the 3/22/13 update of Brain Tumors in Birmingham, AL with Anwar Sadat and Drones will probably appear in an issue of Maximum Rocknroll coming up fairly soon. maybe by the time it comes out i will have lost the weight needed to fit into the badass shirt i got from them.
so i am a real fucking stain on the face of the bandblogging planet. luckily, there aren’t many of us out there and i suspect the few people that chronicle their piss-poor band of pissheads’ adventures are as busy and as broke as i am. i’m not going to beat myself up over not keeping this up as much as i’d like to. i’ll find something else to beat myself up over. then i’ll post pictures.
i’ve been slacking on discovering new music/rediscovering old music. i’m still on this Moody Blues/Marilyn Manson kick. could have something to do with the energy drinks i consumed during our trek through the central part of the country and into Montana. i call it the “Fuckin’ Faggot Tour”, after the name i was called in Billings, MT. i was so mad after the dude muttered that. then i remembered the reason i don’t fight people – because i will probably try to kill them.
so we did this tour and total fest and played and saw mark masters and did other shit. that’s been keeping me busy. that and going to The Gathering of the Juggalos.
i got sent to The Gathering of the Juggalos. i got sent there with Daniel Hill from Cross Examination. we got paid to write about it. the articles appeared all across the websites of the nation’s weekly publications that people complain about. it was difficult and scary. we lived and slept in a minivan for four days. five days? i cant remember at this point. ask me about it sometime and watch me get that thousand year stare. or just read all these links and call me a poser sellout etc etc etc. and watch me own up to it.
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/author.php?author_id=4054
all i want to convey to you is that Juggalos are not too different from you or me. when you see them, give them a “whoop whoop” and some random pills and some mountain dew if faygo is not available. they will love you forever, like the angry neighbor’s angry dog who you fed some raspberries once and then stopped barking at you all the time.
here is the shit about new orleans.
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this dude with facial tattoos in Milwaukee told us our show would be rotten because we were playing at this place no one had ever heard of called The Mushroom. everyone else told us that the show would tank because it was on the opposite side of town. we were told to get in touch with whoever runs The Bakery, but by my estimation, the punks in New Orleans (who we are told adore our friends, Wild Child), are off the grid. true punks. no internet, no phones. no bullshit. i imagine there are a lot of vests. maybe one of them has a Tumblr to communicate with the outside punk world. i still dont know what Tumblr is aside from a place where attractive artpunx post a macbook picture of themselves amidst 300 still shots from Dario Argento films.
maybe animated gifs of Oprah shooting lasers out of her eyes. ah fuck, the internet.
so we drove from Birmingham, stopping at various sweaty service stations while i worried about getting jumped in New Orleans over an article i wrote about Mystikal being an insane sex offender. there were nice people at these gas stations. there were heat and strange insects at these gas stations.
we arrived in New Orleans and were almost immediately killed by a car cutting us off in high speed traffic. after the shock, we made our way through the city and to The Mushroom, which had a small sign in front with our band name misspelled. we laughed and then cheered upon realizing we could drink while walking down the street.
we loaded our gear up a few flights of stairs to notice that we were basically playing in a fucking head-shop. the smell of patchouli filled our dumb faces. some of Joel’s friends also showed up. i did not write their names down because i am a dick, but i remember one of them was wearing this shirt with metal elements written as metal band names.
me, joel, and his friends walked to a bar where i talked to a girl wearing a red hot chili peppers muscle shirt. she was from wisconsin.
at some point, i got in touch with some of Wild Child’s friends who had a show running downtown. there were a few bands on tour (none i had heard of) and a traveling freakshow that was also performing at the house. i pressured everyone to go and play but they pressured me to shut up.
one of my favorite friends and the man i cite as “the best writer i know”, Mario (MZA) moved to New Orleans with one of the sweetest little ladies i have met. if i am not mistaken, the three of us were all intertwined within the same LIVEJOURNAL music rating community. the community also had members that would later go on to form the bands LIKE RATS (chicago) and YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN (toronto?) ah fuck, the internet. Mario and Samantha were a big reason why we chose to stop in the humid crime-zone known as “the big easy”. they joined us at the pipe palace with the autographed Dave Matthews Band poster in the bathroom.
i didnt write down anything about one of the bands, but i did write down that Anne Frankenstein was fucking great old-school screamo shit. real interesting mix of kids, too – the kind of show where you assume you were maybe the 5th punk band from out of town you thought any of these people had seen. there was a good crowd and we had fun. i met someone from THOU, a band i still haven’t seen but everyone loves in Minneapolis. there were also some sketchy dudes hanging outside of the show who i thought were drug dealers who came inside to see the show.
during our set, i went into a rack of shirts and pulled out the exact Cradle of Filth t-shirt i wanted and threw it at a bunch of people. earlier, i had asked the store manager if i could wear 30 hemp necklaces that they were selling while we played, but he refused to accommodate me and my artistic vision. i also stepped on pat’s cable and snapped off his input on his amp. fuck.
then somehow, i threw my fucking back out. hard. i had a tastefully grungy punk gal walk on my back, which may have made it worse. i had a buff-bro-dog outside the bro-bar pick me up to try and crack my back, which may have made it worse. i stretched, which may have made it worse. then i ate a ton of greasy pizza and probably threw some of it up and spit up some blood. it was light colored, so i didn’t worry.
from what i recall, New Lands were good, too. but my pain prevented me from fully enjoying it.
through no fault of the pizza or the blood, two hours later i found myself standing outside a bar, propping myself up with a broken bannister rail i had found outside of a club. although unable to walk, i still managed to get a birthday party to vacate through the use of Pink Floyd’s 23 minute long opus, “Echoes”, on the jukebox. pat, joel, his friends, dan, and mario sat inside drinking cheap domestic beers. i went back to the van and laid down while everyone met up with the Anne Frankenstein boys.
we ended the evening hanging out on Mario and Samantha’s balcony. i slept on the hardwood floor in a hopeless attempt to fix my back. it didn’t work.
i woke up early and hobbled around the apartment over to my phone. i began calling every single chiropractor i could find in new orleans. i found one who was willing to work on me for cash. he had a practice located near a Wendy’s across a bridge.