Saturday, August 25

Nick and I got up early-ish and took a walk to go pick up our rental car. We went back to the hotel and got the boys and loaded up. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, not too bad though. We made it a bit out of the city before pulling over and getting some Taco Bell. (Why do they not serve breakfast burritos there? It would make so much sense!)

Back on the road, we didn’t get too much further before hitting a huge traffic jam, which ended in the highway being closed, without any real indication of a detour. That was not so cool. We sorta followed all the other traffic for a while, until we got a handle on our location and then Alex saved the day by Google-mapping us on his iPhone. Anyway, we found our way back to the reopened highway, and I napped for a while, and eventually we made it to Portland. Ground Kontrol is this amazing old-skool arcade, with tons of beautiful vintage games. Wow. Anthony, the owner, set Sean up with a handful of quarters and sent him on his way. I set up our merch table, even though we had a ridiculously small amount of stuff left, just some side project CDs and teeny-size t-shirts.

The early show was all-ages and the crowd really did cover all age ranges. Mostly teenagers. We played w/Benco, who's one of our old-schooliest fans from back in the day, so that was cool. The sound was kinda rough since our late arrival meant no soundcheck for us. We still had an okay time though, and mixed up our set list a little bit. But by the end of that set, we were pretty exhausted, it had been an ass-kicking couple of days, and we were like “oh man, we have to do it again in a few hours…”

the early show

We had a couple of hours to chill out, so we met up with Jeff and Eileen and their friend DJ Swank (who had been playing some hott jamms in between bands) and we headed out to check into our hotel. My plan was to get some food since we hadn’t eaten since Taco Bell that morning, and I was really hungry, but when we checked into the hotel they gave us large, warm chocolate chip cookies, and I could not say no to that. So then the plan changed to we were gonna relax in our rooms for a while. But it quickly became apparent that we would be in severe danger of falling asleep forever and ever. And I was a bit unsatisfied with my limited clothing choices for the gig that night and had noticed a mall across the street… So, Sean, Alex, Gordon, and I took a little walk and did some shopping. I did amazing power-shopping (since the mall closed in a half-hour, and stores were literally closing around me). I did find an acceptable outfit though. And then some. We went back to the hotel long enough to fancy up and then went back to the club.

I am glad we got there on the early-ish side, because I’ve gotta say that the folks opening for us were amazing! It’s pretty rare that I’m that into all of the bands that we’re randomly playing with. Operation Mission was first and that put off my plan to go get a decent meal because I wanted to watch him. PGE were awesome music to play video games to. And Michele Wylen was so ass-kicking and also totally adorable. I think all the boys (and probably a lot of girls) in that place totally fell in love with her. The vibe of the night was a lot different than the daytime too, a lot more energy, a lot less daylight.

I stepped out for a quick dinner around the corner, and played a lovely old pinball game sometime in there too. Mostly I just watched Sean playing some Star Wars video game and Gordon playing a Star Trek pinball game.

And then it was time for our set, and it was a really great note to end on. Really fun crowd, we had a fantastic time. I even got A BLISTER from banging on our drum machine during “Brainpower.” How rokk is that? (Note: I don’t even really play the drum machine all that much on that song, and it’s really just more of a symptom of me being a giant baby.) At the end of the night, my voice was pretty much no-longer-there after so many shows.
Anyway, awesome times, and we stuck around for a while after the show before finally heading back to our hotel for some quality sleeping.

These pix are all courtesy of Gordon Merrick.