music for planes (anomie belle tour journal)

the midwest part of the anomie belle tour turned out to be freezing and fun. we all bought new winter clothes but i don't think we were quite prepared; apparently living in seattle isn't much preparation for the wind chill, and for car windows that freeze over on the inside. i'd never been to minnesota, illinois, or iowa before, so was glad to see them, though i was seeing them all from under a big hood.
for the first 2 nights, anthon, toby, and i were hosted by toby's musician friend henry in chicago. lots of drinking in bars and down in the warm basement where we slept, lots of conversations about gear and 3am dinners. we performed at the empty bottle, where we were joined by our bandmate aileen who had traveled separately. aileen's husband dean brought several family members and colleagues so there was a really good vibe in the club of supportively noisy onlookers.
the next day we drove to des moines, arriving very early so we set up camp at a place called java joe's next door to the venue (vaudeville mews). they had a vegetarian menu, internet, beer, and malts... all the things we might need. the vaudeville mews show was an anniversary party and it turned out that everyone in des moines gets ridiculously drunk so we had another rowdy and happy audience. when we started playing a radiohead cover, one of the guys who worked at the club ran to the front of the stage and started singing the lyrics so loudly that i couldn't hear myself saying 'yesterday i woke up sucking a lemon.'
we spent the next 2 days in minneapolis, which wasn't snowing as much but was the coldest of the 3 cities. on the first afternoon we performed live on the air on Radio K - did 4 songs and toby had a brief interview. we then found a motel that we could stay at for 2 nights and took a band nap. we woke up in the evening to get pizza and then go to a comedy club where we enjoyed being the audience for a change. more heavy sleeping. the next day, we split up at the Mall of America and went shopping for boots and tights. aileen and i went on one of the roller coasters inside the mall which actually had us screaming quite a bit. in a few hours we only got through one floor of the mall, then we were off to our last show of the tour at the 400 bar. after sound checking with amazingly powerful monitors (nice) we had a delicious vegetarian meal at an anarchist cafe called Hard Times which i recommend. back at the club, there were 5 bands on the bill, mostly electronic artists with minimal set-ups. we got pretty amped up during the band before our set and aileen, toby, and i danced in the back of the club by the merch table for a good half hour. by the time we went on stage we were in a great mood and despite the quiet sunday night thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
anthon drove us all the way back to chicago after the show (after we stopped for twinkies at a convenience store, which sounded like a good idea at the time). none of us slept much, perhaps out of guilt, because anthon didn't get to go to bed til 8 in the morning. slept like babies at toby's sister's house in chicago before going to the airport for a non-stop flight home. we didn't want to sleep because we'd just slept all morning so i stayed up with my ipod and a notebook, wrote some strange things, changed some lotte song lyrics that i've been working on. danced in my seat. braided lots of little braids into my hair.

i don't keep most of my music collection on my ipod, and many of the songs on my ipod are too mellow for getting amped up on a plane, so to stay happy and awake, i turned to these songs for assistance:

radiohead - reckoner
radiohead - all i need
radiohead - weird fishes
thom yorke - the eraser
thom yorke - black swan
manuok - warship
robert gomez - hunting song
robert gomez - on this day
gorillaz - feel good inc.
sigur ros - glisoli (the dave fridmann mix)
boards of canada - chromakey dreamcoat
death cab for cutie - soul meets body
le loup - outside of this car, the end of the world!
the church - under the milky way tonight
broken social scene - lover's spit (beehives version)

i love my anomie belle bandmates. and none of us caught colds. it was a good tour.