Friday, March 14   9:30 p.m.
The Rio   (301 San Jacinto Blvd)

  Cruiserweight - Balboa
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Whoever came up with the grand idea that a band’s essence could be adequately conveyed in a few paragraphs should be shot. With that said, here I go.

I could take a simplistic mantra off the back of a straight-edge band’s tee shirt, (i.e. “I’ve made my choice,” or “We’re a gang that plays music,”) and try to pass it off in a half-assed attempt to explain the unexplainable. But there are no mantras. We don’t feel restricted by what’s cool or acceptable right this minute- if we did, we’d stand no chance of lasting, and then the Thanksgiving dinner that followed the break-up would be a little bleak. We just do what we love- it’s the only thing that feels right. Shit, maybe that’s our mantra. And you know who hates cheesy optimistic mantras? That’s right. Terrorists.

Let me paint a little picture for you. We drive from city to city, not knowing where we’ll stay night after night. There’s nobody telling us when to go home, how to be creative, or how to do any of what we do. Sure, we ask for help sometimes. Our families, our label, our manager- we
have a great support system. But when we have a tire blow-out on the road that’s as loud as a machine gun, who changes the tire? Who decides whether or not we can afford to buy a new one? We make our own rules. (To be specific, Urny, our guitarist/leader, would actually change the tire, while the rest of us stand around, laughing that none of the rest of us ever sully our hands with such work. It’s the nature of our band. Urny knows that his taking care of the mundane crap is a sacrifice well worth being made. He’s like Mufasa in The Lion King. He’s wise enough to take care of all the other animals, but he’s okay with it, and we know it when he’s singing to Simba about the circle of life.) We embody the American dream. We’re gonna have a big-ass American flag airbrushed on the side of our van next week… not really. But it’s plain to see how I could actually think that Al Qaeda is after us. No matter what stands in our way, you know who’ll prevail. Go ask George W. Bush. C-R-U-I-S-E-R-W-E-I-G-H-T spells FREEDOM, bitches. Hallelujah.