East Coast with The Cows! Jun 5 - 10: Volume 2
Featuring Special Guest Tour Reports by Andy Espenshade
Thursday night, we stayed at our friend Andy's house and the next morning we
kidnapped him - he said he'd never been to Boston before, so we figured it was
ok - and made him honorary Tour Manager of the weekend. He had to travel with
us to Boston. Then I laid the bad news on him - he had to write a tour report
for the time he spent with us. He agreed, and you'll get to read it here. It's
great - you can't even tell that he's an Ayn Rand fan. (smile)
Jun 6,7, Thu-Fri, Hoboken-Cambridge, MA
Andy's Tour Report
Hi, my name is Andy, and I am the Grand Prize winner of the
VH-1/Poster Children "Manager for the Weekend" sweepstakes!
My name was selected from over three million applicants who
deposited entry forms at Taco Bells across the country. However,
I was the only one to correctly answer the following question:
Name 10 Burt Reynold's movies that start with the letter "S".
(Answer follows at the bottom of this tour report).
Rose told me that my primary responsibility as the P-Kids
manager was to write the Tour Reports for the weekend, so
here I am.
Our weekend started out with a show in Hoboken, New Jersey,
on Thursday night. (Weekends with Poster Children always
start on Thursday, a great value). Hoboken is a quirky little
town loaded with bars, restaurants, and bars across the Hudson
river from Manhattan. Best known as the Birthplace of Baseball
(or so the Mayor of Hoboken and the big anniversary parade
next month claim), Hoboken's other cultural legacy is Maxwell's,
a restaurant/coffeehouse/watering hole with a small club in
the back room for shows.
Due to smart booking on the club's part and the appeal of
being-able-to-play-near-New York-without-having-to-go-into-New
York, Maxwell's always manages to put on amazing shows in a space
that (if this is possible) is almost too intimate for comfort.
Which I suppose is why Rose admitted on stage before the set
started that of all the hundreds of venues they have played in
the world, in front of crowds ranging from 10 to 10,000 people,
that this is the only place in which she gets nervous performing.
It didn't show.
Here is something I never thought I'd say: I have Rolling Stone
to thank for this. At least partially, anyway. 1991, freshman
year at school. Frontier Records (who I also have to thank for
Heatmiser), send my radio station Flower Plower along with an
article from Rolling Stone magazine featuring a few paragraphs
on this great new band from Illinois called Poster Children.
It took me three days to make it to the end of the album, I
just kept rewinding to the beginning of "Dangerous Life" until
the grooves wore off the vinyl (well, it was a CD, but I think
you understand what I'm getting at).
Three albums, an EP, and several singles later, here they are,
much better than ever. The new songs are complex-as-hell,
with unconventional time signatures and chord structures.
I've just spent the last twenty minutes attempting to express
in words how the new songs sound, but it's futile. So I'm not
even going to try. I'll just tell you that all 12 songs the P-Kids
played were new, and all 12 songs were fantastic. What I can
tell you is that the set kicked off with "Black Dog", one of the
older-new songs, a mesmerizing collage of stop-starts and
crunches. They immediately dove into "Ankh" next, arguably
the best (and Rose's favorite) of the new songs.
After these two songs, I realized how much fun they were
having on-stage. The entire set was frenetic, super-charged,
and that energy was conducted through each member of the
quartet through to the crowd and back again, and I just wanted
to be on that stage, to be a more fundamental and integral
piece of the sound that was moving, and I mean moving
each person in that room. There are instances when human beings
can create a moment of purity and brilliance and purpose and
harmony, and when it happens it is beautiful, and to be a
part of it is truly exquisite. I can't imagine what it would
be like to have been the one to create the moment. This
evening was full of those moments, I wish you could have
been there.
It's well after 1:00 A.M. before the Cows finish a wild and
entertaining performance. ("What is it like, oh baby oh baby.")
A trip to the local convenience store offers microwavable
burritos, Ramen noodles, and a big red candy thumb. By
the time we get back to my house in the bustling urban
landscape that is Port Chester, New York, it's too late to
watch the film I had rented ("Swimming with Sharks", a
fine, fine film I urge any of you to see if you have not
already). I had been informed that the other primary
responsibility of any good Poster Children manager is
to keep several videos on hand, as Poster Children are
infamous for trashing bedrooms and whole apartment
complexes if not properly entertained at all times.
Some steamy B-movie on late-night Showtime suggests
to us what the Cows might be up to at the time, and then
we stumble upon a Burt Reynolds movie (one of the ones
that starts with 'S", but I'm not sure which one).
It's off to Boston the next afternoon, with Jim at the helm
of the van and Captain (as Rick has instructed us to call him)
riding shotgun. The road from New York to Boston is a sad
journey indeed, as there is not one single Taco Bell along I-95
for the entire four hours. We settle for a McDonald's for
lunch, although I'm just not ready yet for the Arch Deluxe.
Our Monopoly game pieces offer a bounty of railroads, yet
we are still missing one piece: if anybody out there has a
Short Line railroad, let us know.
The Middle East in Cambridge is the site of the show; a
seemingly respectable restaurant upstairs with two rooms
for shows (one upstairs, one downstairs). Poster Children
are downstairs, along with Ultra Bide, Quintaine Americana,
and the Cows. We are too late for a soundcheck, so we instead
turn our attention to a delicious buffet of falafel, hummus, and
some kind of chicken with rice. With some time to kill, Howie
and I wander down to Harvard Square and find some good
used books at the aptly titled Harvard Square Books.
At the newsstand we investigate a rumor we had heard about the
new issue of Interview magazine. While on tour in Oklahoma last
year, the P-Kids met a fan who was in town making a little movie
called "Twister". A year later, this same fan is now in New York in a
little Broadway show called "Rent". He's featured in the new
Interview, complete with a photograph of him sporting a nice white
Poster Children shirt. Pretty cool.
The Boston show is amazing as well, following the same set list as
the night before. Hearing the songs for a second time, I learn
they are even better than I had thought. We spend Friday night
in Boston with Joyce, old friend of the P-Kids and the East Coast
rep for SubPop.
Joyce's house is fantastic; with over a dozen beds upstairs
for any good band passing through the Boston area, it's the
Motel 6 of the underground rock world. (But much nicer).
By the time we get there on Friday night, the Fastbacks are
already asleep upstairs. The Fastbacks are on tour now with
the Presidents of the United States of America, and they
have a new album out on SubPop that is very nice indeed.
After coffee and a banana with the Fastbacks in the morning,
we head back to New York. What's life like inside the Poster
Children tour van with "4 P-KIDS" proudly emblazoned on
the Illinois license plate? Aside from the late-nite, all-nite
rave parties and the impromptu rugby matches, it is pretty
much subdued. There's a lot of reading going on, from Rick's
informal history of the American language to Howie's
espionage novel to three decades worth of film critique,
this is a very literate bus. Rose and I raise the stakes by
having a ten minute discussion on politics and the state
of the individual In America today, then realize what we've
done and quickly change the topic to Burt Lancaster movies
and the advantages of having a drug-free sound guy.
Back in New York City, I realize that my weekend as Poster Children
manager is almost at an end. Realizing our time is short, we grab
dinner on St. Mark's place and Ben & Jerry's milkshakes around the
corner. We wander around Greenwich Village for a while (to the
thespians who performed "Hecuba" in Washington Square Park, I'm
sorry for giggling), and make it back to CBGB's in time to see Starfish,
a really great band from Austin, Texas. This Poster Children show is
even better than the previous two, as everything just came together
perfectly on every song. As they conclude "Happens Every Day", the
brooding, bruising epic that has closed each show (Rose doesn't like
this one much, but I think it's up there with "Ankh", "Black Dog", and
"Speed of Light" as the best new songs they've written), I realize my
time is about up.
It's back to Port Chester for cream soda, cereal, showers, and a
movie. After debating between Peckinpah's "The Killer Elite" and
Fellini's "Amarcord", we settle on the obvious compromise: "Top
Secret", starring Val Kilmer in the days before he burned cameramen
in the face with cigarettes. I try to convince Rick to write a song
about skeet surfing, but he says it's already been done to death.
The next afternoon, we make the now-traditional pilgrimage to the
Port Chester Diner, featuring a menu as thick as an Ayn Rand novel
(and not "Anthem" or "We the Living"). After a table-full of eggs,
home fries, and tuna-fish sandwiches, it's time to say good-bye. And
as that great white van with Illinois plates drives off towards
Maryland, I picture a more-perfect world, where "He's My Star" is in
heavy-rotation on MTV; where "Blatant Dis" is played on
"alternative" radio stations across the country; where the Poster
Children tour van has a working tape deck; and where Howie and Jim
get to host the New Dating Game in prime-time network TV. But as
long as Rick, Rose, Jim, and Howie get to write the songs they want to
write, play the way they want to play, tour where and when they
want to (and don't when they don't want to), I guess things aren't too
bad.
I sincerely hope I have not wasted anyone's time in the reading of
this tour report. Don't worry, I think Rose has learned her lesson and
will start writing these things on her own next time.
And so as not to totally disappoint, the answer to tonight's trivia
question:
Semi-Tough
Shamus
Shark!
Sharky's Machine
Silent Movie
Smokie and the Bandit
Smokie and the Bandit II
Starting Over
Stick
Stroker Ace
Switching Channels
(We would also accept Striptease, his new movie with Demi Moore)
Rose's Tour Reports begin again here
Joyce's House - SubPop HQ East
As Andy said, Joyce's house is amazing. She is totally prepared to house about
3-4 bands in it. There is a big guest bathroom with an envelope on the wall
with instructions on how to take the SubPop company YMCA card down to the gym
down the street, to work out. She has bowls of individual hotel soaps in the
bathroom, and tons of towels. It's like a paradise for a touring band. I slept
in the room with the pictures of Six Finger Satellite on the wall; waking up
with 3 of their faces staring at me, I jumped. Sleeping on the matress next
to me was a Fastback; it's very weird going to bed and waking up next to someone
you've never met before. Six Finger Satellite's new album promos had just arrived
at Joyce's,æand you can bet I've got one sitting here next to me. She gave us
a bunch of other promos, including the new Sebadoh record which has about 100
songs on it. SubPop still is King.
Jun 8, Sat, NYC, New York - CBGBs
Funniest Thing In The World
I should describe what Shannon wears
at the beginning of each show. He is dressed in a bright yellow suit-jacket,
and black pants, goofy black terminator-shades with 2 plastic googly-eyes pasted
on them where his eyes would be. And a bright golden shower cap. And a pencil-thin
mustache, drawn with marker on his face. At tonight's show, I heard Shannon
yell in between songs, "GIVE IT BACK, YOU ASSHOLE!" - someone had stolen his
golden shower-cap he'd been wearing the whole tour, right off his head. He was
hatless on the stage. "I CAN STOP THE SHOW," he yelled. Seconds later, the band
started into the next song. After this song, he screamed some more; apparently
whoever had taken his cap wasn't giving it back. It was a shame, I thought,
because I'd never seen a bright gold shower cap before. It was quite nice. The
situation got really tense after about the 4th song, when Shannon finally yelled,
"THAT'S IT, SHOW'S OVER!!!" and stormed off the stage, to the backstage dressing
room. I'd never seen him do that before; he always seemed so good-natured and
even-tempered. A couple of minutes passed, and then suddenly, he appeared from
the backroom, jumped back on the stage again, a new bright golden shower cap
on his head. He must have a pack of them backstage. The music blared, and he
shook the new cap over the crowd taunting and flipping off the guy who stole
his old one. The audience screamed with laughter. True humor.
The Crack Factory
What I now call "The Crack Factory" is still next door to CBGBs, through a
little door, and I watched hooded-sweatclothed little kids go "shopping", always
with adult supervision - it was like a movie. I saw a kid walking next to a
taller person, and the taller person was saying, "Now Don't you worry, I'm not
gonna let you down. I'm gonna take care of you, I'll set you up right." It's
weird for me to be around drug-sellers, pandering to children. Seems to me that
kids should finish college before doing drugs. That should be the requirement,
a college degree. If you get caught doing drugs without a college degree, you
get punished. Maybe you get sent to college, instead of prison.
Capitalism With A Heart
Howie tries to get in a little action with a Cows fan. (Cows fans dress very well.)
CBGB's, if you don't know, is an historical landmark, the birthplace of the
Talking Heads, Ramones, much NY punk. The atmosphere is thick, it's like a cave
in there, and standing on the stage, you can just imagine Debby Harry sitting
in the back room, shooting up before a show. But for a while, it looked like
they were fixing up the pizza-place next door to CBs (still owned by CBs), and
I remember stepping in there last year sometime and hearing people disdainfully
call it "The CBGB's Mall." People were complaining that it was getting too neat
in there, "Yuppified." The "Mall" area today was boarded off and padlocked,
and I didn't ask what was going on in there. You know how gross it is that the
Hippy Baby-Boomer generation is all grown up now and has shucked their hippy
ways in favor of Capitalism with a Heart? I wonder what's going to happen to
OUR generation when we "grow up" and decide to spurn our "ideals." It's a frightening
thought, isn't it? Because we really don't have any "ideals," do we.
Snow White Toilet Seats
But the toilets downstairs still smell like urine, and the banister has fallen
and has turned the staircase an obstacle course. The walls and floor of downstairs
CBGBs are covered in decades of stickers, vomit, grime, graffitt and urine,
but there's another padlocked door next to the bathrooms and inside I think
is a huge, beautiful, expensive, pristine recording studio, with no urine anywhere.
I've never seen it, but that's the rumor. I walked into the girls bathroom,
covered with more graffitt and missing doors to the stalls. It still has its
communist toilet-paper dispensing system, a rope strung across the tops of the
stalls with rolls of toilet paper threaded on it, but ominously, the toilet
seats were spotlessly clean, white as snow.
"No, HONEST, we ARE in a rock band. We belong here, really!"
NEXT
