Tuesday, May 6, 2008

the legend of the hand jammer

May 6th
Queen City (Charlotte), North Carolina
Jeff's Bucket Shop w/ silent weapons

The Milestone was closed during the few days we were coming through North Carolina, but Eston from Silent Weapons was able to set this one up for us. He usually hosts an open mic night at the Bucket Shop on Tuesdays, but he canceled it so we could play there.

We were introduced to the phrase "hand jammer" by Henry Killian. He played a really cool acoustic set to open the Bucket Shop show. His right hand killed. I'd imagine he's on a workout schedule that includes lots of hand jammers to keep his wrist in shape.

Definition: hand jammer - noun - to perform a hand job on one's band mate.

Silent Weapons was pretty cool. They played as a three piece, two guitars and vocals with programmed drums and bass playing through the PA. I'm probably the only one in the bar that thought so (since everyone told us how loud we were after our set), but I thought they could have turned up a bit.

After the show, we all went back to Eston's house. He hooked us up with waters, snack cakes, and some fire. Trevis drove James and Allen to Wac Arnold's. From what I heard, Trevis got kind of lost on the way back and James got really excited. He opened a bag to get his fix and was like, "fuck yeah, they gave me double cheeseburgers instead of regular cheeseburgers." So he chomped them up on the drive back to Eston's.

When they got back though, everything seemed clearer. They didn't give James doubles, he ate Trevis' food. After the long drive back to Eston's, Trevis was a bit let down that he didn't really have any food left to eat. But it just reaffirmed what I've known for a while; don't trust James with yr Wac Arnold's. He'd run over his mom's dog for a cheeseburger (with ketchup only).

Henry was super trashed and at some point disappeared. We looked outside and his car was gone. He showed up before we left the next day, so we're sure he's alive. He was saying all kinds of hilarious shit that I wished I'd written down.

Eston had some kind of crazy ESP thing going on, or maybe our taste is just predictable. Before the show, he played Loveless over the PA, we'd just been talking about that album on the ride to the show. That one's not so crazy since Loveless is pretty popular, but at this house after the show he stuck in some Pale Saints. We'd been listening to them in the van earlier in the day.

The next morning, we got a nice fat slice of the internerd. Gaurav posted the original Albini mixes of In Utero so we downloaded and burned that before we left. I was kind of let down that it wasn't that much different. I'd always heard how different the original mixes were. The vocals were a little lower on some songs, on Scentless Apprentice the vocals were really loud and distorted, but overall, it wasn't much different than the version that got released.

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