The City Veins

Most saturday afternoons the band gets together to practice, discuss band matters, or play with arts and crafts.  We are basically a glorified kindergarten class, though we don’t require as much supervision or take as many naps.  The enduring quote from the past weekend went something like this:

I am way too sober to be working with a knife–Charles

We had just bought nearly $100 worth of paint to get all Jackson Pollock, making posters to promote future shows that we have yet to book.  Charles job was to cut out a stecil of me playing the bass to be spray-painted on to the top section of each poster.  Though I have no first-hand knowledge of how difficult this is, it certainly looked like an arduous process.  And, like all activities that require precission and a steady hand, Charles required alcohol in order to function properly.  Now I’ve never seen Charles get the shakes, but I’ve also never seen Charles without a beer so late in the day.  So we got Charles his “blanky”, and he continued to do the lords work.

Arts and crafts began as an activity intended to avoid the processes that every band seems to take as a natural matter of fact:  promo pictures.  We wanted to avoid poses, frolicking in a field while a photographer catches us in the act, or having our silhouttes turned into a poster.  We’ve all made these mistakes before.  So instead we paint random shit, throwing paint around with our hands or any household item we find in our shed that we no longer care about.  Not one of us is a trained visual artist, but for that fact we seem to come up with some pretty decent stuff.  Spencer will literally try anything to put paint on a poster.  Charles poured some paint, swung the poster up and down to get a streaking effect, and flipped green paint all over his face.  It was awesome.  It was the band version of Porky’s Bikini Carwash.  If Charles had just knotted off his shirt to show his mid-drift….

Now Spencer is painting-insane.  Maybe it triggered some serene memory from his childhood–Spencer’s Rosebud–or maybe he just really likes the smell of acrylic, but Spencer now wants us to paint everything.  So now we’re thinking of different things we can paint.  Look out for limited edition EP’s, painted by the band.  I think it’s a neat idea, really for the super-fan.  Our parents–who I imagine are the only people who will buy both versions–can put the painted EP’s on the fridge next to my 2nd grade self portrait in which I mis-spelled my own name.  Though we might be getting older, we certainly remain young at heart.  Except Charles didn’t drink in second grade.  Well, maybe.