Feed Us A Live Insect

Olympia

(Thursday)

I was very much looking forward to Olympia. I'd seen the exit for Sleater-Kinney road off of I-5 the last time we drove through on the way to Seattle and I thought "cool." I knew about Kill Rock Stars and everything, so our first visit to Washington's capitol city was much anticipated.

It was cold that night. It was cold everywhere on the tour, really (except, strangely, for Seattle) but I think I felt coldest in Olympia. We played at this place called Le Voyeur. It's a bar/restaurant with a cinderblock room in the back where bands play. No stage, nobody runs sound: you borrow a mic from the bartender and run it yourself. Well, no problem, we've done that before...no heat, either, and we couldn't really get the door that opens onto the alleyway to close properly, so it was cold in there. Mary played wearing her coat and my nose was running into my mouth while I played guitar, so whenever I sang I kept spitting out little clouds of snot, which I'm sure was charming.

There were some good things about the evening and some bad. The bad things were that although there were only three bands that night, and the first started at 10:30, we didn't get to play until 1:30 AM (shades of The Mustang) and had to blast through our set at top speed and indifferent precision before the whole place closed. There was also--and I know this is going to sound catty, but seriousy, I swear I'm being generous here--there was also an aggressive and extremely messed-up young woman who clearly hadn't brushed her teeth in a long time, decades, possibly, who kept asking Mary if she wanted to make out, which CLEARLY MARY DID NOT WANT TO DO. In fact she asked PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY in the club if they wanted to make out, and had she been a guy would have been a sleazy and repulsive creep. It was really, really, really hard not to want to pop her in the mouth, except of course for the possibility of coming in contact with the horrendous teeth.

The good was that there was a young woman (a different one, not the teeth one) who stuck it out for the whole night to hear us play, and although I never found out who she was, she was extremely game and enthusiastic and she made our night. If you're there, mystery girl with the knit cap, please contact us, we want to say thanks. Also a very nice and friendly guy named Ian stuck around and bought some merch, which we vastly appreciated, and the folks running the place, Pete and Jackie, let us stay after the place closed to have another drink and chat about baby names for girls. I think we agreed that Josephine is a really great name. That was a very nice way to end the evening, thanks Pete and Jackie!

On a sad note, as I'm writing this I just learned that the great and mighty Mormons, with whom we've played many a show, have lost their drummer and rhythm guitarist and appear to be calling it quits. They had their last show on the 19th, which I'm very sorry to have missed as we were in Seattle that night. I hope that they can put things back together with a new drummer and guitarist, but if that doesn't happen, then godspeed you, gentlemen. You will be missed.

posted by Eli Monolator @ 7:27 PM