tour 6.03
Sunday, October 27 1997 Bozeman MT Filling Station
Carol - this is my first show in Bozeman ever. i don’t think i was expecting anything one way or another. we found the club. it was rather large. there were a few regulars hanging out when we got there. we looked pretty strange compared to them. they had poker machines and kenos so we played video poker to kill some time since we were early. it was a quick and easy way to shed away what little money we had left. the bartender was friendly enough and she was about the only normal person at this place. we just waited and waited. nobody came. the regulars left and it was pretty empty. when the “sound guy” finally showed his face, he only tried to talk us out of playing cuz whoever was in charge of promoting the show neglected to do it and nobody in bozeman knew that we were here. in other words, he doesn’t wanna stick around and work for an empty club. he was very encouraging. we were really pissed off at this guy for saying all this stupid shit, so we were adamant about playing tonight even if there was nobody in this fuckin’ place. it’s not like this is the first time we play to nobody.
we decided Simon should open for us. Simon has a couple of old b/w tv’s and turntables. we’ve never seen his act but we figured tonight would be the night to do it. very avant garde! Zeph left in the middle of Simon’s performance and we didn’t know where he went. a few people actually showed up, maybe 5 or 6 total. we put on our silly show in our jackets and everything cuz it was so fuckin’ cold. after the show the people came up and talked to us and they were so appreciative! they were very cool and even apologized to us for the lame turnout. maybe we sold a cd or two. Michelle the bartender put us up at her house. she’s married and she and her husband had a pretty good record collection. i laid down on the couch and tried to fall asleep.
Zeph - It was freezing cold inside the club. We all played in our coats and hats. There were like 6 people there and if they hadn’t actually been there to see us we would have just left. Simon got out some tone generators and turntables he had with him and put on an opening set. We stayed with Heather the bartender and her boyfriend and had a good time.
Monday, October 28 1997 Missoula MT Jay’s Upstairs
Matt - This was one of the worst nights. I think what happened is that after we had booked this gig, a ska show was booked. And ska was popular in this part of the country, what with all the skinheads around. But the club let us play clean up. I wanted to die.
C - aw, our shows keep getting worse. tonight we just about hit rock bottom. we played with out usual missoula line-up, ‘sasshole’ and ‘rick and mike’. and ‘bates motel’ from canada. and ‘big easy fella’ from seattle, a ska band. and us. we are scheduled to go on last. the club started to pack in as the night grew. obviously the kids were coming in to see the big ska band from seattle. oh, how i hate ska bands! we waited for everyone to play out their sets. ‘big easy fella’ finally got done with there excruciatingly long-winded set and so was the night. soon after they played the last note, the club started to thin out and by the time we were on stage there were only a handful of people left in the audience. very sad. very humiliating. i hated this show and i lost my makeup bag. the night kept on going and the stupidity continued.
Z - Mike and Rick and Sasshole played again. The fourth band was ska, Hey Big Fella from Seattle. We were last. The ska crowd cleared out everyone but the bands waiting for money and then gave me a hard time about borrowing their bass rig. I borrowed something every night of the tour because I had none and these guys were the only ones that put up any resistance. Their crowd stuck around congratulating them on the floor in front of us while we played then we got our 30 bucks and went with Millie to this shitty apartment where the ska singer was holding court and smoking his excellent weed which we got as much of as we could. We took off after about 20 minutes along with the two cases of beer everyone had been so glad to see us show up with. We went to a much smaller apartment downtown that I always forget is in Montana. The Canadian band that played before the ska were there. There were about thirty people in this very small room. The girl who lived there gave the four of us her bedroom floor to sleep on.