Last Friday we played to our most receptive audience in The Dead Pawn's Jason's garage (Jason is pictured above, center). The crowd was mostly 15-20 year old punks and metal heads, whom I asked our marketing dept about and that is apparently our second target audience, the first being Los Angeles late night bicycle party hounds.
We followed a really interesting noise set "I Want To Kill Every Human" and then (I am serious) one match of backyard mud wrestling (Angel won). Anyhoo, the show was loud, fast, sharp, happy, silly and inspiring, and I know I will never forget it. It was so good, that the sound man, Zack Weiss invited us to play the next night, more in a minute.
We stayed the night at Jason's and listened to 45's and ate Cheeto's and Mac and Cheese and drank coffee. The next morning I woke up early and eager, and so did Jason. We started talking about art and careers and kids and ideas and people's outlook and within one hour we were making stencils for new Funderstorm shirts and recording tracks in his mudroom studio. It was an amazingly productive day. I can say its been the most productive day on the trip. Jason has the energy of 15 people and the skills to get things done. By 6PM we had 3 tracks and he threw in 3 Dead Pawns tracks for our first EP split! Its fun. We recorded 4 kids chanting "F. U. N!" on one track! Good times.
That night, Saturday, was our show for Zack Weiss in Farmington, 20 miles away. The gig for us was this:
The night was billed as an all-metal band nightlong festival in the giant patio of Bob-a-rino's Pizza!! The slots were full but Zack had the vision to fit is in as the entertainment between the bands, since they take 15 minutes to set up and we take 15 seconds. So, we rocked it!
The metalhead kids there were stunned. They were hit hard by the eff you enn.
A few awesome things happened. Some kids from Pilot Knob came, and for our "first song" grand start, they went out on their own accord and bought confetti, poppers, and silly string! Those kids really made it happen, big time.
Also, there was an amazingly hard, sharp band here called Rusted Skin. They were killing it, for real. In between songs, the frontman says, "give it up for Funderstorm, my roommate told me about them riding bikes, and I didn't believe him. Well, here they are!" as it turns out, we played at Cesspool Castle with Fig Crosby, and Seymour is roommates with Rusted Skin's Joe and John, who we now met at this metal show, 4 days later, 300 miles away! Haha! Turns out they live in St Louis, and Joe says at the next break between songs, "Seymour says what's up and that you guys should stay with us in St Louis!"
Also that night we were paid $25 and a giant pizza. We were happy that we got to play, and it was totally unforgettable.
Also the closing band "As Vultures Paint The Sky" is amazing too, check them out! Good people, all of them are really fun and talented, do not miss!
