theriotbefore.com

A few days ago while in Syracuse, I walked out of the house we had stayed at and took a seat on a picnic table in a nearby grassy park, opened up a book I had just started reading, and proceeded to sit, for about 45 minutes, in utter fear of spider attack.

The day was too hot for October, humid, and I was outside in only a t-shirt and jeans, my scarves and sweatshirts restlessly remained packed in my suitcase. Though well into the fall, mosquitoes still thrived in the nearby pond, flies and gnats buzzed around my head, and as a result one of their main predators lurked in the shadows stringing webs, crouched in attack position, ready to kill.

I hate spiders. Like, I’m genuinely terrified of them. I can’t get near them, can’t look at them for very long, don’t even like thinking of them. Once I found a black widow in the hall closet of my parent’s house and it took me a solid twenty minutes of standing, frozen with fear in the middle of the living room before I mustered up the courage to get bug spray and kill it. I grabbed the spray from under the kitchen sink, convinced the spider—always watching, scheming—had run away and hid underneath one of the couch cushions I would eventually sit on. Die on. But when I came back to the closet, it was still there, as if taunting me. I inched toward it until I was about a foot away (read: insanely close!), sprayed it thoroughly, dropped the can, ran away, and then did this dance I always do when I come in close contact with an arachnid, where I jump around and swat at the thousands of invisible spiders I am convinced are crawling all over me. It’s very healthy. Not at all stupid looking.

Because of this phobia, I had a really difficult time reading and relaxing in that park. I knew there were spiders all around, there had to be, and, just like swimming with sharks, I was unable for any amount of time to let my guard down lest be the victim of a terrible, likely fatal attack. And as I sat, muscles clenched in fear, the crisp new pages of my book wrinkling beneath the pit-bull grip my hands unconsciously held them in, it became very clear to me that global warming was to blame for all of this. After all, it was global warming’s fault that it was a ninety degree day in the Northeast; it was global warming’s fault that cold fall temperatures hadn’t arrived and extinguished all creepy crawly life for a blessed six months; and, as a result, it was global warming’s fault that I could not concentrate on my book. I was pissed. I wanted to punch a Hummer owner.

In all of this, it occurred to me that one of the peripheral impacts of climate change is the different lens through which we now view the weather. We are told that all the weather systems are dysfunctional and as a result it makes it that much more difficult to tolerate anything unpleasant. What was once just a hot summer day is now seen as an indicator of the impending self-afflicted apocalypse. There’s no such thing as hot any more, just abnormally hot. The present is seen as unnecessarily excessive, the past as romantically quaint, and our suffering is increased in that juxtaposition. Part of my frustration while sitting in that park in Syracuse had to do with the fact that I knew next year probably wouldn’t be any better, but more than likely worse. The weather hadn’t cooled when I expected it to, and thinking of upcoming autumns only proliferated my anxiety. And so my silly little phobia was amplified. I was left annoyed when I should have been relaxing outside, enjoying unseasonably pleasant weather.
This idea—that comparing a present reality with one’s preconceived expectations of it can often leads to increased disappointment—is something I’ve had to deal with not only on that upstate picnic table, but on this tour as a whole. When the lineup to The Riot Before finally solidified in May of ’06, we had one and only one specific plan as to how to acquire a name for ourselves: tour. Our idea from the beginning was to organically grow our fan base (assuming, hopefully, that one could be grown) and since we didn’t have any “connections”, had no knack for marketing, hated posing for pictures, despised any sort of self-promotion, it was pretty natural for us to just hop in a van and start playing shows. We figured if we played relentlessly people would eventually begin to take notice and we could skip that the whole, “whore yourself out” part of being in a band. Our plan was to earn our way, to not skip one step. It sounded really nice, but, 160 shows later, I’m beginning to think that we had a very naïve grasp of just how slowly this kind evolution progresses. From an outside perspective I’m sure it’s less painstaking, but I’ve lived every day of the last two years of my life specifically for this band. The jobs I’ve worked, the absurd hours I’ve worked those jobs, the things I’ve bought, the things I haven’t bought, where I lived; have all been decided on with the band in mind. And while making all these decisions, while forming my entire life around a four chord mold, I had certain expectations, what I at the time thought were very reasonable, about what this kind of reckless abandon would lead to.

In the last year and a half we’ve been on the road, we’ve played many more shows than can be counted on two hands to crowds whose number can be counted on one. But we were never too discouraged by that. Like those torturously hot days of summer, there was comfort in the knowledge that we were in a season that must be endured and that would eventually pass. But last night, as we played to an audience entirely of bands, a scene not far from what’s been common on this tour, that familiar park bench frustration let itself in and took up it’s place of increasingly common residence. I didn’t think this would still be the case after 160 shows. I never expected that obscurity could cling with such dogged perseverance to something so constantly in motion, but in the last few weeks I’ve begun to learn that a rolling stone can and will gather moss, especially if you don’t know anyone at Rolling Stone.

And as I sit here, in a little bakery / cafe in Chicago, my remaining coffee now a thousand words cold, I understand that all of this, all my worry, all my frustration, all my anxiety, is entirely capable of being self-cured. I know this too because of last night’s unattended show. I know this after watching Broadway Calls play with energy for a crowd of a thousand, after about ten circle pits during Death is Not Glamorous’ set. I now understand that the fleeting and frail and extremely precious present, should never have to carry the burden of past expectations, for it will always crumble beneath that calculated and entirely irrational weight. Two years ago this band had incredibly high goals for itself, and today we still do, but it took those two years to learn how to separate the act of setting and striving towards goals from living fully and thankfully in the moment. Rather than complain at having to endure a seemingly never-ending summer, I’ll step out from under the shade of my expectations, and get a freakin’ tan.

Milwaukee sucks anyway.

Brett

This convenient store was in a movie once. We drove way out of the way just to take pictures of it. Kevin Smith owes me three hours of my life back, and not because I hated one of his movies (never watched one all the way through) but because other people I know liked his movie just a little too much.

Burrito Review:

El Paisa, Brooklyn (Bushwick), New York.

You know that feeling you get when driving up a mountain in a car where all of a sudden, after opening your mouth a bit wider than normal, your ears pop and what just seconds before had seemed like perfectly normal hearing, is revealed to be, in contrast with this new unexpected clarity, muffled like you had been listening to the world take place on the other side of a wall in a neighbor’s apartment? The weird thing about ears popping is that the pressure relieved is normally unnoticed until after the fact. Very rarely do I find myself struggling to pop my ears (though when it happens it’s nothing short of torture) because the pressure had built so gradually that I didn’t notice the noises around me were slowly being buried beneath a blanket. Then, POW! the pressure is gone, everything is crisp and bright and close, and you realize you had been listening to the world with the treble all the way down. That is exactly what it felt like to eat at El Paisa.

After months of Chipotle, Qudoba, Moe’s, and all sorts of Mexican food ruined by assimilation, I was beginning to doubt whether or not I really even liked burritos as much as I constantly insisted. Sure they were good, but not THAT good. Maybe I was just clinging to my California roots, finding something beyond taste that I loved about Mexican food. Maybe it wasn’t just rice and beans, but the ocean, friends, and perfect weather that I found wrapped up in burritos. But one bite of my burrito at El Paisa erased all my doubt. Burritos are amazing! I would even go as far as saying that it wasn’t the memory of California that made me like burritos so much, but the memory of good burritos that made me like California. Ok, not that far. Maybe. Seriously though, this thing was perfect
. Everything about this place was perfect. It wasn’t Mexican food for gringos. It was entirely authentic. The waitress didn’t speak English. Neither did the menu. As a result, nothing was lost in translation. It tasted perfect. I’m always amazed by how something so simple as the ingredients in Mexican food can vary so drastically in taste. Luckily, the wonderful people at El Paisa, in the pendulum swing of taste, caught it at its highest point.

I give it a 10!

Aside from burritos, we were in Brooklyn first and foremost to play a show in the backyard of an apartment by the name of Sea Lab 187. But this was Brooklyn which meant that it was tightly surrounded by dozens of other apartments, with hundreds of residents, all of whom had great seats, whether they liked it or not, to a punk rock show. I often doubt neighbor’s tolerance of loud bands (and rightly so) and I didn’t think the show would last ten minutes before getting shut down. But to my surprise we played a whole set free of incidents. And as an added bonus, one of the neighbors, Brooke Pridemore, came downstairs and played a short set while we broke down. I played an acoustic set with Brooke in San Francisco years ago, and since then we’ve crossed paths a few times on tour. He’s a great performer and I highly recommend checking him out when he inevitably comes to your town. Also, he’s the one who took me to El Paisa, of which I’ll be forever grateful.

Unfortunately some neighbors could only tolerate so much music. Broadway Calls played after us and got through most of their set until, during a Jawbreaker cover, one neighbor got out a paintball gun and opened fire. Luckily no one was hurt, though a few were a little more orange than they wanted to be, and the set ended a few songs early. Unafraid, Death is Not Glamorous set up and offered a direct challenge to the paintball sniper, before launching into a loud, fast, and incredibly heartfelt set; something they manage to do every night with an unwaveringly high level of enthusiasm. Whether the sniper ran out of bullets or was genuinely impressed by DING’s set, no more paintballs flew for the rest of the evening. The Fad closed out the night with, from what I heard (unable to wait any longer, I left after DING to search out some food) was a fantastic set. I later listened to some their recordings and immediately chastised myself for lack of patience. I hope we run into those guys again.

The next night, after a show in Long Island, Freddie, Matias, and I took a train back into Brooklyn and set up camp at The Lost and Found, a bar we played at on our last two trips to the city. Then this happened.

I don’t really know exactly how much I drank that night, but I do know that it was way more than I’ve had on the rest of the tour combined and that sometime around 3:30 in the morning, stairs became daunting. I remember looking at the five steps that led from the bar up to the room where the pool table is, and feeling nervous, like I wouldn’t make it up them, or back down for that matter. Five stairs had become Everest. Shortly thereafter I threw up. Three times. Granted, I’m not one for normally getting this drunk, but every once in a while, in the company of friends when it’s entirely in good fun, it can be a blast. Though I would have preferred to go without the puking. Overall, it was a great night!

We’re in Chicago now, heading to Madison in a few hours, and it had occurred to me just how much has taken place since the last time I wrote anything in here, and how impossible it would be to try and catch up. So I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to try to write a bit more and never ever again watch that terrible show on MTV about Tila Tequila.

Your chance at love is over.

Brett

I would like to point out that in the last few days the two most highly played things on my ipod have been the new Weakerthans album (amazing) and ‘Lil Wayne. It’s almost getting to the point that I could delete everything but The Weakerthans and ‘Lil Wayne and probably not even notice. I’m really hoping this wears off on me so that the next batch of songs I write will be both beautifully poetic and gangsta. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of poetic, this morning I woke up both early and ambitions, two things that have been quite uncommon recently, so in order to capitalize on what I knew would not last long, I got dressed and, while everyone else was still asleep—spread out in between the forgotten work out equipment and old, stacked cardboard boxes of the New Brunswick attic we had called home that night—I rode my skateboard downtown to a small diner, ordered an omelet, a coffee, and opened up a book of poems by Philip Larkin. I have made a concentrated effort as of late to find a greater appreciation in poetry. Throughout college I more or less wrote it off, found it a bit too pretentious, too much work for what I determined to be, at best, an ambiguous payoff. But in the last year or so I’ve reopened the file on poetry. Since then I’ve stared at many a line of verse, confused, bored, or just annoyed, but every once in a while a poem will really resonate in me, and when that happens it makes sorting through all the bad ones worth it. That said, I’ve found the aforementioned Philip Larkin to be a person who frequently writes poems that fall into that latter category. Simple, often in rhyme (which I find refreshingly unpretentious), and stunningly profound, Larkin’s poems shine a both wise and cynical light into all sorts of aspects of life, which, unfortunately, on the morning I sat reading in the diner, focused primarily on the inevitability of death. Lines like, “being brave lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.” or the cryptic and very pessimistic view of aging found in “Old Fools,” successfully took my good mood and, well, buried it. All of a sudden I found myself unconsciously picking at a cold omelet, staring off into space, repeating to myself that space and nothingness were all that awaited me, no matter what I did with my life. I would die and decompose no matter the deeds done. Added to my sudden existential crisis, I realized that though it was October, it was hot and humid and I was sweating. So not only was I destined for nothingness, it appeared that the entirety of my existence was going to be, thanks to global warming, nothing but uncomfortably hot. The day had really made an abrupt turn for the worse. And while I can sit here and blame SUV’s and morose, humanist poets for my sudden despair, I have opted to point the finger at the real culprit, the true source of my anguish, and probably, deep down, yours too: The Jersey Shore.

I really don’t think Larkin’s poems would have hit me as hard as they did if it had not been for the fact that a mere twenty-four hours prior, I had spent a morning on the Jersey Shore. We had spent the night at the home of one of Broadway Calls friends, who graciously put all fourteen of us up, and everything was going pretty great until I got restless and ventured a few blocks from the house and all of a sudden found myself in a grim and dreary land that Dante himself could not have imagined making anyone suffer being in. Now I’m sure that, year round, the Jersey Shore provides all sorts of opportunities to be depressed or simply disgusted with just how eager our culture is willing to lower the bar, but there’s something about it completely deserted on an overcast day in October that really makes this picture extra ironic…

I skated around for a bit, walked on an entirely deserted beach, and couldn’t escape this terrible feeling of despair and hopelessness. You know those people who briefly become D-List celebrities when they’re 28 and can just never get past the fact? Their whole life is lived trying to recreate some sort of shallow fleeting fame which they knew only in an incredibly small dose; as a result they end up, thirty years later, looking like they’re melting beneath twelve botched plastic surgeries, still frantically handing out head shots obsolete by at least a decade, a resume boasting of parts in shows that boasted of being in color, while a pair of ballooned out, barely parted lips slur rehashed half truths about past glories that even they can’t believe. That is exactly what the Jersey Shore is like.

Also, I was attacked by a shark!!

(I got better)

The good news in all of this is that all I have just recounted, in what is probably was too much detail, actually accounts for about .01 percent of what’s has actually taken place on this tour. The rest of it has been overwhelmingly fantastic. Being able to watch Death is Not Glamorous and Broadway Calls play every night has been incredibly fun and inspiring, and it has been a blast hanging out with both bands. We’ve played a few shows in places we’ve been to before and it has been tons of fun seeing familiar faces. This was especially the case in Baltimore, which, once again, reminded us why we like playing in that city so much.

In Doylestown, P.A, after the show at a great independent record store, I west into a local coffee shop that was closing down for the night to see if they had any pastries or bagels that they were going to be throwing away. The guy working was incredibly nice and gave me a few bagels, practically apologizing that there wasn’t more, while explaining that he too had toured in bands and knew what it was like. I thanked him and walked back to the show, happy to have breakfast for the next morning. About twenty minutes later, I was standing outside the records store talking to a few of the guys in Barlights (a band we’ll be out with in a few weeks) and I noticed that the same guy who worked at the coffee shop was walking towards me, and he was holding what looked like pizza boxes in his hand. I didn’t really think much of it, assumed he was walking home with dinner, until he came straight up to me, said “here,” handing me two large, hot cheese pizzas, and then walked away. I was so shocked by this guy’s incredible generosity, I barely had enough time to say thanks. The pizza was delicious and was quickly devoured. I’ve said it before, but I think it’s worth repeating, that one of my favorite parts of being in a band on the road is how amazingly altruistic random strangers frequently are. Considering I have a tendency to be a bit of a pessimist at times (see the first 800 words of this blog) it’s wonderful to have an almost daily reminder that my cynicism is oft unfounded.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the news, about how we now have the ability to know what’s going on almost anywhere in the world, and how, though that can be really beneficial at times, it’s also incredibly draining and potentially harmful, at least psychologically. After all, we evolved in small communities mostly unaware of all the countless tragedies happening elsewhere. We knew about what happened where we lived and we were able to not only feel sad or to empathize, but to actually offer tangible relief to those suffering. But now we have news 24 hours a day informing us that bombs have exploded, that bridges have collapsed, that dictators have tortured, that corporations have cheated, that elections were fixed, and on, and on, and on. Unceasing despair. And of a kind and quantity we just weren’t made to be able to handle. It’s just far too much. So while I don’t think ignorance is the answer, moderation is. I think it’s really important to be able to sit on a sidewalk with your friends and eat a pizza some generous stranger gave you, and to be happy. To, for that moment at least, and for many other moments like it, move out from under the cloud of despair we’ve built with our technology, to see life in front of you, to enjoy free pizza, and just as importantly, to not miss a moment to give someone else a slice.

Brett

Here’s the deal people. I’m having fun right now. Too much fun in fact, to write anything substantial here. I’ll leave that for later when, let’s say, I’m bored. In the mean time I’ll just say this, I love Broadway Calls and Death is Not Glamorous. You need to watch these bands play songs. Amazing.

The first show of the tour was in Virginia Beach. If you’ve never been to Virginia Beach I will go ahead and sum it up entirely in 3 pictures.

Notice that I did not post a picture of a beach. That’s because, in spite of the name of the place, the beach really isn’t what defines it. Mostly just trashy stores and the fact that it’s illegal, like cops get involved kind of illegal, if you swear. Ridiculous.

I’m hanging out in Philly today. What are you doing? Wait, nevermind, don’t care.

Brett