The Pseudo-American
Lost in America.
Part One.
Dumped
Thursday 25th
March 2010. Its about 8;45 at night, the Sun has gone down and I am totally
lost somewhere in America. It wouldn’t be so bad, if I was actually a native. But I am most definitely not. I am an Alien, blundering around in this huge country, living in a strange town for less than a
week before suddenly getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. I have no money
and no phone, no car, no watch, no way of contacting or reaching anyone. All I
have in the world, are the clothes on my back and a pair of frog shades and a cowboy
hat. I will have to pit my wits against crazies, battle drunks and nut-cases but most of all, I must battle my own preconceptions of America, as it is portrayed in the movies and ultimately conquer fear itself.
So this is a story all about mistakes. Some little, some huge. Like that cowboy hat I bought in a thrift store, (that cost me $4.50) and now I was broke and totally lost, I kinda wished I hadn’t spent that money but at least, in a way it helped me play the part of the pseudo-American: for if I am to make it through this night alive, I must play the part of a resident native and show no fear, as I walk into the unknown...
***
I have absolutely no idea what to do, other
than fake it and hope for the best. Totally, inextricably lost, I am truly
alone, in every sense of the word: All I know is, I’ve been dumped by the side
of the road, like a dog left to fend for himself, cut off from
all he knows, a stranger in a strange land.
I feel like I am in a movie all of my own:
like that film After Hours, where
comedian Griffin Dunne gets lost late at night in deep down town ghetto land
New York and finds himself in several crazy life threatening situations with
various colourful characters.
That’s me right now. I have become Griffin Dunne
and everyone looks scary and the cops are nowhere to be seen. But fuck it.
There’s no point freaking out. What would Clint Eastwood do in a situation like
this? Be cool. Just be cool. So I deal with it. If I am
to die here in this other world, then so be it, let’s get shot, mugged,
kidnapped, stabbed in the face, what ever, bring it on.
I am a true wanderer on walkabout, the Pseudo
American: hey brother can you tell me
where I’m at? Got pair a frog shades and a cowboy hat. To me this is the
end of the world. Probably the furthest I’ve travelled outside the Uk but for
some reason I’m ok with that. I take it in my stride, I keep on wondering,
rambling along the strip of what I soon learn is Congress Avenue: a ridiculously long street that stretches
nearly half the length of the city, that crosses the Colorado River and
terminates at the familiar sight of the Congress building itself, which seems
to be a duplicate of the one we see in Washington DC. All the major cities have
them or so I’m told.
On my journey I wander pass
all sorts of strange characters, it seems that the city festival has attracted
them all like moths to a flame: animated drunks that dance circles around me,
crazy bible bashing nut cases who want my soul but I keep in character: the Pseudo American, cool and calculating, I
say little and nod at passers by. I have become America, I have become Clint
Eastwood and I can deal with it, because the high plains drifter aint got
nuthin on me...
After the week I've had, this is the last thing I need. Its been a week of chaos as it is. Touring in a rock band is stressful. But this takes stress to a whole new plateau of crazy shit. This was simply the icing on the cake, even the cherry that tops that. Why did I join this Band? I had no idea. Some vain idea that I was capable of being a guitarist. Fucking bands! Its all their fault. I knew something like this was gonna happen. And it had stressed me out all week. But now it has happened. The bomb has dropped. And I am lost in its wake. But then I felt strangely calm...
***
Maybe I should backtrack a little: I play guitar in a
four-piece electro pop band. There’s the singer who thinks he’s Marc Bolan (and
every other cock-star rolled into one) there’s the crazy sound engineer Zed, (coz he looks like Zed from Police Academy 2) who's also doubling as our bassist, then theres our
introvert hairy drummer, who’s drums are louder than his bite and finally our highly
stressed and very young manager. Oh and of course me, on electric guitar. This is
why I am here in this country and ultimately why I am lost. Flakey musicians. You turn
you back on them for a couple of seconds and they take off down the highway
without you. WTF! Did this even happen in Spinal
Tap?
I distinctly remember in that
mockumentary, that the drummer exploded and the band got lost behind the stage
and the Stone Henge gig was a total disaster of centimetre proportions. I think
of that parody and the similarity and wonder why the hell did I join this band
anyway? It’s not really my kinda music, I’m more of a Bob Dylan, alt rock and
folk kinda fella but anyway I got a free ticket with them to play at the South
By SouthWest music festival, here in Austin, Texas. So here I am, a Pompy boy
straight from my digs in London to this mental two-week festival that happens
here every year.
Originally from Portsmouth, our band was
all about sensationalism, we dressed loud, played load and we acted crazy but I
still felt like a hat-stand by comparison, I struggled to keep up with them and
at thirty-six I was no spring chicken but with no ties, nothing to hold me down
I rambled with them out of a sense of belonging to something that was more real
than the job centre back home in Portsmouth, more real than the stuffiness of
being quaint and English and living a mundane uneventful life.
To be honest I didn’t really
wanna come to America, not like this anyway. I only said I would because I was
drunk at the time but in the cold light of soberness the reality of being in a
real rock band began to dawn on me. Holy shit ! We really are going places.
We’re not just doing crappy pub gigs any more, we’re actually playing the USA !
This all sounds idyllic apart from the
fact that A: there was no record company supporting us whatsoever and B: we
really had no idea what we are doing here. None of us were getting paid either,
I had fifty dollars to my name, the last of which went on a pizza to feed the
band and because I left in England in such a hurry I didn’t make time to format
my credit cards so they would be compatible with US cash machines – so
essentially I was all out of gas. I also didn’t think to bring a converter to
charge my phone, so naturally that died too.
***
For seasoned travellers to Austin Texas, this situation wouldn’t normally be such a big deal, at least that’s
what I imagined to be the case but on the other hand, I really had no time to
plan anything because the others organised this trip on my behalf but you know
about that saying best laid plans and
all that? Basically the band mentioned this gig like months ago, down the pub and at the time it seemed like a good idea, because I was shit faced. Next thing I know, they've booked plane tickets, gigs and hotels and suddenly I'm caught up in a commitment, that I really know very little about.
I tried everything to get out of it. I just really wasn't ready to go to America. I barely had any money as it was and the thought of spending a week in America with very little cash, was quite daunting. I tried getting Gecky (our former guitarist) to cover for me but he couldn't do it. I even tried telling the manager point blank that I refused to go but in the end, they had already booked and paid everything and ultimately if I didn't do it, I would have to pay them back.
So back to the present: there I was standing
in the middle of a strange city, completely lost, with nothing to sustain me
but a chocolate ice-cream melting under the Texan Sun. I wish I never got that
fucking ice-cream now. If I hadn’t followed the singer to get ice-creams, I
would be back safe at the hotel by now. Nice
going Chewy, always thinking with your stomach. I looked around, nothing
but a desert of shops, bars and cafes stretching off for miles in
either direction. I fumbled around in my pockets, nothing but pocket fluff and
a few guitar picks. Strange creatures began to approach me, sizing me up,
glaring me up and down. I began to walk. Best not to look back. Just keep a walking. I checked the pockets of my mustard tanned leather jacket: maybe I had
a dollar somewhere, maybe a nickel? But no. I was running on empty. Was this
the end? Probably…
Part Two.
Rockin in the Free World
Scroll back
three days ago: we’ve just made it to Austin, Texas in one piece and checked
into the hotel – its cheap and cheerful, what they call a ‘Jolly Hotel’:
Nothing on the menu but Waffles and Maple Syrup for breakfast every morning and
after a week of that, I never want to even see another waffle for as long as I fucking
live. To make matters worse, tensions in the band are running high: That
evening after a whole lot of new chaos
over who was going to pay for the pizza THAT THE SINGER HAD ORDERED, I ended up
paying the $20 while the rest of the band are looking over my shoulder like
sniffing dogs, as I count out the last of my monies and kiss it goodbye to the
pizza delivery boy. I am now totally broke.
An hour later I was alone in the hotel room with the singer and found
myself pacing up and down in order to keep focused while I said what needed to
be said about his rock star behaviour: his child like eccentric interest in the
banal, the endless manipulating, the continuous playing with his afro and
always wanting everything his way. I could have character assassinated him but
felt fisty cuffs could have been on the menu, so employed diplomacy as I tried
to explain how his persistent Jim Morrison/Mark Bolan-esque antics were fucking
up the band and I was fed up with it. He lay sprawled across the bed like a
retarded Eartha Kitt, posing and grinning, regarding me alluringly as
I paced up and down the hotel room, while he twiddled with his Afro hair again.
‘Like…I dunno wot you mean man…wot …wot ?!’
‘This!’ I said gesturing at his cock-star
posing. ‘This ! Dude, You ‘aint Mick Jagger and you ‘aint Jim Morrison! Jesus!’
He grinned at me
like a child and burst into laughter. With a big sigh I realised I had to give
up on this. His faith in the God of Cock
was unshakable and conveniently deniable. And since I was in his world and not my own, I ended up
falling deeper and deeper into cock-rock bullshit, shaping me into the ever
complaining musician who points out the faults of the rest of the band while
looking like the least cohesive member. The crazier it got the more Woody Allen
I became to the point of neurosis.
I had read the
biography of The Doors drummer John
Densmore and why he got fed up with the singer Jim Morrison for probably the
very same reasons.
I realised probably way too
late, that I was in a band with overgrown kids: Our manager was just a kid
himself but for whatever reason they accepted me as part of the group. But what
the hell was I doing all this for? Notions of rock stardom? Would this somehow
help my flailing rock career in any way what so ever? I wasn’t even playing
music remotely like the stuff I was into but I guess I had nothing and I when
you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. I think Bob Dylan said that.
***
And with that uncertainty, the band spent
half the time getting lost and the rest of the time arguing and in between all
that, there was a handful of gigs. It was probably the only thing we didn’t
fuck up. As a band. we actually weren’t half bad. I mean, once we had a decent
sound check in the afternoon and the singer’s guitar wasn’t drowning everyone
else out it was all kool. Even though our original bassist couldn’t make it to
the USA (because of a drugs charge) we winged the gigs anyway with our resident
sound engineer Zed: who stepped in
and joined us as our replacement bassist. He was a large man, a real brash
rocker type in sleeveless denim, tattoos and bandana, who partied hard and
lived to the Pepsi Max and as I may have mentioned, looked like the bonkers Hells Angel Biker in
Police Academy 2.
I probably sound like I hated these guys
but to be honest I really loved them. I guess we were all loose cannons in our own
kind of way but we got on, most of the time, you have to. I might bitch about
them but no more than I might bitch about any of my annoying siblings. Being in a band is not just about playing the
music, it’s a whole lifestyle choice that you share with like minded lost souls
akin to yourself and that ethos forms the basis of the camaraderie within a
tight knit band and the ideas you want to share with the world. At that moment, your band is your family and
you love them. As a band we did everything together to the point of being
married: sharing beds in the jolly two star hotel, four miles out of town,
eating pancakes, waffles and maple syrup every fucking morning. You end up
sharing everything to survive. To live the rock n roll dream. To be free .
And out of some sense of fuck it all, our electrified souls where
bursting to rock, to break free of our limitations and push the barriers of
what can be achieved if you believe in what you are doing. None of us wanted to
work in crappy office jobs or factories anymore, to us it was like a death
sentence. The Beatles knew that, that’s why they got the hell out and toured.
They lived and breathed it. The Doors, Nirvana and countless others new it only
too well. But we were none of those bands, we were far too rock and roll for
our own good. It’s not like we even did drugs but there was the demon drink and
perhaps that’s all it takes between success and failure. There are the bands
that make it and then there’s the
bands that don’t. I guess we were the latter. I sort of had this ethos born out
of a certain naivety, because when you are in a touring band like I was you all
stick together sharing some notion that the music you create will somehow
change the world and many rock bands tend to share this same ethos but in the
end you only end up changing yourselves.
***
But as the days passed, I
became increasingly weary of the uncertainty of touring with a group this
chaotic, this unpredictable, who’s singer seemed to take rebellion to the next
level and insight revolution in his own band by taking us off somewhere random
and putting us all in serious situations of jeopardy. We had just played around
the Uk already and it was becoming a real chore having to deal with the various
dramas that ensued. With every gig there was another fuck up; like not having
anywhere to stay after a gig in Manchester and then having to ruff it all night
in a freezing bus shelter in the winter cold or the time we got stuck at Dublin
airport because there wasn’t enough plane tickets for the whole band to fly
back to London or losing the manager and singer and then finding them passed
out blind drunk in a taxi at two in the morning, with the taxi driver demanding
to be paid, when all I really want is to get back to our digs and crash out.
And then there was the classic: running out of petrol and having to push the
car off road and wait for the manager as he took the petrol can off into the
night and fog looking for fuel.
Contrary to the rock and roll myth: Most
professional bands ‘aint like this. They’re boring: They do a gig to a few
hundred people and nothing goes wrong, other than a typo error on the posters
or a faulty microphone and then its back to the hotel afterwards and hot coco
and bed and if your lucky there might be a an episode of Country File on catch up Tv.
But I’m not in a professional band. I’m just a guitarist touring with a
mobile lunatic asylum.
Now Texas beckoned and would take me to
whole new level of random shitness and not knowing what might go wrong next, I bit the mullet and hoped to get
back to England in one piece but then it happened again:
Part Three
Seafood
‘Seafood’ said the singer, playing with his hair in the mirror. ‘I fancy sum seafood…’
The world has just ended: His words resonated in my ears, much like sticking your head in a large brass bell, while a hunchback clangs it incessantly. The singer wants 'seafood' but if there was subtitles to this latest escapade forming in his head, they might read: lets go take a random walk somewhere and get totally lost.
Make no mistake readers. This has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with Seafood, at all… Yet again its a typical situation, with the singer manipulating things: He really never dropped that cock-rock act for one second - he was forever the quintessential rock star 'rebel' with that fuck everything and never listen to anyone vibe, to the point that it almost broke up the band, on a regular basis. Now he wanted Seafood and America had to deliver.
‘What?’ Is the universal reply from the band. We’re stuck in the
USA, in a baking hotel, practically in the desert and our random singer wants
Seafood! I guess it had to happen sooner or later. The singer has the want: Every cock rock group has a
nightmare band member that wants
something, usually a childish request or demand that must be satisfied or a
tantrum will ensue: whether its Ozzy Osborn or David Lee Roth refusing to gig
unless somebody goes and gets them M&Ms or Liam Gallagher eating batteries,
or Keith Moon demanding that the taxi on rout to the airport be turned around immediately because he forgot to chuck
the Tv out of the hotel window. This is the want: There is no rhyme or reason for the want but the want
must be fore filled or all others will share in the wrath of the king. Lest we
try to ignore the want it will only
fester and sulk and beckon calamity and yet this request can only lead us into
such catastrophe. Now I realise why Nirvana would never hang out with Kurt
Kobain socially outside the band...or the Doors with Jim Morrison for that
matter.
‘I fancy some seafood’ shrugs the singer,
shaping his wild bouffant in the bedroom mirror. He has no idea of the implications of what
he’s requesting. On the other hand he always liked to test us, to see how far
we would go with him down the path to the unknown. The hotel room goes quiet and all I can hear
is my own voice.
‘But dude' I said. 'We need to get back into town and
pick up our stuff from the gig!’
‘We’ll go there later. Lets gets some
seafood!’ He mumbles, non-chalant. Whatever.
I feel my
musicianship sail away off down the lost highway; I lose all sense of self and
turn into Woody Allen again. I want things in boxes. I need fucking boxes.
Jesus! All we needed to do today was go into town and pick up our stuff from Luther’s clothes store (where we had
gigged the day before) and make sure we didn’t lose anything, particularly
things like lap tops and a weeks worth of film footage of our trip to Austin
Texas. But this guy’s brain doesn’t think of things in terms of boxes. More
like a random ball of electrical wire plugged into any and everything and right
now its plugged into Seafood.
So I suggest a suitable alternative, the
STEAKHOUSE RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO THE HOTEL. I even go there. The band watches, as I walk out of the hotel
room and run down two flights of fire escape stairs and run across the sun-beat
car park and into the Steak House right next door. It’s a big place too: An
ideal food stop for hungry musicians but alas no seafood other than fish
fingers. Nevertheless, I grab a menu, run back across the sun beat car park,
back up the fire escape and return to the hotel room where everyone is
bickering with the singer who still wants seafood, which obviously isn’t on the
menu.
In fact it’s probably the one thing I
can’t offer because it’s his idea and not mine and anyway, even if I had
thought of Seafood he would probably have wanted something even more exotic. My
only problem was that I had no money left, so ultimately my stance seemed
flimsy because they all knew I was broke now because they seen me empty my
pockets over to the pizza delivery boy. But whatever, I had to draw a line, so
I stood my ground and he stood his. The manager would not make a decision
either way and suddenly the whole room was full of sheep wearing bandanas and skid
row T-shirts and with a big sigh I decided to walk out of the hotel room and
down the two flights of fire escape and back across the sun beaten car park
again to the steakhouse next door, just see who would follow me. So I sat on a
bench outside the steakhouse next to the hotel and waited for them to appear.
***
So I sat there, five minutes…ten
minutes…fifteen minutes and then several cigarettes later, they finally appeared led by the singer and I watched them all slowly walk pass me and that fucking Steakhouse
altogether, while the drummer sheepishly enticed me come to join them, as they
followed the singer blindly across the desert, chasing after the fabled seafood
restaurant, somewhere out there in the badlands.
Pissed off I eventually got up and walked
after them but they wouldn’t wait for me to catch up, so like a sulking
teenager (on a day out with his asshole parents) I trudged 50 yards behind them
wondering where the hell this was all going to.
Along the road I saw looming up: a groovy looking restaurant with a boat
sunken in some gravel outside and a windmill spinning slowly in the breeze.
What’s more folks, (and I need to stress this point): it ACTUALLY SOLD SEA FOOD
and yet, beyond all comprehension, the
band walked passed it, without a second glance and like lemmings kept going.
‘Its closed...’ Says the singer. ‘Lets try
somewhere else!’
‘What? No its not! Wait ! ’
I run up to the
entrance and try the door, I see staff and customers. Not many but a good
indicator that the place is most definitely not closed.
‘Excuse me...’ Says I to the bar staff. ‘You
sell seafood here?’
‘Wouldn’t be much of a seafood restaurant if
we didn’t buddy…’ Came the reply.
With this vital
snippet of information I am armed. God I am Rambo fucking Eastwood. There’s no
way anyone can dispute this. I run after the band, who by this point have
disappeared down the highway somewhere.
Running along the side of the road, I see them
up ahead down a side street and they seem to be following the singer as he
climbed into some random car parked up nearby. So now I’m running like mad
after them, hopping in the car just as the driver takes off, taking us on a
road to nowhere…
Little do I know of course, that everyone
in Austin is on this game: During festival season, it seems to be the norm that
you can just flag down any old car heading in or out of town and they will
drive you anywhere. Getting
lifts into town by the grace and generosity of random strangers saved us $30
there and back on taxi fares. It gets as close as it might feel to a real
community as you could imagine of the old frontier times: Hop a lift on a wagon heading west; join the
exodus of hope to greener pastures. In
this case, our random driver dropped us off at a rather large and expensive
looking Chinese restaurant, where we had a waiter and a char grill and NO
SEAFOOD !!! But that didn’t matter, because we were in the singers world: where nothing can possibly go wornnnggg !
All I can remember is eating Pumpkin soup with Lee and Perrings Sauce, courtesy
of the manager and thanking God I was still alive. Then back to the hotel via another random
lift.
***
In addition to our band, we acquired a
hippy actually called Austin, that the band had picked up at a party the night before
and he crashed in our hotel room. He kinda reminded me of a young Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws. He had a beard and glasses and seemed quite intellectual. But I didnt trust him. I decided I needed him out of there
and with us downtown. It was merely because I didn’t know him at all to really
have him in this close proximity, since stuff in our room seemed to be going
missing. He was cool though when I
finally got him to laugh. Mainly at the ride we got into town. She spoke with a real southern drawl that none of us could really understand. But she had this really bouncy happy go lucky voice and I guess she reminded us of the Canadians from South Park.
***
Gig wise, the night before, we had the
good fortune to play on a proper stage down at Emo’s bar, a large alternative music venue down off Riverside
Drive. We play at 8pm and despite all
his brashness, our surrogate biker bassist Zed is trying very hard to hide his
stage nerves, until just before we go on stage and I notice him swig his water.
He’s got the shakes bad. I tell him everything will be fine and to watch me for
the changes. He nods and then we don the stage in front of a respectably large
audience of several hundred people. Show no fear. Suddenly it all comes together and all the
arguments and pettiness is gone. All that bullshit has been wiped clean and all
grudges in the band dissolve as we rock out our tunes to a crowd who nod their
heads and dig our grooves. Fuck the seafood.
As we get into the swing of things, one gig
leads to another: earlier that day we played a beer garden doing Beatles covers
with a band called The Egg Men, where
I got to step outside the electro pop confines of our own little band and got
to sing solo on a Beatles number with the
Egg Men accompanying me on the song: A
day in the Life – the grand final to the Sgt Peppers album. I’m no
John Lennon but I give it my best and impressed by our Rock and Roll’ness, the
manager of The Egg Men invited us up
to their hill top retreat later that night, for a house party in the grounds of
opulent well-off ‘ness overlooking the valley...
Part Four
Riders on the Storm
Later that evening, after
our gig at Emo’s, we waited at the top of a hillside junction for a taxi to get us to the party. Our biker
bassist Zed however had other ideas and followed some totally random young girl
(whom he has never met before) and jumped into a taxi with her (!) he then
coolly tells us he’ll catch up with us later and drives off with her into the night!
Oh Yeah! Rock and Roll.
The remaining four band members shrug and
taxi it up to the dark hills, abundant with trees and crickets and to this strange ominous party, held within a quiet leafy suburb of expensive looking properties, all
surrounded within a perimeter wall with lots of high security. There’s even an electric gate that slowly
draws back, to allow us entry into the world of the filthy-rich. So here I was, doley
scumbag from Portsmouth, hanging out in Austin Texas (as you do) with the rich
denizens of rock. And this house is like: HUGE! With chunky wooden stilts, supporting balconies encompassed by palm trees and crazy paving surrounding it
all. The party itself was pure rock n
roll: like straight out of a 60’s movie like Return to the Valley of the Dolls or The Trip. I half expect Peter Fonder to roll in the LSD. It was
great. There was even a band playing in the lounge with a mahogany balcony
overlooking them, lined with musicians, groupies, writers, artists, dealers etc
all looking on. The music is pumping and
the vibe is awesome.
‘Wana joint ?’ Whispered the brunette I meet
on the stairs, She was oriental, well spoken and beautiful. I follow her
upstairs and we find a small bedroom, so she could roll the spliff. We soon get
talking about president George Double’ya and Iraq.
‘Fuck the government’ She said hesitantly.
‘I’m sorry?’
Said I. She spoke very quietly
about this, like she was speaking treason, like the Man was watching our every move.
‘I said fuck the government, those fucking
assholes, they lie to us about everything’
‘Oh yeah right of course, absolutely’ Said I, taken aback. I was in the proverbial Valley of the Dolls, finally mixing with
the counter culture of America and soon I found myself more and more immersed
in it. I raised the spliff to her in a
toast.
‘Fuck the government’ I said and took a long
toke, catching in the corner of my eye some dude watching us, he sorta looked
very much like Harrison Ford in his crap latter years of movie making, when he
much rather be catching up with Country
File.
‘ooh, well looky here!’ He said raising his
eyebrows in a spooky way and smiling.
‘You’re a long way from home now boy, your in
Americaaaa now, I guess you think you’ve really made it to the big time now
huh? Plush house, lots of stars, wooo!’
He grinned insanely and
backed out the door like I’de expect Harrison Ford to do if he had landed a
part in The Exorcist.
‘What was that all about ? ’ Says I getting paranoid from the spliff.
‘Oh
ignore him...’ Said the girl. ‘He’s just being his usual asshole self.’
***
Whatever movie I had just stepped into, it
was obvious that those two had history. But before I could engage with her
further I was dragged away by the singer and found myself in the garden,
talking to the group who played earlier in the lounge down stairs: their
singer, a much younger (yet somehow maturer chap than ours) slouched in a black
shirt and waistcoat, totally zoned out, coked to the eyeballs and sitting there
staring into space. I asked him if he enjoyed the gig but he just sat there on
the garden table, looking right through me as if he was gazing into some abyss.
I waved my hand in front of his eyes until he came back from where ever he was
and then he began to speak.
‘could have been better’ He shrugged. ‘ I
think we sucked’
‘What? but dude you sounded awsum’ I said
pressing him. ‘didn’t you enjoy it?’
‘Yeah, maybe - sorry I’m not feeling myself’
He then zoned out again.
No shit. The manager who
invited us here appeared and I expressed my concern for his singer but he proudly admitted that he had
the entire band running on fumes of the coke variety. As far as he was
concerned it was a great gig. No Problem.
‘I like to run a tight ship’ he said, in a
fast Joe Pesky like New Jersey accent, munching on peanuts. The more he ate
them the more they flew out of his mouth as he spoke. Everything about him
seemed fake, he was a blue eyed chubby little fella, dressed in black, with a
blond cow lick and lots of gold hanging off him. Perhaps he too was a pseudo
American. I told him what I thought of him and his ‘managerial tactics’ and
walked away. I then went looking for the girl but found myself talking to a
bald guy in his 60’s with only three teeth in his head. A trumpet player, who
tells me of the wonderful life he leads out here in the wild wild west.
‘I love being a musician out here...’ he said,
in a long southern drawl. ‘Like last night I fucked some girl, she must have
been… what like 15 years old? Where else can a 60 year old fart like me get
with a hot chick like that ? I fucking love it!’ He cackles.
‘Awsum’ I said, trying not to judge him too
harshly, thinking about the Jerry Lee Lewis scandal in the Uk, back in the day
but at the same time, feeling slightly repulsed by him . As the party winds
down, the memory becomes muddy and several spliffs later the party is all but
over and we crash on the floor, awaiting the coming dawn...
***
That night however there is a terrific
thunderstorm, that rattled the very foundations. Besides my band (and a few others who dug in), the rest of the
guests had left hours ago. Those too stoned to move crashed where they crashed.
I found myself laid out on the carpet between my band cohorts, all passed out
around me. It is now very late into the night and the house stands tall, dark
and silent but for the snoring of various party casualties. Shadows dance off
walls and low rumbles key the coming Tempest. The storm moves in above us with
a vengeance and I am shocked into soberness by its rage. Very few curtains have
been drawn and I can see the street beyond quite clearly as it is lit against
the bursts of lightning. Gusts of wind howl about us and leaves rustle and blow
in all directions as the conifer tree across the street throws its low hanging
branches in all directions in an uncontrollable frenzy. It is surreal. I am
totally in a horror movie, like a scene from
Frankenstein or that crazy storm in Poltergeist. I know I’m no longer in Pompy: We never get
storms like this, maybe the odd crackle of thunder and lightning here and there
but nothing us Brits cant handle. But this, this was something else. Usually
there’s a delay between lightning and thunder but here it seemed to happen all
at once, like some terrifying monster from the ID was on the roof with a drum
kit and smashing it to smithereens with sticks of dynamite. Then the building
shakes again, as the thunder rumbles overhead, threatening to tear the house
from under us. Lightning
flashes across the rooms, illuminating briefly the outlines of numerous snoring
corpses dotted about the place. Outside, the wind howls insanely and the rain
sheets across the windows relentlessly, rattling on the panes like steel hail.
I half expect the house to be swept away in a deluge. My fears arose, when I
caught the outline of someone at the front door, fumbling at the latch.
Then a figure entered, panting and coughing-soaking wet. He stumbles across the bodies, like some half drowned walking corpse. It take me a moment to realise who it is. Our brash biker Bassist Zed, has finally returned from where ever. He staggers to the floor and makes a bed for himself next
to me, he looks exhausted and grateful to be back in the fold. Turns out his
little taxi ride jaunt with the random girl was a disaster. A wild rock and roll adventure in the next two states.
After stopping at her place, she didn’t even invite
him into her apartment and left him standing there in the street, as the taxi
drove away. With little or no money, he then had to make it back to us by foot,
across two states - or so he claimed, climbing over neighbours fences and being
chased by wild hungry dogs, until somehow he made it back. Rock and Roll.
Part Five
Lost In
America
Two days later Rene,
our chauffeur, drives our band in his 4by4 to pick up our music equipment from Luther’s clothes shop downtown on Congress Avenue: We essentially got the gig
thru the party and the shop owners thought it would be really cool if we
performed in their shop window.
Afterwards we took off to see Scissor
Sisters play somewhere and left all our music stuff in the store in the
back room. On our return however, I notice immediately that one of our
travel bags is open with gear hanging out and things missing. It then
transpired that the drummer had left his rather expensive little Apple Mac lap-top in that
very bag and of course all the video footage I had shot of our stay in Austin
Texas was saved on it and was now lost forever. In hindsight I might have
suggested after the gig we could have taken all our stuff straight back to the
hotel, but I guess it was too much hassle and they wanted to go see the Scissor Sisters play and there was little
I could do to make them see sense.
Anyway, we took what was left of our gear
and loaded it into the back of the truck but then our singer wanted to get ice
cream across the road. Oh God. This is starting to feel like the Seafood situation, so to avoid any further disasters, I go join him because well, I wanted one too and for once our wants are unified. We then
got talking to some hippies there, who’d seen us perform and they invited me to
join them for a smoke back at theirs, I decline as I don’t even know them
at all. They seem really really nice but I’m broke and I need to stick with
the band and not lose sight of them, maybe another time when I’m not so strung
out and skint.
I’m probably talking with them a few minutes and oblivious to
the fact that the singer has already headed back to the truck without me. I’m
still talking to the hippies. I think they’re great. So sincere. Ethereal,
totally non-Pompy. They keep offering me to join them for a smoke but I kindly
decline. God I wished I had. Instead I give them a hug and wave them goodbye as they hop into
their jeep and take off down the highway. Then I turned around with my chocolate ice-cream
and looked around for the singer. He’s gone. Vanished - along with the rest of
the band. Perfect. Just perfect.
***
If I’d realised any sooner I could have at
least hopped in the jeep with the hippies and be hanging out somewhere cool but
now I’m alone. Totally alone. Reality began to dawn on me. No money, no phone.
No Shit. I didn’t even know where the fucking hotel was. Don’t panic be cool.
Just be cool. I’m thinking, maybe I’ll just hang around here for a while.
They’ll soon realise they’ve forgotten me and come back right? Then an hour passes and then another. Perfect
just fucking perfect. And just for the record: If you tour with a
rock band, there is a unwritten rule: you watch each others backs. One for all and all for one. At least, that
is what it’s supposed to be like. I guess that’s just everybody else’s
band. I looked around me. Just a
ridiculously wide street spanning off into the distance in both
directions, dotted with shops, bars,
cafes and people going about their business. It wasn’t like the Nevada desert
but being I had no cash on me, it may as well have been.
And with that thought burning into the back
of my mind, I began wondering around, trying to find any cash point that might
accept my credit cards: it was a long shot but maybe just maybe, somewhere they
might have a universal cashpoint of some sort. I didn’t know if one even
existed, in this timeframe but I figured somewhere it must. In the proverbial
desert, there is always water - if you dig deep enough. So I walked towards the
river.
As I headed down the avenue I got accosted
by a shabby drunk with a bushy beard who began to do a little Indian dance around me, he
circles and circles me, singing some blues song, it sounds familiar but then
again all blues songs do. If the rumours of Jim Morrison still being alive are
to be given any credit, then this dude could well have been his doppelgänger:
An albeit much older Jim Morrison, rumoured to have faked his own death, is
now maybe a bum in Texas and giving me grief. I should be honoured but I’m just
tired. It is almost as if he can read me like a book. For the blues music is
specifically about being all out of money and flat on your ass.
I read somewhere that when confronted by
wild creatures, just chill-out and hope they don’t eat you and if all else fails
run like fuck. So I stood my ground, while he circled me some more, reaching
into my pocket for my plectrums, that I could maybe fling into his eyes and
temporally blind him, while I made best my escape. He then got bored, staggered
off into the dusk, still singing his devilish song about lost women and abject
poverty and killers on roads and brains squirming like toads. And all the while
the Sun was setting fast and more strange creatures began to emerge
from the dusky shadows. Time for me is
running out.
***
As I crossed the bridge over the Colorado
River, its almost twilight: car headlights dazzle me as they zoom pass in the
frenzy of rush hour and with that it is not long before I am then accosted by
another crazy, this time its a short evangelical nutter who jumps out of
nowhere and prances about me, grinning inanely. He’s a young fellow, thinly
built and dressed in a blue tracksuit and a white baseball cap. I can’t think
who he resembles – I’m all out of boxes. My singer has seen to that.
‘God be praised !’ He shouts
in a loud southern pastoral as he reaches out and grabs my arms.
‘Jesus hath sent me another
one!’ He then draws me in close. We are
now embracing each other big time. He’s like totally Ace Ventura’s and Ned
Flanders bastard child on acid.
‘Hi…’ I say,
a little taken aback. I’m not sure really what to say. ‘how is it
going?’
Still smiling, he cocks his
head as if he barely understands me. Perhaps he is an android sent by the
government to annoy me, until I leave the USA.
‘How’s it going? He repeats my words. Oh god.
He must be a fucking android. I should be
fighting him off but I guess he must have me in some electro-magnetic trance.
Next he’s going to want my clothes and punch a big hole through my soft organic
chest with his steely robotic fist but fortunately for me that doesn’t actually
happen. Eventually the cogwheels stop turning and he gives me the following
response:
‘How’s it going? Wellll… our great and good
lord has sent me down here among the heathens of this here festival of devils
music, because I am pure and have total direct contact with our good lord at
all times, for he has plugged directly into my brrrrain, his immeasurable
divinity, so that I can hear only his word and speak his words, holey and with
absolute truth – the truth of which I now relay from my brrrrain to yoooooo!!’
I have to think for a long second
about my reply. I really have no fucking idea what he just said but it was
straight out of the deep south bible-belt. A lesser man might have been
baptised right there and then in this guys piss but I had a country to get back
to.
‘And …what truth is that?’ I said carefully,
expecting to have my eyes poked out.
‘That you are meeee and I am yooooo and we
are all one, in Gods eyes!’ He grins.
‘Sounds awsum, I have to go now...’ And giving him a hug I break free and left
him standing there, still yelling at me, his voice trailing off into the
night.
‘Jeeeeeezussss Luvs Yooooooooooo!’ I heard
him wail. Yeah what ever I thought. Jesus fucking loves you. But I don’t.
***
On reflection, I don’t know why I had no
inkling then, just to tell someone, anyone of my plight. Why was I wondering around this city
of strangers, wearing nothing but a pair of frog shades and a cowboy hat? I
should have found a cop or located a police station or just asked somebody sane
for help. But I didn’t. Maybe I was still strung out on what ever I was on the
night before. Or maybe I just wanted to figure all this out for myself. No
mother or father bailing me out. Nobody to pester me and tell me where I should
go or what I should be doing. Maybe through it all, I wanted time out. Maybe I
wanted to see how long I could go before the band missed me. Did they even
care? Whatever. It no longer mattered, I was tired of being in this band. I
loved them all but I grew weary of following them around like a lemming, tired
of being the guitarist and not getting paid, tired of not really seeing the
world, beyond the trajectory of this group. Maybe above all, I wanted some Me-Time. A walkabout: a journey of
discovery. So here I was. Out in the perimeter. Stoned immaculate.
I walked slowly languidly into town,
passing one cashpoint after another, none of which would accept my credit
cards. Things were getting pretty
desperate and getting nowhere fast, I decide to double back across the river
and head towards the other end of Congress Avenue near where I was abandoned
and try that way, hoping maybe that the band might have come back and was
waiting for me but they never returned.
It was now early evening, and the sun had
sunk beyond the horizon into the dark oblivion of night and it was not long
before more of the strange creatures began to emerge from the shadows,
staggering about the Strip. Keep calm. I said. Don’t panic. You are Cool Hand
Luke. Your are a Clint-Badass-Mofo. And with long deep breaths I slowly became The Pseudo American.
Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Say
nothing, nod to strangers, swagger as you walk but don’t swagger too much and
little by little, Woody Allen was gone. Replaced by who I truly was. Just a man
lost, in every sense of the word. Lost in America. And the more I wondered, the
more I rambled across this strange terrain, all the anxieties melted from me
and I no longer cared. Thousands of miles from home, with no money, no phone, no nothing. Just a
pair of frog shades and a silly cowboy hat. I was facing the darkness head on.
The road stretched out before me into the eternity of night. Along the strip, I passed numerous strangers
and it no longer bothered me. Nothing seemed to bother me anymore. As I passed
illuminated displays in shop windows, I regarded them with remoteness, like I
was no longer connected with these items that hold us to possession, as if
these things no longer meant anything. They were just things.
***
Then, after several miles I came across a Seven Eleven store, with a cash point
out the back. It was perhaps my last hope as I was beginning to run out of cash
points and places to go to. I tried not
to draw attention to myself but wearing a pair of frog shades and a cowboy hat
was bound to raise a few eyebrows, even here in Texas. The shop was large and
empty of people except for the young store clerk behind the counter, bored,
reading his magazine and chewing gum, his lips smacking together seemed to
reverberate around the desolate store, which the elevator music tried to hide
to no avail. I wondered passed rows and rows of isles packed full of chocolate,
endless fizzy pop, duff beer and magazines and clocked the cashpoint
I walked slowly back up the first isle,
noticing the store clerk regarding me over his magazine as he popped a bubble
with a loud pop. I approached the tall thin black pillar that is the cash
machine of fate: parked there in the far corner and produced my credit card. It
all hangs in the balance with a piece of plastic. I kissed it good luck and put
it in the slot. The screen flickered into life and displayed some options, one
of which says I’m entitled to an emergency $20. So I pressed that button and
the machine made various clinks and whirling noises before spitting out a crisp
twenty-dollar bill that saves my ass.
Part Six
Salvation
My Salvation was at hand. As
I held up that crisp twenty dollar bill in my grubby little fingers, the light
shone through it, illuminating president Andrew Jackson’s portrait and I could
have sworn he winked at me. Then outside in the driveway of the Seven Eleven, I
heard a mass chorus of young virginal women singing hallelujah, while church
bells rang out all across Texas and even God herself was smiling down upon on me. But in
the world of rock and roll, there are many gods. So I Thanked the god of fuck.
Now I can rest a little more easy. Things
don’t seem so bad now. All I got to do now, is just head back into town, where I
spotted some taxi ranks and get back to the hotel. No problem. So I swagger
back that way and feeling a little hungry, I notice one of those shiny metal
bullet shaped trailer caravans across the road set up as a diner.
So I mosey up to the little serving hatch
and order some food and a coffee from the pretty little Thai woman serving
there. The place is called Crepes Mille.
She gives me some awesome Thai food and I sit at a table nearby, munching my
meal and regarding the landscape of the city beyond. I decide to write out the two post cards I
bought there, one to my Mum and one to a friend in Brighton, telling them I am
fine and things are looking up. I
noticed an Irishman walking by. Being half Irish myself I recognised something
undeniably Gaelic about him: perhaps it was the long black coat, the
thinness of him and the bowler hat. I shouted after him, told him I was half
Irish and he spun about to give me a quick bow before rushing off into the
night.
I then thanked the pretty Thai girl. She’s
young and very beautiful, brown eyes and long dark hair with this amazing
smile. I’m about to leave and she starts
talking to me.
‘ I love your hat...’ She says. ‘ You’re in a
band right? Are you here for the festival?’
I then explain about the crazy band I’m in but
left out the whole being lost in Texas thing.
‘Wow! Didn’t you play at Luther’s
yesterday?’ She said excitedly.
‘Yeah that was us! Did you see us play?’
‘No but a friend of mine borrowed my camera,
she took some photos of you guys’ ‘Wow I’de love to see those , are you on
facebook or anything?’
So we exchanged contacts and
talked a little more, I wanted to share my plight with her but I guess my mind
was a muddle and besides I didn’t want to burden her with my problems. What
could she do anyway? So, taking her contact
details I said goodbye and headed back into town, where I eventually found a
taxi and somehow made it back to the hotel and hooked up with the band again.
Their excuses for abandoning me were pretty lame: They thought I was getting
stoned with the hippies. Whatever.
***
So anyway, a few days later we are now
leaving the massive expanse of Austin Texas and returning home. Like Alice in
Wonderland, every step towards England seemed to become smaller and smaller.
The planes got smaller, the corridors at Gatwick became smaller, everything got
that little bit more confined, grey and dreary looking until it got to a point
where the London Tube train back to Stamford Hill, was unbearably
claustrophobic. The orange tinted day had
suddenly become bleak again.
As part of the of line up of 2010 that
played Austin Texas, my band cohorts, (still donned in our rock star garb)
stood together proud in that dreary little train carriage for one last time:
radiating light and colour about us upon the grey looking commuters, as we
swayed from side to side, drowned in the screeching of metal.
A few regular looking
business types mulling over the Metro, peered over their papers and regarded us
with a few bemused looks but our
experience had changed us one and all. A week ago I wouldn’t have been seen
dead wearing frog shades and a cowboy hat but now ? Fuck what they thought, I
didn’t care how I looked to them.
To them we were just sad little nothings,
yobs that needed to get hair cuts and proper jobs but to us, these so called
business men, looked like caged animals, shackled to the jobs, grey and
stagnant, un-evolved and lame in every sense of the word. We were birds of a
feather, we had flown the skies of true rock and roll and nothing else could
compare. And then, one by one, with one last bear hug before home, we got off
at our stops and went our separate ways.
***
Then that weekend, (back in my dreary little
shoebox bedroom in North London), I put on my cowboy hat once again and got in
touch with that Thai girl on Facebook and talked with her for nearly two hours.
She sent me those pix of me gigging in Texas and there I was on a stage,
rocking my shit: Looking like a musician, jamming with the drummer in the shop
window of Luther’s: the only decent record that I was ever even in Austin,
Texas during the 2010 Music Festival of South by Southwest.
But now I was back in England, back in
London and feeling I had made a real connection with that girl way, way over
there, half way across the globe. She said she had even noticed me earlier that
day wondering about the Congress Hall in my stupid cowboy hat. She really
seemed to like me, even sending me photos of herself sitting near waterfalls
and countryside slopes and looking amazing. I guess she wanted me to come back
to her, to share in those places. But how could I? I had no money. Eventually I
admitted to her that I was from the Uk and that the night we met I was totally
lost in Texas.
‘OMG ! She said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I
have a car! I would have taken you back to the hotel!’
And therein lies the tragedy. I decided not
to contact her again, simply because there was no way for us to be together. I
was broke and I had a degree to finish and life had to move on but I still
think about her from time to time.
***
So there it is. A Pompy-Boy lost in America.
Besides the reality check, my excursion to the USA was awesome, it was pure
rock and roll and it was all hell at the same time.
Years later and that girl
was still stuck in the back of my mind. So I looked her up again only to find
that her business has been closed for at least a couple of years now. I even
checked out for her silver bullet shaped canteen on google street maps, landing
myself back on the slopes of Congress Avenue strip again, but she’s not there
anymore, just a patch of land with a ropey looking burger van on it, amongst
the autumn leaves. I guess I left it too
late. I wonder were she is now, is she married, is she happy...
I had this
stupid fantasy that I would (somehow) return to that festival one day and
stroll up to her chrome plated bullet shaped café, all dressed in what I was
wearing back then, with my frog shades and my cowboy hat and just coolly asked her
for a coffee.
But I’ll never get that chance, not now, not ever.
Coz I guess that sort of thing
only happens in the movies…
One of the few photos taken of us, gigging in Luther's retail Store SXSW
