10/30 and 11/1 wrap up.

So we played a few shows over the last couple of days.

First off was Thursday, October 30th with the Blind Shake and the Cops at the Sunset Tavern.

Our set went pretty well. 7/10, I'd say, though many folks seemed to like it quite a bit. We debuted a new song called "Hatchet Wound City". Yep, our second album isn't even out and we're playing songs from the next record already. I got exhausted during the block of songs I sang a lot of lead vocals on, "I Made Out With You Before You Were Cool", "Always A Greg McBridesmaid, Never A Greg McBride", and "There's Always A Heap of Trash as the End of the Rainbow".

The Blind Shake were, just like each time I've seen them since the summer of 2003, completely amazing. Jim, Mike, and Dave are one of the most consistently amazing live bands I've seen, and it was great to finally get to play a show with them. Before and after the show, we discussed some possible tour plans for next year, and got to get our general hang on.

The Cops had quite a task ahead of them, following the Blind Shake, and they did pretty damn honorably well. I'd somehow never seen the Cops before, but they are a great live band, energetically playing rock and roll without any bullshit.

Sara Bickman wrote a nice piece on the show for the Seattle Weekly Reverb blog. She posted some good pictures of the night as well.

Last night (Saturday the 1st), we played our first show in Bellingham in about 4.5 months. Richy and I are still residents of Bellingham, but we've been more focused on playing in Seattle for the last year or so.

We played first out of three bands. Seeing as how Halloween was the night before, attendance was pretty light as most folks in this town had blown their load the night before. Making lemonade, we (sans Richy, as he is normally sans undergarmets) decided to ditch our pants and play in our underwear. Sorry sig oths. We played an energetic, sloppy, discordant, sloppy set, though I think "Hatchet Wound City" was actually better than at the Sunset.

The Contra and Boris Budd and the Waterboarders played second and third, respectively, and both put up their best show in the face of the small crowd.

Our next bout of shows is in a couple of weeks with Mount Vicious, Conan and Chris from Replicator's new band. These shows are going to be a lot of fun. Here's the flier for the Seattle show on Friday, November 14th (the night before, the 13th, is a house show in Olympia):
We should be getting a digital copy of the final master for Real Size Monster Series this week from Carl Saff. And maybe some hope for this country, we'll see.

-Chris