LAL TourDiary with J + The Fog

[Cloud9]

J Mascis and the Fog /LAL on tour 4/11 to 5/6 2001…

So here’s some short blurbs on our tour with J Mascis… we also did one before that with Les Savy Fav … but I wanted to get the long one started first. This isn’t really a tour diary like you can check out on Mike Watt’s hootpage (hootpage.com), just more like a synopsis…

4/11 New York NY- This was our first show with the fog at a place called Wetlands which had a fuckin’ VW bus inside that sold t-shirts and stuff… We met J upon first getting to the club with our rented 2001 Pontiac Grand Am… open road here we come! J is very deadpan and says hello nonchalantly, I wonder if this guy lets loose? Later in the tour Zeke and I discover that J has a wicked sense of humor; making fun of Love As Laughter? Let J Mascis show you how. Zeke and I do our thing to some sideways audience and then hang with friends(shout out to NY peeps here). J and the Fog take the stage and what the fuck! Jesus they’re so fuckin’ loud this rules! Some people do not share the same enthusiasm as myself for blistering loud volume levels, I foresee my ears at the end of the tour hanging limp at the tail end of a 747 jet engine… ho well… what? Wait a second… that guitar solo rules… Some weird scraggly old guy was talking to Zeke before the show while playing on his computer… turned out he was Mike Watt, bass player for the fog and total maniac all round. George Berz is the drummer and the nicest fuckin’ guy ever, also possessed of some crazy humor gene… Sometimes I could not understand his Neanderthal ways, but to smoke ancient dirt you don’t need to speak the same language. Giant David is the guitar tech and Ray is the sound guy. Eric is the tour manager. And Ron Asheton is the stooge! This first show we played with the fog featured Ron Asheton of the Goddamn Stooges for a second set of stooges covers! The Fog and Ron kicked ass on these numbers too, Watt goes for it on the vocals except when Evan Dando got up there… Hmmm… So great first show all round; hung out with our lovely and hilarious booking agent Robin Taylor after the show.

4/12 Baltimore MD- If you are going to Baltimore to play a show, do not play Fletcher’s . Whatever. The Otto Bar is where we would usually play, But the Fog gigs are bigger so we’re here. Not that bad except for the sound … ahem. Some weird hippies showed us so many kinds of pot… Amazing! Those hippies really know their stuff! Who let you in to the dressing room you freaks! We ate sushi and hung out with our friends Jason and Julie after the show. I still have Jason’s Harley mesh hat he left in the car… Dude I’ll send you another Hat!

4/13 Richmond Va- There’s a party district in Richmond that’s like 100 times more Durst than Pioneer Square! There’s a club called Alley Catz that’s a huge wood club that sounds good and has a balcony so more people can see the show which is good cuz there was a bunch of people there, people were nice to LAL there and stuff. We stayed at our friend Marty’s place which was cool, his band played the same night and I tried to get over there before they were done but playing a show and trying to see one in the same night never works for me. We ate at a little diner late night style. A shoutout to Guy, who came to several consecutive shows.

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