Tit Patrol Tour Journal 11/19-11/22

Tit Patrol just got off an amazing mini-tour and are currently re-adjusting to stupid real life, which we hate. It started in Philly on Thursday night at J.R.'s, a tiny little bar with really cool staff. They were very cool to us, and it is cheese steak adjacent with a Phillip's stand right across the way! So the Tit got all greased up and played a great show with the Brown Bag Trio, One Short Fall, and the Slotcars. Andy and King from the Sheckies were also there and jumped on for a great mini-set with Dave Slotcar on guitar! On the way home, Toddy realized that he had somehow left his guitar. It seemed like the end of Tit Patrol, but Steve, the awesome sound/doorman with the slick 'stache got ahold of us and said I could come pick it up the next day. Luckily, everyone but me had to work that morning so we weren't leaving until the next afternoon. I slid by in the a.m. and grabbed that axe, safely stashed behind a curtain. Thanks ALOT to J.R.'s for still having it!

We congregated at Todd and the Main Man's new pad in New Castle the next afternoon and packed up Grant's mom's SUV. Dude, we need a van, big time, please contribute. We cruised up to New York and got stuck in city traffic, but made it to the Riff in Long Island with plenty of time. This was a great bar with alot of walk in business, all of whom had to pay to see us, so, ahem, we did pretty well that night. The opening band were young teenagers called Here She Comes. I don't know, but I think it may be in reference to the first line of "Femme Fatale" because they covered "What Goes On" by the Velvets. Also, their drummer had a real Main Man thing happening with his spectacles and all. Vinnie from the Scutches, who helped us get the gig, did acoustic Scutches songs and they were great. Vinnie's tunes are super-catchy and he has a wild and really cool voice, and I can't wait for his upcoming "The Sharon Chronicles." Great album title, by the way! Next the Tit did our thing, to the standard great success. At the Riff we conjoined our tour with Kepi Ghoulie. You know the Groovie Ghoulies, part of the pantheon of Lookout(!) Records greatness from the mid and late nineties. We were all big Groovies fans, but I gotta say, Kepi's new stuff is even better. His bassist Dino Girl is a great player with a beautiful voice, and as Tit Patrol will tell you, extremely crushable!! They rocked old and new songs and gave tambourines and maracas to the audience, which Tit Patrol greedily monopolized, and Toddy jumped on the drums for a couple numbers! Kepi also had the best merch. New and old CD's, LP's, EP's, and t-shirts, original art and even Kepi-Couture holiday tree ornaments!

After the show we were headed towards Wheeling, West Virginia for the next night's gig. We had planned on going half way, hitting Harrisburg, PA and getting some flea bag room for the night. Unfortunately, the Holland Tunnel was closed or fucked up or something, and the GPS we were blindly relying on led us into mid-town and off the highway. Toddy was behind the wheel at this point, and his heart did not explode, thankfully. We did get to see some classic "hooker-brand" hookers, with the shiny gold micro mini-skirts and purple fur coats and all, unlike our hookers who just wear like jeans and a Starter jacket. We got as far as Clinton Township New Jersey and hit up the first place we could, a slightly too ritzy Holiday Inn with a pool. The desk clerk saw we were from Delaware, and greeted us "Welcome to the real world." I was tired and cranky so I was like, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" But he lightened up and so did we. Unfortunately we got a non-smoking room with strict warnings about $250 additional rate if any evidence of smoking is found. So we just all crowded into the bathroom, turned on the shower to hot and threw a bunch of good smelling stuff into the tub and hot-boxed that muther, with no one the wiser. We headed out the next morning and hit up the Waffle House, along with an African-American college's step team, and the Main Man picked up the tab. On the way we saw a car on fire on the highway and snapped a great shot.

We got to Wheeling that afternoon and checked into the much more affordable Wheeling Inn, which features a menu of the room furniture with prices, so if you wanna break something you know how much it's gonna cost, very convenient! The desk lady was very band-friendly, telling us she used to work in Miami and saw all the big acts, such as Korn, Fuel, Slipknot, Chlorine, etc... and how she'd get her fourteen year old daughter to meet them. We wondered where her daughter was now. We decompressed for a couple hours, loaded into Yesterday's Draught House and then set off for grub. We decided on the Bridge Tavern, and were not disappointed. The Main Man got hot wings and bacon and eggs, me and Toddy got huge meatloaf sandwiches on white bread with like a quart of brown gravy soaking the whole thing, and Grant got turkey on white with white gravy and mashers, which even the anti-potato Toddy ate and enjoyed. So, with our gravy levels at high we went over to the show. We weren't expecting much because it honestly looked like a ghost town, like Market Street Wilmington after 6 p.m., but the place was pretty packed. The openers were another teenage band called N.F.I., and even though it was an eighteen and older club, they were young enough to need parental accompaniment. They played three Blink songs, four Green Day songs, Nirvana, Sublime, and ended with "Jenny I Got Your Number." We were all really supportive and sang every song (except Sublime), and everybody had a good time, even thought they refered to "Dookie"-era Green Day songs as old-school. There were a bunch of local young girls and young punks who combined '82-style hardcore dress with fashionable haircuts, like the one I have. I got along with these kids really well, and they got the party started in the pit. Tit played next and we were torrid. Grant even did a header off the stage, a la Joey Ramone. Things got kicked up a notch when One Short Fall took the stage and did the best set I've seen them do. The place was electric and wild and me and Grant even had to break up a fight with Grant carrying some flanneled dude out the front door. Kepi headlined and had the place dancing and it would not settle down, even for an acoustic set. It was far to kinetic to take photos.

Afterwards things got a little crazy. Grant had been using mind control on the bartender to receive many free drinks that evening, and this one kid in trendy J-Lo glasses rubbed him the wrong way, so Grant was whacking him in the kidneys. This was infuriating the dude who was complaining that he was offended. Me and the Main Man came out to this, and didn't want anything to happen because that kid had also bought two Tit Patrol records earlier in the night, but he was saying how he and his boys would "take care of it" so the Main Man asked exactly what they would take care of, seeing as how he and I were right there and are both sober and muscly and have unlimited star punches, and the kids agreed that they wouldn't enjoy that and it sort of diffused. Grant took off towards the motel, the Main Man got a beer off this cutey blonde sophomore at WVU, and I went in to help Todd get us paid. Turns out that Grant was hassling some mannequins in a store window with a traffic cone and that glasses guy went down to, I don't know what, so the Main Man went and told the kid to go the fuck home and took Grant back to the hotel parking lot. Meanwhile, I was discovering that someone claiming to be the promoter for the evening had already received the cash from the door. Well, there was no promoter present, so the long and short of it was that someone had stolen the door and none of use were getting paid. WEAK. I went to relieve the Main Man so he could get back to his lady friend and me and I willed Grant to walk into our room and we crashed out. Dan from One Short Fall stayed with us while Brian got some booty and Logie slept in the van. That night we got tussed up and I won three out of four games of R.B.I. 3 off the Main Man.

The next morning we all had tour breakfast together at Uncle Pete's out on the deck. It was a beautiful morning and everybody was in very high spirits despite not getting paid the night before. We drove to Morgantown, WV for the final show of mini-tour at Club Octane. We had some time to kill so we hit up the adult book store and arcade with private and semi-private booths. They had no gay porn, which we thought was discriminatory, but when we saw whippits, crackers, and balloons all in one display, we changed our tune. Tit Patrol spent the next hour reading the free Go-Go Girl newsletter and blowing whippits in the car on Main Street, Morgantown and then joined One Short Fall at the bar with our brains half-melted. The show was great. Kepi and Dino Girl opened up to get the party started and were amazing as always, complimenting the Main Man on his maraca work calling him a modern-day Jerome Green. Praise from Caesar! The Tit and One Short Fall did our things, and then it was time for the locals. First of the two was the Serpent Handlers of West Virginia. I do not recommend seeing them ever. They were trash. A mix of ECW and a G.G. Allin rip-off, they cut their heads and bled profusely while whipping out their minuscule junk, all the while having no bass player and patently boring semi-songs. Very bad. Dino Girl looked like she was gonna puke! After the owner put a stop to it, everything was covered in blood, so the Tit stepped up, grabbed latex gloves from the kitchen and disinfectant and cleaned the mikes and stands and the stage so the last band could play without fear of hepatitis. Though we all had to get going, that band cleared the joint out, so we stuck around and watched the last band, called Days to Come. They were very nice dudes with amazing West Virginia accents who played a metal-hardcore hybrid. We hit the hot dog stand, said our good-byes, and hit the road back to Wilmington with a Kepi soundtrack the whole way.

Thanks so much to Kepi Ghoulie, Dino Girl, Dan, Logie, and Brian (One Short Fall) for being awesome and letting us use equipment, Vinnie Scutch, J.R.'s, the Riff, Yesterdays, Club Octane, Justin from Punk Rock Promo and all my fellow Tits for making this a great experience! Back on the road December 10... you should come.