March 16th, 2005 - South Gate, CA

We woke up around 7am and Dan and I decided we should drive to find a coffee shop somewhere. I think hanging out at random coffee shops is a staple on any tour we take, especially in LA because we like to sit around and watch how important people pretend to be. As Bill jumped into the driver’s seat, we started wondering how we were going to get out of the parking lot. It wasn’t big enough to just turn around in, so Bill had to pull off quite an amazing three point turn by backing the trailer into a covered parking spot. He did it much to our amazement and we were on our way. We drove to a Starbucks down by the beach and set up camp for a little while. Austin and Brook opted out of the coffee shop for more sleep in the van, but the rest of us had wonderful conversation that resulted in the formation of the greatest band in the history of the world. All I can really say about it is the name, The Guitarmy. Don’t be surprised when we take over the world someday soon.

The Rookie had never seen the ocean, so after a few hours of Starbucks we headed down to the beach to give the kid a look. Dan, Jake and Clint all got in their swimming suits to take a dip while Bill took a long walk on the beach talking to his girlfriend on the phone. We pretended that they were taking a virtual walk on the beach together while we watched the other three take a cannonball run into the water. It was March, so the water was pretty cold, but that didn’t seem to matter to any of them. While we were at Starbucks, our friend Kodee had come down to meet up with us, and offered up his apartment for a shower. We piled back in the van and drove to Long Beach to get cleaned up. When we were all ready, he took us to Native Food before we left for the show.

As we left Native Food, we stopped by another shop to see a friend of ours at work, but he wasn’t there, so we decided to head on to the show. As we were on the freeway I saw the exit for Compton, and after years of listening to NWA, I decided it would be a good idea to get off and drive around for a minute. That idea was immediately shot down the second I brought it up, but it didn’t really matter, because the exit that we needed to take for the show was the first exit past Compton. As we exited the freeway, we saw a homeless guy on the side of the road staring at us, a few seconds later we heard a loud “BOOM” and were convinced that the homeless guy was jealous of our sweet van and had thrown something at us. We didn’t think much of it and continued on our way.

The show was in South Gate, California, which is like a small Spanish city within LA, and about two blocks from the venue, I noticed that we were driving on a flat tire. We pulled through a parking lot on to a side street to get it changed. Thanks to our brilliant planning, we didn’t have all the tools we needed to get the tire off, so I set out looking for a hardware store that might have something we could use. A few of the other dudes went down to the venue to let the promoter know we were only a block away and to borrow some tools for changing the tire. Brook and I sat on the curb eating rice and soy sauce watching Clint and Austin struggle with the tire for about an hour before it was finally changed and we could continue to the show.

The venue was actually an old movie theater that had been slightly renovated to accommodate shows. It was definitely the creepiest venue we have ever played. The stage was huge and it was the only part of the room with any light to it. It looked like the set of an old horror movie. Aftermath was up second, so we set up our stuff and started to play. After the first song, the sound guy told us we only had time for two more. We were confused, but just made the best of it and rocked the two best songs in the set. As we finished, we tried to get Cherem set up as quick as possible to use as much time as possible. As we were setting up, Jake walked up to ask the sound guy why they got cut short and the promoter walked up to the stage with Rob from Bring It Down. Apparently, BID was to share a set with Winds of Plague, but the sound guy got it mixed up and thought Aftermath and Cherem were supposed to share. They started apologizing to me and I told them they were going to have to talk to Jake, because he was furious. Cherem played a full set and everything went alright, but after we were finished, I walked out to our merch table and Brook said, “Jake just took Aric (Bring it Down singer) outside.”

I got a little nervous at that thought because Jake has a pretty short temper as it is, and he had been trying to keep his cool for three days. He finally lost it. A few minutes later, Rob comes walking up to their merch spot, which was right next to ours and told their merch guy to pack everything up because they were leaving. They started getting ready to go and Jake walked back in with smoke coming out of his ears. None of the kids would look at us and we just sat in awe as they put their shit away and drove off. After the show was over and we were packing up, we decided to take bets on whether or not they’d come to the Phoenix show. They weren’t getting very good odds. We jumped back in the van and back on the highway towards Redlands.