September 27, 2006 "(Well) Dusted (For the Millennium)"

09/27/2006 Club Congress - Tuscon, AZ
Other bands: Authority Zero, SKITN, Last Act of Defiance


Hotel Congress. Est. 1919.

Stayed the night outside Phoenix with a friend of Phillips. She lived in an apartment complex off a main thoroughfare surrounded by pawn shops and gas stations, which were surrounded by desert. Nothing fancy, and probably not much more than half a grand in rent. Bathtub ring and burn holes in the carpet included free.

The landlord was verifiably batshit crazy. Some breed of paranoid old lady who probably believed what she read in the National Enquirer and kept a thousand glass figurines in her rarely-visited-by-outsiders-except-the-minister living room.

We parked our van across half a dozen spaces like we always did and camped out for the night. Next morning, she marched up to whomever was in the van at the time and demanded they move it out of the parking lot. So we did. We let it idle in the parking lot across the street until the rest of the band was ready to come down. Then we circled it back around to the apartment to pick up the rest of the gang. She came marching back out as we pulled away to head to Tuscon, launching daggers from her eye sockets and mouthing something unintelligible as we drove away.

We parked there again later that night. Phillips friend explained to her that we were friends from out of town and that we were staying at her place for two nights but the lady wouldn't have it. She followed us from the van to the apartment, ranting the whole way in her shrill and warbled menopausal voice, calling our host "young lady," while we toted our suitcases and sleeping bags up the stairs. Most of us ignored her. James allowed himself a shouting match. Quite a site to behold - crazy vs. New Jersey.

I noticed a worried look on Phillip's friend's face. She was, after all, the one who to lived there. She would probably suffer some serious blowback for as long as she continued to do so.

I talked to our new agent Nikki for the first time outside of the Hotel Congress, which housed Club Congress. She was a Colorado transplant now living in Brooklyn and she sounded tough. We sealed the deal and she was ready to hop on board to start selling our shows to whomever would buy. She told us we should stay in the hotel, and I thought someday. But not today.

Our performance at Club Congress was stellar, full of swagger and joyous bile, and most likely inadvertently so. We had, I thought, a drunk heckler and heckling had by now become a psychological trigger. Where it once used to eviscerate me psychologically, it now energized me. Flipped a berzerker switch.

And now I could actually notice a tangible difference between the crowds entrance when we started and when we ended. We were keeping them interested.