I'm back at work for the first time since Thursday before the Oakland warehouse show. Even after seeing Pink Reason play eight nights in a row, it never got old, and I had as much fun as I expected to and more. As fun as it often is to read Kevin's stories here on the TB Board, the stories are even more fun to hear in person. It sounds like I need to tour the basements of Wisconsin sometime.
Certainly the Pub 340 show in Vancouver on Thursday was my favorite show of the tour, but there was something to like about every show, even the ones that were fraught with technical problems. It was the best-sounding Pink Reason show of the tour, and the Vancouver sandwich of No Feeling and Shearing Pinx was a perfect compliment. Both bands ruled. I probably would've loved it more if No Feeling's vocals were as reverb-drenched as they are on their recordings, but that's a minor quibble. They're a really fun band that I wanna see play my living room someday. And of the several Shearing Pinx shows I've seen...yeah, that was the most tremendous.
Overall, my impressions of Vancouver are even more positive than I expected. What an awesome place for extremely friendly people, awesome cheap food, and rad architecture. And it doesn't hurt that people are making me feel famous or something just for playing Vancouver punk, slop, and noise on the radio every so often. I'm definitely gonna make plans to return again and again. Jeff was very fun to hang out with. He reminded me of the Canadian version of Mario "Plastic Idol" Solis. Loves to geek out on punk records, has 'em all filed incredibly neatly in an immaculate and highly organized home....just like Mario!
Another rad thing about this tour is how our itinerary lined up so well with the New Flesh...this crushing Baltimore brutal-scuzz band. They played together with Pink Reason in Oakland, again in SF at the Hemlock, and then in Portland at the Food Hole. The next night in Seattle, they played at separate venues, but the fellas met up with us at Funhouse and hung out 'til pretty late. Great band, great guys.
Portland wasn't as fun as usual on Monday, but the partytime on Friday night and breakfast on Saturday morning more than made up for that. I guess a lot of people were outta town (being a city of young carpet-baggers, I should've expected it), but the new Rotturé club is pretty outstanding as a space. Moody, weird, cool-ass "Bat signal" sign projected onto the neighbor's wall to announce it's open...good sound w/ incredibly pro gear, free food for bands that was certified fucking gourmet (eat up to $14 worth!), and the most drink comps of any other place we hit. But it's off to a crawling start as far as crowd support apparently. The place is big enough to have certain "mid-major" type bands pack 'em in. But it's in a weird location...a sorta dead, easy-to-ignore part of town in the rusting industrial section below the main Willamette bridges. If you live in Portland, you really oughta go see shows at this place.
Following that show, my friend Ryan from Night Wounds took us to a rad late-night eats spot where I had the best mac & cheese of my life, and then we went to his place where one of his semi-belligerently-drunk roommates kept us entertained for a while. This guy was originally from Arcata, but somehow, he was the only guy Pink Reason met on tour who had enough of an asshole streak in him to match their brashness. It was the funniest conversation I've been witness to all year, I think.
Saturday breakfast was at the Hungry Tiger, the near-daily haunt of Dead Moon's Andrew Loomis. We didn't see him there, but we did all get the most ridiculously giant chicken-fried steak and egg breakfast any of us had ever seen. It was like the Black Bear Diner's "bigfoot" breakfast on 'roids. The steaks took up an entire platter and were covered in ungodly amounts of sausage gravy. Like a half-inch-thick layer all the way across. And the cook said she made "too much gravy" so she brought another heaping bowl out. Our eggs, potatoes, and toast was crammed onto another platter. Three dudes...six giant platters. I could barely eat half of it.
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