3/23
We woke up and headed on down to do a quick interview at WBWC in Cleveland. We may or may not have scared the DJs a little bit with our silly antics. First, if you’ve been watching our videos, you’ve seen our late-night performance of “Sometime Around Midnight” in the car. We all arrive at the radio station and take a seat and the first song they play is “Sometime Around Midnight,” which results in us bursting into laughter, followed by Patrick doing a dramatic lip-syncing rendition. Video of that should be posted in the near future. We joked around a lot on the air and probably didn’t give any serious answers to anything. I hope the WBWC kids didn’t mind. We had a fun time with them and hopefully, they were entertained as well.
After the interview, we scooted on over to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. None of us had been there before, so we were excited to check it out. It’s kind of a funny place. They have some cool things, but it’s not really organized or curated as well as I think it should be. I kind of wish they really made it historically threaded in a little more of an active way. Anyway, awesome to see the well-played guitars of everyone from Leadbelly to Joe Strummer and Johnny Thunders.
While at the HoF, my friend Yona, who I have not seen in years sent me a message saying she hoped to come to the Pittsburgh show. I hadn’t even realized that she was back in Pittsburgh, so this was a very happy surprise to me.
We got out of the car near the venue and a gaggle of little 12 year old idiot kids was walking by. One bounced his basketball off of my back and pretended to apologize with a snickery “my bad.” These are the thoughts that went through my head over the course of about 1 second as I stared the kid down:
1. What a little shit, I should break his arm.
2. There are about 10 kids with him.
3. (As I scanned the group) The four of us could totally beat up all of these kids, no problem and they deserve it.
4. Yeah, that would be awesome, we would win the fight.
5. Holy crap, I am thinking about beating up 12 year olds. That is really embarrassing.
So, I dropped the staredown and went back to pulling stuff out of the car.
We arrived at Howler’s Coyote Bar, which was an awesome place with a bar on one side and a massive stage in a rectangular room on the other. The ceiling was covered in signed T-shirts from bands that had passed through. At the end of the night, we were sure to offer a shirt to add to the collection. Everyone there was super nice. The other bands we played with were a pleasant departure from our other experiences over the last few days. Stylistically, it all felt okay. The opener was Truth in Advertising, two local guys playing some over-the-top silly songs a la Flight of the Conchords. They brought out some people who were kind enough to stay for the whole night. We did some rock-paper-scissors action to decide who played second and Travis, our reigning RPS champion, defeated a fellow from Hammer No More the Fingers to get us the second slot. We played all right and got all but one or two people in the audience to do the “30 Lives” dance. Hammer No More the Fingers played next and they were great and were doing something interesting, but still accessible. I would suggest giving them a listen, though my recollection is that their live stuff sounds better than their recordings, but I will have to go back and check out the recordings. Anyway, cool guys, cool music, and a nice change from the weird and inconsistent lineups we’ve been on for the past few days. Perhaps we’ll encounter these guys again.
It was really nice also to catch up with Yona and hear what she is up to. We talked quite a bit about the good old academic world as we’re both sort of caught up in a variety of topical tangles. Overall, a fun night, particularly given that we were doing a Monday in a city we are not well established in.