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2004 North American Fall Tour Blog (p.1)
click
here for tour schedule
Peter’s tour journal
Here are the first 30 days of the tour's blog (counter-chronological)
DAY
30---THU 11/04---Chicago, IL---Day Off
We arrive in Chicago by sundown, and Will, Joel, Izzy go for a walk, but
some unknown force begins to possess Will:
Izzy looks on helplessly as Joel is also zapped by a strange spiraling
light force that swarms around the front and back of his head, which doesn’t
possess him as much as render him oblivious to Will’s abduction:
This is the final stage of Will’s abduction, and witnessing it sends
Izzy into shock and Joel into a light-wave-aided euphoria:
With Izzy passed out, and Joel blissfully blasé, the abduction
can continue unimpeded. The abductors are extra-terrestrials from the
planet Zolton-5, and they will own Will’s will until the following
morning. When he returns he downloads his brain into my computer. This
is the play-by-play from whence they abducted him:
The Zoltonians telepathically instruct Will to go to the nearest building
not inhibited by right angles so that he could better receive their initial
transmissions. Will finds this famous skyscraper by the Chicago River,
and the Zoltonians use the shape to let the initializing data coil its
way into his brain and spine, the coil dispersing the heat of the information:
He is now ready to receive orders, and a magnetic field pulls him to their
data transfer station where orders can be transmitted:
Unfortunately, after all this effort, The only message he is accurately
receiving is this one, not from them but from Earth:
“I have never been moved
to write to an act before to comment on their performance. In your case
I'm making an exception after your gig last night (Nov.3) at the Mod Club.
I can honestly say that after 25 years in the music business I have NEVER
heard anything as unlistenable as your band. You are in fact beyond bad
which I suppose is quite an achievement. Please disband.”
This was not the message the Zoltonians intended for Will, but instead
one sent from a disgruntled crowd member from the Count Zero show in Toronto
the night before, a message the Zoltonians which they were trying to prevent
Count Zero from being exposed to. Frustrated, the Zoltonians realize that
Will needs to learn their language if they are to be successful in downloading
any messages. So he’s magnetically directed to their Mother-Mind
Station. Here Will is standing under it as the entire Zoltonian’s
lexicography is downloaded into his own little mind:
(Apparently, Will was chosen by the Zoltonians because he was the designer
behind the artwork of the upcoming Count Zero record “Little Minds,”
and they assume he is the engineer of the concept. The Zoltonians interpreted
this uncharacteristic human trait as heroically humble and deemed him
an apt subject.) Not only did Will learn the language from the Mother-Mind
but his enlightened new self could now see the earth and its inhabitants
through the Zoltonians’ eyes. And we looked like a messy, ugly lot
to them:
Outside, the Mother-Mind gives him the final orders, but Will’s
little mind is still confused as to how he could be receiving orders from
a large silver reflective structure and not a talking human presence:
Exasperated, the Mother-Mind realizes humans only trust that which at
least appears to be human contact. The Mother-Mind soon morphs into the
most common pleasing image of Earth, which is that of a smiling mother:
Will listens to the nice human woman. Her race is Asian, of course, as
the Zoltonians assume that this is the most common face due to the higher
percentage of Asians globally. Also, they assume Will, like an absurd
proportion of white men on Earth, have “a thing for Asian chicks.”
Not to say this is true, it’s simply what their studies show to
be the most effective.
The nice woman smiles now the message has been successfully disseminated
to Will. It will stay in Will’s Little Mind until the appropriate
time for its information to be disseminated amongst the masses.
DAY
29---WED 11/03---Toronto, ON
The crisp, bright, beautiful autumn weather belies the sullen state of
our spirits after hearing the election results. And throughout the course
of the day, as friends pop in and out of my subconscious for various reasons,
I picture them all as being bummed out. The common joke is that we’ll
just stay in Canada and never return to the States.
Some of us try to not get too anchored by this and enjoy the weather and
head down Queen Street where the shops are. Will takes some postcard-esque
anonymous photos of Toronto:
Brendon is doing better than yesterday now that he’s gotten some
rest and much of his burdens have been lifted, but he’s still illin’.
Even so, tonight we manage to have a great show at a well-heeled funky
venue called the Mod Club, replete with psychedelic op-art pop-art and
Peter Max stylings. Nice crowd, with a higher proportion of attractive
people than normal (I think I’ve noticed this before about Toronto).
The Dolls feel they play their best show tonight since Boston, possibly
only because they finally received backstage the eighty-five hand towels
they requested:
DAY 28---TUE 11/02---Montreal, PQ
We’re hung up at immigration crossing the border for about three
hours. This delays us enough to arrive at the venue that much later than
we intended. We joke that they’re getting stringent on letting Americans
into Canada because they fear that after the election there’ll be
a lot of us defecting to avoid four more years of the idiotic Bush agenda.
We play the best we have yet as a five-piece. Supportive, if slight, audience.
Will and I toured in Europe back in the days of Think Tree, and I’ve
toured as keyboardist or vocalist in other bands to Canada and England,
but this is the first time this band has ever played outside the U.S.,
and that alone is notable. The province of Quebec is the nearest place
to us that feels like another country.
As we hit the stage I’m trouble by two things: 1) the early election
results, which show Bush with a clear lead; and 2) Brendon. Brendon had
Guillain-Barre Syndrome earlier this year, an immune system which had
him in intensive care for six weeks. He recovered quickly, but unfortunately
will never be fully cured. As he’s been under undue stress on this
tour, especially this past weekend, he’s again feeling the symptoms.
We order him to get more sleep and Amanda, Whitney and I agree to split
his tour management duties.
Strangely, even with Brendon in this situation, Count Zero plays the best
we have yet as a five-piece on this tour. The crowd is thin---it is a
Tuesday night after all---but attentive and enthusiastic, at least for
a Montreal crowd, who in my limited experience are not as vocal as most.
After the show we wait in the bus for our driver to take us to Toronto
as we listen to election results. It’s grim. It’s as if we’ve
all been told a parent has died.
We sit there, morose.
The win seemed so close.
And now to lose only by inches.
Engulfed in despair,
like zombies we stare,
as if from some nightmare they’ll pinch us
DAY
27---MON 11/01---Boston, day off
Real
boring, just ran errands cuz I was home, and stayed quiet so my voice
could heal a bit.
DAY
26---SUN 10/31---Northampton, MA
Pearl Street is hopping tonight, cuz Northampton is a town that prides
itself on its freakdom, so playing here on Halloween is appropriate. The
Ditty Bops get the crowd feeling good with their flapper-folk. We’re
in our Devo suits tonight as well, and open our set with a cover of their
hit “Beautiful World.” It has vague socio-political overtones
if you listen for them, and none if you choose not to (Freedom of Choice
is what you got). We haven’t played this song except once at a John
Kerry benefit nearly five months ago, so it’s a tad rusty, but no
one notices. Hell, most of these kids were only three months old when
this song last got airplay, so I’m sure they don’t even recognize
it in the first place.
As we’re packing up our gear, I realize there are five people here
that have played these Count Zero keyboard parts: Elizabeth, Amanda, Joel,
Brendon and I. If you ever saw what it takes to play these parts, you’d
be amazed. Like many elements about our band, it seems fairly simple on
the outside, but it’s pretty intricate on the inside. Like the human
body. Or a skyscraper.
Or a pumpkin.
Happy Halloween!
DAY
25---SAT 10/30---Boston
Today was insane, but don’t tell that to yesterday, when we thought
yesterday was insane. This is the day of the Red Sox parade, where as
many as 4 million are expected to descend on the streets of Boston to
celebrate the first World Series win in eighty-some-odd years. The parade
doesn’t start til 10:30 am, but when we first pull into Boston at
7:30 am, the streets are cordoned off, and there are as many people mulling
around Kenmore Sq. and Fenway park that it looks like it does right before
a game starts. Our show tonight is at Avalon, which is right across the
street from Fenway Park. So we have to unload now, because we fear if
we wait there’ll be way too many people for us to even move ourselves,
much less our gear.
For this show and tomorrow night’s, we are playing as we normally
do when not on tour, which is as a six-piece. Elizabeth joins us to play
keyboards, which frees me up to prance around like a bio-hazard nancy
boy. After some minimal rehearsing we readjust and are back to normal:
Elizabeth and Peter rehearsing "Dream
a Million Stars" backstage @ Avalon
The Devo suits we’ve decided to wear look great, even though both
Izzy’s and Will’s rip in the crotch within the first few songs.
Oddly we don’t look unattractive in them, and none of us can figure
out quite why:
After
about the fourth song, the chemicals in the dyes begin to "out-gas"
on us, and I find myself feeling a bit sick. So I don’t feel I put
out my best at the show, and the rest of us feel we did okay, but not
superlative. But, as I mentioned yesterday, what we feel is often immaterial:
Boston fans of ours in the audience thought otherwise, all of them telling
us it was among the strongest they’d seen us. Go figure. Might have
to do with Avalon itself, which is huge but doesn’t sound the least
bit murky or cavernous, just clear and big. I really appreciated those
fans of ours in the audience tonight; even though they were only a small
portion of the 1500 in Avalon that night, we could really feel their love
onstage:
Mehran introduces Count Zero
A Dolls fan posted some photos of the whole night:
http://www.sherihausey.com/dresdendolls/halloween/
As you can see from that entry and others from Doll’s fans, they
did some fun bits where they dressed up like Sonny and Cher, then double
Britneys, etc. etc. My friends and me were so famished we split a ways
into their set to eat sushi in Kenmore Sq. Little did we know there was
karaoke going on, being run by the only other filled table in the joint,
that of a bridal/bachelorette party. After listening to them butcher Christina
Aquilera type music, the mic was passed to me as the song “Sexual
Healing” by Marvin Gaye came up. I did my best, wolfed some eel,
then quickly had to leave to head back to Avalon to load the gear in the
trailer and call it a night.
DAY
24---FRI 10/29---NYC Bowery Ballroom
I spend most of the day hunting for accoutrements to accessorize the outfits
my girl is making for our Halloween show in Boston tomorrow. We are dressing
in the yellow jumpsuits Devo wore for their first album back in the late
70’s. Instead of saying Devo on the left side of the suit they say
Zero. I find myself on the Lower East Side so I pay a quick visit to my
boyz in da hood at the Blue Man Studios, who I toured with on the Blue
Man tour last year (Jeff Turlik, Chris Dyas, Dave Steele, as well as engineer
Andrew Schneider, who, incidentally, mixed the soon-to-be-released Count
Zero record).
This is a wild show…the first show we will have the Ditty Bops opening
for us, the first show with SO MANY accessory performers (statue people,
jugglers, sideshows, exotic dancers and the like). And it’s sold
out, and it’s New York, and it’s a Friday night before Halloween,
so it’s kinda tense backstage. We all wear silly costumes: Will
is in African tribal garb, Izzy is a Ninja, I’m a bird-man, Eric
dressed just like Brian from the Dresden Dolls, and Brendon is dressed
as a stressed-out tour manager. (If we find photos for this we will place
them here.)
This may have been the only night so far Will or I didn’t break
a guitar string. The Bowery’s a great venue, and onstage, it felt
like we played a great show, but I think a lot of that didn’t translate
into the audience for various sonic reasons. It’s typical to play
what you think is a marvelous show only to find out that it wasn’t
as special for the audience; and the converse is true, that you play what
you feel is a klunky show, and the audience thinks it’s the best.
Fortunately that’s more often the case.
DAY
23---THU 10/28---NYC---Day Off
I walk out of the bus this morning and the air is so fresh and so clean
clean. It’s nippy, but it’s such a refreshing autumn nippy,
and so sunny, it really kind of recalibrates us. Many of us go shopping
in Manhattan. Izzy Will and I hang with my friend Krishna at night. (Krishna,
Will and I used to play together in Think Tree.) Kinda wild. At 3 am I’m
dancing to lame 80’s hits I once loathed with a dance floor of ten
other people I don’t know. Guess we felt like we had to let off
a little steam.
DAY
22---WED 10/27---DC
Will, Joel and I have some time to kill before having to leave for sound
check, so we frolic about the National Arboretum, which is within walking
distance of our hotel. This is a gem of a place, especially when one considers
the dreariness of the section of the city that encloses it; a pearl, really,
in a sea-beaten clam.
These
are columns that were taken down from the old Capitol building in the
fifties before a renovation.
I feel it’s only appropriate to pirouette amongst them. Click on
this mini-movie link of me traipsing about like a bloody poofta to see
what I’m talking about:
I
mean, after all, no one’s around but us, so I can act as idiotic
as I please. Well, except for this dad and his son that I didn’t
notice behind me until it was way too late. Oops. I’m sure I’ve
ruined his child’s potential manliness forever. Well. Manliness
is stupid. You heard it here first.
We drifted into this weird forbidden area off to the side of the arboretum.
I jumped atop the one of the structures to survey:
I decided it was undoubtedly an abandoned concentration camp for goat-people.
After awhile the park rangers drove up in a pickup and kindly informed us we were trespassing. They were teenage girls who looked and acted like they had special areas in the arboretum where they grew secret magical mushrooms. They told us this area we were at was an abandoned brickyard. I challenged “Yeah? Well, then why does Costco keep all their shopping carts here? Huh?” as I pointed my finger to this and another strangely round building chock-full of shopping carts:
close-up view:
She neglected to respond, but the more I looked at them, the more it seemed
apparent that they were wicked shopping carts, and deserved their dreary
fate.
Our bus driver’s tardiness again made us miss a sound check, but
we played a good show, anyway. This was the first sizable crowd in awhile,
and most of them seemed to enjoy us just fine. Had some weird audio glitches
with my guitar again, Will broke a string again, but you know, no one
notices, so why even mention it? Okay so everything went perfect and everyone
is lovely and great. Meanwhile, the Red Sox win the World Series. This
causes us joy and elation. Brendon, probably the biggest fan of all of
us, is sad only that he isn’t actually in Boston to share the love.
I try to imagine how silly Boston must be right now, so elated to have
reversed the curse. I picture a Dr. Suess setting, with all the Whos in
Whoville, blowing on their electro-whocardial schnooks while riding around
in their Who-Cars. But with Red Sox caps.
DAY
21---TUE 10/26---Day Off DC
It’s 11 pm at night, and we’re in the bus is in the hotel
parking lot, watching the movie Amadeus with Brian. Eventually tons of
sirens swirl around the parking lot. After being here for awhile, and
seeing all the prostitutes who cavort around these parts, the sirens don’t
immediately faze us. First some squad cars, then a fire truck, then an
ambulance. They’re focused on some room in the other leg of the
hotel. After an hour or so the hub-bub dies down. Then a knock on the
bus door. Izzy’s the nearest to it so he answers.
Cop #1: Hey, what’s up with this bus here. You guys in a band or
something?
Izzy: Yeah.
Cop #2: What’s the name?
Izzy: Well, there’s two bands in this bus, Count Zero and the Dresden
Dolls.
Cop #2: Yeah?
Izzy: Yeah, it’s our night off. We’re playing tomorrow night
at the Black Cat.Cop #2: Cool.
Izzy: Yeah…Hey, what’s all this commotion with the firetrucks
and everything?
Cop #1: Oh…well. Um, there’s a guy in room 115, a schoolteacher,
who was fleeing Virginia on child pornography charges.
Izzy: Wow.
Cop #2: Just sittin in his hotel room tryin to kill himself with rat poison.
Izzy: Huh! Wow.
Cop #1: (sniffs as if to acknowledge odor of smoke from illicit substances)
Looks like this bus is where the party is, eh?Izzy: (a tad paradnoid)
Um. Kinda.
Cop #2: Well, looks like fun. We’d love to come up there and hang
out. But we’re on duty. Maybe we’ll see you at the show tomorrow.
Izzy: Right on.
We all breathe a sigh of relief, except for wondering why that porno guy
chose this hotel to do himself in at. Is there a lot of rat poison in
the walls here? Are the maids accustomed to cleaning up ex-porn casualties?
Are we all secretly being groomed for a future in the porn industry?
DAY
20---MON 10/25---DC
We’re a couple miles outta the center of the city, in a kinda dicey
area, but the only place in town that let us park a bus in the parking
lot. Yeah, a tour bus is much swankier than a van, but it has its drawbacks,
and it’s cumbersomeness is one of them. If only for the fact that
to describe it you have to make up words like cumbersomeness. But the
good side is that you can be sitting in the back lounge, say, composing
a blog, and hear some beautiful music in the front lounge and get magnetized
into its vortex. That’s what happened this morning, when Brian from
the dolls started playing a DVD of a recent unplugged concert of Bjork.
She was performing her first record in entirety, replete with gamelan
orchestra, sax trios, harpsichords, etc., and it’s so beautiful
and well-executed that it really pisses all of us off. Plus Bjork looks
unforgivably delicious for her age, better than she did years previous
when she recorded these albums. I decide that I must own this DVD, because
I love her so much I hate her.
Eric, Izzy, Joel (Dolls’ sound engineer and, like Amanda, one-time
keyboardist for Count Zero), Will and I scoot into town to act like tourists.
We need to practice our Fab Four publicity shots, so we ask Joel to play
the role of shutter-bug. He misinterprets this as us asking him to do
the jitterbug, but a simple explanantion clears this up, and he takes
some pictures:
Since these photos didn’t make us look glamorous enough, we blame
Joel. Then all of us get into a fight, and communication dissolves to
the point where we have to consult our lawyers to talk to each other.
Here we are deciing which monument to visit next:
The Egyptian undercurrent of the design of the Washington monument zaps
us with residual pyramid energy, making us realize we are all One People
of Earth. So we patch up our differences and visit the Sculpture Garden
in front of the Hirschorn Museum. Here Eric tries to persuade us that
he was the inspiration for this Rodin sculpture. We tell him the resemblance
is unequivocal, but feel we must challenge him on the chronology:
DAY 19---SUN 10/24---Asheville, NC
Ears are popping as the bus, the little engine that could, chugs through
the Blue Ridge Mountains of central South Carolina into Asheville. It’s
another beautiful day here, a bit cooler, but the trees are starting to
change here. Like Chapel Hill, I’ve heard this is a great, progressive
little town. One of those places you could picture living. (Bostonian
bohemian types like us are often inquisitive about living elsewhere as
Boston has so many rich students and yuppies that keep rents astronomical
there). Everyone we talk to who lives here says it’s an awesome
place to live. Say, isn’t this the Asheville Skyline Bob Dylan named
a record after:
The Orange Peel is the name of this club, and it’s really a terrific
place. Large, too. Super-kind house staff that really are into Count Zero’s
music and treat us with respect and give us a decent soundcheck:
Very professional sound and light system. Good, supportive crowd, we feed
off them to give a good show, even though two strings break during our
set. Here we are playing our song Heaven’s Balloon (l-r: Izzy, Brendon,
Peter):
Eric, with Gloucester, MA-born belly-dancer who entertained the crowd
between sets: "Hey, Pete, sing that Tiny Dancer song by Elton for
me":
"Me Bearded-Satan-on-Stilts. Me confused as to how to negotiate low door frames":
A good hundred or so people are here by the time the Dolls go on, which is okay for a Sunday night in a town they’ve never played in. I run into Matt from Jump Little Children, who I met two years previously when I played keyboards with my then-housemate Bleu, who was playing some shows down here with them. He, like some other folks tonight, traveled up to four hours to see this show! Gotta love these people!
DAY
18---SAT 10/23---Columbia, SC
Beautiful weather here, sunny and in the 70s, we take turns riding the
$53 wal-mart bike around residential Columbia. Will exercises as Eric
does some sidewalk yoga:
The Dolls rent a one-way van from Chapel Hill and meet our bus at the
venue here. Appparently they had a wonderful sold-out show up there, which
we sort of didn’t want to hear (‘cuz the broken bus prevented
us from getting there). The venue is not one I’d expect us to be
booked at. It’s kind of a chain sports-bar complex in what resembles
an office park. The nightclub section where we’re playing looks
to be suited for Guns-n-Roses cover bands. We play for a young non-drinking
crowd. They’re polite, but they keep their distance. Just as well,
as I’m plagued with some bizarre technical snafu where my guitar
is intermittently cutting out at will during the entire set. A young man
tells us after our set that there are other clubs in Columbia to play
that would’ve been much better suited for our bands. He adds that
his friend does the booking for this club and booked the Dresden Dolls
just because he liked them, not because it was a good match for his venue,
and that in fact, many people who would’ve come to the Dolls show
probably wouldn’t show their face at a meat-market complex like
this. Oh well, maybe next time they’ll/we’ll get it right.
We stay in the bus overnight in Columbia. Brian just bought a video of
vintage 1920’s porn, so we all have to watch. Much more entertaining
than modern-day porn. And they're silent, so there's none of those phoney
moans and groans. Will
and I go exploring by the river at night and take some photos, but they’re
way too arty, like this:
DAY
17---FRI 10/22---Tallahassee, FL
Today is a day from hell, but don’t tell that to us yesterday, when
we thought yesterday was a day from hell. The bus is still not fixed,
it got the wrong part yesterday, so we hang in the lobby of the Tally
hotel until it’s ready at 6:00 pm. Chapel Hill is a 10 hour bus
drive from Tallahassee, so Count Zero will have to forfeit the show there.
(It was decided last night that Amanda, Brian and Joel would fly to Chapel
Hill this morning so at least the Dresden Dolls could play there tonight.)
Too bad for us. Insert whimpering sounds here.
When we finally get into the bus and are on our way to South Carolina,
Eric asks Whitney and Izzy to braid bright orange extensions to his hair.
It will be a work in progress.
They turn the back lounge into a salon, I turn the front lounge into a
saloon.
DAY
16---THU 10/21---Tallahassee, FL,
We stay in our Tally (local talk for Tallahassee) hotel overnight instead
of driving to Chapel Hill on the bus as the itinerary stated, because
the bus-fixing wizards across town didn’t get the repairs done before
closing time today. No, no, avid blog-readers, this isn’t an entry
you’ve already read, the bus is in fact getting examined yet again,
this time for radiator hose issues. So we’re stuck at our hotel
waiting. Fortunately, our hotel is not only near the FSU campus, but also
near to where prostitutes can be located. I thought of going down there
just to yell “Tally-Ho!” to one of them, then realized prostitutes
stereotypically don’t appreciate puns, especially unfunny ones.
Ho hum…
Today is a day from hell, but don’t tell that to us yesterday, cuz
then we thought that was a day from hell. Details are boring so I’ll
skip them, but the lack of transportation due to non-working bus is causing
much stress with tour manager Brendon.
Will went to the History of Florida Museum and learns about Florida vegetation
and the difference between mastodons and woolly mammoths, and he describes
the difference to me, but I’m not listening closely enough and this
image ends up in my head, which is that of a leafy mammoth:
He also tells me that none of the Seminole Indians, even males, showed
their nipples. At least in the dioramas at the museum, which are known
to be reflective of reality.
Trying to make the best of a night in Tallahassee, Will, Joel and I decide
to go out on the town. We venture down Tennessee Street and see Amanda
walking towards us twenty feet ahead. She offers her gesture of acknowledgement
in pure post-pubescent Peppermint Patty fashion by pulling up her shirt
and flashing us her boobs. Wotta gal. (She approved of Will taking a picture
of her naked, working on her computer on the bus the other day, but it
seems a bit inappropriate to post such a thing.) We end up at a bar that
has $2 top shelf cocktails and a cover band that overplays 70’s
and 80’s rock music. It’s strange to me that much of this
music was hits before they and most of the audience were born. Anyway,
a little research…just tryin to see what life is like in textbook
collegiate America these days. Ho hum.
By the way, here’s a bunch of other photos from a few days ago in
Tampa when we went canoeing in ‘gator country.
These images are from 20-30 feet from the ‘gators, so I’ve
included captions above where the monsters can be found so they are easier
to identify—they kind of camouflage with the logs:
 |
 |
 |
 |
This one below is hard to make out, but all those black specks on the
shore by the white rock are vultures. My guess is they took one look at
Will (above) and realized soon they could scavenge the alligators’
leftovers:
Simply some funky floating flora, one of the easier and prettier obstacles
to navigate canoes through:
This is Izzy and Whitney relaxing after taming the wild 0.5 mph current
river and the above frightening beasts (excluding Will):
DAY 15---WED 10/20---Tallahassee, FL
This
is a college gig. These have good sides and bad sides. Good sides: They
often have energetic and eager-to-please student staff, and many of them
to help load. Bad side: Student bartenders are apt to neglect to report
for duty at the student union where one’s band is playing, forcing
students who want drinks to go a few doors down to the bowling alley during
one’s set; sound systems are often below par; students rarely know
of or care about events such as these.
But for now let's, as Bing Crosby would say, accentuate the positive.
We play okay tonight, but much of the audience is on a balcony directly
above us so it’s difficult to decide whether to play for them or
the handful of fans on the floor in front of us. The only time people
sing looking that high up is when they’re doing a Christian rock
video. Which, hard-to-believe, we aren’t doing.
Well, this won’t go down as one of our favorite shows, and same
goes for the Dolls, who feel they were going through the motions on their
normal material and stumbling through their new material, and they feel
the audience was giving them “golf claps,” a similar response
to what I refer to “applause-sign applause.” I didn’t
notice any of this, because I missed their show to go with Will and his
two Florida friends Adam and Scott to a bar to watch the Sox-Yankees game.
This is them:
Some teenage-angst-pop band that none of us know or care about is playing in the front of the bar. We're at the back trying to ignore them to watch the game, but can't once the lead singer shouts out "Hey I'd like to thank Adam and Scott. You guys are sweet." Just an odd coincidence that makes us laugh our butts off.
File that in the "had to be there" category.
We
have come here to savor the sweetness of both Beer and Revenge, watching
the last few innings of the last game in the playoffs as the Sox go
out-homer the Yankees. I'm thrilled, not only to have
won against the bloated Yankees and their spoiled, puerile fans, but now
I feel I can finally stop ending these journal entries with the phrase
Yankee Go Home. Also, because our tour is starting to head north,
it seems appropriate anyway. Please accept the following anagrams as an
apologetic token for this ludicrous self-imposed textual discipline, as
if to bid adieu to the recurring phrase:
Gee! Me a Honky?
No, a Geek Homey.
* A rider is a loose contract between the bands and the venue that specifies
what food and drink the band requests to play the show. Often it is the
discretion of the venue as to which, if any, of those requests they will
bother to honor.
DAY 14---TUE 10/19---Tampa/St. Pete, FL
The
show is actually in St. Pete, which is right next to Tampa. Will’s
nephew Derek drives us into town in his pickup, and I better understand
why people would bother to live somewhere I would find so uncomfortably
hot and humid as Florida as he tells me how the extreme heat and humidity
are essential to his breathing and overall physical well-being.
A couple of us get a swim in before sound check. The club is near the
water, a joint downtown called the State Theatre. Sounds nice, but it’s
really just the carved-out carcass of an old theater, replete with sticky
beer and baked-in smoke smell like any hole in the wall. Grossly cavernous
sound, which enhances the Doll’s two-person music but swirls our
five-person ensemble into a dull mush. A few girls are nice enough to
head toward the front of the stage after Will and Izzy make some joke
about the floor caving in. We sweat a bit onstage, but not nearly as much
as we do during load-out, it’s still so friggin humid and hot outside.
And, yeah, we watch the Sox playoff game during the Dresden Doll’s
set, actually going back and forth between the two. We miss Brian kicking
his drum throne and cymbal into the audience, forcing him to play the
remainder of the show erect (that means standing, you naughty people):
This coincided with Derek Jeters’ odd I’ll-slap-the-ball-out-of-your-hand-as-I-run-to-the-base
strategy that caused such commotion. (I bet Mariah Carey won’t let
him touch her after that embarrassing spectacle.) Yankees home. Go
figure how Sox win.
DAY 13---MON 10/18---Tampa, FL
What
I did today that I’ve never done before #1:
Canoed on a swamp river for four hours. The Hillsborough River is full
of gators. Saw about eight. No match for Izzy, Will, Whitney (Doll’s
merch person), Derek (Will’s nephew) and me. Photos taken with the
lo-fi camera in my cellphone will be inserted here once I upload them.
What I did today that I’ve never done before #2:
Went to one of those cheap bars that have various popular cocktails in
colored slush form in chest-level chrome refrigerated coolers like cadaver
slots in a morgue for circus clowns. And actually ordered drinks from
it. Izzy succumbed, too, and got an “Electric Shock” that
matched the blue-green color of his hair. That was after I did….
What I did today that I’ve never done before #3:
Looked for a sports bar. Or at least a bar that was playing the Red Sox
game on a large TV. This is abnormal as I usually avoid bars with Sports
TVs in them. It was under the guise of helping out Eric whose illness
prevented his involvement in our canoe adventure and is a Red Sox fan,
fair-weather or not. But really, I just wanted to watch the game. So we
watched what we could then watched the rest at home (Will’s sister’s
place). It went on for, like, thirty-five innings. Sox finally win. Now
the series is 3-2. Final two games of the playoffs are to be in New York.
Yankees go home.
DAY 12---SUN 10/17---Tampa, FL
The
Dolls and their sound man are headed on a flight to Kansas City this morning
while we take the bus down to Tampa. They’re doing a promotional
show with other acts like P.J. Harvey and Sonic Youth for some big radio
station. This is how artists, new or established, get radio stations to
play their music---they play free promotional concerts for the station.
Kind of pathetic, but that’s how desperate the record business has
become, whoring their talent away in exchange for exposure. Don’t
get me started on this one…
So we’re off to Tampa. Will’s sister and mother live here,
so we’ll stay with them for the next two days while the Dolls are
in KC and Andre (bus driver) takes the bus up to Orlando to get some more
work done on it. Our show in Tampa isn’t until Tuesday night.
Some of us head to a Starbucks to get some wireless coverage. I’ve
always been suspicious about Starbucks…I mean, we’re all aware
of their ubiquitous quality, the evil component of which was best elucidated
in that second Austin Powers movie. But I will never ever forgive them
for force-feeding America the overpriced and over-roasted coffee known
as dark, or“French” roast. I only joke about calling French
Fries "Freedom Fries," and I chafe when I see the “Iraq
First---Then France” bumper sticker on pickup trucks, but the words
“French Roast” coffee was a PR stunt that could’ve been
dreamt only by Satan himself. Let’s consider the history of the
moniker: Probably during one of the last century’s wars, when rations
forced their populace to live on less, the French figured they could use
their old stale coffee beans instead of throwing them away if they just
roasted the beans a second time. That way they would never NOT be fresh,
because it was burnt to a crisp. Then, long after the lean years of the
war, the French nostalgically yearned for the flavor of that low-quality
desperate food. I believe this is what happened with most odd culinary
developments like Caviar with the Russians, Retsina with the Greeks, Fish
Eyes with the Eskimos or snake blood with the Southeast Asians: famine
begets it, stability forgets it, and melancholy reforms it into a delicacy.
So the French learn to love the crappy burnt flavor, and Parisian tourists
take to politely referring to such a roast as “French” or
“dark” instead of “burnt.”
Starbucks loves this, because now they can call their roasts “French”
or “Double” or “Dark” and everyone thinks this
is cooler and meaner than the usual coffee. It's sheep in wolves' clothing
because, in fact, double-roasted coffee has less caffeine, and the caffeine
it has is the useless kind, which gets your heart rate pumping but doesn’t
get any more synapses firing in your brain, doesn't really wake you up
like single or light/medium roast coffee does. Not only is everyone duped,
but Starbucks can charge more for this “special” roast just
because it sounds European, and the best part is, they don’t have
to keep their beans fresh, so think of how much money they save on inventory
not having to throw un-fresh beans away, or rush them from the roasters
to maintain premium freshness---just roast them again so their so burnt
they’ll never spoil!
Okay. So I knew all that. But now I’m noticing a third disturbing
dimension: these Starbucks employees can’t stop moving. So the employees
in the last two hours I’ve been here have been walking around like
ants cleaning and dusting everything. Remember, the dark roasts don’t
make you smarter like good coffee, they just give you nervous energy.
So I now am more convinced that Starbucks is part of a grand covert government
experiment to train the urban and suburban among us into being fast-moving
but moderate-thinking robots---and the Starbuck’s ubiquitous we’re-everywhere
will only convince us that we are becoming such robots of our own free
will---because the coffee makes us feel so so so cultured and European.
Yet another fourth dimension is the Starbucks free brochure they circulated
at their counters months ago. In it they detailed how one should order
from Starbucks, replete with how to replace words like "medium"
and "large" in your lexicon with "Tall" and "Grande."
Mind Control! But again, so much more insidious because we believe we
are coming to Starbucks out of our own free will. And of course this delights
the conservative powers-that-be who champion free trade over government
regulations, because then they can fool themselves into thinking the mind-control
Starbucks is practicing is actually free-trade and not a new breed of
covert totalitarianism, and …
WE ARE SORRY TO INTERRUPT THIS MESSAGE. IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE NATION,
WE MUST ASK YOU TO CHANGE THE NAUTRE OFTHIS MESSAGE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR
ANY INCONVENVIENCE. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.---Office of the
Attorney General.
Ummm...okay...So later that night we watch the Yankees play the Red Sox
in Boston. It goes on for, like, thirty-four innings. Sox win ‘cuz
the Damn Yankees don’t go to home plate
enough!
THAT'S BETTER. ---Office of the Attorney General.
DAY 11---SAT 10/16---Atlanta, GA
Here’s some photos from the first week of the tour. None of these
really show us playing, as they were taken by Will, who when onstage is
more concerned with playing guitar than taking photos of us. I’ll
have to have a talk with him about this.
Tomato truck driving alongside us near tolls:
The row of twelve coffins, I mean bunks, in the midsection of the tour
bus, looking backwards toward the rear lounge. This is for no other reason
than to show people what the inside of tour bus looks like if they’re
curious
Great
for germ incubation, huh?
Atlanta's
fun. We first park the huge bus in a small parking lot in Little Five
Points, an arty section of Atlanta, b/c the Dolls have an in-store to
do at a record store here. (An in-store is when a band shows up at a record
store and does a set of music, usually with less equipment than at a show.)
Do some shopping here, then we head towards the club in East Atlanta,
where there’s also a little section with funky shops and the like.
Either the club or the promoter screws the information up so that there
is only enough time for the Dolls to sound check before doors open and
people trickle in. This causes us to play our set without hearing things
perfectly, and is the reason for a technical complication which costs
us about three minutes of down time between two songs, but the crowd is
the best we’ve had yet. People are hooting not only at the ends
of songs but during dramatic moments within them, and most of the people
in the club are paying attention to us. Maybe it’s just that it’s
a Saturday night, but I think we’re also beginning to play more
like the shows we headline in Boston, as opposed to the beginning of the
tour when we were trying to get a feel for ourselves in the context of
being the Dolls’ opening band. And now only Eric is sick, instead
of three of us. (Poor lad looks like death warmed over, it’s amazing
he can play his drums with any fire at all.) I missed the opening local
band before us, but Dolls kick ass as usual, pulling a few more rare songs
out of their butts tonight.
After the show we discuss how integrated these two Atlanta communities
appear to be. Blacks and whites shop and sell in stores in equal amounts,
more black kids come to rock shows, yadda yadda. In Boston, which is still
stuck with its vestigial and antiquated “neighborhood” (read:
racist) mentality where “Blacks live here, Irish live there, Italians
live here, Jews live there,” it’s notable and refreshing to
perceive a higher level of color-blindness.
And a bit embarrassing that this is the Deep South against which the abolitionists
up north successfully have claimed the high moral ground for so many years.
Damn! Another thing a city down south is better than Boston at! Yankee
go home!
DAY 10---FRI 10/15---Athens, GA
Count
Zero has over thirty-five songs in its repertoire, but only ten or so
did we determine we could do easily without Elizabeth in the band, and
those have been comprising our set list to date. We are endeavoring to
learn a few songs we had previously crossed off the list as too much work
to relearn or too aesthetically sacrificing to adapt. So this morning
I wake to train Brendon how to play Elizabeth’s keyboard parts on
the song “Bachelor #3.” (“Bachelor #3” is a satirical
mini-opera about how our current culture rewards belligerence and idiocy,
particularly in males. Amanda might eventually try and re-learn her old
vocal parts to sing it with us. More on that saucy gossip as it develops.)
While we’re slaving in music school, Will and Izzy go out and take
some pictures of the Georgia Bulldogs Homecoming Parade.
One of the floats is a Bush-Cheney float, so Will appropriately heckles
it. (I mean, c’mon, it’s a school parade, presidential politics
shouldn’t be involved.) His heckling stupefies the other spectators,
as if only a madman would oppose our current leader. Only the pirate float
towards the end commiserates with Will’s “Bush sucks”
yelps by nodding at him while raising their swords to their own throats
as if to say “We’ll slice our necks if he gets in for four
more years!”
Show is generally good, even though drummer Eric is feeling sicker than
he has yet, and no one seems to notice how our playing is more clam-filled
than a Cape Cod dragnet. The crowd stays about fifteen feet from the stage
for most of our set, except for a dozen or so people up front. But they
seem attentive, and appreciative once you count the hoots and hollers
of approval after many of our songs. I thank them.
After we play, I walk next door into Low YoYo stuff and buy all the records
I mistakenly thought the past 24 hours would sober me out of buying. I
do my best to ignore the headlining band Gogol Bordello, largely because
they arrived late and took way too long for their sound check, forcing
ours and the Dolls’ to be harried; and they were grunt-heads to
our sound guy, Joel. (Which reminds me, props out to the house sound crew
at the 40Watt, who worked in getting our complicated equipment setup patched
and wired in time for the doors to open.) Even though they are a tight
band with a strong schtick and a well-honed knack for getting a crowd
pumped, I spend most of their set pooh-poohing them backstage, with Brian
and Amanda.
DAY 9---THU 10/14---travel day to Athens, GA
The
travel time to Athens from Birmingham is only three hours. We leave at
noon and magically we don’t pull in to Athens until 8:30pm. There
are reasons: 1) it takes two hours for a wheel on the bus to be replaced
at some Dukes of Hazzard truck repair shop; 2) we hit Atlanta traffic
at rush hour; and 3) we stop for groceries outside of Athens. So much
for our day off. We’re able to spend a little of the night in Athens.
Ever since I heard R.E.M.s Chronic Town and Let’s Active’s
Afoot E.P.s back in the early 1780’s I’ve been interested
in visiting this town. We stop by to check the 40 Watt, the club at which
we’re playing tomorrow night, but a lame reggae-snooze jam band
is plopping down some tangy audio-barf so we instead investigate the tiny
but awesome record store attached next door. I mean, any place that’s
got 40 Captain Beefheart CDs is a godsend to me. The store is called “Low
Yo Yo stuff” which is in and of itself a cock-eyed Beefheart reference.
Then the sales clerk, who after seeing me browse the Beefheart, Cornelius,
XTC and Brian Wilson, intuits that I’d love to watch this newly
released DVD of Wire playing in Germany in 1979, right before “154”
(one of my favorite records of all time) was released. For a clerk to
connect-the-dots between these obscure bands is impressive and intuitive.
And although I’m somewhat flabbergasted by his hole-in-one, experience
and relative poverty have taught me to be a overly cautious shopper and
I decide to buy nothing and defer all purchases til I have a chance to
sleep on it. I just want to support this place---why aren’t there
places like this in Boston? Athens kicks Boston’s ass! Yankee go
home!
(Plus the girls here are cuter. I mean, I don’t think that, Will
does. I rename him Dr. Ogilvie because he ogles in a way that I’d
find creepy were I a girl. But I’m not a girl. Really.)
DAY
8---WED 10/13---Birmingham, AL
The Narcotic Nymphs of Morpheus let the Somnophilia I.V. drip into me
all morning.
Helped. Felt a bit better.
We were all very impressed with tonight’s venue, a newly built and
apparently partially state-subsidized arts complex that housed a theatre
called the WorkPlay Theatre. Reminds me of state-subsidized arts centers
in BeNeLux and Switzerland I encountered whilst touring there years ago.
The crowd is sitting down, which throws an odd but welcome vibe into our
set. They are polite as a whole and some are even enthusiastic. At least
underneath their stony veneer. A Birmingham fan named Patricia kindly
took some photos:
View these and others at http://fandamonium.deep-ice.com/CountZero/page_01.htm
The doors open and the show starts soon after sound check. Izzy and I
are impatient for food at the end of the night so we hoof it through the
silent streets of Birmingham. And golly, they are desolate: it’s
only midnight, but the traffic lights that mark every block down every
avenue march in time like dutiful Swiss soldiers training for combat they
know they’ll never be needed for. We end up eating at one of a few
all-night food places, just like ones you’d find in many college
towns, that survive as parasites on their post-pubescent human hosts.
Why does Boston not have places like this? Birmingham kicks Boston’s
ass on this topic!Yankee Go Home!
Day
7
Tuesday, Oct. 12th
New Orleans
Oh Lawd. Really feelin’ crummy today. Heinous Head Cold make my
eyes red and heavy like Santa’s post-supper trousers, make my nose
drip like a barnyard hose faucet.
Or like Santa’s post-coital trousers.
Izzy (bass player) is faring even worse, with a nagging nausea. Eric (drummer)
is slowly emerging from an enduring encephalo-phunk, as are Will, Amanda
and Whitney (Dolls’ merch salesperson). Brendon’s bout with
Guillain-Barre Syndrome ten months ago bequeathed him with a lifetime
supply of painfully slow flu-recovery rates, so he’s still coughing
from weeks ago. Hell, this ain’t no tour bus, it’s a mobile
infirmary, and it’s coming to your town! Roll up!
Fortunately for all other humans in a 50-mile vicinity, my illness enabled
the weather to perk up and be the first pleasant sunny and warm day we’ve
had yet on the tour. We’re a block away from Le Vieux Carre (for
you uninitiated, that’s fancy French-talk for the Freedom Quarter---it’s
what New Orleans is famous for). Guitarist Will goes to find some beignets
(the creole culture’s entry in the fried-dough-with-sugar competition)
but instead finds a stripper coming out of a gentlemans’ club on
Bourbon St. and sweet-talks her into coming to the show tonight.
Our tour bus, with its trailer full of both bands’ gear, can’t
park anywhere near the club. So we have to unload our gear out of our
trailer and into a box truck provided by the club, then out of the box
truck and into the club. And the reverse after the show. Not only does
this make double the work for our flu-soaked bones, but each of us inevitably
forget items we need to perform with from the bus, and have to walk the
fifteen blocks back to it after sound-check, past cigar-chompin’
beer-guzzlin’ Bourbon St. revelers. Most of Count Zero waddles into
a desolate Indian restaurant, primarily to ingest spicy food that we hope
will frighten the evil sickness bugs out of us. Apparently it’s
the non-ethnic ex-hippie waiter’s first day on the job tonight,
and he is nearly as greasy and salty as the food he delivers. It is the
most expensive and amongst the worst Indian food I’ve eaten, with
the green salad consisting of a plate of sliced raw onions, tomatoes and
green peppers, and the papadum being peppered with small still-crawling
bugs. Service is so slow that I am running back to the club in time for
the beginning of our set. At least the club (One-Eyed Jacks) is really
a terrific li’l hang, all red velvet, candlelight sconces and authentic
circa-1950 black velvet paintings on the wall. Perfect place for the Dolls.
A newfound convert fan named Erin, who has been to all the shows so far,
brings a couple of her San Antonio friends with her.
As I recall this city had the least enthusiastic response of all cities
during the Blue Man Group Complex tour. (I’m not alone in this assessment,
it is thought to be due to the fact that people here are used to free
music, what with free live bands playing covers nearly 24/7 in many of
the clubs lining Bourbon Street.) So I don’t expect much from this
New Orleans crowd, and any reaction they give our band I consider a bonus.
At least we didn’t accidentally offend an audience member as much
as Brian of the Dolls did by gallivanting around in a bustier. (Offended
audience members took time to write an editorial across eight lines on
the Doll's mailing list illuminating how insulting they thought Brian's
"limp-wristed mincing" in girls clothing
Day
6
Columbus Day, Oct. 11th
Travel Day to New Orleans
Feeling a bit under the weather, as is almost everyone else in our band.
I Actively Avoid Actuality to Bestow Burdensome Blame and Cowardly Copiously
Charge the Damned Dresden Dolls for Evidently Empirically Exporting the
French Freedom Flu or Grand German Germfest. As a result, I’m laying
low today til we get to New Orleans.
Be patient, by the next posting I promise we’ll have photos as well.
Day
5
Sunday Oct. 10th
Dallas, TX
I pop out of the tour bus into the Downtown Dallas hotel to take a shower
in our day room. A gaggle of red-sweatered Oklahoma Sooner fans are mulling
about the lobby. I had heard that the #2 Sooners lost to the lower-rated
Texas Rangers here in Dallas yesterday, which would’ve been welcome
news, but I’ve since established that info as false. As a native
Nebraskan, it is always delectable to hear news of any team upsetting
the Sooners, which are Huskers’ long-time rivals. Football was the
only sport I ever cared about growing up, and I only pay a attention to
it in my adult life if the Huskers are in a championship game or the Patriots
are in the Super Bowl. Then the ghost is shaken alive and I revert to
a 10-year old. Other than that, I usually have too much music to make
or work on that I can’t justify wasting hours each weekend watching
sports. Significant, this; I’ve been writing songs since I was four,
but I took a three-year sabbatical from ages 7 through 10. And that was
because I started loving football. The last song I wrote before I entered
this sabbatical at age 7 was in fact called “I Love Football.”
But enough about me, and more about Dallas. And me. Well, let’s
see…Haven’t been here since the Blue Man Group Tour played
here 8/13/03, were given the keys to the city by a mayor and filmed the
show for a DVD. Remember there being gobs of friendly non-threatening
BMG fans backstage. But now it’s an early afternoon on a Sunday,
and downtown Dallas is a bit uneventful. I walk a good distance to the
West End District to find an open café or restaurant where I can
park my laptop and spew entries in this blog. (Oh, the life of a touring
musician is soooo rugged!) Find a little restaurant with an Italian surname
and wireless hi-fi pirated from a nearby hotel and set up shop. Before
too long some yahoos enter and hijack the volume knob on the giant TV
overhead to amplify the currently playing Cowboys-Giants game so loud
it could wake a deaf armadillo. (Not saying it does, but it could.) The
pirated wi-fi signal evaporates and I let another day go by not being
able to upload my blabberings. Oh, the agony!
Our show tonight is at the Gypsy Tea Room in the Deep Ellum section of
Dallas, and it’s a fine club, a well-run establishment. We aren’t
terribly rushed and can hear ourselves onstage better than the past two
shows, so we put on a generally more vivid Count Zero performance than
the past two shows. Audience attentive but in no way rowdy, and we receive
many compliments after the show. Nice folks in Texas, gotta say, will
miss it and all its unseasonably cloudy and mild weather.
Day
4
Saturday Oct. 9
Houston, TX
I think I almost offended the waitress at breakfast this morning at the
Austin Rte. 30 IHOP because: a) I didn’t want the side of pancakes
with my omelette; and 2) I voiced my suspicions on why an item could be
referred to as “international” on the menu if the most exotic
ingredient it contained was salsa. As I was muttering this I remembered
that IHOP stood for International House of Pancakes, and being that the
structure we were in didn’t in the least way resemble a House, I
deduced they really had to emphasize what they could of the International
and Pancake aspect of their moniker. She shrugged my observation off and
in fact countered with quips were far wittier than mine. Plus, she was
a very attentive waitress at one of the busiest hours in the work week,
the food came within three minutes after ordering, the coffee was endless.
The place is run with the efficiency of an ant colony! IHOPs will soon
rule the world! Pancakes for all nations!
Stopped at a Wal-Mart. I have heretofore never set foot in a Wal-Mart…there
just really aren’t any in Boston. Plus some articles I’ve
read about how they exploit their underpriviliged employees and have an
outdated male-centric management structure have left me less than eager
to support the mega-behemoth. Not to mention how huge chains like that
are obliterating mom-and-pop businesses nationwide and thus helping to
further homogenize our already flavor-free society. Nonetheless, it’s
where our weary bus driver is stopping for some bus supplies and I don’t
think he’s in the mood for any “boycott Wal-Mart” rant,
so I find the few sundries I needed, and buy a bike for $53. Yes, a bike.
This may seem strange, but so often when you pull into a town and park
the bus at a hotel you’re kind of “land-locked” there,
and a bike is a healthy and frugal alternative to the cab in any city
in the nation (save Manhattan). Plus we had room in our huge trailer to
stow it. At tour’s end, I’ll just paint the words “Lance
Armstrong’s Zoom Zoom Express” all over it and sell it on
eBay for 1000% profit. I am so shrewd.
At the show tonight it becomes evident how fruitfully the Dresden Dolls
have mined an estimable younger audience. With the exception of Blue Man
Group and other theatrical productions, I don’t often perform in
front of people under 21. I certainly don’t write Count Zero’s
music with a teenage audience in mind. But the good side is that the li’l
whippersnappers are a bit less jaded than older folks. I think I should
also quantify this observation by emphasizing that the Dresden Doll’s
crowd is not your average boy-band loving teeny-boppers. So even though
it feels like some stuff may be over the heads of young’uns, the
audiences have been attentive if not enthusiastic. Hell, we’re just
one of those bands whose music is an acquired taste and is often tough
to swallow on first listen by adults, not to mention kids.
Note to self: Completely overhaul the overall musical direction of your
songwriting so all your music is generic and predictable. Eradicate any
elements of your music that may expose complexities about your personality.
Note to self: Ignore notes to self.
Day
3
Friday Oct. 8
Austin TX
We meet up with Amanda and Brian of the Dresden Dolls who flew in last
night recently returning from a European tour. Amanda presents me with
a label from a Belgian orange juice carton as a gift. See, when Amanda
was Count Zero’s keyboardist two years ago she asked me why the
indie record company we founded was named SineAppleSap Records, and I
explained it was a bastardization of Sinaasappelsap, which is Dutch/Flemish
for Orange juice. Most likely I detailed its myriad entendres to her ad
infinitum. Sounds like a lame gift, I know, but it’s the thought
that counts.
After we get them situated, most of our Count Zero’s members grab
a cab to a music store to purchase last minute accessories. The cab driver,
frocked in red white and blue suspenders, proudly informs us his name
is Tiny. He notes our strange colored hair and asks if we’re all
in a band, “Yeah.” Apparently our affirmative response is
the green light for him spark up a joint. “Not from round here,
are ya?” “Nope. Boston.” “Rhymes with Austin.
There’s a song in there. (slight pause while he takes a hit of his
joint) Y’all want a hit? This is Mexican weed. Betcha can’t
get that up there in Boston.” “No.” “Where does
the weed up there come from?” Canada.” “Canada?!! Ahh,
God! That sounds awful! How can they grow it up there? Too cold, ain’t
it?” “No, no, they use greenhouses.” “Oh. (slight
pause) They must have thermostats.” Stumped for a tactful response
to that last comment, we see we’re already at the mall and fork
over the $45 for the cab and leave stoned Tiny to ride his yellow horse
into the grey Austin afternoon. After load-in, I notice the air in the
club is stale (for a bar?? with troughs for urinals in the men’s
room?? Naaah!) so I walk outside to find a drugstore. Gathering in the
leaves of tress on one block of Sixth Street is a choir of probably 2-300
birds, no joke. From what I could discern, they were ravens, but there
was so little light and I’m no ornithologist, so they could’ve
been ducks for all I know… yeah, well, probably not ducks. What
a striking sound. And oh, the red-brick sidewalk is nearly white from
toxic bird-poop!
Our show tonight is part of a multi-club festival as as such tonight is
not so much a Dresden Dolls/ Count Zero show. Feels more like some local
radio station is trying to cash in on the success of the South By Southwest
Festival (SXSW is an indie-music industry “convention” of
sorts that Austin is famous for). As a result we’re rushed to set
up our gear, rushed to line check and rushed to play our set, playing
five songs of the ten we’ve prepared before we’re obligated
to turn the stage over to the Dresden Dolls. They proceed to blow everyone’s
pants off, including ours, and we console ourselves with the reminder
that their superiority is due at least in part to the fact that they have
been performing on tour nearly every day for the past two years, and this
is really our first live show as a five piece. See, we’re compensating
for a missing member; our crack keyboardist Elizabeth was unable to join
us on this tour due to employment obligations. It’s actually a miracle
we’re doing this tour at all, really, being that we were given not
much more than two weeks to prepare. But the Dolls have a good following,
similar musical inspirations and are friends so it seems like this tour
will be good match for both bands.
Day
2
Thursday, Oct. 7
U.S. 70
Boring driving day. Finally locate a trailer in Baltimore that will work
at least for the time being, and we re-load gear from the bus into it
and head West. Should be in Austin early tomorrow.
Day 1
Wednesday, Oct. 6
Hello Day One of tour. Let the games begin.
On 10/05/04, a tour bus occupied by one rented bus driver leaves Philadelphia
for Boston. He has been instructed to rendezvous with members of the two
Boston rock bands he is to transport across North America for the coming
six weeks at a parking lot at a Boston Staples at 7 pm. The bands are
the Dresden Dolls and Count Zero. The 7 pm arrival time gets later and
later as he's delayed in Queens trying to pickup a trailer intended to
tow all the bands’ equipment. The fellow at the trailer place rents
him a crappy trailer that Driver quickly ascertains will be successful
not at transporting our gear across our fine nation’s highways as
much as tossing it or exploding it across said highways. Trailer Rente's
motivation in setting up Driver with insufficient equipment is his eagerness
to leave his trailer-rental job to get to the Yankees game, starting in
minutes. Driver is forced to leave trailer rental place with no trailer
and only the consolation to pick a better one up somewhere the following
day as the bus heads back south from Boston towards its eventual destination
of Austin, TX. So not only were the Bostonians (that’s us) left
with no trailer in tow for our gear but we were also left with yet another
reason to resent those damn Yankees.
We unload our equipment and wait with it in the chilly and symbolism-rich
black asphalt parking lot with Brian from the Dresden Dolls to help us
load. (Amanda, the other half of the Dolls, can't make it as she's so
sick from the European tour they just returned from that she’s coughing
blood. I’d blame France were it still fashionable to do so.) It's
midnight as the bus shows up, and some mysterious and obviously evil timer
shuts the parking lot lights off right as he pulls in. So we load in utter
darkness. Without a trailer, we haul all the gear that can't fit into
the bus' limited storage bays into the back lounge and unused bunks of
this tour bus. We hope this little incident doesn't prove to be auspicious.
The Yankees lost their game, btw. Reverse the curse.