STRUT REPORT

Thursday, 3/02/06 : Well, with a week left to go before we split for SXSW...we're almost done booking! While I'd love to go on and on about this remarkable process (ever seen a butterfly emerge from its cocoon? Or a domesticated three-legged dog torn apart by slavering, parvo-infected wildebeests? Like that, only the butterfly meets a hammer and the dog's endorphins fail to kick in), I've got to get back to the serious business of figuring out which Texaco men's room we're going to be living in during our three days in Austin. I heard all the BPs are taken already. So here, without further ado, are the winners of the Crimson Sweet Spring 2006 Book You Like A Hurricane Awards. They are few, but you can't tell me they're not proud.

VENUE I SERIOUSLY CONTEMPLATED DRIVING 17 HOURS JUST TO PLAY, AND STILL THINK ABOUT EVERY NIGHT: Cesspool Castle, Joplin, MO

MOST HORRIFYING BAND NAME: A tie between Dogshittaco and Brown Frown

BAND I'D BE MOST LIKELY TO SEE BASED ON NAME ALONE, EXCEPT I HEARD THEY BROKE UP: Cocaine Unicorn

Sunday, 2/12/06 : Well, if you live here (or live somewhere else but have electricity), you probably know that there's, like, eight feet of snow here and it's still snowing. Sometime last night, probably at about the two-foot mark, a wasted certain someone in this band decided to have a pit bull tow him around Greenpoint on a snowboard. Later, in the emergency room, this someone learned that he won't be able to play any music at all for two weeks until his shoulder heals. Feel free to send an e-mail guessing who it is: All winners will receive an empty Vicodin bottle autographed by the victim. Allow four to six minutes for consumption of contents and six to eight weeks for delivery. Members of Crimson Sweet and their families are not eligible to participate.

Tuesday, 1/31/06: Thanks to everybody who packed Union Pool (which was recently transformed from a concrete box with a drain in the floor to...I dunno, I guess a concrete box wallpapered like a Wild West saloon. Awesome.) for Friday's show celebrating the birth of a) Robbie Kongress and b) Mozart with VCR, Some Action (the triumphant return of!), Tampoffs, DC Snipers, and of course us. Special thanks to JB, who recorded the show ON HIS FUCKING EYEGLASSES. How the *fuck* do you do that? Lemme tell you, those 2mm postcranial over-ear mics really grab some live sound. I wish I'd had them to capture the sound of myself weeping in front of ABC No Rio the next day after learning the Villains/Caustic Christ/Municipal Waste show sold out before I even got out of bed. Thanks, God. So our next show is at trash this Friday, Feb .3, with the always-blazing Bamboo Kids, who somehow finally managed to make bail in northern Denmark after six months on the Continent just so they could play this show—and we all know how hard that is given the dollar's current value against the euro. See you there. "I don't wanna waste my time, so you better fucking be for real!"

Monday, 1/16/06: Haaaapppy New Year! The mighty Crimson Sweet rang in double-oh-six tripping the light fantastic at the fabled Memory Motel in . . . a place I have no memory of. It's possible I will once the answering machine messages are decoded though. Then we came back to the lovin' Irish arms and brutal four-four charms of our new drummer, Tim, so look yr fucking last at the trio below, cuz *all* beds will be shared from now on!