May 30

City: New Brunswick, NJ - Nice town. The knew nothing about NJ besides what I'd seen in Kevin Smith movies, but it turns out that there are some really nice places around here. Every one we talked to was pleasant and helpful (though we never did manage to track down a place to sleep).

Venue: Southwest Burrito - pros: We got free burritos. Cons: no one really listened to us play. People trickled in, bought their burritos, and left. A few chatted with us, but no one did rock and roll karaoke or sat down to listen.

Songs:
Since no one cared, we did our full set plus some R&R karaoke.
The 2+ minutes of banter between songs were cut for your listening pleasure
Carpedium - This was a pretty good take. I recommend listening.
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - I think we finally know how to play this one!
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Even the beautiful croonings of Bonnie Taylor were not enough to bring people in.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - This is an abbreviated version. We dropped the sing-a-long part since there was no one there to sing along.
The Hand Jive - The only song Dave and I co-wrote together, so, of course, Dave hates it.
I Am the Greatest - This was a very sloppy take. Don't bother with it.
Somewhere around here, we started playing Buddy Holly by Weezer, totally messed up and lost the beat, gave up in disgust, and decided to rework the song for tomorrow
Happiness - There was a couple in the burrito shop, so we decided to play a ballad for them and dedicate it to 'em, but they left before we could start playing...
My Love - Since our real ballad had gone so well, we decided to follow it up with our stalking song. If you notice me mumbling towards the end, that's because some old ladies came in, and I felt really awkward singing about domestic violence with them around.
Our House - The Madness classic. Decent take.
Conspiracy - Another song about one person following and frightening another. I'm sensing a trend here.
It's a Good Thing - Saving the best for last! (as if it matters)
Drugs PSA - Just because no one's listening doesn't mean we shouldn't try to educate the kids

The moral of the story: New Brunswick is pretty cool, but burrito shops aren't a great place to do a show.

- Steve

Farewell New Brunswick!

We're starting to get an idea for how this tour is going to work.

1. Getting lost.
Neither of us has a sense of direction, GPS, a way to get online, or a road atlas younger than 10 years old. I suspect we're going to spend a lot of our time in strange, abandoned places wondering where the hell we should go to get a show.

Note to self: Old Hoes Lane is a good name for the next band.

2. Getting found.
Yesterday worked treasure hunt style. We started at Rutgers which was a wasteland because it turns out students go home during the summer. Some dude told us what street to hit up, where we wandered around until we found a bar, where a very nice bartender gave us a list of places to try, all of which turned us down but suggested other places, one of which was Southwest Burritos, where we played a show to upwards of 5 people and enjoyed sweet burritos. I guess the burritos were the treasure because they were totally on the house.

Pictured: totally sweet burrito.

3. Sleeping in the van.
We've got about 5 places to stay lined up for the 60 or so days we're on tour. We're couch surfing and better-than-the-van-ing, but it's starting to look like we're going to spend many a night thusly:
We totally slept like babies for 9 hours.

4. Driving. In the van.
Neither of us is particularly fond of driving.
Or the other guy driving. In certain cases.

5. Plenty of time to take it easy.
I brought some work with me to help pay for this adventure, and we have a lot of poking around to do when we show up in town. Regardless, so far we've had plenty of time to hang out. Perhaps this will also be a drinking tour. Last night we got a great Irish Stout and Honey Lager at a local brewery called Harvest Moon.

Tonight it's on to Trenton, NJ, where we have a tip to check out The Green Light Vegan Bar. Let the rocking continue!

The Cat Pushed Me Over the Edge

I did pretty well at the goodbye party last night, I held on when Mara and Odin took off for Wisconsin, I started to lose it when I said goodbye to the teddy bears, and finally started crying when I kissed the cat goodbye on my way out of the house. I've never been homesick before, crazy. I blame it on all my loved ones, including the cat. Damn you, making me so fond of you!

On the bright side, tonight I'm going to sleep for as long as I want, though admittedly on the floor of a minivan. Also, we have our first sweet show of the tour lined up at Southwest Burrito in New Brunswick, NJ. Huzzah!

Show #2

We played the open mic at the Quays again this week. 'twas pretty sweet!

Songs played:
Carpedium - Turns out, Steve's tone deaf and has no idea what key to sing in.
Our House - Making up for last week's sorry performance of this one.
Happiness - We dedicated our ballad to Samantha, our biggest fan (since last week), but it turns out she wasn't there for our set this time.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Why wouldn't we play this one? It's clearly our best song.
It's a Good Thing - Why did we save one of our best songs for the encore?

Lessons learned:
Prepare an encore, but don't get too attached to it - We practiced our encore all week, but no one asked for us to play one. We had to beg the audience to demand it. It was actually quite pathetic.
Check your levels - We forgot to make sure the guitar was loud enough. Ironically, this made everything sound better. We'll do better next time.

More Bootlegs

Here are some more songs we recorded while practicing (again, ranked in descending order of awesomeness):

Fat Kid Emo Pants - Because fashion is very important to us.
I am the Greatest - Regardless of what he tells you, this song is not about how good looking Dave is.
Drugs PSA - A Canadian public service announcement about drugs
Buddy Holly - The Weezer Classic
Conspiracy - Another original
My Love - Because every band needs a song about stalking
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - Russian scientists making giant snot monsters. What's not to love?

John the smelly landlord part II

Pictures!

Here's his troll mattress.

Some days, he has to kick yesterdays underwear out of the way before we can get to our equipment.

The Man himself!

Biking to Practice

Our practice space is down in Brooklyn, so whenever it's nice we bike down from Queens, usually around 45 minutes. Steve's from out of town, and within 5 minutes of our first bike trip, I've got some guy screaming, "I'll break your fucking face you fucking asshole!" out his car window at me. All I did was smack the hood of his car and shout, "Use your signals!" when he cut me off, was that so wrong?

I've, uh, since toned down the ol' aggression a little, though not by much. In my defense, the worst injury so far is a mild sunburn, so I consider myself a successful shirpa.