Post-script 2008. At some point on this tour, Robert called his girlfriend Denise from a phone booth and asked her to marry him. We had been driving all night and were in a parking lot and the sun was coming up. He walked back to the car and told us he was getting married, I was like, uh…”why?!! Are you insane?!” I didn’t really get that--like you are on tour and you want to go home? And get married? The road makes you wanna settle down? He said he missed Denise and he didn’t want to be away from her ever again. It was a mystery to me but he knew what he wanted to do and in retrospect I’m glad he was smart enough to live his life the way he wanted to. It was only on this last tour that I began understand how he must have felt. He and Al were older, they were turning 25 and had just graduated from college and they were ready to settle down. I liked Robert, but we argued a lot, he was always talking about wanting to grow old gracefully and did stuff like listen to Frank Sinatra and wore old man sweaters. I remember wishing I had met him when he was a young, wild punk kid. He spoke in aphorisms, so it’s cool that there are so many Robert quotes in here. I was turning 20 and returning to Olympia to finish my first year of school but I all I wanted to do was hang out and play music 24/7. I was trying to formulate my next band. Calvin was 26 or 27 and was working on K full time. Mecca Normal were older too, I looked up to them because I had seen them on the Black Wedge tour in when I was 16 and was blown away but they seemed like authority figures to me, because they were older and serious…I related to Billy and Jenny best, they were older--Bill was 23 and Jenny 25 I think--but they were both wild and up for kicks ….so I was the baby of the tour, still a teenager and a little scared of everything but trying to break out. I would spend much of the next several years on tour. Bikini Kill started touring the summer of 1991, but first there would be another Go Team U.S. tour (fall 89) as well as a west coast tour playing drums with Some Velvet Sidewalk (spring 1990).
Cheers to Robert and Denise. Cheers to Al & Jenny, Bill and Calvin and to Jean and David. Thanks for bringing me on the road.
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Showing posts with label Go Team Tour: March 89. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Go Team Tour: March 89. Show all posts
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Go Team Tour March 89 PT 6
In the car on the way from Washington DC to Iowa City, Iowa to play a show tonight.. Mecca Normal and what’s left of Some Velvet Sidewalk stayed at Shawn Wolfe’s house. Everything feels so much different now that Jenny’s gone He has a small apartment with lots of cats. 597 Franklin Columbus, OH I think. He is a lot less geeky looking than I thought he’d look, but still geeky, with blow dried hair. He’s young looking and has a lot of records. I think I’ve gotten used to Al’s anti-consumer ways. Also there was a totally old and yuppy looking girl and a computer geek guy who maybe plays drums.
Washington DC -Calvin’s mom was not what I expected. A little more like Edith Bunker than I had imagined, but pushy. Calvin was acting like a little kid and his mom slapped him at the dinner table. We ate salad and listened to Broadway musicals. We saw the video she made for Crashing Through (Beat Happening). Things seemed really tense at the dinner table. I slept on the couch and woke up and it was Easter and we colored eggs and ate food from a New York catering company and we had a day off so we freaked out because there was nothing to do, like everything is totally pointless and arbitrary and nothing has any meaning. We went to a cemetery. Robert says “poverty and hunger aren’t arbitrary” and that “things really do matter”. I decide that it’s because we are on tour and nothing is real like paying rent and that since there is no real life there is no basis and when you sit around all day and don’t play a show you freak out and don’t understand anything especially when someone is trying to deal with something real it is just extremely difficult to understand what’s going on. So we maybe are living a hedonistic life style? In the aesthetic realm? Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. The whole world is like what it’s like to fall in love with someone at first. All the excitement and apprehension without the pain. But without the sex too. So we went to a movie. Everyone except Jean. and mom. and Jenny. who stayed in new york with Linda. We saw a movie called Paperhouse and it was about a little girl who drew pictures and then would pass out and end up in the world of her picture. And it was bad. Bad acting. No plausibility. No logic within the movie. Kept thinking about them filming the movie rather than about the movie itself. Al and Dave seemed to like it. Robert didn’t care, he said “I fucking hate the movies” and me and Calvin and Bill didn’t like it. Then we had to drive around Washington DC looking for Cynthia Connolly and it took forever. DC is so fucking gross, American royalty. We found her. She was shy. I was disappointed she had long hair and wore sandals. I thought she would be more punk looking. We drove around the block with her in the car. I didn’t really get to talk to her.And then back to Calvin’s mom’s for dinner. We had lasagna and then everybody tried to kill me and then Calvin turned into Dracula and his arm fell off and then I was going to write my paper but then Calvin asked me to go for a walk. He asked me why I like to go on tour. I’m not sure. Bill is driving the car and turning into a monkey.
Iowa City, IA Flannery O’Connor used to live here. It’s a college town. Our show was 21 and over, but it wasn’t supposed to be. No one showed up. Calvin argued with the guy and then we left.
Lawerence, KS Played basketball and drank beer on the fire escape with Billy, it’s beautiful and peaceful here. This is near where my family is from. It feels peaceful, like the center of the world to me. It’s springtime now and warm and sad. Last night Billy called William Burroughs at 3:00 AM. He answered and told him he had to go to Kansas City today. I wonder what would have happened if he called earlier. His number is listed in the phone book. We met John and that was good. We hung around and drove and drove and drove and ran out of gas and stayed in a motel and snuck Billy in and had a fire alarm and then we drove and I didn’t wanna go home and we played in Utah.
Salt Lake City was our last show and it was weird. It is really spread out and feels like it’s in the middle of the woods. We ate at a hippy vegetarian restaurant that reminded me of Mork and Mindy. It was 1974 there and I was wearing my Hellcows shirt for all the Mormons.
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Washington DC -Calvin’s mom was not what I expected. A little more like Edith Bunker than I had imagined, but pushy. Calvin was acting like a little kid and his mom slapped him at the dinner table. We ate salad and listened to Broadway musicals. We saw the video she made for Crashing Through (Beat Happening). Things seemed really tense at the dinner table. I slept on the couch and woke up and it was Easter and we colored eggs and ate food from a New York catering company and we had a day off so we freaked out because there was nothing to do, like everything is totally pointless and arbitrary and nothing has any meaning. We went to a cemetery. Robert says “poverty and hunger aren’t arbitrary” and that “things really do matter”. I decide that it’s because we are on tour and nothing is real like paying rent and that since there is no real life there is no basis and when you sit around all day and don’t play a show you freak out and don’t understand anything especially when someone is trying to deal with something real it is just extremely difficult to understand what’s going on. So we maybe are living a hedonistic life style? In the aesthetic realm? Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. The whole world is like what it’s like to fall in love with someone at first. All the excitement and apprehension without the pain. But without the sex too. So we went to a movie. Everyone except Jean. and mom. and Jenny. who stayed in new york with Linda. We saw a movie called Paperhouse and it was about a little girl who drew pictures and then would pass out and end up in the world of her picture. And it was bad. Bad acting. No plausibility. No logic within the movie. Kept thinking about them filming the movie rather than about the movie itself. Al and Dave seemed to like it. Robert didn’t care, he said “I fucking hate the movies” and me and Calvin and Bill didn’t like it. Then we had to drive around Washington DC looking for Cynthia Connolly and it took forever. DC is so fucking gross, American royalty. We found her. She was shy. I was disappointed she had long hair and wore sandals. I thought she would be more punk looking. We drove around the block with her in the car. I didn’t really get to talk to her.And then back to Calvin’s mom’s for dinner. We had lasagna and then everybody tried to kill me and then Calvin turned into Dracula and his arm fell off and then I was going to write my paper but then Calvin asked me to go for a walk. He asked me why I like to go on tour. I’m not sure. Bill is driving the car and turning into a monkey.
Iowa City, IA Flannery O’Connor used to live here. It’s a college town. Our show was 21 and over, but it wasn’t supposed to be. No one showed up. Calvin argued with the guy and then we left.
Lawerence, KS Played basketball and drank beer on the fire escape with Billy, it’s beautiful and peaceful here. This is near where my family is from. It feels peaceful, like the center of the world to me. It’s springtime now and warm and sad. Last night Billy called William Burroughs at 3:00 AM. He answered and told him he had to go to Kansas City today. I wonder what would have happened if he called earlier. His number is listed in the phone book. We met John and that was good. We hung around and drove and drove and drove and ran out of gas and stayed in a motel and snuck Billy in and had a fire alarm and then we drove and I didn’t wanna go home and we played in Utah.
Salt Lake City was our last show and it was weird. It is really spread out and feels like it’s in the middle of the woods. We ate at a hippy vegetarian restaurant that reminded me of Mork and Mindy. It was 1974 there and I was wearing my Hellcows shirt for all the Mormons.
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Go Team Tour March 89 PT 5
Am in Washington DC now, we aren’t playing here though. It’s Easter, we are staying at Calvin’s mom’s house. So much has happened. We had a party on Friday night at Linda Serbu’s basement apartment, across from Tompkin’s Square Park. There’s a studio in it where the yogis come to teach yoga or whatever, or maybe they live there. Her apartment is painted black, even the bathtub. There’s all this weird art hanging everywhere, like torture devices, it’s creepy. They were doing bad stuff in her room. Sex and drugs and rock-n-roll. Lung Leg lives there too, or did. We got the new Madonna tape after the Boston show and drove straight to New York, the city that never sleeps. We got to the Lower East Side at 4 AM. Apparently the city that never sleeps does sleep from 4-5 AM. Olympia has more stuff that’s 24 hours than the Lower East Side. I didn’t eat anything because we were supposed to get pizza in New York, so we drove around until we found a place called Ray’s and I got a slice. It had canned spinach and corn on it, it sucked. We then slept a few hours before getting up early to see the city. Me and Calvin went to Battery City Park where Madonna hangs out in Desperately Seeking Susan and rode the Staten Island Fairy past the Statue of Liberty. He made fun of me because I didn’t recognize any of the buildings, not even the Empire State Building. Who cares about that stuff? I wanted to go to Macdougal Street and Washington Sqare park and see where Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo lived. I wanted to climb the fire escapes of Greenwich Village and live life like the pictures of Jack Keroauc and all the cool girls in the beat history book whose names I don't know but who must've written cool poems too. We walked around for the whole day until I had blisters on my feet and we had to take the subway to an art museum that was showing the Andy Warhol retrospective. Wow. The party at Linda’s was nuts. We got in a fight with Mike McGonigal from Chemical Imbalance. We wanted to dance to the new Madonna record. He kept putting on Jad Fair and the Shaggs. Hey, we love that music, but the new Madonna record just came out yesterday and we wanted to dance. All these east coast people showed up with dyed hair, big shoes or boots and black clothing. Tammy Rae was there and some people from Pussy Galore. We played with Galaxie 500, who are so boring but really nice. When Go Team was playing this totally wasted old guy comes in off the street with a guitar and asks to play a song. He played Sympathy for the Devil. I played the Go Team beat and Calvin & Bill started Go-Go dancing (the rule is that I can play the beat whenever I want and they have to drop whatever they are doing and start dancing like crazy) things really almost fell apart then, the drunk guy thought he was in our band. The New York people wanted to kick him out, but we invited him to stay at the party. It seemed like a culture clash. Tammy Rae said Olympia/NYC are very different and it was weird for her to see her east and west coast friends in the same place. Everyone at Linda’s party was real arty-farty and too cool, like almost too cool to have fun, but we were not afraid of being ridiculous and we pulled off the show I think. Billy taped it. We got beer at the corner store and drank in the park, then hung out at a 24 hour diner for a long time after the party was over. I wonder if they closed from 4-5.
I’m reading a book for school called Breaking the Glass Armor about Neo-Formalist film analysis, this new approach of analyzing films where you’re encouraged to look at the formal elements for variations? I don’t exactly understand what they are talking about because they spend pages on the most obvious things and they explain everything so well that it’s distracting from the overall picture and you begin to think it’s really too specific. Like I’m not exactly sure why to do the whole analysis thing in the first place. Ya know. Why? Why why why why why? To explain things more effectively. Truth I guess.
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I’m reading a book for school called Breaking the Glass Armor about Neo-Formalist film analysis, this new approach of analyzing films where you’re encouraged to look at the formal elements for variations? I don’t exactly understand what they are talking about because they spend pages on the most obvious things and they explain everything so well that it’s distracting from the overall picture and you begin to think it’s really too specific. Like I’m not exactly sure why to do the whole analysis thing in the first place. Ya know. Why? Why why why why why? To explain things more effectively. Truth I guess.
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Go Team Tour March 89 PT 4
We are in a tunnel in Pennsylvania.
Fast Forward. Woke up early after a night w/ Al & Mecca Normal and cats (allergic) and drove across Illinois and Indiana and Ohio and then Pennsylvania. I forgot Wisconsin. Little House in the Big Woods/ Wisconsin Death Trip Illinois, Indiana is major farm country. Superman. It was sunny there. Robert says Ohio guys are Rubes. Bill was driving “Is this where Chrissie Hynde lives?” then PA. Pittsburgh was more bricks. We drove across bridges. Bricks, I can’t even explain this. It turns out we were in a dry town outside of Pittsburgh and it was Sunday. Nothing was open. We still haven’t had pizza yet. There was a subway sandwiches. A tired gray slow bitter man was working. Calvin says “what kind of cheese do you have?” and the guy says “American.” He holds it up with a plastic glove hand and says “white American, that’s about all I can tell ya” He asked if we had any rolling papers and of course we didn’t and then he seemed even more defeated and resigned to doing his ridiculously demeaning job. But then he said “you can get as much pop as long as you want if you stay” and he said it like “take as much as you can while you can”. We played at the Sonic Temple, an old Masonic Temple. They have shows on the fourth floor, it was warm there. The Go Team drove together all day. We were pretty good. There’s a tape of it. Calvin said we had attitude. Set list: Red Headed Aunts, Broken Window, Tummy Hop, Sand, Hop on Clock, Cactus Bone Candy, Outside…fuck I don’t know but I sand Sandcastle Nightmare. And we broke a snare. Some Velvet Sidewalk were alright. Robert and Jenny were really great. They carried the drums all around the room, Robert banging on the kick drum like they were a marching band. The room was huge and they took up a lot of sonic space. Weird record store geek types. Manny. We got stuck in PA because Mecca Normal’s car broke down so our show got put to the next day.
New Hampshire. At a weird place. Some guys house in the middle of the night. It’s colonial times here, quilts and wooded slats. We played a show at a café of some sort with Ed’s Redeeming Qualities who are the worst band in the history of the world. No sex no reality no rock-n-roll no punk rock no sadness no anxiety they are so totally normal I couldn’t even stand it totally boring totally lame. Anyhow the show went alright I suppose.
Then Boston. We played at the Rat Cellar, the first real club we played at. It felt like a pretty good show I guess. I found a Look Blue Go Purple record at the record store, still looking for the Shop Assistants. I met a guy named Mark who puts out records for Galaxie 500 Aurora and we stayed at the house of the Blake babies and briefly met Juliana but they were all studying pretty intensely I think. Then me, Calvin,Jenny and Bill drove to NYC.
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Fast Forward. Woke up early after a night w/ Al & Mecca Normal and cats (allergic) and drove across Illinois and Indiana and Ohio and then Pennsylvania. I forgot Wisconsin. Little House in the Big Woods/ Wisconsin Death Trip Illinois, Indiana is major farm country. Superman. It was sunny there. Robert says Ohio guys are Rubes. Bill was driving “Is this where Chrissie Hynde lives?” then PA. Pittsburgh was more bricks. We drove across bridges. Bricks, I can’t even explain this. It turns out we were in a dry town outside of Pittsburgh and it was Sunday. Nothing was open. We still haven’t had pizza yet. There was a subway sandwiches. A tired gray slow bitter man was working. Calvin says “what kind of cheese do you have?” and the guy says “American.” He holds it up with a plastic glove hand and says “white American, that’s about all I can tell ya” He asked if we had any rolling papers and of course we didn’t and then he seemed even more defeated and resigned to doing his ridiculously demeaning job. But then he said “you can get as much pop as long as you want if you stay” and he said it like “take as much as you can while you can”. We played at the Sonic Temple, an old Masonic Temple. They have shows on the fourth floor, it was warm there. The Go Team drove together all day. We were pretty good. There’s a tape of it. Calvin said we had attitude. Set list: Red Headed Aunts, Broken Window, Tummy Hop, Sand, Hop on Clock, Cactus Bone Candy, Outside…fuck I don’t know but I sand Sandcastle Nightmare. And we broke a snare. Some Velvet Sidewalk were alright. Robert and Jenny were really great. They carried the drums all around the room, Robert banging on the kick drum like they were a marching band. The room was huge and they took up a lot of sonic space. Weird record store geek types. Manny. We got stuck in PA because Mecca Normal’s car broke down so our show got put to the next day.
New Hampshire. At a weird place. Some guys house in the middle of the night. It’s colonial times here, quilts and wooded slats. We played a show at a café of some sort with Ed’s Redeeming Qualities who are the worst band in the history of the world. No sex no reality no rock-n-roll no punk rock no sadness no anxiety they are so totally normal I couldn’t even stand it totally boring totally lame. Anyhow the show went alright I suppose.
Then Boston. We played at the Rat Cellar, the first real club we played at. It felt like a pretty good show I guess. I found a Look Blue Go Purple record at the record store, still looking for the Shop Assistants. I met a guy named Mark who puts out records for Galaxie 500 Aurora and we stayed at the house of the Blake babies and briefly met Juliana but they were all studying pretty intensely I think. Then me, Calvin,Jenny and Bill drove to NYC.
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Thursday, October 2, 2008
Go Team Tour March 89 PT 3 1/2
I found this in my tour diary in between Montana & Minnesota, I probably wrote it in North Dakota:
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS: a sketch of politics and truth, prospectus ’89
mind. major frustration lack of clarity “everything is vague, nothing is ever clear” also everything totally sucks …um…questions:
+ in order for art to be political, is it really necessary for the form to be destroyed? (more later)
+why are there so few girl bands? ideas-girls are smarter than boys and not as petty. girls are shyer? girls write songs but don’t go about it in the same gung-ho way—not aggressive about marketing, don’t want people to hear them, they’re not as show off-y? don’t know how is a common excuse—‘I wouldn’t be any good at it”. in the spotlight. don’t want to be exploited, objectified, male defined. lack of drive; self-respect?
+another idea: explore the sexuality of rock-n-roll. things like, why do teenage girls like boys in bands that look like girls? the teeny bopper vs. cock rock. look at existing models, girl groups, etc. “the tease” & “the slut” and girl bands. why so much sex and does the music sacrifice it’s integrity…morality… when it’s sexualized?
+more on being male-defined and feminism. attitude. dry “women’s music” that ignores sex is not realistic and too repressive.
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GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS: a sketch of politics and truth, prospectus ’89
mind. major frustration lack of clarity “everything is vague, nothing is ever clear” also everything totally sucks …um…questions:
+ in order for art to be political, is it really necessary for the form to be destroyed? (more later)
+why are there so few girl bands? ideas-girls are smarter than boys and not as petty. girls are shyer? girls write songs but don’t go about it in the same gung-ho way—not aggressive about marketing, don’t want people to hear them, they’re not as show off-y? don’t know how is a common excuse—‘I wouldn’t be any good at it”. in the spotlight. don’t want to be exploited, objectified, male defined. lack of drive; self-respect?
+another idea: explore the sexuality of rock-n-roll. things like, why do teenage girls like boys in bands that look like girls? the teeny bopper vs. cock rock. look at existing models, girl groups, etc. “the tease” & “the slut” and girl bands. why so much sex and does the music sacrifice it’s integrity…morality… when it’s sexualized?
+more on being male-defined and feminism. attitude. dry “women’s music” that ignores sex is not realistic and too repressive.
Read more!
Go Team Tour March 89 PT 3
Chicago.
Now it’s the next day. Nothing seems real. There is a real feeling that we are really on our own and nobody knows or even cares or something. My life in Eugene and working at the deli seems so weird now. Like that whole year didn’t even happen. I really almost believe it didn’t actually happen. I feel so isolated. My mom says “people are more alike than they are different”. I can’t identify with that at all right now. Maybe being in Some Velvet Sidewalk is really hard, because it’s so confessional and raw.
Later. We drove across Illinois. It was different from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Really more Midwestern looking I guess. Flat without snow, fields of hay and silos. Bill drove the last stretch. It was classic fun, hanging out in the backseat with Jenny. In Chicago we were supposed to call Calvin. We called Peter from Buttrag and got the answering machine. So we drove towards the water and went walking around. It was called Old Town. Brick buildings, lots of shops. What else…I don’t really understand what kind of area it was, except tourist-y I guess. Bill used the phone, we memorized the directions, drove down an alley and we went to the show. I wanted to eat pizza and we had to go get guitar strings. There were hours and hours and hours of waiting, which was just like…grueling. Buying strings and then seeing the place we had to play. It was a back room to a coffee house that was just too arty. It was from a “beatnik” scene in a movie. If they had shown us any respect or been nice to us I probably could have been more impressed, because it was kind of cool that it seemed like it was from a movie about beatniks, but in real life I guess that sort of thing kind of freaks me out. And it was sooooo coooold in Chicago It just kept snowing but nothing stuck to the ground. So far both shows we played were in really bright places without much of an audience. I don’t really have a sense of who these people are, like why are they coming to see us or whatever. We ate some health food stuff, the guy was a dick and wanted us out of the customer area and to sit in the back room, which was, by the way freezing cold. We didn’t have to pay for some reason and I got free coffee too. Sneaky girl. I am having a hard time playing the shows. It seems unfocused and really random. Singing felt pretty good this time, but I am still too concerned with people’s reactions and expectations. I wish I could be totally removed from that when I play. Peter’s house was too small so some of us went to this weirdo artist guys’ house. There was this couple on the couch who had been drunk for several days and were watching a video. They didn’t want to have to move and I didn’t trust the artist guys there. They had really ugly sculptures on the wall, disgusting pet ferrets and the one guy reminded me of Dustin Hoffman. I couldn’t understand why he would want us to stay at his house except maybe the Wipers (because we are from the NW) Mostly I like their first record and the Greg Sage solo record. Actually I like their other early records a lot too, just not as much and I love seeing them and their live record. And I know why people like them so much, I understand them, I can relate to it. They are so real and completely passionate, about being lost and sad and desperate-- but the desperation is so much in the need to express it rather than the need to overcome it…the Wipers are a soul band…and their soul is heavy. Lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of heavy souls and bands and people I know. So much anxiety, self-pity and depression. Doom town. Being so sad and lost and frustrated with your situation. You know, I feel like that too, but if I let myself sit around or hang around with people who do, or be in a band ABOUT THAT—I would be wallowing. I would be accepting it. I don’t want that. I want to go on, to get by, to live, to lead a meaningful existence. Like Mecca Normal “I want to go beyond the weather or not at all”. That is my desperation. The drive to be more than that. Truth. To understand things. Clarity. To be complete. And I love the Wipers, but they are not the ultimate band to me. Probably the reason I like them is because they are so good at being completely one thing. They are true, clear, focused. In my own songwriting I settle for sad and it needs to be more than that. Empathy…the walking wounded. I know some people are so hurt and affected they can hardly walk down the street and I can feel like that too because the world can totally suck. Everything is so fucked up and nobody cares. And sometimes you feel so powerless. For people who have so much pain they can’t relate, they can’t communicate, the Wipers are so important. To know that someone feels the same as you, to have something to identify with, is so powerful and clear. Empathy is important, but I can’t limit myself to working out of personal frustration. I am driven to create and feel despair about being controlled by capitalism, nuclear war and sexism. I don’t want to accept these things, I want to go beyond it and reject the pain they create in the world. I am confused about what I want in music.
Back to the Chicago artist guy. He wanted something from us, but I don’t know what. And that was Chicago. It was so cool looking there. And freezing cold.
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Now it’s the next day. Nothing seems real. There is a real feeling that we are really on our own and nobody knows or even cares or something. My life in Eugene and working at the deli seems so weird now. Like that whole year didn’t even happen. I really almost believe it didn’t actually happen. I feel so isolated. My mom says “people are more alike than they are different”. I can’t identify with that at all right now. Maybe being in Some Velvet Sidewalk is really hard, because it’s so confessional and raw.
Later. We drove across Illinois. It was different from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Really more Midwestern looking I guess. Flat without snow, fields of hay and silos. Bill drove the last stretch. It was classic fun, hanging out in the backseat with Jenny. In Chicago we were supposed to call Calvin. We called Peter from Buttrag and got the answering machine. So we drove towards the water and went walking around. It was called Old Town. Brick buildings, lots of shops. What else…I don’t really understand what kind of area it was, except tourist-y I guess. Bill used the phone, we memorized the directions, drove down an alley and we went to the show. I wanted to eat pizza and we had to go get guitar strings. There were hours and hours and hours of waiting, which was just like…grueling. Buying strings and then seeing the place we had to play. It was a back room to a coffee house that was just too arty. It was from a “beatnik” scene in a movie. If they had shown us any respect or been nice to us I probably could have been more impressed, because it was kind of cool that it seemed like it was from a movie about beatniks, but in real life I guess that sort of thing kind of freaks me out. And it was sooooo coooold in Chicago It just kept snowing but nothing stuck to the ground. So far both shows we played were in really bright places without much of an audience. I don’t really have a sense of who these people are, like why are they coming to see us or whatever. We ate some health food stuff, the guy was a dick and wanted us out of the customer area and to sit in the back room, which was, by the way freezing cold. We didn’t have to pay for some reason and I got free coffee too. Sneaky girl. I am having a hard time playing the shows. It seems unfocused and really random. Singing felt pretty good this time, but I am still too concerned with people’s reactions and expectations. I wish I could be totally removed from that when I play. Peter’s house was too small so some of us went to this weirdo artist guys’ house. There was this couple on the couch who had been drunk for several days and were watching a video. They didn’t want to have to move and I didn’t trust the artist guys there. They had really ugly sculptures on the wall, disgusting pet ferrets and the one guy reminded me of Dustin Hoffman. I couldn’t understand why he would want us to stay at his house except maybe the Wipers (because we are from the NW) Mostly I like their first record and the Greg Sage solo record. Actually I like their other early records a lot too, just not as much and I love seeing them and their live record. And I know why people like them so much, I understand them, I can relate to it. They are so real and completely passionate, about being lost and sad and desperate-- but the desperation is so much in the need to express it rather than the need to overcome it…the Wipers are a soul band…and their soul is heavy. Lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of heavy souls and bands and people I know. So much anxiety, self-pity and depression. Doom town. Being so sad and lost and frustrated with your situation. You know, I feel like that too, but if I let myself sit around or hang around with people who do, or be in a band ABOUT THAT—I would be wallowing. I would be accepting it. I don’t want that. I want to go on, to get by, to live, to lead a meaningful existence. Like Mecca Normal “I want to go beyond the weather or not at all”. That is my desperation. The drive to be more than that. Truth. To understand things. Clarity. To be complete. And I love the Wipers, but they are not the ultimate band to me. Probably the reason I like them is because they are so good at being completely one thing. They are true, clear, focused. In my own songwriting I settle for sad and it needs to be more than that. Empathy…the walking wounded. I know some people are so hurt and affected they can hardly walk down the street and I can feel like that too because the world can totally suck. Everything is so fucked up and nobody cares. And sometimes you feel so powerless. For people who have so much pain they can’t relate, they can’t communicate, the Wipers are so important. To know that someone feels the same as you, to have something to identify with, is so powerful and clear. Empathy is important, but I can’t limit myself to working out of personal frustration. I am driven to create and feel despair about being controlled by capitalism, nuclear war and sexism. I don’t want to accept these things, I want to go beyond it and reject the pain they create in the world. I am confused about what I want in music.
Back to the Chicago artist guy. He wanted something from us, but I don’t know what. And that was Chicago. It was so cool looking there. And freezing cold.
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Go Team Tour: March 89 Pt 2
Later that day
Something happened. A big snow-storm. And Calvin’s still driving and we are still in MONTANA. Billy and Al probably both got to stay in motels both nights. we drove and drove with a lot of junk in this car. now we are in North Dakota and it looks like where they go to make freaky movies..Friday the 13th or Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something.
Ok the plot. First me and xxxx are sitting around on her bed talking about yyyy and why he is so oblivious about her..knock knock knock Mecca Normal are here. I was surprised. “Are you early?” Jean said “No, I told Calvin we were going to be here.” We didn’t know where Al and Billy were and Go Team were supposed to practice the next day. Being in a band where we don’t work together like a band—practice, play something, is really kind of nerve racking. And Mecca Normal wanted to leave at 10 AM the next day, which really kind of sucked. Bill was with Cheryl and Al was coming back from Eugene. They got home super late and everyone had all this stuff to get done, no one knew they were leaving so early and it felt like we were little kids or something, but then they finally left. The universe seems to be more and more infinite every day. I fell asleep. Then the records arrived. Calvin woke me up and things were so hectic and I felt really bossed around again. Silk-screening the singles was ridiculous. He was so completely stressed out. It could have been avoided. There’s no way I want to spend all that time silk screening, it’s not worth it. Maybe it is. Maybe more people will buy them, or maybe it means something that we care enough to waste hours of our time making ‘art’. I’d rather be playing guitar or studying. I don’t have time to silkscreen. It is totally ridiculous. Business (selling records) no matter how cool, totally sucks. I should have thought about this before. As it is we’re going to have to practice, mix, record and play and I’ve got to see shows and write two papers. Finally, Robert and Jenny arrived, which was TOO COOL and we left. Off to Seattle with Calvin driving, to Margaret and Heather’s cool apartment and then we drove to Ellensburg. We got gas at Circle K near where the Screaming Trees grew up. Cool. The town smelled like cows. They let us use the employee bathroom. Me and Jenny stayed up all night. The sun came up. We were in Idaho. It was in the mountains. Snowy big mountains and then weird little houses. Driving by seeing people turning on their lights was real strange….it was like what the exchange student wrote in my high school annual “it must be strange to live here forever and ever and ever and ever…” And then the freeway stopped and we were in Wallace. A town with really old old wood houses. Beautiful colors, beautifully painted signs. Pretty soon we were in Montana and that lasted for absolutely ever. It was really weird and really snowy. Montana looks exactly like that Alice Wheeler photo of Slim in the field with the cows. It was incredible--wild-west display and all that. But there weren’t any towns. None. Dirt roads. Montana doesn’t really exist. I kept wondering if more people live in small towns or cities because there sure seems to be an awful lot of small towns in the U.S. We stopped in Billings, on Montana Avenue. A café. But it was really a bar or something …old Montana drunk guys. It was scary. Robert comes back from the bathroom and says “my shirt was tucked in, no wonder everyone was starting at me”. It was really really snowy. We had to stop really fast because a guy from a truck was walking across the freeway. Calvin slammed on the breaks and we went in a ditch. Then a snow-plow came up and saved us with sand, but then we had to jump in the car when it was still moving and all these cars were coming and if they put on their breaks we would have all died. In North Dakota it was dark and I kept thinking of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It was purple outside. Jenny was driving and there was even more snow all of a sudden and then we got to Minneapolis and I had to wake up Calvin But first it was really cold and the window kept opening up and then it was really really really cold. Some Velvet Sidewalk was playing really really loud on the stereo. And then Snakepit and finally we were at a house. Actually driving wasn’t really that bad, but I didn’t actually drive, as Jenny reminds me. So we got to Rick’s house all of a sudden and we fell asleep on the floor. For a long time and got up, took a shower, ate some food, played a show, went to a cool record store. It snowed an awful lot. We played at this college-y coffee house with no real audience, a lot of lights and no PA. Go Team set list: The Loneliness March, Outside, Keep Away, Rainy Day, Stay Ready, 935 Patterson, Red Headed Aunts. I broke a string, Billy broke two. It was weird. Too bright and no one watched us. The volume was fucked up. The show was chaotic; kind of horrible. I hope we get better. It totally sucked. What a dumb place to play a show. Some Velvet Sidewalk were totally on overdrive. It was powerful to watch. The songs were pretty great but they were too loud and a bit over dramatic. It was like ‘we want to be really sincere and rock out but we don’t know how to unless we act self-destructive’. Makes me think of the sacrificing of reality/truth for morality. Mecca Normal were alright. Joel is a great song. Strong White Male “your talk is in the sun and rain/mine is in the want and hate” and stuff like that-songs about women. No one does what Jean Smith does. I just wish it was more accessible. David was going overboard. With time things will get better. I don’t know how well-received we were. Met a girl named Karen who works at Twin Tone. She’s heard of Rockin’ Rod. “I have connections” she says. Talked to Rick about Evergreen. He’s gonna send me a tape of Babes in Toyland. Tomorrow it’s off to Chicago. It is so fucking snowy here.
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Something happened. A big snow-storm. And Calvin’s still driving and we are still in MONTANA. Billy and Al probably both got to stay in motels both nights. we drove and drove with a lot of junk in this car. now we are in North Dakota and it looks like where they go to make freaky movies..Friday the 13th or Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something.
Ok the plot. First me and xxxx are sitting around on her bed talking about yyyy and why he is so oblivious about her..knock knock knock Mecca Normal are here. I was surprised. “Are you early?” Jean said “No, I told Calvin we were going to be here.” We didn’t know where Al and Billy were and Go Team were supposed to practice the next day. Being in a band where we don’t work together like a band—practice, play something, is really kind of nerve racking. And Mecca Normal wanted to leave at 10 AM the next day, which really kind of sucked. Bill was with Cheryl and Al was coming back from Eugene. They got home super late and everyone had all this stuff to get done, no one knew they were leaving so early and it felt like we were little kids or something, but then they finally left. The universe seems to be more and more infinite every day. I fell asleep. Then the records arrived. Calvin woke me up and things were so hectic and I felt really bossed around again. Silk-screening the singles was ridiculous. He was so completely stressed out. It could have been avoided. There’s no way I want to spend all that time silk screening, it’s not worth it. Maybe it is. Maybe more people will buy them, or maybe it means something that we care enough to waste hours of our time making ‘art’. I’d rather be playing guitar or studying. I don’t have time to silkscreen. It is totally ridiculous. Business (selling records) no matter how cool, totally sucks. I should have thought about this before. As it is we’re going to have to practice, mix, record and play and I’ve got to see shows and write two papers. Finally, Robert and Jenny arrived, which was TOO COOL and we left. Off to Seattle with Calvin driving, to Margaret and Heather’s cool apartment and then we drove to Ellensburg. We got gas at Circle K near where the Screaming Trees grew up. Cool. The town smelled like cows. They let us use the employee bathroom. Me and Jenny stayed up all night. The sun came up. We were in Idaho. It was in the mountains. Snowy big mountains and then weird little houses. Driving by seeing people turning on their lights was real strange….it was like what the exchange student wrote in my high school annual “it must be strange to live here forever and ever and ever and ever…” And then the freeway stopped and we were in Wallace. A town with really old old wood houses. Beautiful colors, beautifully painted signs. Pretty soon we were in Montana and that lasted for absolutely ever. It was really weird and really snowy. Montana looks exactly like that Alice Wheeler photo of Slim in the field with the cows. It was incredible--wild-west display and all that. But there weren’t any towns. None. Dirt roads. Montana doesn’t really exist. I kept wondering if more people live in small towns or cities because there sure seems to be an awful lot of small towns in the U.S. We stopped in Billings, on Montana Avenue. A café. But it was really a bar or something …old Montana drunk guys. It was scary. Robert comes back from the bathroom and says “my shirt was tucked in, no wonder everyone was starting at me”. It was really really snowy. We had to stop really fast because a guy from a truck was walking across the freeway. Calvin slammed on the breaks and we went in a ditch. Then a snow-plow came up and saved us with sand, but then we had to jump in the car when it was still moving and all these cars were coming and if they put on their breaks we would have all died. In North Dakota it was dark and I kept thinking of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It was purple outside. Jenny was driving and there was even more snow all of a sudden and then we got to Minneapolis and I had to wake up Calvin But first it was really cold and the window kept opening up and then it was really really really cold. Some Velvet Sidewalk was playing really really loud on the stereo. And then Snakepit and finally we were at a house. Actually driving wasn’t really that bad, but I didn’t actually drive, as Jenny reminds me. So we got to Rick’s house all of a sudden and we fell asleep on the floor. For a long time and got up, took a shower, ate some food, played a show, went to a cool record store. It snowed an awful lot. We played at this college-y coffee house with no real audience, a lot of lights and no PA. Go Team set list: The Loneliness March, Outside, Keep Away, Rainy Day, Stay Ready, 935 Patterson, Red Headed Aunts. I broke a string, Billy broke two. It was weird. Too bright and no one watched us. The volume was fucked up. The show was chaotic; kind of horrible. I hope we get better. It totally sucked. What a dumb place to play a show. Some Velvet Sidewalk were totally on overdrive. It was powerful to watch. The songs were pretty great but they were too loud and a bit over dramatic. It was like ‘we want to be really sincere and rock out but we don’t know how to unless we act self-destructive’. Makes me think of the sacrificing of reality/truth for morality. Mecca Normal were alright. Joel is a great song. Strong White Male “your talk is in the sun and rain/mine is in the want and hate” and stuff like that-songs about women. No one does what Jean Smith does. I just wish it was more accessible. David was going overboard. With time things will get better. I don’t know how well-received we were. Met a girl named Karen who works at Twin Tone. She’s heard of Rockin’ Rod. “I have connections” she says. Talked to Rick about Evergreen. He’s gonna send me a tape of Babes in Toyland. Tomorrow it’s off to Chicago. It is so fucking snowy here.
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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?
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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?
Read more!
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