September 23, 2006 "Death of a Gremmie"

09/23/2006 Chain Reaction - Anaheim, CA
Other bands: Lola Ray

So we stayed a long day at Johnny's house, meeting his mother and grandmother Lola Ray, for whom the band was named. She was a charming old Filipino lady that shuffled around the house making sure the rice cooker was always full and steaming for us growing boys.

We were back West for the first time since resigning and therefore had all sorts of meeting and greeting to endure. It was always a fascinating thing to do, meeting these folk and seeing their digs, but it usually always led to us being late for load in. The first person we met was Isaac who came out with our first load of CDs.

He was a gangly kid who gave us the lowdown on everyone we'd met in the offices. There was Jason who came from Victory Records, Daniel who came from Universal and Happy who owned the joint and made his money pimping nu-metal in the 90s when it was actually nu. Except Happy was never there. He was always off somewhere exotic honing his photography skills.

So we listened to our new CD in Johnny's upstairs loft. It was a bittersweet joy to finally hear it in the final version after all that we had been through to bring it into this world. The label had even taken so long to send payment that Tarbox was threatening to file suit. I can't say it was a comfortable place to be, and in fact more than a little embarrassing.

But payment did finally come from the turnip, and our CD was released fully packaged with gleamy glossy retail sheen. We each took a copy and unwrapped it. Felt its matte booklet. We'd never had anything other than straight, traditional glossy.

We stuck it in the player and during the verse of You Never Know it skipped. We put in another CD. It also skipped. We all took turns with all the rest we'd opened. They all skipped.

The strangest thing was, when we went to the Immortal Entertainment offices - which were in a Santa Monica Boulevard high rise with a huge wrought iron Immortal logo, behind a gilded receptionist desk, down a marble hallway, and through doorways slung in platinum records - and played it for them, they didn't hear it.

We pushed it a little bit, but I think we were through fighting battles on this record. It was out. I hoped that maybe each person that bought it and heard it would think that they had the only malfunctioning copy and would excuse it.

I've discovered the amount of times a band can play a shitty venue before finally deciding to mop it up, and that amount is five.

The vibe of the Chain Reaction had changed much since the first time I'd been there. Geographically it was the same. The stage was in the same place. The floor layout was the same. I had been there when it was shoulder-to-shoulder with industry trying to see what some were calling the next fill-in-the-blank band. Us. And I had been there two years later when no one gave a shit.

And we were here again, still silently hoping for the high of that first time, and knowing that we weren't going to get it. I won't attempt to wax a poetic cliche about Southern California being the proverbial boulevard of broken dreams, but there is something to be said for the enormous amounts of money and attention floating around the area looking for something to be aimed at and channeled into without rhyme or reason maybe just because the singer has two different colored eyes or the guitar player talks up a half-made up story about living on the street. The potentialities of it all make people do strange things. Perhaps the strangest of all is the compulsion to ignore the odds.

I drained a 40 in the car of Tazy Phyllipz who ran an indie show responsible for breaking No Doubt and Sublime. He put a microphone in my face and conducted an interview while I tried to keep up with the questions as best I could in a haze of Mickeys.

Blaze was there again. Hung out with us in the dressing room while Nic and I drained a bottle of cheap wine that turned our mouths purple. He said he was worried about our drinking. I told him we were fine. It was the only thing I could find that would place the buffer between a thousand sets of eyes and a soul. It was like dancing in a room walled with a 2 way mirror. I knew they were there but I didn't care because I couldn't really see them.

I wanted to burn through those bodies like napalm. The Chain Reaction was a place where I'd felt most disconcerted, the most let down in the history of all our touring. It was usually the first place we would play in the region and would set the tone for the rest of our stay. I couldn't connect with those kids because they were all rich Orange County punks with more money and better skin. We were flyover trash disconnected from any sort of scene at home or abroad.

But this time we had our armor. I had my suit on. We tore through a set like it was a snakish religious experience. I threw myself to the crowd time and again. Stood defiantly at the front of the stage, arms raised with imaginary foam fists attached to my hands, pulling out reaction from their bodies like it was hardened mutagenic tar.

At the end of Strange Days I pulled the entire front row onstage and crawled through their legs, lifting them up on my shoulders. Falling down into a pile.

Lindsey texted Blaze to ask how we were.

"It's the best I've ever seen them."

It was the last time we'd ever play Chain Reaction, and in my head, we burned the fucker down.