Go Team Tour: March 89 Pt 1

In the Spring of 1989 I went on my first US Tour as a member of the Go Team. The line up was me, Calvin and Billy. Also on the tour: Some Velvet Sidewalk -Al, Robert & Jenny Olay and Mecca Normal. It was an International Pop Underground Tour, all K bands. We crossed the country in 2 1/2 weeks, skipping the South, and the West Coast, which we had already done the previous year with Mecca Normal, Rich Jensen and Spook and the Zombies. I was 19 and had just moved back to Olympia after having taken a year off school to work and live in Eugene, OR. There was a scene of NW bands we felt a part of, so we hit the road. My writing is not strictly linear and jump cuts around because I'd start writing and then have to stop and then pick it up later, so the tenses change and there are some chronological gaps/overlaps and then there are all these expository rants where i'm trying to formulate my ideas about art. Read all about it. I'll be posting more as I transcribe/edit. Thanks to Joaquin for making a rad blog.

March 16 1989 PART ONE
One day before our first show, in Minneapolis. It doesn’t really seem like we’ve been driving very long at all. 12 hours about, or so I guess. Montana. It’s snowy here. It looks like eastern Washington from the car window. There doesn’t seem to be any people who live here. Hey, where did all the people go? Apprehensive about it being my turn to drive a stick shift… in the snow. I’ll be totally exhausted pretty soon. A lot less hellish than I thought possible. I feel like one big pore, sweaty and ugly. It’s been a really long time since I’ve played a show. What would it be like to go on tour for like 2 or 3 months? Less drive drive drive? Countdown until the first day of spring, when Madonna Like A Prayer comes out—where will we be then? It’s Thursday the 16th…driving across Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota…Friday the 17th Minneapolis, the 18th Chicago, 19th Pittsburgh, 20 New Hampshire, then Boston March 23 & 24 New York City, the 25th & 26th are free, then Easter in Maryland then Iowa…Kansas…Utah? Idaho.? Listening to Scrawl…Calamity Jane. God the snow is getting really bad. Dylan said “Keep your head level with the window so that you see outside moving past with one eye and you don’t get motion sickness.” I love my friends. Love & truth…it’s so important to me. I hate being tangled up, I love moments of clarity…the Subterraneans…Al and Billy in the car with Jean and David. I have to not be mean. I make everything difficult for myself. There is power and strength in distance.
Talking to Dylan about girls and bands. The Tease, The Slut. Girls thrive on the sexuality of rock-n-roll. And we are male-defined, male-dominated. It’s like escapist, only…an idea. Art that has morality and is feminist..or that tries to be moral & feminist…is didactic and not very accessible or real..the sexuality is usually denied…and in rock-n-roll that’s a contradiction…boring or non-existent..not real or contemporary. A need to find something new that is sexual but not exploitation…and not just sexuality..which a lot of rock-n-roll is. There is so much repression and denial tied up in morality…and it’s so arbitrary that consistency is impossible. On post-modernism…in order for art to be political it has to destroy the form. This is difficult and kind of depressing-a sacrifice of aesthetics? Is aesthetics then in conflict with the morality of the decade?