Sunday, July 1, 2012
Thong #2
I'm a Little Country - He's a Little Rock
Quotes:
“Rene must have decided to drop the kids off at the pool.” -
Chuck after Rene had been gone awhile at a pit stop
“When you sleep on a bus you have to make sure your feet are
facing forward or you could snap your neck if the bus brakes
hard.” The Connells to Chuck back in the day.
“I love the smell of my hat” Me, when I was covering my face
in mortification.
“Smells like a Halloween mask” Chuck (both sung Broadway
style)
“Is he driving the bus when you get one?” - Maestro mocking
Joe when we ran into a little confusion parking the van at the club
“Snap Snappy!” - Turtle (one of the Gator Boys on a very
late night reality show featuring idiots who run an animal removal company I
guess) He was explaining why he prefers to use his hands when capturing skunks
as opposed to the more conventional humane traps. (they’re undependable and
they break) They also took a bath in bleach water and got a cow out of a hole
using a backhoe.
Fauna: Not a damn thing
Our next show was to be in Little Rock. Lisa played a
selection of Texas songs as we drove north from Dallas. Joe sang a lovely version of
Texarkana by REM, (20,000 miles to an oasis) which upon reflection seems to
have been a non-fiction account, as we drove on through to the Arkansas border.
And just like that our time in Texas was done.
This show had a little extra weight attached to it. Little
Rock was the site of the only time Wussy ever left the stage in anger and
protest. After a whopping two songs last March. Not a good night, so we were hoping to
make up for that and get right with Little Rock. We were playing Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack and as
we pulled in to the back parking lot an energetic middle-aged man was waiting
there for us. He immediately began giving Joe directions as to where he should
park. For the next five minutes a comedy of miscommunication and errors resulted
in the man now known as Maestro declaiming, “You gonna let him drive the bus
when you get one? “ (Joe’s an excellent driver btw.)
Almost all of our memories of this evening are tied up with
Maestro. I feel inadequate to express the force of nature that was his energy
and personality. I’m just going to start by bringing up the cliché of how
anyone doing pretty much any work really really well is indistinguishable from
art. Now I used to do live sound for my job when I was younger. I started out
in bars and after I realized it sucked I moved to corporate type gigs. For
instance I used to do a lot of management seminars by the Seven Habits guy and
that other one, you know the One Minute to Manage To Move Your Cheese guy. Anyway, in
the corporate sounds gigs it was always quite obvious that the person on stage
was our client. In rock clubs most of the time if there is any perceived client at all it is usually the club, not the band. Rock sound people have a reputation for
being churlish and I understand why. When I was doing sound I would try to be
pleasant and I realized that a lot of bands looked at that with suspicion. As
if being chipper somehow meant you were weak or trying to cover up inadequacies
in your sound skills. Plus, bands are a pain in the ass, this one included.
Deal with three or four bands a night and after awhile you just want them to
turn their damn amps down, (they wont) get on and off stage with some alacrity,
(maybe) and stop expecting miracles from the monitors. Add in the fact that
most bands suck, think they don’t and use their gig nights to regress back to 9th
grade then I get the surliness. Now Maestro (that’s what he goes by) is a
veteran of several decades in the trenches, came from Cleveland and broke into
the business up there. Stickyz is a great club with pro sound and good
lighting. They get national acts and have their shit together. Everyone was
nice without being overly friendly. (except the bartender who wouldn’t serve me
– damn douche lick) Like I said about the previous night, it’s easy to be good
when everything is going well. So we had no excuse and we played a really good
show I think. But Maestro was among the best I’ve ever seen. Yeah he was good with
mixing; he’s supposed to be and he was. We had absolutely anything we wanted in
the monitors. But he also told hilarious stories with lots of swearing, drank Jagermeister
while swearing he wasn’t a drunk, and in general acted like a character. At all
times he made it clear that we were his main priority and without being
obsequious made sure we were in the best place and position to play a good
show. And this was after he had worked for nine nights straight. (“eh, it’s
what I do.”) How did he do this? Little things like saying, “ You just sit
there and we’ll sound check after you eat. I don’t want us to get started and
have your food come and then you got to eat cold food.” Or just observing
Lisa’s body language and two songs in saying over the monitors, “Are you sure
you have enough vocals in the monitors?” Running up to the stage to make sure I
was good after I asked for more bass but forgot to give the OK sign. We were in
a good mood, comfortable and confident it was going to be a good show. That’s
what this overlong paragraph comes down to. It was a pleasure to watch a master
at work.
And for the only two funny things I can recall Maestro saying.
(they came so fast and furious I couldn’t keep up) He walked by us as we were
eating and says dumping a bag of Skittles in his mouth, “This is what they give
a black man to eat in Arkansas.” (He sat down to a full meal a few minutes
later) He told a five minute story about the bass player from the Stray Cats.
It went something like this: “ Well now you remember that dude had that big
bass with the cat on it? The one he would stand on? Well it’s got gold all
around at the edge on the top too, and you know what? That bass flies to every
show. Hell yes, we had to go to the airport and pick it up. It got here before
he did. Well I put it up onstage and placed bouncers around it because everyone
wanted to open the case and look at it. No way was I gonna let that bass get fucked
up. Anyway, when the guy finally gets here I figure I’ll play a little Brian
Seltzer (that's how he said it) Orchestra to be nice and some guy comes running up telling me to turn
that shit off because the bass guy was turning green he was so pissed. Turns
out he’s not really happy with getting left behind for the orchestra shit.
Anyway, I was like Maestro you fucked up now. I knew I was gonna have to be on
point mixing that night. So when he got onstage I was all like see how good it
is? And after awhile he was all right. ‘Course then we had to take that damn
bass back to the airport the next day.” There are more stories and if they
occur to me in coherent form I’ll post them.
Anyway, it was hot as fuck, as apparently was the rest of
the country, but I went on my walkabout as per usual. I’m very aware that I’ve
been judging towns on merely a tiny slice, but who cares, it’s just a blog. So
the slice of Little Rock I saw was great. Nice, neat little town. I came across
a miniature White House that was the original some fucking important thing that
I can’t remember because it’s been a long tour and I drink, but regardless it
was cool. I walked back to the
club along a wonderful river walk trail that now makes every city but
Cincinnati one that realizes what a resource a major river is and dedicates it
to the citizens, as opposed to the pathetic local major sports franchises.
Along the river behind the convention center was an amazing sculpture garden.
In the way that one does not get enough fresh fruit and vegetables on tour
there is a similar lack of edifying art. I’m not going to get into it, let’s
just say I felt a lightening of my spirit to walk at twilight in view of the
Arkansas River, by myself looking at some wicked cool sculpture. (I’ll include
a picture so you don’t think I’ve gone soft) After that I came across the
Little Rock equivalent of the Purple People Bridge. (a bridge converted for
pedestrian use over a major river) Even though I was sweating bullets in my
wicked cool skinny jeans ironic moustache rock star duds I went out to the
middle of the river, and found out where Little Rock puts its homeless people.
They were all there, but it was a wonderful, slightly homesick view as the Arkansas
bares more than a passing resemblance to the Ohio. (According to Joe this
because they’re both RIVERS – to which I replied with the weight and gravity of
Churchill addressing the British population after a particularly brutal blitz,
“Oh fuck off.”)
I guess that’s it. The opening band, other than the
egregious foul of wearing flip-flops onstage, was the first band of the tour
that I sat and listened to the whole set. They were called Swampbird and played
Drive By Truckers style alt. country in a way that few do well any more. Good
guys too.
It’s funny how life works. In the small unimportant world of
a small unimportant Midwestern rock band, this night was exactly what we needed
to revive ourselves after our
collapse in Dallas.
Tomorrow is Nashville.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Dallas Death and Disappointment
Quotes:
“Starbucks, Tampons, and Conspiracy.” Chuck summarizing the
various band members needs that will be met by Dallas
“(insert rude sound) Fazoli’s!!” John from inside the stall
at a Fazoli’s. You could hear Chuck laughing throughout the whole restaurant.
Fauna: I will continue to hope, but I’m guessing that fauna
is going to be hard to come by from here on out.
Nice quiet start to the day; paid bills, folded clothes,
filed band receipts, ate lunch with my friends, and had some good dog time
before the band picked me up to head on to Dallas. The van was eerily silent
and I realized they hadn’t gotten to have a break from each other. Still
everyone was doing OK.
Rene really wanted to see the assassination site, so before
we went to the club we travelled through Dealey Plaza. It went by so fast I
couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I said I was going to have to walk back and
look at it more closely and everyone in the van said, “Why? We just did
it.” So we made our way to the
club, were scolded by valet parking dudes because we were encroaching on their
area by about two feet, backed up, parked over a sewer grate and were assaulted
by the smell of corpses rotting. Loaded in up two flights of stairs at a club
called City Tavern, which was right next to a velvet rope club called Plush.
Plush was the kind of club that had a man wearing a tuxedo standing inside a
door with no windows and horrible faux fuck if I know statues of women with
bared breasts and no nipples. Between that club and the sidewalk patio of the
Tavern there were at any given time 20-30 people willfully ignoring, actively
enjoying, and tenaciously pursuing their Snookie inspired lifestyles and
cigarettes completely encased in the smell of slaughterhouses in August.
I was anxious and crawling out of my skin so I started
walking. Dallas is a very clean, new looking city. It had that open feel that
I’ve seen so much in these western cities, which were obviously built with an
infinite sense of space. I know Dallas has been around a long time because I
stumbled across what is presumably a replica of the first post office that
marked the beginning of Dallas, but it really looked like everything was less
than 20 years old. I came across a decent cemetery and a herd of bronze life-sized
long horn cattle before I made it to the Kennedy Memorial. It’s emotional
impact lay somewhere between the Vietnam Memorial and a youtube video of a
kitten playing with a crab on the beach. In other words I get what they were going for and I
think their intention was good, but in the end it’s just a big box with a black
slab inside it bearing J.F.K.’s name. I laid down on the slab to take a picture
pointed at the sky in an attempt to capture the stated intent of the artist in
creating a quiet place inside the city. It didn’t work but as I was sitting up
I heard a loud, friendly voice cackling, “Ah ha ha ha, I’ve seen a lot of
pictures here but I’ve never seen someone try that!” (It’s possible he was shining
me on) It was a surprise because Dallas at that hour on that street was essentially a ghost
town. A homeless man came ambling up to me like a sage in a poorly written
movie about to dispense wisdom and crystallize the solution to a problem so obvious the audience
had known it for an hour, however he just wanted to take me on a tour of the
assassination. I thanked him and told him honestly the reason I was walking was
to be alone. He was cool with that, I gave him a few bucks, and continued on. I
walked past the old courthouse and found myself in Dealey Square. I will
confess now that I am not a scholar of the assassination. I’ve seen the same
famous pictures everyone else has, but talk of conspiracies has a negative impact
on me; like reversed polarity magnets. An argument could be made that people
who believe in conspiracies are optimists because they believe humans are far
more intelligent than I do, albeit evil and conniving. To pull off
most conspiracies requires a cleverness and dedication, not to mention ability
to go to the grave carrying a secret of unacknowledged success than I think is
typical in most human endeavors. You know what Benjamin Franklin said, “Three
people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead.” That said, I am also
in awe of mankind’s innate curiosity and ability to peel back at least some of
the mysteries of the universe. I believe that a lot of the hard things we do
comes from an inherited shame that we do not live up to our better angels, and
that it is our deepest inclination to be generous and kind. Or as Joe Henry put it, “God only knows
that we mean well, and God knows that we just don’t know how.”
To get back to Dealey Square, I kept turning around in circles
confused. I couldn’t square the reality with the pictures. Even after sunset on
a Wednesday night the area was a hive of activity. I saw a group over by what I
assumed was the grassy knoll and went over and eavesdropped as an unofficial
tour guide was holding court. I finally figured out which building was the
depository and which window the shots came from. I stood in the street and
could take in the entire tableau. I figured out what was throwing me.
Everything was so much smaller and closer together than what I thought. From
the square across the street, to the knoll and on over to the depository seems
like it could fit in maybe a football field and a half. The shot from the
window is completely make-able. The Clock Tower shootings were from much
farther away. You could throw a damn rock from the knoll and hit the motorcade.
Guns are loud, I don’t see how someone could have fired a rifle from the there
and not had it be completely obvious. Regardless, as I stood in the street I
had the same overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness that I felt at the
Clocktower; of lives changed and cut-off, of pain and mourning. In the way that
alcoholism or abuse can echo through a family for generations after the fact, I
feel like these places of violence still send out ripples and that is why, more
than just morbid curiosity, people are attracted to them and grow silent in
their presence.
As I was standing there another hale, hearty, homeless voice
called out to me, but this time rolling without pause into what really
happened. He wanted to show me where a bullet had hit but I asked if he could
just point out stuff from where we stood. He talked about the changed route,
pointed out where the other shooters were and about the missing network
footage. After a particular point I said, ”Yeah, but the depository window had
the best angle.” He said, “Yeah, you got it! You right.” Then he gave me a high
five. I paid him and walked for awhile longer before getting back to the club.
And that’s when the wheels came off. From our first note on
stage nothing was right. It’s easy to be a good band when you’re well-rested,
you can hear everything, and the audience is adoring. A band makes its bones
when faced with adversity and still puts on a good show. In the end we just didn’t do our jobs
and let down the people who’d waited a long time to see us. It’s not the end of
the world, but still I feel embarrassed. The feeling is that maybe it kind of
shook us up and now we’ll finish the tour strong as opposed to limping home.
Here’s hoping.
Tomorrow is Little Rock, another place we have a little
making up to do.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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