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Whenever I hit the road, I write what I call my "dispatches"--
usually wandering accounts of my life on the road which
I send tomy family and friends in an effort to assuage
my guilt over my extended absences, as well as to let
them know what I'm up to.
This is an excerpt from a national US tour which I
did last summer on a smaller-venue tour as the drum
tech in charge of a 9' x 9' riser crammed with a pretty
elaborate set-up including electronic and acoustic drums,
two huge racks of myriad effects and its own monitor
system...
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Two days off in New York City-- that never happens. Usually,
it's in somewhere like Albuquerque, where I am now, typing
this at 4 am. I'm definitely on rock time now up until 5 am,
sleep a couple of fitful hours, wake, read, doze off again,
get up in time for load-in. It works most days, but on days
off it sucks. Today, we got to the hotel around 2 pm, which
feels more like 9 am or so. Swam in the pool, then lazed around
in a deck chair, finishing my book in the New Mexico heat.
I have fire-engine red hair, tattoos, fish-belly white skin
and many bruises and scrapes, including a black eye (more
on that later). Needless to say, the tanned and respectable
mothers were eyeing me uneasily. By the time we actually got
out of the hotel for a meal at what felt like a respectable
time to start the day, everything was closed. Of course.
Anyway, back to New York. We stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel
in Tribeca. It was beautiful coming in on the 95 from New
Jersey, dead of night and pouring rain with lightning. Our
bus driver, John is a very laconic man of few words, and it
was just me standing in the front of the bus with him, quietly
watching the approach of the twin towers like watching a stalker
emerge from the mist. There is something infinitely more satisfying
about creeping up on the city, letting it permeate your reality
slowly, instead of the slam-bang of an airport approach, after
which the time you spend there doesn't seem to quite soak
in the always-limited time one has there. That city eats time
for breakfast.
Since our driver wasn't too familiar with Manhattan, I guided
our bus straight to the hotel with out a glitch, it being
right in my old neighborhood. We got there at about 4 am,
checked in. My own room, with crisp white sheets on the bed!
Joy! Small but clean rooms, with a crap view of a light well
and a brick wall. When I awoke the next day at 1 PM, the room
was still immersed in a heavy gloom. I collected the bits
of the band that I could find and herded them all to the Square
Diner for a proper NYC Greek diner breakfast (our sound guy
definitely has to have his daily fix of pancakes!). Afterwards,
I led a shopping tour to the East Village, including stops
on Broadway and St Mark's Place for fresh infusions of rock
clothes (for them, not me!!) I'm the closest thing to a local
that those guys had, so my knowledge of all things NYC was
worked. Actually, I walked the feet off most of them sissy
wimps; we walked for about 6 hours straight, from Tribeca,
through SoHo, the East Village, down the East River Park,
back through the Lower East Side to the East Village again.
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holy crow, how time flies.
It's now a week after the last show in Anaheim. I am actually
finishing this up at my dad's house, partially for all of
you, but mostly so I can get down what I remember before it
all disappears into the haze. So we had two days off in NYC,
the first described above, the second mostly spent (for me,
at least) on the back of Sandra's motorcycle, then the evening
with my friend Roz. She and her husband, Harris, just bought
a place in upstate New York (Woodstock area), and asked if
I wanted to live there and help renovate it. That would be
a nice dream-- work some more in the analogue world and watch
the leaves change.
The NYC show at a certain infamous nightclub on 6th Ave was
a mess. The PA was nearly nonexistent and the promoter was
a sleazy notorious local who put his wife's "band"
on the bill as an opening act. Whatever. It was a talentless
group of "dominatrixes" who performed to a lame
keyboard accompaniment. BORING!!! The show, because of technical
difficulties, was 2 1/2 hours late, and fraught with technical
problems. As the stage manager (on top of being the drum tech),
I needed to get things moving. So, what might you do with
a bunch of silly girls dressing up in bad-ass mommy's clothes?
SCREAM AT THEM-- let's see how tough these ladies are! "HEY!
GET YOUR ASSES DOWN HERE, FRONT-AND-CENTER, RIGHT NOW!!!)
What could be better than, for the rest of the night, having
those whip-slinging, squeezed-into- leather dominatrices "yes
pleasing" and "so-very-sorry" -ing for the
rest of the evening. After all, I pulled a stretch in a NYC
dungeon myself. Ha.
No one had a good show. And then we lost money from the sleazebag
promoter to boot, who was trying to pin various contract-breakers
on us. On top of that, he tried to pick a fight with me, of
all things, after he was good and stinking drunk during load-out.
"I'm more of a man than you are!" "Well,"
I answered. "You're probably right about that one."
"And I have more hair than you!" (Huh?) "I
guess you're right on that point, too," I replied. "But
I can tell you one thing." "Whazzat?" he slurred
back. I winked and said, "Your zipper is down farther
than mine." It was, too. He almost fell on his face trying
to check the status of his fly, cursing muddily under his
breath. What a loser.
It didn't get much better in Boston. The club we were booked
in hadn't done a live show in two years, and seemed ill-prepared
for one yet. Still, we crammed the gear on and commenced.
During the show, I saw a guy with a bad leg and a cane standing
off the side of the stage in an area that was technically
off-limits. I told him that he could stand there as long as
he was cool. I told the single security guard the same-- "...after
all, what's a cripple going to do." Little did I know.
About halfway through, he suddenly jackrabbited across the
back of the stage, behind the drum riser and the video wall.
Didn't really look like he needed that cane after all. I started
after him, but he vanished off the other side of the stage
and back into the crowd before I could do anything. Whoa.
Oh, well. But then, a few minutes later, he showed up again,
this time with what looked like his girlfriend. I told him
no way, get lost. He came closer, until I could see the dead
flat look of a blind drunk in his eyes. Great. I told him
to clear off; he responded by reaching out and grabbing a
chunk of flesh over my rib cage, out of view of the security
guard, who was slowly loping over. I calmly looked at the
guy and asked, "Do you want to get the hell out of my
face, or do you want to be ejected from this club?" He
grabbed harder and twisted tighter. "I see." I answered.
I gripped his wrist in a hold from my Hap Ki Do days and wrenched
his arm up, pushing him backwards at the same time. Satisfyingly,
he fell down a short flight of stairs off the side of the
stage, right onto the inept security guard, squashing him
flat. Goat rodeo! Most of me stood there, agape, thinking
"How cool was that? It worked! Hap Ki Do in action!"
But then he lumbered up and tried to come at me again. I screamed
at his girlfriend to get him the hell out of there, to which
she responded with a dull, stupid, uncomprehending look. Grr.
So I get the guy in a headlock and drag him bodily over to
Wayne, the head of security, yelling "GET THIS DICKHEAD
OUT OF THIS CLUB! PERMANENTLY!!!" Thankfully, Wayne had
the situation under control and dragged him the rest of the
way out.
Then DC. Another night of frenzy. This time, it was club
employees (and about 50 of their friends) who all had these
purple laminates issued by the club that claimed "All
Access," allowing them to swarm like ants over everything.
Including the stage during the show-- unacceptable, as they
were stepping on power distro boxes, sound junction boxes,
and extensive cabling for about $50,000 worth of gear. I had
to put a big case lid up as a barricade on my side of the
stage to actually keep them out, which they got huffy about.
They mowed through all of the hospitality in the dressing
room like a marauding herd of wildebeests and continually
pestered the band with unwanted attention. Nightmare. I kept
asking the head of security, who was a flame-haired matron,
to please control her crew; she responded by calling me a
bitch. Great. And the punchline was a load-in/load-out through
a 23" wide door, which meant that we had to dump all
of the trunks and half of the cases on the sidewalk of the
club, then hand-carry it all in. In DC, where every neighborhood
is bad.
I was completely overjoyed to get to the Masquerade in Atlanta,
even if their venue is on the top floor of an old granary
and the load-in is basically a death-trap-- a piece of the
floor drops down on a cable/winch setup, enclosed by rickety
battered plywood. They do, however, have a fairly pro crew
who know the drill. Yay.
This looks like it's actually going to drag out into a fourth
dispatch. Anyone getting bored yet? Wait, I haven't told you
about the black eye yet!
love,
p
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