Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Oh yeah...

After driving from 2 am to 5 pm on Friday, we are back in the Great
Lakes state! The show Friday night at the Black Shamrock was great. We
got to play Sleep Bellum Sono again, and those guys are amazing.
Thought and Memory also rocked the house. Ahmad raised the roof during
their entire set. We had a lot of fun, but not too much fun... we knew
what was ahead of us. Because of Jon's craziness and wanting to run
the Crim on Saturday morning, and my needing to be at work, we decided
to drive right from the show in East Meadow (Long Island) all the way
to Michigan. So drive we did. Keith and I took turns driving from 2 am
to 8 am, and then Jon and Ahmad took over until we got home.
We made a slightly random stop in Toledo after finding out that
Keith's parents and grandpa were in town (also from Michigan). So we
hung out, and got lunch at a yummy eatery with delicious waffle fries!
.
Jon kicked ass in the Crim (which is a big race in Flint where he ran
10 miles).

I heard he earned a gold star. And before we knew it, it
was Sunday and we had another show at the amazing Maruma open house
('09). We partied hard. Really hard. We watched some Guitar Hero
prodigies, and ate cake. We left the night with a seemingly 30 lb bag
full of meatballs. What more could you ask for?
All in all, the tour was great!

cathy

Thursday, August 20, 2009

I thought we were tight, CT. I thought we were like THIS (fingers crossed).

Despite Tony and Jeff's best efforts to put on a good Tuesday night show at Cousin Larry's in Danbury, we were simply out of our element. The place sounds amazing, but unfortch no one came out, and winning over bar crowds isn't exactly our strong suit. We even had a heckler or two. I personally enjoyed Failure's Art and Supervolcano, but on the whole, Connecticut can suck it.

So for Wednesday, it was back to the basement, where we belong. Thanks to: Sam's parents, for letting us be loud in their home; Karate Christ, Along the Way, and In the Clear for letting us on the bill; and Joseph and everyone else who came out to watch us and/or bought a shirt and/or EP. I hope those disposable camera shots surface at some point. My only regret is that we didn't have time to partake in the rope swing / pond activities, which sounded scary but awesome.

BIG THANKS to Keith's sister Amy and her boyfriend Jeff for letting us stink up their living room for the last three nights. We had a blast sweating it out with you in the van at 60 mph on the way to and from the show.

Today, we wave a final goodbye to Providence, RI. On the way out, I will make sure to keep an eye out for Harry's Mutt Cutts van. Maybe we'll even stop at Freda Feltcher's in Cranston for some French tickling. Hopefully we don't have to trade in our van straight up to some kid for his moped.

I will now leave you with some assorted tour photos and maybe even a few videos of us being ballers in Philly.











-Jon

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Feel better Hampton, thanks for the brownies!

What a day! After a long drive from Erik's in New Brunswick we finally made it to Hagerstown, Maryland for an awesome afternoon show at Hampton's. Sadly, Hampton is insanely ill and fighting for his life against an unnamed ailment (probably the flu). But he's still young and spry, feel better buddy!

The show was totally awesome. We played with local badasses Eat People and мища(pronounced Mischa), as well as The Usual and Sunlines. Because it was an afternoon show in a garage, it was hot as hell and my bass is now covered in delicious sweat streaks. COOL! But it was totally awesome anyway and can't wait to get back to Hagerstown.

Post show, we realized that we had no where to stay! So instead of staying in Maryland, we decided to supplement our 4 hour drive from New Brunswick to Hagerstown with a (supposedly) 6 hour drive to Rhode Island where Keith's sister Amy lives. So we said good bye to Hampton and thanked his mom for the yummy brownies and Gatorade and hit the road around 7ish. It is now 3:20am and we are still only in Connecticut. Why? Because being from Michigan, we underestimated the severity (and smelliness) that is I-95 traffic in New Jersey. Tolls are now the arch nemesis of Empire! Empire!. We are now about 2 hours behind schedule and $12.10 poorer. New York City tolls were no help either. So in short, thanks, tolls. You're a douche.

Here's a video from Hamptons! Enoy!



-Ahmad

Monday, August 17, 2009

So hot...

alright, it's finally my turn to update this beast!

where to start? i'm going to go back and touch on the algernon show and say that it was amazing, but it was also a total bummer because we ran into some technical difficulties in the first time for like two years. bad timing! so we scrambled around during our set and tried to figure it out, and we tried every option we thought it might be until we finally figured out that it was cathy's cab. which is pretty random because those things hardly ever are the problem. but joe from algernon let us borrow his cab (thanks!) and we barrelled through three more songs for a short but fun set. sweet redemption.

after that, we hung out with jon and ross from snowing, and heard how they mispronounce "tour". also had an invigorating chat about gilmore girls, which is an amazing show if you didn't already know. rory is a hottie! and kirk is now doing those kgb commercials! bill buckner!

in the morning, jon and his parents totally made us waffles! heck yeah!

then we set up for new jersey, but we had some time to kill, and it was jon's birthday so we decided to take a little detour to philly. i am not going to lie, philly cheese steaks were the motivation, and it was all worth it.



there was a basketball court right across the street and jon had brought along a ball, so he grabbed it, and we proved to all philly we had absolutely no game. fresh prince eat your heart out!

after that, we fulfilled jon's life-long dream of running up the steps of the philadelphia art museum ala rocky, and it was an epic moment for all of us. except for maybe cathy because she was far too lazy to run up the steps and follow him. tsk! tsk!

i'm going to go on a small tangent here to explain one of the reasons it was such an epic moment. jon, for whatever reason, is not a fan of sleeping bags. the man refuses to take one with him, and to everyone else, they are tour essentials. last time we brought and extra for him, and it never left the van. he is a anti-sleeping bag semite.

at any rate, in leau of a sleeping bag, jon instead dons a fantastic gray sweatsuit to sleep in. and he just lays on the floor and goes to sleep. i imagine in his dreams he is sweating to the oldies and jazzersizing like there is no tomorrow. richard simmons eat your heart out!

so what could more perfect for jon's ascension to rocky-like status than wearing this magnificent jumpsuit? complete with incredible rocky impressions and gray glory, jon pumped his way to the top. my heart almost stopped when he reached the top, and if i had seen the movie in the last ten years, i might have cried. ahmad did.



thinking of sylvester stallone reminds me of rambo as well, but more of the nintendo game than the movie. for those of you foolish enough not to know of the glory of this nintendo game, you should seriously reevaluate your lives. i am tempted to post nothing but screen shots of the action as opposed to actual video, but since it was jon's birthday, i will pass. still, it might be a good time to buy stock in nintendo, because after this blog post i am guessing stock will rise at least 10,000% solely from people purchasing this game.

then it was time to head back to the hot, hot, sauna-like van. let me take a minute to appreciate this glorious piece of machinery: there is no air-conditioning and all of the sudden this very mild summer has taken a turn for the worse and actually decided to grow some balls.
bad timing! to make matters far worse, the driver's side window is a total jerk and refuses to roll down, and all the windows in the back only open a crack, which does little to nothing to cool things down. all of this is a dreaded combination for august, and it is safe to say we have all sweat off like five pounds already.

while cathy and i took a nap on the way to jersey, ahmad and jon were stuck in a good ol' sunday night traffic jam. all of which meant we missed our good friends deer friends set, as well as sad zombie. we were totally bummed. all the kids at the show told us that it was probably beach traffic of people coming back to jersey, but i would rather believe it was a conspiracy designed to make us late for the show.

after we got there, we immediately did some surgery on cathy's cab, and got that bad-boy back in action and had a great time rocking out in a hot, hot basement. though it was debatable which was hotter: the basement or the van.

after the set, we hung out with jersey's finest people! erik, my friend, you are an amazing guy, and we had a good time talking music and maps. we will forever cherish the map you gave us, and as we speak the m and m's are melting to a glorious mess in our van.

next stop, maryland!

xoxo

keith <3<3<3<3<3<3



with a cartridge like that, you are already getting a boner. even if
you are a chick.




...and now you are spent!

i am in the van right now so i can't upload the video's, but they will
be up soon!

-Keith

Sunday, August 16, 2009

From the Galm Household ..

Tonight's show was RAD! We got to hang with the Algernon dudes, Paul and Marco from Great Friend of Mine, and Ross and John from Snowing. In fact, I'm writing this from the Galm household, where John's parents have generously allowed us to crash (on beds even!). So in the spirit of kindness, touring, and pop(not soda) a huge shout out to The Galms for being awesome human beings. This blog post is officially dedicated to them.

We still haven't managed to get pictures or video footage from our shows. We actually had a bit of a technical mishap tonight, so you may not have even wanted to see us in 10 minutes of "shiiiiiiiiiiit". But we still have goodies.

Here's us post late-night dinering with John and Ross:



And here's 19 year old John on the front of a local magazine, reping AUDIO RECORDING CLUB. There are pics floating online, but this is the original from the guest bedroom.



LOL.

Also, happy birthday to our Jon. He turns 24 today! We're taking him to a movie.

YEAH!

-Ahmad

Saturday, August 15, 2009

I felt pretty good about it.

So first off, thanks to Presea, Ossimer, and Orphans for playing with us last night. All the bands sounded ridunkulous. Also, thanks to Tony, Cassie, and Eli from Stay Young House for all your hospitality / vegan pasta / multitude of cats to play with. We are all very jealous of your humongous low-rent, no-noise-ordinance house, located in an only mildly scary neighborhood.

We are currently on our way to Bethlehem, PA's Secret Art Space to play with (OMG) Algernon Cadwallader, along with the Joint Chiefs of Math, We Were Skeletons, and Great Friend of Mine. We're pretty excited for this one- as in 'spend 10 extra minutes picking out your outfits' excited. Will Keith continue to stubbornly wear tight jeans in 90 degree weather, or will he finally break down and sport his more practical, yet less fashionable 1997 Umbro soccer shorts? Find out tonight at 7 p.m ET.

...I am now contractually obligated to embed this youtube video of us with Annabel outside a Toledo Big Boy on Thursday night:



-Jon

Friday, August 14, 2009

Going to Pittsburgh!

YO. Finally we've gotten a chance to update this thing! The past couple nights have been pretty awesome. Wednesday we had our kickoff at the Montie House in East Lansing with Cheap Girls, The Give A Hoot, and our pals The Plurals. A good time was had! But we missed Tenement and The Used Kids, who were stuck in Columbus. Shout outs to Mac for loaning us his speakers and my buddy Nate Papi-Wark for helping us set up the show.

Last night we played in Toledo with Annabel, Husky Puppies, and Slingshot Dakota. For reasons we won't go into, the show ended up running super late and a couple sets were cut short. It was a slightly shady, but otherwise, awesome show featuring Slingshot's rad as hell Fugazi cover. We also met two lovely animals, Molly and Dodger. I'll put a picture of our late night Big Boy excursion when it's up.

Today we're driving to Pittsburgh and are armed with Vitamin Water and cream soda. See you all there!

Here are a couple videos to tide you over.





-Ahmad

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Summer Tour '09...


8.12 East Lansing, MI
8.13 Toledo, OH
8.14 Pittsburgh, PA
8.15 Bethlehem, PA
8.16 New Brunswick, NJ
8.17 Hagerstown, MD
8.18 Danbury, CT
8.19 Centerville, MA
8.20 East Meadow, NY
8.24 Lansing, MI

Let the fun begin!


-Ahmad