Recording

2nd-3rd May

I went to Seattle and Portland in 2 days. weeeee!

Ben Kamen + Britain Ashford + Viking Moses + Golden Ghost
Friday 2nd May
The Deerbourne House - Seattle








Saturday we went to Portland where Polka Dot Dot Dot were recording a 7'' at a place called the trash factory.

Adventures with Craft, Over the Atlantic and ArtsWalk.

April 25th - 28th

I was really looking forward to this weekend.
Sally (of Papertin fame and from NZ) was coming down from Canada for the weekend to hang out and share a table at a Craftmarket we were doing during ArtsWalk.
Blink and Over the Atlantic were coming to do a show and hang out for a few days.
Lots of shows were happening all over the place, Olympias big arts festival - ArtsWalk was happening over the weekend, and Procession of the Species was part of it.
I was mainly looking forward to having people around that could understand me.

So....

Friday - Sally arrived and we went had good times at a Vibarians show, when we got home Blink and OTA had shown up to stay the night after their Portland show. Late night gossiping and comparing "America is fucking crazy!" stories followed.

I'd also seen some neat hardcore bands in an alleyway earlier in the day....




Saturday - Me and Sally participated in the Arts Loves Craft market. It was shit. I sold 2 things at the end as pity sales to friends and Sally sold one thing in the entire 5 hours we were there. With literally thousands of People RIGHT outside the venue roaming the streets during arts walk, you think they could have at least put a sign or chalked out on the street. They didn't even advertise it, even with my offer of postering or chalking for them. No advertising and no table = $40 stall fee. Fuck that.


This drawing machine ruled my socks off though....



Anyway!
Managed to get away briefly to go see the Power tools races. AWESOME.




Afterwards we met up with Onyx, OTA and Blink and watched the Procession of the species. Pretty much the whole town is involved in this thing.







Then I jumped in the OTA van and squished off to Seattle where they were playing a show that night.

Over the Atlantic + PWRFL Power + The Elephants + The Quit Saturday 25th April, The Comet - Seattle.

Over the Atlantic were great. Last time I remember seeing them... probably 2 years ago, they had laptops. They've changed a tad.

PWRFL power was also neat. He's extremely talented and and makes really beautiful, cute pop songs. He's also fascinating to watch.
Wasn't too impressed with the rest of the show, but that probably due to the fact the me and Sally had drunk a fair share of beer (SO CHEAP HERE!!) and were more interested in the 24hour drugstore down the road and the wonders in contained. Kiss My Face Chapstick being the most hilarious thing in the world at the time.

Sunday - tagged along on the pilgrimage to see where Kurt Cobain died. Spent a good hour in the car chasing up addressed Rhys Atlantic had collected up the night before.
Then we ate coco-pops out side of what used to be his house.




This was the memorial bench in the park next to the house. It was covered in melted candle wax, guitar picks and dedications.





(Later we found out Kurt used to have band practice in the basement where I've been living. I thought it was pretty stupid going to Diana's cafe just because it was the last place he was seen. But even I was a bit stoked about that wee bit of history. )

Then we squished home to Olympia.

Over the Atlantic + PWRFL power + Polka Dot Dot + The Sundance Kids Sunday 26th April, Black Front Gallery - Olympia.

Sundance Kids

PWRFL Power

Over the Atlantic...

Monday - Went for a bike ride to the Capitol building with Rhys Atlantic. FUN!

A self indulgent post about WHY?

WHY? is pretty much my favoritist band right now.
So here's a whole lot of photos and video that you won't be much interested in.

WHY? w/ Mount Eerie, Julie Doiron and Generifus.
Thursday 17th April,
The Vera Project - Seattle.

I didn't realise that WHY? was so popular here, so I was pretty surprised and terrified to see about 200 kids waiting outside to get into the show. Shit. I'd booked accommodation and traveled a few hours by bus to get here, but hadn't bothered buying a ticket.

But I got in.

Julie Doiron

Mount Eerie

And a whole hell of a lot of WHY? (videos coming soon)....

They were amazing as you'd think they would be. Nothing particularly incredible about there live performance, but it would be impossible to go wrong with playing those songs.


This was also my first trip to Seattle so here's a bit of that. Seattle is nice. Hills like Wellington. I liked it.

To Portland!

April 11th -14th

Panther was playing in Portland over the weekend so it seemed like a good time for me and Onyx to go explore. Blink was also passing through on his way down the coast to pick up Over the Atlantic so that made it an even gooder idea.

Friday 11th April
Panther + White Fang + Starfucker
Backspace - Portland

This is WhiteFang.
They had a band member who's role it was to play the shaker (ala Joel from the Brian Jonestown Massacre ) and be a 1 man mosh pit. They had two drummers. The one in the hat spent the most part of the show looking terrified and not quite sure what he was doing.
They were interesting.

This is Starfucker.

I didn't like them. I'm not entirely sure why but It probably had something to do with the the name. Hiding an I-pod and trying to make it look like an effects pedal didn't help either.

SNAP!

This is Panther.
I like him. Although I was disappointed with his new songs and their lack of Prince-like vocals. He's really not the same panther that came to NZ.
He'd just been to the doctors and discovered he'd broken his ribs. DUDE.

This is a bar. I forget what it's called but it's just around the corner from the bar where Panther played. The bottom level is jamed full of retro arcade games. Pretty much a Disasteradio heaven. PaperBoy, Tron, Q-bert,... really pretty much everything.
The top floor was wall to wall with Pin ball games.
Everything was 25c to play and sometimes they even host bands.




This is a chicken.