Frazzled Nerves at the Fireside Bowl...the Queen of Rhetoric....Jorge, the quick-thinking
drummer...the second best band on the planet...heavy with sludge and nastiness.
The Spliff Chomping Head Honcho introduced me to the Boys from Cavity Shortly
before their set at the Fireside Bowl. The gringo wasted not one second in trying to
determine my usefulness in scoring junk. He didnit seem much interested in the fine
Black Tar I had imported from Philadelphia a week or two before. Go figure. I had
observed them earlier washing down their frazzled nerves with 40-ounce bottles of cheap
beer in the evening heat. Their Dutch courage was kicking in with the rest of the drink
tickets they quickly spent trying to entice suburban young nubiles into fronting their
allowance for drinks.
The set was a bit sloppy, as one might expect after a day full of
beer and acid, with Rene falling and stumbling over the monitors and off the stage. It was
loud and painful. Very few had the balls and earplugs necessary to stand up front and
take this assault like a man. Even Sasha, famed country black metal artist, was ready to
head to quieter pastures before I handed over the little yellow Frankenstein earplugs. For
once, Elliotis habit of not running much guitar and bass through the PA didnit seem to
matter much, they stilled cleared out the sissies. This mild-mannered but at times uptight
soundman watched in horror as Rene proceeded to pummel the stage with a broken mike
stand and pound himself in the head with a mike. The abuse heaped upon this artifact of
the Chicago punk scene was too much. The vocal mike of the Fireside, twisted and
mangled as it was, finally succumbed to Reneis thrashing. The promoter refused to hand
over the proper remuneration and will not live to see the nex Cavity Tour.
Back at the
Nailhead Compound the heavy drug intake that started separately by all involved parties
across several states converged on my living room floor. A deal was worked out with the
Queen of Rhetoric for the resident black cat for use in one of her depraved sacrifices to
the pagan god of heinousness for a bottle of cheap bootleg Mexican speed.
The gringo
and I exchanged tales of mainliner bravado and it seemed weid all have ariot doing
heroin. Gunfire from the neighborhood gang war made it impossible to sleep so we
decided on a leisurely drie to Milwaukee for the next date. Rene dove from the back of
the van in a desperate attempt to wrest control, in order to pull off into the Skanky Alley
section of I-94 near Kenosha where strip bars are the only legal work in the area since
GM closed up shop. Jorge, the quick thinking drummer, clotheslined him with a bass
strap and subdued him. Upon our arrival we gassed my parents with chloroform, tied
them up and tossed them in the shed. Our unexpected arrival had caught them off-guard,
so they had not informed the sheriff of my visit as per the norm. I tried to sell my sister to
Dan-o, but he wouldnit hear of it upon finding out she was impure. I made a mental note
to torture and kill her last boyfriend with Lou Reedis Metal Machine Music lp as a
soundtrack.
We left a trail of food containers and broken dishes on our way out to the gig
in a decrepit fire trap of a house. Everyone was in good spirits; even the gringo was
content and relaxed, following a couple of good meals, some fitful sleep courtesy of
codeine and phone calls back home. We all hung out and talked to the masses assembled
for tonightis catharsis. After downing several cases of pilsner pilfered from the local
sissies the boys were ready to play a set that would rocket them, if only temporarily, to
second-best band on the planet. Rene howled and screamed with a controlled furu, while
Dan eeked howls of feedback out of his bass that sounded like someone in the death
throes of some hideous monster. The gringois guitar playing sounded heavy with sludge
and nastiness, while Jorge just pounded hit kit into a pile of dust. Things got sped up to
lightning-fast speed and more than one onlooker was sent into an epileptic fit from the
lethal combination of crucial frequencies. The PA was thrown together, quite well given
the circumstances, by the guitarist from the first band called something like Chorus
309.
One of the better set-ups for basement shows I have seen and the vocals were
generally loud and crisp if not always audible. Ice 9 kicked out a cool set while the
gringo tried to cop with GG Allinis last girlfriend. She denied being poked by the
scum-fuck and seemed to want to get with the gringo. See the pattern? With some fancy
footwork we tricked him into the van and took off leaving the skank in the dust over
some $2 pint at some dive of a bar. Her days as a stripper are numbered. Foiled, just when he felt the junk nearly in his
hands, the Gringo went to a corner of the basement and pouted. The rest of us over-drunk and not terribly amused went on an
all-night laundry scrubbing marathon. Up with the mid-afternoon sun, we ditched the boys from Ice 9 when their van exploded on the way to meet us.
In spite of the hard tunes they play they were way too nice fellas to just car-jack a new one so they had to pay for a new
radiator. Worse yet, they were stuck in Milwaukee for another 24 hours.
Eight hours in a hot van will wear a band down and rolling into Minneapolis we were getting a bit burnt. No beer supplied
by those smelly punks that claim crust.. We were forced to content ourselves with counting tattoos on crusty girls' breasts while the
Gringo disappeared into the projects of "Blood Alley". Nine shootings this year I'm told, though if a town is so tame that they have only
nine shootings in the area in five months then I'm not terribly worried about becoming the tenth. The Gringo must not have been that worried since he
left the heater in the car.
The set was tight, but lacking that spark. The bomb shelter's vocal PA was worse even than that of the Oakland house and
the bass amp never did quite work right. Bad craziness was all around during the load out. The homies from the vice lords ripped off a
bike and very nearly nicked Dan-o's bas when Felix Von Havoc stepped in. The VL screamed "AAAAIIIEEEEEE! YOU'RE TOO
PUNK FOR ME!" and ran out to gather up the homies. Felix then shoved us in the van and told us to high-tail it out of there.
He then turned adn shook his fists at the gang of eight-ball breathed thugs across the street and daredt hem to fuck with him.
Many people say that he is a humorless creep, but we all found this hysterically funny, and found much comfort in the fact that his
Mad Max shin guard motorcycle boots would protect his shins from ensuing gunfire.
Eight long hours on the road after a few days of hard living can turn a van full of clean-cut, mild-mannered college students into a
roving band of savage frothing with a blood lust not seen since the police riot in Chcago in 1968. Our plan had been to burst into the Headquarters of
Rhetoric, guns blazing and use the rest of the advance money (and then some) busting things up. Luckily for them we were sidetracked by the only thing that could
distract us: porn.
We did a screeching U-turn and skidded across four lanes of traffic at the first sight of the tell-tale smoky mirrored windows of your finer porno
establishments. Rene adn teh Gringo were asleep in back and looked like stunned deer struck in the headlights of an oncoming truck when we threw
the doors open. We mamaged to get a good handle on Rene and dumped him onto the pavement in a heap while the Gringo dove under the seat
and cowered.
Rene was screaming like a banshee at the hour of 5 AM in a residential neighborhood while we dragged him in and threw him into a booth, deposited a bunch of quarters and slammed
the door. Nate of Bongzilla fame's appetit for sick degrading porn that would cause a sane man to commit is rivaled only by his size.
The proprietor, sensing our vacant stares, threw himself at my feet and begged us not to let Nate tie him up with his own bondage
gear and plug his every orifice with the 11-inch John Holmes signatures modle marble dildo. We went on a rampage wtih inflatable party sheep until
Rene, out of tokens, attacked some poor guy trying to mop up the piles of crusty gook around his shoes and we had to hustle him out.
Brad bolted out of the house just shy of house just shy of 6:30 AM,
haven woken up by our approach down the block,
and hustled us off in a desperate attempt to save his
possessions and his wife. He shrewdly directed us to a
greasy diner struck in 1962 and filled us with heavy, greasy
food to make us tire. Jorge and Dan-o nearly got into a
fistfight to determine who would be able to lock themselves
in the bathroom with the memories of the night's adventure
while Rene already spent from his hour-and-a-half locked
crashed out next to the Gringo on the mats Jen
out in an effort to get us to sleep without any
further destruction.
Meanwhile, I spent the next few hours lacing the 60 joints and
60 pot brownies earmarked for the party with as much
formaddehyde as I could spare while laying out my
plans for world domination as the legally elected dictator for
s great nation. Finally, near 11 a.m., I could no
trol the hallucinations caused by narcotic sleep
and went berserk. Jen hit me from behind with a
Stunned, I turned and lunged at her. 'You old
led. 'I'll rip your tongue out for this treachery.'
ealed and I ran after her, but stumbled into a
of records that came tumbling down like an
avalanche.
I came to on a couch with a bookcase leaned
to keep me pinned down - not something I was
nd for. I thrashed and kicked until there was little
n a pile of firewood left and stomped into the
re my appearance was most unexpected. The
n on metaphysics that the hippies were having
pped as they all stared at me. I smiled a saw-
smile and slowly scanned the silent room for
utes. Slowly, they started getting up and putting
away like the cl\41ized little shits I had whipped
such a short time. They mumbled things about
manager, saying it was time for a sound check,
non-band members just looked concerned and
hile they loaded the equipment I handed over
film I starred in a few years back to Brian from
(ironically, my co-star appeared on the first
of Big Black's Headache 12.) Word from the
camp is that Eyehategod were even bigger
drug fiends than even Pachinko with less than
e talent and none of the personal hygiene.
e pot brownie I had eaten (this one wrapped in
the formaldehyde from evaporating) suddenly
hen Brian turned into the Pillsbury Doughboy,
illing me. I remained clam, ordered a spiced rum
h coke to make it brown and a beer, spit in his bp
bowl and departed.
I was just in time to see Ice 9 kick ass. The dual
singing attack army takes a bit of getting used to, but there
is no denyi ng that they go all out. Scot-the-Crazy Scotsman
of a drummer had a sudden bout of spontaneous urinary
tract spasms. Luckily
