The grind begins ...

(Mike)

OK, its Friday, I think. We have embarked on the realistic part of the tour now, and said goodbye to festivals and catering and being driven around and treated like we are the Beatles.

Lets see, Wednesday night, we played in Sorocaba at the Imperium bar with a band called The Biggs, a really good punk band. The singer, Flavia, is an instructor at a rock and roll camp for girls in Portland Oregon, and is a badass. They rip. We played really well, jumped around, broke some strings, fried some amps, ate some burgers, met some people that had heard of us or had seen us already at one of the fests, which was neat. Everybody there, Andre from the Name, and especially the Biggs, were really cool people, we hung out with them afterwards and had some beers, went out to an all night place to eat some chicken balls, then drove the hour home back to Sergios in Sao Paulo. Sergio almost drove off the road after falling asleep at the wheel, and Jason had to grab the wheel from the passenger seat to save the day.

We´ve gotten our first taste of driving around Sao Pàulo, in a big clunky Fiat van no less. Its a blast, let me tell you. You gotta stay on your toes, and actually be a bit of a prick or else you will get nowhere and probably kill a motorcyclist. Road laws are purely suggestions here, and the traffic is insane.

So luckily, yesterday morning, we headed out of Sao Paulo city for a 4 day mini tour, in the sense that we are not going to drive back to the city after these shows, but just crash somewhere and head to the next one. We drove 4 hours out to San Carlos, a college town north of the city. Before the show we got the Brzilian version of hotdogs whic is ... strange. We played at the cd release party for a band called Plano Proximo, a sort of sugar pop band. Carol, the singer, and all of them, were great people and very friendly. Probably because it was sort of their party, the atmosphere at this club was a big contrast from the night before and we were curious how it was going to go for us. There were djs playing mashup dance music, then a pop band, and then us. Oh and we went on at 2AM.

Oh yeah, shit, it was also Jasons Birthday. So happy Birthday to Jason.

We played probably our best set of the tour so far. People were diggin it and stuck around for our whole set, which probably ended around 3am or so. AND we got our first A.M. (after Mike) encour. A few people especially, including Carol from Plano Proximo, gave us huge props.

Oh, also have to mention we met Mark, the drummer from the Dead Rocks, a local surf rock band that played the Goiania noise fest. Besides being the man, he also let us know that lots of people in Goinia were buzzing about us. We were entertained at the end of the night by a really crazy drunk chick that had everyone laughing. Thenwe crashed at Phillipe´s, a local radio DJ. Now, we go for breakfast. Oh, and I almost took out the driver side rearview this morning.

More later ...