July 18 Seattle WA
Been looking forward to this show playing with our friends in Pink Mountain and Eyes. Shortly after our arrival in Seattle, we met with the gang for a nice meal at Thai Tom in the U district and then proceeded to get lost trying to find the venue. Relying on GPS, we ended up in front of a nice house in a residential neighborhood. Turns out the address was NW 65th St not N 65th st, just a 1/2 mile down the same street, but amongst a small strip of buildings down the hill from the Phinney district. May I digress a moment? This GPS thing is wonderful, but you tend to lose your sense of place as it seems you are taking orders from a dispatcher who knows your every movement and change in direction and politely tells you what to do (our GPS, named Matilda speaks with an educated English accent). And when she melts down (like she did when we were on Bainbridge Island), you resort to asking the nice policeman for directions. I feel a little naked without an actual paper maps. AAA here we come.

Back to the point…So the venue was punk-squat-like and the nice creatures living there sort of wandered around the place very used to the hustle bustle of touring band load in and text messaging, moving about, etc.

We played a good set. I must say we are feeling like a band more than a collaboration and the sets are changing and developing new things. Of late shorter pieces. this night we did three: a scritchy-scratchy one, a mayhem loud one with much theatrics, screaming from Val and David (David’s extended theater moment including a discussion of lactating and a desire for breast milk ice cream) and a high-pitch whistley thing that finished with a Branca-like tension filled ‘big ending.’

Seattle Scream, Seattle, WA 7.18.09

Eyes rocked out a quick set and Pink Mountain kicked it all into high gear. Sadly, their set was cut short just as they were really grooving. The PA wasn’t very good and the vocalist for PM apparently wasn’t having a very good time and put and end to the evening early.

Headed back to the cool little bar at the end of the street called The Dray (why don’t we have any neat little corner pubs like this in Oakland???) with John Shiurba, listened to the bartenders consolidated life history and were soon joined by Gino Robair and Justin and Aaron from Eyes. Prehistoric Horse had decided to start the drive east immediately rather than deal with taking a ferry out to our hosts, The Snapp’s house and inevitably getting a late start. This strategy paid off handsomely as we put in a solid four hour drive east to the outskirts of Spokane. the next two days are going to be all about driving…