San Jose'

Animals: Sadly none to speak of. Urban settings and all.

Quotes: “Itty Bitty Shitty Committee”

SIARPC: Shat Benatar

I find myself once again hopelessly behind. I’m not sure how I kept up last time. I’m going to assume it is merely the huge leap in the quality of my posts.

There was no way I, and it turns out the rest of the band, were going to attempt to get back into the city. I was too tired and wanted nothing more than to hang around the hotel and do as little as possible. I stayed in bed late and then hung about the lobby working on the blog.

We were to play in San Jose’* which is only about 45 minutes away from Oakland. Someone in the van told the story, which you can fact check if you want, that Galaxy 500 played to 12 people in San Jose’ and the next night to 1,500 in San Francisco. Our numbers were similar, albeit off by maybe 1,300 people. In some ways it was eerily similar to our Tacoma night in that we had an amazing packed night in a big city, then a more humble night in a closely adjoining town. One big difference is that the club in San Jose’ was completely badass. Here’s a short list of bands who have played there: The Buzzcocks, The Melvins, Stiff Little Fingers, the Damned, X, and a crap-ton besides. Granted most of those appearances came in the last ten years, so far enough after the big bang for impact to have dimmed some, but still, look at that list. Chris the sound guy was the fastest,** sweetest, most pro guy of the tour and maybe ever. Seriously, Rene’ said it was the best we sounded all tour and it took him maybe 5 minutes after the mics were hooked up. It was a Wednseday night and there was an obvious air of being there to just do your job about the staff. They were all cool, but everyone knew it was going to be a small crowd on weeknight. So it is with immense pride when I report that the bartender and waitress both bought merch and the bartender even said our set was life changing for her. In what way I do not know although I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it put her off ever seeing a man naked again.

The crowd was small but shouted like we were Jethro Tull after every song.  I mean if you liked Jethro Tull and all. They were a sweet, enthusiastic bunch and it was a blast playing for them.

San Jose’ seemed like an OK town. I was told that it had had an influx of people and money during the dot-com boom and hadn’t really recovered from the collapse. I could’ve gotten that wrong though, I’m not Studs Terkel here. I saw a mass art class of at least 30 people in a public market that was actually a rouge’d up food court. They were learning to paint a wine bottle from a guy wearing one of those headset microphones like a cross between Reverend Moon and Richard Simmons. Joe and I ended up talking to a red-faced business man from Boston who said he was the president of the Boston Pinot Noir Society and had been drinking wine for 8 days. He also kept saying how inappropriate it was to leer at the beautiful bartender he was leering at because she was probably his daughter’s age, and then upon finding out we were in a band how he had been signed to Columbia Records when he was a young man. So not a cliche at all.

That’s about it. Saw the Tesla plant on the way back to the hotel.

Travel day tomorrow.

*For the record Chuck was the only one to make a “Do You Know the Way?” joke and it wasn’t even funny.

** That's what his wife said. No seriously, he had time to set-up the mics, have sex with his wife, perform a successful tracheotomy with a Bic pen and a steak knife, and prove that 10 is actually the loneliest number, before Lisa even tuned up. Although to be honest entire species have evolved, created great art, and then died off underneath my thumbnail in that amount of time.