#72 On The Rox on 12-12-11

This was the holiday party for High Voltage Magazine. I had come across their announcements for the event on Twitter and reached out to see if we could play. They said yes. It rained like Hell which definitely had an impact on the number of people, but there was still a crowd. I had never seen Sunset Blvd. look so dead!

The evening was opened up by Zero One, the band fronted by actor/comedian Hal Sparks. He was not joking in how seriously he took his metal, decked out in Kiss-worthy dragon pants. They even covered Spinal Tap. MPC forgot some drum stuff, so we borrowed it from Bethpage Black's drummer, a tall dark figure named Steve. Our set was enjoyable, including our Christmas song we wrote. We even wore Christmas lights. Bethpage Black were an eclectic 'rock' band, who chose to cover The Darkness' "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" and their singer nailed all the high stuff. Suddyn was an alt-piano-rock band who closed out the evening.

The ladies of High Voltage were very approachable and we had some good conversations with them. They also gave out Christmas gifts to everyone who attended.

#59 Maxwell's on 5-25-11

We lingered in Sacramento for most of the day, as we stayed with incredible friends. The drive to Redding was full of a lot of open plains, but beautiful. A freak rainstorm and fiery sky hit us a the end.

The show was set up by a Redding band called Avenue Of Escape, who were going to play after us. The bands were supposed to play after an open mic night event, but I got a call saying that was cancelled and that AVEofESC would probably play first since the owner wanted the music to start. We were in full agreement with that so it came as a surprise to arrive at the club and find the sound equipment not set up and the band playing pool. They said we could go ahead and play first, so we started setting up. The 2-piece Active Set takes much longer to set up than the full band for some reason. I overheard some of AVEofESC's posse complaining about us taking too long and it saddened me. The bartender was nice enough and helped out when asked, but I pretty much had to set up and soundcheck myself.

We started playing and the singer from the other band watched half a song with his girlfriend, but then everyone walked out, except for one lone person at the back of the room. We didn't see the other band for the remainder of the evening, or hear from them. By the end of our set there were a few others, all who said, "Oh man, I could hook you up with a better show!" We discussed the politics of touring and such.

We found people to stay with, who turned out to be irresponsible, so much that at 3am, having invited us to stay at a house asked, "So, where are you guys gonna stay?" Michael and I left and argued for a bit before settling on sleeping in the van.