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Next day travels take us through Northern Nevada in the snow and to the lovely town of Bendover, excuse me, Wendover for a pit stop, then on to the Bonnevile Salt Flats. We've detoured a small amount to get here, we just want to see the test tracks and the speedway. Heading out on the little road, we're starting to get the idea that we may not be there at the right time of year, because as the road ends in a cul-de-sac and we all get out, we realize that the Salt Flats are covered in two inches of water for as far as the eye can see. it's a pretty amazing sight and we are slightly stir crazy so we all take plenty of pictures. Then back into the bus and into Salt Lake City.
well, SLC turns out to be a bust. When we pull up, it is apparent that they have moved the venue form the upstairs "DV8" club to the downstairs "Brick". and they are already setting up for a 6:30 pm all ages punk ska show. So we can't load in until after this show is over and then we get no sound check, but it wouldn't matter cuz there are hardly monitors anyway... and the promoter is in Las Vegas leaving his lackeys to help us out. I head off to have some cybersex at a local kinko's and return to Mandrake loading our bus with our rider, beer and sandwiches basically, and when he's done, we've cancelled the show and are preparing to split. I am astonishingly the only one who still wants to play. (I mean maybe astonishing that I'm an idiot? we all knew that. Jud from Varnaline wants to play too. SLC is always this way, you play punk rock shows in quanset huts, that's just the way it is. man, the shitty places i've put up with in the past just to play... I just can't get behind the mentality of cancelling a show if you're actually there! i could see it if you weren't going to arrive, but I swear in years of touring, never have done this. and we're all a little edgy from travelling and not playing, this just sets me the wrong way, I feel like everybody's really snobby. back into my paperback..... )
A new Vox has been following us a day late until now, we pick it up here. It's a blue speakered one (the 15 watt speakers, to be overdriven by the 30 watts of the amp) so I give my old OX ( i had covered the first letter) to Mark to replace his one that has no brilliant channel. the new one gets a 5 so it's VO5. also in the boxes from Vox is a wah-wah pedal that Mark uses for the rest of the tour.
Off into Wyoming, then wake up in Boulder. My brother Daniel and his wife, Barbara, live there so they come and get me and i get to go over to their house and do laundry (thank god) and watch sonograms of their as-yet-unborn baby. I'm going to be an uncle. Weird Uncle Jonathan. Has a nice ring to it...
We're playing at the Fox theatre, which is a beautiful theatre, but it's Easter Sunday and all the students have gone home, so nobody is there to watch. well, nearly nobody. there's Jef Harvey, from Denver, a fan who has graciously allowed the touring Container to stay at his house in the past, former SF drinking buddy-turned-ski bunny DeDe Turnbull, and even Dave has friends here, a guitarist who plays in the band of the daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon. As we start the set, we're already drained. but then, a vision, it's the Taylor girl dancing in front, 6 feet tall in a sheer white dress. it's inspiring and she knows it. she's pretty much the only thing that sustains us through the show. We bravely stumble through. the next day, again no show. we stay somewhere in western Kansas and entertain ourselves by going to a bowling alley! Garsh. And those waitresses, they just knew we were a band, gee... So we get to Lawrence and it's some club i've been to years ago but by this point i'm getting a little foggy...at least Lawrence is a college town, hence good coffee... small but appreciative audience, including people who have driven from Omaha, Lincoln, Wichita and Springfield, MO. (including a rock fan couple whom I had seen actually enjoying our show in Austin!) That's dedication. they liked every note, I could just tell. And with the new amp I'm actually getting some decent midrange finally, getting a decent tone.
several days have passed again living on the bus, which means no showers and no shaving, but we get to Minneapolis for another day off, but this time with a hotel room. At the same hotel the P-Funk All Stars are staying and Dave in fact knows Michael Hampton, "the Kid", the guitar player. He has his signature on the back of his bass. Anyhow, they are playing that night and we can go if we want. I walked downtown to Nicolet Mall to meet the illustrious Holly Day, poet and writer, and coincidentally a music journalist as well ( which is how I know of her. her poetry, however, is incredible, and that's really why I want to meet her, not just to get Magnetic product reviews.... yeah, sure, you say.) We were going to meet at Jitters coffee house, but apparently it's closed down, as I'm looking for a phone, I see a young woman pushing a child in a stroller and I just know it's her. I walk up to her outside the record store and say "Holly.." and she looks up, it is her. she's a little freaked cuz she doesn't know me...anyway we had a pleasant afternoon talking about words and geography and whatnot, and she promises to come to the Sparklehorse show the next day.
That evening Dave, Matt, Ivor and I get in the hotel's van to get a ride to Prince's club to see P-Funk. The hotel seems to house recent army volunteers on their night before they ship out as well, and as we get into the van, several get in with us saying that they're going to 'the View', a strip club with glass floors that you can sit below (?) and they have some girls with them in this endeavour ...well, at least until the driver gets there and the lady from the front desk comes over and yells "Army kids out! You're not going anywhere!" And they're looking at me! iI swear I'm with the rock band! I can see it all now, they think I'm an 18 year old recruit, i'm going to be in Yugoslavia tomorrow.... (so i briefly have the nickname of GI Jonathan...)
we had already seen the Original P in Austin, but that was no preparation for a modern George Clinton Concert. We got there way before they started, and waited around watching all the well dressed black audience and the poorly dressed white hippies come in. they started around 10pm. I smoked some with Dave, as I was instructed to do by the band. last time i saw george Clinton was way back in the 80's in Santa Cruz (where coincidentally they had just come from the previous show...) but he had the full thing going on tonight. I lasted slightly over 3 hours, during which I had the revelation that Dave's friend Michael was indeed the guitarist on the 7" live version of Maggot Brain, and a heretofore unnamed guitar hero of mine since high school! and he played Maggot Brain, for at least 20 minutes... and then Blackbyrd McNight did his guitar solo, oh man...
Matt and I left Ivor and Dave there and caught a cab, who's dispatch radio aired the incoming phone calls through to the cabs, it was like a comedy show with the dispatcher abusing the callers...
The upshot of all that was that the brits got some of the funk in 'em. they insisted that it was the best show they had ever seen and they continued to play THE BOMB all the time....every night... I mean baby's first P-Funk is cute and all, but...
Everybody seems to have found some music stores here. Scott went and bought some sort of hard disk recorder factory demo version and Dave bought another 1978 Fender Precision Bass just like the one he's had for 18 years, except the way it was when he bought it.
The bus placard reads "Heaven" now and remains that way for awhile.
OK. We played the next night at the 7th street entry, adjunct of the 1st avenue club, both old CVB venues. Across the street at the Target Center, Rod Stewart! and, no shit, Matt blags his way into getting tickets for us, so after sound check we went over to check out Rod. We sat up on the side in an auditorium of 15,000 poofy haired bleach blonde forty year olds...whew. they were excited! at one point the lady next to me turned and said "don't you just love him? I mean, as a guy?" having no idea what she was getting at I had to say No, but i'm pretty into the violinist... they were playing on a huge empty stainless steel set with no visible amps and then video throughout. what a spectacle. and they're fucking good musicians. whatever. We opened our show we the intro to Maggie May. the audience were packed into the small bar and it went ok. I could see Holly Day entering some form of music listening dream as we played. (I fear that maybe she's out of her mind, wouldn't surprise me. she did compare me to Charles Manson in a review of 'Fancy Birdhouse'.....)
onward to Chicago. Anybody who forgot to shave or shower in Minneapolis is fucked at this point, because we're living on the stinky old bus until Toronto now. I'm the only one in the entourage that doesn't smoke, in fact I am avidly opposed to it, I fucking hate cigarettes. and i say this as a tobacco user as well, I do like the drug. I even like to smoke it occaisonally (in a pipe, and I would never do it indoors). Cigarettes are just so fucking not tobacco, like bad booze or American beer. it's sad, they're just made for addiction and Addiction is slavery. I can't wait 'til people figure out that it's really not cool at all, but it's so much like the might makes right of punk rock, those that offend think they're cool by being offensive... and of course even the part time smokers like Scott and Paul are swayed by the full timers so that everybody is smoking all the time in the bus. at least in Europe we had one area of the bus where nobody smoked, but there we also had Scott Fitz on bass, another nonsmoker. By this point in the tour the bus is completely disgusting, everything is dirty dusty and smelly.
In Chicago it's cold. seems a little seedy despite the fact that we're in some fairly cool part and there's nice restaurants around. Paul has lived here for a time before moving to NY so he's got friends. We're playing at the Double Door so we're there all afternoon. I spend too much money renting an internet computer across the street for awhile, and looking for cds at the local Reckless (where they're just as clueless as the Reckless in SF, hmm..) Just to make ourselves feel good, Dave and I go to a semi-fancy italian restaurant where we get the evil eye from the moment we walk in, they think we're bums coming to scam a meal.
Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers opens the show. it's a big place and it's full by the time we play, and we do a rockin' set. my amp was a little low for the hall, couldn't fill the room like Mark's two, the show was videotaped and that's how i discovered that for sure... still and all a successful show. Several friends and Magnetic fans there, including old housemates of mine from SF...
Backstage afterwards I find that Paul's friends include Sally Timms from the Mekons. Despite the fact that she's been doing the song cycle shows in SF a bunch lately, I haven't seen her for ten years, (besides on TV in LA MCing a screening of "Jaws"! what will they think of next..) since Camper did shows with the Mekons around here and they all showed up the next day in Detroit all wearing Plaster Caster T-shirts, red and blue ones for the casters and the castees respectively.
People are starting to get sick by now, the tour bronchitis is setting in. Some have been sick for days already... fuckin' smokers.
The next day in Detroit, we are informed that the Smashing Pumpkins are playing at St Andrew's hall and don't want anybody in the Shelter so our gig has been moved to Alvin's. The unfortunate truth about Detroit is that there's no good food around. We're in a haze. We spend time in the afternoon at a bookstore near the venue getting dirty paperbacks with great covers ("Sin Fool" and so on) and old issues of Rolling Stone from the 70s. I think by this point I was no longer able to concentrate on anything enough to read a book, so I spent most of the time listening to CDs on headphoes and staring out the window.
The issues of Rolling Stone are enlightening. Most of the reviews are of bands or records that never made it beyond that year. One story claimed that the Rolling Stones themsleves were foolishly continuing their career "crippled with age" as they were... (this in 1979). it all makes me think of present rock journalism with the same sceptical view that the writers really and truly have no concept of the non-importance of what they're writing about and can't give any sort of historical perspective to it.
and as if to prove it to me, we went to Cleveland. I think I can say that brain death occurred in Cleveland. we played the Grog shop, a tiny bar. Much yucky shops nearby. at this point the tension of living on the bus and being gross and dirty finally cracked ---- Dave. not whom you would expect. but he had had enough and on top of it the club was gross and the bass sounded like shit. we got him calmed down by bringing him Austin Powers head on a keychain which spoke four phrases from the movie. Mark has been loading his sampler with phrases from "Touch of Evil" like Dennis Weaver's "it stinks in here" and "do you know what a mary-jane is? do you know what a mainliner is?"
Barry Simons is at the show, he's The Music Lawyer from SF, the guy who negotiated Camper's contract wtih Virgin way back when, and many other bands before and since. seems he's in town visiting his mother. he says that the street the club is on (Covent? can't remember) is where he used to come to look at hippies back in the sixties, where all the cool record stores were...and now it's this... Barry's alright by me. for a lawyer. I get him a rolling paper.
Next we head to Niagara! and the Great T Shirt Caper Part 2, smuggling the rest of the merch into Canada. Since it doesn't take much time to get to Canada, we have time to go on the Maid of the Mist boat ride! never got to do that before, and with the abundance of Marilyn postcards already sent out, I have to get Niagara ones to continue the tradition.
We get to Toronto a day before we play and finally have a hotel, so after a shower Dave and I go out for food but i am unfortunately poisoned by the food. afterwards I went to see the Matrix and comtemplate the life I could have had if I had chosen to stay at Danetracks last September to be assistant sound designer on this movie instead of touring with Sparklehorse. I spend the night and the next day completely nauseous. most of the day of the show is spent wandering around Toronto with my face facing the cold air to keep me going...sick for days. Mark has a plethora of press and interviews, TV and radio and such, and gets to see videos that Garine Torossian has made for some Sparklehorse songs. She also has a film that we're going to use instead of the normal slide show. Our show that night is fantastic, filled with people and the film is spectacular, it's beautiful (so is Garine, her eyes will swallow you whole.) Lots of local musicians are there too, which is always nice to know. also there is Roman Sokal, who was the sound man for the Invisibles, the film i had scored that was at Sundance this year, who says that the film is going to festivals around the US this june...
back on the bus afterwards, off to Montreal. Having been unable to eat the previous day, i'd trying to find out if I can eat today, and thank god we discover a cafe with decent cappucino. the Club, however, is new and obviously a front for some other sort of money making. And the local Record Company rep hasn't supplied anybody with the requested photos or press. the show is boring. people leave in the middle of it. I don't blame them.
From here we go through customs again at 4 in the morning, as if that was going to prevent them from full cavity search, but again they look on the bus and are so disgusted that they wave us by.
Next stop is Boston. I hate Boston. it's a disgusting and violent city, and I say that from the bottom of my heart. Boston is where i had the truly Spinal Tap Moment many years ago trying to get paid at a CVB show, where the Rathskellar promoter guy had the slicked back black hair and a voice box to talk, uh, rasp out words with. he says, "so there's 120 people on the guest list so i can't give you your guarantee"... I say, "well, we don't know that many people, we're from the west coast..." he laughs (rasps) and says, "You Have A Lot To Learn About The Music Business......."
we get a hotel room but it's outside of town by 30 miles because it's near somewhere where Mark wants to look at studio gear for Static King. it's a 3 mile walk to the nearest highway food. (when we found out about this situation was in Cleveland of course, and as we complained, Mark said "I'm not here to accommodate your days off" which pretty much said it all.)
next day we actually drive into Boston after a side trip to Mercenary Audio to look at more audio gear. it's a great place, but gear that we at the Magnetic Motorworks or the Satellite could never afford. kind of like going into a Ferrari shop. We played at the Middle East Club, a fairly big venue. Richard Gann showed up, he who painted all the Hieronymus Firebrain cd covers. I have my little flip out this evening when i bring Rich and his friend onto the bus and it's full of smoke so i open the roof vent, then Matt comes on and sees the roof vent open and closes it 'cuz it's raining, I jumped all over him.
A band called Wooden Leg opened the show. the show was ok, that's about it. Mark is pretty sick, he's been coughing pretty steadily.... it's a robitussin show. Again we leave after and awaken in New York City, our bus placard reading, "you're in good hands".
We loaded into the Bowery Ballroom at about 2pm. Sound checked til 5. Danny Clinch was there to take pictures of Mark for the Vox ads (ha ha)... I took a cab over to Edie's ( the Magnetic Mistress of Illusion, photgrapher and artist extrodinaire) and Andrew Norton was already there ( Andrew is another name from those old CVB records... also happened to be our sound man when we opened for REM, so he's my crew for the show that evening). We went out to eat at Boca Chica, my first real food since Toronto, and then amused ourselves in the new hipster area of Ludlow street, where we found video driving games of California cities like Santa Cruz and San Francisco. saw some random band at arlene grocery, passed by but did not enter the Living Room where, unbeknownst to us, Chris Unrath from Baby Flamehead was playing an acoustic set...
The show was big and boomy, we put as much as we could into it and it showed. probably our best east coast show. in the audience in front of me, LD from Flare, partner of Chris X in their new project, the Moth Wranglers, winking whenever I looked at him...
New York Set List
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I should point out that these set lists are just what was listed, I can't remember what we actually played, and sometime it isn't what's written...
Paul had bought a Fender Jaguar Guitar in Montreal and graciously allowed me to use it at these last few shows a a second guitar to my regular Stratocaster. It was inspiring to have new tones to play with.
after the show, everybody partied downstairs until whenever they kicked us out. I got to show my friends the wonderful stinking tour bus. wheee.
Left and woke up by the Airport tower hotel in Philadelphia. having no idea where i was , i got up and called Eden Daniels, former Baby Flamehead singer, who said, I can come and get you but you have to come with me as I shop for my birthday barbeque. when she arivved, we took Paul into town and proceeded over the bridge into NJ to buy beer 'cuz you can't in Philly on sunday, and ran out of gas. Luckily, we were on just that much of a slope to keep the car going on to a gas station....eventually stocked with beer and party favors, we went to her birthday bash, where i learned of Chris Unrath's performance the night before, and by then I had to leave and go sound check at the Theatre of the Living Arts, where we had played last fall with PJ Harvey. realizing that my friends here were going to drink themselves silly and forget that I was even in town soon enough, I bid them adieu and went to South Street and lost myself in the revery of being in the theatre ("that's where I met Polly Harvey, right there!...")
in Boston, Rich Gann had told me a story of a coworker of his at RISD who had a 17 year old son. the day after the prom, the son is fumbling about the ktichen trying to make a bowl of cereal, whistling. the Father said to Rich, "he thinks i don't know what's going on.." well, Dave Dreiwitz live in New Jersey and he went home last night. He arrives with his girlfriend, whistling. he thinks we don't know what's going on.
He also happened to bring his weird Danelectro longhorn bass for this last show.
A band named Bent Leg Fatima opened. great Can-like weirdness, a very Jaki drummer and a guy with many synthesizer things... Varnaline gave themselves to NY like we did, and they're all sick too. seems like the tour should have ended last night. anyway, we slug it through and pack up to leave. drop off people in Philly, (Mark is staying to do NPR Fresh Air interviews the next day, Ivor leaves from the Philly airport) head on up to NJ and NY to drop off Matt and Scott and Paul, by the time I get up the next day it's only me and Allan somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Eventually by dusk we get to the Linkous Ranch. After Allan and I unload all the gear, I realize that I am going to have to take two trips in the truck to get it up the road to the house, but by this point I can smell actual sleep so I have super human strength and unload it all alone. The I had to feed the animals, and got sucker punched by one of the horses while giving them oats, the fuck. bit my tongue. Showered and soundly slept, Mark and Teresa came back shortly after I arrived. Got a ride to the glorius Star Motel in Dillwyn where the bus was the next morning, Mark grabbed whatever he had left and we went off to the Richmond airport, the planes were on time and I made the same trip through Chicago and home. In looking through the bus, however, I found out that sometime in the past few days Mark had lost his little bag of loose leaf lyrics, all the lyrics he had written for the past two years. All are gone! A tragic end to the creativity of the tour, and Mark seems to write while he's on tour too.....
And to round it all out, I stayed in SF for the next few days and played another show with Victor at the Bottom of the Hill opening for Mark Eitzel the next Saturday night, and we all bought new matching Danolectro Guitars and basses for it. (or at least everybody else's matched, mine's sparkley.)
that's it, if you don't like it, write your own tour diary!
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