an alarm that made sirens and emergency lights come on, so the place cleared out real quick. Oh well, still a great time, and Zoe tore the place up as usual: rabid screaming fans, epic rock music, flashing lights and fog, girls jumping up and dancing on the stage, the whole package.

Next thing we know, we're at the house of blues again, but this one is somewhere in what might be described as a suburb of Disneyland's Magic Kingdom (tm). This HOB is not as cavernous as the other one, which puts it as just the right size to feel good and rock the goddamn motherfucking bitch-ass shit out. Which is what proceeded to happen. Which is a good thing, cause on the way home it keeps us from feeling sad that we wouldn't be seeing the White Stripes after all because they cancelled their tour because Meg has "acute anxiety", whatever that means.

Right and Wrong recordings

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ringer

Today's Spanish lesson from Catty Tasso of the May Fire:



Translation: "This is very boring. This the second day, driving to... Seattle."

Damn that's a lot of driving. Luckily, El Pipe loves to drive. So he drives almost the whole trip. The rest of us pass the time by staring out the window, making ipod playlists, arguing about how many songs each person gets to put at a time, listening to the mixes for the next EP we're hoping to release Aug 22, and insisting to each other that we should practice our vocal parts, but not really practicing our vocal parts.

We carried some cold cuts in a cooler to cut down on costs, but we also ate at Shari's, where the menu is twenty pages long with lots of colorful pictures of the food, and they have not only a three-sliders-and-three-weiners plate, but a chicken salad with potstickers covered in sweet chili sauce. We ate at Penny's and watched the 3rd shift cook pour big gobs of yellow buttery mix on the hashbrowns and fry it up. We tried to eat at a Sushi place recommended by the door guy at the Comet, but the wait was too long, so we ate at the thai place a couple doors where the soup was killer and the waiter (owner?) was EXCEEDINGLY nice and tried to give us free dessert.. we felt kind of bad not taking him up on it. They also had far-out bathroom sinks. You turned it on by pulling or pushing an upright lever, like a joystick, and the water spills out of a tilted glass saucer sort of thing. Fancy.

The Comet show was fun. People came. We played rock and roll music.

Saturday was the party day. Only 3 hours of driving, hanging out with Michael, friend and sound engineer for kooken & hoomen, at his house with lovely wife, child, and vegetable garden. Gave us beds. Got us high. Barbequed steaks. Hooked up the 4-player football (soccer) on the wall projector. Made us fucking pancakes! Luxury.

The Tonic show was fun. People came. We played rock and roll music. This band Sleepless Me, that was sort of tacked onto the beginning of the bill surprised us by being good. And of course our friends X's for I's were good. Good and crazy. They had a bucket of donuts with them.

Sunday was a nice long day of driving. 10 hours. Oh wait, more like 12 hours cause of a huge traffic jam near Lake Shasta. We took a detour. I don't think it saved us much time, but at least we were moving. We like to be moving.

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.