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.
_________________________________________________________________
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.
