Ugh. What a shitty, shitty month. There were four shows canceled this month. If you can fucking believe that. We play an awful lot but take serious pride in making it to every show no matter what the hurdle. When our van broke down in the middle of Ohio sometime in 99 or so, we fucking towed that bitch to a friends house about 50 miles away, grabbed the minimal of what we could, piled into his mom’s mini-van and made it to the show. We ditched the van the next day for a Ryder rental truck, a two seater. We had four people, two of which sat in the back of the Ryder with the gear, without any heat, in the total darkness for 5 hours while we finished driving to our next gig in Pittsburgh. And they drove in those same conditions upon our return to Detroit from Pittsburgh during a wintery cold blizzard. We’ve seen our share of road-blocks but we always manage to overcome. Not this time.

A serious money crunch and trouble with our RV prevented us from making it to Reading and Philadelphia during the first week of December. Two new towns for us that are probably so pissed they’ll never want us back. For hours and hours we searched for solutions to the problem and came up empty handed. When we accepted our fate, we swallowed our pride and did our best to lay the past to rest and look forward to the coming week when we could redeem ourselves with gigs in Toledo and Minneapolis. The next week approached and we got a call that our Toledo gig had been canceled due to some sort of liquor violation at the club. This sucked especially bad because we were counting on the loot from that gig to get us to Minneapolis, without that money, we were right back to where we were just one week ago. We were doomed and there wasn’t any way out of it. I made the agonizing call to my friend Jamey in the Panty Huffers, one of Minneapolis’ coolest bands, who we were scheduled to play with, and broke the news. I felt like such a schmuck, worse than a schmuck actually. But we’re hoping to rekindle that gig somehow in the near future so keep your eyes peeled. Jamey, if you’re reading. Let’s do this proper this time!

And if anyone from those towns are actually reading this, we sincerely apologize for not making these gigs and we promise to deliver the rock goods sometime in the near future.

As always, we soldier through the tough times and found it much easier to make the next gig. It was after all only a few short miles away, in Hamtramck Michigan. It was December 17, a cold and snowy winter evening as we headed out to the New Dodge Bar. Our friends in the Bomb Pops helped us out on this show, taking the gig at the last minute. They went on first, charging up the crowd with Natalie’s sex-charged vocals and the Bomb Pops amped up party pop rock! We’ve been friends with them for a long, long time and it’s always a pleasure to have them along with us. They have a new record coming out this year, keep your eyes peeled!! Second on the bill was an unnamed side-project featuring some boys we know in some local bands. It always amazes me at how good these guys are – they just get up there, unrehearsed and crank out the jams. Very cool to see them all work so well together. Hopefully one day they’ll be an actual band, with a name!! The only problem tonight was with the sound, each band was plagued with sound trouble from feedback to a wishy washy stage mix – the sound proved to be troublesome all night.

We had some friends try and crash the sound board – donating their expert advice on how to tweak things the right way but were quickly shooed away by the sound guy. Thanks guys for trying. It’s rock n’ roll and that’s how these things go sometimes. We played a decent set but our early month hurdles, coupled with the bad sound made for just an “allright night.” We wrapped up the evening with some after gig partying – even one of us who played tonight puked (and it wasn’t me!!!!!) and we all settled in for a long cold winter. We can only hope 2005 has better things to come.