Friday, October 1, 2010

Monarques Tour Day 5

The fifth day of our second tour began around 11am when we all awoke in the living room of our mutual friend Jason’s house, scattered on his hardwood floor. We wanted to wake up earlier to check out some sights such as the Oakland swap meet where we all scored sweet deals last tour, but had to exchange our shopping misadventures for burritos and coffee to make the sevenish hour drive to Santa Barbara in time with some sort of nourishment in our systems. We finally ended up leaving around 1:30pm, right as the sun was beginning to drench us in our own sweat and cement our exposed flesh to the seats of our seven passenger van, “Lucille,” that serves as the vessel for the eight members of our party and our bags. I’ve heard about days in hell that were at least ten degrees colder than that day.

Besides the intense “UVs” from the sky the drive was notably smooth. California’s sunset on a clear September evening is strikingly beautiful. Picture a watercolor work of art so moving that it would make any artist never even consider picking up a brush. We drove down the 101 along the coast, gazing at the pinkish orange sky and wondering if we were real. We arrived at the venue just before eight, leaving us enough time before loading in our equipment to chug free band coffee and smoke away our exhaustion from the day’s “Californiadventure”. The show started around 9:15 and the first band, “Gardens and Villas,” started off the evening in an impressive way, throwing together several different modernist indie rock elements into a formula that produced an original and memorable sound. We played after them and it went pretty well. People were pretty responsive for a Tuesday night at a cafĂ©, and danced and sang along when the feeling called for some action. “Jared Mees and the Grown Children” played after us and sounded great as usual. They played a song they hadn’t previously played on our tour with them, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

When we ended up leaving the venue it was after 1:00am and we had to be in Fullerton, a drive that would take about three hours ideally, for a show at 10:00am the next morning. We contemplated throughout the night just leaving after the show, but could not slither out of the Motel 6 room we had previously booked in Santa Barbara. On the way to this particular crash pad, we ended up taking the van and trailer down a dead end street in a residential area. We were a bit frightened for a moment but our comrade and tour enthusiast James displayed dominance of the great beast, taming the old bastard back enough to cut a hard right to the nearest alley. Finally, around 2:00 am, it was lights out with a wake up expectancy of 5:00 am. If the destruction of western civilization doesn’t kill us, this tour is in high running.
Lee