Show Journal 2003-09-19
Wow, who expected such a rocking show in Sandy? Fun show tonight. After some sound issues the first band with the ever changing name was pretty good. Countdown sounded damn amazing as always. Their fine assortment of new and amusing stickers was priceless. Plus it was probably the loudest I had ever heard them as well. I actually missed all of Idle Class as Justin and I decided to venture over to Taco Time. We paid the price though as both of us became ill within minutes. Should of stuck with the cookies instead. We got back just in time for Statch’s first song and I’m amazed they played as well as they did with all of what Tim referred to as “distractions”. Think about their name for a minute and you will understand. Good to see the mighty Statch on stage again as they have been missed. Our set was fun. Justin lost his shoes, Dave insulted anyone he saw fit and somewhere in there we played two new songs that only a handful of people have heard before. Huge thanks to Alex for hooking up the show, as well as props to our friends from Longview, Newberg, Bend and Clatskanine.
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New shirts, new shirts, new shirts! Yep, we’ve got a brand new and somewhat evil looking t-shirt design featuring a hearse on it. Also, we’ve got the old school Flaming 800 Ball shirts in every size again. Word. Also, in purely self glorifying news we now officially have over 500 pictures in our pictures section. Plus we just topped 125 flyers archived in the show journal. Consider this shit super sized sucka!
Show Review
The vocals for this band were totally awesome. Not only great melodic sound in a kind of deep voice, but a great screamer too. The back up vocalist was just funny but also good. They really played to the crowed and had a couple come up and sing, including their merch guy, who frigin rocked even with water getting poured in his ear by the singer. All in all it was a lot of fun no matter who was on stage. I gotta pick favs and tonight it was the headlining band for a change. (Anti_StatusPDX / nwequation.com)
Show Journal 2003-09-10
I gotta be honest I was totally hoping to play on the big stage upstairs but it wasn’t meant to be as they ended up moving the show downstairs to Lola’s Room. Initially I was worried because our first show there back in ’99 completely sucked. Fortunately they have improved the sound system and added a stage. Much better. Best thing about the Crystal is that they help you load and unload your gear. Next best thing is that you even get free food and a backstage area. Not that we really used the backstage area or anything. After so many years of not going backstage I still feel like I’m not supposed to be there so I usually hang out in the crowd with everyone else. Anyway, no problems to report during our set and it was very nice to get such a good response on a weekday night. Irish Car Bomb was ok but was plagued with bad sound. Useless ID sounded great and more importantly since they are from Israel we can add them to our list of international bands we’ve played which I think now comes to 5 different countries. No Use For A Name sounded awesome. It had been a while since I had listened to them so when they started busting out the old songs I was completely impressed. After the show we ended up going to the Montage with a rather large group of people. Pretty fun until the German guy started crying. Never mind. Thanks to everyone who showed up especially the message board crew who will be thanked despite their “gift” to me that was a black ribbon that reads ‘old fart’. The ribbon wasn’t bad but I ended up sitting on it which did not feel good. Oh yeah, the diss of the night belonged to Mocephus. Jeremy and Jeff from NSR were selling our merch this evening. I asked how it went and they proclaimed from across the room “Dude, we hooked you guys up”. In front of everyone and without hesitation Rick immediately chimes in “Yeah and about 5 other guys as well”. Guess you had to be there. Thanks to everyone who came early to see us and to all at Thrasher Presents and the Crystal.
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Our dream of playing with Zeke just got up and walked away. Turns out they had to reschedule their show to a day we couldn’t play. Bummer.
Show Journal 2003-09-05
Finally, after 5 years of application letters and application fees we were deemed worthy of playing MusicFest NW. Was it worth the wait? Yeah, I think it was. The last time we played the Cobalt was about 5 years ago (before Justin and Jim) and at the time it barely even had a stage. I’ll admit we were a little surprised to get a bar show with all of these old school punk bands but it worked out great because it was a big crowd (100+) that most of whom had never seen or heard of us before. The only real downer was that I missed all the other bands at our show except for the Hazmats (who were great by the way). Thanks to the MusicFest NW folks. Maybe we can do it again in another 5 or 6 years.
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This won’t really be much of a surprise to anyone but Jim is once again “officially” in the band. Despite our efforts at hazing and public embarrassment he continued to stick it out. Why so long for this seemingly inevitable announcement? Because we’re guys and guys don’t like to talk. Well, that and we had to wait for him to cancel all of his prior engagements with the Shriners.
Show Journal 2003-08-21
Tonight’s show was a benefit for the dog poisonings in Laurelhurst Park. If you aren’t from these parts there was some slimeball that went around putting poison in food and leaving it for the dogs to eat. It ended up killing a bunch of dogs and many more are still sick. As Dave would say … “scumbag”. Anyway, the show was cool. Ever We Fall was really good. Kind of technical emo-ish stuff with a slightly heavy edge. They don’t really sound like anyone else and it’s kind of refreshing. The next band up was SYX and inexplicably we had to follow them. They are heavy. Real heavy. We are not. We felt like wusses but what else is new. They sounded great and it was kind of nice to play with a band with a different style of music. Highlights of our set included me pouring water in the ear of Mocephus while he sang, Justin jumping off the drum riser and stumbling face first into the monitor and Jim horribly messing up a song but since it’s so new no one besides us (and Dan) realized it. Thanks to the Paris and all who supported the cause.
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Big shows to mention! First off is our appearance on Musicfest NW. If you are going to be in town for it please check out our set at the Cobalt. Yeah, I know there are a million other good bands playing but the Cobalt is a cool place to hang out and by 11:00 you’ll probably need a short break from all the sensitive indie rock bands. Bigger show news is that we are playing with No Use For A Name and None More Black at the Crystal Ballroom! I certainly never thought we would ever get a show at the Crystal, let alone two. Yes, we are totally lucky and yes, we are totally excited. Even though it’s two months away the last show worth mentioning is the Halloween show in Longview. If you live anywhere within 100 miles of Longview go ahead and mark your calendar now because you will be foolish to miss this show that is being lined up for you. Oh yeah, anyone need a new lunchbox? Don’t ask.
Show Journal 2003-08-11
Tonight rocked. Seriously, it was totally fun. I was stoked for the skate demo and had been rambling on about it excitedly for at least a week and it didn’t disappoint. It really brought back memories of the old days when I was coordinated, flexible and not scared of falling and breaking my hip. The skate park there is in an old movie theater and oddly enough was a pretty good place for a show. The bands setup on top of a large flat ramp on the side of the room and the people can watch from the floor area. Much better than our ill fated trip to Utah back in 2001 where we were on a 10 foot high ramp playing to a dozen people who were 30 feet away because of the banks. Of course that show sucked for a number of other reasons, none of which I really want to think about right now. Anyway, the crowd tonight was awesome and this show was right up there with any of our best Longview shows. I missed Unlisted perform. By the time I decided to abandon our merchandise and watch them they had already finished. A Time To Many sounded rock solid and hopefully we’ll get to play with them again sometime soon. As I implied earlier our set was a blast. We ended up playing 4 songs from the Kelvis which was cool for us. We hadn’t played ‘On My Side’ live in literally over 2 years. Lots of crowd participation including the always creepy vision of people other than Dave singing Berserker. To be honest it’s still creepy seeing Dave sing it but these are the things you must accept playing in this band. Huge thanks to Derek and the Board Room, the CTL boys, the message board faithful and the large group who stuck around to see a band they had never seen before.
