(Note: Local rapper Amsterdam and his crew, The Garden, are on a short tour through California, Arizona and Idaho, and the guy knows how to tell a tale. So Frequency asked him to spend a few minutes each day writing down stories from the road and his observations about life on tour. Below is the second installment, and the first is here. More to come in the next few days.)
Friday, June 26, 11 a.m.
Morning, folks. When we left off last, myself and the rest of the Garden crew had just finished up a great afternoon touring Universal Studios and were headed to our show in L.A. at The Londoner. While we had a few sound issues at the show — namely that the venue didn’t have a mixer, not necessarily a minor issue — the concert was cool and everyone had a lot of fun.
We got up early the next day and started driving to Tucson. I was excited to see the University of Arizona campus but a little skeptical of my ability to handle the heat. It was 107 degrees when we first arrived to the state and it never let up. It’s actually pretty bearable since it’s dry heat and not at all humid, but it was certainly a little draining until we got used to it. We got into Tucson around 7 p.m. and found an incredibly delicious and inexpensive Mexican restaurant called The Taco Shop. Lets just say the $2 tacos were substantially more impressive than the name of the restaurant.
The promoter had booked us a room at the Hotel Congress, so we stopped by for a moment to check in and drop off bags. The venue we were playing was called Vaudeville and it was only a few blocks from our hotel. As we arrived to the bar, everyone started with their individual pre-game warm-up operations: Hit n Runn begins setting up his equipment, Espi and I order a round of drinks, Middle chain smokes outside and JG converses on the phone with his awesome girlfriend. Who says stereotypes aren’t healthy?
As people started showing up, we noticed a recurring theme. Tucson’s hipster movement is in full swing. It wasn’t long before The Garden practically became lost in a sea of skinny jeans and smedium T-shirts. Luckily, there were plenty of cute girls plus a pretty smoking hot opening act. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Diana Gen.
The opening act, miss Diana Gen
That’s right, she brought backup dancers. While she’s certainly attractive and isn’t lacking in the charisma department, it was her first show and her inexperience shined through. She’ll be pretty dope in the future though. She even brought Mr. Skinny Jeans himself on stage for a duet of sorts. It was all pretty confusing, but any girl that changes outfits three times in a 20-minute set is cool with me.
The enemy himself, Mr. Skinny Jeans
DJ Hit n Runn got up next and started spinning. This is always one of my favorite parts of the night as it gives me a time to get my head right before the performance. Jeff has an absolute knack for picking the right song to fit the moment, and tonight was no different. Beautiful, exotic women and men dressed in what could possibly be these beautiful women’s jeans mingled and danced for about 20 minutes and then Wright Family went on stage.
DJ Hit n Runn had the people moving.
I honestly can’t give a fair evaluation of Wright Family’s set as I was somewhat busy chopping it up with one of the backup dancers. They always set it off though. Normally, I wouldn’t give a girl wearing purple and yellow the time of day as Laker colors just don’t really do it for me. I did think it was cool that she was dressed like one of the Fly Girls from “In Living Color,” but her dancing was just not cutting it. JG could out-dance her any day of the week.
Top Shelf says: stay away from girls wearing Laker colors.
Wright Family wrapped up their set and it was time for Top Shelf to go on. You know how we do, killing it as usual. Ahem. That is, until it came time to introduce our song “Big Tipper.” I always try and make a point to encourage the crowd to tip the bartenders well while we’re on the mic. Shouting them out before our track usually results in some good smiles and stronger drinks from behind the bar.
Unless you completely botch their names.
Right after stating that everyone should be big-tipping “Alex and Sarah,” I was informed that the shorter, gorgeous bartender’s name was not “Sarah” but actually “Zaira.” I guess that it’d been a little loud when I asked her name but I didn’t have much of an excuse. It might have been a more embarrassing situation if I didn’t tend to handle awkward so well. Needless to say, I paid for drinks the rest of the night.
Beware: This beautiful creature's name is NOT Sarah.
The end of the night was a blur of good music, questionable company and bad food. Hit n Runn spun records for the duration of the evening while Top Shelf engaged in warfare with a pack of overly flirtatious yet sexually ambiguous vixens. They flirted with Middle. They flirted with me. They tried flirting with Hit n Runn even though he was too focused to notice.
One troublemaker in particular, a girl named “Megan,” was doing her best to work the room. She convinced The Garden to come eat at the after-hours grill across the street after promises of the best biscuits and gravy in Tucson.
However, she inexplicably refused to speak to us once we actually stepped into the restaurant, which made for a fairly awkward dynamic at the table. It wasn’t clear why this happened, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with one or several of the girls that were clearly interested in her and making attempts to mark their territory. When they weren’t shooting your boy a dirty look here and there, they were being more suggestive with “Megan” than I could ever be on my best day. Espi says the biscuits and gravy were actually pretty decent though. Regardless, our battle with the sexually ambiguous vixens ended in a blowout loss for The Garden.
Bonus points for drinking PBR
We stayed an extra day in Tucson and walked around the U of A campus handing out fliers and giving away CDs to a few choice students. It was a day to relax and catch up on sleep. Pretty uneventful overall. On Thursday, we all found a mall and saw “The Hangover.” I thought it was about as good as people have made it out to be. We drove to Tempe (as we had a show that night) and found a bar to watch the NBA Draft, one of my favorite annual events. While it was a pretty quiet draft, it was down the street at an Arizona State University campus bar called Barney’s where we accidentally stumbled into an incredible idea. I’m not going to say anything else about it until Part Three so stay tuned for more. I’ll also be covering the Tempe and L.A. shows in the next installment. (I have to catch up a little due to a lack of solid writing opportunities). Hope everyone in Bend is having as much fun as I am, I’ll see everyone soon.
RT @frequencyblog Amsterdam’s Tour Blog, Part Two http://bit.ly/zHBHa
Dude, Ben, good idea….I’m hooked on the Amsterdam blog- can’t wait for the next installment.