Siren Festival 2010: Cymbals Eat Guitars Blog About Their Dreamy, Sweaty, Diamond-Studded Saturday

The Alternate Side reached out to a few of our favorite local bands performing at last Saturday's Siren Festival, asking them to blog at will about their long day in Coney Island. Cymbals Eat Guitars, who hail from Staten Island, didn't have far to travel, but as bassist Matthew Whipple revealed, it was still a mystical, near-transcendent band experience, thanks in part to Dan Aykroyd's mysterious and readily-available beverage:

Let me tell you about Crystal Head vodka. Crystal Head vodka comes in a skull-shaped bottle. Not only is Crystal Head vodka quadruple-distilled; it is filtered through DIAMONDS. But not just any diamonds! Crystal Head vodka is filtered through Herkimer diamonds, from Herkimer, New York. Herkimer diamonds are said to have mystical properties. They are said to enhance not only the clarity and perceived reality of one's dreams, but also the retention of dreams in one's memory. If you sleep with a Herkimer diamond under your pillow, you will remember your dreams better. For some people it is too much, and can lead to a nightmarish crystalline madness in which their dreams and reality become indistinguishable. These people are advised to sleep with an additional diamond of some other variety under their pillow to mellow the effects of the Herkimer diamond. Basically, Crystal Head vodka is the most legally-psychedelic vodka ever created, and it was created by Dan Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd's family has been in the liquor business for way longer than Dan Aykroyd has been in the comedy business, according to Kevin, the driver of Dan Aykroyd's personal RV, which is, as of late, travelling the country promoting Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head vodka without Dan Aykroyd. One of the stops that Dan Aykroyd's mystical vodka RV made recently was at the Village Voice's tenth annual Siren Festival. This is a blog about that music festival.

July has been a non-touring month for our band, and so Siren was a local show for us. Several days prior to the festival, the four of us loaded whatever gear we would need to bring to the festival into our personal vehicles so that we could all drive ourselves to the festival. That is not very green, but there was no other option. We do not own a van. We got to the Stillwell stage at 10AM as instructed, which was super early, and by that time the heat was oppressive.

The backstage area was quite comfortable upon our arrival, with cabana-like dressing rooms for each artist. Joe, Matt, and Brian were excited to try to catch up with previous tour-mates the Pains of Being Pure At Heart, who were playing the main stage. I hadn't joined the band yet at the time of that tour, but the guys speak of the Pains fondly. We also had hopes of hanging with almost-friends-in-real-life Twitter-pals Surfer Blood, who we met for a jovial few minutes at SXSW, but to no avail. Someday. The heat was ON. We were zapped as soon as we settled in. It was 100 degrees in the shade for most of the day, and there was nothing to do but sweat and try to acclimate. We took out and re-strung our guitars so they could mellow in the heat as well. We were lead around to do a bunch of promo, but to be honest, it is kind of a haze, and we hadn't even dipped into the dream vodka. Sorry if we sweat on you.

That we didn't play until 6:30 was a blessing. The sun was going down and it had cooled off significantly. We had planned to test out a lot of new material in our set, and we felt much better doing so knowing that the crowd wouldn't be melting so badly. We debuted a brand new song called "Gary Condit" that will be on our next record and were quite pleased at the response. We're not really a "chill vibes" band, but I would go so far as to say that we enjoyed some during our set. That is, until a mosh pit broke out during "...And The Hazy Sea" the likes of which I haven't seen since the DJ dropped "Bulls On Parade" at my 6th grade dance. What fun! It was one of those "over in the blink of an eye" sets we wish we could re-live again and again.

In conclusion: vodka, diamonds, dreams, Dan Aykroyd, sweat, moshing.

-Whipple

Cymbals Eat Guitars Summer Tour Dates

Aug 5 - Schubas Tavern, Chicago

Aug 6-8 - Lollapalooza

Aug 12 - Haldern Pop Festival, Kleve, Denmark

Aug 13 - Out West Festival Gothenburg, Sweden

Aug 14- Oya Festival Oslo, Norway

Aug 21 - Pukkelpop, Kempische Steenweg, Hasselt, Belgium

Sep 10 - End Of The Road Festival, Dorset UK