Quebec City - Scanner - Feb. 24/11
I woke up at 6:30 choking on snot. It wouldn't be a trip to the Maritimes if I wasn't fucking sick again. Jason pulled up outside at 8 with our temporary rental tour van. There was some slight damage to the front from running over a deer. We headed to the jam space and loaded all the junk out of the van that we wouldn't need: industrial size garbage bag of a drifter's clothes, suitcase, extra van bench, and shovel (which would probably have come in useful had we kept it). We loaded all our equipment in the van, locked up and headed for the highway. We realized just as we were approaching the highway that we left Chris' second bass drum at the jamspace. Jason pulled a crazy u-turn and we floored it back. We were finally on the road by 9:15 headed to Ottawa to pick up Chris and his cymbal stands. We were finally able to leave all of his scrap metal apartment building scaffolding drum hardware behind! We called Chris and told him we'd be there at 1:30. When we arrived no one was home. His block watch neighbour across the street came out and started yelling something at us about no one being home. We pissed around the side of his house and waited. 1:41 pm: Chris pulled up in his decrepit van along with Brian and our resident merch guy and KISS trivia expert DK. We threw Chris' cymbal stands in our van and said our goodbyes to Brian. We kept driving and stopped somewhere in Quebec for food and pee. Jason and I opted for pizza since ordering at Subway in Quebec is nearly impossible. Even at the pizza place the guy behind the counter didn't understand what sticking up 2 fingers and pointing at a slice meant. The pizza was sloppy dog shit. We took 2 bites and threw it out. We went next door to Le Subway and saw Chris and DK both ordering in perfect French. There was a lineup at the bathroom, I got in first and when I came out two 8 year olds pushed in front of Jason who was next in line. Everyone in Subway stared as Jason yelled "I'M IN LINE HERE FUCKERS! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" They both ran away and told their mom. Later on Jason told us he was in the bathroom preparing to fight their Dad when he came out. We all ate some shit subs and were back on the road in no time.
By this point Chris and DK both had to piss and started filling up bottles. There were only 3 bottles between them and they had to keep going, so Jason helped out and emptied the piss bottles out the window. Thanks to science all the piss flew onto the windshield of the car behind us and we prepared to fight more French people. Jason then shit his pants, but of course saved a bit for on stage later that night. We arrived at LE BISTRO SCANNER an hour later. The local band Kaotik was already there and the place had started to fill up nicely. We all got a round of St. Ambroise Noir which looked like tar but tasted pretty good. Within a couple minutes of setting up merch we sold the last 2 Burning Fortune LP's that we had. Hopefully we get some more because the Quebecers want 'em. By the time the first band finished the place was already packed. The sound guy was good too, probably because of all those years doing sound for AUT 'CHOSE. We played a good set even though we all felt like shit (me), had to shit (Jason), or both (Chris). It didn't stop us from pounding back all that black beer though. We made some cash, packed up the merch and gear and headed over to Fred the promoter's house a couple blocks away. He told us we'd have to move the van by 8 or we'd get a ticket. Chris, DK and I went across the street to CHEZ ASHTON to get some dog food before bed. In the time it took me to eat one "hot dog", DK ate 1 large poutine, 1 Ashton Double Burger, and 2 hot dogs full of ground beef. Back at Fred's DK locked himself in the bathroom for 3 hours while I tried to buy Fred's copy of EXECUTIONER'S SONG off him, but he just wasn't willing to part with it. Jason slept on the couch, but the rest of us grabbed a room to avoid Boris the dog who could be heard barking all night, and probably licked Jason's mouth for a few hours. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened.
Feb. 25 - Manhattan - Moncton, NB
We got up at 8 and saw that the van had already been ticketed. Fred thought it was bullshit and walked outside in his underwear and started yelling something in French at the parking lot attendant. The guy said something back in French and then took the ticket off our van and ripped it up. Now we're welcome back in the fine city of Quebec anytime. However leaving is a problem. They have the smallest street signs there, and we drove around in circles for half and hour. Jason couldn't take it anymore and jammed on the brakes at a gas station and kicked the door open. We all watched and thought he was either going to rob them or at least kick over the ANDY CAPP'S chip display. Instead he came back with a coffee, but no directions. We stuck to some rue and finally made it onto the 'ighway. This called for some KISS - ANIMALIZE. The speed metal opener INTO THE FIRE was promptly cranked. DK then began to fill us in on Animalize trivia. Soon we all got in a fight over Eric Carr and Eric Singer. The cd was ejected and we all tried to calm down. We were surviving on stale tortilla chips by now and needed to stop before we all starved to death and the van drifted off the highway into the bushes never to be seen again. We pulled over at Nasty Ronnie's with about 3 minutes to spare before they stopped serving breakfast. We almost had to go Michael Douglas on them. Everyone had been warning us there was a storm on the horizon, but the Cauldron machine don't stop for nothin'. Pretty soon it started snowing, little snowflakes, intertwining, nothing too serious. We pulled into an Ultramar and bought the cheapest sandwiches they had and filled up. By now it was turning into a full on blizzard. We passed a car flipped over on the side of the road but didn't stop because it could have been a trick. By now the wipers were so crusted with ice that we couldn't see anything. Jason tried to do a trick that works with his Chevy Lumina by sticking his arm out the window and smacking the wiper against the windshield. This time it broke off in his hand and went flying behind us into the wilderness. All that was left was a robotic stump scraping against the glass. We couldn't see the road, and since the snowbanks were so high it would have been too dangerous to pull over. The stretch from Quebec City to Moncton is notorious for having no gas stations. For the next 4 hours we drove going 30 km/h with Jason sticking his head out the window. When his head would freeze he would come back inside and thaw out and use a newspaper as a wiper.
We finally got to the outskirts of Moncton and pulled into a gas station. They didn't sell replacement wipers so we lined up for the bathroom. Who should appear but PJ from Iron Giant. We figured we must be close to the concert hall, even though it was still another half hour away. I guess we should have asked him for directions. We thought we were lost but finally made it to the show. We contemplated even getting out of the van for a good 10 minutes. Jason went around front to get the load-in door open, and we dragged our gear through 5 foot high snow and satanic winds. Kyle McDon the promoter showed up and brought us a bunch of cold Dab's to drink in the van while we listened to Witchfinder General "Live '83" which is completely fucked up. It sounds like the master tape they used was slowed down a couple steps. We ejected it and put on some breakdown era Carcass. After a couple soda pops we set up merch and then went to a pizza place connected to the other side of the concert venue. Chris, DK and I ordered a poutine pizza and devoured it behind the merch table with some complementary beers. It was delicious, and probably only took a couple years off our lives. People had actually started showing up despite the satanic weather, although I'm sure one or two decided to stay home and be nerds. The opening band featured "THE WORLD'S FASTEST DRUMMER!" I recall meeting the guy a few years ago, but apparently he still holds the world record for the fastest double kicks. I guess what it really means is "World's fastest drummer among some people who have tried out for the world record". He was playing a massive kit with mirror kick drums. Chris talked to him about it and found out it once belonged to Bobby Jarzombek from Riot and was used on the Thundersteel album. All the shells were autographed and we heard the guy paid $25,000 for it. A steal! We had a fucking amazing set, there were lots of ragers up from smashing beer bottles all over the stage. The crowd demanded one more song, so Jason said if they wanted one, they'd have to pay for it. People started throwing all kinds of change up on the stage, so we played Free Country by Witchfinder General. Afterwards Jason was looking abnormally happy and said he collected all the money and made $12. DK did lights for this show and pretty much cleared us out of merch after the set. We hung around for a while finishing off our beer tickets, then threw everything in the van and fucked off. We went over to Remi from Cop Shades house, and waited for him to plow his driveway with his SUV. He set up a few air mattresses for us and we all rocked a couple sips and went to bed exhausted.
Feb. 26 - CD Heaven/Gus' Pub - Halifax, NS
We all woke up around 11, drank coffee (except me), and showered (except Jason). While DK set the record for "WORLD'S LONGEST SHOWER", Remi dug our van out of the snowbank and went to Canadian Tire with Jason to get our windshield wiper replaced. On the way out of town we stopped at the Nasty Ronnie's drive thru, and discovered on the highway that Jason had been gypped out of his McChicken by "Megan", the pleasant drive thru hostess. "COCK FAGGOTS!" Jason could be heard to say. We drove only a couple hours until we reached Dartmouth for the huge promo release concert at CD Heaven with Hellacaust. We met up with Crucifuck and Hellbastard from Hellacaust and killed a couple hours at their ski lodge drinking homemade beer and some delicious bear meat chili. Then we drove to the liquor store down the way and bought a couple cases of Wildcat and Moosehead "Dry Ice". When in Dartmouth! The concert at CD Heaven was all ages and free so it filled up pretty quick. We played a shorter than usual teaser set after Hellacaust played, and chatted with some fans. Just before we left we all violated the bathroom in the back from eating all that bear chili. We headed over the Dartmouth bridge into Halifax and got bit in the ass with the 75 cent toll. You try to make some money on the road but keep getting hit with setbacks. We fired our gear into Gus' Pub and then went across the street for our annual visit with Mike Fedora. We listened to Mike's stack of Venom cassettes while DK wowed everyone with his KISS trivia knowledge, featuring such greats as "You see that KISS photo on the wall over there? That's actually from the 1976 KISS ARMY Destroyer mail order fan club kit!" and "Mike, all your KISS records are in horrible condition!" Mike upped the ante by reciting the entire "At War With Satan" speech from the end of Black Metal word for word without faltering. I bet he memorized it for a grade 7 English presentation. Back at Gus' the concert started filling up and we watched "The North End Metal All Stars", Spew (featuring Hellbastard of Hellacaust) and Hellacaust themselves. We were all fucking exhausted by this point, as we usually are when we come to Halifax. This could be proven by the appearance of Chris' alter ego "Darby McGee" who only comes out when Chris is forced to endure more than 10 hours of being awake. Jason made the mistake of falling asleep in the van before we played, which is always a bad idea. I forced myself to stay awake by holding my eyelids open and holding my piss. After reviving Jason's corpse in the van we hit the stage and one of those "mosh-pits" broke out for the duration of the set. Jason got hit in the teeth with his microphone so many times that he finally held the mic stand forward and kicked the bottom into some guy's face. He looked so pissed that I thought he was going to jump on stage and beat the shit out of Jason. We ended with Free Country and got the fuck out of there. Outside we did a short interview with some dude who was very enthusiastic and dropped the "devil horns" frequently. We fucked off to Crucifuck's house with a bunch of people crammed in the back of the van. Halfway over the bridge Hellbastard threw up into his toque. There was surprisingly little drippage. At the house we listened to more KISS and drank the rest of the Dry Ice while Jason played with the Angus Young and Brian Johnson figurines putting them in naughty poses. We all went to sleep right after. The next morning I got a text from DK that said "You snore AND talk in your sleep. And "Chains to the wicked is off!" whatever that means". Apparently I had been saying it over and over in my sleep, angrier each time. And now you know where Cauldron song titles come from. Next album for sure.
Feb. 27 - Plan B - Moncton, NB
We woke up around noon at Crucifuck's house and went straight to Taz Records before breakfast. There were pretty much the same records as always. I picked up the Heavy Metal Records "Heavy Metal Heroes Vol. 2" comp and almost bought the SEXX 12" on Iron Works Records. Never seen it before, but I took a listen and it wasn't so hot. 3 tracks of fake live AOR on a pink picture disc. I should have bought it. We stopped at the Wendy's drive thru on the way out of town for some afternoon slop. They got the order right and we all stank up the van. We got to Moncton a couple hours later even with all of Jason's Robert Sweet air drumming/no-hands driving. We tried to find a record store we went to a few years ago but it was long gone. There was another one down the street but it was just a bunch of shit. We called up Kyle to find out where Live Wire Records was that we remembered being good. All his directions involved "taking a left at the Tim Hortons", but we had some trouble since there are 4 Tim Hortons on every street corner in Moncton. We finally found the store, and there was a small metal section in the basement. DK inquired about all the KISS memorabilia, but it wasn't for sale. I picked up Killer "Ready for Hell" for a few bucks, and passed up a battered Metal Massacre IV for $5. Should have got that one too. We called up Kyle again, this time for directions to his house for the filming of our segment on "The McDon's House" show. Basically it's us playing a few songs live in his basement. We lugged most of our gear down into the basement and recorded 4 or 5 originals and 1 cover. We also rewrote the theme song for the show with Chris on lead vocals. It's a little bit different to say the least. Since we had today off Kyle managed to book us a last minute show to make up for the necrotic snow storm the other day. The idea was to lure out all the people who missed the last one. So we loaded up all our shit again and then unloaded it into Plan B. We were all pretty tired and hungry so we got another one of those poutine pizzas delivered to the show. We played with THE WORLD'S FASTEST DRUMMER again and got hammed off some dark ale on tap. After we played there was this drunk kid who was getting up in everyone's face until we finally saw him get dragged outside and have the shit beaten out of him by some burly looking dudes. Everyone rejoiced and continued drinking. We hung around for a while listening to Diamond Head until a few haggard crazy chicks started following us around. We promptly fucked off to Kyle's sister's place to get some sleep. We were so exhausted by the time we got there that we all did a bunch of drugs and then went to sleep in the living room. We slept for 10 hours or something, except for Jason who was up at the crack of dawn staring at us for 5 hours until we got up.
Feb. 28 - Nicky Zee's - Fredericton, NB
We were all starving so we followed Kyle to his favourite restaurant in town, the Colonial Arms or something along those lines. We were served by the slowest waiter in the world who was clearly a cross dresser with breast implants. The food was pretty good and cheap, except for the "sausages" which were "a little bit different to say the least". To our delight, when we came outside again we discovered another blizzard had started. At least we had two windshield wipers again. We said peace to Kyle, bro hugged, and hit the open road to Fredericton. We had some time to kill before the show so we headed to Jason's sister Ellen Decay's house. After driving through the back woods for some time and listening to our favourite grunge albums of years gone by, we came upon our destination, the "red house on the left", since they don't have house numbers in the back woods.
Jason fighting off rabid dogs near Ellen's house
Our dogs were barking, so we all took our shoes off and relaxed, and some of us even showered. Or I think all of us showered actually. We all ate the delicious chili that Ellen made us, sipped on some light beers, and listened to some Bollweevil "Rock Solid" on the stereo until it was time to leave for the concert at Nicky Zee's. We braved the storm and when we got to the concert venue, got DK to run inside and find out where the load-in was. We lugged all our shit in through the 5 foot snow banks and then chatted with the pleasant English fellow doing sound. While Chris was setting up his drums we walked next door to the record store. It had a sign on the door that said "CLOSED. GOT FLUE BUGS". We decided we better get the fuck out of there and trudged back to the show. We started a bar tab and all got whatever dark beer they had on tap, and then watched the opening bands. Well it was more like band. Both bands were all the same guys under two different names, I guess to distinguish between their vastly different songs. We played a full set to a pretty great snow storm crowd, and afterwards had to give all the money we made back to the bar to pay off our huge tab. We chatted with the locals for a few minutes and then fucked off into the night. We stopped at the Burger King drive thru and got a round of poutines. Jason was having trouble driving and eating his poutine and could be heard yelling "SATANIC FUCK" into the wee hours of the morning, or until we got to Ellen Decay's house. We were all rudely awoken at 6:30 am by Jason and/or our alarms and knew we had to be on the road by 7. We said peace out to Ellen and the dogz and hit the open road again. We stopped at Nasty Ronnie's (again)… fuck… and Chris and DK went to Subway (again)… Of course in the time it took me and Jason to order and eat our shit, Chris and DK were still ordering. It was Chris' turn to drive, so he had to eat a footlong at the same time. He had sub sauce all over his face for about 6 hours.
I took over near the French side of the Quebec border and nearly got in 2 accidents within 5 minutes. Just a little rusty that's all. We made it to Ottawa a couple hours later and dropped the boys off at Chris' house. I forgot to mention it was DK's birthday today (March 1). Happy birthday there fella. Sorry we didn't get you anything. I thought hanging out with us would be enough. As we left Chris' a van pulled up and blocked the driveway. We said what the fuck and then it backed up. As we pulled out, there was a silhouette of a pouffy hairdo behind the steering wheel. I rolled the window down and who should be in the driver's seat but none other than Dan Beehler of… Beehler... and Exciter! We tried to remain cool and gave him a head nod and a "what's up". Nothing else happened on the way home other than Jason and I eating peanuts and falling asleep behind the wheel.
