I saw Meshuggah on the 3rd at the Hollywood House of Blues with Cynic (ex-Death) and The Faceless (though we got there late and missed The Faceless), it was amazing. They were so loud and heavy and flawless it put me into a trance... I thought my head was going to explode! We watched from upstairs and the balcony next to ours was literally bouncing up and down and looked like it was going to collapse.
Last week I went with my buddy Tom to see our friend Scott's band, The Growlers, in a warehouse that the dude who runs Ezekiel Clothing owns in Costa Mesa. It was in an industrial district so we were having some trouble finding it until some guy in his mid 30's and a reflective rain jacket asked us if he could help us with anything. "Yeah we're looking for the show," Tom said. The guy pulled open a gate and we walked down the driveway were a ton of kids hanging out. Once we got inside, the show turned out to be a lot better than I expected. There were two empty rooms next to the room with the show in it, one of them had a projector set up and it was playing some bizarre sex cartoons. This place looked like a punk rock art gallery or something. All of the bands were playing psychedelic surf rock, but not all of them did it well haha. One of the supporting bands were called Japanese Motors and they were really good. I guess their singer is some famous pro longboarder and RVCA pretty much just funds their band. I was shocked that the draw was so well considering this was some super DL show in the middle of bunch of warehouses. Tom was saying the high school kids just go to any show there regardless of who's playing. My guess would be that there were close to 600 people in this place; most of them high school aged, all smoking and drinking beers that they'd bought from the makeshift bar in the corner which was obviously not carding. Sketch!
We played The Troubadour for the first time last Wednesday with Final Fight, Media Blitz and Danny's band Crash Akademy AKA "Primer Walls," it was awesome. The show ended up selling out and we had a ton of friends come out, including Four Year Strong and Phil and Sheep who were all in town for the Taste of Chaos Tour.
Thursday night This Is Hell were in town playing with Funeral For A Friend and The Sleeping at The Roxy so Phil and I went because everyone else either had to track or was too scared. We got there just as they'd finished so I walked over to The Key Club to see Madball, Terror, and Stick To Your Guns. I ran into Chad, Kent, Garth from NM (who lives out here now), Anthony Amor (he was doing TIH's merch), Sheep, Robert & Katrina, Steve Looker, and a ton of other friends. Chucky Edge was doing Terror's merch still so it was cool talking to him for a bit as well. The show ruled but Madball didn't play enough songs which sucked, I think there was a curfew.
Friday night Craig Jennings (manager for Bring Me The Horizon) and Kevin Lyman (runs Taste of Chaos & Warped) had a little pre-ToC get together with BMTH at the Sunset Marquis Hotel (balliiiiin!) in Hollywood and Sheep invited us to come and hang out and have a few free drinks courtesy of Mr. Jennings. I went with Mikey and we picked up Phil beforehand for some pre-drinking yogurt festivities at our new favorite Hollywood spot, Cantaloop. Once we got to the hotel it was pretty awkward for a while. We just hung with Flip and Phil and talked with Matt Ash who works with BMTH about booking stuff and sorta shot the shit for a while. We did see Billy Bob Thornton hanging out though, that was kinda rad. Once we all relocated to the bar at the front lobby things started to pick up. Some of the FYS dudes showed up as did Rob Hitt, Brad Gilboe, and an array of other characters that we didn't expect to see. Mike Green even stopped by and helped himself to a slice of some stranger's red velvet birthday cake and stole one for me too before he left. Delicious!
Taste of Chaos was a super fun hangout but the show itself was kind of weird. I ran into a bunch of the Epitaph heads, Brian Dale, Trevor from the Smartpunk stage on Warped this summer, Michelle Yoon, a few other people I hadn't seen in a while, and even made some new friends!
Sunday I went with Tom to see The Swellers play a house show in Orange. The show was super awkward until they played. They were solid as always and the 30 or so people there were having a blast.
Monday I sat around the studio and worked on lyrics all day and then went to our friend Felicia's apartment and hung out with The Swellers dudes for a bit. I left early and got a ride to San Diego with my friend MVM and I've been down here ever since. Got to hang with Mishella which was cool and went to Taste of Chaos down here last night at HOB which was cool too. Thursday's set was a lot better this time around because they played more of the songs I like and during one of the new songs a bunch of us threw these humongous black balloons they'd inflated off of the stage and for the rest of the song they bounced around the room on top of the crowd, looked pretty cool. I go back to the studio tomorrow where we will begin writing lyrics/vocals. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera down with me but luckily there are some pics Felicia took from our show at The Troubadour available here.
XXX
