Hey everyone, TR here doing a little update for the Winter 2009 Black Square tour throughout California. We're officially one week into the tour, and its been a fun adventure so far. Right now, we're leaving the cold, snowy zone of Big Bear Mountain for the (most possibly) even colder city of San Francisco.
Before the tour began in LA, those of us still in Hawaii fought our way to California, with only minimal worrying that we wouldn't make it (mainly Josh, who got stuck on standby in Honolulu for practically a whole day). Finally, our reunion was complete, and the band was on its way to having another fun-filled two week tour.
We began with a couple of shows in the greater valley area, first playing The Lighthouse in Hermosa, and then another Chris Murray Blue Beat show at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. The fact that Josh 86 suffered and survived a bout of food poisoning on day #2, and still managed to rock out hard on Wednesday night is testament to his mean talent!
Overall, we've had a pretty good reception wherever we played. In Riverside, our unity music led to a stupid barfight, resulting in broken tables and beer steins, not to mention bloody faces (thankfully, none of us!). But we still had a killer time cruising with old friends, and rocking our hearts out and making new fans (those whose heads weren't too dazed and confused after having bottles smashed on em!)
Down in Sandy Eggo, we partied with some Hawaii friends, before rocking out a couple of shows. Friday night, we played a venue called The Radio Room, formerly known as the Zombie Lounge, and were the lone ska band at a show full of thrashers and punks. It's always a pleasure seeing the punk rockers skank their butts off to our sweet reggae hardcore sounds! The second show in SD was at an Irish pub called O'Connells, where just the night before at an OI! show a skinhead punk was shot and killed; great way to feel safe on tour, huh?
From down south, we headed up to Big Bear mountain to hang with our stoney friends from now-defunct band Elevated Roots. Because there was a Chargers game going on at the same time as our show (they lost), we were forced to play outside in freezing ass cold weather. Whoever had the great idea to make a bunch of warm-blooded island boys play music in the snow has a mean sense of humor!
After we had just about all frozen our balls off, we defrosted with friends by the fireside, 'riding the rails' and playing a little Skip-bo (Just to clarify, I'm not talking gay sex or drug references... just some weird board games we play when on tour). My hopes that we'd have time for a mean snowball fight fell short, but I still wanna try to peg some unsuspecting tourists before tour is over.