They had to get to work on the accommodations problem right away, hence the vodka, and they’d need every drop.
Lenny said it, the session was a “no-brainer,” all right.
We should have been able to knock out this basic, entry-level heavy metal song in no more than a take or two, under almost any circumstances, not limited to consciousness. Certainly it ought to have been easy enough in the relative calm after Wilma left, bumbling out of the bathroom after a vociferous ten-minute vomit, veering drunkenly toward the elevator teetering on a broken heel, to-go vodka in one hand, Chihuahua in the other, continuously missing the elevator button—with the Chihuahua hand, obviously—announcing, “Umma find me a house.” Matt, isolated in the windowless guitar room, couldn’t fathom the playback, insisted for a while that we were playing him the wrong song. Between blasts of feedback and swearing and the sounds of minor objects being destroyed, he said that “the computers” had been programmed to sabotage him, probably something I did, probably “in cahoots” with our record label. I pressed the talkback in the booth. “What is it about the arrangement you don’t get? You talking about the arrangement of the song, the amps, what?”
“Of fucking everything!” He threw something that clanged. “All of it!” Eug, fetal on the couch, woke up, said “Awesome,” then redeactivated.
After his umpteenth attempt at the guitar solo (thirty-fifth, but who’s counting? The software is. Right there on the screen: “Take: 35”) Matt gave up. Pat, with great producer-diplomat aplomb, took over for him, his guitar proficiency so absolute that you had to laugh. He did something that sounded impressive as hell but turned out to be dead simple. “So Matt can play it live, if he needs to,” Pat said with humility uncommon for a lead guitarist, in any era. For Matt there was hardly a second between his dropping his guitar and the first mobile walkie-talkie bloop, Wilma barking nonsense about imagined tenancy rights to other people’s apartments, and suing people for touching her personal sexual devices. He sat on the couch fielding updates, quite shitfaced by that time, though not as shitfaced as Wilma sounded. He announced he was leaving. Pat indicated a quagmire of multicolored graphics on the computer screen and said that it was “enough to work with,” and Matt left. Pat was determined. Circuit boards melted down trying to process the whole mess into a passable song. Pat introduced a machine called an “auto-tuner” onto Matt’s vocal track. He twisted knobs but the machine produced only different kinds of electronic bleating, gargling, erratic octave jumps. An old Atari being tortured. “It can’t find a note,” Pat said.
Cats and dogs when we left the studio. Eug went off to dinner, I ducked into a bar, I don’t know where. I was in my head, not paying attention. Ate a couple complimentary boiled eggs and met some people, and later one of the women in the group invited everybody over for drinks, including me. I tagged along up to her apartment in the East Eighties. The apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows that angled out over the city, and when she flipped a switch on the wall the place mood-lit itself and long panels on the ceiling slid back revealing skylights. Drinks we had to make by hand, like slaves.
“I’m having a party here Saturday, you should come,” the woman said. “But you have to dress white trash. It’s a white trash party.”
“White trash?”
“Yeah, like—I don’t know. You know. White trash.”
“You mean people who ride ATVs and shoot their fingers off, or people who call falling off banquettes at charity events a ‘job.’”
“What? No, it’s, like, a thing. Everyone’s gonna wear those acid-wash jeans and, like, sleeveless tees, with heavy metal bands on them, and I’m getting a bunch of cheap beer—what’s that one—High Light. And really good music.”
“Quite the fantasy,” I said, sipping from one of her Waterford rocks glasses.
“I know, right? What’s, like, the best heavy metal music?”
“Manowar.”
“What? No, like—” She made the devil horns, kind of. I said I wasn’t sure what she was referring to. She started talking to someone else, about goings-on in “sag.”
The ceiling panels squeezed out the sunrise and when it was all over people were passed out on the couch and the floor around it, and I gave up trying to shake vodka fumes into a glass of ice. The girl who’d invited me tipped her head toward a bedroom and said, “You can stay in there with me.” I said I should go.
She winked and said something about “memory foam,” which in my condition I took to be some secret technology Upper East Side people had for dealing with regret. Even so, I went down to the street and started the hike downtown.
FRIDAY
Matt gone for a week at least. Figured I’d hear out this MTV producer who’d “reached out” about “reality television.” Not just oxymoronic, impossible by definition. There’s not much music on Music Television anymore, and very few videos. In short, as I understand it, record labels used to pay—effectively if not in legal leader—to have MTV play their artists’ videos which have budgets like major motion pictures, some of them. MTV already earning on content that cost nothing, sat back and collected the ad revenue and became a bazillion-dollar cultural juggernaut. Labels now want a piece of that ad revenue and MTV won’t share. So, labels started charging MTV fees to play their videos, mistakenly thinking MTV gave a wet shit about music videos in the first place. Now whenever you catch a glimpse of music TV, there’s some cretin in a half shirt going, “Me and Brianna was in the pool and she’s like, ‘Do you like Melissa?’ An um like—yo, that’s like, whatever.” Beyond me, but the fact is, I got bills.
“It’s kinda a reality show, but real,” this producer said. “Edgy-ish, but with a heart.”
“Outside the box, I hope.”
“Totally—but inside, too. I’m emailing you the script now.”
“Script? What happened to reality?”
“Don’t worry, it’s more of a guideline. Wherever it says rock coach, that’s you. Hit me up when you’ve read it.”
I opened the email and read:
“Wannabe”
Pilot
MEET OUR WANNABE
Super dorky MING-HUÁ wants to be MADE INTO A ROCK STAR. (Production idea: maybe feed her lots of chocolate and greasy food in pre-pro so she breaks out/looks geekier?) She’s at home practicing her violin on her lawn in her normal-looking neighborhood. Jocks, rockers, and cheerleaders doing splits laugh at her.
NEED SOUND BITE: “Everybody knows Ming-huá is a huge Republican. What a loser.” (Producer: maybe a cheerleader can say this? While doing a split, if possible.)
MEET ROCK COACH
Tricked out grungy rock band van surrounded by BIKER GANG drives up. (Shoot tilt-up, multiple angles.) ROCK COACH jumps off his bike. He is more cock rock than emo and has a lot of badass TATTOOS. He rips out MING-HUÁ’s hair clips (producers: make sure she’s wearing hair clips), and jumps on them (smash cut, fisheye, smash cut) until they’re mangled, showing how he’s a nonconformist. He makes her put them back in. He tells her about how art comes from living on the outside and pulls a bunch of ED HARDY BRAND rocker chick gear from his backpack. (close up on tags)
ROCK COACH SAYS (Emotional but tough)
Being a rocker comes from what’s inside you! It’s about pushing the envelope and staying true to yourself! And being extreme! (wide shot, zooms) Now repeat after me! (medium tilt-up, wide zoom) I WANNABE A BADASS ROCKER CHICK! (Extreme close up) I’M GONNA BREAK THE RULES! BUT NOT LAWS! (or however he wants to phrase this, per legal)
MING-HUÁ (smash close, tilt-ups, smash cut to whatever) says what he tells her to over and over but she’s totally afraid and super dorky. ROCK COACH tells her she sucks (blows, is worthless, etc.). Tears ensue (hopefully).
ROCK COACH SAYS:
You’re gonna have to do a lot better than THAT if you wanna impress my friend JOHN MAYER tomorrow! (Production please note: John Mayer is ONLY available on the 11th!!!)
And so on.
I was about to emai
l back accordingly (rage, extraordinary threats) when the power went out again. The Mass. Electric man, shutting us off with his infernal wrench.
23
HEADSTONES
“It’s like a vacation, wtihout the fun!”
—Steve Sanderson, tour manager
OCTOBER 16 / NEW YORK
Six hours to Rainbow Bridge. We’re eleven hours behind schedule, nothing record-breaking there. Meeting the bus in Toronto in the morning. Steve’s got a wedding to officiate and is driving up in the vansion in a few days, to rendezvous in Kingston, Ontario.
My nerves are shot. Only a few hours ago, came suddenly the renewed argument about Wilma coming along on the tour, since she’s Canadian. This, Matt argues, overrides any conventions regarding girlfriends on tour, he says, “It would be fucking stupid of us not to bring her.” As if we might be shot dead at checkpoints or accidentally order chicken feet in their restaurants. What can you say? No, a thousand times no. Even if she were reasonable, and helpful—no. Steve may have to do his Thor hammer thing on this one. On a positive note, Matt’s rock-coach session in Texas was total carnage; Millard Fillmore’s guitar player reduced to tears, everybody almost got arrested, and the bass player called Lenny quit not just the band, but music, while Matt was still on the plane home. Something like that.
We’re traveling in the equipment van now, rolling Utica-ish at present, Peeler driving. Marshall heads seat-belted in the passenger seat, we’re wedged in back between merch boxes, guitar cabs, drum hardware, and all the gear normally carried in the trailer. It all rides with us now; the trailer is occupied solely by the Hand. Movement seriously restricted—half a bottle of vodka and a couple disco biscuits just barely separating me from a claustrophobic meltdown. Some kind of dark, noxious fluid is seeping up through the floor panels, presumed to be what’s causing dizziness and nausea, since it’s not just me feeling that way.
Pulled up to the border at around five in the morning. Have photographs of the way Eugene was sleeping that would make a yogi wince. Matt smells of vodka. Not like you do; like an unemployed Russian does. Customs guys were suspicious (curious?), and made us unload the Hand, and demonstrate in the parking lot. A quiver of customs agents observing the seven-foot devil horns rising into the breaking dawn like a morning erection. One of them said, “I don’t get it.”
Up through the hinterlands now and across the crotch to T’rono. Past Grimsby, and outlying Puslinch. Ohsweken. Guelph . . . Listowel . . . No wonder this country’s never been invaded.
Universal arranged motel rooms in Toronto. One of these motel facilities they’ve got up here that seem more or less dedicated rock band rest stops, with repurposed dorm furniture covered in stickers and band names etched in; a legible musicological record mashed, ground, and seeped into the carpeting, and beer in the vending machine, where we might steal a few hours of sleep, time permitting. (Time did no such thing.) The bus was waiting when we arrived, the driver, Mack, standing outside looking at his watch. Mack is bright-eyed, Santa-like, the Canadian counterpart to Brian, our European driver. The bus looks like it’s been around; not much we could do to it that hasn’t already been done. No bells or whistles and a foot narrower than a standard Prevost; our fuel costs are reduced, by a lot. Plenty of room in the lower bays, one of which is dedicated to the Hand alone. This pleases it, I know.
We’re en route to Ottawa now. Typing this on a laptop. An old one but a computer’s become a necessity; record-keeping, email every day now, practically. Clunky thing and I resent having to lug it around. The extra bag, finding an outlet—adding, not subtracting shit to do. It’s not light, either.
Just ran the numbers again, with the extra van travel, train and plane tix, etc., figured in. If we do some shifting, some creative budget restructuring, this trip works out, by teeth-skin. We stick to the plan or close to it, and there are only a few disasters, we could break even. “Even” meaning without losses on top of the losses already built in. Have to run a tighter ship this time, hence the computer, meant for Steve, who glares at it with real enmity.
OCTOBER 17 / OTTAWA, ONTARIO
Watched the Headstones’ soundcheck. For once a perfectly sensible pairing, us and them. The Headstones have been around since 1988 or so, same as us, and we’ve been informed, without explicit details, that they’ve recently come through some “interpersonal issues,” as they’re known. We could do worse than be on the road with a band already on the other side of something like that, learning to hold itself together. And they’re good. Musically, I mean.
Matt had no interest in doing phoners with the local papers if he couldn’t do them from the bar, where there’s no phone reception. I did them, four pacing with the mobile in the freezing lobby, the last one in a minivan en route to a radio interview. I handed the phone off to Matt at one point, who listened for a half a minute and passed it back. The radio station in the basement of a Gothic government building; the arts are a government concern up here.
OCTOBER 18
Fine-looking city, Ottawa. Tough to get a handle on what it’s all about from the back of a minivan, the only way we’ve seen it thus far, shuttling between radio and TV stations, and a couple of these always surreal autograph events. Us at a table and people lined up. Try to write something new every time . . .
Second show here went as well as the first, and in some ways better. Invited to a bar across town after the show. Minivan took us. The bar was closed, unless you knew the knock. When we emerged the sun was already high, dazzling, punitive.
No sign of Steve yet, nor word from him. No one we’ve talked to in Northampton has seen him around. I find that encouraging. I choose to find that encouraging.
OCTOBER 19
Late start for Toronto. Steve called, ETA a few hours. Can’t be soon enough for Peeler, who in the thirty-six hours since he’d been appointed interim tour manager—really just a neutral party to run interference—is exhibiting signs of battlefield trauma. Steve showed up with Trailer, who jumped on last-minute to do front-of-house sound, good news. Unfortunately they missed the train, so drove the vansion here, bringing trailer’s girl along to drive the vansion back to Northampton. It’s not a bad solo drive from Rainbow Bridge. Not a bad drive, that is, if one isn’t completely strung out. Alternatives to her driving vansion back are all expensive, so: none. Off she goes with microdot pupils. We watched her drive away in the wrong direction, toward the lake instead of toward the highway, and immediately take a funny left. Long, angry honks as she rolled out of sight.
“She’ll be okay, right?” I asked.
Trailer said, “What. Her? Yeah. Probably, yeah.”
Should be fine.
OCTOBER 20 / TORONTO
T’rono. Enormous event space. Nashville Pussy are joining for the night, minus Corey. Losing the tatted-up seven-foot blond from your band does thin at the draw. Replacing a member remains inconceivable.
Lex called, coming to shoot for a week or so, meeting in Vancouver, possibly sooner. She’ll get a lot of tension, brooding, gray skies, long, pregnant silences. Maybe that works for her, it’s all very “indie.”
Next stop is in a place called, I notice uneasily on the trip-tik, Waterloo.
OCTOBER 21 / THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO
Looks like a commercial strip anywhere else, of car dealerships, supply stores with shimmying (shivering) inflatable mascots out front, dodgy motels. Too much time to kill here. I’m in no condition to read these days. Spent the afternoon with Hugh (Heartstones’ singer), talking music, etc. Doesn’t surprise me to hear he’s done a movie, wouldn’t surprise me if he’s good in it. Eugene, as he does annually, informs me that it’s my birthday. No say in the matter, dragged to a bumpkin peeler—strip clubs are “peelers” here. Compared to the average U.S. club, Canadian ones are more upbeat. Men and women patrons, couples, and the drink prices are less inflated. Peeler had already checked a few places out, lunchtime reconnaissance, and selected the one we went to. “Got the gals warmed up for ya, hey.�
� That’s why he’s called “Peeler.”
OCTOBER 23
Hour eighteen tobogganing across the whitewashed wastes. Sometimes caribou, or a horned sheep brooding on a crag over the highway, then more nothing. We’ve just met the expected blizzard head-on; it’s snowing sideways. Mack unfazed. Driving totally blind, gusts shoving the bus everywhere. Canadian bands—hats off. Touring means the Trans-Canada Highway. A mastodon route across tundra. It’s no exaggeration that doing this in a van the way we usually do would mean Certain Death. Even when it’s not Arctic-storming, west out of Ottawa it’s no-man’s-land, pitiless monotony all the way to Medicine Hat. Then glaciers, hundreds of miles crossing some expanse called “the icefield,” saber-tooth country, all the way to Vancouver. If American bands had to do this, forget it. Fugazi or someone might make it. Rollins. People like that.
Mack stopped the bus to put on the chains. I put on multiple sweaters and two pairs of socks on my hands and walked out into the abyss. I went to the edge of a chasm, indeterminate depth because of the snow, the uniform whiteness. A lynx, or similar, appeared on a ledge directly across and stood there. I don’t know for how long. Longer than I did. Back lounge now, smoked whatever those kids gave us (heavy) with Peeler, listening to the Guess Who. Eagle all gone, and no more caribou . . . Guns, guns, guns . . .
OCTOBER 25 / REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN
Come to our attention that there’s concern in the Headstones crew that the band has fallen off the wagon. We’re a tight tribe at this point, so nobody’s upset with anybody else, all for one, for sure. Evidently there was supposed to be a wagon this tour, not a proverbial one, either. If not an actual bus, or area, at least the overall sense that sobriety was an option. I don’t think anyone would get that sense, necessarily.
Adios, Motherfucker Page 28