30 April. Mr. Small's Funhouse, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia
Day off. Hurrah. After a relaxing day of rest, emails, a shower and general catching up on stuff, I wanted to go out to get something to eat. There had been some emails going around mid afternoon suggesting going out for a meal, but these seemed to stop around 5 pm. I assumed either my email was not working or people had gone off separately and I was not invited. So I leave my room around 7.30pm to wander off all by my lonesome..., and then I bump into Nick in the lift. Turns out he is going to get something to eat on his own. So we wander out together. Great. We find a cafe that looks nice and take a look inside. Hey - there is Harv and Adrian. We ask if they want to eat and Harv does so comes along with us. We find a cool bar that does pizzas and light bites and go in and sit by the window and order. Five minutes later there are 3 more of the guys and some friends standing outside the window on their way to dinner. Adam leaves them and joins our growing party. So it is quite a gathering now. We are sitting at our table by the window and ten minutes later, there is Steven outside wandering down the street on his own. We wave him in pleased to see him. "Hey guys, no one invited me out to dinner! " he says. So I explain that no one asked anyone, and by chance we all met up and he joins us and a good time was had by all.
The next day the van picked us up to take us to the venue, Mr Small's Fun House which is a converted church. On the way to the venue we saw another converted church, that one converted to a brewery. I have not seen that before. Drink of the devil indeed...
There was some free time before the soundcheck so a few of us went to an amazing nearby record store called Attic Records. Wow. It was huge and had thousands of vinyl albums, and some really obscure CDs and records and multiple copies of rare records. The helpful proprietor explained there was even more stock in a separate building. I don't think I can ever remember seeing more vinyl in a record store. I was particularly interested in seeing some rare jazz flute albums, but didn't buy anything as I would have to carry it round South America and my baggage weight allowance is already up to the max.
The gig itself was good. We dropped 'No part of me' and brought back 'Sectarian' which worked well. Sectarian is played mainly behind the gauze and amusingly Steven larked about a bit during it. I think it is great that even though he has so much on his shoulders with the concerts and the organisation of the tour and he is so focused and acutely aware of everything going on onstage, he can still relax and have a bit of a laugh during the gig.
At the beginning of the encore we tried an alternative version of 'Luminol' inspired by the band The Shaggs. I am not sure how that went down, but it was fun to do and unusual...Then we played 'Remainder the black dog' and 'No Twilight'. Again I went out to the merchandise table after the gig for photos and to sign autographs as did some of the others.
We left for Cleveland after the gig, and at 4 am I got up to go to the bathroom on the bus, and I bumped into Marco, who said the three magic words 'Rooms are ready'. We had actually reached the hotel in Cleveland by 4 am and could check in to our rooms already. Splendid.
Theo Travis