SOMERVILLE

In 1996 I went on a very stupid tour. In total we were on the road for 20+ weeks through the US, Canada and a short stint in Japan. The Canadian portion of our jaunt was filled with (mis)adventure and ill advised excursions including an off road drive through some dude's corn field and a visit with some weird ass heavy metal hillbillies in Sault St. Marie - but the subject of today's post was put together after we returned to the United States. It seems foolish to leave out the pants shitting in Maine, the PCP in Montreal, the almost but not quite visit to Newfoundland, the multi province pursuit from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the passing out in vomit in a phone booth in Toronto, the watching THE CURE play on Canadian Much Music, the meeting my future wife in Milwaukee, the getting told that the "headlining" band didn't want to stay in the same house with us after we all played the same Days Inn in Rapid City, South Dakota.......basically, there were a lot of adventures on that trip and it was one of my favorite tours ever. But here's where this tape came from...:
After three weeks in Canada we returned to the USA from Nova Scotia and found that we didn't exactly have many shows booked on our way home. We stayed at Matty's grandmother's house in Maine for a night or two (that's the pants shitting part - and yeah, it was me) and then we headed to Boston. We had a show in Boston (technically, it was in Somerville) and even though it wasn't for several days we figured that the kids at the house would host us until we sorted our shit out. We figured correctly, and even 15+ years later I cannot thank them enough. Imagine a band cruising up to your doorstep and saying "yeah....we are supposed to play here in a week. You think we can stay here until then?" That's what we did, and they said it was cool. So we were there for what seemed like an eternity....sorting out our tour back to the west coast, drinking excessively, smelling bad, listening to their records....just being a general nuisance. Every day, Arik came home, looked at the living room full of miscreants, and uttered some variation of: "I'm going to make some food...are you guys hungry?"  We said yes (because we were), and Arik made us food. Every day. Something involving a nightclub owned by a member of AEROSMITH and cocaine happened at some point, but I don't recall the details so let your imagination run wild since it's probably more accurate than my memory. But the living room at this house had killer records, and we taped a LOT of them. This tape is a part of that week (a week that also included our discovery of EARTH CRISIS and SWING KIDS). I still listen regularly, and most of this tape still crushes.

SOMERVILLE

After we were there for a week, we played a fukkn incredible show in a basement on Wyatt Circle - absolutely one of the most fun shows I have ever played. When Doug handed me money that night he basically said that he hoped that we had enjoyed our stay and that he was glad we were leaving, which is completely fair since there's no way I would have put up with us for nearly that long. Did I mention that at this point our singer was completely covered in blue food coloring? Yeah, that happened.