There's a really good turnout tonight (around forty or fifty people) and a really energetic response from the crowd. Nothing particularly wild happens, we just get onstage, play our songs and get off—the relative complexity (for rock) of our tunes doesn't allow for much jumping around, anyway. We're supposed to get $75, but end up receiving $30 instead.
The sound girl, Tera, invites us over to her house, where we spend the night on a mattress in the basement. Funny that the promoters at most of our empty shows have paid us our full guarantee, while the one at this crowded show tonight cheeses out on us.
Sunday, June 5, 1994—We see a random man puking on the shoulder of Interstate 70—welcome to West Virginia. A stop is made at Bob's Barbeque Boy and a cool thrift store in Washington, Pennsylvania before heading South through Morgantown, West Virginia and Eastward on to Baltimore, Maryland and the Memory Lane, a '50s-style bar complete with a high-ass stage, again, crammed into a corner.
Thirty or forty people show up for the first couple of bands, one of which announces at the end of their set, "Be sure to hang around for Custom Floor. If not, you're blowing it." The ten or twenty people who remain flow us the pleasant vibes. Thanks to that, I have so much fun and get into it so much more. It's not the size of the audience that matters, it's the energy—good or bad—that they flow toward you that powers you forward and compels you to return that energy.
A couple of girls Adam knows, one named Jamie, are hanging around after the show, so we drive an hour South to Arlington, Virginia to stay at their house. On the way, we're throwing sparklers and garbage back and forth, making faces, passing on the shoulder and almost repeatedly ramming into each other. At one point, Adam removes his shirt, stuffs a bra full of garbage and shakes his "tits" at them. The girls claim to be naked in their car, but it's so damned dark, we can't see in.
Finally, we pull into their garbage-strewn dump of a home. Once again, Michelle and I bed down on a moldy mattress in a musty basement—just like at Tera's house in Columbus. I think I'm sensing a pattern here. We ride bicycles without tires to 7-Eleven for refreshments and almost crash.
Monday, June 6, 1994—We stop to eat at a pizza place and see a random kid in a snorkeling mask climbing around on the tables outside. After ordering, we sit down, only to be greeted by a very loud and jolly, "What's your name?" This kid is so funny, with big, dark eyebrows and a gap between his two top front teeth. He talks up a storm and is quite the little character.
After bidding goodbye, we set off on a brutal seven-hour drive in the opposite direction—back to Huntington, West Virginia. The venue tonight is called Gumby's, a multi-purpose night club with a bar in front, big stage in the back and a huge "reading" room upstairs filled with a hundred junky thrift store couches and chairs.
There's fifty or so people here—the only problem is they're completely ignoring the bands by hanging out at the bar up front or the reading room upstairs. There is no response at all from the five or ten people that do actually make an effort to check out the live music. Needless to say, it's really annoying to drive fourteen hours round-trip out of the way for this kind of crap—and in the opposite direction we were supposed to be heading, too.
The only slight saving grace is seeing a band from Australia (or someplace), who display some nice, drawn-out guitar feedbackscapes. A couple of bald guys with a surprisingly good attitude—despite such a lame crowd as this. Although we retire to a hotel called Smiley's for the evening, it's safe to say we ain't exactly smilin'.
Tuesday, June 7, 1994—We score a good breakfast at a local diner, then it's back again through Morgantown, West Virginia—another lost-in-time backwoods small town. We visit another thrift store and snap a photo or two on the main bridge there running over the river.
A three-hour jaunt brings us to Washington DC and the Black Cat—a huge hall with a capacity of several hundred. The crowd is really nice and attentive to the opening bands, but our set lags a bit, unfortunately. It's our first show with Drive Like Jehu and they rip.
After spying Ian MacKaye and Guy Piciotto out front, it's back to Jamie's house in Arlington and, again, a round of car chaos ensues. Everyone bursts out of the doors at stop lights—smearing ketchup, throwing food, squirting guns, punching each other, switching cars and on to the next light. Back at the ranch, Jamie is trying so hard to score with Adam, but he repeatedly denies her.
