Form A Log 2014 European Tour

Regret had been seeping in as we progressed deeper into the drive, setting up in different regions of the brain and injecting its poison into all of my thoughts. Although it had been at my insistence, upon reflection I felt that ‘eating something American’ hadn’t been as necessary as I’d implied and that we could’ve done without the sit-down Waffle House breakfast. As my eyes darted back and forth between the road and the incessant escalation of digits on the dashboard clock, going several miles off the highway to hit the thrift store in Delaware also began to seem like a completely frivolous venture. I received minor consolation from knowing that the clock ran six minutes fast, but it would need to be still much farther ahead than that for us to make this flight. Time had gotten away and we were now dangerously behind schedule. 

As my attitude veered increasingly towards pessimism and as the last strands of hope began to slip through my fingers, just before the towel was thrown in and defeat admitted, a rare inner shift known only to occur in particularly dire situations took place. My internal cobwebs parted so-to-speak to reveal an ordinarily concealed stockpile of pure, undiluted, full-strength focus to which I was now being granted access. Hesitant to indulge in such a precious and potentially limited resource for fear of its premature depletion, I took a moment to envision our immediate futures if we were in fact to miss the plane. Not seeing anything I liked, it was concluded that our current situation did indeed warrant a dip into the old supply.

Less crucial functions went into sleep-mode as the potent concentration was conjured forth and began to take hold. Distractions were blacked out, the regret was pushed aside, and my entire purpose became to successfully complete the mission of arriving at the airport in time. ‘Do or die’ driving techniques that should only be attempted when operating at this heightened level of clarity were employed, executed with skill and precision. To the untrained eye my maneuvers might have seemed reckless as I wove at high speeds through the lanes of the Belt Parkway towards JFK, but I was locked in, seeing the road from above, calculating four or five moves ahead, at one with the flow.

We made it to the check-in desk with moments to spare and were escorted through security in the fast-track lane, pointed in the direction of our gate, and told to ‘run’. Cursing the capitalistic deviant whose perverse mind thought to place a curvy aisled shopping mall before the gates, we stumbled through the duty-free shop in a lawless display of slapstick mayhem, struggling with our belts, coats, and luggage while attempting to maintain a healthy jog. The doors to the Brussels Airlines jet were closed directly behind us as we boarded and we sighed with deep relief, plunking down into our seats and taking off on a mostly empty flight.

Some bands or artists at a certain point in their career find that they might benefit from working with a manager, someone who can help out with the big decisions and maybe open a few new doors. Form A Log was not one of these bands, but we did have someone on our payroll (in an unpaid position) who acted as our ‘advisor’. His name was Kevin Esposito and although he hadn’t exactly applied for the role, he fit into it comfortably. When we as a band would reach an impasse — be it, should we get gas now or let the tank get down into the red, or should we get coffees in town before we hit the road or stop along the way — a call would be placed to Kevin who would give thoughtful consideration to our predicament before delivering his almost always sensible answer.

Shortly after I had first received news of The Log’s invitation to the Kraak Festival (where we were now headed) my phone began to buzz as a call from Mr. Esposito came in. 

“Fuckin’…. heard you guys are going to Belgium.”, he said. I couldn’t tell if it was the distortion in our connection or not, because even though his Long Island accent and Italian-American upbringing came across crystal clear, something else about the way he spoke was different. His usual boisterous straight-shooting manner was subdued and I thought I could detect a wavering tinge of uncertainty. 

“I was thinking, you know…fuckin’…maybe I’d come along.” He paused. “So I can advise.”

His voice reverted to its usual state of joviality after I expressed my approval of the idea and he confessed that he’d already purchased his plane tickets. He arrived in Brussels about an hour after we did, having come in on a separate flight, and we all got on a train to Antwerp from there.

We spent a few days just hanging out at Johann and Hannah’s house before getting the actual tour started, beginning first in Amsterdam and then heading to the town of Aalst where the festival was being held. The car we had borrowed was a boxy European model I couldn’t readily identify, larger than average, but still not an accommodating size for the roll call of our crew which — with Johann, Hannah, and Jonathan, plus The Log (Noah, Rick, and myself) and Kevin — ran seven deep. We managed it somehow though and had a great time at the festival, spending the night split up between two rooms in a charming old hotel in the center of town. 

The following morning brought with it the usual haze one might expect to follow a rather celebratory evening, and it was due to this impairment that I had trouble processing the scene through which we walked on our way back to the venue. Local shopkeepers and residents were busy nailing plywood over their windows at a determined pace, and conflicting with the lively atmosphere of the night before the town now had an ominous feel of impending danger. Something either had just happened or was about to and as I scanned the area in search of clues, Jonathan, who was walking beside me, received an incoming call. 

“Did I move the car?” I heard Hannah ask him this first, her voice squelching out through the tinny speaker of the phone before he repeated the question back to her, struggling to get the gist of the conversation. 

“There is a carnival where the car was?”, he continued to echo back the information he was receiving as it failed to sink in, deflected by the forcefield of hangover which stunted his acuity. The issue was presented in perfectly clear terms when we arrived back at the Netwerk venue to find the entire row of cars which had been parked out front replaced by a series of stalls which were readying themselves for the sale of various drinks and snacks. I hadn’t recalled it being mentioned even in passing the night before, but today was apparently when the Aalst Carnival began, a controversial three day event (which has since had its UNESCO designation revoked due to accusations of bigotry) attracting tens of thousands of spectators into the town for an exuberant and subversive display of costumed revelry. Our car and all the others had been towed during the night and were now in police impound. 

Leaving the rest of the crew to relax inside with a coffee, Jonathan and I hiked our way back through town towards the police station, watching as storefronts and windows continued to be sealed for protection and barricades put in place. A large gathering of suddenly car-less people had amassed themselves in the lobby of the station (including a group of Germans we had met at the festival the night before) and waited there impatiently for news on their vehicles. I curled up on a blue plastic bench hoping to sneak in some rest during the wait, but was quickly prodded by an officer and motioned to my feet as more and more towing victims filed into the building. An end to the ordeal was not in sight and as overpopulation increasingly became more of an issue Jonathan relieved me of my duties, sending me back to the venue where he would come to meet us whenever he retrieved the car. 

The tens of thousands of people we’d heard about had begun to descend upon the town and different gangs now roved the streets dressed in elaborate attire and disguises. Groups of Queen’s Guards, fairytale characters, and various bastardizations of political figures intermingled in the square, all gleefully swilling beer out of plastic cups as the morning faded into afternoon. It seemed more or less peaceful for now but wasn’t hard to imagine eight hours down the line, those same cups crushed into the ground amongst puddles of vomit as the strength of the plywood reinforcements began to be tested.

The crowds and festivities grew in size the further I walked, spilling out in the roads and congesting particularly badly in the area of Netwerk. As I fought my way through the mob the procession began. Parade floats made their way past displaying warped caricatures of faces I didn’t recognize, followed by masked men on stilts looming imposingly above. Seemingly hundreds of floats existed, each more absurd than the next, blaring Schlager music through loudspeakers, parting the sea of people as they passed. My friends gazed from out of the venue windows — amused, but not without reservations — at the spectacle unfolding before them.  I swam through the rapids as the streets began to swell to capacity and an employee of the venue unlocked the door, prying it open just a crack, allowing me to slip in before bolting it shut again and graciously presenting me with a cup of espresso. 

In terms of time it wasn’t looking good for us making it to our show in Hamburg that evening as it crept deeper into the afternoon without news from Jonathan. We watched the festivities descend further into lunacy until eventually he called, his patience audibly having run out, informing us that he was on his way, describing a corner where he expected we’d be able to meet after having already been redirected by multiple road closures and nightmarish congestion. And with that we gathered up all of our gear and belongings, reluctantly bid farewell to our safe-haven, and joined the chaos outside. 

The line between the parade and the audience had been erased by this point and random civilians frolicked drunkenly amongst the masked and costumed, chasing and boarding the passing floats, hollering through megaphones. Members of what presumably had at one point been a marching band were now separated and a lone trombonist leaked queasy notes into the air on one side of the road while his former colleague tapped away freely at a snare drum on the other. The cups were beginning to collect on the ground. 

We were traveling against the current, hacking our way through an overgrown jungle of clowns and miscreants chanting in our faces, blowing party whistles, and dancing against us with aggressive gyrations as we passed through with our suitcases in search of an escape. With time we began to acclimate, complying with the rules and acquiring cups of our own, Rick even braving a portion of carnival escargot. Many times we had to pause, struggling to remain stationary while Hannah would duck to the ground, pressing the phone to her ear in an attempt to decipher above the noise the new location at which we were to meet Jonathan — his route having yet again been diverted — sending us on various detours back through the throbbing hordes.

Somehow we found him, parked on a sidewalk with the hazard lights on, standing next to the car with his hand on the roof, absolutely dominating a cigarette. It was clear he’d been through a hellish odyssey of sanity dissolving traffic and police bureaucracy. We navigated ourselves to the main road out of town where we sat in a complete standstill, gridlocked in place as newcomers emerged from parked cars, donning their festive decor on the side of the road before joining the madness. One such group of ‘NSA employees’ who were loading their ‘proton packs’ with beers were kind enough to pass me one and we sailed away slowly from there. 

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Five or six days later — having made it to Hamburg, up into Denmark and Sweden, and back down into Berlin — we played our final show of the tour at a small gallery space in Cologne, underground in a pedestrian walkway beneath a busy intersection. Our friends from the police station in Aalst were there, and although nothing crazy happened the vibe was right and the show treated us well. But almost as soon as it was over, we had to leave. The car needed to be returned the following morning and with early flights to catch from Brussels, we said our goodbyes and departed. 

Having myself consumed innumerable bottles of Kolsch throughout the evening, I hopped into the comfort of the passenger seat and pried open the atlas, assuming the role of navigator with Jonathan taking the reins behind the wheel as designated driver. As the city lights disappeared behind us and the certain end of our trip approached, I could feel Rick fidgeting with malcontent in the seat behind me. 

The level of excitement we’d experienced in Aalst hadn’t been surpassed by any of our other stops, and in stark contrast they’d offered barely any thrills whatsoever. In Gothenburg we had some fun riding a shopping cart around the venue and rolling around in the skate bowl after the show, and a gas station employee in Germany had asked Kevin, “Do you need to douche?” after he’d inquired about the ‘bathroom’, but that was about as wild as it got. Back in America, Form A Log wasn’t used to playing for respectful audiences who sat politely before us, silent and motionless, listening intently to the music like they did in Europe. We found ourselves missing the dysfunctional energy that we as a band had not only become used to, but relied upon. A disjointed feeling hung in the air, the sense that our business in Europe was still unfinished, that our action quota had not been met. 

I was sipping the last Kolsch, staring bleary eyed at the map trying to determine how long we wanted to be on the A4, when a pair of hands emerged from the backseat and began to fondle my face in a rather indelicate manner. They were clammy, lightly tacky, definitely unwashed, and they worked themselves around my features in a blind animalistic investigation. I allowed it, knowing that any form of protest on my part was sure only to fuel the fire, deciding instead to ‘ride the wave to shore’. And so it continued, hindering both my ability to navigate and to finish the beer, yet I stayed strong, uttering no objections while my eyebrows and lips were tweaked and deformed, while my nose was bent in awkward directions and my line of vision was overtaken by a blur of grubby fingers and palm. As the time passed, everyone began to remark at my ability to endure what was obviously such an unpleasant experience, and I appreciated the positive encouragement, but my tolerance was weakening and I didn’t make it too much longer after that. The breaking point eventually came. 

“Alright!”, I shouted, swatting his hands away, leaning forwards as far as I could. As I had feared, airing my grievances only provoked him, and whereas before he was rubbing intrusively yet gently, he now grasped forcefully for what he could still reach, groping spiritedly at my ears and the corners of my mouth and eyes as I sat pressed into the glove compartment, struggling to gain distance.

I knew from experience these ‘car games’ could get out of hand fast and that it was only a matter of time before the driver was dragged into the antics and away from the duties of the road. The level of distraction that it had already caused was certainly in violation of European safety standards, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to sit back and return to the manhandling I’d been receiving. In need of sage advice I hollered for Kevin, asking what I should do, but he just chuckled and said, “I dunno, man."

Sensing that a change was necessary, Jonathan pulled the car over to the side of the road. I hopped out and opened the back door. Rick was sitting with attentive posture, staring straight ahead, hands folded neatly together in his lap, feigning innocence. We fumbled sloppily at his seat belt, him trying to prevent me from undoing it, while I pulled and yanked in opposition, eventually getting it loose and dragging him from the vehicle into the grass by his legs. I sat straddled atop him slapping him back and forth across the face, alternating between open and back handed while the nighttime highway traffic passed us in a steady glide. Caught up in the moment, I failed to notice that amidst the blows Rick had dug his hand into the Earth and I was taken by surprise when he reached up, compacting a fistful of loose soil directly into my eye. The dirt stung as it dispersed itself across my cornea and I clutched at my ocular region in pain as I fell backwards. He quickly took over the straddling position I had previously held and began to rub an additional handful into my face, resuming the techniques he’d perfected in the car, working meticulously to leave no area uncovered, imbedding the dirt deep into my pores. Summoning up a burst of strength, I cast him aside, managing to land a couple ‘actual punches’ before we locked into a series of bumbling wrestling maneuvers, flopping each other to and fro on the side of the road while the traffic began to slow down for a peek.

“That’s enough of that.” Jonathan eventually said. 

We looked up, filthy and out of breath, as he dropped the end of the cigarette he’d taken the opportunity to smoke while watching, heading back towards the car. The back door was still wide open and the overhead light cast a sorrowful glow over the others faces as they sat looking out at us, unenthused and exhausted.

An unknown amount of time passed before I woke up to a nudge from Jonathan.

“Give me twenty euros.”, he said. 

I was slumped over in the passenger seat in a horrifically contorted position and some trapped air emerged in a violent belch as I straightened out. We appeared to be in a parking garage or some type of subterranean bunker. While I’d been asleep they’d crunched the numbers on the tour and after the impound and towing fees, ferry tickets, Denmark-Sweden bridge toll, and other expenses, we were in the hole over 100 euros. I took my wallet out and coughed it up. 

The way home was different. We were early for the flight. Very early. Several hours needed to pass before we could even check-in and we spent it occupying the rather prime airport real estate of the leather sofa lounge area at Starbucks, much to their dismay. The Europeans had left, Kevin and Noah had gone silent, and Rick and I — both in pretty good moods — watched the departures board as new cities were added, saying what we could about them as they appeared. 

There was only one concern. It had come to me on a trip to the bathroom when after turning the corner I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With our spare time having been so limited on the tour I’d never found a chance to shave, it had been weeks, and a brambly unkempt beard had been slathered across my face and neck. Like the rest of my hair, skin, and clothing, it was covered in layers of visible filth and polluted soil from the side of the highway. My right eye — the dirt eye — had swollen up to cartoonish proportions as if I’d been stung by a wasp. Due to the lax indoor smoking policy in most of the places we went in Germany I reeked like cigarettes and also probably stale Kolsch as I began to sweat out the poison from the night before. Would they actually let us on this plane?

We were the last ones to board, which wasn’t a coincidence. At check-in, after a huddled exchange between employee and manager, we were told our seats would be ‘assigned at the gate’, which after presumably having kept a watchful eye on our behavior and determining us too downtrodden to be a threat, they were. We were given the very last row in the back next to the toilet, where we sat lined up together in a shameful display. 

The stewardess who was in charge of our aisle’s drink service gave us a sidelong stare, shaking her head back and forth, simultaneously entertained and appalled. 

“One too many Belgian beers for you guys, eh?”, she said, handing us bottles of water, not extending the option for anything more. I’d have liked to say something back to her in return, anything at all, but there was nothing there. My supports had given out and the weight of the partying, fighting, and lack of sleep had all come crashing down at once, leaving me mentally vacant, frail, and in physical pain.

When negotiating our terms with the Kraak Festival, I remember thinking it seemed reasonable for us to fly out of the New York City area, but as the plane began its descent and we looked down over the snow capped buildings of northern New Jersey in preparation for landing at Newark airport, I couldn’t for the life of me remember why that would’ve been. Rick lived in Chattanooga, Noah in Philadelphia, and myself in Providence. After landing, we all ended up in different customs lines and were spit back out into civilization separately, each man going his own way without any kind of farewell.

 

I was extremely tight on time for my Megabus back home and after getting off the train at Penn Station, although I was in no condition to do so, I ran, sprinting through the streets of midtown Manhattan, jet-lagged and destitute, but determined to make it. It hurt a great a deal to see that big blue bus turn the corner from just a block away, but that’s what it did. I prayed for a red light, for something to interfere, but it released a big cloud of exhaust into the air and it kept going. Leaving me alone, sitting on the sidewalk with my suitcase full of cassette players, shattered in the shadow of the Javitz Center. 

Dynasty/Coughs 2006 US Tour (Part One)

A white 1970’s Volkswagen Bug had spent the last year or so in peaceful repose next to the river outside Boys Town. The rumpled terrain of the blue tarp in which it was partially shrouded had organized the rain water into miniature lakes and various bits of airborne debris now floated serenely upon their surfaces. Blending in naturally with its post-industrial surroundings, the car was deep in hibernation and in its vegetative state had become an ornament of sorts, a piece of furniture to lean against or rest your drink on when outside during a party. For these reasons it didn’t seem to me to be the type of vehicle that you’d call ‘road ready’. I doubted it was capable of making it to the nearest gas station, let alone across the country and back on a whirlwind 3.5 week tour with a trailer full of gear in tow, but it was the vehicle we planned on taking.

Robert Parker — the car’s owner, and admittedly both a capable mechanic and practical guy — had awarded it an exemplary bill of health, giving his seal of approval and assuring us that it was up for the journey. Although I remained skeptical, this was enough to convince the other members of Dynasty (Christopher, Carlos, and Jeremy) of its integrity, and without the resources to procure a more reliable replacement myself, I was left with no choice but to sit back and hope for the best.

Waiting until the day before the tour began to give it a test drive, Jeremy and I slid away the tarp and peering through its windows took stock of the tranquil, dust laden atmosphere that had developed within. Its interior dimensions were such that when in the driver’s seat I was forced to sit with my head firmly pressed into the ceiling and knees tight to the dash. We noted just how many advancements had been made in terms of comfort and safety in the thirty years since it came off the assembly line, how many of the modern amenities that one has come to expect from the cars of today this one lacked. The seatbelt was an airplane style clasp, the door was kept shut via an exposed latch, and the stick shift was an unlabeled rod that shot directly into the floorboards revealing a glimpse of the ground beneath. 

It took several insertions of the key to properly tamp down the crud that had collected in the ignition, which when it was finally able to be turned, set into motion a squall of metallic collisions as long dormant pieces of machinery suddenly began to jostle against each other, crying out in agony at their rude resuscitation. Stagnant fluids lurched from their resting places, coursing lethargically through their designated tubes, eager to appease the calls of their parched counterparts but lacking the energy to do so promptly. Amidst the engine’s gasps I could hear the exhaust pipe wagging rustily as it bellowed smog into the air. An odor of gasoline fumes and general automotive poisons began to fill the cabin. Desperate to retain optimism I tried to convince myself that it ‘just needed to warm up’. 

A battle ensued as I fumbled with the clutch, struggling to pivot my feet between pedals due to spacial constriction and repeatedly abrading the gears with the stick shift as the car jerked about and stalled. Although we eventually got it moving, it objected to every twist of the wheel, hobbling stubbornly down Manton Ave, never missing a chance to let us know this was happening against its will.

For a brief moment before we entered Olneyville Square — a tangled knot of roadway where seven major routes simultaneously intersect — I was able to set aside the panic and dread and appreciate the comedic aspects of introducing this thoroughly impaired vehicle into such a bustling junction, but it was a brief moment indeed. In no time at all I was shouting obscenities and punching the steering wheel as the car expressed its distaste for life through a basic vocabulary of high pitched squeals and foreboding thumps, stalling out entirely in the center of traffic. Occurring to me that we may not have any gas in the tank, I directed my gaze towards the control panel only to find the fuel gauge leaping erratically between F and E, searching for answers itself — while the speedometer, having already entered a state of postmortem rigidity, laid in rest at a permanent 35 mph. Managing to bring it back to life with a vigorous pumping and twisting of all accessible knobs and pedals, we continued forth, clunking our way down Broadway and across Downtown Providence.

The slope of College Hill had never looked so severe as when I approached it that day, looming colossally before us in a pose of silent intimidation. Even with the accelerator depressed fully to the floor the car still only managed slow motion speeds, heaving its way hesitantly up the hill in an unsteady geriatric ascent, plonking forwards step by step as if the wheels were square. Its pace seemed to decrease the higher we climbed and I shuddered imagining how it would fare on the Rocky Mountains in just over a week's time. As the engine’s palpitations increased in severity, for fear of rolling backwards I pulled into a random driveway, shutting it off and admitting defeat. A great accumulation of air was expelled as the car sighed traumatically, settling back into its coma. It slowly began to sink in that we could warm it up for as long as we wanted, it still wouldn’t change the fact that it was pretty much inoperable and incredibly dangerous. 

The plan had been to take it to my Dad’s workshop in Pawtucket where he would help us weld a hitch to the bumper, allowing us to tow the trailer of gear, and as we stood around loitering dejectedly in a stranger’s driveway, he by chance happened to pass by in his truck. Running behind on foot I caught up with him at the next stop light where we made a u-turn and doubled back, brutally cutting off two lanes of oncoming cars and pulling in next to the Bug. He looked at it like the ludicrous piece of machinery that it was, completely inadequate for the job we needed it to do, and at us like the idiots that we were, unimpressed by the whole situation and with concern for our common sense. 

I followed behind in the truck as my father — a notorious demon behind the wheel — drove the car back to Olneyville, keeping Jeremy with him as a hostage. Had it not been for the piercing sounds of mechanical malfunction and consistent emanation of smoke signals I actually might have lost them as he strong-armed the car into speeds I hadn’t thought possible, not only having the audacity to take it onto the highway, but weaving through traffic and maniacally jumping between lanes as I struggled behind in pursuit. 

Jeremy emerged from the car visibly battered by stress and jacked up on adrenaline whereas my Dad, although disappointed in our impractical planning, was mostly cool and collected. He used an assortment of uncomplimentary descriptors in reference to the car, wishing us luck in finding an alternative on such short notice, saddened that there was nothing more he could do to help. Leaving us back where we’d started, next to the river outside Boys Town with the now smoldering wreckage of an antique automobile on the eve of our tour.

A somber gathering followed as the whole band convened to process the news. It was a particularly hard pill to swallow seeing as how our last tour just three months prior hadn’t been seen through to completion for somewhat similar reasons. We’d mistakenly thought that the ‘check engine’ light in Christopher’s car had come on accidentally when we narrowly avoided a serious crash on the Garden State Parkway, when in fact it was on — as the light would suggest — because there was an issue with the engine, which having gone unchecked resulted in its spontaneous combustion. The violent disintegration scattered shrapnel across the highway leaving us stranded in Alabama with a trailer full of equipment and no way to tow it… but that’s a story for another time.  

Calls were placed to more responsible, level headed, van owning bands in Providence and across Massachusetts to plead for some type of pity based vehicle rental agreement and were either met with an uncomfortable silence as they scrambled for a good reason to say no, or a deluge of unreserved laughter at the absurdity of the inquiry. On the off chance the price for renting a minivan for a month through a commercial company had plummeted to somewhere near our budget of $300 or so, I ran down to the library to use the internet, discovering the cheapest to be $1500. 

The outlook was grim and morale was low as the four of us sat in a sour silence with all of our options exhausted. I was nearly ready to return to the library and start e-mailing the promoters of the shows to tell them we wouldn’t be making it when Jeremy was struck with a curious idea. 

“We could ask John Lusi.”, He suggested. 

A thin ray of light entered an otherwise dark room as each of our heads rose slowly from their slumped positions, being lifted by the unseen hand of hope. The idea was just crazy enough that it could work. 

John Lusi was a local defense attorney, approximately fifty years of age, who through one of life’s great curveballs had found himself in an unlikely role as the proprietor of the most active DIY venue in the city. Being privy to asset forfeitures and property seizures, Lusi had purchased a building in the Smith Hill neighborhood which had previously been used for the growth and cultivation of a large quantity of marijuana plants. Keeping the upstairs as a secondary office space and storage area, the ground floor was used as his music studio and served as a practice space for local reggae-inflected soft rock band Kojo and The What. Although it ended up being known mostly by the name of the road it was on — Okie Street — he referred to it as The Growroom. 

With the majority of Providence’s underground venues having been eradicated in the 2004 mass eviction of the Oak and Troy warehouse complex, show spaces were in high demand. Somehow or another the Okie Street space had been sniffed out and with Lusi’s consent began to be used as a venue. The frequency of the gigs grew exponentially and before he knew it there were sometimes as many as three a week, ranging from teenage folk to harsh noise. Lusi was present at each one, in command at his throne behind the soundboard, teeth festively stained with red wine, blasting Jeff Beck’s 2003 album ‘Jeff’ in between every act, never taking a dime of the door money.

We listened as Jeremy in his characteristically wavy, hallucinogen shaped cadence, explained our situation to him over the phone, quickly getting to the point and asking if we could borrow $1500 dollars. The verdict wasn’t immediately clear as the conversation continued for another minute or two longer with Jeremy only interjecting occasional ‘mm-hmm’s’ and nodding along before ending the call with “Sounds good man.”, and hanging up the phone. The weight of anticipation occupied the entire room as he took a moment to digest the news himself before filling us in:

“He said meet him at Okie Street in the morning and he’ll bring us the cash.”

And sure enough, early the following day before he was due in court he met us at The Growroom with fifteen one-hundred dollar bills in an envelope. It was our first time seeing him in the bright light of the day, in his lawyerly attire, tie precisely aligned and hair slicked back. We thanked him genuinely and profusely, letting him know that it would honestly be several months before we’d be able to fully reimburse him. 

“You know what..”, he said, resting his arm atop the open car door, paused in thought before he got back inside. “I’m trying to start a label… Providence Records. Maybe when you guys get back I can record your album here, it could be the first release. That’s how you could pay me back!”

This caught us all off guard even more than him agreeing to give us the money in the first place. Even though Dynasty had played at Okie Street before, I got the impression it might’ve been on a night where the shade of his tooth enamel had fallen deeper into the robust end of the rouge spectrum than was usual, and perhaps he wasn’t aware that we were — as Jeremy would later describe us to a California Highway Patrol officer — an ‘extremely aggressive noise rock’ band. 

“Think about it!”, he shouted to us, waving farewell as he drove off. We waved back slowly, bewildered by the progression of events and struggling to compute the facts. 

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Exactly one week later we woke up sprawled about the Rhinoceropolis venue in Denver, curled up in sleeping bags in various corners of the building. After Allentown and Columbus we’d joined up with Chicago band Coughs and continued west from there, with our next stop being the Mormon metropolis of Salt Lake City — a place Christopher had recently passed through on a solo tour and wasn’t happy to be returning to. He spoke of the city and the show he’d played with such disdain that he’d managed to radicalize us all, convincing us of its evils, and bringing us to the decision that we’d take our sweet time getting there, with any luck arriving too late to play. 

We eased into the day, eating a leisurely diner breakfast and aimlessly wandering around Denver for a while, finding ways to put off starting the eight hour drive. The only problem with the brand new minivan we’d rented was that it operated too smoothly. As your vision casually scrolled past the speedometer it would come as a shock to notice that you were driving well over 100 miles per hour without even as much as a tremor of resistance from the vehicle. So it was to our great dismay that we made it to Salt Lake City in record time, arriving far earlier than necessary and way before Coughs, having blown by their early 90’s conversion van somewhere in the desolate martian landscape of Wyoming several hours before. Even our backup plan of not having any directions to the venue failed when the first person to whom I shouted “Do you know where the Urban Lounge is?” from the window of the van not only knew exactly where it was, but added insult to injury by informing us it was just on the next block. 

The Urban Lounge was a proper rock club, the first one we’d played at on the tour, complete with a stage, fully equipped PA system, and posters for the upcoming Dave Navarro show plastered all over the room. The bartender made a big deal about how he could give us each one Coors Light for half price, leaning across the bar pulling an uncomfortable face in an attempt to make us believe he was bending the rules close to their breaking point by doing even that. I imagined they weren’t expecting the same size crowd they’d be getting when Navarro rolled though and that the staff had been told to hold back on offering anything complimentary. I took him up on it anyways, doing my best to enjoy the ‘non-intoxicating’ 3.2% Utah-style beer as I absorbed the joyless ambiance of the room from atop my stool. 

During load-in the employees side-eyed our raggedy speaker cabinets and improperly strung guitars, watching disapprovingly as Coughs cobbled together their oil drums and scrap metal in front of the stage. Uncertain of how to assist, the sound guy roamed the perimeter with his mouth agape, poised in anticipation of questions that never materialized and went unasked. A group of regular patrons for whom the impending show was sure to be an inconvenience hovered around the bar, occasionally snickering in our direction, amused by the fact that we were from out of town. We had come from a world so far away from the one that existed within the venue that basic verbal communication had ceased to be an option and the hope for understanding each other was lost. The disparaging depictions that Christopher painted for us had come to life before our very eyes, manifesting themselves into our bleak reality. Salt Lake City — judging by our surroundings and the size of the audience — was not ‘our kind of town’, and we were about as welcome in it as we were psyched to be there. 

The sparse crowd arranged themselves in a semicircle around the band as Coughs proceeded to play as powerfully as they would have on any given night, sonically pummeling both intentional and accidental spectators alike. Somewhere around the halfway point of their set, an unguarded mug of beer was lobbed fully across the room by a member of the band. It sailed silently through the air, disappearing behind the onlookers in a muffled eruption of foam and glass, triggering a hostile exchange of glances between all members of staff, and raising the night’s threat level from ‘moderate’ to ‘substantial’. 

Dynasty was up next. Having all now experienced the repugnancy first hand and wanting desperately to rinse the putrid taste of the city from our palettes, it was felt that a cleansing of sorts was in order. We had a song called ‘Open The Door’ which at a certain point would shift into a monotonous pulse, getting progressively slower and eventually devolving into a swamp of feedback and irregular drum hits. We decided to begin the set with a new version of this song entitled ‘Close The Door’ in which it was played backwards, beginning in utter shambles and without any guarantees of reaching normalcy. 

Not having to actually focus on playing at all, I was able from my unique vantage point perched behind the drum set at the back of the stage to really take in the entire scene as it withered away into chaos. The animosity was breeding and spreading contagiously between audience members while I very infrequently hit the drums, adding light accentuations to an otherwise ravenous gale of feedback. I saw the irritation grow in the faces of the sports fans who sat at the bar unable to properly take in ‘the game’ as it flickered past on the television, and as the hope for hearing ‘good’ music slowly faded away from the expressions of those who had actually come for the show. 

When a mic stand was accidentally taken down by the flailing neck of a guitar, a gang began to assemble. The sound guy — probably wondering why we’d made him mic up the amps and drums — stood at the front of the stage with his pointer finger raised in a timid display of authority as the regular bar crowd and his co-workers flocked from across the room to back him up. Although I couldn’t hear them, I watched the lips of men in baseball hats who now occupied the front row, able to distinguish the motions as they berated us with traditional jeers like ‘Fuck you!’ and ‘You suck!’. The already tight grip of tension constricted itself further as negativity boomeranged around the room taking out everyone in its path. 

From the moment we started I’d noticed that one of the monitor speakers had been stood on its side, pointing upwards into the air as opposed to laying flat across the stage. Encouraged to do so by the heel of Christopher’s shoe, I watched as it flopped downwards, resuming its intended positioning and simultaneously igniting a flare of anger within the eyes of our newfound enemies who took this as their cue to strike. In a frenetic blitz that could only have lasted a second or two, the rabid mob thrashed about haphazardly, lunging awkwardly from the floor for accessible limbs or instruments, only to cease fire at the behest of the sound man, who having flipped off the main power switch now stood in the center of the stage waving his arms downwards like a referee. 

“Enough!”, he shouted. “Enough!”

The sudden lack of vexatious sound in the building had stunned everyone into a temporary obedience as the sound guy commanded the rooms attention with a passionate speech on the topic of ‘respect’. I remember him starting a sentence with “Never.. in all my life.. have I…”, before I snapped out of the trance and started packing up the drums, realizing we might need to make a quick break. His speech of course went on to mention our permanent banishment from the venue and was concluded with a firm request for our immediate evacuation. 

Having experienced a change of heart in regards to taking out some money for us from the ATM and letting us stay at his house, I watched as the promoter hurried off down the road, distancing himself from the scene. Failing to have made a single friend at the show who we could attempt to burden with our presence overnight, we followed Coughs convoy style up I-15 to the town of Ogden where we split one motel room ten ways, packing all the available floor space with our bodies. 

As I carefully tiptoed back across the human carpet after brushing my teeth, I reflected on how violence and misunderstandings were beginning to emerge as reoccurring themes in the tour. We’d had mid-set scuffles with the audience in both Chicago and Minneapolis, and if tonight was any indication, it appeared as though the matter may be intensifying. Snuggling up next to the TV stand, I speculated on the trouble that laid in wait on the remaining 2/3rds of our trip, settling in for what was sure to be a horrendous nights sleep. 

 

Serbia / Slovenia

         It was the Spring of 2013 and one week deep into a European tour with Rene Hell and Laser Poodle. The tour had been centered around an invitation to play at the Donau Festival in Austria and the four of us relaxed in the dressing room there drinking complimentary cans of a cheap lager called Zipfer while Jeff (Rene Hell) watched basketball on his laptop and I took Vine videos of everyone hanging out. 
In three days time we would reach the eastern most destination of our trip — the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Speculation as to what awaited us there was one of two conversational topics that dominated our car rides. None of us had ever been or really knew very much about the place and the mystique of it cast an apprehensive and somewhat ominous shadow over the days leading up to our arrival. The second topic was a fantasy in which the promoter of an upcoming show, enraged by the some might say ‘difficult’ computer-music stylings of Rene Hell, experiences a violent meltdown resulting in a variety of unspeakable horrors, ultimately ending in Jeff’s murder. Other than this we kept it pretty quiet. 

The night before Serbia we rung up an impressive bar tab drinking frozen cocktails on the roof of a ship in Budapest and in the morning we traversed the Great Hungarian Plain in a frenzy of hungover anxiety as the highway signs guided us gently towards Belgrade. The armed border patrolmen did little to soothe our nerves, staring abhorrently at our American passports and surveying the car’s interior clutter with an eye of revulsion before eventually waving us through. Immediately the TomTom GPS unit that had escorted us thus far ceased to operate — Serbian highway data had not been part of its programming and we hurtled along through the countryside desperate for guidance. Stopping at a gas station on the outskirts of the city we took photos of a road map and zooming in on these managed to locate the name of the street the venue was on and clumsily navigated our way to that general area where we proceeded on foot.
Mosquitoes were a problem this time of year as was apparent the moment we stepped out of the car when a large flatbed truck came noisily shambling up the road spitting thick streams of toxic insecticide out of various tubes that protruded from a large Soviet-style contraption strapped to the back. Imitating the locals, we covered our faces with our shirts and ducked into the nearest shop as it ambled by, enveloping the street in a pale orange haze. We had arrived. 
The addresses weren’t always labeled so clearly and the numerical system by which they increased or decreased wasn’t based on a logic that any of us could discern, therefore we weren’t certain if the building which we gazed upon was in fact the venue for that night’s show, but we feared that it was. Down an overgrown path sat a two story concrete structure that had quite some years ago fallen into a state of disrepair, any doors or windowpanes were long gone, and the place was now in the process of going back to nature.  I’d been paid a decent amount from the Donau Festival — twice what we’d agreed upon to my pleasant surprise, and in cash — so for safety reasons I took the opportunity before entering to roll up the wad and lodge it deep within my sock. Inside it was how you’d imagine an abandoned building that’s been exposed to the elements for years and is now hosting gigs would be; wet, cold, sprouting vegetation, every inch covered in ridiculous graffiti. Power was provided by a chain of extension cables that ran secretively from the closest neighboring building through one of the windows. 
We could hear the backstage spreads and hotel rooms of previous days calling us, welcoming us with open arms, and we began discussing the possibility of a retreat. We hadn’t met anyone yet so if we just drove away it would be as if we’d never shown up. Jonathan (1/2 of Laser Poodle), Jeff, and I all liked the idea of getting back in the car, driving towards our next show, getting a hotel along the way and having a nice relaxing night. Comfort however was not of much interest or importance to my friend Johann (the other 1/2 of Laser Poodle) and he repeatedly shot the idea down each time we suggested it, leaving us to reluctantly pull up the car and begin loading in.

We sat around a small bonfire outside taking swigs of some type of sweet but extremely potent Serbian liquor I didn’t catch the name of. The offeror of the booze watched us closely as we drank it, waiting for our lips to make contact with the bottle before his mouth would contort into a devilish smirk, the expression made even more disconcerting by the light of the fire. A respectable amount of people had turned up for the gig at this point, but they didn’t necessarily seem like your typical abstract computer music fans, and Jeff began feeling hesitant about his set. 
“These people don’t need to see me do that, Schofield.”, he would say. I couldn’t help but agree and I wasn’t in the mood for doing my usual thing either, so we decided to do an improv ‘hard-style’ collaboration in which I’d mess around with unused beats I’d already programmed while Jeff scattered a layer of weird sounds from whatever software program he was using at the time over top. It went alright, the audience seemed to dig it sort of, and our moods began to improve. 
Back at the bonfire, someone who was apparently in charge of the gig came to pay us for the night. Our eyes surged with delight, pleased with ourselves for not having fled the country when we so foolishly wanted to, as they exposed a plump cylinder of rolled Serbian bills and handed it in our direction. They then chose the words, “This converts to about 30 Euros”, to deflate our sudden swelling of joy. We continued drinking around the fire until it was deemed acceptable to sleep, at which point we were shown to a room on the second floor which identically resembled the rest of the building, except with a pile of thin mattresses and some sheets of foam in one corner which we distributed amongst ourselves. I hopped on one, pulled my coat up over my head and let sleep take its course. 

I awoke in the morning horrifically thirsty, my tongue bone dry and pasted to the roof of my mouth. My eyelids flickered and as I adjusted to the sunlight I began to notice the intricacy of the stain on the mattress next to my face, radiating out from the center in increasingly sicklier shades of yellow. A surplus of stagnant mucus, having lost its viscosity, came rushing from my nostrils as I sat up. I sopped the translucent ooze up with my sleeve and took a couple good deep sniffs to try and suck any that lingered back inside. 
The first thing I noticed as I assessed the room in my state of morning decrepitude, was that during the night a pack of eight to ten stray dogs had come inside (there was after all, nothing to stop them from coming in) and they now laid about the room interspersed between my sleeping friends. They seemed unwell, mangy and breathing shallowly — but unthreatening, which led me to believe they may be diseased. I then realized that with this backdrop, most living things would appear to be diseased and that I at that moment most certainly fit the part as well. 
A morning dew had blanketed the room and my shoes squeaked in the moisture as I tiptoed around the dog carcasses, not wanting to rouse the beasts. I found Jonathan outside smoking a cigarette around the remnants of the fire and he said something along the lines of, “We should get the fuck out of here, right?”. It only took one good shake and a quick gesture towards the dogs to get Jeff up on his feet, but Johann, who does like a good snooze, proved harder. It turns out that even in a wet concrete room in an abandoned building filled with sick dogs, curled up on a filthy sheet of absorbent foam, that getting a solid night’s sleep was still his top priority. 

Once we crossed the border into Croatia the GPS started working again and Jane, the British woman we’d chosen as our navigational voice, directed us without issue to the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia. This evening’s show was at a more traditional club/venue within an arts commune that we were told many times was like the ‘Slovenian Christiania’. The promoters seemed nice enough and were very excited about the show, busying themselves posting up a schedule on various poles and doors around the room. 
After soundcheck we hit the town in search of a cocktail bar where we could hopefully sit outside, unwind with a stiff drink, and maybe have a laugh about our Serbian excursion. Before too long we found just that, except the menu at our chosen establishment was rather untraditional and I didn’t recognize a single drink on it. Our waiter stood by slowly losing patience as we hemmed and hawed, shooting looks of confusion across the table at each other, until I decided I’d end the insufferable limbo and order us a round of drinks named “The Killer”. Objections were voiced all around, but I insisted upon it and the waiter eagerly scurried off. 
They were aquamarine in color, heavily iced, and in tall glasses with one of those curly rollercoaster-esque party straws. After a few sips I guessed it to be a combination of vodka, gin, and blue curaçao. It tasted awful but went down easy and ended up packing more of a punch than expected. 

The first DJ opened the night up to a small audience who mostly lingered in the back of the room and Rene Hell went up next. The crowd moved closer as he took the stage and then changed their minds shortly after he started — I got a great Vine that starts with him beginning the set and cuts to a group of girls rushing out of the room. As I headed backstage once he’d finished, I began to hear the cries. 
“Schofield! Schofield!”, he shouted, “It’s going down! It’s going down!”. I caught a glimpse of his panicked face darting up and down where the three promoters had him cornered and pushed up against a wall. They were genuinely irate and their fingers poked and prodded Jeff’s chest forcefully as his eyes begged for me to intervene. 
With some persuasion I managed to coax them away from him to talk to me in the next room. I couldn’t quite believe my ears as they began to explain what — from their perspective — had just happened as it was taken verbatim from the fictional tales we’d spun in the car. They believed that Jeff, angry he was made to play first out of the live acts, had decided to retaliate by playing what they called ‘very bad music’. This next bit perplexed me, but they seemed even more angry not about the fact that his music was ‘bad’, but that he played it for such a short amount of time — 22 minutes, they repeated. He had done this, in their minds, in an attempt to sabotage the evening and sully the name of their DJ and party promotion crew. I assured them that Jeff had in fact played this exact same set every night for the last week and half in every city we went to and that not only did he intend for it to sound the way it did, but people often liked it. This information managed to derail their anger somewhat and replace it with confusion, but a hostile vibe now lingered in the air. 
One of them grabbed a timetable (they’d put up so many that one was always within arm's reach) and showed me that Rene Hell was scheduled to play from exactly 10 until exactly 11 pm — one solid hour, and in fact each of the live acts and DJ’s in-between them were to do the same. This presented two additional problems as far as I could tell: we had a long night ahead of us, and I was going to need to double my set length somehow.

In the meantime, while all this bedlam had been unfolding, The Killer — unlike any other cocktail I’ve had before or since — was managing to increase in strength as time went on, as if it was regenerating or giving birth to little Killers inside of me. Everyone agreed they were at an unusual level of drunkenness for what had been consumed and wondered if the drink didn’t perhaps contain a variety of illicit pills.
A couple of hours later its gestation period had been completed and I took to the stage in a frightful state of inebriation. I began, intentionally, to play each part of all my songs for twice as long as I normally would, thinking that this would stretch my 25 minute set out to a more locally acceptable length of 50 and hopefully help to avoid any additional conflict — but boy it wasn’t easy! My vision rattled and trailed erratically, each button press or knob twiddle required utmost focus and concentration to ensure that the correct one was being depressed or tweaked. One arm had to be used to steady the other one as I hunched over the array of blinking electronics squinting through one eye.  I had a hard time ‘losing myself in the music’ if you know what I mean, and the set slogged forth at an alarmingly sluggish pace. 
“It was like being in a time-warp.”, remarked Johann, his glasses skewed at a steep incline across his face as I watched The Killer work away at him from within. 

Jeff was catching a train back to the Donau Festival in the morning, and Jonathan and I walked him back to where we were staying, which unfortunately was the promoter’s apartment. I scarfed down a cheese burek from a late night food stand along the way which I drunkenly praised in great detail for the remainder of the walk and still have flashbacks to the succulence of to this day. After tucking Jeff in, advising he stay awake in case the promoters came back feeling vengeful, and saying our farewells, we headed back to the venue to pack up and get Johann. 
What we were hoping to see when we walked up was Johann standing out front of the venue, which was now closed, with all the gear packed up, eagerly awaiting us. To our dismay what we arrived to was a party that had nearly doubled in size and showed no signs of stopping. We squeezed though dancing Slovenian club goers in a frantic search for our friend, wanting nothing more than to be free from this situation, when my eyes caught sight of him as they scanned the room. He was on stage, behind the decks, in the middle of an unscheduled DJ set, responsible for the continuation of the party. The Killer’s transformation had been achieved and the glasses were fully off now as he bopped around behind the turntables looking possessed. Our groans were audible even over the roar of the PA, as Jonathan and I both knew well that even a trained FBI hostage negotiator with thirty plus years experience would have no luck in getting DJ Cosmo Knex off of that stage. A hopeless feeling of inescapable monotony began to take over, a feeling that I would become very familiar with in the years that followed, a feeling known as ‘Techno Hell’. Due to my brain’s safety mechanism, in which it enters a stand-by mode when exposed to Techno Hell, the remainder of the evening goes blank and is wiped clean from my memory.

The Poodle Boys and I drove to Italy in the morning and explored towns along the Gulf of Trieste before landing at a Best Western in Gorizia. We had our first showers in several days, watched Italian television, and ate prosciutto pizzas in the square — a necessary and restorative night of relaxation after several in a row that offered none. 

In 2018, back in Budapest for the UH Festival, I met a guy from Belgrade who had driven up for the show.
“You played there before right?”, he asked.
“Well…”, I paused. “Sort of.”
“At kind of a strange place?”, I nodded slowly, watching him search for a more appropriate word. “At a kind of very sketchy place?” The pace of my nodding increased. He went on to say that although he knew about the gig, he hadn’t gone as he had a hard time imagining it could be real, finding it unfathomable we would’ve been playing such a ‘venue’. In the time that had passed I always wondered if my imagination had embellished my memories so it was good to meet someone, a Belgrade native, who could reaffirm the way I’d preserved the experience. How, he wondered, had we ended up there? Who had led us astray? There were no sensible justifications that would satisfy his questions and I stood silently before him with my hands in the air. Before we parted ways he suggested I come back for an actual gig sometime, which I would love and hope can happen, although I’m not confident on being able to get a Ljubljana show secured for the following day. 

Gun Trouble

Rick’s backyard like all the others in the area had been paved over with concrete and extended rectangularly from the rear of the house to where it abutted a highway underpass. The underpass was a long and dark corridor which provided ample space for parking, and judging by the amount of used condoms and syringes that littered the ground, granted an acceptable level of privacy for the conduction of deviant acts. Above that the interstate traffic flowed by in continuity, blanketing the neighborhood with a steady rumbling which droned away into the periphery over time. Due to the state of our surroundings no one could see the harm in me playing my set from the backyard, how adding a little bit of music into an already disharmonious atmosphere would have any ill effects — it was a crisp early Spring evening in North Philadelphia and everyone was ready to spend a bit of time outdoors. 
        Kicking off the night under my noise alias of God Willing, I sat with my gear on a folding table in one corner of the yard with my back to the house and my Roland keyboard amp on a chair next to me. A respectable twenty-five or so people had come and were spread out before me swilling cans of Schmidt, also known as ‘animal beer’, as I began. A minute or two into the set I entered what is commonly referred to as ‘the zone’ and became absorbed in the music and less aware of my surroundings. I remained in this state of focus for several minutes before a hairy pair of hands that I immediately recognized as that of Rick’s roommate Arthur broke into my line of vision and occupied the previously vacant space between my face and my gear. They oscillated in tandem, crisscrossing each other to repeatedly form the shape of an X — the universal gesticulation for the command of ‘stop’. I suspected that either a neighbor had complained or a cop had shown up or that Arthur just really wasn’t into what I was doing. 
Earlier in the day when rehearsing I had recorded a cassette of rich and vibrant bubble sounds which although I was very excited to incorporate into the set, I hadn’t yet gotten around to — the set had yet to progress to the bubble stage, but not about to let them go to waste, I slipped the tape into my 4-track and slid up the faders before stopping to look and find out what the problem was. The bubbles frothed out from the speaker popping jubilantly in the night air, and as my head craned upwards towards the crowd I nearly expected to see everyone erupting in joyous rapture, smitten by the sound. 
It came as a surprise when I found the entire audience compacted against the opposite corner of the house from where I sat, squished into each other tightly as if compressed by some invisible force. Lower lips were extended and trembling gelatinously as bodies writhed together in a desperate grasp for safety. Those who hadn’t managed to cover their heads and face the house were staring across the yard towards the highway in a mix of terror and suspense. Following their gaze I found a man standing at the gate, his face distorted in a clash of shadows and streetlight glare, who was in a state of severe agitation. His body jerked in unpredictable spasms and his mouth morphed through a selection of exaggerated shapes as he rambled to himself incoherently, holding a handgun above his head. 
In a rapid, nearly imperceptible motion, he had lowered the gun and pointed it directly at the mass of people that had accumulated in the corner. A chorus of fearful objection emanated from the crowd in the form of moans and shrieks before he redirected the trajectory of his weapon, aiming it at me. Previous to this I had never really taken the time out to sit down and  imagine what goes through your head when someone who is visibly in the throes of a psychotic episode threatens your life with a presumably loaded gun, but things slowed down and took on an eerie calm. Watching the way the gun quivered in his hand and how his finger slipped unsteadily around the trigger in his jittery grip, I decided it was probably a good time to end the bubble solo which had been percolating away, serving as a wildly inappropriate soundtrack to the occasion. I reached out slowly and lowered the faders. 
Silent aside from the endless hum of the highway his voice was now audible. Each word collided into the next forming a long strand of incomprehensible babble which occasionally spiked in volume to arbitrarily emphasize certain fragments. It was the closest I’ve seen anyone come to actualizing the expletive speech bubbles that cartoon characters make when overcome with frustration, as what he was saying could only be written out in a complex series of asterisks and dollar signs and exclamation points. His maniacal oration came to an abrupt halt when he fired the gun once into the air in a form of punctuation and then carried on his way down the road. 
Although all attendees were physically unscathed, his bullet had struck the vibe of the show, murdering it in cold blood. The vast majority of people made a mad dash for the front door and a few kooks stuck around seeming relatively unfazed, wondering what time the touring acts were on. Abandoned in the heat of the moment, personal stashes of animal beer were free for the taking and the few of us who remained hung out for a couple more hours drinking those to reduce tension.

It was somewhere around Noon the following day when my phone vibrated with an incoming call from Rick Weaver. “You better get over here.”, he said. I only lived about a ten minute walk away and started in his direction immediately. We sat across from each other on separate couches in his living room eyeing an aluminum foil covered baking tray which sat between us on the coffee table. Rick explained that just before he called there had been a knock at the front door. He opened it to find a fifteen or sixteen year old girl wielding the aforementioned baking tray.
“I think my dad was here last night.” She said to Rick.
“Oh yeah?”, he questioned her uncertainly.
“Yeah, I think maybe he fired his gun?” She went on to explain that her father was a shell shocked war veteran suffering from PTSD. Awakening in fright to the sounds of searing feedback, loops of plastic bottles being crunched up, and pulsing bass tones descending upon his neighborhood had sent him into a horrific flashback, and in an ingrained militaristic reaction he grabbed his gun and hit the street. 
“We made you this lasagna as a peace offering.” She said, extending the tray towards Rick. 
We took it into the kitchen and served ourselves heaping portions, cracked open some more animal beers, and sat down to an unexpected and delightful lunch. Ricotta doesn’t exactly sit near the front of my list of top cheeses, but after inadvertently inducing a nearly catastrophic meltdown that teetered precariously on the precipice of tragedy, I felt that consuming this food was really the least I could do. 

__________________________________________________________________

A few months prior to this in January of 2010, running late for a show, I hastily tossed my gear into a duffel bag and set off for West Philly. Traffic snarled up a bit as I entered University City before gridlocking entirely on Walnut Street where I sat impatiently in my van accelerating forwards at the rate of one parked car length per five minutes. Feeling that my composure was soon to expire I decided it best to walk the rest of the way and snuck the van into an open space along the side of the road. I hadn’t packed with walking in mind however and the weight of the vintage test oscillator, bulky cassette players, and case of beer I’d brought made for no graceful way to carry the duffel bag as I wrestled with it in a bizarre dance past the immobilized motorists. 
Where Walnut intersected 40th Street had been closed off completely to automobiles and pedestrians alike, and a foul mouthed officer of the law brusquely directed me to return to where I’d come from with a choice of words that I’d describe as ‘rude’. The issue was that the venue I was trying to get to — The Rotunda, although visible from where I stood, just past the cop on the other side of the movie theatre, was now inaccessible. Going behind the library I was able to navigate through a portion of the University of Pennsylvania campus to an area further down 40th where I managed to cross to the other side undetected. Thinking I could probably access The Rotunda though a rear entrance I took the alley behind Qdoba where I encountered a pair of detectives illuminating sections of the ground with oversized flashlights. They weren’t pleased to see me and one began rifling though my bag while the other steadied me against the wall with an outstretched arm. Their faces expressed uncertainty as to whether the contents of my bag were anything to be concerned about before turning me loose and barking “Get. The. Fuck. Outta. Here.” into my face, accentuating each word with a slap of the flashlight into the palm. 

The gig that I was having so much trouble getting to was for Outer Space, who had driven a cool 6 hours from Cleveland just for the one show and I was to be providing ‘local support’ in a collaborative duo with Bee Mask. It was being put on by a local promoter who tended to specialize in events of a ‘high brow’ and ‘avant-garde’ nature and therefore had secured arts funding for his organization which I had been guaranteed $75 dollars of in check form for my participation in the evening. It was absolutely essential to the continuation of my existence that I acquired this money and therefore felt deterred in no way by the obstacles that had blocked me thus far and continued forth, persevering in my quest. 
Entering into a classic game of Cat and Mouse with the detectives, I covertly maneuvered through the driveways, yards, and neighboring alleys, clutching the duffel bag in a way that would prevent the bottles from clinking together, only to fall into their spotlight at the turn of each corner, scampering away back into the shadows as they cursed and hollered. After much exploration and many close calls I eventually was able to pass the bag over a chain-link fence to Brian Morseberger before scaling over it myself, entering the grounds of the venue after having thoroughly contaminated a crime scene. 
Everyone was there and awaiting my arrival so the night could begin, but before that had a chance to occur, two uniformed officers entered the building. They quickly studied the appearance of everyone in attendance and did a cursory search of the room before making an announcement. During an attempted robbery of the movie theater next door, an off-duty police officer who had attempted to intervene was shot dead in the lobby by a perpetrator who had then fled the scene and was still believed to be hiding out somewhere in the immediate vicinity. The show was allowed to go on, but the doors would need to remain locked, no one could leave until the area had been cleared or the suspect had been captured, and no one could say when that would be. If anyone needed to go, they needed to go at that moment, via police escort. The idea of spending a moment longer than necessary at the gig seemed more than most people could bare, as about 75% of the audience eagerly lined up to be taken away in a voluntary mass evacuation.

Although the promoter and I had never actually engaged in conversation, I was under the impression that we had differing opinions in regards to the way one should enjoy experimental music in a live setting. Of the handful of his events that I’d attended in the past I’d made a habit of bringing along (both for economical reasons, and to share with friends) a case containing 24 bottles of Lionshead beer, something which always got me a raised eyebrow and disapproving leer at the door, and which I’d heard him verbally object to to one of his colleagues. My frat-noise buffoonery was at odds with the chin scratching gallery approach he was taking, and where as I saw no reason the two couldn’t co-exist, something about it seemed to go against his vision. So where as some found the jingling sound of glass bottles which echoed around the nearly empty room as I shimmied the case free from my bag to be merry, the promoter did not, and took a seat in a far corner of the room, distancing himself from the events. 
The next blow to the evening’s class level came when it was realized that the DVD which Outer Space had planned to project and have serve as their visual accompaniment had been misplaced. Desperate for a replacement, John Elliott (of Outer Space) bravely chose to break free from our lockdown and sneak over to the Redbox which sat temptingly across the street in front of The Fresh Grocer. Not having any time to leisurely browse, and limited of course by the somewhat conventional selection, John returned moments later with a copy of the 1990 romantic fantasy box office decimating blockbuster ‘Ghost’, which they then provided a live score to while it was projected at 3 times the normal speed. 
His presence made known only by the glow of the Apple logo which shone faintly from his laptop in the outer reaches of the room, the promoter busied himself with distractions as the evening degraded into a sparsely attended, beer fueled, Hollywood movie screening — financed by grant money and from which there was no escape. Phantasmic sex scenes flickered past in hyper-speed while arpeggiated synth lines and filter sweeps orbited the cavernous room without mass to absorb them.
Sometime in the early AM hours, taking a peek into the outdoors, we determined that some resolution had been achieved and with other things on their minds the authorities had simply forgotten to notify us. If it hadn’t been crucial to my well-being that I received payment I almost would’ve felt bad taking it, as it was with great reluctance that the checks were forked over. And with that, everyone filed out of the building and went their separate ways. It was not, I imagined, the way anyone had intended things to go, although — murder aside — I don’t think I could have planned a better evening myself.