Cal
We got some well-deserved rest in mHat (eg, 18 hours' sleep for WE and Tobe) and trucked into Calgary. There, we met up with an old friend of Eb's and crashed at her place for a few hours after lunch. If there's one thing I'm learning from this experience it's that you sleep as much as you can, whenever or wherever you can.
We asked the friend (who used to work at the venue) what to expect. While the bar itself sounded cool, she did not paint a rosy picture of the neighourhood it was in. The word "crackheads" kept coming up. The area hadn't looked too bad when we drove by earlier, but I guess we'd find out.
The venue was very much like the old seahorse, yet you would swear a dome crowd had been transplanted there. Lots of brah-dudez and party-dress chicks. I was immediately very concerned about how we would go over. We played with a metalcore band and a straight-up prog rock band. We did not play our most inspiring set either. You'd think all of this would add up to a disaster, but the opposite turned out to be true! We sold a TON of merch and got (drunken) compliments from virtually every angle. It was so weird... I was expecting everyone to be super-bummed afterward, but I think the crowd response alone saved the night.
Loading out was... interesting. The van was in a parking lot, but right on the side of the road. There were a lot of extremely forlorn people milling about. It left me feeling sad, pissed off, annoyed and worried for the gear and my own safety all at the same time. I've tried to think of ways to describe what this was like without sounding dehumanizing, but I cannot. So I'll just leave it at that.
With a tight schedule ahead of us, we immediately (and without incident) left the venue and headed off into the mountains. It was late and very dark so we couldn't see much, but many enormous, vague shadows could be seen all over the place. As the sun came up, some mindblowing sights were seen. If only we could have stopped every few minutes to take pictures. The wild, winding road kept me on my toes, but very soon after I was too tired to drive. We switched up a couple more times, and soon arrived in Van.
We asked the friend (who used to work at the venue) what to expect. While the bar itself sounded cool, she did not paint a rosy picture of the neighourhood it was in. The word "crackheads" kept coming up. The area hadn't looked too bad when we drove by earlier, but I guess we'd find out.
The venue was very much like the old seahorse, yet you would swear a dome crowd had been transplanted there. Lots of brah-dudez and party-dress chicks. I was immediately very concerned about how we would go over. We played with a metalcore band and a straight-up prog rock band. We did not play our most inspiring set either. You'd think all of this would add up to a disaster, but the opposite turned out to be true! We sold a TON of merch and got (drunken) compliments from virtually every angle. It was so weird... I was expecting everyone to be super-bummed afterward, but I think the crowd response alone saved the night.
Loading out was... interesting. The van was in a parking lot, but right on the side of the road. There were a lot of extremely forlorn people milling about. It left me feeling sad, pissed off, annoyed and worried for the gear and my own safety all at the same time. I've tried to think of ways to describe what this was like without sounding dehumanizing, but I cannot. So I'll just leave it at that.
With a tight schedule ahead of us, we immediately (and without incident) left the venue and headed off into the mountains. It was late and very dark so we couldn't see much, but many enormous, vague shadows could be seen all over the place. As the sun came up, some mindblowing sights were seen. If only we could have stopped every few minutes to take pictures. The wild, winding road kept me on my toes, but very soon after I was too tired to drive. We switched up a couple more times, and soon arrived in Van.
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 3:11 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home