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You
don't have to go home, but you can't stay here...
part
2
Over
the next two days we saw Mary
Lou Lord busking in the street, Neil
Finn play with a band that included Lisa
Germano and Wendy
Melvoin, went to a small seminar where Ben
Fong Torres interviewed Robbie
Robertson about The
Last Waltz, ate great Mexican and drank beers in some
of the best yards and bars, walked around during the day
in the gorgeous dry Texan Spring heat and congregated with
lots of people we had played with in other far away places
like the Pee
Wee Fist from Boston, Jon
Auer and his posse from Seattle, and the Datsuns
from New Zealand, who we wrote about in our NZ tour diary
back in early 2001. We had been blown away by their show
when we shared a bill with them in Dunedin and now they
were on a rapid ascent to superstardom.
Our
flight back to LA was delayed in Denver, which was extremely
agitating because we had tickets to the last two days of
All
Tomorrows Parties — a four day music festival on
the UCLA campus curated by Sonic
Youth. I looked out the terminal window at little flakes
of snow swirling around in the late afternoon sun. It wasn’t
snowing heavily, just a light fall that melted as it touched
the dry ground.
Just
when I thought we were going to be closed in by a blizzard
and stuck there for the night, missing our once in a lifetime
chance to see Big
Star, they piled us on to a 747 and we were away.
We
got a car as soon as we landed and headed straight there.
We floated as if in a dream world through sets by Big Star
and Wilco, and
the next night went back for Stereolab
and Sonic Youth. The place was overflowing with celebrities
of the coolest calibre and we had a very weird, synchronous
experience when we were crossing a campus quadrangle heading
for a flight of stairs and, for no particular reason, talking
about the film Buffalo ‘66. Other Dave was doing an
impression of Vincent
Gallo’s "I’m allergic to chocolate"
and seconds later we passed him on the stairs looking every
bit as dangerous and enigmatic as he did in the film.
Our
next gig was in LA at the Silverlake Lounge. A really good
singer songwriter called Patrick
Park opened and every A&R person dropped in to see
him, or possibly just to see which other A&R people
were there. We pretty much played to no one except a few
friends, and two new fans who told us that they just looked
us up on the web and downloaded our MP3s that day. I had
to hold Wayne back by both arms to stop him from hugging
them.
Seattle
Woke
up to a gloriously warm LA day and arrived in Seattle to
low heavy cloud and freezing rain and snow. We caught up
with friends for dinner and then headed to the music museum
to try and catch a show by Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer.
The Museum is a new building down near the Space Needle
designed by architect Frank Gehry. It’s kind of impressively
random from the outside but inside is like a Hard Rock Café
or something. Our entourage grew when we hooked up with
some A&R folk from LA who were in Seattle for the night
to check out a band they were interested in. Mission accomplished,
they were now living it up, drinking twelve-year old Chartreuse
in a quiet bar. They invited us to join them and here everything
gets blurry. I know we went from one bar to another in search
of the evil green liquid that has unpredictable effects
on people, and that I, personally, will never drink it again.
When the bars closed we headed back to their hotel. Before
long Other Dave was wearing the hotel bathrobe and ordering
room service while at least one of our band members was
being sick in the generously proportioned bathroom. When
one of our hosts started squeezing a fistful of sliced turkey
in his hands I felt like I was in a Roman Polanski film
and rounded up the others, clutching at shirt collars and
bathrobes, and corralled us into the hallway. It seemed
to grow longer as we lunged forward. I pushed everyone into
the elevator and the doors closed on a hallucinatory gaggle
of cartoon A&R people with chartreuse coloured eyes.
We got back to the house on Capitol Hill as it was getting
light and I was woken soon after by two cats working in
a tag team - one sitting on my chest pawing my face to make
me open my eyes, the other on top of the covers trying to
capture my toes when they wriggled underneath. That next
night we stumbled somewhat too soberly though our show at
the Crocodile.
Eugene,
Portland
We
had to leave Seattle for Eugene. The traffic was hell driving
out and again we just made it to our show on time. Deathray
were on the bill too — a band that had a member from
the band Cake that had a big hit some time in the nineties.
I really liked them, and they were really nice to us - as
was just about everyone we met and played with, especially
cos we were being such laissez faire Aussie bludgers by
just turning up and assuming we could borrow speaker cabs
and drum kits everywhere.
We
met two guys at the club who had been in a band called Marigold
that had a bigass deal with a label that had folded. They
made an expensive record but don’t own it so they never
got to release it. One of them, Travis, offered to put us
up for the night and he scrawled elaborate directions across
two sides of an envelope. We were lost as soon as we pulled
out of the venue’s driveway but we got to see some
of Eugene in the search for his house. We had to pull up
at a railway crossing as a really long freight train passed
bearing loads of fresh logs and dozens of old carriages
away into the night and we were momentarily spirited off
into a bygone railroad era. Over the other side of the tracks
we drove down near a river surrounded by big pines and saw
a raccoon scamper up the grass verge. When we did find his
house it had a big open plan living room with a drum kit
set up and excellent amps and keyboards and guitars everywhere.
Travis played us a bunch of great records before we turned
in including some of the Marigold stuff that sadly never
saw the light of day.
The
next morning I went with Wayne to the hospital to get his
stitches out. The receptionist couldn’t understand
us when we were telling her our address. We kept saying
the number ‘eight’, and she looked at us blankly
and said "Excuse me? .. Aye-t? "
"Eight"
"I’m
sorry I didn’t get that…? Aye-t?"
"No,…
Eight"
Oh
eeeettt! I’m sorry!".
We
packed up the van and drove to Portland. First stop was
Powell’s Bookstore
- a massive, multi-level, city block sized store. We were
looking for Simon Honisett who works there. He used to be
in the Melbourne band Sea
Stories and moved to Portland about four years ago.
He wasn’t to be found at the shop. Apparently he had
taken the night off to go and see some Australian band that
was in town. ("Bummer…. I wonder who it is?")
We
loaded into the Cobalt Lounge — no sound check for
us being in the middle spot. A local band, Man
of the Year were on the bill too and we took their advice
and went to Berbatis for dinner. Nice bar, Greek food, cosy
wood panelling, high ceilings, student art on the walls
and they were playing the Sodastream
record. Back at the venue we finally met Alex from our record
label. A ball of inspiration and energy who looks all of
fifteen and talks really fast, punctuating his sentences
by protruding his bottom lip and blowing his fringe out
of his eyes. We had a fun show but my energy nose-dived
straight after and I had to go have a nap in the van. I
lay down in the back seat and pulled Other Dave’s heavy
woollen overcoat with a furry lining over me and slipped
into unconsciousness. Outside was bitterly cold with rain
threatening to turn to freezing snow. The cold seeped into
the van and I woke up shivering with Wayne tapping on the
window. Dave and Other Dave went out partying with Man of
the Year and Wayne and I followed Alex back out to his place
in Clackomas. He showed us our room and we collapsed into
it with relief. It was his younger brother’s room and
on his bookshelf was a whole stack of very recent letters
from a friend in the army. I didn’t mean to read them
but I picked up one and became absorbed in tales of infantry
training. The young narrator talked about the kind of weapons
he was being trained to handle — things that destroy
tanks and such, and revealed an interesting new strategy,
seemingly involving the beef industry… "the US
army is even a thousand times stronger than I imagined.
They find the enemies weakest point and drive a steak through
their heart".
I
stopped being nosey when Alex knocked on the door and handed
me a little parcel from Australia. A friend in Adelaide
had posted the latest Gillian
Welch album, which stayed in my cd player for the rest
of the tour. It was just all too appropriate… "a
girl passed out in the back seat trash, there was no way
they’d make even a half a tank of gas".
Chicago
Flying
in, the flight attendant reported the weather. "It’s
about two below. I don’t think we’re going to
make freezing today." There was a thin layer of snow
on the ground and icicles hanging everywhere. We found the
venue — a cool old bar/restaurant with a great band
room out the back with a little churchy stage, lots of wood
and beams and banqettes, a big deco bar and an old phone
booth with little wooden doors on it. We unloaded the gear
in the freezing cold, careful not to slip on the treacherous
ice.
They
had a great jukebox in the venue and the bar person put
some money in and let us make some selections. Other Dave
and I stacked up plays with Elliott
Smith, Damien
Jurado and My
Morning Jacket. After the show we decided to book into
a hotel and get a good night’s sleep. Other Dave and
I really wanted to sleep but Wayne and Dave wanted to go
for a drive around and they were right. Who knew when we’d
get back here? We had to see what we could, while we could.
Even if it was after 3am and several degrees below zero
and we were on the point of collapse. There was no one around
so the city looked deserted, but pretty, with a little pristine
snow brightening its image. Lake Michigan was being whipped
up by the wind and looked about as cold and inhospitable
as anything could look.
I
woke up next morning in the divinely luxurious hotel bed
with pillowcase creases down my face and very bad bed hair.
We were tardy getting going and only just made our NY flight.
Among the signs at the security check-in was one saying
"It is an offence to make a joke".
New
York
Some
of our bags didn’t make the flight and when we landed
we found out that our show time was an early one - 8pm,
which sent us into a bit of a flap. Luckily our bags came
through on the next flight so we called a hire car, which
dumped us with all our stuff in the rain outside the venue,
Fez, on Lafayette St.
The gig was a semi-acoustic affair and there wasn’t
a lot of gear to borrow but we got by. The sound guy seemed
to know what he was doing and Edith
Frost was playing over the PA.
It
was good to reconnect with a lot of friends, mostly Australians
we know who now have their lives in New York. September
11 seemed to have left everyone with a palpable sense of
both sadness and cynicism. One friend greeted us with "so,
are you sick of seeing the American flag yet?" and
someone else said that after Sept 11 every New Yorker looked
like they had lost a relative, but within about two months
it was back to hard-assed business as usual.
The
next day we drove out to Asbury Park to play at a venue
called the Saint. We met an Australian guy there —
a photographer who was photographing all the old amusement
park stuff and gave him a lift back into Manhattan after
the show.
Next
stop was Richmond, Virginia. After a fairly long drive we
arrived at the venue and loaded in our gear. At the top
of the stairs I was greeted with a gigantic student painting
of fleshy genitalia and a loud band playing featuring a
woman making the most satanic, guttural, unearthly noises
imaginable. We were so the wrong band on the wrong bill,
but we met a nice gothic couple at the show and they offered
to put us up. They lived in an apartment just walking distance
from the venue and had a fluffy cat with one of those pushed
in faces and it’s claws removed so it couldn’t
tear up the furniture. We stayed awake with them for a while
talking and playing records. Not theirs.
The
guys slept on the couches in the lounge and I slept in a
spare room on a small thing you could only describe as an
ottoman, more commonly referred to at home as a ‘poof’.
I had to curl up in a foetal position and rest my feet on
a pile of washing. When I woke in the morning I saw that
I was sleeping beneath a kind of satanic looking alter with
a birds claw hanging around the neck of a carved wooden
cross and a scroll of some sort with a purple pagan ritual
gown hanging on the back of the door.
We
drove on to DC for an instore at a record store called DCCD.
The first thing we saw driving in off the freeway was a
couple of cranes over an anonymous building that we quickly
realised was the patched up hole where a plane had flown
into the Pentagon. It looked strangely small and unreal,
just like any building site.
After
we played the instore we bought some discs, grabbed some
dinner at the Indian next door and drove back to New York.
Around 1am we saw Osama Bin Laden driving a black Lincoln
Town Car on the New Jersey Turnpike. He passed us on the
right and then sped on ahead towards the Lincoln Tunnel.
We wondered if he had a boot full of explosives and was
going to blow it up. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Osama
but everyone in the van agreed he was a dead-ringer. A robed
and turbaned muslim of Middle Eastern extraction with a
long beard and very similar facial features. ‘The face
of terrorism!’
A
friend of mine in NY had offered me her apartment for the
weekend cos she was going to be out of town. I had called
her earlier that day from a pay phone in a gas station in
Richmond. The e.mail with her instructions for picking up
the keys was garbled and I felt the common travel ailment
of the pathetic, needy friend looking for a cheap or free
place to stay. With my diary perched on the tin slanted
ledge beneath the phone and the receiver cradled into my
shoulder I scribbled her directions. I was supposed to find
the keys near the recylcling container in the vestibule
of her building but when we pulled up at the kerb outside
late that night my stomach sank when I saw that there were
bags of rubbish piled up on the pavement waiting to be collected.
Sure enough the keys were nowhere to found in, under or
around the empty recycling container in the vestibule. I
went reluctantly to the pay phone to call her and break
the news that I suspected they were on their way to a tip
in New Jersey. I picked up the receiver but couldn’t
bring myself to dial the number and give up on my shot at
an apartment of my own for the weekend, remembering how
that morning (which already seemed like a week ago), I had
woken up on a sacrificial alter. I walked back, and with
Wayne and Dave looking on, opened one of the big plastic
bags and started picking through the rubbish which wasn’t
so bad cos it was mostly recyclables. I dug through to the
bottom of the bag and was about to give up again and head
back to the pay phone, and most likely burst into tears
on the way, when I heard an angelic ‘clink’ and
found them inside a little cardboard box.
They
were my keys to a couple of days of sanity restoration.
I had breakfast of fresh baguette and good coffee at the
French café on the corner and did astonishingly normal
things like checked my e.mail, did a little food shopping
and went to the Laundromat. That weekend we played CBs Gallery,
memorable because Dave had to play the drums without a kick
pedal and I decided he was a genius when I heard him work
out a way to hit the kick with a drum stick without breaking
the snare and symbol pattern in a couple of the songs. After
the show, while the others went on to drink at East Village
bars with names like ‘The Library’ I went home
to my Chelsea studio, read books and listened to music while
lying in bed and looking out the window at all the other
apartments and the square of moonlit Manhattan sky above.
Philly,
Boston, back to DC, then back to NY again
The
next gig was a rainy Monday night in Philadelphia. It was
an extremely eclectic bill and there were no punters, just
the other bands standing around watching each other. The
opening act was a woman called Kelly
Slusher. She made a cool noise with electric guitar,
drum machine, keyboards and sultry vocals and she invited
us to stay at her place. She had a young, boisterous dog,
and sticky-taped to the wall was a long list of things that
he had eaten which included the remote control and a set
of car keys.
Next
was the drive to Boston. At this point you probably need
to look at a map to realise how impractical our tour route
was but we took any show we could and sometimes that meant
stupid driving and doubling back. The discovery of MapQuest
helped. We would go to some net café in the morning
and print out the map and directions for the day’s
journey. The directions are really detailed but there were
still plenty of wrong turns, wrong exits, and driving down
the wrong freeway for miles which seemed to keep us constantly
behind schedule and the first thing we had to do when we
arrived at the venue was find some of the other musicians
who were playing on the bill and ask if we could borrow
their gear for our show, hoping that there was enough equipment
there to soundcheck with, and that any other gear we had
organised to borrow would show up before our time slot.
The
good thing about Boston was seeing more familiar faces.
Chris and Kelly in Boston, "actually Cambridge,"
(not to be confused with Chris and Kelly in Austin) put
us up for the night and Kelly piled loads of chocolates
and lollies into our van the next day for the long drive
back to DC.
We
arrived at The
Galaxy Hut, a sort of café cum bar, just in time
and played in the window, our backs to the street. Again
we met some nice folks, had a couple of beers and once again
were lulled into a sense of everything being worthwhile
as we put the hellish 8 hours in the car behind us. At closing
time we loaded the gear back — some of it downstairs
to the bar’s basement, some of it upstairs to the muso
guy who lived in the flat above. Someone from DCCD had offered
to put us up and we drove out to her place. Next morning
one of the housemates, Amy, was making breakfast in the
kitchen and left out an array of muffins and blueberry bagels
for us. She is a professional indie rock cello player and
was rehearsing with Mary
Timony who is on the Matador label. Mary and the rest
of the band came over and they all went down to the basement
to rehearse for a showcase in New York later that week and
a beautiful orchestral noise wafted up through the floorboards.
We
played that night at the Black
Cat, which I believe is owned by Dave Grohl. We chatted
to a couple of people in the bar after, including another
photographer. He said to Wayne, "you can use some of
my stuff for your next record cover."
"Yeah,
what kind of stuff do you do?"
"Nudes."
I
got Other Dave to help me load up the car and drove myself
back to the house leaving the others to get a cab later.
I was feeling the onset of some serious exhaustion. Next
day after strong coffee we spent a couple of hours in a
Kinkos sending e.mails to hook up gear and make arrangements
for the LA and Tokyo shows before driving back to NY. It
was dusk when we got back and the Manhattan lights looked
very pretty. There was a lot of traffic because one of the
tunnels was closed due to yet another terrorist alert. We
loaded our stuff into the Luna
Lounge and had time to get some dinner and send more
e.mails before our show. Afterwards we stayed with friends
in Brooklyn for the night but the four of us with all our
guitars and luggage were way too much for their small apartment
and I felt kind of bad for imposing on them. Dave and Other
Dave slept on cushions on their kitchen floor.
Next
day we packed up and drove back into Manhattan and parked
the car on the street. We just left it there with all our
gear and luggage in it, too tired to worry about it getting
broken into or stolen. Wayne and I split off from Dave and
Other Dave who were doing their own things — sightseeing
and shopping, and went to a café for a 4pm breakfast
before a walk down Broadway. That night we all hooked up
again and went to a taping of Saturday
Night Live, courtesy of friend Maggie, who booked the
bands who play on the show. Cameron Diaz was hosting and
the first skit involved her introducing the audience to
her ‘ass choreographer’ and having a dance-off
with him. She was, of course, gorgeous, and she wiggled
her butt in her teeny designer jeans and stillettoes practically
in the faces of Dave and Other Dave who had front row seats.
Jimmy Eat World
were the guest band and they played that great anthemic
pop song of theirs that goes "everything, everything
will be alright alright …". We even went to the
SNL after party. It was in a big bar called ‘America’
with plenty of stars, and more stars and stirpes, and even
a life-size Abe Lincoln statue.
A
few hours later the alarm was going off at 8.30, beeping
for ages while the four of us stubbornly pretended to be
more asleep than eachother. Wayne eventually got up and
turned it off. I got up with him and we walked out for coffee
and bagels and as we were walking back it started snowing.
Sharp little pin pricks of ice on our faces.
We
were flying back to LA for a show that night at Spaceland
in Silverlake. We were almost out of money and I bought
a phone card at a deli before leaving and tried to use it
while waiting at the airport but it didn’t work. When
I rang customer service they kept me waiting for ages and
then when I finally spoke to someone they just repeated
the same three meaningless customer service phrases that
they had been told to repeat regardless of any question
I asked them. The card itself was a little American flag
and this made me so angry I had to restrain myself from
vandalising the payphone.
On
the plane we had a flight attendant who looked like she
was doped up on valium, with lipstick drawn outside the
lines of her mouth and teased hair kind of bushed out on
one side. She kept coming through with bag to collect any
rubbish calling out "Skytrash? Skytrash?"
We
landed, got a car and arrived at Spaceland for our 9pm slot.
One of the bands on the bill was signed to some indie run
by a young rich kid who had given them $50,000 and a van.
They were from Missouri and said they were trying to stay
out on the road for a year. They were only two weeks into
that plan and already looked pretty pissed off. I would
have liked to talk to them a month or so later to see how
they were going.
For
our last night in LA we went out with a few of our new friends
to this tiny Italian place on Fairfax. It took the concept
of mood lighting to a new extreme. It was impossible to
see anything including the faces of people you were talking
to, the menu, or your food. After dinner we went across
the road to the bar in Canter’s Deli. I asked the bar
tender if he had a red wine and he answered "Yeah,
but I wouldn’t drink it".
Tokyo
A
long day. We had to get up at 4am to drive about 6 hours
to SF in time to make our nine hour flight to Tokyo. The
time difference meant that we arrived in Tokyo only 2 hours
later so by the time we went to bed that night we had been
up for about 26 hours and travelling for most of it. Daisuke
from the label met us and we all got on a shuttle bus with
him. It was about two hours into town and we glided at dusk
through sleek streams of flowing traffic on elevated freeways
that curved, metropolis-like, in and out of high rise buildings,
over putrid looking water channels and other busy streets
below. All the offices were still brightly lit with people
working late into the night.
I
was completely exhausted and over travelling and I wanted
to go home. If someone had said to me ‘we‘ve cancelled
your last shows and here’s your ticket to get on the
next plane’ I would have gone, no question. But I stayed
and experienced Tokyo which was like a glimpse into the
future. Loads of people moving as one. So clean and efficient,
ordered and civilised, that the crowds feel almost comforting.
We played three shows and were put up in a hotel and each
day collected and driven to soundcheck, which was precisely
scheduled to accommodate every band on the bill. We sampled
sushi bars and noodle bars and were taken to a beautiful
traditional Japanese restaurant where we took our shoes
off, sat in a private room and had an array of tasty food
with saki and beer.
On
Saturday night in Shibuya we shuffled from the venue to
the train to go back to our hotel two stops away in Shinjuku.
Wayne observed that it was like being in the crowd leaving
the Big Day Out. On the platform people formed orderly queues.
We piled on to the train and it got more and more crowded
until I couldn’t move, couldn’t even raise my
arm to hold on, so I just let go, like a trust exercise,
and let myself be held up by the people around me.
Home
Wayne
and I dumped our bags, changed our clothes, and ignoring
the piles of mail and an answering machine full of messages
we got Wayne’s old car out of the garage and pointed
it north for an hour until we arrived at a quiet beach.
We collapsed on the sand in the late afternoon, early autumn
sun and gazed lovingly at the sea, the blue sky, the pine
trees and rocky headland formations, and breathed in the
perfume-fresh salty air.
I
closed my eyes but images from the last six weeks continued
to fly at me. It didn’t help that the very earth itself
seemed to be moving and rocking as if we were still travelling.
The waiter at the café in SF ran towards us with
our bags; a vending machine in Texas dispensed bunches of
fresh flowers; another vending machine somewhere dispensed
mobile phones and chargers; a giant truck stop on a highway
promised an array of food and sustenance but inside offered
only Cinnabon muffins and crappy coffee or french fries
and coke amongst the rows of payphones and public toilets;
The sign at the airport in Chicago said it was an offense
to make a joke and the armed guards in ‘camouflage’
at LAX assured you the sign was serious. The bracket mounted
TV’s in hotel rooms played CNN, warned of another terrorist
attack and again played the footage of the planes slamming
into the world trade centre. The American flag phone card
left you disconnected. The cat in the house in Seattle crouched,
paw outstretched, alert but not alarmed, and tried to catch
the drips from the bathroom tap.
To
still my mind and think nothing, I held a fistful of sand
and let it trickle out while I watched a seagull briefly
hover, wings outstretched, beak pointing into the wind,
orange webbed feet dangling.
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