Expanding Universe: Like Regular Carolina, but Further... South

Wednesday, June 29 2011
From the moment I booked the South Carolina stop of this tour, I had a weird, bad feeling about it. I couldn't place what it was exactly, just this feeling that something was going to go wrong. But waking up this morning proved to be not only uneventful, but very pleasant! In a final act of hospitality, the Damasks provided us with an enormous bag of delicious bagels, and packed the numerous leftovers for the road, along with some bananas, a bunch of cookies, and various other goodies. 

Thomas and Julio were ecstatic.

But gut feelings usually happen for a reason, and at around 3pm on the drive down to Charleston, I finally found out what was going to go wrong. To make a very long story short, the club we were supposed to play at decided to bump the show in favor of... 

A beer pong tourney. 

I specifically said "Spinal Tap" then "puppet show."

So now, a 5-band show that was supposed to start at 9pm has to be over by 10, and who's the guy that has to figure out how to make it happen? Yours truly. So away I go, rebuilding the show to start at 6:30 and end at 10, contacting bands as both time and the venue draw near. 

But wait, you didn't think that would be the only problem for the ol' UriCrew, did you? Of course not! While approaching Charlston, the standard "URIZEN Rain-on-Arrival" began, and it was more of a downpour than ever before. And this probably wouldn't have been a problem... had the driver's side windshield wiper not broken in the midst of the hurricane...

The picture above was only made possible after we coerced James into making an emergency exit from the highway we were on, which only led him onto another highway... on a bridge... that was going in the complete opposite direction of where we needed to be.

At this point, we were running too late to properly inform the other bands of the new schedule, and it didn't look like we were going to get the wipers fixed anytime soon, so talk of cancellation began. By which I mean, I wanted to cancel this goddamn show. It seemed like further disaster awaited, and it didn't seem like the damn thing was going to pan out in our favor anyway, so fuck it, right?

Wrong. 

Well, so said the others, anyway. I was ready to throw in the towel, but they wanted to go ahead with the show, so I went along for the ride. We arrived at the venue (on James Island, no less), which I was told was called The Oasis, but is apparently now called The Edge, and began the ceremonial unloading of the trailer onto the rainy ground. 

In a bit of a humorous twist, though, right next to the venue was this place:

For those who don't know, UriBassist James is known in the inner circle as "Jam," or in more formal situations, "Jimmy Jam." So you can imagine our excitement to find a place like this... located on James Island... *BRAAAAHHHMMMM*

So the show finally started around 7pm, two full hours before it was supposed to start originally, and as you can imagine, all of the early bands got screwed. I felt bad that no one was there, but I commend the bands for playing their hearts out regardless of the nonexistent audience. 

By the time we were about to go on, we realized that there were actually people starting to show up... for the beer pong, of course. So you can imagine that the apathy was runnin' high with the beer pong crowd as we started to play, and we continued the nightlong tradition of playing for the other bands and their girlfriends. 

Because what could be more exciting than this?

But something strange started to happen: the applause after each song started getting louder and louder as the night went on. Slowly, the tables in the back close to the pool tables started filling up, and the walls in the back of the club had more and more people peeking around to see what the hell was going on up on stage. 

By the time we finally pulled out the robot battle, the goddamn room had packed out and people were losing their shit! It was after 10, but the beer pong tables sat on the sidelines, flaccid, ignored by the once pong-hungry masses. We finished to resounding applause and a healthy crowd at our merch table, and I felt both proud and a little like an asshole for wanting to cancel. 

I should have had more faith in the framed Jim Morrison poster

We hung out at the club for a bit longer before the beer pong-ing became intolerable, then made our way to a Denny's, where I found this humorously broken looking Green Lantern plush in a claw machine.

Hittin' up da beach tomorrow for the off day, stay tuned!