Goiania Noise Fest - Mike

Taken from an email

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I think I said this in my nonsense email but it really feels like we've been here for like 2 weeks and its only been 3 1/2 days. We are going to collectively update the blog, hopefully tomorrow, so you'll get most of the details there, but I'm having the time of my life. I nominated our tour slogan to be "one way or another". Its felt like we have been one step away from disaster the whole time, and yet so many amazing experiences have come out of it, which in a strange way. It seems as though nothing at all has gone as planned, but its been everything and more than I expected.

I think the blog so far has covered us getting to the Goiania noise fest so I'll pick it up from there. Friday morning we woke up in our hotel room. Turns out we were in the wrong hotel, the shittier one that the press was staying in, we were supposed to have been brought to the nice hotel where the bands were all staying. Sergio had left early that morning because he had to catch a flight back to Sao Paulo to pick up helmet and sort them out, but luckily, he had taken us to the pre-party at the site of the festival the night before and we met alot of really great people. Leonardo, a really cool dude who was there to promote his new book and who was a huge help for us cuz he spoke great english. Jan, a festival guy from belgium, who was down there to speak about indie music. Gushus, a zombie movie director who reminded me alot of Marcus. Uri and Frankie, the sound guys who were the nicest guys, totally professional and ready to attend to any request we had. This really awsome chick Quinn from Canada, another fest organizer that was down there just to check it all out. Pablo and his girl from Argentina, who again was really helpful translating for us. The fest organizers, whose names escape me. The guys in this band holger, friends of Sergio's who were also looking out for us. So many more, one right after another like a blur, everybody just putting out incredible warm and friendly vibes, hugs and thumbs up from everybody (very Brazilian apparently), everybody present in conversation and genuinely interested in us and our band, "Oh cool, I'm going to definitely make sure I check you guys out tomorrow night" and really meaning it. Part of what made this so surreal was the way it directly contratsed all the danger we had been warned about, and how it always seemed like everything was going to fall apart. More on that later.

So we woke up and went downstairs and ended up getting picked up by Anne and Jays friend Fernando, and his wife Maria, who live in Goiania. This was a big relief to the extremely nice and friendly Marri, the transportation organizer for the festival who looked like she was falling apart from stress. Fernando was a really cool dude, civil engineer, so you know, we got along, and his wife was great too. He first took us to the other hotel, which was way nice (we were on the top floor with an incredible view of the city), to drop off our bags, then took us out for lunch at a churrascaria, which is a Brazilian BBQ.

I have to tell you about this, theres a buffet where you can get pasta or salad, but the real treat s that they stop by your table, seriously, every 30 seconds with a giant piece of meat on a spit and ask you if you want some. It was bordering on harrasment, but in as best a way possible. The meat was un-fucking-real, and all you can eat, which we did. Oh, and the juice is hands down the best I've ever had in my life, everything is fresh squeezed right before they serve it to you. We ate till we felt like we would pass out (we were already hungover and hadn't gotten any good sleep), then Fernando took us back to show us his place, which was cool, (You'll have to excuse the rampant use of "cool", "awsome" and other bland adjectives. I've been speaking simplistic-so-people-can-understand-me english for a few days now and I'm finding that I'm incapable of being very descriptive, or funny).

We took a hour long nap then went downstairs to the lobby. Marri had told us that there would be someone there to give us a ride to the festival with all our gear. But nothing goes as planned so we spent alot of time looking around like "OK, whos giving us a ride, what the hell is going on?". Turns out, mostly no one ever knows whats going on. We ended up hitching a ride in a van with a bunch of press people.

The venue was a big courtyard with an outdoor stage, a some poorly located booths for merch, a perimiter set up with food and booze, and a big semi circle that contained the main stage we were playing on later that night. The main stage was huge, sort of like the place we saw slightly stoopid, but a little bigger. We threw our stuff in a room backstage we were sharing with a couple bands, then headed out to set up Gushus with our merch. Leonardo also helped out, putting ch stickers inside his books he was selling.

The festival started out with band of younger kids from Brazil. A bunch of 18yr olds, with a little 5' girl singing and ripping on the guitar. Then this band the demosonics, who we met and chilled with, and who were the only band that could even remotely be labelled as similar to us. Then Holger played, some other bands....it's all a blur. We spent alot of time hanging out backstage with the security crew who were guarding our stuff. Slightly-younger-than-us kids, who were super nice and who were drinking heavily and probably were not supposed to be.

Brazilians sure do like there smoke machines and there strobe lights. We decided we needed to make it very very clear that we didn't want either when we play. Sergio had advised being very animated while doing this because if we just casually mentioned it they would give us the thums up and then do it anyway, and Dan and I would probably fall off the stage from strobe induced vertigo, and Jason would barf from smoke inhalation. More on this later....

The time was coming for us to do our thing and I had the jitters for a while, but I calmed down alot as the moment approached. But it was incredibly tense. We had 30 minutes to get the previous band off stage, set our stuff up and soundcheck. With a venue this size , this is a complicated process, even when everyone speaks the same language. We start our soundcheck, however during which we had a bit of trouble getting the monitors in line we were imploring them to fix it, to which the said "OK, you start now"...this was due to us having reached the end of our 30min set up time...so away we went! We ended up with a 30 minute set, which we worked out as Crab, Contact in 3, Stop Motion Sensor and Chicane. I looked up and saw 2000+ Brazilians staring back at me throwing up devil horns. The guys down here had warned us that lots of people knew of us, had looked us up on myspace beforehand, heard our stuff. Fabricio, the tour organizer announced us, butchered our name, which everyone amusingly does down here, and the place went nuts.

We didn't take it easy on them as Dan and I launched into a full noise hell crecendo, then we ripped into Crab. We fucked the opening riff up a bit, but came right out of it, to the point that it was more or less unnoticable. Crab went really well, then we went into Contact. As you know our songs have alot of loud parts followed by really quiet sections. Everytime it got quiet, the crowd would go nuts and cheer. The lighting was done well and accented the parts. It was an incredible rush.

The middle of contact has a part where it gets really quiet and theres no drums, just me finger picking, Anne playing along and Dan bugging out. The 3 of us were completely lost in the music. Jay thinks it would be fun to get up from behind the set and fuck with us one by one. He sneaks up behind Dan, and gives him bunny ears, the crowd goes wild, and we think its because of the music. He then sneaks up behind Anne and gives her a kiss. I actually have my eyes closed the whole time, like I said, just vibing out to the music. Jason sneaks up on me, on stage in front of 2000 people mind you, and plants a wet one on my cheek, which sratles the ever living crap out of me, to the point I royally fuck up the part I'm playing. But it was ALL GOOD. The crowd loved it, we were all loving it, it was all just straight up fun.

Stop Motion and Chicane went really well, I really love playing those two songs live. Chicane is an awsome closer, its consistently our best performed song, and it ends with sour-ass chords and dan screaming like hell. We finished, everyone went nuts again.

The next hour or so was really a blur. Rushing off stage, trying to wrap up my shit in the dark, still high on massive amounts of adrenaline, Jay thinks he lost his camera, the whole sound crew is searching around with flashlights when they probably should be doing more important things only to find out it was in Jays bag the whole time. It took us a while to calm down, and unfortunately, those moments right after you finish a show the only thing that sticks out is the fuckups. But considering the jetlagged, hazy, hungover state we were in, we did pretty damn good.

Multiple people approached us afterwards to try to tell us in broken english "so awsome! you rule! dischord records! Motorhead!". Uri, the sound guy says "You guys 2010!!! Everyone else here ... 2000!!!". Before we started, the room was filling up with a couple hundred for each band that played in there. The room packed for our set, and no one left. In all seriousness, I think we were just so out there, so different than anything else that they were hearing, and it was great to see real appreciation for that.

Then, we got supercalifragilistic drunk.

I lost track of Jason and Anne for a while. Turns out, after hanging out for a while, Jason caught montizumas revenge and got really fucking sick. He started to feel bad, rushed to the toilet in the bathroom backstage and started shitting and puking all over the place at the same time (we are still trying to come up with a name for this, the best we have so far is a Tennesse Tuxedo). Apparently, as Jason is on the toilet doing this, a wasted Brazilian in the next stall over stands up on his toilet and starts pointing down at Jason saying "HEEY!! AMERICAN!!!! RIGHT ON!!!WOOOOO!! OK!!!!, YOU IN BAND!!, ROCK AND ROLL!! ". Jason was trying to tell him to fuck off, but he was too busy with his Tennesse Tuxedo.

Jason finally meets back up with us and tells us he has to leave, and that we have to find our own way back to the hotel. Once again, we were suppoesedly going to have a ride ready for us, but by now we were pretty wise to what that really meant. At around 4am, we stumbled back onto a random bus that would supposedly be OK with lifting us back to our hotel. Son of a bitch if we dont look up and see the same fucking press people that we had mistakenly hitched a ride with to the festival. Crazy.

We got back to the hotel. The guys from Holger had insisted that Anne and a visibly twitching and pale Jason hang out and party with them in their hotel room, with the (Vaselines), so they were still up when we got there. Jason Anne and I decided we were done so we went to bed, by now it is 430am. Dan stayed down there and partied with them.

Fast forward to the morning. We had to get up at 8am to catch our flight back to Sao Paulo. At 7:30am, I start hearing an alarm and I'm like, jesus, what the fuck? I get up ad see Dan isn't in his bed. OK, I'm thinking he probably slept on the couch. I look out in the lounge area and he isn't there. I follow the alarm sound and its coming from the bathroom. I walk in and theres Dan, butt ass naked, twisted up into some horribly uncomfortable looking pretzel ... in the tub. I swear, my train of thought was ...

Holy Shit!! ... Dans dead
...
...
Oh man. he must have shit his pants and passed out in the tub
...
...
Holy shit, hes fucking naked and I do not want ot look at this.

Turns out Dan decided after partying with holger he wanted to take a bath (?). He drained the tub, but somehow passed out before getting out of the tub, so thats where he spent the night. This tub was small, like, even for Dan. I'm still trying to erase the image from my head. It haunts me.

Our ride to the airport was, sursprise, all fucked up. They came at the last possible moment, we dragged ourselves onto the plane groggy, hungover, and in Jays case still sick and twitchy. And that was Goiania Noiefest '08.

On to Sau Paulo Noise fest 2008 ...

-Mike

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