First Show

This is a picture of The Braille Tapes' first show. It was actually about ten people (our friends) in the Coat Exchange. We sucked pretty bad (my friend Ryan recorded it. What i remember most about this show is that we tried to do a song with Chad on drums, but that didn't go too well. We played all of out songs. At that time, we were still an improv-band. We had what we called "sections." So instead of saying, "What song next?" Chad would start playing a riff, or I would start a drum beat and we would know that we're playing the section that is a back beat with distorted arrpegios in the key of D. As the years went on (After Chapter 1: I Want to Be Victor Ward) we started writing more "songs." But our process still came from "sections" and many of our songs were written from numerous attempts at just improving our way from a section into a song. But by Robot Meat I had started writing songs, and we sort of left the section-idea behind. Maybe when/if we ever record this Geriatrics EP, we'll do a couple sections, instead of all songs.

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The Coat Exchange was the house (one of the only houses still available the October Chad, Bill, and I left Snohomish County for Bellingham). It was cheap, shitty (my room would shake when trucks drove by the house and we hat rat problems by the time Dave Woods moved in--ask him about the rat who was licking ketchup off the plate he left in his room), and perfect for us to practice and have shows. A few months after this picture, we had a show with Treasures, Autumn Poetry, In Praise of Folly, and Red Robot. The place was so packed that our kitchen was full of people, trying to stick their head out to see the show. The hallway leading to the door was the same. At one point, some people gave up trying to see, and just listened, staring out our side windows. The front room had way too many people, and the friends of the bands had to stand in front to form a wall, in order to give the band enough room to play. I'm trying to remember, but this might've been the show where We had six bands: The Robot Ate Me played without mics and walked around the room playing his songs, and at one point made every puts an arm around everyone else and sway while he sang. And Green Hills Alone played too (they were touring with the Red Robot). And I think I opened the show, playing a few paper airplane songs. Though, many of our shows (little and big) have blurred together so that I can't remember.

Looks like I got some research to do.

That's all I got to say today. Oh, except that the wind was blowing so hard yesterday, kicking up dust. Our apartment smelled like dirt and the sky was the color of dirt (tannish-brown). Couldn't see the mountains, couldn't see the sun. The dirt was in my teeth and eyes, and when I drove to the store, I saw that the wind had ripped the roofing off the local church...yikes.

OK. that's all I have to say,

Later

Joshua