We had a really good breakfast with Meghan this morning at this cool corner café we'd been to the last time we were over. They do all ecological bagels and baguettes and a great mug of coffee. We hung out there for a while, enjoying a perfectly relaxed start to the day. As we were planning the day ahead with Matt, Meghan mentioned there was a pretty cool used record store a few blocks away...
I bought seven lp's for fifty five dollars, including a vinyl copy of a Jesus Lizard album I've been looking for for a while. I also picked up Crucial Section and Direct Control albums amongst others. Very productive start to the day.
We're now about a half hour from Baltimore. We're going to pull of the highway and take a visit to Guitar Centre. We don't have to be at the venue for another few hours. Jon's foot is still pretty swollen. I think Matt is going to take him to the hospital tomorrow since we have the day free. Liverpool – Arsenal tomorrow. We're heading back to Matt's tonight and we're taping the game and watching it when we get up in the morning. Looking forward to our day off tomorrow.
Later:
Sitting outside the venue in the van. The place is an oblong room with a stage at the back wall. And that's about it. Fifty kids here will be enough to make it a good night. We got here a few hours ago and have been killing time doing pretty much nothing. Johan, Andy and I took a walk a few blocks and got some coffee at a Barned & Noble book store, took care of about an hour. I took advantage of the pristine toilets they had there since Jon had blocked the bog at the venue earlier. He actually had to go and ask the promoter kid help him flush his turd away!
Earlier when we arrived I witnessed Matt reverse park the van into the tightest space I've ever seen. We're talking millimetres here, although there was the odd little nudge here and there. “That's why they call it a bumper!”, Matt says, looking pretty chuffed with himself.
I'm now in the van with Jon and Matt, Jon is resting up his foot which is still pretty swollen, sipping a bottle of whiskey from a brown paper bag. I had a couple of sips, although purely for medicinal purposes of course. We just watched a “The Wire” style drug deal go down, just a few yards ahead of us. I can't honestly say I saw that much, but Jon is completely convinced. Baltimore really is a rough city though. Matt told us earlier to keep ourselves within a three block radius of the venue since it gets pretty bad around here. The third band of five are about to go on. The band Full of Hell are on right before us. I seen those guys in Stockholm a while ago at Kafe 44. Nice guys and a good band.
Later still:
Sitting in the dark in the back of the van, listening to Baroness' The Red Album, getting geared up for our day off tomorrow. I've never seen Baroness play live before. Looking forward to that. It's been a pretty hectic week that started in Belgium seven days ago.
The show tonight felt like hard work. There weren't that many kids in, maybe around twenty at most, with members of the other four bands making up the numbers. It looked ok in the room but for the bright lights been on throughout the show. There was a good response to the set though. It was the playing itself that was hard going. Theft almost fell apart at one point when Andy dropped a stick and pulled up a wrapped pair together instead of a stand alone stick. He almost came to a stand still as he stood there looking at his double stick all confused.
It didn't make things easier for us either that Jon's foot is now the size of a balloon and I had a face full of snot again. It was hard to breathe at some points, especially with the place being as hot as a boiler room, the industrial size fan at the back of the stage blowing nothing but a warm fart around the stage. By the time we reached the end of the set, finishing with Broken Bones and skipping Scars, I was more than done.
We packed up super quick after the show and got on the road to Richmond, back to Matt's house. Jon's foot looks pretty bad and he's saying he wants to be dropped off at the emergency room when we get to Richmond but it's hard to know how much of what he's saying is coming from him and how much is coming from the bottle of bourbon he's been supping on all night. We'll have to see how it looks in the morning.
Even later:
We just got back to Matt's new house. The place is amazing! It's one of those classic southern houses that is over one hundred years old, with the wrap around porch and the big yard out back. I slept most of the way between Baltimore and Richmond but got a second wind from somewhere when we got here, but after one beer I'm done and now going to bed in one of the many rooms in this huge house.
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