A Weekend With Dark Meat

Sup, yawl. So maybe you were at Fun Fun Fun Fest this weekend, that is rad, good work. I spent the weekend with Dark Meat. It was sweet. They had a FFF aftershow at Mohawk (a $15 ticket for them, Trail of Dead and An Albatross) on Sunday that hardly anyone was at, most likely due to the fact that it was wet and nasty as fuck, and I'm assuming people had had their fill after being at FFF all day. I really wish I could have seen Broadcast, and am a bit grumbley that their Austin stop on the tour was a ticket I could not afford. Its speculated that were I a true fan I would have jumped the fence, but I just wasn't quite there for this show, for whatever reason. For those of you keeping score at home, last time Broadcast came through town was a show at The Parish in Winter of 2003, my freshman year of college and exactly 2 weeks before I knew who they were. By all accounts they played a great but brief set at FFF.

But onto what I actually did do this weekend. So Dark Meat show #1 was at the pedestrian bridge Saturday night. They got all set up but 2 cops who acted disorientingly like security guards instead of actual cops showed up right as they were gonna play the first chord. They seemed on the stupider end of cops and informed us that while there hadn't actually been a complaint, there was a general complaint out about bands playing on the bridge. A confused bit of bartering occurred and they agreed to let the band play for 10 minutes. This was very hilarious for me, mainly because I lived in Athens with one of the Dark Meaters who was about to go into some completely unnecessary legal shit ("what about Letterman vs. ____?") on these cops who wanted to flex their muscle but ultimately be the good guys and let the kids have their fun. The whole scene was a bit of absurdist comedy, with asking "please" being the most effective tool getting the pigs off our proverbial rock and roll backs. So they played and it was great. Someone got me high first (thx duder), and I had been drinking this really rough rum mixed with coke. The whole thing did end up lasting about 10 minutes, but it was really ecstatic, especially once the confetti started raining down from behind me. Total immersion.

So the cops came back and we moved the party to Alexandra and Zach's house. The "make us pancakes!" lobbying effort was unsuccessful, but the party was really fun. Just good vibes and hanging out and they played in the living room for a long long time and it was great. Loud as fuck, but I had some toilet paper stuffed in my ears and was A-OK. I don't know how you other folks do it.

The next day was Sunday and I took it real easy. I had to go back to Alexandra's because I had locked my bike to hers and scored some some free hash browns and breakfast tacos, so all was right in the world. I took the day easy, and then saw them again at Mohawk that night. It was their last show of tour, and a little bit of a bummer that there wasn't a bigger crowd, but it was cool that there was a good contingency from the night before. And honestly, the sound was great. Sonically with a 9 piece of whatever they were,while it was great to see them in such awesome environments, i'll go ahead and give a shout-out where a shout-out is due to the Mohawk, because I was really able to hear some shit with them all PAed that I hadn't gotten the night before.

Afterwards I got some great tour stories, including their "best show ever" according to one member, which involved Hell's Angels in the desert, and a 60 year old burnout saying "Hawkwind is my favorite band. You remind me of Hawkwind," followed by an invitation into his RV (a recording from that show is a bonus track on their first record "Universal Indians". Also I got a 30th birthday story involving loads of folks on loads of substances, some of which were advertised as other substances, and BB guns. The funniest part of that story was it would go on and on and be really incredible and then there would be an acknowledgment of what time of day it was at that point and after all that had happened in the story it would be like 1 PM still and the story would keep going and going.

So yeah, Dark Meat rules. Their new record is real good. Make sure you catch em next time around, cause they may not have much more tours left in em...

here's a bunch of pictures I jacked of Chris Wigington's facebook