I woke up in the morning and it was extremely cold. I managed to muster up the nerve to grab my jacket and put it on, and I found out why it was so freezing. I looked at the walls of the van, and they were covered in condensation. The water had run down the wall and my feet had been pushed up against the wall, so the bottom foot of my sleeping bag was drenched. I got up and walked around the gas station and looked at the scenery, or what passed as scenery in Lordsburg, NM. We only had an hour or so drive, so we were in no hurry. I called Danny for the first time on tour, and we talked for a bit. Ryan was going to sleep as long as he could, so we were in the gas station for quite awhile, but we eventually left.
We drove to Las Cruces, and had a lot of time to kill, so we hit up Whataburger. Whataburger is this chain, which is a southern burger chain. I didn’t really get anything, but the burgers were gigantic. Afterwards, we leave and go to the Las Cruces mall. Ryan was just going to sleep in the van some more, but the rest of us head inside. I see that they have a Chuck E Cheese. I like arcade games, and I figured that arcades could still conceivably be around in New Mexico. I walk in and all their arcade machines suck, and are mostly all ticket-generating games. I don’t even think that they had Skee Ball, so that place was BS and I left.
Walking through this mall was a trip. It seemed like 80-90% of the mall-goers were teenagers. It was Saturday, so this must be where the entire teen population of Las Cruces goes on the weekends. I saw every single type of clique, every type of trend, and every type of hipster. It was like a teen culture museum, walking along this long hallway with small groups of Asian Goths or whatever gaggle of kids were sitting on one of the mall’s couch islands. I walked to the Atom Age embassy, which is Barnes and Nobles, and got bored pretty fast. Free wifi is not as exciting as long as you have 3G. I leave and then walk some more to people watch. And then, I come across the most perplexing mall store I’ve ever seen.
It’s this furniture store. When I passed by it the first time, I didn’t think that it was open, yet alone an actual functioning store. It’s this large mall space, like you could fit a small department store in it. But, instead of any sort of décor, cash registers, or even a single employee, the place was just a bunch of furniture sitting in the center of a large room. I walked inside and sat on a couch and threw my feet up, and watched while people trickled in, looked around a little confused, and came up to me and asked if I worked here. I told them I did not, so they left. At one 15 minute stretch of time, I was the only person in the entire store. I stood up on a table that was for sale and snapped a couple of pictures. A few minutes later, a security guard came in and came up to me and said “Are you here with your parents?”
This kind of puzzled me, and made me laugh a little to think “No, my parents are a thousand miles away.” I said “Haha, no, I wouldn’t say so.” And then, she asked “Are you over 18?” to which I replied “Yes.” She said “OK, I just have to make sure that kids don’t wreck this store.” So, I asked the million dollar question “What is the deal with this place?” and she said “You can buy furniture if you just call the number on that banner over there, so I guess it’s a display area or something. I just come in on my graveyard shift and sit on that very couch that you’re on; I know how comfortable it is.” I say “OK” and she leaves. Some kids come in later and start playing football with a full bottle of Coke. It was anarchy.
I got a call from Peter saying that we were leaving, so they came by the magical furniture paradise and picked me up and we left. We get in the van, and Ryan drives us all over to the venue. We drive up and I hop out. I greet the lady at the door and tell her that we’re the Atom Age and we’re playing later on, and she seems to know what’s going on. But, I ask her what time the show starts and she responds “Oh, you know, when bands show up.” I said “Ok, do you know about when that will be?” to which she replies “Not really, you’re the first band here.” I ask her how many bands are playing, and what the order was. She says “There are 3 other bands, and I was thinking you guys could play last.” For those of you not in bands, playing last fucking sucks because everyone always leaves. I ask her “Uh… well are kid’s going to stick around?” and she says “Hmmm, probably not.” “Well then, is it a good idea for us to be playing last? If no one is going to stay?” “Oh! No, kids will stay.” “Alright… should we load in now? And where will we be loading in?” She directs me to the back of the small club (which is this sort of clubhouse style teen center) and points down this skinny hallway. “You can load in whenever you’d like.”
I go back to the car and report in. This lady clearly has no idea what is going on. Ryan says that on the club’s myspace, there are 7 bands listed to play tonight. I told him that she said that there was only 4. He also said the myspace said the show was going to start soon, and he wondered why there were like 3 kids there. I go back into the club, and play chess against this teenage girl who barely understood the rules (she got really confused when I castled, saying “Um. That’s 2 moves.”), but she was a tactical GENIUS. If she actually knew how to play, she could have been really good. I went easy on her and we ended up in stalemate. I went back to the van a while after, and the band apparently went to Best Buy and came back and were burning CD-Rs with Ryan’s computer. I joined in with my computer, and we watched a little bit of this Joe Strummer documentary that Ryan had.
It was getting late and we were wondering where all the fucking bands were, or why no one had a clue what was going on at all. The lady running the show now says that we’re playing 2nd, which is good news, so we load in. The first band finally decides to show up, and they load in and I notice that this place really doesn’t have a proper PA system at all. The lead singer of the first band was singing his vocals through a Line 6 practice amp. To those not familiar with guitar amps, Line 6 is the McDonald’s of guitar amps. They suck, they’re cheap, and they’re everywhere. People get them because they have a slew of cheesy built-in effects, even though they have no tone. The Atom Age hates them with a passion, and it seems that every night we play with a band that uses one. This band right now is playing some sort of nu-metal/rap-metal, which is just downright awful. We stay inside the van, which kind of makes me feel like an elitist douchebag, but I’m not going inside to watch a rap-metal band.
Brendan leaves the van, and comes back a little bit later and says “The lady says that we’re playing 3rd now, because apparently the band that would be playing third has to leave, so they want to play next.” This shit is getting fucking ridiculous. The lady comes up to the van and asks if it’s alright if we’re OK playing 3rd now. We kind of want to play now, because a few more kids showed up, and it was getting late. She says “Well, the band that wants to play now… their parents are here, and they want to see them play, but they have to get home.” We look out the window and there is a 50 year old couple standing by the door. Great. We’ll play later if we have to, I guess.
Inside the van, we watch as these 2 really gross looking crust-punks bring in an accordion and a fiddle. Typical crust-folk-punk duo. I’m not going in for this band either. We really start questioning the wisdom of the lady who put this show on, and say a few pretty bad things about her, but we’re all kind of tired and tour is starting to wear on us a little bit, being a few days in. But still, she was being a little rude to us and we just wanted to know the deal and to make sure things were set up right, but she was being passive aggressive and never giving us a direct answer, and it was seriously frustrating. The crusties finally finish playing, so we head in and start setting up.
It’s dark outside now, so they turned the lights on in the place. 100% of the lights in the venue are black lights. The club has so many black lights that it’s actually well lit, something I have never encountered before and didn’t know was even possible. We start setting up, and I open my bass case and get the biggest WTF so far in this tour. My bass… is green. The black light of the venue has turned my dark red wine colored bass into a light sea foam green. I now look like I play a Mark Hoppus signature bass. What’s more is that I can now see exactly how much blood I spill on my bass. Right above the strings where I pick my bass, there’s this gross/awesome looking blood spray. Pictures included.
Ryan tackles the shotty PA system, which is not going to hold up at all against how loud we play. He does his best to have it not feedback on us, but it’s difficult. We start to play, and within the first song, about ¾ of the kids leave to go outside. Ryan comments about this at the end of the song, and I tell Brendan that he should go out and terrorize the kids outside during one of the times he has a break on the sax. He does this later on in the set, and he comes back inside with 2 kids chasing him. He apparently stole one of the feathers out of this one girl’s hair (feathers in the hair, it’s a New Mexico thing). We finish up our set and there are a few kids there who liked it and bought a shirt or 2.
As I’m taking pictures of my freak bass, this kid comes up to me and asks “Uh… hey. You guys should stick around for the next set… I’m playing.” This kid is the saddest looking teen I’ve ever seen. I say “Ya, sure, we’ll stick around. Totally.” He says “Alright… You guys like techno?” and inside my head I scream at myself a little bit. “Yah… I’m sure that some of the guys in the band might like techno, sure.” He says OK and leaves. He comes up to the band about 10 minutes later while we’re loading the van and asks the same question. He’s just so awkward.
He starts playing a few minutes later, and it’s just him and a keyboard. He starts playing generic electronic, but instead of being the usual hyped up DJ, he’s super depressed. Between the sets instead of saying stuff like “ALRIGHT LAS CRUCES! ARE YOU READY TO DANCE!?!?!?” he says (and this is verbatim) “Umm… so I was going to dedicate this song to my girlfriend, and tell her that I love her, but she’s not here. I think she left. So… nevermind.” There were 3 or 4 kids dancing, they were sort of doing moon-walking style bullshit, and they would constantly terrorize the kid playing, who always looked like he was about to start crying. We decide to leave, because this is just getting sad, but we haven’t gotten paid yet, and no one wanted to ask the lady for money. So, I volunteered.
I went inside and went up to her and said “Well alright, we’re about to take off. Thanks a lot for having us.” She said “Oh ya! Sure!” and she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a couple of bills. “Is $30 enough for gas?” and I said “Ya, thanks.” $30 was actually a little more than I was expecting, so I was grateful that we got some of the door and that I didn’t have to ask for it. She came outside and said goodbye to the band and talked to us for a little bit.
We talked to this lady for an hour, and we felt like total assholes for saying anything bad about her. This lady was a borderline saint. She had opened this club all by herself, and ran it all by herself. She was a counselor at the high school, and said that there were a lot of kids who were suicidal and homeless and abused and more, and she just wanted to open up this place to give them a safe place to be. She was trying really hard and she promoted all the shows at the local college, but most of the people there come from small towns and aren’t used to going to shows. She was even taking marketing classes to see if she could find a way to better bring people to the club. The show that we played was supposed to be a benefit show for the PA system, because their old one was broken and they just had to make do with the shotty one that they had. She was seriously super nice, and super selfless, and was really trying to give these kids a better life, even though the most likely thing to happen is she is going to pour a bunch of money into this place and it’s going to close down. Ryan later said that there’s a place in heaven for people like her, and I completely agreed.
We also talked to her about whether it was a better idea to stay in a motel in Las Cruces or El Paso. We are kind of worried about El Paso because it’s right across the river from Juarez, Mexico, where there’s pretty much a civil war going on and drug-related violence leads to weekly massacres. She says that El Paso has cheaper motels than Las Cruces, and that it’s actually not dangerous in El Paso at all. Ryan also likes driving at night, so we decide to go that route.
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