Minneapolis with Quasi

I, Mike Lightning, am writing today's blog.

We've just got off a two week break in North Carolina where we got drunk, played ping pong, rode around in our tour manager's pick-up truck and celebrated my birthday. We had a good time but were keen to get back 'on the road'. We left NC early in the morning and rode with all of our stuff to the airport in our truck we arrived in Chicago, picked up the car and took a leisurely drive up to the twin cities. We stopped in this amazing place on the way called the Wisconsin Dells, it was a plastic wonderland with rollercoasters and trees with faces in them. We had a good dinner, Darkus had a salad. After our dinner it got dark and started to rain so we just listened to Ram on repeat, Wesley and I decided it was our favourite record of all time. Ram on forever.

We got to the hotel and watched 'Lady Sings the Blues', a film made in 1972 about Billie Holiday with Diana Ross and Lando Calrissian in it, then went to bed.

In the morning we realised we were down to our last few dolars so went to eat at the 'Hard Times Cafe', which we thought would be cheap. It wasn't and you couldn't buy meat, which sucked. We hung out there for a while before heading off to a radio station in Minneapolis. When we got there they didn't have a bass amp so I was pretty TO'ed, because I love to play the bass, but then we decided that I'd play the piano which I liked, I felt like John Lennon but looked and sounded like Chris Martin.

After this we drove off to the Turf Club to sound check and meet our new tour companions, Quasi. They're the coolest guys and high up on our list of favourite Oregonians. Wesley covered his guitar in purple and silver gafa tape as an homage to Prince and his hometown. The gig went well, not much to write home about.

The low point of the day was eating at White Castle. Wesley decided that he had to go in honour of his favourite film Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. It was horrible and Louis and I got pretty grumpy, especially when Wesley insisted on sticking around to answer a questionaire and claim two free cheeseburgers. Hoppie toook us to get some fruit afterwards then we calmed down.

Good first day overall I think.