the galaxy hut. friday. november 22, 2024. 11pm.

well all good things must end right (except steve miller songs.. which just seem to faaaade out giving me the impression that the original arrangement calls for them to go on forever) anyway, this was the last show of our torr and it was really bittersweet, well actually it was sweet first and bitter second... or maybe it was salty at some point... but anyway, we all shaved for the first time on the torr and then spent the afternoon messing around in dc again with our boy lenny h finally getting a little bit of game time. we were walking by this restaurant when this girl bursts out and says "travis!" not because her friend travis is like congressional whip or something and stopping by, but because she was our travis's sister's roommate in college... in boston... how crazy!

we arrived at the galaxy hut... and brace yourself... this band was so early for a show that the bar wasn't even open yet! we had dinner with my friends tammy and bruce, who is in the band zero beat with a guy who was in a journey cover band with the bass player from the dismemberment plan! (bruce is practically a star...) the galaxy hut finally did open up and we spent waaay to long coming up with a set list which gabe then tatoo-ed on robert's arm in pictogram form. we played with the band heros severum from athens ga. the three piece (two guitar and drums) band was so great, and i know if you read all of these torr history pages you'll realize that i'm saying nice stuff about all the bands we played with... but as i'm thinking about it i'm realizing that we were fortunate enough to play with fucking spectacular bands at most every show. heros was not only no exception to this rule, they might have been the best band we played with (well... top three). if your into burning airlines and the dismemberment plan you should definitely check them out. their latest record was actually recorded in their home studio with j robbins (imagine us wetting our pants) and sounds great.

we pulled out all the stops for our last show and also pulled out all the toy pianos and all of the mechanisms engineered into amps and drums that keep them from being loud as fuck. we woke up the woman who lives above the galaxy hut, but she came down and hung out which was cool, she also fell in love with our rocktopotimus and tried to steal him, which was not. a brief word about the galaxy hut if we may: simply the best philosophy of any venue we've ever seen. it's been run by a musician named alice for quite a while now and all the shows are absolutely free! all sorts of people just wander in (and we were playing there on a sunday, mind you) just to check out, in this case, two bands from out of town. the crowd was really there for the music and alice runs the bar and the show at the same time with her mixer which is in a cabinet under the bar. i'm sure the finances of running a place like that are tight and we are both amazed and thankful that something as cool as that is happening. arielle and tammy both brought a lot of friends to see us which was simply wonderful and we are also indebted to ariel for the banana bread, the bed, the temporary tattoos of rosy the riveter. also, thanks to robert (a different one) who and tammy (the same one) for taking the photos you see.

well, you say to yourself, that all sounds pretty sweet... what's bitter about that? we are sad to say that when we drove back to dc after the show we were so hell bent on doing a few touristy things (i.e. grabbing greasy "giant slice" of pizza), and neckface had been so strong during our trip that we were lulled into a false sense of security... we just rushed off to the pizza place leaving all of our stuff in the car... if you know anything about this band and our luck, you know that things were going far too well for us for far too long, and perhaps when travis and robert both broke their low e strings during our show at galaxy hut we should have taken it as an omen... but alas, when we went to the car to begin the ride home monday morning, we found neckface's side window smashed in. robert's guitar and bass and both of travis's guitars stolen. travis also lost his cd player, the cd's he had brought, and both guys lost backpacks (robert's contained his harry potter book...) we drove home with trash bags taped to the window listening to the radio and discussing the various horrible physical torture we would subject the thief to if we were ever catch them... but along with the sorrow associated with such a loss, and the ironic smiles and headshaking, i could feel the band getting stronger. looking back on it, we did something amazing together. a vacation packed inside an adventure powered only by what we care about most: rock and roll. so fuck the people who rob us, and fuck the luck that foils us, everybody better watch out! me and three of my best friends ever are going to rock again (and again) and we're not going to stop.

SETLIST:

the sun is falling
broken typewriter
smile like asterix
k.o. star
milestone
i!d!m!
perfect radio faces
keep your hands away
the rocktopotamus theme
don't drive away