PORTLAND, 04-20-05:

If you’re female and live in Portland, there’s a 50% chance you work in a strip club. That’s a scientific fact. Our lovely neighbors to the north certainly seem to like their women nude and picking up singles with their hoo-has. I wonder how that affects relationships there – since a high percentage of the female population works in the buff, and since a high percentage of males regard the nudity of their woman as their domain alone, it’s gotta make for some awkward situations.

Anyway. Heather, the sound person and now booker at the Ash St. Saloon is one of the finest people you’ll ever meet if you’re so lucky, and on top of that she has declared that “Ronnie and Chad” is her favorite song. I’d like to say that all bookers say that to us in an attempt to butter us up. Really, I would.

5 bands on a Wednesday night seems a little epic to me, but that’s what we got. It had been 4 (still a pretty long night), but the last band was added at the last minute because they needed a show and seemed like such nice kids. The show was billed as "a special 4-20 event." For all of you non-potheads out there, 4-20 is police code for marijuana. I've always been more of a 4-14 man myself (look it up), but any excuse for a good time.

We were up 3rd, and 2 songs in we’d cleared the room. Typical. We were definitely the odd men out on this bill, so it’s not a surprise, and anyway, we’re used to it. Comfortable with it, even. We can get pretty discordant and arrhythmic at times, and there ain’t many melodic hooks in what we play. Plus we’re ugly and don’t jump wildly on stage.

Capping the evening off, there was a Christian Screamo band called Laying Awake. Yup – Christian Screamo. From Stockton, no less. And these kids were totally pro: they had the publicity shot, the wireless guitar rig, the well-rehearsed rock moves, and most important of all, a metal cash box with rock stickers all over it. “Screamo” is how they described themselves, and one of them asked me what kind of band we are. Eh? “You know, are you emo or new wave or something like that?” Kids these days.

The dictates of their genre demand that they scream their lyrics indecipherably, which certainly gets rid of the potential for preachiness in their music. I only figured out that they were Christian because I heard one of them talking to their pastor on the cell phone. Oh, and their cash box had one of their lyrics on it: "He bled for you/He bled for me/He bled all he could bleed." I like the adaptive reuse of the army's slogan there at the end. CHRIST: Bleed all that you can bleed.

And they played to more people than we did.

Sounds like: “You guys should totally be on Dischord. You totally sound like a classic Dischord band. TOTALLY.”

BELLINGHAM, 04-22-05:

Every show I’ve ever seen at the 3B has been heart-stoppingly great, and I was completely intimidated when Crider called and said he’d helped get us on the bill at the 3B tonight. Luckily, I got over that pretty fast.

We got up on stage and did our thing, and played one of our best shows to date. We didn’t launch off into anything too abstract (although the middle of “Song to End All Cancer” can’t help but get out there), but did kept things pretty loose. We dug deep on Ayler, our last song, and when it was over it felt like we’d said absolutely everything we can. This is what it’s all about.

Not only were there plenty of people at the show, but they were into it. God I love this town. Sadly, the used ½” tape that’d been brought down to record us ended up shedding, and I didn’t set up the minidisk, so no document of this show exists.

76 Charger was mid-bill, and are an incredible balls-out rock band. They blasted through their set and were completely ON. It’s always great to see a band that can pull that off without seeming like a Motorhead rip-off – a band that can rock hard without clichés. Typical Bellingham. And in true Bellingham style, they’re also the nicest, smartest, coolest people you’ll ever meet. One of them is the brew master at the local brewpub, another one runs a recording studio in Bellingham. And they liked what we sounded like. I have no idea why it is, but people who are into rock tend to like us, even though we’re not a particularly straight rock-for-rock kinda band.

Sounds like: Firehose, early Gang of Four.

STANWOOD, 04-23-05:

“You sent me 2 CDs. I didn’t like it. You guys are fuckin’ noisy! I wouldn’t book you here, except that Dave wanted to play with you guys.” This is the first thing the booker/owner said to me. “You’re just fuckin’ noisy!” Normally, I think someone in my situation might be insulted by this. Love me love my band, etc. Not with Bob. Nobody has ever been so willing to tell me exactly what they think of the ‘Pos, especially if it’s negative. It’s undiplomatic. Bookers don’t do things like that. And the smile on his face made it clear that he might not like our music, but he was happy to give us a fair shake as people. We got along splendidly. Bob is a real champ.

We’ll never be allowed to play here again (because we’re fuckin’ noisy), but it was a helluva blast. If you are in a band that happens not to be fuckin’ noisy, this is a great place to play.

For my money, this was the best show of the tour.

We opened, and pulled out what we had going at the 3B, but with a little something extra. The room sounded great and, while nobody seemed to know quite what to make of us, they didn’t leave, and in pretty short order we won them over. This is the show where we got the tightest balance of what we do, and also had the best time playing. Plus we threw in a cover of “More Than Good” by MX-80 Sound, which coincidentally the next band had been listening to every day for the last 2 weeks of their US tour. Friends for life.

Motorama were up next, and did their Vancouver thang. The bass player was dressed as a nun and wore knee pads. He got on the bar and played bass from there. Loud fast hardcore, circa 1982. Once again really nice guys, once again incredible energy.

And then there were the DTs. Fucking incredible. This band will burn off all of the impurities in your body and leave you shaking. They lit up the sky for an nearly an hour, and delivered on the promise of Hard Soul music. It’s a huge thing to play music that has ties to the past like that without it turning into a lame genre exercise - as oh so many bands from the eighties and nineties proved, fusing 2 sounds together is not necessarily original or a good basis for a band. Faith No More, fer instance, took their cues from assorted genres and ended up with a bland soup. Fuck that. The DTs don’t play genre music. They don’t play hard rock, they don’t play soul, but they draw inspiration from both, and don’t worry about obsequiously mimicking either. Inspiration’s a funny thing. Lesser artists hear something incredible and want to steal it for themselves; great artists hear something incredible and use it to drive themselves forward.

SEATTLE, 04-24-05:

The Funhouse is located right across the street from the Ikea-meets-Gaudi mess that is the Experience Music Project. It may as well be a million miles away. On their side of the street everything was clean and new and futuristic; on ours, what hadn’t been torn down or turned into a parking lot was grimy. They had families walking hand-in-hand. We had all the meth heads.

Also on the other side of the street was the Key Arena, where U2 was busily saving the world one $50 tickets at a time. They played under the space needle, we played under a giant clown head. I know exactly which side of the street I want to be on – not because of any big moral stand, but because the Steel Pig BBQ was on our side of the great divide.

We did our thing to a thinner house than on the 2 previous nights, and felt like we’d exited the magical kingdom of the north for more familiar terrain. More like we’re used to, except that once again there were a decent number of people into what we were doing. We were a little bit tired and my voice was pretty shot, and man were we loose. In a good way. We played more straight-ahead stuff and tried to keep it under a half-hour since there were 4 bands playing a Sunday night.

So So Many White White Tigers got a plug in the Stranger for this show, which referred to Ned as “the hottest guitarist in San Francisco”. And he is a damn fine guitarist. Unfortunately, in the cement box that is the Funhouse, turning up too loud works against anyone being able to hear what you’re playing, something Ned either didn’t notice or didn’t care about. Probably the latter. Or he may have noticed and liked it that way – they’ve definitely got their own unique aesthetic sense, and will probably go far in this world before they melt down entirely. They’re a huge wash of sound, without any noticeable detail, something all the harder to pull off because there are only 3 of them.

And of course, it ends with power pop. Because what else could you follow SSMWWT up with?