the gravy that is New York.....tour diary part 5

The next official entry in the notebook is from 9-24 on our way to Cincinatti so the rest of this will be from memory.
John made one of the best quotes ever while walking around Brooklyn: "Soak up the gravy that is New York with the biscuit that is your eye." Only a genius madman drummer can say such amazing things.
The show in NYC was great. We played after If When who were quiet albiet a bit Stereolabby. I dunno, didn't do much for me. There, I said it. I was bored, and I don't care what big shoegaze band they were in before. Hartfield then made their NYC debut which was thunderous and amazing, then Airiel came and showed the NYC people and their "half hour attention span" how we do it Chicago style. We threw down. A Place to Bury Strangers came and threw down themselves. Okay, they tore the roof off the place. I'm glad we played before them. Chris calls them a sonic assault. I do too. BRMC who? wha? ehh? I can't hear over the wall of sound from a 3 piece who sounds like the best of Jesus and Mary Chain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club all turned up to 11. They had visuals too. This cool british dude named Spencer did some amazing 16mm film loops with 2 projectors and he'd flap cardboard or something over each projector to make a rapid fire cutting visual assault. Being 16mm the film was scratchy and gritty and amazing. The best part for me was when a frame burned in the projector with fire footage behind it from the other projector and Spencer just pulled it down one frame to burn the next one and it was such an amazing thing to see with the music fitting in so well at that very moment. Magic, I tell you. It was magic.
After the gig, we dropped off our stuff in Brooklyn and went back to some bar in Manhattan for the after party. I should mention that my dear friend Susan came out to the show and after party, and I haven't seen her in like a year. It was so great to see her again, yet a bit weird to be outside of Chicago and on her home turf which made it all the more special. She, like always looked lovely that night. Chris made a comment how one of the defining moments of the tour came when we had 13 half drunk or half stoned people in the back of the APTBS van blasting Ministry speeding over the Williamsburgh bridge with what we later found out was a flat tire. This my dear reader, well okay both of you, is ROCK AND ROLL.
The after party kinda sucked but the booze was good. Isn't it always? I guess the shoegaze night got mixed up with the metal night at this bar and there was a lot of metal, no metal heads and a handful of shoegazers, and a couple of bands. Did I mention how great it was to see Susan? A few drunk texts were sent from and to Chicago to the Panic crew who were bored and drunk themselves. I swear, whenever I'm away, my cell phone is my umbillical cord back to Chicago. We found out the van had a flat tire and Oliver in all his laid-backness was like "whatever man" and we filled it back up with air and drove our happy asses back to Brooklyn for our last night's sleep in NYC. I think Ministry was still playing on the stereo.