The day starts out nice enough - we drove into town the night before from Madison, WI to crash with our bud Andy. Sleep in late, run some errands and devour fish tacos (joke off...go!). Get to Lincoln Hall and start loading in and its right about at this point that the day takes an interesting turn. The only way to load in is through the back doors and by blocking the alley. The alley forks though and one could conceivably, and quite easily, go around if someone where blocking said alley. Some rich piece of shit pulls up behind us and instantly begins a tirade of obscenities about us moving our "fucking piece of shit" out of his way. Our sober loader / lighting guy Matt asked him politely to wait just a couple minutes cuz we had literally two things to take out of the trailer. Not good enough. "I've got a fucking 8 month old baby in the car I need to get home! Get the fuck out of the way!” All of a sudden my hangover awakes from the depths and rears its ugly head and I take a few steps towards his Lexus (or whatever the fuck he's driving). "HEY! Shut the fuck up buddy! Your fucking attitude isn't gonna make us move any faster so if it's THAT fucking important put your fucking car in reverse and go the fuck around!". Apparently he mumbles something about phoning the police and how I should "get more tattoos". We finish up and move out of his way: "There you fucking piece of shit! Happy!?” I punctuate with my middle finger and a death glare.
Well that was exciting, grab my bag out of the van and head towards the back door of the club. This guy isn't done yet and he comes back WITH HIS FUCKING BABY IN A CARRY-ALL and yells something at me I can't even make out while he runs past me down the alley. "You should watch your fucking language in front of your baby you fuck!"...ok, enough of that, right? Nope. He comes into the club, still carrying the baby to yell some more. I'm in the theatre room standing around watching High on Fire get set up laughing about the encounter in the back when the door to the lobby swings open and I see the fucking guy pointing at me yelling "THERE HE IS! THAT'S THE GUY RIGHT THERE!” So at this point it's time to learn this fucking guy in the head with his own kid and I start up the stairs to the lobby towards him. "WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM!?!" The bar manager Dave jumps in my way and gets me to back up, "WHOA, WHOA, let me handle this!” He shuts the theatre door with the guy still screaming and he asks me what happened. I'm not a fly-off-the-handle kinda guy in the slightest. Even the dudes in the band were surprised by this one and we've spent the past four years together being yelled at by assholes for one thing or another all over the world. Sometimes hangovers make ya do weird shit and this guy pushed the wrong fucking hangover button. I tell Dave I’m all cool I let it go and he eventually gets rid of the guy. Apparently they've been having problems with the neighbors and the last thing I want is to get the venue shut down for beating a man to death with his own baby.
Despite the way I look I’m a lover not a fighter....but be warned that if we politely ask you to give us a couple minutes while we're trying to load and you're a dick about it I WILL FUCKING PUNCH YOU RIGHT IN THE FUCKING BABY!
The rest of the night is awesome though! It's our first official 'show' in Chicago and after years of near misses here we figure we need to make the most of. We played a party a couple years ago at the Emperor cabs warehouse (yep, that's a plug...Emperor Custom Cabinets: proudly hand built by a bunch of crucial fucking bros in Chicago since 2000-something) and had to cancel a show here last year cuz our van of years died the first day of a tour in Spokane (RIP The Blue Bitch, 1991-2009). The venue is also directly across from the Biograph Theatre which is of obvious significance to anyone who knows anything about Chicago. For those of you who don't it's where Johnny Depp got shot trying to buy a burrito...or something. I wasn't really listening and was only thinking about how much I wanted to eat a fish taco from Qdoba.
Chicago rules and we've gotten to spend a lot of time here getting right fucked up with Nachtmystium and our crucial bud Sara 'lil brother' Taylor who coincidentally (not really) is on this whole tour right now doing merch for HoF. Tonight will be no exception and after waiting on a guy, we and our bud Robdad end up heading back to Steve from the Atlas Moth's house to hang and make fun of bands we hate till the wee hours (see how everyone is someone from such-and-such? that's what tour is). Good morning Chicago! I'm going back to bed!
Negro_Joe
