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Friday, September 28, 2012
...and we finally made it to Spokane
The Hop in Spokane, WA
w/ Nasalrod, Mercy Brown, Dysfunktynal Kaos, Boneye, & Abode for the Dead
“Hey, look at those cows! They're outstanding in their field.”
And, hey-- We're actually making it to Spokane this time. We stopped in Ellensburg for old time's sake... and Mexican food... and gas... but it's nice to be charging east and full of hope.
It was a long haul, about five hours, and we left early. Joel started to get road hypnosis by the end. Michelle was tuned out for a lot of it, dancing in her headphones. Literally.
She popped them off to see what Tyler, Joel, and I were head-bobbing to. "I looked up any you were all grooving, so I had to see if what you were listening to was better than what I was listening to." It was Joel's mp3s on random-- we were all head bobbing to Gojira.
Actually, "random" for Joel's player means "a lot of Dead Milkmen and Burning of I." Which is all pretty fantastic driving music. Even in our van's tinny speakers, those Burning of I songs are stand-outs... they were my first write-up, and like most freshman efforts, I look back on that piece and think they deserve a better review. They should be heard-- get their records. And hey, we're playing with them at The Kraken in October.
But I digress...
While we didn't actually get there last time, Ellesnburg definitely wasn't this hot last time out. Spokane was really, really sweaty. We got to the venue before the doors unlocked and found a pub around the corner with WiFi, air conditioning, and $2 Blue Moons.
The Spokane crowd was really nice-- Spokaners, as far as I can tell, are really nice in general-- and I was handed a parking lot Pabst tallboy while we were loading in. The end of that beer was like swallowing sand... I drank water through most of the night.
We initially balked at the pay lot behind The Hop... until we saw the price. Paid parking lots are expensive in Seattle. The lot we were in, noon, evening, and night, was $1. I think we can handle that.
ubik. and Nasalrod were absolutely the weirdest bands of the night, and different kinds of weird, so one of us couldn't inoculate the crowd for the other. There was a lot of metal metal metal on tap from the Spokane bands, and we were in the middle of the whole thing.
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| Nasalrod at The Hop |
And we met Bono. He covered Alice in Chains. It's rare to see a club empty out so quickly.
While that was happening, we discovered the "backstage" area-- the kitchen is right by the stage at the Hop, so I didn't round that corner until I saw Joel, Tyler, Tim, Kat, and Justin head over there. There are stairs down into the basement with a "staff and performers only" sign above it.
Hey-- I'm a performer!
and the next door says "Employees only," and, since the club was going to pay us, I considered myself qualified.
Well, that, and half my band was already in there.
Pretty keen little place, all told. I liked The Hop quite a bit-- they mic everything, which is not my personal preference, but Nasalrod (who's seen us often enough to know) says we sounded good, and they sounded great as well. The sound guy definitely knew what he was doing.
The show ended at midnight, so we hit Spokane and found some places to be... which included (and I wish I had a picture of this) Justin surfing on top of the Nasalrod van holding on to Michelle sitting outside their passenger window (she was his seatbelt).
At bar time.
In the middle of downtown.
I, being the devil-may-care rocker that I am, was just waiting for tour to stop dead as Nasalrod and ubik. each had to bail a member out of jail. I am old and stodgy. Of course, that's just me being neurotic. Nothing bad happened to anyone.
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