Well, the music was worth it...
For the most part, I don't usually put a value on my experiences compared with the hassle of experiencing them.
For this trip, I can't help but feel a little bit like it possibly might not have been worth it.
DX and I had planned a trip to Chicago to see Cake. They were playing at the Guinness Oyster Festival, and I figured that it would be an event similar to some of the little events that they have here in Detroit, decent sized, lots of stuff to do and see. So I bought tickets about a month and 1/2 in advance, through tickets.com. That all went fine, the start time on the tickets was 4:00pm. Not entirely certain when they would be going on, and wanting to kind of make a day of the trip, see Chicago and all that, I booked a room, and prepaid for it, at the Chicago Niles Thriftlodge via Orbitz.
Now, I need to preface this by saying that I *Love* Cake. I've never heard anything like them, and they're just clever as all hell, and completely uncatogorizable. :) I've loved them since DX introduced me to them in '97. I'm not a drooling fangirl that knows everything about the members of the band, I really only know anything about John McCrea, the front man, and all I know about him is his name, what he looks like, and the fact that they started out in Sacramento. I've been wanting to see them play for years and years and years, and the anticipation after I got the main parts of this trip settled was amazing. :) I was *geeked*. I had a sampler CD from 1994 that DX and I had found at a thrift store in Salt Lake City from before Cake put out thier first album - I'd always loved having it, and thought it would be veryvery nifty to get it signed and maybe meet the band. It's a very cool little item, the kind of thing that bands don't usually see around, and I thought they'd be very impressed by it. I kinda wanted to see thier jaws drop when they saw that someone actually had a copy of it, heh.
We set out, after getting DX's younger sister and her boyfriend to stay with the kids on Saturday and part of Sunday, figuring that we'd be back Sunday evening. The trip there was great, good music, good conversation, we were in very high spirits. We hit Chicago, and 94 was backed up horribly. The crappiest traffic we had ever seen for a Saturday afternoon.
Finally, at 2:30 according to the clock on the dashboard, we get to the motel. It looked a little like a hole in the wall, low budget, but all we needed was a clean place to sleep, nothing fancy. The lobby smelled faintly of urine...and when we got to the room, we discovered that the smell was 100 times worse. It was completely unacceptable. We couldn't stay there, but didn't really have time to haggle around with the desk clerk about our room, and didn't think that any of the other rooms would be any better. So, we decided just to get the hell out of Dodge, go to our show, and drive back home. Told the desk clerk that some friends of ours had asked us to stay with them, and checked right back out. Desk Clerk said that he couldn't refund my money, since I had booked it thru Orbitz, thad I'd have to call them and see about a refund. He was pretty skeezy and creepy looking, so I figured I'd just deal with Orbitz when I got home. Total time spent on the hotel was about 1/2 an hour. We were thinking we were cutting things a little closely time wise, since we still had to get to the Oyster Festival, and we only had an hour to get back downtown, a trip that should have taken us 15 minutes, and park and get in and all that. Because of stupid traffic on 94, it took us an HOUR and 15. Sitting in the passenger seat, going 10 miles an hour, watching the dashboard clock tick closer and closer to 4pm, I was feeling crappy. I didn't WANT to have to rush off after seeing the show. I didn't WANT to have to drive until late at night to get home, and dammitall, I had made SURE that we wouldn't have had to - paid for it in advance, even! I wanted to wander around Downtown Chicago, eat Chicago style pizza, be leisurely about this trip! And now, NOW, it's looking likely that we'll miss the beginning of the show, since the tickets said 4:00pm, and it was 3:48, and we're not even off the fucking expressway. I about cried. I was starting to tear up, DX was in a horrible mood because of the room and the traffic and the assholes on the road (they were really awful) and it looked like this trip was just sucking, when....we pass a sign that gives the date, time and tempature, and it says (and the angels sing!) 2:48. I had COMPLETELY forgotten that we had changed time zones, and we had a whole extra hour to get there!! YAY!! I was very happy, so relieved, DX calmed down a bit, since the time restraints had just loosened, and the stressy air in the car just evaporated. :) We had time! Time to get there! Time to park! Time to figure out what the hell we were doing!! Hoooray!
So, finally get down there, get a helluva parking spot, and it's only 3:20. Poking around the outside of the site shows that it's... tiny. A couple of booths, some beer tents, and, to my endless amusement, signs all over the place that say "Due to health regulations, oysters will not be served at this years event". Hee! I was happy that we didn't come for the oysters, lol!! We had 40 minutes till they start letting people in, we already have our tickets, so we wander over to a Borders bookstore and get some coffee. Once finally in the event area, my first stop is at the Guinness tent, where I was thier first customer, and plunk down 4 bucks for a cup of Guinness. There's fliers on the counter that have the information on the bands that are playing...Cake doesn't go on till 9!! SHIT! There's no readmittance to the "festival", so DX and I are stuck there unless we want to pay another 10 bucks to get in. grrrr. So, we figure we'll just eat and browse the booths and sit around and listen to the 3 other bands that were playing. I was very cute in my Vote For Pedro t-shirt, inspired by Napolean Dynamite and pigtails. The people around were very nice, I got many questions about my shirt, and plugged the movie every time, heh. But we were *bored*. The first two bands were just local boys, they were kind of sucky. We ate, and sat around playing "What's *that* person's name?" giggling at ourselves, watching the crowd and trying to guess what thier names were.
3 hours of this, and we gravitated to the stage area. We were pleasantly surprised when it looked like the band before Cake, Powder, looked like they were going to be pretty good. Oh boy, were we surprised. They had the best stage show that we had ever seen, and that was a big deal coming from DX, who has been to about a zillion concerts. They totally looked like they were having an amazing time, and there were choreographed pole dance and jumprope routines. It was very cool. DX and I agreed that we would have come out just to see them.
As they were breaking down the stage, we went over to the barrier that they had put up seperate the "backstage" area. Saw a guy that looked like he could be John McCrea talking to someone, but wasn't sure if it was really him, so we didn't try to flag him down. Finally, a guy in a blue shirt who was talking to a security guard noticed us standing there with the CD and came over and asked if we would like that signed, he could take it around. I of course said yeah, and pointed out that it was a rarity, and he seemed a little surprised when he realized what it was. So, we sat there waiting for him to get back with it, and hoping that maybe they'd think it was cool enough to warrant a meet and greet, heh. He finally came back with it, but alas, no invitaton backstage. *grin* I was completely geeked by it. :) Still am, really. Bounced over to the stage area, and jostled into a decent position, maybe 15 feet from the stage. Wish we could have gotten closer, but people had pressed closer during Powder's show, and there was no way. Being short, my view was kinda sucky at times, but poor DX got the brunt of the abuse. He's tall, so all the smoke around us went straight at him, and I was really surprised when I smelled someone spark up a joint. He was irritated by this, since he's a non smoker, and there was not only cigarette and weed smoke, but there was some cigar smoking going on.
Cakes show was *awesome*. :) They were exactly like I thought they'd be, polite and pleasant, kind of low key. :) They played a lot of stuff from thier new CD, coming out on October 5th (that I have preordered, heh), and I was surprised when they left without playing "The Distance", one of thier most popular songs. When they came back for the encore, they played 3, one not on any cd, my favorite "Stick Shifts and Saftey Belts", and left us with "The Distance", heh. Such teases, *grin*.
Traffic out of Chicago was, again, shitty, DX was cranky and headachey from the smoke and the idiots on the road, and we were both tired. We made it, though, I did a little driving to let DX get a bit of sleep, and got home about 4am.
Called Orbitz this afternoon when I got up, and they told me that they'd only be able to refund my money to me if the management of the motel was willing to refund it to me. Needless to say, creepy skeezy guy told them he wouldn't, and there was no complaints about any of the rooms. What an asshole. I'd like to call him and press the issue, because, really, we didn't even STAY there, but I'm just letting it go, because it would just piss me off, and likely not come to anything. DX had issues with his sister completely not respecting his house and his groceries (they ate ALL the kids cereal, and drank almost a whole gallon of milk, smoked in his house, and some other annoyances) and he's crabby and tired today, so that's not making today's contact very fun.
I love what I got out of the trip, the 2 bands that were reallyreally good, but there was really a lot of negativity abounding, lots of stress and hassle and bad feelings. I'd love to say that it was all worth it, but when I went to Cake's site today to see if I could find an e-mail address for the band to thank them, I saw that they're coming to the Royal Oak Music Theater in October. Which is much MUCH closer to me than fucking Chicago. I'm kicking myself for being over prepared. :S
For this trip, I can't help but feel a little bit like it possibly might not have been worth it.
DX and I had planned a trip to Chicago to see Cake. They were playing at the Guinness Oyster Festival, and I figured that it would be an event similar to some of the little events that they have here in Detroit, decent sized, lots of stuff to do and see. So I bought tickets about a month and 1/2 in advance, through tickets.com. That all went fine, the start time on the tickets was 4:00pm. Not entirely certain when they would be going on, and wanting to kind of make a day of the trip, see Chicago and all that, I booked a room, and prepaid for it, at the Chicago Niles Thriftlodge via Orbitz.
Now, I need to preface this by saying that I *Love* Cake. I've never heard anything like them, and they're just clever as all hell, and completely uncatogorizable. :) I've loved them since DX introduced me to them in '97. I'm not a drooling fangirl that knows everything about the members of the band, I really only know anything about John McCrea, the front man, and all I know about him is his name, what he looks like, and the fact that they started out in Sacramento. I've been wanting to see them play for years and years and years, and the anticipation after I got the main parts of this trip settled was amazing. :) I was *geeked*. I had a sampler CD from 1994 that DX and I had found at a thrift store in Salt Lake City from before Cake put out thier first album - I'd always loved having it, and thought it would be veryvery nifty to get it signed and maybe meet the band. It's a very cool little item, the kind of thing that bands don't usually see around, and I thought they'd be very impressed by it. I kinda wanted to see thier jaws drop when they saw that someone actually had a copy of it, heh.
We set out, after getting DX's younger sister and her boyfriend to stay with the kids on Saturday and part of Sunday, figuring that we'd be back Sunday evening. The trip there was great, good music, good conversation, we were in very high spirits. We hit Chicago, and 94 was backed up horribly. The crappiest traffic we had ever seen for a Saturday afternoon.
Finally, at 2:30 according to the clock on the dashboard, we get to the motel. It looked a little like a hole in the wall, low budget, but all we needed was a clean place to sleep, nothing fancy. The lobby smelled faintly of urine...and when we got to the room, we discovered that the smell was 100 times worse. It was completely unacceptable. We couldn't stay there, but didn't really have time to haggle around with the desk clerk about our room, and didn't think that any of the other rooms would be any better. So, we decided just to get the hell out of Dodge, go to our show, and drive back home. Told the desk clerk that some friends of ours had asked us to stay with them, and checked right back out. Desk Clerk said that he couldn't refund my money, since I had booked it thru Orbitz, thad I'd have to call them and see about a refund. He was pretty skeezy and creepy looking, so I figured I'd just deal with Orbitz when I got home. Total time spent on the hotel was about 1/2 an hour. We were thinking we were cutting things a little closely time wise, since we still had to get to the Oyster Festival, and we only had an hour to get back downtown, a trip that should have taken us 15 minutes, and park and get in and all that. Because of stupid traffic on 94, it took us an HOUR and 15. Sitting in the passenger seat, going 10 miles an hour, watching the dashboard clock tick closer and closer to 4pm, I was feeling crappy. I didn't WANT to have to rush off after seeing the show. I didn't WANT to have to drive until late at night to get home, and dammitall, I had made SURE that we wouldn't have had to - paid for it in advance, even! I wanted to wander around Downtown Chicago, eat Chicago style pizza, be leisurely about this trip! And now, NOW, it's looking likely that we'll miss the beginning of the show, since the tickets said 4:00pm, and it was 3:48, and we're not even off the fucking expressway. I about cried. I was starting to tear up, DX was in a horrible mood because of the room and the traffic and the assholes on the road (they were really awful) and it looked like this trip was just sucking, when....we pass a sign that gives the date, time and tempature, and it says (and the angels sing!) 2:48. I had COMPLETELY forgotten that we had changed time zones, and we had a whole extra hour to get there!! YAY!! I was very happy, so relieved, DX calmed down a bit, since the time restraints had just loosened, and the stressy air in the car just evaporated. :) We had time! Time to get there! Time to park! Time to figure out what the hell we were doing!! Hoooray!
So, finally get down there, get a helluva parking spot, and it's only 3:20. Poking around the outside of the site shows that it's... tiny. A couple of booths, some beer tents, and, to my endless amusement, signs all over the place that say "Due to health regulations, oysters will not be served at this years event". Hee! I was happy that we didn't come for the oysters, lol!! We had 40 minutes till they start letting people in, we already have our tickets, so we wander over to a Borders bookstore and get some coffee. Once finally in the event area, my first stop is at the Guinness tent, where I was thier first customer, and plunk down 4 bucks for a cup of Guinness. There's fliers on the counter that have the information on the bands that are playing...Cake doesn't go on till 9!! SHIT! There's no readmittance to the "festival", so DX and I are stuck there unless we want to pay another 10 bucks to get in. grrrr. So, we figure we'll just eat and browse the booths and sit around and listen to the 3 other bands that were playing. I was very cute in my Vote For Pedro t-shirt, inspired by Napolean Dynamite and pigtails. The people around were very nice, I got many questions about my shirt, and plugged the movie every time, heh. But we were *bored*. The first two bands were just local boys, they were kind of sucky. We ate, and sat around playing "What's *that* person's name?" giggling at ourselves, watching the crowd and trying to guess what thier names were.
3 hours of this, and we gravitated to the stage area. We were pleasantly surprised when it looked like the band before Cake, Powder, looked like they were going to be pretty good. Oh boy, were we surprised. They had the best stage show that we had ever seen, and that was a big deal coming from DX, who has been to about a zillion concerts. They totally looked like they were having an amazing time, and there were choreographed pole dance and jumprope routines. It was very cool. DX and I agreed that we would have come out just to see them.
As they were breaking down the stage, we went over to the barrier that they had put up seperate the "backstage" area. Saw a guy that looked like he could be John McCrea talking to someone, but wasn't sure if it was really him, so we didn't try to flag him down. Finally, a guy in a blue shirt who was talking to a security guard noticed us standing there with the CD and came over and asked if we would like that signed, he could take it around. I of course said yeah, and pointed out that it was a rarity, and he seemed a little surprised when he realized what it was. So, we sat there waiting for him to get back with it, and hoping that maybe they'd think it was cool enough to warrant a meet and greet, heh. He finally came back with it, but alas, no invitaton backstage. *grin* I was completely geeked by it. :) Still am, really. Bounced over to the stage area, and jostled into a decent position, maybe 15 feet from the stage. Wish we could have gotten closer, but people had pressed closer during Powder's show, and there was no way. Being short, my view was kinda sucky at times, but poor DX got the brunt of the abuse. He's tall, so all the smoke around us went straight at him, and I was really surprised when I smelled someone spark up a joint. He was irritated by this, since he's a non smoker, and there was not only cigarette and weed smoke, but there was some cigar smoking going on.
Cakes show was *awesome*. :) They were exactly like I thought they'd be, polite and pleasant, kind of low key. :) They played a lot of stuff from thier new CD, coming out on October 5th (that I have preordered, heh), and I was surprised when they left without playing "The Distance", one of thier most popular songs. When they came back for the encore, they played 3, one not on any cd, my favorite "Stick Shifts and Saftey Belts", and left us with "The Distance", heh. Such teases, *grin*.
Traffic out of Chicago was, again, shitty, DX was cranky and headachey from the smoke and the idiots on the road, and we were both tired. We made it, though, I did a little driving to let DX get a bit of sleep, and got home about 4am.
Called Orbitz this afternoon when I got up, and they told me that they'd only be able to refund my money to me if the management of the motel was willing to refund it to me. Needless to say, creepy skeezy guy told them he wouldn't, and there was no complaints about any of the rooms. What an asshole. I'd like to call him and press the issue, because, really, we didn't even STAY there, but I'm just letting it go, because it would just piss me off, and likely not come to anything. DX had issues with his sister completely not respecting his house and his groceries (they ate ALL the kids cereal, and drank almost a whole gallon of milk, smoked in his house, and some other annoyances) and he's crabby and tired today, so that's not making today's contact very fun.
I love what I got out of the trip, the 2 bands that were reallyreally good, but there was really a lot of negativity abounding, lots of stress and hassle and bad feelings. I'd love to say that it was all worth it, but when I went to Cake's site today to see if I could find an e-mail address for the band to thank them, I saw that they're coming to the Royal Oak Music Theater in October. Which is much MUCH closer to me than fucking Chicago. I'm kicking myself for being over prepared. :S
posted by Juby at 1:58 PM
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