Nashville! Sept.9-10

So it’s Sept.9, Tuesday. We made it to Nashville safely and roll up to the venue. The Crystal Mud System Warehouse is a cool work/live space in what’s basically sort of like a big, single level garage. The place is rented by Bridget, of the noise project Mouth Pet and also a member of one of my favorite bands, Do It Big (or D.I.B.).

Show starts around 10PM with “The Hijacker” which is RJ from Right Arm Severed. As it’s been explained to me, the performance is based on an obscure Marvel comics villain. He wears a black mask and has a cardboard tank cutout stuck to the front of his amp. Then he plays random stuff on a Casio SK-5 while ranting that he has “lasers, and missiles! And lasers!” Using scissors, he cuts each of the drawn missiles from the cardboard tank and throws them at the audience. I don’t know if my description made it sound as entertaining as it was.

RADIO SHOCK is up next and thanks to a longer guitar cord that Brian gave me, I was able to break out some dance moves and get a little more expressive. I think I was overloading the signal at some point though because some songs turned into big muddy fart noise when I played too many things at once, but I’m sure it still sounded good.

DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS had some technical issues setting up, but once they got rolling, they did a great sounding set. I’m starting to wish they would do a second song.

HYLAND HOLOGRAM played last of our crew, which I insisted they had to do because they wired up a light show for the night. I guess the light show burned out not long into their set though because there was a bit of smoke and a burning smell and then the lights stopped. The set was awesome though, gets a little tighter each night and Lance was totally jazzed throughout.

UNICORN HARD-ON is the headliner. Val does a long, slower, noisy trance-out song first, then a dancey, robotic, synth-hurricane song second. It’s denser and more complex than anything I’ve heard from her yet. Sounds great through all those amps we brought.

All around great show and an appreciative crowd. I talked to a cool young guy who bought something from everyone and talked about how he saw Mincemeat or Tenspeed last time he was in Nashville and that was the first noise show he ever saw. That’s the best kind of thing you can hear. This was the best show also for people buying stuff and we even got some pretty good donation money.

We all sleep in the space. There’s a couch, some foam blocks, and a mattress which I share with Brian. I chose the mattress because the adorable little kitten which lives in their place was laying down on the mattress and I wanted to sleep with the kitten. However, during the night it somehow got shut in another room because a few of us woke up to it crying to get out.

I do a little meditation while its still dark (inside anyway) and quiet and then head outside into the bright sun and chat with Richie for a while. When others arise we start moving stuff and Brian takes the van to an auto garage next door. Their assessment is just that our tire is totally shot and they send him to a place down the road to buy a new one. Tour funds cover it with still some left over for gas to the next town. Birmingham! So far I have actually not had to pitch in money for anything on this tour (except my own food) which is pretty amazing. I always have to rent a car on my own and start out like $500 in the hole. If I sell more CDs I may even be able to come out even on food money.

After getting the new tire, loading up and rousing Bridget, we all head over to Ren’s house to cook some eggs and make some coffee. Listen to a tape of “Guy Mann-Dude” – some seriously wanky thrash metal - on the porch. Check email and post some blog posts from Ren’s computer, plus I score a Lazy Magnet tape which he’s putting out. Gas up, put some oil in the van and we’re back on the highway.

It’s September 10th today which means they did the first proton collisions in the new LHC particle accelerator. Saw a short story on the internet while checking email that says it went well. A few people on the road have been mentioning this and I’ve been trying to explain what it’s about since I’m a science nerd. It’s a rather suspenseful and exciting time for physics. By the way, if you were worried about them creating black holes like you may have heard about, there’s no reason to worry. There won’t be black holes and even if there were, they’re no threat because they’d evaporate instantly, and even if they didn’t evaporate they’d just drift out into space anyway. And we’re all still here and it’s a beautiful day so obviously the world didn’t end.

Birmingham next!