tour diary – friday 03.28 – athens, ga
we drove through the night. well, ryan and chad drove through the night with me taking a turn as the sun rose. we stopped only for the occasional fill up and once for ryan, chad, and will to get some food at a waffle house. the server remarked that we looked like “that sum 41 band” and asked if he would have ever seen us on tv. i joked, “no, unless you saw will on COPS”. we eventually crashed in the early morning at a deserted state park on the south carolina/georgia border where some slept, some frolliced and we ate a spartan picnic of dumpstered english muffins, peanut butter, carrots, and apple juice. when everyone was sufficeintly revived, we loaded up and headed to athens. while hanging out at the park, i discovered that a large number of kids with whom i’m traveling are completely down with one of the most bro-dog practices i can think of – putting gold bond powder on one’s scrotum. totally lame. scrotum grinder = good, scrotum powder = bad. ryan wearing will’s hat and a sleeveless shirt made him look like a complete dude. ridiculous.
after we started out towards athens again, we came across a wal-mart and decided to use some of chad’s gift certificate to make some ridiculous purchases. i got a new toothbrush, but we got some ridiculous stuff too. we ate curly fries and soft pretzels in the food court and felt like the loitering, dirty, no-good kids that we were. chad, ryan, and will got tobacco and rolled cigarettes and looked like complete ruffians. definite six graders, all that they needed was the complete marlborro miles wardrobe to be completely authentic. i hate smoking, i think it’s stupid and it makes the van smell bad when you get in it after you’ve been smoking outside. lame. i still don’t get why otherwise intelligent people want to ingest carcinogens and smell bad. if that can be pleasureable, it seems like absolutely anything can be arbitrarily pleasureable and it would just be better to do that.
we got to athens and we were all pretty tired. chu cha, ryan, and i went to the post office so chu cha could apply for a passport and then to the jiffy lube to top up the fluids in the van while will, bz, mikeal and jonnie hung out downtown. they eventually hooked up with andre and john from carrie nations and made their way to a bar to drink cheap beer. we met them there, hung out for a while and then left to go to john’s house where we ate rice and beans and lounged on his huge porch before the show.
we got to the show space and it didn’t seem like there were that many kids there which was sort of dissappointing, but we later found that such worries were unfounded. more kids showed up as the evening got later, and all the kids there were amazingly fun. a band from florida called “darius axis” (sp?) played first, and they were pretty good – emotive post-hardcore florida sort of stuff with a lot of the melody carried by the bass. they seemed a little reserved, but they might have just been stressed out because they were supposed to play with a band they were on tour with, “the south”, and they hadn’t arrived yet. the fact that “the south” was running late meant that we had to play next, and i was kind of worried about that because we were all really tired, and ryan was super tired. we set up, and on the first note of the first song, i broke a string. i was freaked out because i never break strings, and i was tired and grumpy and was afraid ryan would freak out about more equipment breaking. luckily i had extra strings, and more luckily, the athens kids were super fun and didn’t mind waiting while we repaired stuff.
we played kind of sloppy, i think (what’s new right), but the show was a lot of fun. kids were dancing and clapping and having a good time, and that makes it a lot easier to get through parts that are kind of rough. will’s snare broke and we had to borrow another that was much quieter which weirded me out a lot when i had to play it. still, we made it through our set and it went pretty awesome. a bunch of kids said they liked it which always makes me feel akward. i still don’t know how to take a compliment and i hope i don’t come off as an asshole. but, i’m glad kids still had a fun time even though things seemed a little weird when playing.
“the south” eventually arrived and played next. pretty typical hardcore, but they played with a ton of energy and emotion. everyone was dancing and clapping – it was beautiful. in between songs, the drummer talked about some things like making punk more accessible and not turning things like straight edge or veganism or politics into exclusionary snobbishness and treating the developly challenged with respect. i guess these are pretty standard topics, and the drummer was so out of breath that he stammered and gasped and had a hard time getting the words out, but he came off as really sincere and i appreciated that. some kids hate hearing political rants at shows, but i always like it. it doesn’t matter if they’re things that we’ve all heard before, or if they’re a little rambling and incoherent (as is often the case, i’ve been told, when i try to talk about stuff like that) as long as what people are sincere, because i think it’s important to be reminded that what makes punk different for me and important for me is that its inseperable from dealing with the questions and battles that are relevent to our lives.
the last band that played was from athens and they were called, “it lives” and they played energetic rock music. everyone danced and had a good time. after the bands finished playing the place turned into a dance party and while a few of us retired to the van to crash hard, a lot of kids jerked and flailed around to cheesy 80s pop and had an amazing time. it’s been a long time since i’ve been to a good dance party in columbus and i miss them. in athens it seems like this goes down all the time and it’s awesome. i just hope that the sweet beats and laughter didn’t cause any problems with the neighbors.
we played at this community practice/show space and zine library called “tight pockets” and it was really neat. it was somewhat like the old addition13 in columbus, but i’d say more fun. it’s good to see that places like that are working out for kids in other towns. athens is supposed to be a good town for music, and i believe it. i guess rolling stone rated it as the best place for college music, and while that means a lot of ridiculous bar bands, i think it means a lot of good stuff too. it seems like people’s musical tastes are pretty eclectic and the punk kids even seem to have a certain respect for local legends like the b52s and rem while the more mainstream music types seem pretty supportive of the diy scene. it struck me as kind of like austin, but in a more organice, small town sort of way.
after the dance party, we were pretty exhausted so we drove the short two blocks to john’s house and found some clear floor space (or hammock space in will’s case) and went to sleep. i must have been sleeping pretty hardcore because i think that kids were partying out on the porch until pretty late.
when we woke up i found a pile of dumpstered krispy kream donuts and later john and his housemate cooked up an awesome breakfast. nutritional yeast gravy, biscuits and spicy friend potatos – sweet! john, his housemates, his siblings (who were visiting and partying from indiana), andre, and all the kids from town are some of the nicest people ever. they were really supportive, helpful, and lots of fun. i can’t wait to go back to athens.