Fistful of Lies

5/7/08

Well... I want to talk about boobs.

When I worked for 311... hell, even when I worked for everclear... every night was a boob fest. Girls of all ages, races, religions, an sizes on the shoulders of boys were lifting their shirts in joyous celebration of the rock.  I don't really know where it all started. You know... like... the history of boob flashing. But I bet it would be interesting. For those of you still in school... maybe it would be a good essay of project or something... on second thought, maybe not. Anyway, I miss it.  Boob flashing, not school.  The past few bands I've worked for don't really get the boobs at the shows they play. Weezer... no, not really. Tenacious D.... very rarely. The Foo Fighters also get it rarely... and when we do get it, Dave makes fun of them. Saying the boobs are lopsided or too small or big. Basically scaring anyone else that might want to show their mammaries into keeping them imprisoned inside their bras and rock t-shirts. I speak for all the roadies and "some" other band members when I say to Dave "stop quashing the rock tits!". C'mon dude... let the boobies free, loose.. whatever. I mean, you Foo Fighters are my favorite band and all but we roadies see the show every night... Gawd.... The boobies are a pleasant change of pace from the groundhog day we are paid to endure. Just kidding.. but not really.  Ladies, Don't let the mean old Dave Grohl scare you into keeping your boobs hidden. Be proud... fly the flags of femininity. 

I Australia we actually got a couple of boobie flashes... very exciting.  Australia is always good... in fact, I don't really even mind very much traveling there. Hehe... Australia is kind of the culmination of all things good about other countries. Y'know... the best of the states, the best of Europe, the best of Asia. Good and beautiful people everywhere. We flew into Perth from Japan and the flight went through Hong Kong... but all was good... the Qantas lounge in Hong Kong was frickin DOPE! The had a free noodle bar inside the lounge! Kickass was it.

The Perth show was in a dumb venue. An inflatable venue actually. Air pressure held the circus like roof up. When you go in or out of the venue, you have to walk through air locks. You cant have the internal and the external doors open at the same time... if you do... you get a wind tunnel, and if you left it open for long enough you'd deflate the roof. God, that would've been cool. The show itself was great.

Next was Adelaide... I like to call it the Salem, Or. of Australia (I'm not going to explain that). The hotel was right next to "restaurant row"... a pretty nice Hilton. Although, every time I stay at a Hilton I always picture my money going straight into the pockets that stupid bitch, Paris. I try not to spend any money there. Anyway, my psycho pal Ben lives there... unfortunately I didn't get to hang out with him. He was too busy building a diorama of the new Burger King they built down town Adelaide for his junior college extra credit.

The shows were good, but they had these creepy Dave masks with the eyes cut out... super scary... I'm not sure who thought that would be a good idea but they were wrong.

Then it was off to Melbourne... My favorite Ozzy city. It reminds me of where I live... the great Pacific Northwest. A little wetter, a little greener, a little cooler... just better. Didn't get to see my pal Mark that lives there either. Something about a diorama of his bathroom... dunno what it is about Australians and dioramas. Stupid Melbourne hilton... they had the worst internet service ever.  They charged by the bandwidth used... lame. So you could buy 1 day or 400 megs of traffic... whichever came first. Fuckin stupid. There are actually a bunch of places that do this down under. Our old pal Wiley got really screwed in New Zealand once... the problem is... they don't tell you when you reach your allotted bandwidth traffic. So once you go past it they start charging you an astronomical rate... like 50 cents per megabyte. When Wiley checked out after uploading shitloads of photos he was taking of the band to the bands website.... he had a 1300 dollar room charge... I thought he was gonna cry.  Anyway, I complained and got it free... awesome. In the States hotels are giving internet away as a hook to beat the competition. The UK has the most expensive daily rate for hotel internet... an average of 29 pounds... about 60 bucks a day. Still better than "by the byte".

the Melbourne shows were great. My pal Jeff Lyster from Portland just happened to be in town. Somehow he got a gig with the Eels and was there playing a show with them. They call him "Dirty Jeff".  I wont elaborate.

Great crowds here in Oz..... possibly the best.

If you're a foreign band you can't tour in Australia unless you put a local act on the bill. Our local act was Mess Hall... not my cup of tea but I loved them cuz they had a bed sheet with their name painted on it.... keepin' it real.

The gigs in Australia are too far apart to use tour busses... so we fly. The drawback to that is that normally the crew would have no bus to hang out on show days after the show is up. But  we usually get a crew room whenever there is an extra room available... sometimes they aren't really comfortable or adequate for the 40 crew guys we have.

Brisbane next. The nice folks from the crocodile hunters animal sanctuary were nice enough to bring some critters down for us to play with backstage... I have to admit I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a kangaroo and a koala but it was still cool.

Off to Sydney we went... flying domestically in Australia sucks ass. I heard a bad joke... Why doesn't Qantas have a U?.... Cuz Qantas doesn't care about U.... yuk yuk yuk.

Here's sydney.

After the 2nd Sydney show myself and a few of the fellas had to go with the gear to the airport to Qantas air freight. We sat through a safety briefing and were issued cute little yellow vests and yellow gloves so we could go onto a loading dock to supervise the pallet loading of our gear that was being shipped to New Zealand. Silly.

New Zealand crowds are possibly the loudest crowds on earth... it would be a battle between NZ, Ireland, and Scotland. Auckland is a beautiful city as well... really reminds me of growing up in Hawaii. The good parts. 

The hotel was my favorite on the tour... a Hyatt Residence. I thought I checked in to the wrong room at first... I thought I accidentally got a band room. A nice suite with a gorgeous kitchen.

Another awesome thing about the Auckland show was they had the best catering of the whole tour.

On the second show day it was Chris's birthday... and Dave hired a male stripper to jump up on stage like a stage diver. The rest is predictable...

Like I said... This NZ crowd was fuckin loud! A good crowd always makes the band put out harder... Dave got so wound up that he blew out his voice on the first night. But being the consummate professional that he is... he said no to canceling the second show. Here he is nursing his voice before the second show in the dressing room.

These shows really were great and the second night was every bit as good as the first. Mad Props to New Zealand.

I'm sure you all have seen the you tube footage of Dave crashing off the drum riser already... yes... he took a tumble. Ever since lights have been getting put in front of the drum riser... Sean and I have been saying it's only a matter of time till disco eats it. Thank god it was only the guitar that broke and not his bones. He got tangled up in the cord somehow. When he got up and realized his fiddle was broken he abandoned it like a true survivor. I'm taking home with me to try and repair it... or have it repaired at the luthiers. It's only two pieces... it shouldn't be that hard. The drag about it is... it's his 001 guitar. The first one off the production line. He's fine... everyone had a good laugh about it... Oh well...

Here I sit on the plane now... on the way back home, typing this website update for all you nut jobs that actually visit my site. Really looking forward to the couple of weeks off before Europe... my favorite place. To finish I want to respond to you fuckers that complain about my site "not being correctly formatted" and how I need to resize my pictures. To them I say.... "suck it"... you're lucky I post shit at all. These posts take a long time as it is, to sort through photos and come up with stories that wont get me or anyone else in trouble. Plus... I take high rez and quality photos for a reason... If you want to resize them and dumb them down.... do it on your own time. I thumb them... that's it.  In most browsers there's an option to automatically resize photos... also is an option to automatically format pages to fit your screen. I can't make everybody happy... nor do I try to.

With that I bid you a fond Farewell.

4/29/08

So the fucking web server that I pay to host this site had a catastrophic crash that destroyed my site… all the backups they supposedly had too.  But thing are slowly getting back to normal… postboard is back up but all users were deleted so please sign back up for abuse by Nelson. Please choose a user name he would approve of as he’ll change it anyway if he doesn’t.

Well, Madison Square Garden was where I left off last, so that’s where I’ll begin. That show took my soul. All started out well though. What usually is a nightmare venue (because of the shitty union labor) was quite painless in the in. We got it all in and up in plenty of time to make the house dark for the allotted hour of two. The penalty for not going dark is quite expensive. Going dark means “shut down”.  NO ONE working on anything on or around the stage. This was a high profile show for the Foos. First of all, seeling out MSG is a big deal. Secondly, it was being filmed and recorded. Third, always a lot of VIP’s and famous people running around backstage in NYC.

Everything was fine till the acoustic part of the show. I gave Dave the acoustic guitar……………………… and nothing. No sound. I looked at the wireless meter and it was showing signal. I hauled ass out to the B stage and checked the tuner pedal (as that is where the signal is then routed to).  I’m clueless at this point. It worked just at set change about 25 minutes earlier. By now the B stage has landed and the band is still standing on the main stage in the dark waiting for Dave to start Skin and Bones. Dave tries to get Pat or Chris to play the riff so at least they can all start walking out there to the B stage but they don’t un-mute the monitors until they hear Dave’s guitar and get out to the B stage. Lots of confusion. My heart was sinking. They finally get out to the B stage and start playing, except for Dave , who was still silent… me still clueless as to the problem. I dropped to my belly and slithered under the B stage to check connections…. All fine. Wireless signal registering on the meters and everything. Sweating and dirty I slither out from under the stage and give him a new guitar…. Still nothing. At this point Skin and bones is over and it feels like a half an hour has past. About a minute or two later… Boom!!!!!  Everything starts working again. No rhyme or reason.

I felt terrible and inept. I had no idea why or how. For the rest of the show Dave was frustrated at me. Let me tell you folks… that doesn’t happen very often and it’s awful. Angry guitar changes… thrusting guitars into my hand… mad looks that burned my soul. By the end of the show though… he had gotten over it and moved on. He forgave me. He’s a good man. But I didn’t forgive myself for a couple weeks… I was miserable. Because I could not figure out what happened. Magic off and magic on. Lame. I changed all the signal routing after that day to something much simpler and easier to diagnose. That show took years off my life. I’m glad it’s behind me.

All fun and games… right before “the incident”.

Here's the photos of earlier that day.

I didn’t take many photos that leg of tour… too depressed. But here’s what I got.

This is the make up show in Fayetteville. College Gymnasium gig. Lots of meatheads in this crowd.  I thought it was a lame gig… maybe it’s cuz all there is in Fayetteville is churches and lawyers.  Yeah… I said it…. What. I guess I'm not makin any friends in Fayetteville.... Sorry.

Actually there was a good part of that day... Load out... and chillin on the bus afterwords.

Binghamton was a pretty good gig.... Super snowy.  In fact we ran into a lot of foul weather on this run. I remember one of the overnight drives was pretty sketchy. Freeway iced over... I just sat up with the driver and watched the chaos. Cars spinning out everywhere.

After a much needed week off at home, it was back out to Canada for the next run. Poor Geof, our bass tech, was denied entry.  I really missed him on this run. As one of the only other sober crew guys I realized just how valuable he is to me. I felt squirrelly the whole run.  But we all chipped in and did his gigs for him while he was away. Ruff took care of the bass tech duties and I took care of his recording duties. Sean picked up Ruff's and my slack. Shit.... Canada almost didn't let me in either.  I was detained in customs for about 45 minutes. Now that all the law enforcement databases are shared... all infractions show up. no matter how small. I guess I shouldn't have killed all those hookers.

We started in Montreal. Montreal can suck it. I think it’s the French thing that ruins it for me. Pompous and snooty has been my experience… so ‘nuff said. I'm sure they think highly of me.  Good show though.

Toronto was awesome. Taylor got to live out a childhood fantasy. Geddy Lee and Alex Liefson from Rush come out to the show and played YYZ with him in the middle of the set. Dave said that watching Taylor rehearse the song at soundcheck made him all misty eyed… fuck man…. Me too. It really was like watching someone living out a life long dream. Taylor was so amped… just like a little kid bouncing off the walls. It was so cool to see. The performance was flawless and awesome. I didn’t get to talk to Geddy but Alex was a sweetheart. Polite, humble, and thankful… that guy gets the nicest rockstar award. 

The “middle of Canada shows” were weird… meathead fest… lots of mullets. I didn’t take photos but I should’ve.

Here’s Vancouver. My favorite city on the planet. I would move here if Canada would let me immigrate. Dunno why, I just feel at home here. Kick ass old school snake runs for skateboarding… whistler/blackomb for snowboarding… great music scene…  good friends. My pals Libby and Dennis came down from the mountain and hung out. Love you guys!!

Good Van show.

A little more time off at home then we were off to Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The big overseas trips for me are always preceded with travel anxiety. As everyone knows... flying in this day and age sucks balls. Overseas international travel just raises the bar on suck. But it doesn't have to. There's a few things we as travelers cant change. Security policies, the size of airplane seats, the strange flavor of airplane food. But there are some common problems we can overcome if everyone followed BB's rules of travel etiquette.

1. Pay attention to your surroundings. Don't fucking stand or sit in high traffic areas like doorways or in the middle of the concourse.

2. when picking up you luggage from the luggage carousel... stand back a little. If you get right up next to the damn thing, only a few people have access to their luggage and no one knows who's shit comes out first. In most airports in Europe there's a line on the ground that's about 3 feet away from the carousel that you're not supposed to cross except to pick your shit up off the thing.  Standing closer to the conveyor doesn't make your shit come out any faster. So back off!!! If you're in my way when my bag comes out... I will lift you up and move you over.

3. For people picking up friends and family in cars... don't be the dick that parks at the curb and just sits there and waits. You screw everyone by doing this. It creates traffic because everyone has to stop a lane out to pick up. Just do laps around the airport like you're supposed to.

4. For people meeting friends and family outside the customs door.... see rule #1.

5.  Check a damn bag in at the check in counter. Everyone thinks they can get through airports faster by not checking bags.... wrong. It slows everyone down at security checkpoint and especially boarding the plane. There is only so much overhead storage and it always runs out... so there's always the last minute overhead repack and inevitable gate check that is sooooo unnecessary. If you're gonna bring shit on the plane... make it small please.

6.  When going through security checkpoints... pay attention. Plan ahead. Look at the signs. listen to the fucking idiots robbing you of your civil rights. Just get it done. ***sidenote*** don't think that because you think you're gonna miss your plane that you have cutting rights... you should've got to the airport earlier. If there's a question about this... just ask one of the security nazis.

7.  Most Airlines have controlled boarding... starting with their first and business class passengers then followed by economy in whatever their system is. Sit your ass down and get out of the way until it's time for you to get on the damn plane. Again... see rule #1.

8.  If you have a window seat. Pull the damn blind down once you get to cruising altitude. Especially on long flights. People either want to sleep or watch to shitty movies they show you. The light through the windows glares and washes out the crappy screens and obviously the light keeps people up. If you want light... use the overhead lamp. And don't be the guy that in the middle of a 12 hour flight at 30,000 feet in the air over the ocean...  decides he needs to open the blind to make sure there's nothing to see. Trust me... there's nothing to see. You just woke up everyone in the entire cabin.  Prick.

9. Don't OD on perfume and cologne when flying... Duh.

10.  Give the guy in the middle seat the armrests... he got screwed and could use a little courtesy.

11.  If you have small children... check them in as baggage. ************just kidding........ jeez.*************

I will add to this list as humans inevitably continue to piss me off.

Ok... Japan.  Roadies love Japan cuz they really take care of you. Every tour is a little different but I've been on Japanese tours where on the first day, the local promoter shows up with a measuring tape, a notepad, and a digital camera... and documents how the gear is set up. Then every show after that, by the time you get to the gig, the shit is all set up. The promoters love to take you out to dinner. Everyone is just so damn great.  I feel really comfortable with the language and culture having grown up in Hawaii.  But you can still feel pretty alone and alienated in Japan no matter who you are. That movie "Lost in Translation" really did a good job at capturing what it's like.

Tokyo... check out all the blonds in the crowd.

Japanese audiences are a trip. So orderly and polite. When there is music being played, everyone is rocking out or dancing or whatever... just like anywhere else. But when the song is over there is an appropriate amount of applause then.... silence.  Unless you're ready for it... it can feel pretty uncomfortable. I've never gotten used to it. It just seem so UN-rock. 

It's easier and more comfortable to take the bullet train to travel internally in Japan than flying. This is on the way to Osaka.

I didn't attend many of the many Band/Crew dinners... sometimes they just take too long.... and when you're jet lagging, you just don't care. But here's one I did attend. We had the cutest sushi chef.

Osaka is pretty cool... they filmed alot of "Blade Runner" there.  Here's me and Sean toolin around.

The Osaka show was pretty good. Huey Lewis... yes.... Huey Lewis come out on stage and blew harp for a song. It was awesome. Huey Lewis and the Foos... hehe.

After Osaka we went back to Tokyo to do some TV thing.... and ya know what?... TV sucks in Japan too. But there was a WII in the "dressing room" and everyone seemed to make the best of it.

I'm in Australia now... I've taken piles of photos.... I'll get around to sorting them sometime in the next 6 or 8 months I'm sure.

Yeah... I talked alot of negative shit in this post... fuck it.... it's how I felt. Feel free to talk your own shit on the post board. I'm sure I'll get hate mail from Montreal and Fayetteville... yeah, I suck... whatever.

2/12/08

Pain in the ass Grammy week. I think I've worked the Grammys for like six years in a row... or something like that. Did it with the D, Weezer, and Foo...  And every year it tops the list of worst gigs for roadies. However, this year it was a little better than previous years. We didn't play on the same "main" Grammy stage as everyone else. They put us on our own stage outside the staples center on the street. This made it a little better. The performance was kickass too. I was super impressed with John Paul Jones' arrangement of the song and variations on the pretender theme... and every single one of the contest winners were amazing players and a lot of the girls were smoking hot. The roadies were beside themselves and stupid over the talented hotties. The soloist that won the spotlight has a second major in school besides music... conceptual physics... go figure. Hot, talented, and smart. None of the roadies stood a chance.

Awards shows and TV shows in general suck because of all the "hurry up and wait" that goes on. Always early load ins... then it's setup and wait for a couple hours, then tap the mikes out and wait a couple of hours, then its ring the monitors out with the techs and set levels and wait a couple hours, then do all that again for the broadcast truck and wait a couple hours, then sound check with the band and wait a couple hours, then camera block with the band a wait a couple hours... makes for very long days.  Roadies with time on their hands get is trouble. We try to stay busy doing productive stuff but inevitably do some damage somewhere. Luckily a friend of Ruff brought down a couple of giant chicken pot pies for us. Sean and Ruff chipped away at one of them all day... finished and managed to get halfway through the second one by the end of the first rehearsal day.

The day after the Grammy rehearsal we had to play a Clive Davis industry party. For those of you that don't know who Clive Davis is.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Davis . There are other websites with other descriptions of him and histories and opinions... find 'em yourself. I'll probably be killed for the small amount of shit I'm gonna talk about him. I'll step out on a limb here and say that it's probably the most exclusive shi-shi party that goes down for the music industry. If invited, it's probably not a good idea to miss it. If invited to play... it definitely not a good idea to turn it down if you want your career to continue. The 80 year old Jewish man is like the Godfather of the music industry. This is the second time we've played his party. It sucks. Hotel ballroom, small stage, many huge acts, sharing gear, poor planning, bad communication, shitty load in and outs, overblown security, uppity party planners. Hehe... Taylor had to play on the house bands kit... and nobody told the house drummer. His kit was super proprietary and barely movable into a configuration that would work for T. Flat drums and low cymbals... definitely not rock.

Right at the top of the show Clive comes out and rambles about who he knows and introduces famous people he knows in the party... basically everyone. Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Slash, and shitloads of others... but while he was talking he managed to kick out the input jack on Shifty's pedal board. Clive introduced the band and they came out and of course nothing was coming out of Chris's amp. He glared over at Sean (shifty's tech) and Sean ran out and within 5 seconds had it figured out and fixed. But the damage was done... Sean would stay pissed off for two days about that. But Sean earned his money for the month in that 5 seconds. Traced the signal path and diagnosed and fixed instantly and calmly. Awesome. Clive made it worse right after the performance by standing on Chris's loom that is connected to his amp... so we could not strike the amp off the stage without either pushing Clive or taking the time to dismantle the loom. They wanted 2 minute set changes which is pretty unrealistic... but we were close. 

The food they set out for the production staff was awful. Big iceberg lettuce and cabbage salad with some ranch dressing... pasta and marinara sauce... done. So lame. I heard the party food was amazing though.

This was another long day with no place for the crew to hang... so we all went up to the suites they gave the band for dressing rooms and invaded. I taught everyone to make a very special paper airplane that my father taught me how to make and we threw about a hundred off the balcony there at the Beverly Hilton. Then settled down to watch Howie on deal or no deal for way too long... I felt dumber afterwards for sure. Sean drank the mini bar and a good time was had by all. Everyone (except the roadies), looked fantastic... especially Gus.

For the fancy events of this week... security is retarded. They make everyone get the passes with the photos on them. I went with the angry look for the Grammys and my Emo look for Clive's party.

After the party, the boys and I stopped to take some photos in front of this ridiculous jewelry store. Jonathan Arndt... a huge store on Wilshire near Rodeo Dr. By appointment only... Weird... this dude can't be serious... or is he? You decide.

No photos of the actual Grammys... but hey I watched it on TV and apparently we won a couple... Awesome. The show itself looked like a train wreck.  The part with Kid Rock and Keely Smith bummed me out. I love Keely Smith... she is such a pro... and kid rick just completely butchered that song... terrible. Our part was pretty fucking killer though. Congrats to the Foo Fighters... thank god they exist in this age of bullshit and lies. My love of their music and respect of their work just keeps going up.

I'm off at home for a few days then it's off to the NE... see ya there bitches.

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
Aldous Huxley

2/5/08

New Year... New tour. I successfully avoided xmas once again and the new year passed by without much pain. Mission accomplished. There wasn't much that I felt like celebrating until January 3rd when I turned 2. Yes... 2 solid years of sobriety and not just dry. I haven't had a drink since February 6th of 2004 but managed to find sniff out a relapse on coke after a couple years of white knuckling it. How I managed to do blow without drinking is beyond me. In these past two years I've come to be a grateful man... a humble man... and a spiritual man. (and a fat man... sheesh). I don't try and control the world anymore and I certainly have learned to be accountable to other people in my life. I can recognize my own bullshit when it pops up and I'm pretty damn happy these days. I have a lot in my life to be thankful for. Like my job, my family, my dog, and these guys.

Now that we're in a proper tour mode... not promo... not festival... our show, our venues, our production... roadie life gets good. I think it's better for the band too. With a show as big as we have... 9 semi's, 7 busses and 50 or so touring personnel... tour life gets really consistent. The show wont fit into smaller venues so we only play the big rooms. Rooms with enough space, trim height, and power to accommodate the spectacle that we're carting around. It really turns into groundhog day. The only thing that is really different every day are the local crews that help us set up and tear down and of course the crowds.  Some good crews and some bad ones... almost all good crowds.

We started with a crappy club gig though... the Kevin and Bean morning radio show at the famous Troubador in boy town LA. Many groggy "dingo and the baby" jokes flew around that morning... and an early morning it was. Who plays a rock show in a shitty club at 8am? ... we do I guess. Whatever... it was actually kinda fun.