Okay this one is a bit more detailed and contains more graphic language.. ENJOY!
DOOB TOUR DAY 2
Bizzo/Grand Forks
“I’m seriously fucking freezing in here. I’m so glad I brought a beach towel to sleep under!” -Jake
Today began with a lame as hell alarm from Jimmy’s new fancy ass phone.
Jake froze himself last night because he forgot to bring a sleeping bag or blanket.
He slept under his very large beach towel though. I got right up and stretched out because my back was killing me. SIDE NOTE: Previously the night before I had fallen asleep listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album on tape, and all I could think about was how many times he talked about some girl being in the front yard or fast cars going straight out of his life. Anyways! We left our gracious host Matt and headed out for the nearest coffee and chow place. We found a local coffee shop with WiFi that cost 2 dollars for every half hour. We said screw that and kept walking. We reached a local music store called String Bean, a music and coffee shop. OR SO WE THOUGHT!
“Do y’all have coffee.” -Andy
“No we don’ do that no more.” -Dick Bag
We looked around the music store for a few minutes, and the grouch of an employee watched us like a hawk. Because we were totally going to steal one of his crappy off-brand guitars. We then slunk back to the first coffee shop. Andy and Jake sipped some okay coffee, and max ate a muffin. Jimmy and I posted our blogs, and we checked our emails. Afterwards we went to the shopping mall to get Jake a sleeping bag and some other assorted junk.
We dilly dallied around for a good while before finally having brunch out of the back of the van with some damn good zucchini bread from my mom. Then we took off for Grand Forks. Andy and I blared tunes in the front seat while Jake slept (a lot) and Jimmy and Max watched the Watchmen on Jimmy’s computer. During our ridiculously long trip to Grand Forks these great things did occur (mostly involving Andy and me). A bunch of stupid jokes about this that and the other thing. A Star Wars conversation about Lando’s ship and life on Cloud City. A roadside picnic in Harwood. Jimmy needing to pee extremely bad and screaming “TESORO!” at the first sign. Skating in a Tesoro parking lot. A sign which declared “God’s Stimulus Package” with a picture of five babies in a box that read ‘America’s Future.’ Why are there babies in that box? A sing-a-long to The Beatles “White Album.” Tunes from the Flaming Lips, the Minutemen, Underground Railroad to Candyland and more! Needless to say, driving or riding along is wearing day. By the time we got to Grand Forks I was pretty pooped.
The show was put on out at lovely Jamie Mulligan’s farm. It was outside on stage made out of wood boards on a trailer that had a weird slant to it. The sound system was extremely nice as well as the crowd turn out. There was even an awesome trampoline that I bounced on a few times. However, larger crowds don’t always mean people who care and outside means mosquitoes. The show started out with Jamie’s brother Mike who played in Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovels, which was super freaking awesome! They were like a way stripped down version of Modest Mouse getting “folked” in the buns. (apologies for the vulgarity of the comment, merely an observation of the night that we wanted to share with you all). MOVING ON!
Kirk something or other played some acoustic diddies followed by Jamie Mulligan and then Kelsey Sargent who had a super awesome bulldog played. We talked a guy named Jeremy who used to play in the Enola Gayes and had a Thulsa Doom (the symbol of the bad dudes in Conan the Barbarian) Tat, which was super awesome!
He was a super nice guy who talked a lot about his days on the road. Somewhere during this night Andrew Verry showed up from Minot along with our good buddy John McClure, another Minotian who now lives in GF. It was really good to see both of them being as the show was extremely awkward and very few people actually approached us. When the Diabolic Octopus got up and played a solid set. Andy really laid down some prime time funky on the bass tonight. They also played their 50’s-esque rock jam Motherboy XXX for the first time, it was pretty freaking awesome.
Then the Ooblecks got up and I was forced to wear my flip flops while playing due to the gaps in the boards on the stage. I’m not sure how well we went over and all in all I think I agree with Jake when he said that we might be out-of-place. I fell off the stage during out last song but luckily landed on my feet it was a good 4 feet or more. I then jumped backed on and broke my guitar strap in the process and we finished the song by blowing a fuse from all the crap they obviously had running through it at the time. We got all our gear off stage and began what was to be the rest of an already bizarre night. One guy named Nate seemed to be an overall nice guy and we gave him a couple of things for his spare change and that was our only real sale of the night beside McClure who we tried to convince him we’d give him all of the stuff for free but he insisted.
Kentucky Sound Arsenal played. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think they should change their name to Kentucky Sound Arseholes. First the guitar player broke the trampoline and as far as I could tell never told or apologized to anyone for it. It was obviously an accident but still, one would usually say something. Then as soon as they were done the packed up and left, with their quarter of the crowd never saying anything to anyone. Lame.
Then Kimmy Gibbler, played. They were a pretty fun ska band that played a bunch of covers including Take On Me by Ah Ha, Just What I Needed by the Cars, Spiderwebs by No Doubt featuring guest vocals by Kelsey Sargent, an older Catch 22 song that Jake knew, and they ended with an awesome rendition of I’m Walking on Sunshine. I was really glad they ended the show because they definitely brightened up my mood. The trombone player was pretty wild and I dug that. Then a weird dance session broke out with a bunch of crazy techno that started out as fun but got really annoying while we loaded up all our crap. Meanwhile we debated on wether or not we drive to Bemidji for the night and drive the rest of the way to Duluth tomorrow, or just stay where we were. We stayed since Jamie picked up pizza for us and we had a very fun time eating it. Although the awkwardness continued on. The 5 of us stood in one corner eating our pizza giggling about this that and the other thing, (something involving BRAK) and a large majority of people left over from the show gabbed in the other room. After they left, Jamie declared the house ours, and left for her parents house across the field.
So I mentioned Mosquitoes, thousands if not millions of those pesky sonsovbitches, have been biting us all night. Especially while we were playing. So far the only freakout or fight has been from Jimmy. Who recited a rather detailed and hilarious rant to Andy and me involving the words ‘fuck’ ‘fucking’ and ‘mother fucking bugs.’ It is now pretty late in the morning and we will be getting up early to make our drive to Duluth before their music stores close. Jimmy is still up fighting off the mosquitoes and max, jake, and Andy are sleeping in the other corner. Even though the crowd was a bit on the hum-dee-dumm side I actually had a really good time playing and Jamie collected a good amount of money for our tanks tomorrow. Show, food, gas money and a place to sleep, pretty good deal. As for me I’m pretty excited to go to Duluth to rock out to some hardcore bands. New cities, new kids, new roads, long drives and more dumb jokes ahead!
chips ahoy!
charlie
p.s. we set up our merch stand in our trailer… since there was no other real spot to do it. this was a conversation @ the end of the night after we had announced more the 10 times if anyone wanted anything from us now was the time.
“So is this the Merch stand?” -Suspender John
“Yup what can we get you?” -doobs
“Oh sweet where the KSA stuff?” -Suspender John
“….uh pretty sure they left an hour ago.” -doobs
“….(whisper) what a fucker.” -doobs
