Feed Us A Live Insect

Berkeley--924 Gilman Street

Aha! To make up for the debacle that was Modesto we get to play what turns out to be the best show of the tour. I always had fond, tender memories of Berkeley...like cobbler...and now I like it even more.

If you're never been there, The Gilman Street Project is a club much like The Smell in downtown Los Angeles: an all-ages venue where all the freaky and underage bands get to play. It's in what I think is an old warehouse, covered in grafitti, and has (thank god, why don't more places have this) natural light coming in from the skylights. Since we're playing an afternoon/early evening show, this means I can see where I'm putting my hands on my guitar neck, an important consideration in my case.

Everything about this show was great, we actually made enough money there to drive all the way back from San Francisco to Los Angeles without using our credit cards once. There were droves of teenagers in the place (is 56 a drove? It seemed like it after the other shows we played). There were little kids dancing around onstage while the bands played! Yay little kids, we salute thee.

The first awesome band that played was the majestic and resplendent Space Vacuum (from outer space), motto: "we suck in the best possible way." They have blindingly sparkly silver outfits and play synth-rock songs about outer space. What more do you need? NOTHING, that's what. They had the little kids get onstage and dance with tinfoil-covered space monkies. We loved them and were very glad we didn't have to go on directly after them.

The second awesome band of the night was the equally majestic and resplendent (in their own way) synth-and-drums duo The Tuesday Club, who actually have pictures of the very show I'm talking about up in the comments section of their myspace page if you look right now. The synth player/singer looks like some kind of elf but performs a bit like Jimmy Durante--she sings out of the corner of her mouth and she has that sort of vaudeville shimmy to her head and even though she did not actually say "hot cha cha cha" I feel it was essentially implied. I think this band is going places. Mary said of the vocalist "she's got a bit of that Becky Stark charisma going on," and I agree. I hope we can play with them again before they get all big and famous and leave us peons in the dust.

The third awesome band to play was us, and we did fine, I think. We got a really good response for "Best Friends In Space," which doesn't surprise me considering that the overall mood of the night was kinda loopy. I think some of our other songs might have been too much on the rock side of things for the kids in the audience, who were really there to dance.

And dance they did for the fourth awesome band of the night, Mister Loveless, a moody dance-punk trio who headlined the show and I think brought a largish chunk of the audience. They were pretty spectacularly tight and reminded me a bit of The Killers and maybe Wire or Gang Of Four. Good stuff! We would love to play with any of these bands again, should they come down to Los Angeles or when we make it back up to San Francisco again.

So we ended the main leg of our first tour on a high note, which I'm very grateful for. The rest are weekend shows...Las Vegas this coming Friday, then (we hope) Phoenix, and then San Diego at the end of the month.

posted by Eli Monolator @ 10:52 PM