Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but that’s because I was exhausted from running around on various exploits. In a nutshell, a trip to Canada with my brother and his best friend’s band and a rather eventful New Year’s Eve.
In more explicit detail, here was last weekend:
I had never had a chance to see my friend, Bill, play a show with his band. Part of that owed to weird issues with my brother and the other part was just bad timing—I never really had a chance to see them. And if I didn’t see them this break, I wouldn’t until summertime. So I resolved to watch their show in Canada. My brother (their roadie) and the band were gracious enough to let me tag along, and within about five minutes we were northbound in the car.
An aside about Canada and points to consider: a) we are all 19 years of age or older. That means we are all perfectly legal in every bar and pub north of the Canadian border; b) the boys had only booked a venue for the show—they had no plans as to where they would sleep that night, or even if they would. The options were to find a place, stay up all night and just head back in the morning, or head back in the middle of the night. However, the dilemma of staying sober and driving back was seemingly solved, simply because I was there to stay sober and drive back. Enter a few pitchers of beer and some Guiness (oh, that made for a fun couple of hours in the early morning...).
The show? Awesome. Damn, those guys can perform. It’s even more impressive that they write all of their own songs (shameless plug—check out myspace.com/seasonofnightmares). I took pictures and babysat the guys’ stuff, switching off with Joe. What was really neat was to watch the crowd. They were the headline act, so people came out of the woodwork to see them.
Before the show was a little scary. We were in east Vancouver, where walking down the street could very well make you high. People snort and shoot up whatever they please in broad daylight, so you can imagine what they were doing by the time we got there after dark. None of us would walk around outside the pub alone. Including my 6’4”, 225lb, rugby-playing, tough-as-nails brother. Yikes. When we parked, there was a very aggressive panhandler demanding money from us. He was in a wheelchair and his legs, which stopped right at his knees, were exposed to the cold. But any sympathy we may have felt (he wasn’t faking—the man had no legs. Nick referred to him as Nubs) went away within about a minute—he was yelling obscenities and threats that really freaked us out. At one point Joe had to move the car so that it wouldn’t block the loading door to the pub. Right after he moved, Nubs yelled something to the effect that it didn’t matter where we parked, he’d still slash our tires. Truly afraid (as impromptu as the whole excursion was, our only asset was the car), I handed him two American dollars (I rationalized that I was buying our car out of the parking lot. Only $.50 per unslashed tire). But then he made a comment about the woman being the one that gave him money, and before I could help it I snapped, “Yeah, we can vote, too.” Great. Forget the tires, I thought he might bomb the damn car.
So, anyway, Nubs scared us. But the car was safe. Then after a very successful show the pub started to close, so we went across town (with directions from Nick’s tattoo artist’s girlfriend. So, you know, she’s like family… and she was kind enough to cram in the back and tell me where to go) to a cool place called the Railway club. Really neat pub, enough if it was on the corner of Crime Spree and Crack St.. We milled around with many cool people from the show, and a few other people. Canadians are genuinely good people, really congenial. At one point I accidentally ran into a guy and spill his beer all down my shirt, and was thoroughly prepared to get yelled at, if not slapped. I apologized profusely and offered to buy him another one, but he just smiled and shrugged it off. Around three in the morning, Nick came over and announced that we DID have a place to stay—he’d been schmoozing with people all night and finally met a girl named Mel (short for Melody), a bonny lass from Australia whose personal resolution is to give shelter to people who need it (she had a six-week layover in LA between Vancouver and the land down under and had to rely on the kindness of strangers), so we went to her place for the evening. Coincidentally enough, some of the really cool folks we met at the pub were friends of hers, and they came along, too. It was cool. I got to bed around 4:30 that morning. We got up later that morning (well, I got up in the morning, the boys got up in the afternoon) and drove home.
Without the sordid and messy details (I was fine, but I was also sober, ahem, Joe, ahem), that was my spontaneous trip to Canada with the obliging and talented boys from Season of Nightmares.
The New Year’s story will have to wait, as I’ve been typing forever.
To be continuted…
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