Boston is a cool town, I've always had a negative association with it, but last night changed all of that for me. Even though there's too many white people, if you make one wrong turn, the next thing you know is you're thirty miles away from where you need to be and have no idea how you got there or to get back, and "roundabouts" suck ass, it's a very beautiful city and I rarely, if ever, meet someone from Boston who isn't a cool person, in fact I can't think of one yet.
Before leaving NYC though I had to settle a bet that I lossed with Casey. I didn't think two people would get the Avengers cover all tour and two people got it in Philly, so I owed him two bagels. After a short drive, we made it to Boston without a hitch, scoped out the club and parked it to walk around a little bit. The club, The Paradise Lounge, is located next to Boston College, near Harvard and down the street from Fenway Park. We geeked around a little bit, me looking for an internet cafe or a Kinkos, which I have single handedly put a down payment on a house at on this tour, Nova looking for a cafe to sit down and Casey just geeking around. After some extensive walking we found a place on Newbury Street and I plopped down to do some "band business." We met up with Nova's Aunt and Uncle a little later, as well as three friends of Nova's friends, two of them we were staying with that night. We all went for dinner down the street at a "Mexican" place and Nova's Aunt totally paid for everybody's meal. They were super cool and had a lot of good questions, really sweet people.
When we finished our meal we saw people were loading their stuff into the club so we followed suit and said hello to people. All of the bands at this point seemed really cool and friendly and I could tell it would be a real good night, I had a good feeling about it. We chatted outside with Dave from Shanghai Valentine, who put the show on, until the show started.
As it turned out, all of the bands on the bill were amazing and it was the best put together show we had all tour. Dave, was willing to slide us around the bill however it would work out best for us, limited the other bands guest list so we could get more at the door and postponed the start of the show so more people would be there to see us. He was overall an amazing guy.
The first band was called Birth Rites and they describe themselves as Black Metal, Latin, Industrial, I thought they were more punk rock/industrial with keyboards, what the fuck ever they were they were amazing, but my only complaint is that there set was only 15 minutes, we all wanted more. We went on next to a very good crowd and gave it all we had, it wasn't our best performance on tour, but we gave EVERY last ounce we had left in our tired bodies and put on a great show, a very spirited performance if I do say so myself. People seemed to like it and people were enthusiastic about us and wanted us to come back soon. The next band was Dave's band Shanghai Valentine and they fucking killed. They play late 80's/early 90's melodic hardcore/punk and do a bang up job of it, lots of "whaoooooo's"! We highly enjoyed their set and can't wait to play with them again. The last band was having their CD release party, they were called The Red Invasion. Dave called them the Dead Boys of Boston and that's pretty accurate, I would say through in some New York Dolls and you've got it, lots of rock and roll swagger and good tunes, I highly enjoyed their set.
This was a very good last show for our tour and we had an awesome time and are highly in debt to Dave for being the raddest guy in the universe. It was inspiring to talk to him about punk rock, scene/community building, and his ideas for punk rock in the future. He's got a good heart, is really smart and we hope he succeds with his vision and that we can be a part of it. Thanks also to Kelly and Weston for being so cool and letting us crash at their house, they're sweet people.
Tomorrow we part ways with Casey who's flying back to SF to take care of some last moving things before he leaves the bay area. Nova and I have a long haul back with some stops in between and I'll check in one more time. Have a rad day,

Matt