It's always the way on tour. You have
an early rise booked in, with plans to actually do something other
than just travel in the van all day, something that is all to rare an
occurrence, and you piss all over those plans by drinking until the
sun comes up. I don't regret it on this particular day though. It's
not every night you get to see your drummer mistakenly suck your
merch guy's bobby. Everybody, except Gordon, was in a good mood
today, sleep deprived or not.
Once we got out of the van and inhaled
some Pacific air into our lungs, everything started to feel better.
We only had an hour or so to look around the city, and so we had to
choose what we wanted to see. I would have liked to have gone to
Haight/Ashbury as well as check Amoeba Records out, but was content
enough with the majority vote that decided we go down to the bay,
look at the seals and have a glance at Alcatraz out on that island.
We stopped for coffee first though, as functioning on any sort of
level without a caffeine fix would have been impossible.
The seals were cute and it was fun
watching them paddle about in the harbour waters, and Alcatraz was
cool enough, although from our standpoint a little imagination was
needed. By the time Dutch called time to leave, I was not for the
first time on tour, left feeling that I wished I was here on holiday.
We made the short drive over to
Sacramento, or actually Orangevale, which although Dutch said was
Sacramento, was actually Orangevale. When we pulled up outside the
venue, which was as usual in the middle of a nondescript nowhere, I
asked Dutch how long it would take to journey into Sacramento. “Oh,
well it's about twenty miles away.” Fuck sakes, sometimes this
country gets on my tits. Twenty miles away in USA terms apparently
equates to being in the same place. That's like me saying Corby is
actually in Leicester. Although why I'd want to say that I don't
know. So, that was that. We're stuck here in Orangevale, which
isn't Sacramento, with nothing to do but wait for Nile to get
soundcheck over and done with.
Today is the actually the first day we
have any contact with the Nile guys. Fat Jeff actually came out to
greet us on our bus. He seemed like a decent enough guy to be
honest. He asked it was ok to come aboard the disco bus and then
hung out for about ten minutes making half awkward small talk,
referring now and again to his band's poor effort in the mingling
stakes so far. He said something about them having a new bass player
and some in-band issues that had been niggling away at them and that
from here on in they'd be making a bit more of an effort to hang out
with everyone. He then made a few comments about our band, saying he
“digged it”, although it was painfully obvious that he didn't
have a fucking clue about us. I doubt very much he'd even seen us in
action yet. Still, nice enough of him to come over to us and make
the effort. Funny thing is, this would turn out to be the one and
only time any of us would have a conversation with Fat Jeff on the
tour.
A little while after Jeff has left, and
we're again going over the events of the night before, Chrissy walks
on to the bus. Or, actually, I should say, she shuffles onto the
bus, big duffel-coat wrapped around her but doing nothing to stop the
apparent chill raging through her being, eyes sadly dipped towards
the floor, looking like she's just been told she has a terminal
disease. We laugh at first, assuming she's insanely hungover, which
of course she is, but it turns out it's way worse than that. She
asks us if we've seen her rucksack. “No..... why? What's
happened?”
It turns out that she has lost/had her
rucksack stolen somewhere between San Francisco and here. In that
rucksack was her laptop and even worse, all of the takings from
Decapitated and Hypocrisy's merch from the first week of the tour.
About ten thousand dollars apparently. My first reaction is TEN
THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! Fucking hell, we must have sold about two
hundred, tops. But that quickly subsides into a feeling of desperate
sympathy for Chrissy, sickly almost. We tell her that we're sorry
but we haven't seen it. She hangs out for a while, doing her best to
hold back the tears. The worst thing is, she hasn't told the bands
yet.. Dear Lord...
As soon as she's shuffled off again,
Kev and Lasse agree that they recall a very drunken Chrissy the night
before, opening her rucksack and showing them the bundles of cash
inside, as they were sat partying at the merch stall. It's all to
obvious that someone at the gig has been witness to this and taken
the opportunity. Some fucker is considerably better off this
morning, that's for sure!
I don't know how it plays out with
Chrissy and the guys, but they obviously come to some understanding
since Chrissy avoids getting the sack at least. Although the fact
that she's seeing the Decapitated guitarist probably helps. That is,
if she ever does indeed tell them. Whatever the case, we never hear
word of it again.
The club in Orangevale is much more to
our liking. It's a small club, the likes of which we played in San
Antonio. I think it's sold out at about two hundred and fifty. The
place looks more like a punk dive than most of the crap venues we've
been playing so far, which suits us down to the ground. Thankfully
for us, that actually translated to there being a healthy
punk/hardcore contingent in the crowd and it ended up being one of
the best, if not the best
show of the tour. The place was packed, the stage was small, and the
crowd went mental when we played. There was even stage diving and
mosh pits at points and we sold a bit of merch afterwards. What a
fucking contrast to last night, and the night before, and the night
before that..
Apart
from the gig, something else great happened on this night.
I've
never known a bigger toilet enthusiast than Bloody Kev. I mean, I've
never known anyone who takes as much pleasure in the act of taking a
shit as Kev. He fucking loves it. He claims that when he worked at
Virgin Records, he could entice as many as seven a day out. He hated
his job so lucky for him he could break the day up with constant, and
productive, shit breaks. As well as he can seemingly produce a turd
at will, he can also hold on to one for a great length of time, in
anticipation of finding a worthy toilet to release it.
The
problem/quite frankly absurd phenomenon with rest-rooms (as they call
them) in that States is that a lot of the time the stalls don't have
doors on, and if they do then they most likely don't have a lock to
keep the door closed with. This is at least how I've experienced
this matter on the touring circuit. Just another quirky detail in
the make up of this generally insane country. Anyway, the toilet at
the club in Orangevale, although by no means anything you'd describe
as luxurious, did at least have a door with a lock. In fact, the
toilet itself was one big room with a door and a lock. Which is a
little weird in that the shitter and the urinal don't come as
exclusive items.. you get one, you get the other. Strange design
fault but there you go. Anyway, Kev, as is his routine, had checked
out the bog on arrival and had been looking forward to his toilet
visit since we'd got here, leaving it for a while to build up the
anticipation. You can imagine his fury then when as soon as he
finally calls time on it and sits down on the pan, some obnoxious
metaller bangs on the door, telling him to hurry up.
“Alright
yeah,” an annoyed Kev responds, “I've just sat down, gimme a
minute.” Within twenty seconds the guy is banging on the door
again, shouting at Kev to hurry up. Big mistake. You don't not fuck
with Kev and his turd time. Kev responds in a way only he could. He
decided to wipe his arse and save the first piece of paper. With
this he plans to open the door and shove it into the annoying cunt at
the door's face. The thing is, when he opens the door he's faced
with some big heavy metal bastard who looks like he could eat Kev for
breakfast. Luckily Kev has the piece of shit paper hidden behind his
back. With what can only be described as an ingenious bit of quick
thinking, he stands aside and and welcomes the big metaller in, “It's
all yours mate”. As he does this he pats the guy on the back and
sticks the piece of shit paper to the guys leather jacket. And with
that he makes a sharp exit out of there.
Only
Kev could possibly think of such an action, and justify it. The
thing that gets me is that this is before the show and the guy being
at the gig, he's bound to run into Kev again during the evening. And
unless he's really is as thick as he no doubt looked, he's bound to
realise that it was Kev who stuck the shit rag on his leather jacket.
Amazingly, Kev receives absolutely no back lash on the matter.
Although
there were a few drinks drunk after the show, the night was
considerably calmer than that which preceded it. How could it not
be? Dutch was leaving early in the morning for the trip to Portland.
I had set my alarm to six am so I could get up and listen to the
Liverpool – Man Utd game on Dutch's internet radio. We got beat by
a late goal, robbed as usual. It was the game when that bastard Gary
Neville ran the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the
Liverpool fans at the end of the game, almost causing a riot in the
process. Normally I'd complain that I wished I hadn't bothered
getting up at such a ludicrous hour to listen to the game, but not
this time. The scenery up in Northern Californian/Oregon was
beautiful, really beautiful, like Twin Peaks landscape. It was soul
soothing sitting up front with Dutch, having a deep conversation as
the sun came up and we drove through the forest firs that the highway
snaked through. I didn't even go back to bed after the game.
It was
the first time I'd really sat down with Dutch and talked to him, and
although I have to say he
definitely had his quirks (he probably
still hates Lasse over Coffeegate), I got an insightful look into his
life as we sat there and drank coffee together. It's a weird fucking
life being a tour driver, or any kind of long distance driver for
that matter. He told me about his wife and how much he was away from
home, how he missed her. I could understand how it must have been
for him... I enjoyed our long chat as everyone else slept. I still
don't get the wresting thing though...
We arrived in Portland a few hours
before doors and hung out with the Soilent guys for a while, again
going through the events of the night in San Francisco. After
hearing of Gordon's unfortunate act he had unanimously been elected
their favourite person on tour. They were having problems with the
Nile guys though, as were Hypocrisy. It seemed that Nile were
kicking up a fuss about the amount of merch Soilent had with them on
the road. They had told them that they weren't allowed to sell more
than three different design of t-shirt, which is absolutely fucking
ludicrous! It's bad enough that we all had to match their ridiculous
t-shirt prices as it is, but this was just purely taking the piss!
The Soilent guys were threatening to quit the tour. The Hypocrisy
guys were fucked off too because Nile were clamping down on their set
time, wanting them to cut ten minutes from it. This all seemed to be
strangely coincidental with the fact Soilent were most likely selling
more merch than Nile and a lot of people were leaving the venue's
after Hypocrisy were done..
I spent a couple of hours walking about
the nearby Portland streets. It seemed like a really cool place,
very laid back. Portland is of course drenched in punk and hardcore
history, with so many great bands coming from here. I'd found a
pretty cool record shop on my travels that sold mostly indie stuff.
I picked up a Trans Am record as well as the first Set Fire To Flames
lp. Ben from Soilent found this to be funny. I was pleased with my
purchases though. To be honest, it was just as well I hadn't found a
punk store since I would've most likely pissed away all my money in
it.
The show tonight was a rather chilled
affair. The club was on the smaller side, the crowd of three hundred
or so not quite filling it out. We'd been taking the piss out of the
young guys in With Passion since they'd been having a laugh at Gords'
AC/DC t-shirt. Both our crew and the Soilent crew had slaughtered
them for that. It was all good fun, the little bastards. There was
quite an obvious clique appearing within the touring ranks. Compared
to the show the night before in Orangevale you'd have to say this gig
was a tame affair. We had a few people down the front that were into
it and there were no signs of aggravation from anyone. But
considering the crowd had a greater contingent of punk and hardcore
kids than most nights, it didn't kick off like I maybe hoped it
would. I guess it was an early night and most likely somewhere in
the beginning of the week. Who knows?
The funny thing is, Nile's stage
manager, who was this rowdy little guy who reminded me of Gords' dad
Moggy, had approached us before our set, a little sheepishly, and
asked if we'd mind cutting our thirty minute set to twenty five. You
could tell he felt bad and he was obviously getting shit from his
employers about stage schedules. We laughed when he asked, telling
him we'd be more than happy to oblige. Fuck, we'd cut it to twenty,
fifteen if he wanted! “Really? Are you sure?” he asked, taken a
back. “No fucking problems! The shorter the better mate, as long
as we're still getting paid the same!” we happily confirmed. “You
guys are fucking great! I love you!” And he did and all. From
there on in we became his favourite band on the tour, he just loved
the attitude. He shared with us his sacred nightly bottle of whisky
later on that evening, which was happily accepted. We'd just made a
new friend. And a pretty handy one at that. Not only that, their
tour manager, this quiet guy with a pony tail who seemed to lurk in
the shadows for the most part, offered us a crate of beer after the
show, straight from the belly of the Nile tour bus. “They get
loads and they never drink it anyway”.. Fuck me, what a winner!
Somehow we'd managed to swindle ten minutes off our set, and at the
same time set ourselves up with a steady supply of free booze and
beer from the Nile guys. Win-fucking-win!
We arrived early the next day in
Seattle, in the usual hungover state. We'd gone from the glaring
dessert sun of Arizona to the grey, chilled sky of the north west in
the space of a week. We must have experienced a drop of about
fifteen degrees in that time. The chilly Seattle air was exactly
what the doctor ordered though and Kev, John and I took a walk down
town to check out the Space Needle and some other sights. Again it
seemed like a nice place, kind of European somehow. We spent a
couple of hours walking around. I was impressed with John since he
isn't usually the type for long strolls. We had a good time walking
about though, just the three of us. It's nice to break away from the
bigger pack sometimes.
The venue tonight was another small
place, which always suited us down to the ground. It had a low stage
too, so there'd be a good chance of some crowd “interaction” if
anyone gave us shit. The in-house cuisine at this place was fucking
superb, as far as fat American junk-food goes. I ate the largest,
and tastiest jalapeño poppers I've ever had in my life at this
place. I swear I could fly back to Seattle just to taste them again!
It turns out it was a fun show anyway.
Jeff from Zeke had come down to hang out with us, I'd met him a few
years ago in Sweden and we'd been friends since. It was good to see
him, down the front, drunk and going for it with the rest of the mosh
pit. Good times. It was definitely one of the better shows on the
tour. Again, the smaller the crowd the better the show seemed to be
for us. There were probably no more than two hundred in tonight.
It's strange, for Nile the headlining band, that must have seemed
like a disaster but we were in our element. In all honesty though, I
even watched a bit of Nile later on, the first time for a while, and
they had a good show themselves. I even might say I enjoyed their
set, although that probably had a lot to do with the fact Lasse was
sharing a bottle of Captain Morgan with me and Jeff.
We ended the night back on the disco
bus with Jeff, passing around a bottle of Jager he'd bought for us.
It was one of those nights that we could have easily sat up until the
sun rose, getting pissed on anything we could find but we had to call
it curtains at around two am, unfortunately. Dutch was eager to
leave since we had a long journey ahead. I'd asked Dutch a few days
ago where we'd be spending our “day off” between the Seattle and
Denver shows. “In the van dude, it's like a thirty hour journey!”
came his exasperated response...
We said farewell to Jeff and the
Soilent Green guys, and headed east, into the early hours of the
morning. We'd be spending the next two days in the van...Luckily, we
had enough booze to see us through...
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