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.

to san diego

Well goddamn, we're on the road again, briefly. Friday night we play the Beauty Bar in San Diego, Saturday in L.A. at "Cigarettes & Alcohol"... in their new Chinatown location. Just before jumping in the cars, we watched the first draft of a live "shot me down" video Maria put together for us. It's over a mixed soundboard recording from Bottom of the Hill, and combines footage from the same Bottom of the Hill show with a show at the Silverlake Lounge in L.A. It all pretty much blends together and looks like the same show, except rob's shirt keeps switching back and forth between dark blue and light blue. Looks pretty slick so far though. Maria knows what she's doing.

The Plastic Army e.p. is damn near out.. it's all showing up in the mail piecemeal. First the sleeves, then the discs, and now we're just waiting for the tray inserts, which got mailed later for some reason, even though they were printed in the same order as the sleeves. Whatever. It's gonna be nice, but shit, our heads are already in the second e.p. now.. and the third. That's our little project for ourselves. Three e.p's. Then it'll be time for a full length. Or a tour. Or something.

But back to the cars. It's Pipe, Rob, and Cat in this car, and it is stuffed completely full. The reality has been sinking in as of late that we need to start laying down the bucks for a van. It's gonna hurt, but there's no way around it the more we start traveling. When it comes down to it, the biggest obstacle to this band's success is the cost of transportation. Making music is one thing.. bringing it to people is a whole other bucket of chips.

Here's my view for the 8 hour ride to San Diego:

Recording makes you crazy

The first e.p. gets mastered tomorrow, and already we've started recording tracks for the next one. And here's an example of how recording makes you crazy.

Oakland, SF, LA

So many shows! We've got 'em lined up every weekend for the next month. This Friday 1/26 at the Uptown in Oakland, a really really nice little spot, but unfortunately not very well known. We wrote to the East Bay Express music staff to try to get them to come out, not only to promote ourselves, but also the Uptown deserves more credibility than it gets, I think (maybe I should reserve judgment until we've actually played there?) Anyway, it's with The Look, who just took second place in a statewide battle of the bands, and seem to have a great following in the bay area, so hopefully we can get people to come recognize this spot. Plenty of parking! Let's hear you say that about your typical venue.

Then the following Thursday 2/1 at Grant & Green in San Francisco, in the North Beach area. This is kind of a sneaky little gig that we don't know much about, and we're not sure how much of our SF fanbase is gonna hit this one, cause mostly there's more interest in our Bottom of the Hill show (also with The Look!) two weeks later, on Saturday 2/17. A Saturday at Bottom of the Hill... does life get any better for a young rock band in San Francisco?

But wait, we skipped a week! Have no fear, we head down to Los Angeles on Weds 2/7 to play at the Silverlake Lounge. We've played L.A. a handful of times, but this is our first shot at the Silverlake Lounge, which should be cool. Plus we've got a small list of big shot managers and such (did we mention that TMF is currently in the market for a manager?) coming to check us out there, so we're really trying to pack this one in and make it fuckin' awesome... oh wait, that's what we do with all our shows. Except maybe the Grant & Green thing.. but that's North Beach, practically a different country.

E.P. in the works

Here's something else that's happening. The May Fire is always recording new tracks when we can, and we're getting ready to put a new E.P. out. Since real label support is slow-moving and fraught with complication and peril, this will be another self-produced product from Rock Whores Studios! At the moment, it's looking like a five track release, and we may slap on a couple remixes that others have made from Right and Wrong. The mixing phase will be complete right about.... now, and we're currently researching deals for mastering and replication. Should be popping up on our merch counter at shows soon.