Rabbit Junk - Страница 5

Yo my peeps! As a few of you know, I'm back in school! I quit the shitty job at the homeless shelter where I had been working for the 5 years and went full time student. Life is much better. For summer quarter I've been doing an"independent study" project which consists of allot of writing (papers), the recording of a brand new full length (not rabbit junk, but trust me, you like it) and going on tour. Yes, college is giving me credit for doing what I would be doing anyway! And the lovely people at Pell Grant and WA state Fin. Aid even paid for my tuition. It's pretty amazing. My first paper due was a journal of the "pre-cursor" tour I just did with Cyanotic and 16volt. I'm making all of the writing public and am posting the tour journal today. WARNING: This is very candid stuff, if you have any illusions of the rock and roll life style, this might ruin it for you. So read with caution. Sean Payne and the Cyanotic guys are also going to be releasing journals of their perspective. All of these writing will eventually be compiled in a Anthology of short works that will be made available.
Интересно...
ну и дальше можно почитать. лично я не осилил... много букв, да еще и английских

...And hold their manhoods cheap
A journal of the “Pre-cursor” tour '09

JP Anderson

Like the majestic Lemming of the Arctic Circle, who, driven by a mysterious urge, embarks upon an epic journey to the frost encrusted Norwegian cliffs, and then, at the behest of some Muroidean psychological malady, impales itself upon the jagged rocks below, the intrepid Rock Musician, also driven mysterious urges and equally mysterious psychological maladies, begins its epic journey with similarly predictable results. Musicians, armed with a seasoned talent for self deception and a litany of euphemisms, rush forth with brimming confidence and soaring dreams, in much the same way that the shivering Norwegian Lemming must dream of the far away and palm tree dotted eden awaiting it after what will surely be a short and pleasant swim in the warm, champagne like surf of the Barents Sea (which, for those not well versed in Scandinavian geography, is colder than the abyssal depths of Dick Cheney's failing heart). Those who are about to die, we salute you! So begins the “tour”.
I pronounce “tour” to rhyme with bore and everyone else seems to rhyme it with lure. So when I explained to people that I was going on “tore” with my band Rabbit Junk and fellow rockers Cyanotic, they often looked perplexed. I would then have to correct myself by saying “too-er” combined with various gesticulations to imply either guitar playing or driving. Eventually eyebrows and chin would raise in brief acknowledgment. This is just one example of how I often feel like a perpetual foreigner, although I have
lived in America for most of my life and can claim no other nationality with any legitimacy. And though this leaves me feeling isolated from my peers, it provides me with the advantage of being able to see things from the perspective of an “inside-outsider”.
I had the great privilege of observing this natural disaster first hand, during one week in July of 2009. The story you are about to read is true, though the names have been modified to protect the guilty.

( One point that may need clarification is that although I was on tour with Rabbit Junk, I was also playing as part of Cyanotic, on keys and backing vocals, and we shared a single set time of 45 minutes and all of the gear. So we would trade off doing Rabbit Junk songs and Cyanotic songs. This is very unusual, and totally confusing for the promoters, booking agents, sound guys, and fans. But it was an attempt to bring down the cost of touring. )

June 6th, 2009. Seattle, Washington. Studio Seven.
We arrive at Studio Seven, a dark, and somewhat seedy metal club in the warehouse dominated SODO district of Seattle. It's only foot traffic consists of heavily inebriated homeless men looking for a place to take a sink shower before returning out doors to paint the town red with their beer stinking vomit. I've played at Studio Seven more times than anywhere else in Seattle, and I'm hardly excited. Not too mention it's a Monday night. I am every bit the classic curmudgeon. Earlier that day I aggravated an old back injury (yes I'm old!), loading gear into the 15 passenger white van that will be our home for the next week. We get to the gig at the appointed “load in” time of 5:30 and begin the arduous wait for the headlining band,16Volt, to finish their sound check. Listening to other bands sound check feels excruciating long, no matter how much time has actually elapsed. By the time the 16Volt guys were done, it seemed like I had been sitting at the empty bar (sans bar tender and liquor by the way) for anywhere between
three and four hundred and fifty six hours. And then some other band had their sound check. Great, I thought, we not even going to get a bloody sound check...typical. Studio Seven's sound guy was marching around angrily complaining about the “time crunch” but I suspected he just wanted to get this night over with so he could head back home and watch Tyra. Studio Seven tends to book straight ahead metal bands that consist of Drums, Bass, Guitar, Vocals. Who the hell needs a sound check for that, right? You just plug in, drag knuckles on ground, puff out chest, pick up cougars at the bar afterwards, and do it again next weekend. So is the metal way. Nice and simple. And more importantly, from the perspective of who ever is running the sound that night, predictable. But all the bands playing this night had keyboards, and “backing tracks” (everything that can't be played live coming off of a laptop or mp3 player), and other “faggy” additions to their set up. It's no fun for a sound guy and he made sure we knew it. Stomp stomp, grumble grumble. Bah!
Jesse, our “merch” guy shows up during one of the endless sound checks of the night. He's a nice, affable young fellow, wearing baggy pants and a scruffy beard. He
lives in LA but recently lost his job, so he decided to visit family in Seattle and is hitching a ride with us back down to LA in return for selling our shirts and CD's at the show. Pretty good deal. Selling merch is a real pain and I'm glad to have someone else do it for once. His only request is that we make a brief stop in Redding, California, which is a natural half way point. No problem. Along with him comes Molly, a young tattooed hottie with pink and black hair and mischievous look in her heavily mascarad eyes. My mood picks up, as it usually does around women. I chat up the girly for the next hour and forget my back and boredom.
My little vacation from reality is abruptly interrupted by Jan (pronounced Yan), our drummer for the tour, an hour before our set time. “Um, can I-pods play AVI's?” he says through noticeably clenched teeth. I have no idea, but this can't be good. Sean, lead singer of Cyanotic appears out of no where. “Whoa, what's going on guys” he blurts out worriedly. It turns out that all of our backing tracks, which are essential to us playing live, are in the wrong format, and we have about an hour before we are meant to play. Sean, already a pale guy, turns from fish-belly white to near translucent. He's been given the role of “skipper” on this voyage, and the job of fixing this monumental fuck up lands in his lap. But I don't worry. The bar tender is slinging 3 dollar PBR's and I've been given my drink tickets. I make way for the “green room” and run into people I haven't seen in years and everybody wants to buy me a drink. All of a sudden I'm having fun! Weird. Sean and Jan buzz around in near panic, attempting render the tracks before we hit the stage, but I'm firmly entrenched in a good 'ol fuck-it-let's-drunk space. I notice them in my periphery, but mainly concentrate on squeezing a few more drinks out of people while the mood is good. Some indeterminable time later, someone pulls my sleeve and tells me we're on. I lethargically make my way downstairs to the stage and swagger on, finding my mic atop a guitar amp and coiling the cable around my fist. I wink at some chic on the balcony who had been previously flirting with me in front of her large boyfriend in the green room. I'm feeling gooood. The lights are on, and about 30 people stare at me expectantly. Well it is a damn Monday, I told myself, who the hell is going to come down to the toxic waste district at the beginning of their week and watch 5 guys flop around on stage like marooned sardines on the deck of boat? The rest of the guys are in position. The sound guy kills the CD playing over the PA and silence settles over the venue. Then I notice my keyboard isn't on stage. I gesture to someone about it, but they just put up their arms and shake their heads in ignorance. Then Sean informs me that they must have forgot to load it in the van. Great. Awesome. Tip fucking top. Well, I guess I'll just have to stand here, I thought. My mic felt suddenly awkward in my hand. I felt like I was having one of those classic nightmares about realizing your naked in public. I suddenly felt like everyone was staring at my crotch. Without a keyboard, I don't have much to do when Cyanotic is doing their songs. What, am I gonna dance? God, this is gonna suck. I look like some high school amateur. Oh well, it'll be over in 40 minutes and then you can go back to drinking for free. Just have to get through 40 minutes. 40 short little minutes. I wanted to hide behind a guitar amp. Then the band kicked off the first track and I was assaulted with ridiculous amounts of volume from the on stage monitors, quickly becoming deafened and disoriented. Who the hell needed that much volume on stage?! What cretinous imbecile had allowed his hearing to degrade to the point where this amount of volume was what he wanted to hear on stage!? If we had gotten a damn sound check, I would have told the morons to turn it the fuck down. Now there was no chance of that. I resigned myself to being deaf for the next few days and tried to groove along to the beat. I think I just looked stiff and annoyed. Tomorrow I would use my in-ear monitors, which acted like monitors and ear plugs at once. Pretty nifty. We ran through a few Cyanotic tracks, me standing there trying to look natural, occasionally shouting a “hey!” or a “yeah!”. And then we came to a Rabbit Junk track. I took my place at the head of the stage, foot atop a monitor in triumphant glory, and February War, and old crowd favorite from my second record, started up. Murmurs of excitement rose from the crowd and people started to nod their heads to the beat. The guitar kicked in with a satisfying crunchiness and a buzz of energy shown on people's faces. I was going to pummel these fuckers to death, I thought, and I gave the crowd a knowing nod and pumped my fist in the air. We got to the part just before I come in on the first verse, folks in the crowd began to open their mouths in anticipation of a sing along, and bam! I forget the words! I blurt out an unintelligible string of vowels in some made up language, like a pentecostal drunk on snake venom.
June 7th, Portland, Oregon. The Fez Ballroom.
I decided to invite this Molly girl along for the tour. She had helped Jesse put out all the merch and was clearly more suited to selling band t-shirts than he was. Never underestimate the power of mammary glands to sell drunk guys things they don't really need. She told work that her grandma died and she needed to go back home for the funeral. Now we were a crew of seven. Despite all of the previous nights problems, people gushed about how they enjoyed the show and we sold a fair amount of t-shirts, which resulted in enough cash to feed the gas guzzling beast we now crowded in on our way to Portland.
The 3 and half hours to Portland seemed long and the van was already taking on the smell of 7 humans in too close a proximity. I took the back seat all to myself and stretched out to read a book. The gas guzzler had little if any suspension and I felt like I was trying to read my pulp sci-fi novel in a washing machine.
The rest of the guys were chatty, after a breakfast blend of Adderal, beta blockers, and Viagra. Apparently the three in combination feel fantastic, but I didn't partake. I was back in a mood. I half heard the conversation in the front of the van switch back and forth between a competition over drug induced stupidity and the source of the suspicious white stain splattered on the middle seat. I then examined my seat closely for any signs of biological contamination. Satisfied that I was not lying on top of anyone's “children”, as my van mates charmingly referred to any stain that resembled semen, I settled back down and read my book. I was already missing my kid, and we only been gone a few hours.
It's hard to leave your child. Especially when they're a baby. It's a feeling that's hard to imagine until you're actually there, feeling it. It's a sorrow deep in your gut, in that same place where instinct makes itself known. It's uncomfortable like that gut checked red flag on a date that you want to ignore but can't. You really don't feel like a kid anymore when you're missing your own. And feeling old is not conducive to being on tour. Fuck this, I thought. I called up the Marriott in Portland and made a reservation. I was in no mood to party after the show tonight. The rest of the guys were going to get wasted at some dive hotel. I was going get a good nights sleep and a decent breakfast in the morning. I couldn't wait to get to the hotel, turn on the cable and be alone for the night. And this was just day two! I felt like a fraud on the way down to Portland.
The Fez is a cool club. Ten times cooler than anything in Seattle. It has a strangely Romanesque feel to it, like Caligula should be kickin' it with 15 Carthaginian cross dressers in the curtained corners, being fed peeled grapes. The promoter for this show, Derek, was also managing the entire tour, so we were treated well. We got food, beer, and a sound check. The crowd was sparse but the show went well. We tracked down a keyboard for me and I only screwed up my lyrics in the middle of one song. I ran into a few more peeps from back in the day and ended up having a pretty good time. We pondered the function of the “vented mouth” on the tall boy cans of Coors we were given and talked about bands we hated, which is always fun. I walked to the Marriott after the club closed, disappointing the rest of the band who planned on testing the resistance of the human body to alcohol poisoning back at the hotel the venue had arranged. I arrived at my huge, plush room and was asleep within minutes. As I drifted off, I smelt my Son's hair and heard his laughter.
July 8th, Driving.
The day after the show in Portland was set aside just for us to make it to San Francisco. I had ended up sleeping like total shit in that big plush Marriott and woke from my fitful sleep to a blown out voice and equally destroyed back. I must have hit it pretty hard at the show the night before. I hobbled down to the restaurant for some breakfast. Whoa, I felt terrible! I must have drank more than I thought, either that or a particularly zealous fan had slipped me some Rohypnol when I wasn't looking. I slowly sank into a seat with a groan and the server came over with coffee. “Jesus honey, you look like shit” she said with what I think was genuine concern. I rasped out some, I'm sure, witty response that I have since forgotten, and started reading the menu. My stomach turned on the idea of every meal presented. What the hell happened to me?! I ended up getting some pancakes, eggs, and hash browns. I slowly made my way through the food, fighting to keep it down. When I got the bill they had just charged me for the eggs and coffee. As I left some other server patted me on the back and said “we've all been there brother”.
15 hours of driving, especially in a stinky van that swayed on the road like a drunken sailor, is a serious drag. Add to the that an aching back and you have a quick and easy recipe for hell. But it's always fun to watch the terrain change. Northern California is
a stunningly beautiful place and I didn't have to do any of the driving (because I don't have a license – aint I a smarty pants!). I was impressed that everyone could figure out how to keep a conversation going for that long, but again I didn't really participate.

I finished up my book, called home and choked up when my Son said “bye bye”, called my folks (who I would be visiting when we got to LA), and zoned out on the golden rolling hills we passed. It's not that I don't like other humans, it's just that despite everyone's best intentions, I find myself drained of vitality by their very existence. What can I say, I'm a difficult dude.
We stopped in Redding at Jesse's request. Redding is a small town in central California, mostly known for it's half way proximity between Los Angeles and Seattle and it's abundance of drugs. Jesse was driving and we rolled into town, '90's hip hop blaring on the stereo. After a few turns we ended up at some house. Folks stepped out to use the bathroom, but I stayed in the van, vainly trying to get some sleep. A short while later, everyone piled back in. I was in the back seat, stretched out with a Rabbit Junk Hoodie under my head as a pillow. I heard the back door open, and Jesse threw in a full black garbage bag. The smell of Marijuana over powered the air of the van. “What the fuck is that, Jesse?!”, I said, feeling like the only voice of reason left in a crazy world. “Oh, I'm just taking this down to a friend of mine in LA” Jesse responded. “No worries man, I have a prescription”. It must have been a pound of weed, at the least. I didn't buy his prescription bullshit and I my mind immediately went to having to call my folks and explain to them that I'm locked up in the pokey in small California town and will be needing a competent lawyer. So this is why Jesse didn't care about being payed to sell our merch. He was using us as cover to transport his drugs! I should have put my foot down and pissed everybody off (the rest of the crew had no qualms about getting free pot for the rest of the tour) and told Jesse to take the damn train. But I didn't. Maybe it was the thought of writing this tour journal and how entertaining it would be to have a section about getting busted. So now in addition to transporting ourselves, our merch, and our gear, we were ferrying a solid pound of Redding's finest, “medical “grade weed (not to mention several open containers of Jack Daniels, and a pharmacopoeia of prescription drugs). Just how far was I willing to go to make this paper interesting? That question rattled around in my head all the way to Frisco.
July 9th. San Francisco. DNA lounge.
We arrived in San Francisco at 3am. I was painfully exhausted. The venue had arranged for us to stay at the Vagabond inn, which was quickly dubbed the “Vagi-bond” inn. I got an extra room and was thankful to be out of that van. I popped awake at 9am, still on a Daddy schedule, and decided to explore the city. I had always liked SF on past visits. I found a place to get breakfast (which was the only let down the city gave me) and made my way towards the bay. The sun was shining, the city was bustling, I was having a great time. I found my way to the bay and watched the pale green waves and lay in the sun. It was the highpoint of the tour. Bella San Francisco, bella.
DNA lounge is a swank joint. It has a proper green room, way in the back with couches and TV's. We got food, drinks, a sound check, and respect. The sound system
was top notch and the place had a “big venue” feel even though I think max capacity is probably only 600. The first band played, and then we took the stage. And right off the bat, something was different. I jumped on stage and yelled at the crowd “are you fucking ready!? I said are you fuuuuuucking READY!?”. I noticed my white knuckle grip on the mic stand and I felt like hurling myself into the crowd, enjoining everyone to bloody combat. The first track kicked in and I was all piss and vinegar for next 40 minutes. I don't know what was going on. It's like I was really, really pissed off. But not in a bad mood. Fired up. But not happy. Out for blood. But not for anyone's in particular. And it didn't go away for the rest of the night. I marched around the club, signing autographs and taking pictures with fans, all with this hard ass-back from the trenches attitude. People saw a completely different me. I didn't crack an awkward smile the entire night. This guy was confident, and not about to take any shit. He spoke in short, direct sentences. There was no mistaking his intentions. His voice was low, his stare intense. There was a comforting hum of violence in his gut. This was some someone else entirely. This was that tough as nails, punk rock motherfucker I always felt I should be and never was. I liked it! By the morning I was back to my old conflicted self. Shitty.
July 10th. San Diego. Some shit bar. Oh I hate gigs like this. A filler gig. Some crapola dive bar with a dinky stage, often an Irish theme, with no proper sound system and staff who couldn't give a shit. The headlining band got there late, so we were forced to just hang around and stew in our own juices. San Diego is a cute town, and we snuck off and had some Octopus, Lobster, and Prawn tacos which were completely amazing. The beaches and salt air were taunting me, it's a gorgeous part of the world. All I wanted to do was go sun bathe and drink fruity rum drinks under an umbrella. Screw this show, I thought. But I stuck to my commitment. The show was predictable. 4 people in the crowd were there to actually see us, the rest were just there for the pull tabs and cheap well drinks. We cut the set short and I headed to the Hampton inn where I was greeted with a bed the size of my living room. Fine by me. I caught up on sleep. This gig was a real low point for everyone. Getting to San Diego was brutal and costs us a small fortune. It felt like a massive waste. We had a couple of ups, and now the tour gods had thrown us a down.
July 11th, Los Angeles. Bar Sinister.
This place looked like a for-real vampire slept in the basement and ran the club at night. The stage was in a stone courtyard with this Gothic looking candelabra/fountain thing in the middle. I walked in and heard the the theme from The Lost Boys ring in my head. It had like 5 bars, 10 rooms, blood red carpets, gargoyles, cobwebs, the whole shebang. This was a Goth club, the sort of place that all goth clubs aspire to be (and I was a total tourist). We loaded in our gear and began the long wait till sound check. As the night wore on, a thick crowd of Goths filled the courtyard, decked out in their black lacey garments, thick makeup, and wildly high heels. It looked like a gothic stripper convention. And the truth is, I had never seen so many hot women, dressed so suggestively, in such concentrations, in my entire life. It was actually overwhelming. Not matter what direction you turned, some spindly, barely dressed young thing was hovering around with a blood martini in her hands, looking forlorn. Holy haberdashery, Batman! Yes, yes, I know the lights were dim and the makeup thick, but it was impressive. Women just don't dress up like this in Seattle. The most glitz one can expect to see from women in Seattle is a fancy case for their anti-depressants. This was disturbingly glamorous. And what do I decide to wear to the gig? My b-boy hip hop jeans, white shoes, and a Gorgoroth (Norwegian Black Metal that goths don't like) T-shirt. We all looked completely out of place and kinda lame. As quick as we could, we attempted to rectify our fashion follies. Beige shirts were replaced by black, baseball caps were exchanged for hair gel, scruff was shaved clean. But you can't fake it. Except for the die hard fans who howled the words to every song in the front row, we got a fairly chilly reception. We didn't make things better by playing one of my Black metal meets Hip Hop tracks either. Whoops. Know your audience...know your audience. This was the last gig of the tour, so we all got drunk afterwards, and Sean even managed to get himself kicked out of the venue, apparently for making a joke about marketing a “Miss Potato Goth” within earshot of the promoter Vicki (it's not a bad idea...think about it. Kids love that shit.). Even though it probably wasn't the right place for us to play, I'd go back in a second just for the scenery.
We took the next day off. I spent time with my family and everyone else bummed around LA, recovering from what seemed like a month of travel. We left Monday morning, making a quick and nervous stop at a Rastafarian head shop so Jesse could drop off his contraband, and then drove 20 hours straight back to Seattle. We arrived back home at 9am Tuesday, exhausted and bruised. After a week of housing 7 people, there was enough genetic material built up in that van to construct an entirely new human being, or...at least a moderately sized tribe of lemmings.
Over all the tour cost me $1200. It was a complete financial disaster. Gas, van rental, and my penchant for a decent nights rest took their toll. Sales from merch and monies paid to us by the venues did not even come close to breaking the tour out of the red. But what's the monetary value of personal growth? Overall I had a great time, and learned a lot about myself. I can't wait to do it again. To those about to die, we salute you!

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