Adios, Motherfucker

by Michael Ruffino

  “They have a kinda sorta crossover thing going on a little bit, that hit they had a few years back was kinda arena rock area, anthemy. The Anthrax kids’ll like you guys. I mean, the feedback from the Motörhead shows was great. And this is pretty much sorta the same kinda thing.”

  “Definitely not the same thing,” Matt said. You want to get into it about the minutiae of heavy metal with Matt, good luck. “Why can’t we just go out on our own again?” Matt said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing wrong with it. It’s just there’s notalotta return on those small clubs, know what I mean? And we need to get a bang for our buck here, especially since you guys pretty much screwed the pooch with radio. Like, globally. Forever.”

  Matt and I did spend an entire day in the office on telephones in adjacent cubicles, splitting a bottle of Smirnoff and a list of a hundred-plus radio stations, mega7-monster K-Rocks all the way down to hayseed closed-circuit outposts, calling each station to introduce ourselves to the station managers, DJs, whomever—attempting to cold-sell the album into rotation. Standard practice. By the end of that we were exhausted, and hammered, and for most of the family-style dinner that followed, down at Rodeo Bar with every radio heavy in the tri-state area, Matt and I were underneath the table doing key bumps and couldn’t be bothered. Where our album was concerned TVT’s radio department was daily making a long walk on a very short pier.

  “Let me put it this way. You guys don’t gottalotta options here. I mean, we can try to get you on the BoyZone tour,” said Lenny, glancing off a genius idea, “but other than that, this is what it is. The Fu’s on for most of it, too, I think. So you’ll have a kind of, like a kind of a . . . you know—”

  “Buffer.”

  “Exactly.”

  JANUARY 18 / NEW YORK CITY

  In the early days in Newton there were community-organized shows in the gymnasium of one of the local elementary schools; your typical rudderless, amateur-hour clusterfucks, screeching amplifiers in a tiled room, pre-war PA, over and done in time for the chaperones to catch act two of Murder, She Wrote. We were playing one weekend—the night Mink first came to see us—and were standing around outside beforehand with the punk girls who chain-smoked cigarettes without inhaling when an eighteen-wheeler pulled up, trailed by a Taurus wagon.

  A metal band, a five-piece with serious hair, gets out of the wagon and marches toward us. One guy wants to know is the propped-open door to the rec room behind us the “artist entrance” as roadies in back braces are dismounting the truck and heaving festival-level sound equipment onto dollies, all of it in road cases stenciled PROPERTY OF DAMAGER.

  The event’s volunteer chaperone comes out the door, the artist entrance, palms in front of him, wants to know from these roadie gents just how much equipment Damager’s people are planning to bring in. Strict noise-level ordinances to be observed here, various codes.

  The roadie was firm. “Contract says we unload that truck into that building and back out again, so that’s what’s happening.” Union job, case closed.

  Inside the hall our Toyota hatchback-load of general-purpose starter equipment was piled in the corner over by the card table with the snacks, an area I overheard the Damager chaps refer to as “backstage.” I was over there plugging and unplugging, trying to figure out if my thing worked, and I ate a chip off the snack table. Instantly there was a dude next to me.

  “Where’d you get that. What you’re eating.”

  I was standing next to the chip bowl. I told him I’d brought it from home.

  He snorted, popped the cap off a magic marker hooked to his pro-looking (as far as anyone present would have known) Damager laminate, and wrote DAMAGER on the chip bowl, then on the Dixie bowl of pretzels, then he capped the marker, and said, “As of now this area’s off-limits to everyone but the headliner.” He meant Damager, who were playing last. And on about a quarter of their equipment was the word, still enough wattage to blow the roof off the Worcester Centrum.

  The show started. The first band, a bunch of sixth graders trying repeatedly to start “Iron Man” all at the same time, was total cacophony, ending when a toddler rushed the stage with her hands over her ears screaming and crying, “STOP IT!” Next everyone tolerated a singer-songwriter because of certain things everyone knew about regarding her parents having a difficult time and losing the house and so forth; then, everybody sufficiently annoyed and slightly depressed, we did our thing. When we were done almost everybody left. We threw our shit in the Toyota and came back in to check out Damager. But Damager had refused to go on.

  Other than us and a few friends, the potential audience was the several women who came with Damager, falling over in their heels trying to de-hike their tube skirts and spilling raspberry Schnapps everywhere, plus the ancient, deaf, janitor who hated everyone, and Dirty Mary, a local shopping-cart crazy, so named because she went around offering toothless sexual favors for a quarter. Everyone steered well clear of her, at all times. Above the interim music (J. Geils) the event chaperone was audible having words with Damager.

  “Play, don’t play, same difference to me, this isn’t what I do for a living. But the wife is on about ‘this is our new community’ and me takin’ an active role and so foath so I’m heah doin’ this on a Frydee night and I’m happy to do it. Now. I undastand ya concerns about the turnout, people nawt bein heah, but lemee tell ya I’m the nicest guy in the werld but come hell oah high wahta ten-oh-five I’m in my chaya on Rachel Street with a cold one ar else we see who damages whom. Everybody got that?”

  Eastern quiet.

  Damager did three songs, all covers, before they were made to stop, the chaperone pointing at his watch, and the clock on the wall. They weren’t bad, considering how much equipment they thought they needed to sound good.

  I don’t know what Anthrax is like live, but looking at the stage right now I can say with confidence that Damager rolled a hell of a lot more gear into a school gym to play for a saucy bag lady and an antisocial mop jockey than Anthrax just loaded into the sold-out Bowery Ballroom.

  JANUARY 24 / OLD BRIDGE, NEW JERSEY

  Both nights at the Bowery sold out in a headbanger ticket frenzy. Now we’re here in New Jersey, for some reason referred to as a “warm-up” gig. I don’t know. Seems to me, when it comes to heavy metal, New Jersey is the real proving grounds.

  We didn’t feel the lash at the Bowery show, for various reasons having to do with the more diverse Manhattan audience, plus most of the people in the room at the time we played were there to see us (straight from work, at 8 P.M. in the goddamn afternoon). This show in Jersey will probably be all right, too—Jersey’s a more enlightened place than Manhattan is comfortable admitting. But everywhere else . . . The safe money says we’re about to make a lot of jock metal dudes see red. Good news is, our set time is only fifteen minutes. Bad news is our set time is only fifteen minutes.

  JANUARY 25

  Now entering West Virginia, one of the best-looking states we’ve got. Makes you wonder how Bob Ross might paint a turpentine-crazed hick ass-raping somebody with a banjo neck.

  Cincinnati. Midwestern cities. Same pseudo-deco offices and department stores with anachronistic window displays (female mannequins with muffs, youth ones in plaid carrying schoolbooks by bookstrap); always the stalled rejuvenation project. The time-capsule donut shops; the brand-new or just-shuttered health-juice bar operated by someone in way over their head, chain sports bars. Pedestrian traffic is always light. Willie Lomans, Lois Lanes. Most places you get the odd crackhead or three, typically deferential, hanging around the Museum of Twine. A helpful local told us (I’m sitting in a T.G.I. Freakshow) that just across the river into Kentucky, ten minutes from here is where we want to be, not here. Some town over there, he says, very happening scene. Sounds great, no time, never is.

  Show was terrible of course. Except for our performance.

  JANUARY 26 / CLEVELAND

  Last night while we were still strapping on our instruments
a guy yelled, “You suck!” Someone else yelled, “Die!” and threw something at us. Same tonight. Played with the house lights up, again. Seems this is just the way it’s going to be. Then back to the room identified by the computer printout on the door that after three nights still reads “UNBNAD,” and the indefinite article still nowhere in sight—where we graze on pita wedges and drink 7-Eleven Big Dumps of vodka-anything while waiting for nothing. This is all occurring during daylight hours, by the way. Kids are walking home from school, commuters are in traffic . . . Wunt dunt dunt, wunt dunt dunt . . .

  At Hooters in the Flats Steve made a mark in his little book. We’re a step closer to eating at every Hooters in the country. Steve’s idea of a travel game. Marks time as well as helping to pass it, like spotting license plates. (Unlike Bob Evans restaurants, which we stop at whenever possible, hungry or not; our research compels us.) According to Steve’s rules, he has to actually eat a meal, not just pop in for a beer, because where’s the challenge in that. So we know a great many Hooterses very well by now, which sometimes makes a difference when the bill comes. When we sat at this one I said, too bad, looks like Charice isn’t working, and without consulting his book Steve said, “You’re thinking of Madison,” and I stood corrected. The manager here came over to meet us. Chuck, or Chip. Chuck or Chip chatted for a while. He says there’s talk internally of a Hooters airline. I said there already is one, called Southwest. He laughed. I’m not sure why.

  Venue is out in a place called Chagrin Falls. Where it surely will.

  JANUARY 27

  Morning, witch-tit cold hooking around Erie to Detroit. As for the proceedings in greater Cleveland, well.

  Pyrotechnics are essential. Professional-grade stuff, approved, meeting certain safety standards, etc., etc., requires money and patience, possibly an extra guy, legally. That out of reach, we duct-tape fireworks to our instruments. (Eug and I do, anyway; Matt’s got plenty on his plate with singing, and his guitar’s got resale value.) There is enough firepower in the trailer right now to throw a respectable Chinese New Year. The Monkey’s Cauldron remains untested, since we’ve only got one. It’s the size of a fire hydrant, weighs twenty pounds, and is topped with a maniacally screaming chimp’s head. My gut tells me it’s an outdoor thing. Of what we’ve tested we deemed only a few select items safe for indoor use, and we erred conservative, too. The Disco Flash is the nightly standby. A paper-wrapped clay cup about the size of a sportcoat button that emits high-intensity pulses of colored flame, about three or four feet in diameter, give or take. Very effective for what we’re after when taped to a headstock or a kick drum and lit at whatever moment feels appropriate, three to five seconds prior to that moment, actually, to account for the fuse. Last night the appropriate moment presented itself at the end of our set, during our usual drawn-out, bombastic, final chord. I lit the fuse of the one on the top cutaway of my bass. A few seconds after it burned out I saw a small fire back by the drum riser. Sometimes bits of burning tape fly off, no big deal. I went and stomped it out.

  When I turned around I saw a two-foot flame coming out of the monitor, smoke all over the place. I ran toward it and my cable got caught on a microphone stand, yanking it over and sending an omnidirectional microphone unidirectionally into the forehead of a kid down front, like a stone coming off a throwing club. You get to know the feeling of the slipped rope, the phantom boing of the spring-action on Pandora’s box—I’d heard it clear as a bell before the mic stand hit the floor. Bad commotion down front, crew running around the stage, violent gesturing in the wings. A wet towel was thrown over the monitor (suddenly the room seemed dark), a cymbal flew, Matt was on the ground, more fire, keep banging on A, buy time . . . Steve on the stage, grabbing my bass off me, signaling—I shouldered full-speed into the stage door, which whacked open directly a cluster of metalheads standing outside. I crossed the street and as casually as possible vaulted over a cement wall and dropped—much farther and harder than I’d anticipated, twisting an ankle. A patch of park on the riverbank. A youngun passed by with his mother, saw me and asked, “Mommy, what’s wrong with that clown?”

  JANUARY 29

  Hydroplaned on polluted slush into Detroit. A brown freezing rain.

  What we do musically connects to the MC5 and the Stooges pretty directly, but if this is good for anything in their hometown it doesn’t mean squat to the army of darkness piled into the hangar-sized club for a metal fix. Hundreds simultaneously turned their backs to us as we walked onstage, hundreds more when we started playing. An expression of extreme disdain in the culture of heavy metal. People faced forward hurled insults, cups, and sundry trash at us. Even Fu Manchu, their pezzos di stonados, got roughed up some—Fu’s not a metal band, either; they’re riding on general heaviness, and Anthrax’s stamp of approval.

  I watched Anthrax for a few songs, from the edge of the pit, walled in by professional-level headbangers. Anthrax have their moments. “I’m the Man,” the “crossover” hit Lenny was talking about, is a moment. I’ve heard that song umpteen times and never bothered actually listening to it. Respectable hit-writing, is what it is; it’d be no less catchy done barbership. And if being their most commercial song makes it the poser’s time to shine in the set, they don’t play it that way. Doesn’t do much for me.

  Made me think of Pepillo and Ed, momentarily where a bloody-eyed walrus in a Testament shirt charged up and emptied a full beer over my head. A few people who saw it happen pumped their fists and whooped. The guy chucked the empty cup at me, got in my face, and shouted over the music, “Worth it!” Cost him six bucks, that. “What the fuck, asshole!” said a bigger guy next to me in an Exodus shirt whose girlfriend, in a Dio shirt, had been splashed. The Exodus guy slapped the Testament fatso’s remaining beer out of his hand and they started pounding on each other.

  JANUARY 28 / CHICAGO

  I’m over being adversarial, offended, anything but pleased regarding the House of Blues. Hell, I might staple bottle caps to my own chairs when I get home. On any date on a tour itinerary “House of Blues” means you will be fed well and treated with at least the minimum professional courtesy. As Steve says, “At least I know I’m not gonna have to fight for a bottle of vodka made in fucking . . . Worcester.”* Flipping through the sched, there are four Houses of Blues on this tour, including the Canadian venue. And we need every one of ’em.

  Steve waited until after the short ribs were wheeled into the dressing room and the wine was flowing to tell us another band had been added to the bill and would be with us for the rest of the tour, reducing our set time to seven minutes. He held up the new dressing room sign—the amended punch line to the already old, groaner of a joke:

  UNBNAD: 6:23 P.M.–6:30 P.M.

  “Well. At least we’re not opening anymore.”

  “Yeah, but no. You’re still opening,” Steve said. Eugene chucked a spare rib at the wall.

  “Who’s the new band?”

  “No idea. They’re teenagers. With a much nicer bus than Anthrax.”

  “Christians.” The Jesus Rock industry may be a shadow of the secular one, but it’s massive; the loaves and fishes trick, with tens and twenties.

  “Nü Metal-ish. Or scream-o—whatever. That’s all we know right now, so relax. Also they have some kind of special monitoring system, headsets, or implants or something. Might possibly affect us, somewhat, as far as being a pain in our ass. More pressing, however, Anthrax’s weightlifting shit is stuck in the elevator. So we can’t unload our gear.” When our peals of laughter subsided—it wouldn’t be funny if you’d made it up—Steve said, “Seeing that you go on in”—he consulted his watch, whistled it—“nowish, I don’t think anyone would blame you if we were to bag this one. We can drive away right now. Not saying that’s how you should play it, but just so you’re aware of all the options. I’ll support whatever you wanna do.” New Englandese, the last part—there are no other options. You bomb around the club and recruit all the spare hands you can, get the gear onstage whatever
it takes, and you do your job, with the house lights on in front of ten people who hate you before you play a note. You do however ditch the set list entirely and deliver six minutes of slow, deliberately inept, five-bar blues, with dual-kazoo attacks on top of it, Matt’s Ted Nugent/Peter Wolf-style rap over it: We just want you to know that Anthrax is backstage right now pumping a lot of iron and popping lots of vitamins and steroids to be nice and buff for you. . . .

  The crowd booed, for sure, but it sounded involuntary, and like a question. Someone hurled a cup and it landed short, in the huge, totally unoccupied area in front of the stage. As we were coming off, Steve said we had fifteen seconds left, so Eugene walked back onstage and kicked over his cymbals. Which got a cheer.

  Six A.M. we were at Waffle House, six thirty-five back in the van. Got me a stack of newspapers, and a USA Today. Three pie charts, two graphs, and a bullet list on the front page alone. This publication makes you measurably dumber every time you look at it. Read it first, sort of a palate-cleanser—anything you read after seems like Shakespeare. And we’ll see most of the USA today. In a genius piece of tour routing, we rumble toward Boulder.

  Pit stop.

  A drawback to being a musician is that sometimes you have to go to a music store. Local ones are increasingly hard to find; and for bulky tour purchases they’re too expensive. So you hit the “big box” ones. A huge retail business run by musicians—lunatics running the asylum hardly covers it. Makes no difference which one of the two or three mega music stores you walk into, or where it’s located—midtown Manhattan, Boston, Wichita, Seattle—you step into the same onanist bedlam. A continuous, aural circle jerk at concert volume. A war zone. Barrages of high-speed Mixolydian scale runs, fusillades of finger-tapping, whammy-bar dive bombs, Bouncing Betties of Dream Theater riffage; “Crazy Train,” Metal’s reveille, aborted and restarted, over and over. All the while Mr. Big cranked on the excessive sound system, “Gerard” being paged to get his ass to keyboards—“Gerard to keyboards . . . Gerard, keyboards . . . Gerard!”—not even Gerard knows where Gerard is. . . . Acoustical bombardment is what the military calls it. It’s what the psy-ops use to make spies talk when electrodes to the nuts isn’t enough. And here comes the guy who’s between you and what you need, head to toe in Ed Hardy, top-line douchewear: “Can I help you?”