chrisg's Tour Diary

It's been a long week trying to get my life back in order. I'm still only a third of the way through the pile of magazines that accumulated while I was gone. And I'm totally ignoring the bills for now, hoping they'll think I'm still out of the country. Doing my best to make dates with friends, but it's hard when you can't stay up past 10. And I'm not totally convinced that my dog knows who I am anymore. Someone with more resolve might tackle all of these issues and get it over with. I, instead, make myself look busy until I hop on a plane to Burbank, for our last show of the tour.

It's worth taking a brief sidetrip here to extoll the virtues of the Bob Hope International Airport. Seriously, it is the best airport in America. What makes a great airport? For one, it doesn't smell or look like thousands of people use it as their living room everyday. This qualification eliminates about 90% of all airports, including the Oakland International Airport. Oakland was once in my top 5 airports, but has fallen out of favor because it smells like a huge cheese pizza. I am not exaggerating. To enter and disembark from planes at Burbank, they use those roll-away staircases which, if you squint your eyes just right (and wait for everyone else to get off the plane first), allow you to pretend like Southwest flight 2587 is your own private jet. Also, they allow for passage in and out of the plane from the rear door. Now how often do you get to do that?! Once out of your plane, it is only a short walk (no conveyor belt assistance needed) to the baggage claim. The baggage claim is outside, just like the one at the Kona airport on Hawaii. Things that remind me of Hawaii are good things. Does the fun end there? No sirree. Only steps from there is the car rental area. No shuttle required. Once inside your newly-washed Chevrolet Cobalt or Similar, you are only a 15-minute drive from anywhere you'd actually want to be in Los Angeles; namely, Echo Park, Silverlake, Glendale, Eagle Rock or Los Feliz. Burbank Airport rocks.

Met up with Dan and Adrienne at Laurel's for dinner, then headed over to El Cid to meet up with CW. We've never played there before, and from what I understand, The Fold has only recently started booking shows there. It's a really nice place – a patio area with bar, and a main room with some red vinyl banquettes. Red is definitely a theme, as i'm told their main currency is flamenco dinner theater. About the only problem I could possible have with the place is that it charges $4 for a Budweiser. But in my experience, that's an LA-wide problem.

The second band on that night are our friends Love Like Fire, who are also down from San Francisco for the show. It's been awhile since I've seen them (last time was when we played with them at the Mezzanine), and they sound really great. I borrow the bassist's 810 cabinet for our set, which is a lot of fun to play through. But I'm way too lazy to ever own such a huge and heavy piece of machinery for myself. We are on last, but people are sticking around, and the set goes off well. A nice man videotapes our set for posterity, a portion of which might eventually make its way onto youtube or this site. Keep your eyes peeled!