i like the midwest (part I)

ahhhh ... 5600 miles in 10 days ... and 2200 of those were in the last 33 hours ... it was weird to be sittin back at tumans on monday nite enjoyin my 3rd gin and tonic to think that sunday mornin i was in san francisco ... all in all, it was a good time and we jus covered our costs, so no complaints from this guy ... there was however a disturbing amount of pictures taken of people sleepin ... not sure whats up wit that; i think the drastics jus like to see people at there most vulnerable, like, i coulda killed you right then, but instead i took this picture so youll know what i coulda done ... freaks ...

so since there's been a serious lack of postin to the ol bluntest, ill give you the run down of my past 2 weeks ... or at least what i can remember, since im already sketchy on everything and will probably leave out copious amounts of entertaining anicdotes (ha) ...

• 08.03 ... so lets see, we left at about 11:30pm, after agreein to leave by 10pm at the absolute latest, see we needed to be in denver by 3pm for this ridiculously early show (doors opened at 4 or somethin, on a thursday) ... we had a legitimate reason for leavin late though, as after fillin the cargo area of the van with all our instruments and bags and stuff, we realized we had about 6 more large bags that needed to go in, so we had to take everything out, take out one of the benches and then load everything back in ... this was really unfortunate as it made the whole trip pretty tight for actual passengers (while gear had plenty of breathing room) ... 3 people in the back bench, 2 people in the front bench, and then driver and shotgun ... smostly cause king django had a store on wheels ... about 12 shirts and 15 cds, and a full setup display for all of em (which i must admit looked pretty pro) ... i started off the drivin wed nite, but i dont even remember where our first stop was or who took over after me (im guessin it was chris) ... i musta slept for a little while ...
  
• 08.04 ... got to denver before the club even opened ... hung out in the downtown area for a second, where i finally remembered to put our soon-to-be mascot for the tour bob on our antennae (picture coming soon) ... so this was a really weird show, billed as a matinee of some kind, it was held in this room that was setup like a hockey rink, but sans-ice and hockey players ... the middle of the room was all ages, but around the perimeter was chain link fence, and a really shoddily put together wooden barrier, where from behind you could drink ... this club also had the largest disco ball i had ever seen, it probably mesearued about 6 feet in diameter and was on the whole time we were there, which made playin somewhat difficult as i was constantly blinded while tryin to look for signals from our singer ... pretty sweet ... oh, also, this club was run by a straight crack head (i really wish i had gotten a photo w/ him), but if i may try to do him justice ... he was wearin a straw hat, a 70s disco polyester paisley shirt (tan/gold, w/ huge collars), and a pair of maroon dickies overalls so the shirt was blousing out of his tight-ass overalls, and made him look like a reject from some 1976 futuristic disco moon-farm collective ... he definetly ranks in my top 5 worst dressed ever (unless it was jus laundry day and thats all he had left, but judgin by the state of his teeth, he spends his quarters on rocks, not detergent) ... regardless, the show was ok, there was way more kids then then i expected to be for denver, on a thursday, at 4:30pm ... we played with some local band that was like a ska version of the drastics, they had some nice grooves, but the name escapes me now ... the club also had an excellent collection of pinballs ... eight in total, of which i cant remember a single one now, they also had a pretty large collection of vintage arcade video games, some serious shit too, not jus ms pacman and galaga (again, i wish i had taken a picture, jus now i am startin to realize i shoulda photo-documented better than i did) ... anyway, so despite the fact that we had jus drove 15 hours, we all piled back in the van, and drove another 2 or 3 hours to grand junction (on the very west side of colorado) cause we had a hotel room there for the nite ... im pretty sure i drove the first stretch of this, which was pretty crazy, drivin through the rockies at nite is kinda an intense experience, specially in a big ol van w/ 6 other guys ... we did stop at a wendys half way through and were serenaded by a wendys employee that (what i would bet) was the only jamaican within 100 square miles (after he found out we played reggae) ... he was pretty cool, and we talked about music w/ him for a while ... once we got to the hotel, i dont think we did anything else, whiskey and dice (i think i lost a couple bucks) we were all really exhausted, oh, but the lady at the front desk gave us all warm cookies, that was pretty sweet ...
  
• 08.05 ... grand junction colorado ... festival day, and the festival was at the hotel we stayed at so we jus got up and went downstairs ... overall it was a pretty fun day, though the turn-out was way weak until nite fall (skinda what happens when you have an all festival in the middle of nowhere on a weekday) ... but ska brewing company was there allday w/ brew for the bands, so it was one of those kinda days ... wake up and start drinkin ... id never had ska brew before, and i was pleasently suprised ... like a really creamy sam adams ... you cant get it in chicago yet, but i ended up hangin out wit the owner at nite, and he was sayin he jus wrapped up some deal to start distributin past the west coast, and i think chuck wren of jumpup records was sayin he was gonna talk to delilahs bout gettin ska brew in up there ... that would be outstandin ... anyway, we played our set and then hung around allday gettin drunker till we had to play djangos set (this was the only show were our 2 sets werent right after the other, which made it a bitch to tear down and then setup again) ... i think my favorite group allday was irie beats, very nice sounds, chilled and dubbed slightly ... then there was this all-star thing that was kinda cool, it really jus ended up bein the chris murray combo playin another set with sporadic guest spots by people from other bands ... kinda strange, specially cause they cut djangos set short to start it up ... drastics played a couple tunes on it though, engine 54 and save a bread ... it was fun, everyone had a few in em, and the crowd was really movin by that point ... after the show, we moved inside to the bar, and setup the drastics dub machine as a sound system for chuck to spin on, the hotel was mad strict about it though, and at first wasnt gonna let us, but then relented, but only till midnite ... corporate shit ... i had gone to eat, so needed to catch up, and i think i did 4 shots in about 15 minutes upon my return, the bartended was a sweetheart and jus kept refillin our glasses ... i think we jus chilled out in some kids room for a while (he had a keg in his bathtub) and then jus crashed out ... all in all, a pretty good day, met some cool people, and played a bunch ...
  

ok, thats all you get for now, ill do 3 days at a time ... ill probably get to more before the end of the day ... and ill add pictures once i get em from tom ... so yeah ... im a rockstar ... blahhhhhh