excess bloggage

DEAR (TOUR) DIARY - Part 1 by Kyle Page Schaefer Mar 1: All Roads Lead to Crown Point (1) We hit the Walsh house today, welcome to middle America. Gentleman Jim (a.k.a diamond Jim, a.k.a Dr. Insector) has saved our asses and picked up the last few crucial ingredients for this undertaking, namely: A drum kit, a backline and somebody to drive the damn van until I can get myself on the insurance. His parents (His dad is also a Jim) have likewise supplied: Christian hospitality, an avalanche of food and enough homespun good-will to choke a communist donkey. They have something like seven bathrooms -which is good because international flights always make me shit weird -sort of stuttered bursts of dense matter packed in loose gaseous pockets -like my digestive system just hiccoughed across the whole of Siberia. We've only got one of the bands, but it looks like we'll be able to pick Rebuilding up in Chicago at the latest. Fuck it, one band will do. We let LCD look over the their new equipment (it was like watching a Christmas morning video of Chinese orphans getting guitars and amps on repeat, rewind and fast forward) and then told them to repack everything that could be left behind. I don't know how the fuck we are going to fit this all in the van. We'll be using the Walsh house as a sort of rebel outpost for supplies and food cooked in crock-pots, but I’m ready to hurry up and get this thing over with. As per the embassy’s advice, Matt is keeping all of our documents and tickets (and money) in one black bag, we’ve been calling it the Jack Bauer bag, and I’m seriously thinking about finding a pair of handcuffs and locking it to Kagler’s body. If we lose that bag we’re fucked. Actually, I don’t give a shit about the Chinese dudes, they’d probably be stoked to be washing dishes for minimum wage, but if we lose that bag: I cannot go home. Mar 2: Des Moines: The Kansas City of The Future Made it to Des Moines. In a Blizzard. Flipped over cars littered the last 22 miles. Kagler marched down the miles in inexact Chinese. shi qi! (17) shi liu! (16) White knuckled and silent, the rest of us strapped ourselves in and waited for the inevitable sliding that would mean we are about to be buried in a 14ft drift of loose snow. Somehow that didn't happen. We're holed up in a cafe waiting for load in of our first show. I explained to the LCD that: no, it's not an Irish pub. And where did you learn that phrase? We bought them black bean chili and they sort of just pushed it around in their bowls. We are already encroaching on the kindness of strangers. I can barely mutter a strangled grunt. It means 'thanks', I tell them, 'in Chinese'. Des Moines is an island in an ocean of white death. North and westbound interstates were closed already; they closed the eastbound road we were on shortly after we made it in to the city. As near as I can tell we are trapped. Mar 3: Everyone and Everything is White The Des Moines show was in the middle of a blizzard. The city shut down and most of the bands cancelled except for some high school kids who were supposed to open-open the show. Their parents showed up in support and so did their high school girlfriends -with glowsticks. I thought they had potential, but it is merely that -something untapped: Double drums over keyboards, three clashing danceable rhythms all being played at the same time but absolutely refusing to merge into a unified whole. They wore silly costumes and I just bet they all smell like the hand soap from their mother's bathroom. I should have asked her, or smelled her at least while she stood in the back vainly bobbing her frizzy hair. Imagine three excited teenagers jizzing out of time to a crowd of milk-fed Midwesterners. A lifetime of growth hormones at every meal has insured their weight mass and velocity. I am already inclined to wonder how I would fit them in the van. I basically do this with everything now: Luggage, merch, mailboxes, 1/2 husky 1/2 lab puppies, phone booths. Whatever. All I Know is we are trapped in a sea of corn fed monsters. If everybody would shut up for a second I could think about what I was thinking about. Shut up shut up shut up. I haven't been left alone to have two seconds to think since we left Beijing. I am constantly pulled away from anything requiring concentration to translate some ephemera (Jim likes to talk to the band about music in an abstract sense and they have no idea what he's going on about. Matt wants approval of every decision he makes (I could never spell that word). All day I navigate. The band sleeps while we drive mostly. The LCD boys are adorable. Like children. Like Pets. They ask me a thousand questions, mostly procedural. We spent a good ten minutes today at Taco Bell figuring out the drink machine. Yes, I say, you can have as much as you want. This one? It's root beer, just try it. It's okay you can try them all. No, if you don't like it –pour it out and get some more. No, you can't take the cup with you, what that one? It's cherry Pepsi. They woke me up this morning to find out if they needed their passports to get lotion at the supermarket. They were worried the police would stop them and demand papers if we didn't accompany them. What did they want lotion for, I wonder. Iowa was a death trap, but we've escaped, we stopped counting the flipped-over cars at 100 and we were still within a quick turnaround of the city. We are in St. Paul now. I have about six or seven aunts and uncles I could call locally. Somehow I don't have the energy. It’s six and we will be in this bar until two in the morning. Tomorrow we will do it again. The reality of seeing a rock show every night is beginning to appall me. Rebuilding are flying in here tonight. We think they will be able to play, and we don't give a fuck how tired they are. Mar 4: Wait, You’re in a Band!? Morning in St. Paul. Everything is snow blind and I think I have to pick icicles from the comers of my eyes. The eagle has landed. After countless mishaps and a night in the Chicago airport Rebuilding is here. I forgot how strangely polite Hua Dong is. I asked about the airport and he said it was very good, they got to stay at an 'American 5 star hotel', he tells me. I asked him which one and he said, 'the Comfort Inn", rolling the alien sounds off of his tongue. The fucking guys at Turf Club felt bad for us because three of the four bands had cancelled. He gave us fucking thirty-two drink tickets. Jesus, it looked like when we figured out how to jimmy the skeet-ball machines at chucky-cheese when I was a kid, except instead of turning it in for finger puppets (fuck you, they were cool) and snap-bracelets, I got drinks. Some drunk tried to hand Deng Pei a dollar bill and the bouncers pile-drived him into a snow bank. After that I started getting the girliest drinks I could get them to make me. Like paper umbrellas and shit. I am not hard and I realized can't be an asshole all the time in a country where everybody out-masses me. Kagler looked miserable this morning, and I always feel like skinny crap, but LCD seems chipper. They played a great show and they know it. I gathered them together this morning and explained that they don't have to worry about taking a shower, or washing their hair, but they've got to wash their dicks. Everyday. They took this news with a sort of monk-like solemnity, as if I had just told them today was a holy day and we had to only eat Tofu. We are now a well-oiled machine despite our three new parts. We rolled Kagler out of bed and then dug the van out of a snow bank. Took all seven of us to get it moving. Grabbed rebuilding at the airport and hit the road. Mar 5: Mysteries of Bullfighting Explained In Madison they plow every street, and for that we thank them. It's weird how many capital cities we're going to and I wonder if the bands think that every city in America has some domed building as its focal point, I wonder if they think it's some sort of temple to the mysterious gods of America, like Jesus and the flying one that has heat ray vision. I don't ask the bands what they think, and I'm tired of Americans asking me what the bands think. Americans now strike me as pathetically eager to impress visitors. America!, they seem to say, Just try it -you'll love it, as if the whole world was just a few hesitant bites away from consisting entirely on hotdogs and coca cola. Maybe that's true, but I don't think the boys have been so impressed with our roadside fare. Everybody is spending more and more time in the bathroom. I don't think we can take them to Taco Bell anymore. This is a big country, I always forget that. The Pets seem confused as we drive across this American moonscape: Where are the people? The trees? The houses? I spend most of each day starring out the window, and every song is about my girlfriend. The show was in this big sterile club downtown and they had some local metal band opening for us. I went outside and sat by the heat lamps and smoked. You can't smoke anywhere in America anymore. The bands are confused, "It's cold," they say "why can't we just smoke here"? So I tell them it's because the terrorists have already won. I'm a miserable translator, but I enjoying lying. I'm sitting in my best friends house. He lives here in Madison and I have invaded him with an army of chain-smoking Chinese people and the rest of our team. The bands seem really freaked out by his place -which looks like it should be used to shoot kiddie porn. There are sheets over the windows and a soiled mattress on the floor, heaps of old love letters he bought at second hand stores and other relics of his curious obsessions. Luckily one of them is playing the ukulele. He has collected a whole pile of them and the band is now happily jamming with these tiny, tiny guitars. Our first night with both bands and a friend I haven't seen in years and I just want to go to bed. Mar 6: All Roads Lead to Crown Point (2) Chicago is a city of tiny, tiny street signs. My ear hurts from where my best friend stuck his finger in it. Also my nose. I haven't slept more than 4hours at a stretch since we got here. I have a worsening illness that I have been fighting since I landed. I shook for two hours this morning and then my fever rose and threatened to engulf everything. We slept on the floor last night, my best friend and I, I don't know why, huddled close and sharing our secret dreams and girls and girls and girls. Basically everything but paint our toenails and have a pillow fight in slow motion. I have received very troubling news from afar and I really, really want to get home but I'm trapped here and somebody has got to translate. There is tension between the bands, they got a hold of some of the flyers the venue put out to promote the show and one name was bigger than the other. They express this antipathy as extreme politeness and then they come and mutter and grumble to me. I explained that we don't put that stuff out, the local venue decides who gets top bill. They give me the eye and then we have a beer and it's better. After an hour or so Deng Pei admitted that my friend kind of freaked him out. LCD has wandered off, looking for more lotion I guess. It's a strange and unsettling experience, they haven't been out of my sight for days. I have to keep repressing the urge to call them and make sure they are okay. When we leave Schubas we will drive for an hour to get to Jim’s folks. A shower! Something cooked by hand by someone who loves us! Carpet! I feel awful and I know I shouldn't but fuck it; I'm going to go get a drink. We're at the Walsh residence now. Can barely get enough focus to find a place to sleep. Turns out Liu Min speaks quite passable English, almost better than Hua Dong. Also, turns out she speaks! (mostly to Jim - cause he's gentle and carries his dictionary with him everywhere –I think he has a crush on her). I don't think I've ever heard Liu Min utter a slayable, not even in Chinese. If I hadn't heard her perform, I would've thought she was a mute. I try to do as little translating as possible -and everybody appreciates it. We don't really need to talk anymore. Get in the van, get out of the van, load out and load in. Sound guys and bands all speak the same language anyway. Finally got me on the insurance so now I got to take my share of driving. The bands are polite but obviously nervous. We have all identified the van as the one crucial piece of this tour. We can play shows without bands, but we can't play shows without the van. It's also the area in which we will most likely meet our inevitable end. So, I drove the van around the neighborhood a couple of times. Piece of cake. Handles really well, great pick-up etc. I should have brought a joint, it's just like driving a car with a big ass or fucking a fat girl or those weird bikes you sit sideways in: Just takes a mental adjustment. Finally we are heading south. Mar 7: Are we still in the Midwest? Ung. Woke on a floor. Little knots of people peppered around a barn-sized room -like a bunch of little pupae in brightly colored sleeping bags waiting to burst into chain-smoking surly Chinese butterflies. Everywhere is the wreckage of White Castle and it smells like the bands are trying to figure out how a stove works. They seem perpetually flabbergasted that in the developed west we don’t have boiling water ready at any given moment. What if guests dropped by, they ask, how would you offer them tea? I point at the icemaker, the domestic beer piled in the corner, the bong the dude left on the counter before he left for work, but we are communicating across a cultural divide of hot and cold beverages and I’m going to go see if there are any more oranges in the van. We crossed some sort of mental Mason Dixon last night when we crossed the Ohio River. I’m not really sure if Kentucky is the South or not, I always thought of it that way, but it sure is awful close to the mid-west. I feel better though, the air seems thicker and the bourbon tasted real and we played the best venue I think I’ve ever been to last night. They invented the Tommy gun there, and now it’s this massive edifice with a velvet curtain and deep resonate sound bouncing off an inch of nicotine varnished onto every surface. The green room was actually green and the opening band (Johnny 23) was what I want from an opening band: Interesting, Appropriate and Concise. Even better, they let us sleep on their floor. Looks like Hua Dong has figured it all out, he’s the cultural assimilator in this bunch, found him in the corner of the kitchen sucking down a bowl at 8a.m., seemed like a grand idea, but I’ve weaseled out of driving long enough, I gotta get us to NYC by tomorrow and we start just as soon as Kagler does the finances and I can find somewhere to take a shit. Mar 7 - Are we still in the Midwest? (Con’t) You ever see Maximum Overdrive? We stopped last night in Harrisburg where 78 crosses 81. Got a hotel and then piled everybody in to go get something to eat. Decided we wanted to get a bite at some trucker’s palace with a buffet and ended up in this labyrinth with walls made of parked big rigs that stretched for miles. Fucking thousands of trucks rumbling diesel and I felt just like that part in The Silver Chair when the kids end up in the castle of the giants. I kept waiting for hordes of chain wearing mutants to come pouring over the tops and cut off our ears for sport and then eat our genitals thus transferring our potency to their tribe (which is why I eat genitals). The Chinese guys went totally silent, which is always a bad sign. We drove around for a while with CB beams boring into my skull, and when we saw our opening we bolted back to hotel room. Decided to order Chinese food for a lark and the delivery guy was pathetically Vietnamese. It took us like an hour to order because I couldn't remember which one was lo mien and which one was chow mien. Fuck dude, I live in China – we don't have that shit. Also the fortune cookies were a bust, the Pets just left them in the bag. Just as well - I didn’t want them eating it paper and all or coming over and asking me what ‘Confucius Say:’ means. Driving back North was so fucking heartbreaking. We work up this morning to the first good weather since we got here and now we drove back into snow. Goddamn you snow: I will burn you to the ground. I will rape your mother and fuck her in the wrong-n’. I will melt you with my incandescent hate. Who knew that Pennsylvania wasn’t flat? I always thought it was flat. March 9 – Welcome to New York Shitty Time compression has squeezed the normal amount of events I experience in a day into a nightmare of interlocking psychotic episodes. I will not admit this to anyone around me, but the only thing that has not caused me to snap and get a Beijing-bound plane is sheer terrifying inertia and a deep conviction that if I leave these people alone for even one second they will be raped and killed, their equipment will be stolen, they will rise from the dead to murder one another and then I will have to explain it all to a crowd comprised of equal parts overly-sophiticated New York hipsters, Industry douchebags and cops that won’t shut up about ‘dis ding’ or ‘dat ding’. Somewhere around the Jersey border, in a town that smelled of human excrement, I traded driver spots with Diamond Jim. As the only person who had actually been to NYC before, it seemed wise that I guide us in. Poor little Jimmy Ray got trapped in 170 blocks of screaming traffic with his dick about to pop from that kind of pee that will give you a urinary tract infection if you don’t. Go. Right. Now. Cancer victims waiting in line to be ass-fucked by AIDs patients would have looked more at repose. We finally got to Du Yun’s parent’s apartment up around Spanish Harlem and he bolted. Then they wouldn’t let us in the fucking garage. By some miracle, we found a street spot across the way and it’s not budging till we head South. I hate this city. My ex-girlfriend showed up to our load-in at the Cake Shop just long enough for Kagler to cut her in line to the bathroom (on purpose, which was fucking rad). She stole my records collection from my mom’s house when she went to get some of her old shit she still had stashed there, and when I brought it up she had the NERVE to be coy and then demanded I buy her a new bottle of the anal lube I took from her house the last time I slept over. Fuck that! She can grease her own ass, I’ve been eating burritos for, what feels like a million years, and she’s been getting chubby on peanut butter bombs and vegan lattes. I bet she doesn’t even listen to my records. Also, I randomly ran into my best friend Andy's first girlfriend from high school and she went on and on about how much she was still in love with him (and his ‘perfect delicate hands’!) totally while her boyfriend stood there and made a blank face. The show was packed -NYC kids are totally jaded, but still we sold some records and people were into it…. And it looks like our Richmond show is back on...playing an art gallery -only bad thing is we have to get there early, right after the Southpaw Show. The promoter is this fucking little wet shit of a kid and he seems really sketched out. We could have put something together in DC, but we decided we needed to honor our promises. We’re such great fucking guys, right? Honestly, I’m glad I need to get further South than D.C. and we’ve still got the hell drive to Texas. Southpaw is the only show I’m excited about because we are playing with 120 Days, I've been playing them a lot at indie night recently. Hopefully, Jim will handle that morning...I hate hate hate I-95. Reading that back over I feel like I should have started this with 'Dear Diary' and put little hearts over all the 'I' s. Went out after the show to a great bar, Local something something. By great I mean: Deafeningly loud music in a small space full of people. Our old intern showed up at the show and then we had him send some gear and Luo Hao back in his car to Du Yun’s. The poor bastard calls me two hours later sort of aimlessly driving around Manhattan. Luo Hao no speakie the English and the intern no speakie the Chinese and neither of them grabbed a phone. I’m sitting there outside the bar shouting directions in two languages when our fucking, um, New York guy, Michael Lojudice (actually he’s Modern Sky’s New York guy but we are in bed with him) goes sailing through the air. I don’t know what he did to piss the bouncers off but I think he broke his nose. We are clearly making a good impression everywhere we go.

DEAR (TOUR) DIARY - Part 2 by Kyle Page Schaefer [Editor’s Note: If you haven’t already read Part 1, scroll down, you’ll find it. Yeah, I know it’s annoying, but a bunch of people have actually read the depressing shit storm that is Part 1, sooooo…suck it up. We’ll join the two parts together in some sort of unholy union sometime next month after everyone who initially bought into Kyle’s ‘vision’ of tour is done bugging us for more…dude.] March 10: Jim Uses Strong Language This is has been an endless nightmare of a day, but I must say, this is one comfortable floor. Thick ply carpet and a sofa cushion for my head. We’re bunked up in the family home of our Richmond promoter - somewhere in the suburbs. I think fucking New York has ruined us. It took every gram of my strength and purpose to get us out of the city. Last night (Jesus, was that only last night?) we played Southpaw in my old Brooklyn neighborhood. 120 days blew me away, so we traded some merch for their CD and it’s dull and flat and Jim has been taking us seriously to task for liking it. He says it’s ‘vapid’, which is pretty strong language for little Jimmy Ray. The show was awesome, probably the best sound we will get all tour and we had the sound guy record the sets for us. Hua Dong broke a string and then tuned his guitar fucked up and they totally butchered Hang the Police. Every night he promises me that he’s going to get that one right, and every night he fucks it up. Note to self: Never take a band you actually like on tour. Was talking to the tour manager for the other two bands and he said his charges are fucking nightmares. Every morning he’s got to round them up from 10 different beds around the city, then drive 7 hours so they can play a show and then they fucking disperse to go get fucked out of their skulls on coke. The bands got so pissed with him always calling them, they backed the tour van over his cell phone. Cheeky little fucks. Luckily my pets seldom stray out of earshot…though come to think of it, Hua Dong’s out on a walk in the suburban wilds of Virginia right now. I told him to watch out for bears, and he got this really serious look on his face, like he was imagining exactly what he would do if a bear rounded the corner of a parked SUV. I wonder if Chinese people know about the playing dead thing? He’d probably call the other guys out and they’d all wrestle the poor dumb beast to the ground and drain its bile and cut off its paws to make potency medicine. 50% of Chinese men over the age of 40 have erectile disfunction. I read that somewhere. I think Hua dong and Liu min broke up somewhere back in Madison. I have no idea what the problem is, but they have been fucking screaming at each other -which gets on my nerve (I’ve got about one left and I’m chewing on it right now). The stage manager at Southpaw had to call Kagler back to sort them out. He thought Hua Dong was going to knife her, or something. So now we make them sit together in the van, and Liu Min talks to Jim a lot. Also we have a videographer, Shou Bei Te - the unofficial 5th member of LCD. This occasioned a massive pow wow in Du Yun’s apartment because we seriously did not think he was going to fit in the van with the three of us and the two bands, the kit, the backline, our luggage and the piles of shit we’ve amassed (I got a bottle of whiskey from my best friend that I am saving for Columbia). I was all for leaving him in New York, but then we probably would have had to leave the bands too. Finally Deng Pei and I went down to the van and climbed in and did a test pack. Turns out Chinese people are really good at squeezing in. I guess I should have expected that. Luckily, Shou Bei Te is also comically small, like a little teacup person. Deng Pei made him throw away all his clothes and luggage – he’s bringing nothing but his camera and the clothes on his back. Getting us out of New York was a miserable hour of my life that I will never get back. Then I drove another 8 hours on I-95, which is the fucking worst interstate in the universe – narrow, crowded, in ill repair and toll-boothed every seven miles. And that brings us to J. Wallace. Beijing is a bubble, and it’s full of little shits on their gap-year teaching or visiting, drunk on the possibilities of brining Chinese rock to the world. Usually you spot them right away and reduce everything they say by a very large factor. "I'm doing a piece for NPR affiliates in the south east on the Beijing scene". Translation: I would like to do something with my journalism minor when I get home, or maybe…you know, go to Burning Man. Every once in awhile - particularly if the guy who’s booking your tour is a maniacal alcoholic who likes to squeeze peoples’ nipples and hasn’t been here long enough to see past the hyperbole - one of them slips past your guard. Enter the Wallace, whom I vaguely remember ‘cause he was in town while the Fader people where here and he got attacked by Kagler and LoJudice and they squeezed his tender areas mercilessly (Basically everyone I know is a closeted fag, hiding their light under a bushel – if you’re reading this Ian: it’s time to shine). Through Wallace we had booked a Richmond gallery (which then got cancelled just before tour), and he unfortunately had also booked the Boone show and was trying to use that as leverage to get us to drive him down the east coast. He showed up in NYC and told us he had worked up a new location. The same night we are getting options to play DC with some Dischord bands and crash/house-party with some friends from Beijing. For some reason we decided not to fuck this guy over and take him at his word. We backed out of DC and headed here. By the time we roll in the story is totally different. The guy who was supposed to bring the P.A. fell off a ladder and broke his arm. Also, apparently, the guy has a long history of illness, skin afflictions and accidents - which Wallace spins out in a rambling incoherent hour while we eat sandwiches his mom made. Matt and I decide to go look at the ‘venue’ before we get the bands back in the van. It’s in some deserted warehouse district. The venue is some halfway-house project to get kids off of graffiti and on to Jesus and it smells like disinfectant. Not a soul is in sight. There is no P.A. There is no press. There are no people. There is no show. On the ride back to the house, after a long silence, I tell Wallace that if he thinks we are taking him to Boone he is fucking stupider than he looks. The kid doesn’t say anything for a second and then the little fuck lets out a sob. He’s crying and I just want to smash his face in, but Kagler is a big softie and is all "there, there –of course we’ll take you with us, don’t listen to Kyle he’s just on the verge of nervous breakdown and would like nothing better than to cut you open and show you the blackness inside…" …actually, no…wait. He didn’t say that. I’m sorry, I’m getting mixed up. Kagler actually just reassured him we’d stick to the plan, and squeeze him in the van even though the bands would have to sit four to a seat. I couldn’t even look at Wallace after that, I just kept thinking about bed and maybe one more of his mom’s sandwiches. I can’t believe I just wrote that much. I can’t see and I can’t stop my hands shaking. Good night. March 11: One Big Publicity Stunt for Mankind (Jim Uses Stronger Language!) The only time I have heard Jim swear this entire tour was to tell us that NASA should forget putting a man on Mars, they should "fucking spend the money to improve the NASA channel". Jim takes space very seriously. Honestly, I didn't know there was a NASA channel. We left Richmond and in 10 minutes we were engulfed by pine. It is a perfect spring day in the benevolent South. The bands are starting to come out of their shells; to us at least. To each other, they rest on 5000 years of icy politeness and brittle courtesy. It’s like watching a tea ceremony where every one is drinking boiled piss (which makes phosphorous), but acting like they love it. I bet they hate each other's guts, but in sunshine like this you can forgive people just a little. Yesterday Hua Dong told us that when he lived in East Germany he played piano -working in a bar without papers. After his second mugging he bought a gun on the black market and carried it around in his pocket. How rad is that? Hua Dong shits his pants every time somebody says his name and here’s the dude wandering around East Germany packin’ and ready to send some kraut to an early grave. The pets spent the drive into Boone talking to that Wallace shit, and sleeping. Luo Hao snores like a whole forest being turned into matches. My heart feels tight as clenched fist and I want to throw up all the time. But it feels better now that we are here in the South, like the difference between getting dumped in your home or in the break room at the office two hours into a Monday shift. I will run this fucking van into a tree in the mountains somewhere at 90miles an hour with these people screaming in my ear. Or I will do my job. Not sure which yet. It was my girl’s birthday, and I missed it for this. I want her here beside me so bad that it feels like my chest will explode. But that is our private hurt and it’s none of your business. My parents are driving up from Charleston to meet me and see the show, which will be in a fucking burrito shop. At least I’ll eat today. March 12: We Should Have Just Played the South East Greetings from gorgeous Columbia South Kakalak. When we got to the city and I let the boys out of the van, Deng Pei actually hugged me – for a Chinese dude, that’s about as forward as me putting my boner in your mouth while you’re asleep. He said he felt like he was in ‘a different country’, and I must admit I feel like we have finally left the chill of middle America and the soul-eating east coast behind us. I feel actually warm for the first time in I don’t know how long. My fingers are itching to open that bottle of Rye, I can fucking taste it. [haha, autocorrect suggests: fuck taste it. Good idea autocorrect, I think I will] Boone was stellar and my parents rocked-out for whole show. My mom took like a bazillion pictures and they seemed genuinely pleased every time someone came to make me sort something out – even though we were just smoking a bowl in the ready-room. We made more money than any other stop on tour and the place didn't even have a PA when we got there. I mean, it’s a burrito shop. I thought the bands were going to have a fit when they saw the place in the afternoon full of mountain folk and their kids getting salsa in their beards (the mountain folk I mean, not the kids). I waited for my folks and then split with them and my dad’s best friend from high school to go eat a decent meal with no Chinese people, no Matthew fucking Kagler, no Jimmy friggin’ Ray and no Wallace douche (who had tagged along to ‘set the show up’ but hadn’t even called the P.A. guy 4 hours after we’d arrived). Basically we were the only show in town and even though it was spring break (App. State is huge party school, I don’t even know if they have professors or classes there) the place got jammed with the sort of local kids that will all move away, move back, move away, and then open a bike repair place or a vegan café in their 30’s. I slept up in the mountains in my dream cabin, the very same one that I picture every time I talk to my girl about the rest of our life. I sat on a little bridge over a 7foot cataract and looked at a sky so full of stars I thought I was drowning in milk. March 13: Columbi-yeah! I hate writing in cars. We managed to get out of Cola by noon and I feel like shit that has been steeped in fermented shit and mixed with carbonated shit. Serve chilled over shit cubes and Viola!: Me. Woke up on the sofa of an old friend of mine, his band Rockafeller Horse Collar opened our show at the (art) garage – a very cool mixed use gallery space cum venue cum warehouse cum in my eye kind of place. Place was stacked for a Monday show and the bottle of rye disappeared in about three songs. Kagler and I went through a second of bowel-watering panic because the Bauer Bag (now just bao bao) went AWOL. I seriously thought Matt was going to crap his pants and I just stood there with a dumbfuck look on my face because I couldn’t believe it had happened to us in Columbia of all places –I basically knew every single person in the room. Then the girl running the door was all like “Hey ya’ll lookin for your bag?” She borrowed it to make change for the bar and seemed a little hurt we actually thought someone might have taken it with larceny in their heart. I spent most of the show trying to help the bands polish off the nugs we got in Boone and trying to shake off the couple of bumps I did in the bathroom with my old roommate. Matt could smell it all over me, but I didn’t cop to anything. I’ve been on the straight and narrow this whole fucking tour. That not only goes against everything I have built my wicked cowardly little life on, but I think I was actually starting to enjoy being responsible. Fuck that. I was born right on the dragon/snake cusp and I’ve spent most of my life trying to crush that dragon nature (If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, you need to fuck more Chinese girls). By the time the show was done I was fused about as tight as a piece of glass. The rad folks at the (art) garage revealed that that the green room was equipped with racks of bunk beds a little kitchen and a shower, so we just locked the Pets in and crashed at my friend’s house. I got us lost on the 5-minute walk to the house (in a neighborhood I lived in for 6 years). Like I said: a piece of glass. Now my belly is full of tacos, my body full of poison and we’ve got a 17 hour drive to Austin. We’re going to try to make it to the Texas border before we drop; we’ve got check-in tomorrow and a showcase at SXSW. March 15: What are Cymbal Stands? Stop Sniffing my Crotch. Austin is a hallucinatory blur. There is so much booze and drugs in the air I’m getting fucked up just sitting here breathing three blocks away from downtown. Also my other best friend keeps packing bowls, but that’s actually like breathing rarified air here. Is it weird I have two best friends? I realize that is a misuse of the superlative, but think of it this way: Of all my friends and lovers and enemies: these two are the BEST. So, this is not the bullfighter love letter collecting best friend, this is the architect would-you-like-a-spinach-mango-omelet-for-breakfast best friend. Got it? Good. He’s built his own house. Sort of. He’s basically bought a little shack (a box) turned the shack into a living room and built a two story edifice (two boxes stacked on top of each other) behind the first box and connected the two boxes with a porch where I am now sitting very very stoned. The back box holds the kitchen and the sleeping quarters and is largely comprised of glass and filled with kittens. I am basically sitting in front of a largish, and very modern, cat terrarium. We made it to check-in in time (barely) after navigating hellish Texas interstates (one lane in the pissing rain) and drove into gridlocked chaos. By the time we got near the convention center we were in the middle of a sea of vans identical to our own. I imagine this is what a shepherd feels like when gazing in horror as his three sheep crash into a largish flock. If we leave the van we would be lost – so I sat in the van with my friend while Matt registered and picked up our crew wristbands. Last night was our showcase, in many ways the last thing I’m responsible for save getting us home. As near as I can figure, Rebuilding is safely tucked away with LoJudice – his problem now. LCD are on a home-stay program out in the suburbs with some dude and his daughter and other than feeding them they should be able to sort themselves out. The showcase was cool. Felt like there were more press people than punters, but I guess that’s what happens when you bring bands nobody has ever heard of from China. Blonde Redhead was playing a few doors down… which would you have gone to see? We had to pilot through a maze of barricades to get to the club and my best friend (who had taken over as local navigator) took us in a centric series of looping circles and curly-ques before we made it (just in time). It almost wasn’t good enough. Hua Dong was eating raw nerves and he got in this shouting argument with Kagler, both of them red-faced and shaking. I’ve already forgotten what it was about, but Matt told him to fuck off and if he didn’t want to play then fucking don’t play. Jesus, big mistake. Hua dong thought he had lost face and his marginal integrity had somehow been impinged. Kagler thought these fuckers are being babies and he’d be damned if he was going to coddle a bunch of babies after paying for them to come to America. It took Deng Pei and I’s combined cross-cultural diplomatic skills to calm all the babies (Kagler included) down. Everybody was wound tight as…shit I dunno…something very tight (a spool, a virginal bride, a three foot noose on a six foot man, whatever). Afterwards I really just wanted to sit in the van for the rest of the night, my friend had fucked off and then came back with a bottle of whiskey, a bowl of veggie Korean, a couple packs of American Spirits and some lemonades. But it’s never that easy is it? The whole tour we have been borrowing a couple of cymbal stands and a drum chair for Luo Hao. No big deal, usually the opening band just pops it over or there is some house equipment we can wrangle (actually, I’ve never wrangled anything in my life –and anybody who says different is a dirty liar). But this is Austin Texas on the first day of SXSW: there is not a spare guitar pick to be had in a 30 mile radius, not to mention fucking cymbal stands. Now Luo Hao is no slouch, and he’s no baby either (he’s more like that guy in Journey to the West with the pig’s head) but he will not fucking pick up a drumstick if he doesn’t have his whole kit. So much for sitting in the van getting pleasantly fucked up. I go and talk to promoter - he doesn’t know where to get paper to wipe his ass. The other bands? They where hoping to borrow shit from us. Defeated, I slunk back to the van seriously ready to just say fuck it and go hang myself with the entrails of a murdered prostitute. Then my best friend takes an entrance (he’d finished the veggie Korean I was too dispirited to eat)… "Cymbal stands? he asks. Is that sort of like an articulated arm on a tripod that holds the cymbals cantilevered out over the drums? Got a little bolt at the top to hold the thing on?" (he’s an architect – it’s just how he describes things) He gets on the phone and asks somebody a few questions and then smiles at me brightly. "I found some, he says, we can walk, but it’s 17 blocks. Lets go to my house and get the car and drive the last 9." Bro takes me on a merry trek through the city (we stop to grab some beers and piss on the old French embassy – bloody onion eaters), and then we drive over to one of those Austin houses that were built to hold a family but now contains a small clan of in-grown weirdoes. We are greeted by a woman with lipstick smeared across her face like a huge bloody gash. She is wearing a dirty white t-shirt and very little else. Peaches! She shouts at us. Peaches, we agree warily, fine fruit, fuzzy, yes, very pleasant indeed. Peaches!, she shouts again, struggling to stand upright and supporting herself against a screen less screen door clearly printed with the words DO NOT CLOSE. More weirdoes emerge, from the smell and their composure, they have been drunk for days and I felt very much at home. Hands are shaken and (pointless) introductions made, king weirdo informs us that Peaches Geldorf (whatever) is playing a secret dj set down the road. One of his weirdo minions brings us the cymbal stands while a massive and vile dog sniffs my crotch. The stands appear to be cast of pig iron and are heavy enough to brain a largish quadruped herbivorous vertebrate – a moose say. On the way home the phone rings. It’s Kagler. I prepare to be thanked for my heroic effort (my crotch, after all, has been sniffed). "Dude, where are you!" Kagler shouts. "Don’t worry, I’m almost there, I got the cymbal stands" "Dude, where are you," he shouts again, "Where over watching Blonde Redhead." "What? the showcase is in 20 minutes, I got the stands I’m almost there." "Dude, I can’t hear you, where watching Blond Redhead, this is rad dude, seriously." [Editor’s Note: Kagler was actually at the Eenie Meenie Records showcase and it was essential that he be there for a prearranged meeting with label head Reiko Kondo. Eenie Meenie exclusively distribute Tag Team via Redeye in the U.S. - Blonde Redhead played at 1am that night over at Emo’s. Whatever.] I just hung up. I don’t know if I was ever gruntled to begin with but I’m extremely not-gruntled now. Got the stands back to Luo Hao – he grunted either in appreciation or because they were so damn heavy and the show went off with the normal amount of hitches. LCD played overtime and the sound guy brought the house lights on, but this was Deng Pei’s moment and he would not be deterred from another 7 minutes of icy laptop frost and intense concentration. Hua Dong barreled through his set and our New York guy (Michael LoJudice) managed to stage dive on top of a single woman standing –isolated on the floor. At which point he was promptly thrown out, naturally undeterred he got back in only to be tossed out, face first, a minute later. I just got a call from Kagler who’s doing his industry panel about the Chinese scene, turns out Michael broke his arms when they threw him on the curb. He partied the rest of the night, took himself to the hospital in the morning and still managed to make it to the panel (he’s one of the speakers). We’re supposed to meet him in a bit for drinks and some day parties after we pick up the Pets (just LCD –Rebuilding is not my problem any more). Say what you want about LoJudice (seriously, it’s a free country) but you’ve got to give the guy credit –he’s a trooper. Oh, and we lost Ma Hui (like I said, Rebuilding aren’t my problem anymore). Dude wandered off after the show and I guess he’s now wandering the streets of Austin. He’ll be fine, I’m sure. I mean he speaks no English and always smells of other people’s bathroom products, but he’ll be fine. March 16: My Elbow Smells Weird I am a mass of abraded flesh. My arm is sore and my shoulder is swollen, I can’t make a fist with my right hand, typing is a little difficult. I was up all night talking long distance to China and drawing hearts in my journal with my own bleeding skin. Not incidentally, I am very hungover. It started out innocently enough. I haven’t seen the Pets in two days and it feels great. We took the chance to see as many decent bands as we could before we have to go back to the musical badlands in the Far East (though things are getting brighter –Sonic Youth and Pretty Girls play a bit after we get back). After a day of watching Jim and Kagler eat BBQ while I munched on potato chip sandwich and swilling any free booze I could get my hands on, we settled in for a night of decent showcases. I was pretty pumped to see the Mai Shi – I caught one of their shows in SC a few years back and it blew me away. They have a new album and they got rid of their old singer, and I wanted to see if they still had it. They did. The show was in some old theater and Kagler and I broke into the projectionist’s booth and found crates of – mysteriously - eye drops. I filled my bag up more out a general commitment to larceny than any actual desire to have a bag full of eye drops. The Mai Shi fucking slew and Kagler and I were both drunk enough to shake our asses outrageously. After the show Kagler and I wanted to talk to the band about coming out to China and I guess that’s where the problem began. Reaching deep into our bags we put on our industry hats. I became the A&R guy for Tag Team although I still don’t know what that stands for. Being Industry Douches was far outside our normal line of dirtbagism. I mean when the industry tries to fuck you it’s with percentage points and digital rights. When I try to fuck you its with…erm…panache (and anal lube). Unfortunately, given enough complimentary booze and a wristband, it’s all too easy to warm to being a douche. Shortly after that I blacked out for the first time. I came out a bit some indeterminate time later being frog marched down 6th street, being told in no uncertain terms to stop looking so drunk – I was going to get us in trouble somehow. I was told to hold still while my bag was searched for eye drops. I remember thinking to myself: wait were those really eye drops we stole? It was awful dark in there. Liquid was suddenly streaming into my eyes and they didn’t start burning (more) so I guess it was okay. Jim was there (I think he was the one that doused me, and that made me feel better. You get the feeling that nothing too terrible can happen when Jim is around (If you discount the last two weeks of my life). We were standing in line and I recall asking several times where we were going, but the answer wouldn’t stick. Eventually, I was shushed. We stood in line for what seemed like forever and when we got to the door they wouldn’t let us in. Said I was too drunk and we weren’t important enough. I was sensible enough not to dispute either of these facts which, to me, were manifestly so. Kagler, however, was having none of that. Now a funny thing about the fellow is: for a notorious braggart, he actually becomes quite timid around people of demonstrative importance or fame. (Un?)Fortunately, This doorman was neither, and emboldened by his invisible industry-douche hat and 12 hours of complimentary drinks, he loudly and insistently stated our obvious importance, the great distance-traveled and my general worth, good looks and charm (fall-down-drunkenness notwithstanding). Then we barreled through, at which point I promptly blacked out again. I infer that they propped me up near the stage and went to go get more drinks. I dimly recall being surrounded by about 14 hulking Mexicans and Kagler shouting and then falling down some more, but then they went away and something beautiful happened. An audible change came over the crowd and the general thrum of an eager audience penetrated into even my inner darkness: Something was about to happen. I felt the trembling chord of evil in my bowels before it made its way through the moat and barbican of booze around the auditory centers of my brain. Then the drums kicked and there was this long keening wail that could only be a smallish Japanese person torturing an electric guitar. One thought flashed through my head at a speed approaching sobriety. BORIS. My friends had somehow dragged me to BORIS and there on the stage was BORIS and my my they were certainly Japanese and totally BORIS. They were playing, without a trace of irony (does Japan have irony, I can’t remember): Blackout. Allow me to spare a certain percentage of my word count to say something about living in Beijing. Sure, we are on the other side of the world, but thankfully Al Gore invented a little thing called the internet and Europe is close enough that our luminaries get over there once, twice a month and really the world isn’t that big anymore. We know when cool things happen, sometimes before you do. However, what we DON’T have is Williamsburg and that means we don’t suffer from a deluge of Hipsters telling us that things we like and think are good are cool. We never have to walk into a chain store and hear our favorite band being used to lend a hip-friendly vibe to merchandise and never ever have to suffer through some lumbering frat douche asking us if we’ve heard Modest Mouse before, and we should fucking check them out man because their fucking album is fucking awesome. It’s nice, and it means that we are spared the constant hipster hyperbole and relentless assault that makes you tired of good things really, really fast. So maybe you’re over Boris (or maybe you’re on your 5th Japan-only colored vinyl limited edition press of THE SAME RECORD), but I was pretty jazzed and the set was crushingly evil and loud and basically rad. Then we went to Apples in Stereo and I blacked out again, but it was that strobing stutter on/off blackout where you’re starting to come out of it but you loosing every other 10 seconds so nothing really links up but you can vaguely recall the next day that you fingered that girl from marketing. Afterwards I think we all felt pretty shitty for acting like Industry slimebags and that was probably why I said all those things to Kagler and he pushed me and I punched him in the eye, but later we hugged and now I can’t make a fist. Oh yeah. They found Ma Hui (don’t worry so much, I told you he’d be fine). March 17: ‘The Judas’, Why Did I Just Figure That Out? So, the Tag Team command team (Kagler, Jim and I) are staying here with my other best friend and drinking all his Lone Star and whiskey and meeting his friends and poking into his life and reading his magazines, oh here’s a magazine now I think I’ll just read a little while I take a crap and oh look its got pictures and OH MY GOD THAT MAN HAS HIS ARM IN ANOTHER MAN’S ASS. What do you do with training in architecture or a background in engineering if you’re tired of design and lab work? You manufacture sex toys. I have learned more about fisting in the last few days than I ever realized I didn’t need to know. For instance, I know why you might consider putting a garbage disposal in your shower. Fisting, Bondage and other forms of elaborate sex have always been somewhat mysterious to me. I dislike a lot of procedure and planning in my love life. I suppose I’m really quite traditional. In fact at the moment I feel positively straightlaced. I’ve had sex in a tree once (we were on acid), I used to think that was cool (except for the part when we climbed down and I found my shoes full of slugs). Now I’ve been made to feel I’m a bit of fainting daisy because I’ve never been punched in the kidneys, repeatedly, while someone fucks my ass with their arm. My best friend’s girlfriend and some of their friends have manufactured some sort of vacuum suction cube that you can immobilize people in while you play Mogwai and hurt them (in a pleasant way). Really words don’t do it justice, check it out at www.slickco.net. No dungeon is complete without one, I assure you. Oh the fisting magazines? Some sort of trade publication for the sex toy industry, apparently. It is been quite informative, least of all for the Pets. Every time I bring them over they pour over it (particularly Ma Hui). We’ve taken the day off to lick our wounds and rest up for the drive back to Jim’s house tomorrow. We’ll probably have to stop somewhere for the night, I don’t think any of us want to do a 17 hour drive – even if it does get us closer to home. Besides, we have time to kill before the plane. Rebuilding is going back to NYC to play a few more shows and Shou Bei Te’s plane is the same day but 6 hours before ours. I guess he’ll have to sleep at the airport while we sleep in Crown Point. March 18: Let’s Go the Long Way Everything was fine yesterday until Michael called us. He wanted us to hang out with him, but we get the drift he doesn’t actually want to ‘hang out with us’ so much as he wants ‘us to pick him and his friends up and drive them somewhere cause it’s really hard to get a taxi in Austin at 6 o’clock during SXSW’. We had this bewildering series of calls that seemed to indicate that A) he is right down the road. B) it is really far away) C) they are lost D) he can tell us right where to go E) he is hanging out with Russell Simmons F) there are kids involved. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Blues Explosion in…say…erm…1995-1999 and I saw them put on a few fucking amazing shows, I mean real Church Of Rock and Roll kind of shit, but those fuckers stopped playing South Carolina around the time of Acme and they’ve never toured China as far as I know and my whole fucking left side is abraded and…wait, why the fuck should I have to give them a lift somewhere? “Kids,” Michael mumbles, “oh, and we have Rebuilding with us and they are your problem” and hangs up. I would think it redundant at this point to mention that he is drunk. Basically we all bitch and mutter and kick dirt at stray dogs and shout “Git” a bunch of times, but let’s face it I’m a pussy and Jim tames unicorns for a pastime and Matt…well look, we’re basically all pussies - so we pile in the van with my best friend coming along to navigate (and because he thinks it’s funny that we’re pussies and he’s been smoking pot all day). We find them occupying a bench at some Austin BBQ joint that I wish I could have gone to and hey look it’s Russell Simmons and some New Yorky looking folks and a couple of eleven year old kids with guitars. I think I read about these kids in the Times one day when I was bored at work. I guess genX parents are so desperate to stay cool that they sort of remold their children into little hipsters with precious little indie rock bands. I mean Beat Happening was great, sure, but it was cool for its child-like splendor that had been retained in an almost cult–like manner against the ravages of time and broken hearts and disappointing movie-versions of books you loved. I’m not sure it counts when you write a silly song about love notes when you actually are 9. In any case I think it’s sad. Why not just go back to pressuring kids to join the football team? – At least when they rebel you’ve a good chance they will start smoking pot and listening to early Pink Floyd and secretly dating a girl from art class. The worst part is that when these kids grow up they’ll never have a chance to become cool. They will look back at being 11 as the BEST TIME OF THEIR LIFE. Imagine if it was never going to get better than 11? Imagine you peaked before you even ate a girl out. Or Jesus, imagine you ate a girl out when you were 11 and she was just, like, smooth skin down there? That kid is fucking doomed. Anyways, the kids were really nice and their parents/managers/life-ruiners and Russell and Rebuilding all climbed in the van like it was no big thing. We all kind of got the impression that Michael had been telling them all that we were “his people” and it was “no problem”. We sat up front in sullen silence when we were told we actually were supposed to drive them out to their hotel (which was out by the airport) and THEN bring Michael and Rebuilding back downtown. So Jim darkly mutters that we should take them the long way and my best friend who navigates in elliptical orbits in the best of times gets really into the idea. We then proceed to take a little tour of Texas infrastructure with our navigator trying to get us as lost as possible. We go across train trestles and covered bridges we loop around underpasses and overpasses and those parts of the city where you reach for the door lock even though you’re going 40 in a big van with 10 other people. At some point the back of the van goes from jokey fun to dead silence – punctuated by the occasional “Ummm, do we know where we’re going” and “wait, isn’t that the road over there?” At some point we put the heater on in the back and smile evilly as the van fills with poisonous fumes. When we get to the hotel, at last, they looked positively terrified and the lot of them spill desperately out of the van like stowaways on a leper cruise landing at a point of call. On the way back we are further gratified by the sight of some L.A. douche chasing after the van thinking his ride was leaving him. Mentally I have been high-fiving every identical white van we pass and my mind is tired from the exertion. March 19: All Roads Lead to Crown Point (Part 3) All roads lead to Crown Point, and we've finally named the van: Fist Pig. Watching the pets do their final load-in outside a tasteless suburban home the van's ass bay door wide open, their was an undeniable resemblance to some poor fucker getting reamed with a thousand pounds of gear up to the stamped and wrist banded arm. My last sight of Austin is burned in my mind: Michael LoJudice standing in front of the Hilton in a pair of fluorescent orange shorts, a broken nose, one arm held up in salute - the other held up in a cast, and that Andrew WK shirt where he’s got the bloody nose, like one of those pictures on a book of a man holding a book with a picture of a man holding a book with a picture of a man holding a book. About six different industry shitbags tried to climb into our van while we waited for Rebuilding to get there shit. Every single one had the same scarred/arrogant look when they realized THEIR van was full of smelly Chinese people. Telling them to fuck off seriously made my morning – which was good because the drive out of Austin was on a single lane of interstate packed with tour vans for 200 miles. We vowed to not let the sun set on us in Texas, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t have to drive long into the night before we stopped at some shithole in Arkansas. The Boys took turns sleeping in the van again because “there are many black people here”. In their defense, we did see a crackhead carrying all his earthly possessions through the lobby at 2am. Let me say something about Mapquest. Before I left Beijing I mapped out roughly 38.4% of the continental United States including driving directions in just about every conceivable combination of cities based on our itinerary as two days before we left. I shimmeyed down to a local print shop and had some toothless Beijing girl print them up (some 90something sheets) on a antiquated dot-matrix printer for the cost of a sandwich in the lower east side. I put them in a little folder I had been keeping my RPG characters in and, after Bao Bao, this has been my most prized possession for the last three weeks. Say what you want about Mapquest but it has unerringly served us across this great (in the sense of large) nation of mine/ours. About 3 hours outside of Crown Point, Jimmy wanted to go off The Map. Now, if you wanted to add an extra color to the rainbow or teach children how to graft a unicorn on to a apple tree – Jimmy’s your man, but for navigating through the Midwest I’m sticking with the Quest. So we went off the interstate and trekked through miles and miles of Indiana county highways. The pets got really quiet, which is always a bad sign and was weird because they’ve actually started talking to each other and seem to like it (I think they’re as happy as me to be heading back). This was a part of America they had only seen in slasher flicks. I kept wanting to pull over and check the car for amputated hook-hands. And then we hit Crown Point. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why John Dilinger wanted to bust out of this place. When we pulled into the driveway everyone started shouting. Everything from the hambone soup to the pile of towels in the guest bedroom seems totally unreal. Did those last three weeks just happen? Was is some awful dream and (oh, even more awful dream) the time hasn't past? The scabs on my knuckles say: No. Time is running away like wakefulness before a heavy sleep. Like winter is running away. In Beijing sits a girl who I have pledged my heart, my secret heart, and the fire of my secret heart to. In Beijing it is time for hungry ants to eat lunch and her fingers to touch 8 keys and the send button. Spell out i-l-o-v-e-y-o-u and I am yours forever. I am going home and I’m never going to do this again.

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