a stellar evening

autumn has been stolen by thieves and carried across the border to canada

So first off, the Autumn Thieves did not play the show with us on Thursday. That sucked. Apparently Courtney, their singer has Canadian citizenship and wasn't allowed back in the US after they played their show in Toronto. Lame. Being from NYC, you'd think they would have thought about this, or would know about homeland security, or seriously, what's the big deal? She was only playing music and it was only one date on their tour and now the rest of the tour got cancelled. We were so looking forward to exposing our friends to their music and having a great night playing together with Brock and Tobias. I even offered to marry Courtney so she could get back into the US and be a citizen. Yeah, that idea didn't fly.
The boys DJ'd some great stuff. Space rock and all sorts of cool music. Here's a cut and paste of the messasge I sent out to my email list:
Hello,
On Thursday November 17th at Darkroom there will be a very special Airiel show. Sadly, I have to report that John will not be playing with Airiel. We are very sad about this but we must move onwards and upwards. We tried to replace him with robots and even one of those wind-up toy monkey drummers that James Dean was playing with at the beginning of Rebel Without a Cause. You know the kind, with the banging cymbals or maybe a marching drum. It didn’t work. Nobody could top John out rocking his drum and puncturing a hole in it at the last show before proving how badass he is and standing up and drumming at the end of Kiss Me Sadly. Come see this special Airiel show before John returns to the stage after being retrofitted with the highest grade titanium detachable drum stick hands and super human kick drum speed motors installed on his foot. The same robots that made Darth Vader are working on as I type this. He will be fitter, happier, and more productive. Till then somebody has to rock out as hard as him, and I am that person. If you come out on Thursday you will see 3 determined young men with guitars rocking their hearts out for John’s speedy recovery while I smash my video gear to pieces, shove Jeremy, spank Cory, touch Chris’ arm so gently, tear my screens down and set them on fire, all before jumping out the back window of Darkroom like the Kool-Aid man screaming “OOOH YEAAH!!”. We’re doing it for John. Airiel will rock for the absence of their sick brother. He will make his triumphant return to the stage soon and join us in plans of world domination. I promise these fucking shoegazers will look up from their feet and smile when they see you.

See you on Thursday.

Love,
-arturo
xoxo
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They did 2 songs in the span of 30 minutes. John's been out sick and couldn't practice so they used a drum machine. It was so cool. I got into a groove about half way through the set rocking the rainbow shit that you could see more of without a drum kit in the way. Not that it's ever in the way or anything. I love John and his drums. I love when he stands up all bad-ass during the rock out ending of Kiss Me Sadly. Airiel's sound is changing and morphing and I can't wait to hear more of it and play with them. I took my ear plugs out towards the end, so I could hear everything better. December 3rd at Double Door is going to rule. See you there.

the thieves of autumn

We're all very excited about this. Won't you join us?

meat fest, tour diary #10

I know I've been slow at updating and Jeremy already has his tour journal online here . Our last day off while still officially on tour was here at home in Chicago. Chris and I decided to have our first ever MEAT FEST. This happened at Bobak's over on Cicero and Archer. I've seen this place on Check Please and it looked great. It's a polish buffet restaurant with a grocery store attached to it. Awesome. You can eat 10 different types of sausage and other meat then go buy it freshly made at the grocery store to take home. You can also buy polish hip hop dvd's too. I did, and it rules. The rest of this day was spent digesting meat and relaxing before the last show of the tour on Tuesday.
The show was awesome. What a great night for music and friends. It was so nice to see everybody come out and support us and welcome us home. Only Lovers Left Alive opened the night and were great, I'm looking forward to seeing more shows and hopefully playing more shows with them. Hartfield won over so many fans and the show ended with Taka rolling around on the floor after falling over and rocking out the way only he can. Yukari ended up screaming and rocking the hardest she ever did and it was great to have them in a big venue with a big crowd who loved them. I had a great time with Airiel and the wide screen I set up that went across the entire stage and looked really good. After us, it was Arks who as always rocked hard. Cory and I were at the front of the stage singing along with "Cars on FIRE!" and lots of drinking, hugs, and kisses were had by the merch booth at the back with all our friends who missed us while we were gone. It felt good and made everything worth while.
After Arks were done and people were leaving the bands were still around and I saw the last ever Tequila Screamer that Cory did to finish Chris' initiation into the Airiel family. We got it on video. Now, we have to take Chris to the Pine Cone Restauant, with Griff, to baptise him in gravy and finally give him the status of Pinecone6.

Let's skip to October 9th and our show at Darkroom. This was our first show after the tour and the first time we've all been together since then. John and I wore our Hartfield shirts, and we didn't even talk about this before the show. Great minds do think alike after all. We missed having Hartfield around, it just didn't feel right. I think we all noticed how we've become closer and way more comfortable with each other because of the tour. Needless to say, we got drunk, John out-rocked his snare drum and tore a whole in it, Chris stepped on Jeremy's power strip and turned off his pedal board mid song, Jeremy told the audience we were all drunk, and everybody had a great time rockin' out and didn't care about how sloppy it was. I'm totally dedicated now to the idea of trashing my own gear during the end of "Kiss Me Sadly" since John and the boys have been known to throw gear, turn over drums and rock out the hardest. I want to rock too. I'm thinking, and this has to happen at Darkroom, that I'm going to run on stage and smash a VCR or DVD player and tear down screens and set them on fire before jumping through the giant window like the Kool-aid man screaming OOHH YEAH!!! . Hey, I gotta do my part and rock out too. I can't let them have all the fun and glory. Don't get me started on the video mayhem caused by the custom Big Muff pedal I'm going to have hot wired and gutted to make it a video processing pedal of doom. Oh yes. It will be done.