Baltimore 8/6/10
I kinda like sleeping at rest stops. It makes my dreams really intense. We started driving again at about 6am. It was a quite a journey. We stopped at a Mcdonalds in some random town in Maryland and it was packed. Its such a perplexing thing to see so many people all ages, still cramming in McDonalds. Especially if you’re old, its as if you never learned that its probably a bad decision. We ordered McDonalds breakfast soon after coming to these conclusions. After a couple hours we pulled up to our friend Ernesto Ponce’s house and got to meet his new child and girlfriend. It was amazing to see such a good friend in a such a foreign place. We took in a little Jerry Springer and People’s Court and crashed soon thereafter. Around 7pm I awoke to a house full of sleepers. Evan was terrible to wake up, and took forever to get ready. We drove across Baltimore to get to the venue.
This was our first real taste of what the city was like. Baltimore is an entity in itself, kinda like Boston in architecture but with a vibe of New Orleans in sketchiness. There are really a lot of “Trout and Chicken” shops. Which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. We made it to the venue and there were quiet a lot of questionable vibes around. New Orleans is pretty comfortable to us at this point, being that all of the danger is just out there in the open. Baltimore on the other hand seemed to have a seedy characteristic that was hard to pin point and not necessarily out front, but bubbling underneath it all.
Load in was crazy, we had to close the van mirrors to get into the parking garage underneath “The Annex.” As we inched forward in the van metal scraped the top and we were kinda like Maru the internet cat in a cereal box. Ben Bass, the show promoter/loft occupant/all around great dude, came out and helped us get in. This was step one in a load in that all around generated worried sounds of “ehhhh” from the group. As we got through the tight rows of pillars step two in the journey was getting everything out and into an elevator which had its last inspection in 1989. As the questionable elevator rose we got a chance to peek in a couple other of the gigantic lofts in the annex. It was kinda like those rides in disney world that show all the different glimpses into the future. Except these apartments were set in somewhat of a dysutopic antique store, with a touch of hipster wasteland. I knew the show would be fun as soon as we stepped off the elevator, well…. kinda climbed out the elevator, being that it had a tendency to stop between floors.
Once in with all our equipment we got a chance to meet some of Pet Cemetary’s residents and make some new friends from Baltimore.
Teenage Souls was up first, DJ’s set up consisted of him playing frenetic drums over minimalist dance programming. Using the drums to make the programming breathe, DJ weaved shapes over synth textures.
Whoarfrost was up next. Coincidentally, Sam and i know 2 of 3 of the members from school, and the drummer was our roommate for one day. These dudes freak out, intensely. Ethan punished the drums with spastic free jazz drums while the guitarist and bassist provide texture worlds and rhythmic backdrop. Once and a while they’d sink into a groove but for the most part these dudes just keep cruising for a bruising… a really intense, loud, free jazz, spazz out bruising that is. They kinda give me anxiety, but I like it.
By the time we played the loft was filling up and people seemed generally excited to see us. As we played through our set, I could feel the crowd respond and the general level of energy rose. By the end of our set we had a small tambourine army and a sizable dance party. This was probably our most well received show so far, and Im glad Ben and all the bands helped us get it together.
Weekends closed out the night and people were on the stage and crowd surfing shortly into their set. Reminicient of No Age, and Times New Viking they put together well rafter noise pop songs in the two piece drums/guitar-vocals format.
(The really sketchy fire escape entrance, and the balitmore wasteland behind it)
We packed up our things and Sam and Evan made elevator journey number two. I guarded the van, and listened to them struggle in the elevator shaft shortly thereafter. Sam apparently was almost concussed (side note, not sure if thats a real word, but sam likes it) and the elevator got stuck between floors. We left after saying some goodbyes and navigating the van backwards through the treacherous entrance.
We said goodbye to JP the next morning and laughed at his baby prediction photos.
