im in switzerland. i awaken to an overcast sky at 2pm… it is difficult getting up today– i feel abysmal, probably because i woke up on my period, which is two or three weeks early. my periods are usually regular, so i conclude my body is deeply confused by the travel.
i have an excuse to explore the city in search of “feminine hygiene products”, which takes multiple tries to obtain. i notice how well-curated, clean, and utopian the urban design is– which simultaneously feels robotic and dystopian since nothing feels lived in, at least in comparison to los angeles.
the restaurant next door has a deal with the venue to feed us all day for free; we simply tell them we are playing, ask for something and they serve it to us. it is nice– we sit down for a coffee and breakfast while we watch the city plumbers in industrial orange garb completely deconstruct a fire hydrant right before our eyes. like youtube and eat.
there are little postcards of us in here and also all around town for our show tonight, which contributes to the uncanny reality i find myself in, a sort of quiet spotlight, soft celebrity treatment. an unfamiliar town that is difficult to interact with but our faces are everywhere. i pocket a few postcards to take home since the design feels tastefully swiss. keyan remarks that the physical advertising for this show is what all promoters should be doing, but promoters rarely do that sort of thing anymore, and oftentimes fail to even use photoshop correctly.
weird amp setup for keyan today because, to our surprise, it’s a €20,000 fine if we go over the 96db limit or something like that. we were not told prior which is quite inconvenient for us (notoriously loud band).
my body is sore from lifting all these amps everyday.
the venue is stunning– there are high ceilings and stone masonry walls. to the right of the stage, there is a large floor to ceiling window with a view of the train tracks. i take several pictures and send them to my friends.
keyan and i have been bickering a lot at the shows, though we tend to really enjoy the mornings together. dillon and i have been getting along well in general. i presume keyan and i get into it more at headline shows (as opposed to festivals) because there is more time to (hence, more tinkering, more control). we typically argue about guitars and vocals. we also have to lift a lot of amps together so i assume that contributes to our irritability.
we finish loading in, and i decide to try closing the trailer for once (a difficult to decipher contraption for me), which i immediately regret. i give myself a gaping bloody wound in my bass playing pointer finger. it HURTS!
soundcheck…. and by the end of it things go from okay to kind of bad to really serious and the entire venue is up in flames because we are over the db limit (the swiss are serious about db limits). it begins with keyan repeatedly turning his amps lower and lower, to the point in which he can talk over their volume, and the venue tells him it is still over the limit. lauren suggests we call max about it. the boys go outside and i tell them i’ll meet them, but i hastily turn to brendan for insight about keyan’s guitar tones and the ability for his sound to be reached without amp volume (we frequently argue about this so i am seeking affirmation). he is gentle and down to earth about it with me– he mentions that he knows plenty of guitarists who get there without being incredibly loud, though i conclude it takes extra equipment and time to get there, which we don’t have. regardless, i find myself to be profoundly upset with keyan, for he is threatening to cancel the show since the level he is allowed to play at leaves him with a completely clean amp sound.
i approach keyan and dillon outside, and come in hot (which is definitely not the best way to go about things). i tell keyan that he’s “fucking everything up for everyone by refusing to turn down” and that he should “compromise his sound because he is being selfish.” i personally do not care if the show sounds inaccurate, because there are kids who want to see us and frankly won’t care if the guitars sound like shit, we have never played here before, and no one will get paid if we don’t play. because of my talk with brendan, i feel the urge to be very stern with him. soon, everyone in the venue becomes aware of our argument, and are kind of silently observing, which i am acutely aware of but cannot control– it feels terrible. there is a heavy negativity sweeping the air. keyan and i are running around yelling at each other. it’s bad.
lauren reemerges and calmly tells us that the venue has decided they will cover the €20,000 fine if we go over the db limit and the cops show up but we have to at least try.
i guess being dramatic pays off.
keyan and i talk outside. the amps he was given are old and not what he requested. what this means is that they have no master volume knobs on them, thus, you can’t distort the tubes without playing loud enough to naturally saturate them. he explains that him and brendan tried everything: chaining channels with jumper cables, running the amps on “1”, purposely mismatching impedance to reduce output volume; they ended up landing on a combination of all of these things. i conclude that if keyan had an attenuator or a preamp pedal things would have been different, but he doesn’t, therefore there is no real solution (except sounding dead clean and brittle). i wanted to play regardless, but i understand where he is coming from, and could have been less reactive.
argument is resolved and we apologize to each other, but we are so drained, and i am embarrassed.
everyone else is kind to us and doesn’t acknowledge anything that happened. it doesn’t seem like they mind.
we have another family dinner at the restaurant with robber robber and our team. we receive menus with both of our band names on it and a three-course meal with a few options for each one on it. it is so cute, and is something i would typically be ecstatic over, but i am in such low spirits. i take a picture anyway because that is something i would do. i have salad and baked vegetables on wild rice with pesto and caramelized pumpkin seeds. it looks better than it tastes, but it still tastes good. dillon and keyan have the lamb.
we knew it would, and it did– the show sounds thin because of how quiet we had to play, and everyone gives a lackluster performance because of the pre-show shenanigans. i play with a bandaid on my fretting finger the whole night because of my bloody gash, and it surprisingly sounds fine.
it is always the shows where we perform poorly that someone posts a video of us on tik tok that ends up getting attention.