Pete and I decided to load up the van and hit the road. We blow down the 101 to the 154 shortcut that Trev suggested. Very beautiful scenic drive… sometime in thar i rolled pete a cigarette… i’m not a very good bone roller, but i got the job done. We arrived in Santa Barbara around 5:30pm, parked the car in the club’s parking lot then headed out for some grub. We ended up at a Thai food joint which had a huge painting of John Lennon on the wall, they also played nothing but beatles on the radio thar. Good food, good music. We wandered back to the club, set our stuff up and had a beer. The lights weren’t on in the club portion of the venue… and i had to use the john… i rolled in thar and took a leak by lighter. When i walked out of the rest room the bartender said to me “Pissing in the dark again?.” Heh heh. Barry and Kevin (DJ Spacelab) arrived about an hour later and set all their stuff up. I managed to have enough time to set up my recording equipment so we could get a tape of the show. A majority of our shows get recorded by other peeps, but it’s been our experience that the tapes arrive about 8 months after the gig.
After a short sound check we fired up the jets and started playing… there were about 8 people in the club at that time… and it pretty much stayed the same throughout the evening although there were always a different 8 people every 10 minutes. It became apparrent to me at the outset that we were basically playing for the tape and not the crowd. Despite the low turnout the people who were there were extremely enthusiastic about our playing… asking what the names of the songs were, screaming and yelling and participating. It was pretty damn awesome. Trevor’s friend brought a bunch of hula-hoops with her. She hulahooped and danced all over the entire dance floor, very cool. Here’s the setlist:
Thursday September 26th, 2003 – Absinthe – Santa Barbara, CA
(w/ DJ Spacelab, Turntables)
Set 1:
Zither Loop (The Offenburg Jam)
The Trojan Horse
To Your Head *
Avalanche
Set 2:
Wrong Said Fred * ->
Propaganda
The Optimist Song
Math
Gimmie Some Money * #
Taker ->
Third Stone From The Sun ##
* first time
# Spinal Tap
## Jimi Hendrix
Kevin really went to work on the turntables during “The Trojan Horse”… and i didn’t get electrocuted, which is awesome. In fact nothing really went wrong at this show, and i didnt run my mouth off from the bandstand either. We pretty much put our heads down and played our asses off. We played “Gimme Some Money” by Spinal Tap too. I really wanted to play “Dimples” by John Lee Hooker, but I couldn’t remember the words. Weve never played that song before… first time, no rehearsal either. Third Stone from the Sun magically arose from the Taker jam… “No Surprises” by Radiohead was echoing in my imagination during the last part. “To Your Head” is another of the new batch of tunes that Jesse and I have written, its all quiet and spooky style… this one is gonna be nice after a couple of performances, too bad i botched the lyrics since they’re so amazing (jesse rules!)
after the show we packed up our stuff, drank a bunch more beers, chatted with the soundmen (rob used to go to the food shows at the yucatan back in the day) trevor gave me some mushroom chocolates for the drive home. thanks trevor! i guess the word from absinthe and the frog and peach is that both of them would love to have us back very soon… which is bitchin. hopefully well get back thar before christmas.
all in all a fun trip… not too insane (it was the middle of the week after all) but we played our little froggy hearts out and made a bunch of new friends in the process. see y’all soon. send emails here: fuzz @ spacefuzz.com
the rest of this stuff is in chronological order starting on november 9th 2002. dig it.
welcome to my little online diary. its been a long time since i’ve updated this thing (like… november 2002 – its may 11th as i type this) and a bunch of shows have happened that contained episodes of weirdness so unbelievable i couldn’t write about them. sheesh… maybe some day. lets see what got skipped over… uh… the gig at calarts (weird) the gig in san francisco (very weird and pretty frustrating) and the cancellation of the spring east coast tour (extremely frustrating.) hopefully in the next month or so i’ll get the time together to write about all of these non events in great detail, but let me first say that you didn’t miss anything. really now, i’m not copping out here. yes there were all sorts of insane episodes of debauchery and public drunkeness, vulgar displays of nudity and bad taste, and at least a couple of pretty mind bending jams… you’ll just have to use your imagination n shiat. word up.