Houston’s scenic moped route, Fleabag, & Cory Branan’s manager

I didn’t have internet access for about 3 week or so and now that I have it back, the internet hasn’t gotten any more interesting than the last time I got on.  Getting on my moped never gets old, though.  On a moped there’s always something to do and something to see, even though I never really have a place to go.

I live on the East Side of downtown and every time I head up to the Heights, I pass that big steel WALD sign.  I don’t know what it is, I think it’s some sort of steel company.  I’ve been seeing it ever since I was a kid.

I also pass this General Electric building that looks like it has been in business for the past 50 years without changing any of its decor.

Fleabag from Oakland, California was marked on my calendar for June 29th at Mango’s.  I’m a big fan of Brad, their drummer who used to live here in Houston.  He’s been in bands like Die, Emperor! Die!, Rosa, Punkin’ Pie, and the Tenspeeds so I was curious to see what this band sounded like.  It was a murky, cloudy day and when I rode out to Mango’s I swore it would rain on me.  I was a few hours early and when I got there I sat with John Sears.  He was eating a salad and drinking a beer.  I asked him if he was here to see Brad’s new band and he informed me that he is the biggest Brad fan around.  We talked about Houston punk houses and Houston punk bands what it’s like to grow up punk in Houston.  He pretty much had nothing good to say about anybody or anything but it was pretty great. No sarcasm, I loved it. He loved it.  It was hilarious.

Fleabag was pretty great, a gritty pop-punk/power-pop band fronted by a female.  Too bad it was a total clusterfuck of a show.  I mean, come on, SIX BANDS on a MONDAY NIGHT? And a few of those bands were on tour, but not on tour with each other.  It was pretty obvious nobody was going to stick around to see SIX BANDS on a MONDAY NIGHT.  Good thing Fleabag played 2nd.

Cory Branan was playing on July 1st at Walter’s but I didn’t plan on going.  If that name sounds familiar but you can’t really figure out how you know it, you might recognize it from the song “Tears Don’t Matter Much” by Lucero.  One of the verses goes something like “Cory Branan’s got an evil streak/and a way with words that will bring you to your knees/he could play the wildest shows/and he can sing so sweet.”  I recently quit my job at the punk rock ice cream shop I had been working at for the past year and a half and didn’t really have much money to spend.  Well I check my email one day and Cory Branan’s manager, Brian Mann, emails me telling me information about the show.  He offered to send me MP3’s and albums and stuff to convince me to go see Cory perform.  I thought it was pretty random for him to email me but he told me it’s because I seem like a “punk rock kind of fellow.”  Well that convinced me enough to go out to the show.  I bought a cheeseburger from the the Broken Spoke Cafe, one of my favorite local restaurants about a mile away from Walter’s that’s also owned by my former assistant principal.  I took it over to Walter’s and walked inside.  Doors hadn’t opened yet and Cory Branan and Jon Snodgrass were doing sound checks inside.  I sat down at the bar and started to eat my burger.  I started to think about how a few years ago I walked into Walter’s before doors opened I was sternly asked to leave, but now I can pretty much walk in there whenever I want and sit at the bar and eat dinner.  The bartender sat down next to me and I asked him how his ice cream was and how his head was healing.  (He got stitches in his head recently and I sent him a 2-quart container of his favorite ice cream, key-lime pie.)  He told me the ice cream didn’t have enough key lime pie in it and his head was alright.

Cory Branan and Jon Snodgrass played great that night.  Instead of playing individual sets, they alternated songs in a single extended set.  Thinks got pretty shambled, though, when Jon lost a piece of his guitar hardware when trying to change a string so he and Cory had to share one guitar and alternate songs.

The headliner of the show was actually Joey Cape.  He was the lead singer of Lagwagon, a big pop-punk band in the 90s that I never listened to.  At the end of the show, he invited Butch from 30FootFall on stage to play guitar and do a sort of duet.

After the show, I was leaving the parking lot and Cory complimented my moped.  I told him that the only reason I went to the show that night was because his manager emailed me and told me to come.  He told me that it was nice to “meet proper” and we said our goodbyes.  I went over to Darcy’s and we tried to watch Tokyo Zombie but we couldn’t get passed the first 15 minutes.  We ended up going to this kid’s warehouse, which turned out to be the old Todo Moto warehouse.

We lit a bag of sanitizer on fire and threw rocks at it while listening to a Geto Boys tape.  We got drunk and then at around 3 in the morning we went to Late Nite Pie to see if they had any left over pizzas in the dumpster or any they were willing to give us.  We parked the car outside near the back and an employee came out and we hung out for a while. He told us to wait a little bit and he went inside to go check on the status of leftover pizzas.  We talked about stars and aurora borealis while we waited.  He came back out and told us that all the pizzas had been delivered or eaten already.  Darcy and I went back to her place.

When I woke up in the morning, I planned on leaving but I had so much fun that I decided to stay for one more day.  She sleeps a little longer than I do so he roommate and I just hung out in the living room for a bit.  Our talking woke Darcy up but she didn’t mind.  We didn’t know what to do all day since we no longer have jobs, but I had a pretty good plan.  I remember Darcy telling me about how she loves Allison Mosshart and the Kills so I told her we were going to Whole Foods.  We go there and walk around and buy some food, but what I really planned on doing was finding Bucky.  Bucky and I have known each other for a while now and he loves to talk and tell stories about all the punk stuff he did or planned on doing, but more importantly he was the driver for one of the Kills’ tours so I wanted him to tell stories about them and Allison Mosshart and Discount.  He wasn’t at Whole Foods so I Darcy and I went to Domy Books to find him.  Luckily, he was there and Darcy and I sat on the floor and ate our food while he told us stories about touring with the Kills.

We finished our food and Bucky finished all his stories so we went back home.  We hung out for a few hours and we decided to go hang out with this kid.  He was hanging out with his friends at the time but he told us we were more than welcome to come by, so we did.  We ended up at this guy’s awesome house; he had a lot of antique or vintage furniture, like old rotary telephones and tube-speakers and antique luggage.  It was amazing.  He also wired all the telephone lines in his house, rebuilt a 1980 diesel Mercedes, is currently building a fountain, and was interested in restoring a vintage scooter.  We get to talking about scooters and mopeds and small diesel powered engines.  This guy was awesome, he was a plant operator for the city of Bellaire.

We ended up going to Catbird’s where we didn’t have any money so we left and went back to the old warehouse.  We sat there for what felt like hours, awkwardly glancing at each other and not saying a word.  It was treacherous, like Sartre’s “No Exit.”

Darcy and I went back to her place and watched the Royal Tenenbaums and she stick ‘n poked herself a tattoo on her left hand.