Nurse the Hate: The Hard Earned Shared Gig Philosophy

 

In the early days of bitter struggle, contrasted by today’s “current days of bitter struggle”, we would take gigs playing with almost anybody.  It seemed like audiences were more open minded in the 1990s to other genres than the ones they identified with as an extension of their sense of self like how you would wear a specific brand of shoes.  This might be an illusion because maybe I was more open to new influences in my youth as opposed to being the codger now that watches a band and connects the dots to their influences like it’s a carnival game.  I remember seeing Of Montreal in a sold out Beachland room when they first really started getting traction and within 7 minutes I was bored after I concluded, “Oh, this is mid 1970s David Bowie with some early 1980s New Wave in a re-package”.  Thanks for coming.  See ya later. 

 Look, I don’t know if I was on target with that assessment, but I do know I shut the door to that band in about seven seconds.  There was a roomful of people losing their minds with excitement, so I’m the guy that was clearly missing something.  Yet, despite my snotty half assed assessment, I fully expect anyone seeing our band to patiently watch a full set to “get” what it is we do.  Is this hypocritical?  Yes.  Am I aware of it?  Also, yes.  Am I powerless to stop it?  Again, yes.  I am just trying to be a realist here.  I don’t know if this is my own personal failure or if society as a whole has swung that way into little tribes.  Regardless of how we got here, back in the 1990s, we’d play with anyone as we were sure that we would convert them over to our skewed vision of what rock music was supposed to be. 

 It was a Henry Rollins article I read when he discussed the early philosophy of Black Flag.  Play as often as possible, anywhere, to anyone as the only path to getting better and gaining fans.  It made sense to me.  How else can people like your music if they don’t see/hear it?  This led us to jump in the van and play anywhere I heard even the rumor of a good club/show.  We decided to go to Florida to play with the Hate Bombs as they were A) a great garage rock band and B) very fun guys we liked hanging out with in general.   I am not 100% sure, but I think it was the two of us and a “big local draw” at a place called The Rubb in Tampa FL.  Those Hate Bombs guys drove around in an old camper that topped out at 55 mph.  We drove a newish Chevy van which enabled us to get off the highway, get snacks, and get back on the highway to easily catch the Hate Bombs camper.  We would slowly pull next to them and Bobby Latina would pull his scrotum out of his pants while creepily making eye contact with Dave who was driving the camper.  I think we did it to them like four times between Orlando and Tampa.

 When we got to the club, “the big local” was already setting up to soundcheck.  The term “set up” is sort of loose as they were debating where to place their oriental rugs to max out their groovy vibe.  This was not a good sign.  They were a standard hippie jam band set up with two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard.  Their soundcheck lasted longer than any I have ever heard of including a couple nightmare accounts I’ve heard about with Donna Summer and Genesis (sadly, not the same bill).  The guitar player was concerned about the midrange on the monitors.  Then the keyboard player wanted to further dial in the monitor mix they had just tweaked 11 times.  They played five full songs during soundcheck.  By this time, we had gotten into the backstage beer like raccoons.  We started to get ornery.

Our soundcheck lasted 90 seconds because doors were scheduled to open in 92 seconds.  We plugged in.  We made sure we would hear ourselves.  We played a verse/chorus of something.  The Hate Bombs got no soundcheck.  We sat backstage for an hour and drank beer.  We went out to see a slim crowd when we climbed onstage.  We jumped around and played some of “the hits”.  We received almost no reaction whatsoever.  No one cared.  In retrospect, if I was going out to see my groovy friends play hippie jams and some drunk filthy Ohio guys in cowboy outfits were singing about objectionable topics, I’d probably not be super excited either.  They were probably thinking “Oh, this is some Beat Farmers meets Stray Cats thing”.  They probably weren’t wrong.  They hated us, and then after we cleared the stage, they hated the Hate Bombs.

 After that show, I then realized that Henry Rollins didn’t know as much about realistic touring advice as he thought he did.  It is open for debate if Rollins truly meant “play anywhere/anytime”.  The “Get In The Van” book is not filled with stories about playing with Flock of Seagulls or A-ha, so this could have been my misinterpretation of a more macro point of view pounded into our little rock situation.  Thus, this October we will be playing a couple shows with Southern Culture on the Skids as opposed to Mt Joy.  

See you there. 

Nurse the Hate: Miller Wakes From Slumber

 

After a couple months off from writing, I am going to get back on the horse.  I was just burned out.  I'll get you caught up.  There hasn't been that much that has happened on the MW trail.  I won't get my results back until mid-September, which is a particularily European way of handling an exam.  "Thanks for the effort!  We will tell you how you did after summer break!  We are going to Greece all August!"  I follow a bunch of Euro wine people on social media, and these SOBs must work 7 months a year.  Bastards hopscotch from the Italian coastline to Greece over to Slovenia and then to Austria laughing it up the whole time.  Meanwhile I'm cutting the grass in Ohio long out of corporate sanctioned vacation time.  All those people that scream in your face "USA #1!!!" have likely never traveled outside their comfort zone of Disney and Myrtle Beach.  We have all bought into the lies of "trickle down economics" and unwavering fealty to the Corporate Beast.  Big mistake.

From June until finding out the result of the exam, the natural inclination is to wait and see what happened before proceeding in any direction.  It's hard to plan for the future when you don't know what just happened.  For example, if I passed, I really need to focus on shoring up my feeble understanding of chemistry to enable myself to discuss fermentation with the illusion of having a grasp on the subject.  If I failed, the focus will have to be on writing a note up to the standard of the master of wine.  Between us, I identified the wines on the exam fairly well.  The question is if I wrote well enough within the time limit to suggest I should be moved ahead to the final stage.  If I fail, I suspect my technical writing is to blame.  I'm often told within the program that I write "journalistically", which is, of course, how I was educated to write.  I am now cushioning myself in the idea that I failed, will be exiled from the program in shame, and will be forced to beg for re-entry after two years have passed.  The upside in carrying that mindset for three months is that anything other than that result is a pleasant surprise.  We shall see.

My basset hound Montgomery died in July.  He was an incredibly good dog, well behaved and filled with personality.  That dog would howl if I wasn't around, the saddest moan you've ever heard.  Like his sister Ryver who died in January, he collected every ailment and health issue possible in the last couple years of his life.  The level of care to keep those dogs on the rails was mind boggling to anyone that saw it first hand.  I had a zip up bag of their various pills, ointments and drops that was referred to as "The Nuclear Football".  Like the President of the United States, I was unable to go anywhere with the dogs without The Nuclear Football.  Despite the unbelievable hassle and crippling expense of their final year(s), I loved those dogs.  Covid was the best thing that ever happened for them as they spent each day sleeping next to my desk, supervising my workday.  We were 24/7/365.  It's a huge void not having them around, and I think about them every single day.  I am wired to have a basset hound, and a new generation Basset will take up residence this Fall.  

It should be noted that I am already exhausted just thinking about house training this puppy.  Guidebooks will refer to basset hounds as "stubborn", but I think of it more as "giving zero fucks".  It takes them forever to get on the same page in regards to house rules and expectations.  For example, a labrador retriever spends its life seeking to serve their master and win praise.  They live to please.  The basset hound spends their life looking for angles to benefit themselves and see how you can help them out in their quest for snacks and better sleeping accommodations.  The best analogy I can come up with is a basset is like a deadbeat cousin that moves into your house having no intention of finding work, lays on the couch all day and eats your food.  Despite that, you somehow look forward to seeing them every day because they are cheerful and are real characters.  They are like Kramer on "Seinfeld" or Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".   They're not for everyone, but they're for me.

There has been a cluster of celebrity deaths lately.  I was stunned to see the outpouring about Tina Turner, as if everyone drives around listening to Tina Turner records all day.  My favorite is on social media where someone you know posts something like "This one stings" and you've never known them to listen to Tina Turner, speak of Tina Turner, or even suggest they know who Tina Turner is.  It's one thing if every time you walked into a bar they would sprint over to a jukebox to load it up and "Private Dancer" would blast out of the speakers while they slowly danced by themselves in the middle of the room while closing their eyes and mouthing the words.  Same thing with Sinead O'Connor.  I can't remember the last time I thought about Sinead O'Connor, and when she died it was like a contest to see who could be most publicly heartbroken.  Look, I'm not taking anything away from either of their musical legacies, but let's be reasonable about the brief public displays of grief.  You're going to be OK.  You didn't know them.  They were 30 year old records in a little stack in your basement.  

The one that stood out for me was Robbie Robertson.  I have written extensively about Robertson, a guy who wrote some great songs with his friends, and put as much (if not more) effort into trying to promote his legacy as The Important Member of The Band.  The thing that made me sad about Robertson's passing was not a sense of loss but a sense of inevitable tribute shows that each town's flimsy Americana scene would put together featuring members of modestly popular bands all fighting with each other to see who gets to sing what song, and the doomed cringeworthy finale of each lead singer taking a verse of, and consequently over singing, "The Weight".  Somewhere in Nashville right now a guy is planning on doing the Gospel-singer-doing-the-national-anthem treatment to a line of "The Weight".  You can take.. you can take... you can take... Jack my DOOOAAAAAGGGG!!!  Heaven help us. 

The Whiskey Daredevils have been working on writing a new record and are looking to do more gigs this Fall.  We keep dropping new songs into set lists to see if anyone likes them, and I'm pleased to report that intoxicated folks after the show ask to buy "that record with the Willie Nelson song" and "the one about Leo dying in his trailer".  We haven't recorded them yet, but we will because that's what we do.  It hit me yesterday that I have been doing this rock and roll thing so long, that it's like if when I bought my first house and had asked my father if he wanted to come over to eat dinner, he couldn't because he had a gig with his band in Nashville that weekend.  Frankly, I think it's a shame that he wasn't willing or able to get a band going and write about someone in his office buying a used trailer and setting it on fire by accident while in his 50s.  Took his eye off the ball.  Missed opportunity.  

That's all I have to discuss today, but look for my continued rants as we go.  There's a lot of football to gamble on coming up.  A quick note on current events, in case any of your MAGA co-workers or neighbors can't understand why Donald Trump is being prosecuted for crimes, it's because he committed crimes.