Thursday, February 09, 2006

The Weekend pt2- CBGBs

Monday morning we wake up early in Pittsburgh and head back home to Elmira, get home at about 2, change quick and run to my neighbor’s house and go meet up with the band. At about 330 we are all finally together and we pile into vehicles and head towards NYC. Were going to CBGB’s the place of legends. It’s a fairly long ride stuffed in the third row of seats in a Tahoe for 5 hours but its ok were going to CBGB’s.
We hop out of the car a few blocks away because parking in NYC is not always the easiest. We walk along and suddenly as we step out from underneath construction scaffolding there it is the infamous white awning with the classic red lettering CBGB’s & OMFUG. We could hardly contain our excitement. We unload our gear from the double-parked truck and bring the gear inside. Id been told that the place was small and they weren’t lying. It’s the standard city lot, twenty feet wide, fairly deep compared to many places but still a small place for concerts. The entire place is sorta black but with band stickers covering every available surface. One end of the bar itself if snapped in half length-wise and caving in. The entire place just fills you with a since of being real, its not the typical bar that goes out and buys a bunch of crap for conversation pieces or whatever, no this is real. It reminded me of a bar/hotel in Elkhart Lake that is very similar but with a racecar theme instead of the bands but the same thing, old and historic. The stickers on the walls and ceilings were put there by the bands or the drivers respectively. Its quite a place and I urge anyone who thinks that the best way to see a band is in a tiny little bar where you can walk right up to the stage, please at least go check out the site and buy some merch or donate. They are trying to raise money or they will have to close down.
http://www.cbgb.com/

A couple of bands played and then it was time for the Elmira bands to play. First up was Assasi-Nation.
I think his site is “Myspace.com/assasinationusa� I need to double-check this.
Assasi-Nation is particularly badass because it’s a one-man band. This crazy bastard just stands up there and sings while playing guitar and kicking the hell out of a kick-drum or the cymbals, and he’s pretty good too.
Next up was EPD this is my neighbor’s band EPD stands for Elmira Punk Division, there pretty good. There on the heavy end of the punk scale, which wasn’t perfect for the crowd at CBGBS, the day we were there because the local band that people actually knew was an Emo band. The more emo folks didn’t really get so into Assasi-nation and EPD but oh well we had a blast and it was clearly the greatest moment thus far for either band. I know EPD also has a myspace site but I’m not sure of the address.Then it was over and the people slowly dispersed. We loaded up the gear and for the third time that day I was starring at the prospect of a 4+ hour drive. Well our convoy got split up a little but we figured it would be Ok all we needed to do was get out of the city and then find a highway and head back home. Well we got out of the city just fine but we missed the highway and soon found ourselves traveling up I-95 through Connecticut. At this point we stopped to find someone with a map. The guy from Assasi-Nation was driving and he was pretty exhausted so I took over driving. It was around 2am when I took the wheel and I wasn’t terribly concerned about running into police and traffic was on the light side, we made decent time. Actually despite our taking the scenic route and checking out Stanford we still manage to get back to Elmira about 10 miles ahead of the other 2 cars. Hahaha, and they called one of the other drivers Johnny lightening ha. That’s not a bust on Johnny cause he’s actually pretty chill. So right about 6am I pulled up in front of my apartment and said goodbye. Then I was back at work at 830 ok so maybe it was more like 845-850 but I made it. That was one hell of a weekend.

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