16VOLT/ CHEMLAB MIDI GHETTO TOUR DRUM BLOG BY JASON BAZINET PART 9

5/11/2010 Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ottawa, Canada.

            Played here on the last 16volt tour. Fun place generally speaking. Nice trendy part of town. Great name. Cool promoter.

            16volt blew the power I think three times before we figured out that the venue could not handle our strobe lights.

            My nose is bleeding and my back is sore. The nose is from climate change and I don’t know if the back is from moving gear or playing two sets of intense machine rock every night. Might be a little of both.

            After the gig, there was a dance night with music that was so freaking loud I had to flee the venue.  I don’t understand why dance music needs to be that loud.  It seems to be just beyond the threshold of pain. Do people enjoy not being able to speak to each other that much?

            After the gig I ran into Joseph from Razorblade Dance floor and Steve and I hit him up for a couple of showers at his hotel. Great dude!

            I also finally got to hear the opening band from the other night, Promonium Jesters. We had their CD and we were rocking it. Had a great old school Wax Trax vibe to it.

            After the gig as we were travelling to London, I broke out the travel sized Catchphrase and we played a few games. Turns out the travel sized edition has about 50 words in it total. So it can’t really be played multiple times. What a waste.

5/12/2010 London, ON, Moon Over Marin

            First things first, I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a Galaga Machine at Zaphod and I announced that I could fuck that play that thing for like a ½ hour on one quarter, Phil stated he could beat me and the gauntlet was thrown down.  Long story short his single shooter style was no match for my double shooter kung-fu!

            Moon Over Marin is a cool Dead Kennedy’s song. The club Moon Over Marin is a long hallway. Probably one of the oddest clubs I’ve ever played in.  It’s like playing in the barrel of a large gun. It’s essentially a reverb chamber.  The back stage smelled like a mix of shit and vomit.  We blew the power multiple times which really killed the vibe of the sets, especially Chemlab’s.

            On the bright side, the club was located next to a comic book store and (Loud) Chris and I bought some comics. I got Essential Daredevil Vol. 2 and he got some Wolverine and X-men graphic novels.

            We had to pack up immediately after the gig and head off to Kinetic Festival.  We stayed up and argued about music and busted each other balls for a few hours before everyone kicked off for the night.  Someone asked who the best punk rock musician was and Dan (from The Crills) would be proud of me as I vouched for Joe Strummer against Steve’s Johnny Rotten and Jeremy’s Iggy Pop.

5/13/2010 Montreal, Canada, Kinetik Festival

            1^st festival I’ve ever played. Biggest crowd I’ve ever played to as well.  All the MGT bands did very well at the festival. I think we might have been the only acts on tour at the time, the other bands having flown in or whatever.

            Saw a lot of folks from Seattle, chatted with Ted and Clint from I.R. Met Klaus from Laetherstrip (great and humble man) and met Hans from Run Level Zero in the flesh for the 1^st time.  Also hung with the Gothsicles a bit. Fun folks.

            Unfortunately, in the chaos that was back stage, full of surly stone-faced European rock stars and hard drinking North American rock stars I left my toiletries bag. This really sucks big time. I am hoping my pal Eric G can find it and give it to someone that I will meet up with later in the tour.

5/14/2010 Rhode Island, Club Hell, USA.

            Fun gig. So far Galen and I have broken four cymbals.  I had to break down and buy a few new ones.  I got an 18 inch Paiste rock china and an 18 inch Paiste thin crash.  Fuck I’m burned out, so I’m signing off. NYC tomorrow.

5/15/2010 New York City, NY. Santo’s Party House.

            So NYC was an experience. We got to the cub and start loading in to find that there is a roller skating class going on. Odd. The club has two rooms, upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs with the awesome mixing board from Star Trek was being used for a DJ battle. The downstairs area where we were playing had a less than stellar system plus stairs to load in and out of. Guess where we played? The stage was very small. Actually it wasn’t really a stage; it was more of a drinking lounge.

            The DJ was so fucking loud between the acts we could barely communicate with our sound guy, Chris.

            The club had a dance night after we played so they bum-rushed us out the door and we had to load out through a throng of conformist dance-party assholes.

            My hydraulic hi-hat stand is now broken and we need a wrench to fix it. Luckily we have an extra hi-hat stand on the tour but it is causing me to rap the sticks against my knuckles ever once and a while. It is not a pleasant experience.