December 7 (Boston): This was the first day of our 'mini-tour' with Bedhead. It's sort of miraculous that the whole thing came together logistically -- everyone in Bedhead (except for Matt) had to fly up from Dallas, and they're using all of our equipment. Thursday morning arrived, though, and they all showed up at my apartment -- Matt had picked them up at the airport the night before, and we met here to transfer some of their stuff to the van. We got off to a late start because Jim got stuck in the elevator, but we finally left around 1:30, and after a few stops in Brooklyn, we were quickly mired in heavy traffic in Queens. Bedhead was mostly impressed by how greasy the zeppoles were that Peter bought at the pizza shop in Brooklyn. We lost them in a traffic jam in Connecticut and made it to Boston about 30 minutes before they did. We had dinner at this Indian restaurant called The Globe, which was sort of an icebreaker. Bedhead's manager Josh had managed to detain them at TTs by having Matt and the promoter on separate phone lines at the same time. The show went pretty well -- it was fairly crowded and people were enthusiastic. It was incredible to see Bedhead playing through our equipment, even though they seemed a bit uncomfortable at first. Matt's guitar also had some faulty connections, so he had to use mine. The real fun began after the show, though, when Wheat -- the bass player -- found a party for all of us to go to at a Harvard dorm room where some people from the first band played. First we stopped at Eric Masanaga's to unload the equipment, and while we were there, Wheat gave me some gum that he had bought from a vending machine, and it was so old that it turned to liquid in my mouth. So I followed Wheat outside, except he walked through the wrong door and into someone's bedroom, where we were instantly confronted by 'hey, hey -- watch out!' As Wheat later said, it seemed like there was 'some business' going on in there. Finally we made it outside, though, where I spit my 'gum' out into a sticky mass on the ground and then we went to this all-night pizzeria to meet the people to take us to the party. When we got there, me and Mike and Wheat decided to get some donuts. On the way out, we saw the police chasing this guy up the street, although we never figured out why or even if they caught him. So we finally got to the dorm room, where a lot of pretentious Harvard kids were hanging out; it must be difficult to establish an identity at Harvard. Wheat said that one of them asked him what his 'relationship' was to New Order. We finally left and slept like sardines on two horizontal mattresses that Eric gave to us; before going to sleep, we reenacted the story of Gainesville, where I accidentally farted on Jennifer's head when she switched directions on the couch. Then there was a pillow that was rectangular and flat, and we pretended that it was a piece of toast, a credit card, a computer chip and a cat-bed.
December 8 (Bowdoin): We got up and went to breakfast across from TTs at this Yugoslavian place. Mike got pancakes and they served it with a salad on the side. We got back to Eric's and loaded up the van: from this point on, Wheat rode with us. While we were loading the van, Jim tripped over the curb with my amp and smashed his lip into the loft of the van; thankfully he was ok, it could have been a lot worse. As we made our way north to Maine, the moon came up like a huge orange globe, as it had done the night before. Actually the night before, Jim had said this thing about the moon being 'filled with anguish' and making him want to play sons in 'd-minor.' Even though it was obviously a Spinal Tap allusion, I was like 'huh?' and later on, Trini told me to tell Jim he was a freak for saying it. I said that all drummers were freaks. The other funny thing that happened was that Jennifer lost her pink sweater at the club and she asked Peter if he had seen it, and he told her that Bubba always stole people's clothes, so she accosted Bubba for the sweater, which of course he didn't have. There was this other great awkward moment when Jennifer introduced Ryan (of Car) -- who is a Dean Wareham lookalike -- as 'Ralph Wareham,' Dean's little brother, and Matt was like 'oh, I think I spoke to you on the phone.' Anyway, we got to Bowdoin in time to sit around in the dining hall and feel uncomfortable as all the students filed by and stared at us. Matt Kadane said that 'there must be a nerd convention going on here.' We ate at the pub where we played last time and on the way out, Wheat made a big impression by humping the statue of a polar bear outside of the student center. The show ended up being great -- lots of people came and we sold almost $200 in merchandise. The room we played in was a big dining hall, and Gab was there. He told me how he almost got beat up by a football player at a dance where he deejayed for playing Massive Attack, when the football player wanted to hear 'cheesy stuff, like Soft Cell.' Gab also said it was a miracle that he was able to convince the Student Union Committee to have us and Bedhead up there again. The committee was like 'Bedhead?' Bedhead seemed a lot more comfortable -- they played 'Living Well' and 'Powder' to finish their set, which was amazing. Wheat spent the night with a couple of girls he met -- apparently he walked back through the Student Union (where they had a 'gospel singer, followed by a dance,' as he was informed by this very pious girl dressed in Land's End) and performed the robot dance made famous by Herbie Hancock. Wheat is basically a living legend; one of his nick-names is 'porno-boy' because he slept with two girls at the same time and told everyone in his band about it like the day after he had met them. He dropped out of high school and at one point was picked up by a juvenile delinquent officer in Florida; he managed to push her away and make a run for it, wearing nothing but a punk-rock outfit and a mohawk. As he ran, he decided that he should try to disguise himself as a jogger so he threw away all of his clothes except his underwear and combat boots, and then ran into a store where the clerk behind the counter let him hide in his car, so that he actually escaped. On Bedhead's first trip to Europe, Wheat was nervous about the flight and so smoked a lot of pot beforehand, which combined with a horse tranquilizer and many whiskeys on the flight, led him to become increasingly groggy, so that he fell off the shuttle at the airport in Germany, after which he was wheeled away in a stretcher screaming that he 'couldn't hear himself' and then -- after he was in the medical treatment room -- became convinced that they were going to give him 'shock therapy.'
[All pix by Jennifer Baron!]
God, I love that you wrote this sentence: "Mike got pancakes and they served it with a salad on the side." Also the one about the gum turning into liquid.
Posted by: firmuhment | 02/19/2010 at 01:46 PM
Ha ha -- yes, those were both amazing (and true) things that happened!
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 02/19/2010 at 01:49 PM