Is My Band Cool? DOT com

Nothing at all eventful happened to me this week. …um, I bought a batman t-shirt, the old kind from the Tim Burton Batman… Tried to get together three times to practice , ended up actually practicing once. So that was good. We are working on our upcoming release too, but if I blogged about it, it would read more like a dry text book written by a guy who has no business writing text books, rather than my usual totally awesome bloggery. SO… I’m going to dip way back into my bag of tricks and recall a former adventure that is worthy of your time… I guess, depending on who you are.

*dream sequence style music here*

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The year was 2004, and it was election day. Most of the good citizens of our nation were engaged in a misguided tug of war to decide which pre-selected representative of the Illuminati should pretend to run our country. Dick Cheney would later remark that ‘your pitiful votes are no match for the Dark Side of the Force,’ before electrocuting Luke Skywalker. …Maudlin, on the other hand, was leaving to go on tour in the exotic foreign land of Canada.

I remember leaving the country well. In the middle of nowhere Montana, Maudlin was arriving at customs to lie about our business in Canada, and what goods we were taking across the border. To our surprise, there were fourteen homeland security police officers stationed there. We were on mega-terrorist threat color red alert, as it was election day. Recent intelligence agents had also intercepted a communique that Klingons would soon be firing photon torpedoes on democracy. …that heightened security too. It was those two things.

Now, though Maudlin is usually a law abiding band, we did intend to enter Canada without proper work visas and transport salable goods that we had no intention of paying taxes on, upon entering or exiting the country. This was due to lack of funds rather than disdain for that Canadian authorities. We were keeping a very low profile. No groupies, no blow, no tying prostitutes to chairs and beating them with metal chains for logging on to our computers. Nothing fun at all.

So, when someone at the border asks you a random question like, “Do you have any prescription medications that are not in their original, labeled containers,” most people would say, “No.” …Not Priscilla. She said “Yes.” …Which resulted in our being held hostage until she could located the substance (which was prescription foot cream for a rash) and show it off to everyone. I kid you not, Cheney didn’t actually electrocute any Jedi Knights (that I know of…) but Priscilla did get briefly detained by police due to foot cream that was not properly labeled. Al-Qaeda was terrified after they heard about the incident and canceled all their rouge cream mislabeling attacks they were planning.

Eventually the U.S. forces let us leave the country after tearing apart the whole truck… and the Canadian forces? Didn’t so much as glance in the Suburban. And then, there we were, in Saskatchewan, the stupidest part of Canada, about to begin our first international tour.

So, at this point you’re probably thinking, “why the hell were they in Saskatchewan when there are other places that exist?” …and, that’s a good question, I heard many natives asking themselves that same thing. We had a reason of sorts. Our label at the time, Torque Records, was headquartered out of a town of 300 people there. What were they doing there? Kevin Gales, the owner, is an odd and disturbed man… as we would find out.

I don’t remember a lot of the specific shows.  Some I do remember. Most of them were held in churches, community centers, or colleges… there’s weren’t a lot of actual venues where we played. Lots of towns with just a few thousand people. Usually that sucked, but sometimes it meant that we were the only entertainment these people had seen in their life times; sometimes whole towns turned out. This is an example of an average show up there. There we are… under a parachute? Yes. A parachute. I have no clue what town that was…
(for those astute stalker types, you may notice that Jason is not playing drums. The man pictured, AJ, was eaten by polar bears.)

If you’re from the States, and you’ve never been to Canada, let me try and explain it to you. It’s like an episode of Sliders… a universe parallel to our own. You’ll be walking around and everything will be normal- you could be in anywheretown U.S.A. …and then you’ll see it: something so freakishly perverse that you don’t even think you’re on the same planet anymore… Skim milk with blue containers, and 2% in pink ones… wtf!?!? I know, I know, most people would have left the country when they saw something as unamerican as that, but we decided that someone need to document it all for posterity’s sake.

For the most part, the people of Canada accepted us with open arms. They freely opened up to us about their ancient isolated culture. We found out that the word ‘about’ isn’t the only thing they mispronounce. Also worlds like ‘process.’ They have their own made up, pretend words for some things… like ‘tuk’ which means ‘stocking cap.’ And, if you eat french fries there they will try and put gravy on them. Do not let them; this is a mistake. The most bizarre custom they have involves the tandem coed bathrooms that can be found in many public places.

But, not everything in Canada is fake words and toilet teams, they also still have dinosaurs. Most people presume that dinosaurs are all extinct because we haven’t seen any in a long time. Well, I haven’t seen anyone walking around in jeans and a jean jacket lately, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in Canada. When these animals are hit by cars, the provincial D &R still allows people to take the meat, and Tim Horton’s actually serves mammoth sandwiches.

The state religion in Canada is Star Trek. Most people don’t actually know this either. We spent sometime in the pious village of Vulcan, Alberta. The whole town is devoted to Trek.

…Nothing I can make up can alter the fact that I had to have taken these pictures somewhere, so these things do exists… even if Canadians don’t pee together or worship Spok.

…also I did this.

In conclusion, Canada is an intriguing popsicle of a country, filled with monsters and poutine. For additional studies on Maudlin’s trip to Canada, try checking out our new hit song, Saskatchewan, off our sophomore album, Maudlin, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in stores soon!