Drinking MGD on Aaron Lazar's porch with the Giraffes and Aaron's dad, recovering from last night, bracing ourselves for tonight. Giraffes are talking about getting their van broken into Tuesday morning and being able to tell a bum had been in there by the smell. I wonder out loud how they could smell the bum out from the residual stench of Damien asscrack, Drew balls, etc. Not a promising start. Danny was an hour and half late showing up at the practice space. We had intended to run the set a couple more times, as we needed it. While I was waiting, I set up all my shit just to warm my voice up, and one of my pedals crapped out. I got it kinda working again, but fuck… I was so fucking mad at Danny I was shaking, not the best way to start out an eleven day trip of spending every second of every day together.
Hauled ass to DC and rolled up just as the lovely Ma Spoiler (mother to the infamous Jim Spoiler of Girl Harbor fame, but don't hold that against her) was pulling the steak off the grill. Ma and Pa Spoiler are just about my favorite people in the world. We sat down to a meager fare of corn on the cob, a platter of fresh basil, fresh garden tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, thick steak grilled rare, bowtie pasta with Portobello mushrooms, asparagus and parmesan cheese (and you know that it was the real shit, not that canned cheese dust crap that I have to buy). Man, can she cook. The Spoilers regaled Danny with tales of me having to go last in line at Thanksgiving so other people would get food, and Pa Spoiler dished out a rare compliment, calling me a 'trainwreck' of a bass player before Danny and I had to haul ass to the show. It was only when we got back in the van that we both got so nervous we were ready to shit our pants. I smoked a cigarette cause I thought it would make me relax, and you know what, it didn't fucking work.
But, lo and behold, we pulled it together. We wrote a set list and I of course spewed out some drunken banter and then launched right into the second song. Whoops. Danny rolled with it and nailed the song and I forgave him for being late right then. We sounded good, people dug it, the bar forgave our bartab(!) and we got ten bucks! Which works out to about two bucks for each hour of driving. Yahoo. Oh, but wait, we bought a recording of the show from the soundguy for twenty bucks (I got him down from twenty-five) so we're only ten bucks in the hole. Giraffes weren't totally on their game last night. Aaron's getting into this Miami Vice sports jacket bullshit and then he gets too laid back and business-casual on stage. He pays more attention to his cigarette than he does to the mic and his banter is limited to the fact that they're only playing to the people in the other bands. Suck it up, you big pussy. What, we're not fucking good enough for you? I don't want to play to anyone who's not in a band. Still manages to strangle Damien with a mic cord, spear him with the mic stand, etc. They should just fuck and get it over with.
Read Aaron's tour diary tonight, in which he's going for all-out confrontational. He's predicted that me and him will punch each other in the face by the end of the tour. Maybe he'll punch me, but I love the guy too much to hit him, no matter how he needles me. Besides, Damien and Drew piss me off much more frequently. The Snuff Project is good, painfully loud (this is a good thing). Damien Taylor, their guitar player, wears his Epiphone high like Ed Sullivan-era Beatles, but it doesn't look nerdy or contrived as he just hammers out big fuzzy chords, his arm swinging from the elbow. His sound is a cross between Billy Karren (sp?) from Bikini Kill and Ray Davies. Scott Taylor, the singer looks like an extra from Easy Rider and introduces a song by mumbling "better drugs, better drugs, better drugs" into the microphone. So we're all pretty much best friends forever now. One sour note: Patrick O'Donnell, kingpin of Skoda Records out of DC, opened the set with a compelling batch of songs that no one saw. After doing his label for several years now, he's going to fold, having not made a single buck and having whored himself out at a corporate job to fund the label. Is this what we're working so hard for? Working as some kind of corporate sharecropper to put out records that few people listen to, fewer people buy, but that mean an incredible amount to the few people who enjoy them? The High Strung and The Possibilities have just in the last year each made records that approach perfection, yet The High Strung are skinnier every time I see them, The Possibilities are still in Georgia, and you probably haven't heard either record. There's got to be a better way, we need to find a better way to live.9/11/03 Sitting in the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti, MI, drinking the first of two pitchers that the bands are entitled to (my faithful sidekick Danny doesn't appear to be drinking much). The Giraffes are at a titty bar, their faithful leader asleep in the back of my van, sick already. A sticker on the door says "Strip clubs, not strip malls." Amen to that, brother. Napped in the bunk in the back of the van for the first time yesterday. It's a little terrifying, because you don't want to look at the ceiling (about six inches away from your face) or you'll get claustrophobic and you don't want to look out the side windows or you'll see all these suburban drones giving you the hairy eyeball, so you look out the front and realize that if anything goes wrong, you're heading through the windshield and onto the highway at eighty miles an hour. But the sun was warm on my feet, and the futon is mine and smells and feels familiar, and I drank about five pints in about twenty minutes the night before, so I manage to catch a Z or two. Driving through the toll booth with my shirt off, Danny asleep in the back. The toll collector gives me a long slow look and I imagine him radioing a supervisor as he gets my change. "Looks like we got us some big tattooed Mongolian driving, and he's got a dead naked Mexican in the back. Dunno, it could be a Chinaman." We roll in to Aaron's house around three. He's just waking up after driving all night. "I took too much Dexatrim and I was tagging out," he says, referring to Beauty Supply frontman Josh Taggart's infamous baseline tremor, "shaking so hard I couldn't steer so I had to pull over for an hour and try to sleep but fucking Damien, whenever he rolls over, he like smacks his lips, grunts and farts." He's drinking the first of about ten daily cups of coffee.
His Dad shows up and it turns out Aaron's a real chip off the old block, his Dad has a huge handlebar mustache, goatee and the fucking coolest, biggest mullet I've ever seen ever. He looks like a cross between Wolfman Jack and a wizard and a badger. We drink a couple of MGD's on the porch of Aaron's cavernously huge childhood home and Pops regales us with stories of the dead body he found in the park across the street, the gunshots he heard in the park the night before, the last time the house got broken in to (about a year ago). Drew tried to talk to me about Allison. Trying to get a game of pick-up basketball together-Aaron, of course, is wussing out because he's in engineer boots-and Aaron's neighbor hops the fence. In the movie, he'd probably be played by Lawrence Fishburne, but he's genuinely tough, not movie tough: you can tell by how nice he is to us when he meets us. He's brought over a couple of joints for us. Rampant crime, cheap beer and free drugs: Youngstown, Ohio, America's Holy Land. Drew goads me into taking a hit against my better judgment and three hours later, I still haven't woken up even though I laid off the beer, ate a huge meal (thanks Ma Lazar!) and drank coffee, so I take some of Aaron's Dexatrim.
The club, the Royal Oaks, is a fucking dive, your run of the mill redneck bar w/ PBR signs, three TVs and a room with booths and folding tables that they move so we can play. Some dude drags out an ancient PA, then makes us wheedle and plead for a mic, a mic cord and a fucked up mic stand to duct tape the mic to. But you know what? It sounds good, the vocals are loud with no feedback, I crank my amp and nobody says anything and the drums sound good echoing through the big empty room. I drink a couple of whiskies and a couple of big 24 oz. PBR cans, take some more Dexatrim and Danny and I take the stage, er, 'oor. Somehow, we nail She Treats Me Bad, and holy shit, the twenty or so people there are clapping. Lots. Danny and I turn in a career high performance, it just feels good all the way through. By the end of the set, though, I'm wasted. Giraffes are fucking hot. After being blown away by Helping You Help Yourself, I didn't know how they were going to top it, but the new songs are incredible, Black Knight at White Castle (title and idea by yers truly) and Sugar Bomb really shine. Aaron's gotten out of his Tom Waits-bad-preacher shit and is into some straight Jim Jones/ Tony Robbins/ Al Green gulag. His good posture is terrifying. He stands on a chair, testifying like Farrakan, then puts a foot up on the back and it spills him 'at on his ass, and he just lies there, big shit-eating grin on his face, cracking up. The night deteriorates quickly, we get paid, I piss on the Giraffes van, they piss on mine. Danny drives us home.
Posted by Mishka at September 10, 2003 12:42 AM