chrisg's Tour Diary

Wow, we're back. It was a long flight, but at least it gave us plenty of time to watch movies. I saw Devil Wears Prada (entertaining on a plane, but would've been a disappointment had i seen it in the theater), Wordplay (inspired me to renew my nytimes crossword subscription), Driving Lessons (can anything with Laura Linney be bad?), and The Breakup (perhaps the biggest surprise, since I expected it to be absolute crap and thought it wasn't really that bad. But really, if I see one more movie/sitcom/etc where some fat man snags the most gorgeous woman in town, I'm gonna kick my foot through the screen).

It has been a couple of crisp, sunny fall days here in San Francisco. The time zone change means that I'm getting up at 6am, and can't keep my eyes open past 10pm. Consequently, I've treated myself to several cups of Peet's in order to be alive for our show. The Rickshaw Stop seems bigger than the last time I was there. We load in, but the headlining band (The Figurines, from Denmark) are running late driving up from LA, so we head over to Hotel Biron for some drinks. By the time we get back, they've already soundchecked, so we hop on stage, run through our soundcheck, and then I busy myself taping up small and large tshirts. Yes, life on tour is full of such exciting escapades!

The first band on, The Morning Benders, are great. If I had to compare them to other bands, I guess I would say something about them sounding like the Strokes and the Shins. I'm not sure what that means, but their set was really good. All of us overcame our desire to go to bed, and ended up playing a good set. And for a Saturday before Halloween, the crowd was larger than I expected. In retrospect, I wish we had worn costumes. Since Chris W already looks like Animal onstage, maybe we should've dressed up as Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

The Figurines were awesome. So tight, and so much fun. They were all incredibly nice offstage as well. We talked about our one show in Copenhagen last May, at a venue that I still can't pronounce. Afterwards, we wished them well on their way to Portland, and quickly headed to bed. Rock n roll!