BLACKENED DAY 14: TOUCHING THE STARS [OR JUST JELLO BIAFRA] IN SAN FRAN

Posted on June 5th, 2009

We sent roving reporter Justina Villanueva on the road with this summer's darkest tour, Blackenedfest. She will be checking in constantly with dispatches from the tour. Catch up with all her tour diaries, as well as a ton of photos at the Blackenedfest hub.

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of my energy at Amoeba. So when I finally got back I decided it would be best to watch Family Guy on Cephalic's bus than to watch Mayhem's 1.5 hour long set. Two hours later I got a very angry call from Milkshake (support band's soundguy). Apparently, I'm a terrible photojournalist because I missed one of the great photo opportunities in all of extreme music history: Attila greeting Jello Biafra for the first time.

The way it went down, according to Billy Anderson, was that Attila went up to Jello saying how much of a fan he was. Jello responded with, "and who are you?" That is because Attila had already removed all the corpse paint (duh). So, I ended up backstage all tired and whiny, while Milkshake chatted up a storm with Jello. I finally took their picture and went back to the bus, where I thought I was going to chill out. But, as soon as I got there, Leonard was all like where's my Jello picture?! But, because its Leonard, it become a beer-hunt. I won a 22 ounce of Budweiser and a trip back to the bus. I sat down for about 4 minutes when Milkshake stormed onto the bus, "HEY, JELLO WANTS A WITHERED CD AND RECORD RIGHT NOW." And off again I went to grab the picture above.

Just when I thought the night was over, I got onto my bus and dropped off my camera into the lounge area. Milkshake and the other crew guys were pumping "Holiday In Cambodia", as if we were celebrating a real holiday. And, just when it was the perfect moment for a sing-a-long to develop, Jello Biafra walked onto the bus. We all panicked. Someone ran to my iPod to turn it down so he wouldn't realize we were totally fan-ing out. He said his goodbyes. We tried to convince him to join the tour since we have open bunk space (thanks Marduk). He declined and we let out big sighs once he left.

Other celebrity sightings of the night: Dave Edwardson from Neurosis and Nils Frykdahl from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.