The last week. BEWARE - I moan in this post.

Totally forgot about the jaysus blog this week. It's been nearly a week since Boston. And the week has been demoralizing, rejuvenating, demoralizing again, tiring and finally yesterday, productive. On our way back from the Boston gig we got a mail from the promoter in Northhampton saying that he couldn't get a local support for us and so he doubted anybody would show up if we played. This kind of thing has led us to be really disappointed with our booking agency. We've been let down by them on more then one occasion on this tour. So we spent another day in New Hampshire with Brian and Nataly, which means more great food and hospitality.

We chilled out on Tuesday and once Brian and Nataly were done with work we went down into Brian's basement studio and committed some interest stuff to tape. It may never be heard, it may also be the next Christmas number one. So off to Providence RI on Wednesday. Or not. The van wouldn't start again. Turns out the Alternator was kaput. So was the battery. Damn. $450. We were broke. We are now beyond broke. To make things worse Providence show was badly attended again and the people we were going to stay with never showed up. So we had to drive NYC, a 3.5 hour haul, to the home of America Top Male Model, the frankly beautiful Jon Pack. Obviously he didn't have his face on when we arrived at 0430. Still, it was great to see him. Next day we drove into the City to meet Dudley's girlfriend, the lovely Barb. Dudley is a happy man. Barb is along till the end of the tour. She's so great. Crazy smart too. Soon she will be Dr Barb PHD, and you will all have to kneel. So, after taking in an early Deerhoof show in a sweaty club we got ready to play our big NYC show.

The Mercury lounge is a great venue. And there were lots of folks there. The show was part of the mammoth CMJ music and film festival that runs for 4/5 days in the city. Our label Absolutely Kosher, have this showcase. 5 bands. We were on second. I don't think we have ever played better. People wandered in and stayed and the end of each song was greeted with tons of whooping. We badly needed a good show after the week we've had. The Jim Yoshi Pile-Up also played, and were great. The buzz about town was all about Goblin Cock though. Once again, Dudley got up and sang on the first song with them, skull mask and black robe and all. They slayed. The head of our booking agency showed up too and spent a lot of time apologizing to us about the way the tour has gone. We've been assured that the next tour will be completely different. At one point I wandered down to our dressing room and sat down, Dudley was chatting away to some chap, I then noticed the the guy Dudley was talking to was Rick Fork from Drive Like Jehu/HotSnakes, easily the finest guitar bands of the last 15 years. I've never been star struck before but I had to leave the room as I was afraid I would gush and make a dick out of myself. He'd seen our whole show and really liked it. The Corpo good mood was short lived though. I went to get the van. No van. It had been towed. It wasn't made clear that our parking space became a taxi rank at 2300. Our ticket was issued at 2301, we were towed minutes later. PRICKS! There were 6 of us there when we parked and no one noticed the signs. We made a good chunk of badly needed cash from the NYC show and pretty much all of it went into getting the van back. Sigh.....

If your still reading, I'm nearly done.

To make matters worse (for me) Jill flew back to Toronto on Friday. My Spirits were low as it was , but Jill leaving was the last thing I needed. Having her with me has made the tough parts if this tour tolerable. In foul humor I drove to Philly and we played another badly attended show. Jeff and Judy, our pals from the cross country jaunt drove down from Princeton (where Judy has just started teaching) so seeing them was the only thing I enjoyed about Philly. Well, the cheese-steak was pretty good. We had another long after show drive to Arlington after the show. We were booked into Inner Ear Studios for 6 hours on Saturday, which is conviniently located 5 minutes from our Arlington hosts Donny and Katey's house. The studio is a mecca for DC punk and hardcore, virtually all the important bands from here (Bad Brains, Fugazi, Dismemberment Plan) have recorded here. It was a very productive 6 hours. Hanging out with Donny is such fun too. I get to talk guitars, and it's always an audio-visual experience to be cherished. Show in a cool wee venue tonight.

SO, I'm allowed to moan folks. They don't call it 'paying your dues' for nothing. We're broke and the credit card is taking a pounding. We owe money for T-shirts and the van so we're actually deep in the red. We're learning some valuable lessons on the tour. A week to go. Appearently important folks are coming to see us in Chicago on Friday.