Tour 2010 Part 3: Albany NY (April 2nd)

April 7, 2010

Stacy and Matt were taking her son Joey out to look at colleges on Friday, so we had to be out of the house early. Breakfast was at Cracker Barrel (as it was on the last tour), but I stayed away from the bad stuff. Just egg beaters and turkey sausage with toast, but it all tasted so great i suspect they gave me real eggs with pork sausage. Oh well, I tried. Last tour we discovered that comedy cds go over great on long drives. Last tour was Mitch Hedberg. This tour was Patton Oswalt. What a riot – an angry middle aged post-punk railing against stupidity. A comedy version of… ME! His bit about playing the chipmunks 45 on 33 1/3 literally had me hyperventilating, as that’s exactly what i did when i was a kid. I think i’ll bring some Louis CK on the next tour.

Since we were up so early we got to albany before noon, Lots of time to shower, nap, hang out. I went to school in neighboring Schenectady, and the venue (the Fuze Box) used to be the QE2, which at the time was THE tour stop for indie bands in the area. Of course I was wheels-less back in the day so I never went there. It’s actually in an old White Tower hamburger joint, I guess a rival of White Castle in a bygone era. Bar up front, Dance room in the back with a very high and very small stage, plus an upstairs balcony/lounge. This night was part of Alien Nation, a monthly goth/industrial dance night. They are adding live bands to the show and we were the guinea pigs for this – no other bands that night. Dani the promoter and her life/business partner Andrew were extremely cool and accommodating. We set up and sound checked – the stage so small we had to walk onto it in a certain order. We know ONE person in the Albany area, but there were a bunch of late 30′s ish people who came in during soundcheck and sat down. Before we went on, Andrew told me that there were more people there early than they ever had, and he motioned to the 30-somethings, saying he had never seen them before. We can only assume they were there specifically to see us. Pics of us before and during our set, as well as the dance crowd, can be seen here.

Despite the cramped environment we played pretty well. To fit with the audience, we played a lot of our early, shorter, more new wave-ish material, some songs we haven’t played live in 3 years. It was a nice change of pace from the 10 minute epics. The audience sat quite quietly and watched, some leaving and coming back a few songs later, but for the most part we seemed to go over fine. Later we were told the promoters had their best night ever and gave us credit for at least part of it. Andrew is in a cool band called Doomsday Virus. We’re trying to get them a gig in Portland.

The schtick of the dance portion of the night was Depeche Mode versus KMFDM, the DJ switching between the two. As soon as we said “Thank you – good night” we heard “REACH OUT AND TOUCH FAITH!” booming down from the PA. After packing up Jack and Runtt drove the van back to the hotel while Cruella, Jenny and I stayed to fraternize with the locals and dance. We chatted with Dani and Andrew and some of their friends for quite a while, but Cruella’s choice of shoes eventually put the kibosh on any dancing.

One thing we noticed was there was much more PDA and drunken hookups than we usually see. And albany drunks are much more entertaining than Portland drunks. They were a real mess. My constant humming of “reach out and touch faith” had drunks coming up to me saying “bless me father!”, which i did in my best lapsed catholic fashion.

We eventually departed, caught a cab back to the hotel. We were hungry, so we tried to order pizza. No luck. Then I walked to the restaurant on the corner with the big flashing OPEN sign. They were actually closed and forgot to turn off the lights. Then I walked to Dunkin Donuts, only to find they were closed except for the drive thru, and they wouldn’t let me walk through the drive thru, as they were recently robbed. As though a car would hinder my robbing abilities. So I gave up and went back to the hotel and went to bed. Oi!