3 days, 3 shows, 0 arrests (Part 3)

I awake on the floor in Spokane. A welcome change after sleeping in our mini-van of doom. The house is filled with bands: Us, Lack of Respect, and The Contra. We have a show tonight at the Zombie Room. First order of business, take a dump at Safeway.

When you're in a band on the road, taking a dump is a special thing. Rest Areas are the most convenient, but the most disgusting. If you actually get a home to crash at, you feel kinda guilty taking a dump at their place. A musician's dump is monumental. Add fast food, a ton of alcohol, and a fear of rest areas, and you find yourself with a fecal drop-off that can contaminate a substantial radius. You don't want to offend your host, so you seek other options. Starbucks is usually my favorite. Clean bathrooms and horrible corporate music. Perfect. But no Starbucks in sight, we choose Safeway.

This Safeway is great. They put extra loud music in the bathroom, so noone can hear your movements. Also, an extremely effective aerosol that kills all odor. Safeway may be my new place to go for BMs.

Enough for anal splattage, we chill at LOR's place for the rest of the day. A BBQ is in progress, and we're all ready for a great night. LOR has advertised our show and got the best sound guy in the area to run sound. They put money into advertising and let everyone know there's some good music about to occur. What could go wrong?

Four hours before the show, the Zombie Room sends us an email that the show is cancelled. The reason they cite is that they "forgot" to renew their alcohol license.

Lesson 1: Check if your venue has a valid alchohol license.

Ray and Jean act quick and visit every bar in town to get a show. While they are doing this, THE THEM proceed to open every alcoholic beverage possible and start guzzling. 800 miles of driving, getting $500 in tickets, and having two bad shows in a row will compell the most righteous to take a drink.

Which is ironic. The last time THE THEM played with The Contra was in Bellingham, our most innebriated show ever. That show set guidelines for THE THEM drinking before playing. We were actually determined not to drink before the show just to prove ourselves to The Contra. Apparently, 1000 miles on the road can change anyone's resolve.

Ray and Jean return with an alternate venue for the bands to play: The Swamp Tavern. This place is a great place to drink, but out of the way, ie. no one knows about it. Karen puts up a sign at the Zombie Room that the show has changed to a new location. Day, kinda, saved.

Meanwhile, drinking and merriment continues. When things are fucked, you tend to not care about the outcome. The Contra introduced us to a new beer drinking game, Beer Darts. You throw darts at beer. If your dart pierces the beer, the opposing team shotguns it through the hole.

Fuck it, we buy hard alcohol. What could go wrong?

In addition to the alcohol, The Swamp gives all the band free beer all night long. Free micro-brews! I drink my fill of Manny's. I think we were going on before LOR, but I was wrong. We're going on last. Oops. Alcohol kicks in.

Sonic Death Ray puts on a great show. The Contra puts on awesome show. Lack of Respect put on a flawless show to the largest crowd. And, then, we go on

First note, no one there except a few band members. Second song, my bass is out of tune because it hit the mic stand. Third song, the batteries on my wireless go dead mid-song. Fourth song, I forgot I was still out of tune after replacing the batteries. About two people in our audience now. We finally get it together to finish our drunken set to a wonderful audience of only the other band members.

Lesson 2 (RELEARNED): Don't play drunk.

Afterwards, a giant woman shows up at LOR's place. She is now labeled "The Gunt". This woman ate everything in sight. She was acompanied by an over-medicated woman who just took an ambien. "The Gunt" ate all the remainder of the BBQ as well as her bag of chips. She was a human toilet bowl of hunger. I'm surprised any band member has their fingers left.

Yup, we leave the next day and arrive home. To our surprise, the police run in behind us as we're unloading our equipment in Seattle. I'm like "O' fuck, not again" but they are not after us.

"Have you seen a guy running around with a gun?"

"Oh shit no!" I said, and start ducking behind the van. The police shrug their shoulders and head into our rehearsal studio.

C0me to find out, Terry is drunk and brandishing a BB gun. He's terrorizing another band that's standing outside. A perfect welcome home.

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3 days, 3 shows, 0 arrests (Part 2)

Day two of our "tour-ette", we have a nice nine to ten hour drive to Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. We decide to get breakfast at Jack-In-The-Box. Mind you, we wanted to get food fast and be back on the road. No customers and no one in the drive-thru, it takes them 20-some minutes to get us our food. Damn you, Jack.

(Get off your fucking phone and serve us!)

So now we're a little behind on getting to the show, so we decide to speed it up. We get pulled over by a state trooper and stopped for an hour. Now we're an hour late and $500 poorer. Piss.

We arrive at The Grail at 8pm and told that we're playing at 8:30. Fuck! No time to decompress after the ten hour journey or change into our stage clothes. We haul ass and start playing. Hard to get into the right state of mind especially when we're playing before most of the audience arrives. But we kick ass anyways.

Afterwards, the bartender had us laughing our ass off. He seemed to have a story for everyone who walked up...especially the ladies. We make a couple of friends and end up signing boobies. The Exit Zero guys were nice as hell, and it turns out we played with the other band, Boneyard Butchers, previously in Seattle.

End of show, we head to Spokane to crash at Lack of Respect's place and get ready for our next show. And, again, our bad luck kicks in. (To be continued.)

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3 days, 3 shows, 0 arrests (Part 1)

So, we have mini-tours, or "tour-ettes" if you will, and we went to the following places:


The Samurai Duck, Eugene, OR
The Grail, Coeur D'Alene, ID
and the last was in Spokane, but needs elaboration.


But first, the following picture sums up something beautiful that words cannot convey:







Look in that bottle. A fucking dead snake. This is Habu Sake provided by The Samurai Duck in Eugene, Oregon. You'd expect something extremely foul tasting, but it was the smoothest shot of sake EVER! And I hate sake, but loved this. It went down smooth, a second later a hint of the sake flavor, and another second later you felt the alcohol run through your entire body. Pure bliss.



In addition, the staff was extremely friendly. Jerry and I talked extensively about Babylon 5 (much to the boredom of my band mates), the bar tender hooked us up with some drinks, some person named Crystal apparently bought us another round, and then Masako (sp?) gave us some Habu Sake (sp?).



Though, not many people there, the ones who were really enjoyed it. They helped us out by buying some merch, and Neva(sp?) gave us a place to crash for the night. We were slightly scared by the neighborhood dog known for killing other dogs. I didn't see it, but Joseph described this scarred beast of a dog with a spiked leather harness...roaming free. I mean, roaming fucking free.



And another strange occurrance, Neva's roommate is a drunken clown. I was passed out at the time, but Joseph saw him. He had Xs tattooed on his eyes, so when he was asleep, he looked cartoon dead:




The next morning, Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Nine hours of driving.

THE THEM vs Super Trooper: The 4th Amendment kicks ass!

What follows is yet another lesson for bands as well as a lesson in exercising your 4th Amendment rights: The right against illegal search and seizure. Also learned during this experience, in hindsight, is how to exercise your 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Learn how quickly a speeding ticket can turn into a test of the Bill of Rights.

THE THEM were travelling from Eugene, Oregon to Coeur D'alene, Idaho. We realized that we were going to be late to the show because of the damn, slowest Jack In The Box in the known universe. So we decided to pick up the pace a little...

We were pulled over an hour outside of Portland by a State Trooper. We were doing 81 in a 65. Whoops. I'm in the passenger seat where the cop walks over. He's a little guy with that typical cop mustache and his State Trooper hat on. You can tell he's a corn-fed, good ol' boy who goes to church every Sunday.

"You were going 81 in a 65. You guys in a band or something?" He's eyeballing my mohawk.

"Yep, we're on our way to Idaho." I'm searching furiously for my current registration and insurance card which is buried in months of trash and expired cards and registrations. I'm having trouble finding the current ones, so I start getting nervous that I forgot them.

"Why so nervous there?" He's full focused on me, and it just makes me more nervous. I also realize one of the members of our band has weed on him. (Not much at all, actually, but I had no clue how much he had on him.) "Did you steal this car or something? Transporting drugs? Why so nervous?"

I finally find the registration and hand it to him. He goes back and checks it out. Comes back and questions me on my ID, and leaves again. Then, he comes back and asks me to step out of the car and come back with him.

In front of his car, he begins assailing me with drug questions. "I know you got something on you there. So what is it? C'mon, you can tell me." He smiles all friendly like.

"Nothing,", I say, getting more nervous, standing in my socks in the gravel.

"Do you have marijuana, amphetamines, crack, cocaine, meth, PCP..." I say "no" to all of them, but I'm getting more nervous. Just can't help it. "Do you agree that I can search your car then?"

"No, I do not agree," I said. He looks at me.

"Well, I'm going to go talk to your buddies and see what they have to tell me." He goes over and talks to them out of ear shot, and comes back a minute later.

"Your buddies over there say they're fine with me searching them. They seem like nice guys, but you seem all hopped up. I know whatever I find in that car is yours and not theirs. We can make this a lot easier and have you on your way if you just let me search the vehicle."

I again say "no, you can't search the vehicle."

"Well, I'm going to have to take the next route, then. I'm going to call in the K-9 unit to come sniff around your car."

"Do what you have to do, officer."

I go back to the car and tell everyone what's going on. I ask the stoner if he can eat his stash real quick. Unfortunately, he has it all packed into mini-cigars, spliffs if you will, and he has a glass pipe. No eating is going to occur. Also, I'm not sure if the officer can see what we're doing from his car. Time to wait for the dogs...

Half an hour later, the officer comes back. "You guys are really going to wait it out aren't ya? Today's your lucky day guys. There's no K9 unit in the vicinity. Because of your 4th Amendment rights, I can't search the vehicle." A smile slowly grows across my face, and he points at me. "I know you have something on you in this car. Your buddies seem all right, but I know it's you. It's a good thing you're having somebody else drive, but you need to talk to your band mates. What you're doing is going to bring the band down. You need to think about this."

"But I don't do drugs..." He waves me off, not wanting to hear it. Seriously. I don't do drugs. I don't even jay walk! Never even been pulled over before. I'm actually the only law abiding citizen out of the group of us!

He hands us a $242 speeding ticket and 2 $97 seatbelt violation tickets (2 guys were sleeping in the back seat). And we were on our way.

Good thing, too. In addition to the weed, there was an empty beer can under the driver's seat that I had no clue about. That probably would have been even more trouble than the weed. I fucking love the 4th Amendment. So here's the band lessons:

Lesson 1: Don't speed and wear your seatbelts always.
Don't give them a reason to pull you over. You only made $20 at the show the night before, and you can't afford the tickets.

Lesson 2: Do not consent to a search.
Never. Even if we didn't have the weed, we would have got something because of that empty beer can that has probably been there for months. It could have been the cocaine laced panties of some groupie. Someone you didn't know may have threw something in there you don't know about. The singer could have a secret addiction he/she was hiding from the band. Just say no. When the officer is asking to search, he/she is out for blood.

And here's my hindsight lessons

Lesson 4: Use your right to remain silent.
If I hadn't answered the questions, the officer would not have been able to gauge that there was something in the car. They use these questions to trip you up psychologically. You are not obligated to answer any of them. If they start asking you about drugs, just recite your right to remain silent.

Lesson 5: Don't consent to be recorded.
When the trooper introduced himself, he stated we were being recorded. This law I'm not 100% sure about, but if you consent to being recorded (even nodding your head), they can use that against you in court. True or not, at least you can cover that base just in case.

Lesson 6: Keep your registration and insurance easily accessible.
I probably wouldn't have been near as nervous if I had that paperwork handy.

Lesson 7: You're in a band. They know you have drugs.
Even if you don't have drugs, the officer will assume you do. In their mind, they are going to get a drug bust.

And that's that. Live and learn. Remember, pretend to have a throat infection when the officer pulls you over. You can't talk, then.