6/23 - got into mechanicsburg late (who does road work at 6:30 on a friday night?). it took about two seconds to meet my first weirdo of the tour, a guy who looked like fred the elephant boy asking me why i don’t play with cat gut. he went on to pantomime his friend shredding on a classical guitar. i played a short set and it wasn’t particularly great. things were pretty dead since the MMC (millennium music conference) was in town but the owners of the venue, brad and kim, paid me anyway and kim made me a super tasty honey peanut chicken panini.
i hung out for a while afterwards and brad went on to tell me that despite the fact that mechanicsburg seems like your typical small, white bread american town, there is a crazy crime and drug epidemic in town. the kids have all these codes and hiding places to avoid the cops. it was straight out of brick. for example, there’s a place in town called ‘the portal’, quite literally a hole in a wall near a tavern where the kids leave money for drugs and then pick them up later. if there are tennis shoes hung from the phone line above, it means that a deal is ‘in progress’. he went on to tell me stories about the time he testified against a convicted murderer (and didn’t know it until he’d gotten to court) and the next town over’s (dillsbury PA?) really high concentration of KKK members and satanists. needless to say, i couldn’t get out of town quickly enough.
6/24 - i figured i’d get to oakland with hours to spare so before i left i got directions to a massive comic/music/dvd store in pittsburgh called eide’s. stopped for lunch at maggie’s cafe, a vegetarian cafe off the PA turnpike. it was really good but overpriced. despite having a variety of bridges, pittsburgh is really easy to get around in. there was a convention for the deaf and hard of hearing in town for the week. on nearly every corner you would see someone in need of directions gesturing broadly and the other person shrugging their shoulders. i found eide’s with no problem but it was a huge disappointment. the music selection was awful, the comic store had nothing of interest and everything was grossly overpriced. i was so disheartened that i didn’t even check out the dvd section upstairs. there are few things sadder than leaving a comic or record store without having the desire to buy anything. i walked around the city a little more, took pictures and then drove to oakland early.
i was hoping to scope out the spots for the weekend’s shows so that i wouldn’t run into problems finding them later. first off was trying to find the CPOF house. the directions i got made it look pretty shady:
go down a stomach-churningly steep cobblestone road? check.
make a 140 degree turn onto another cobblestone road? ok.
go up a narrow road and follow the twist and turns until you get to the top of a hill where your progress is impeded by a group of chickens, cats and a drunken hillbilly angrily pointing and yelling at you to go back the way you came? no problem!
since there was only room on the road for one car, i had to drive backwards all the way back down. i assumed that mapquest had led me astray. i walked around town for a while and hung out at this park in front of a massive building in the center of pitt’s campus. ended up reading most of henry rollins’ roomanitarian, it’s an infinitely depressing read. eventually jake from triangle & rhino met up with me and we drove over to the house show:
‘OK, you’re going to make a right turn down this steep cobblestone road–’
‘i’ve been down here already, do you live on top of a hill?’
‘hey, did some guy yell at you earlier?’
‘umm yeah’
‘oh, he’s the biggest racist in the world but don’t worry, there’ll be a lot more of us tonight than there are of him.’
great. why do i assume anything?
hung out for a while before the show with the T & R guys and a couple of their friends, corianne, jay and alan. they are hilarious and good-hearted people. i got hit in the head with a soccer ball, it’s a long story. as far as the show went, a lot of kids ended up showing up and it was a really fun show. just about everyone set up and played on the porch. a two piece distorted bass & drums band called rock and roll skeleton started the night. imagine death from above playing blue-eyed soul. they were real good. triangle & rhino played second and they are an absolutely hardcore/jazz crazy guitar & drum duo. i was right up front and it got so loud that i had to stand behind some kids to buffer the sound. when did i get so lame? matt from T & R was completely soaked afterwards. the next two bands from kent, OH were awful; i went inside and read snow crash instead (is it me or is that book one of the densest reads ever? i’ve been reading it at least an hour a day and i’m like 37 pages into it). i went on last, played a six or seven song set and i sang better than the night before. it felt really nice, yelping out towards the woods with no PA or anything. i’d love to play every show like that.
afterwards we sat outside listening to nirvana and dio (i blew everyone’s minds when i showed them that the dio logo upside down reads ‘devil’). i helped jake catch a mouse that was running around on the porch before one of the cats got him. i had my flashlight on him, it was like a rodent version of a perp being pursued by an LAPD helicopter. eventually everyone left. cat dander in the house was bugging me so i slept in the car.
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