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As I've been busy, just wanted to check in with quick thoughts. 

I equally love "Sea Within a Sea" by the Horrors and "Mama's Mad Cos I Fried My Brain" from Turbo Fruits. The 5CD Little Walter comp on Hip-O is bananas. Sonic Youth wins on their split 7" with Beck. More words soon, I promise.

Random Rambling Thoughts on New Kids on the Block Live at the Sommet Center...

Why did everyone think my going to see New Kids on the Block was a joke? I never was a fan (beyond buying some packs of NKOTB trading cards because they were unbeatable at .25 cents each and I was a sucker for some cards) but with a friend working for them I couldn't resist the opportunity to see what they had to offer live.

First off, if before the show I was pressed to come up with four New Kids' songs that I was familiar enough with to sing along to, I would have quickly failed. So to sit through roughly twenty songs and clearly recognize half of them was a welcome reintroduction to the mass of shit buried in my unconscious. As I said, I was never a fan, but my sister played those damn cassettes religiously, slept on the bed sheets and even went to their concert at the ripe old age of seven (with my DAD, ever the trooper) thus always making me jealous that her first live concert experience was a good six years before mine.

As I look up a list of NKOTB jams, I'm realizing there's a handful more that I could've kept rhythm to that they didn't even play…"Funky, Funky Christmas", "Dirty Dawg" and "This One's For the Children"…and realize how utterly inescapable this group was in my formative years. These guys completely OWNED it during the first Bush administration and apparently I was paying attention enough to never forget. Wikipedia claims they've sold over 80 million records worldwide. That is a shit-ton if there ever was.

The guys put on a genuinely enjoyable show and I don't mean that in an arch-ironic hipster sort of way (but will say I feel vaguely inspired by Carl Wilson/Celine Dion). They are able to maintain your attention for a solid two hours and the thousands of screaming, fake tanned, late Gen-X/early Gen-Y, peroxided women losing their shit in the room not only ups the db's a bit…it adds an unexpected, good-natured humor to it all. The kind of thing where you just sit there and randomly laugh at the absurdity of it all at random points in the concert. I was told there's just something about New Kids that just instantly brings those women to back to the shrieking pre-teens they were some years ago. And while it helped to be told that…it wasn't like it wasn't completely evident while sitting in the crowd. I wondered how the volume compared to that of the Beatles in their heyday or what performer unequivocally has the loudest audience besides that of theater-goers for Barbershop 2? Heyoo!

I like the vague references to more critically acclaimed pop culture throughout the show. Donnie Wahlberg at one point was wearing a Misfits "Crimson Ghost" t-shirt. In a video segment with the instrumental outro of "If You Go Away Girl" they flashed images of "Those We Have Lost" that included Kurt Cobain (decent applause) and Notorious B.I.G./Tupac Shakur together (fucking MONSTROUS crowd reaction).

I also noticed the bass line for "Games" was almost a direct lift from Liquid Liquid's "Cavern"…and sure that bass was popularized by Melle Mel's "White Lines"…but the fact that something as obscure as Liquid Liquid can be made palatable to a generic, Middle American crowd goes to show that cream truly does rise, for better or for worse. Liquid Liquid never got paid for the lift and the legal battles essentially ended the group but now you can hear said approximation live at a Nashville hockey arena. Good times.

I was also wildly surprised to find out that NKOTB's original guru, Maurice Starr, a large, seemingly lovable black man (or at least depicted as so in their Saturday morning cartoon series) was an integral member of the Jonzun Crew…a seminal electrofunk band whose records are a definite must-hear.

Or that "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" is an unparalleled Philly-soul track from 1970 that was less of a hit for the Delfonics than it was for New Kids. Not only that…it's a classy tune.

Why does it feel like I'm trying to find reasons to justify being at a New Kid's show?

Conversely, the songs' lyrics are particularly more dreadful with about two decades behind them. The puerile, juvenile, sappy, pappy dreck that severely overuses the word "girl" ultimately comes off as an 8th rate Michael Jackson imitation. The soporific instrumentation (those faked keyboard string sections!) is equally as retching and I dare you to find a fan of triggered drums.

It's hard facing the fact that this is how most Americans (hell, most people everywhere) experience live music. In big, oversized barns with no regard for acoustic quality. Once, maybe twice a year. At inflated ticket prices. Miles away from the artist. I get the feeling these people, on the whole, do not know what they are missing.

They are not exposed to smaller-level artists (with traditional radio and television outlets all exposing FEWER artists than ever) and are thus that much less likely to experience more intimate performances. To put on an impressive show in an arena you really do have to up the production value…video screen, pyrotechnics, back-up dancers…and with the added production you add to your costs, thus ballooning the ticket prices.

I'm not saying the world would be a better place if more people went to small clubs to check out music. I just think that a majority of people would sincerely enjoy it. It seems a large percentage of the population genuinely enjoy music and in turn derive pleasure for seeing it live. Yet it's something that most people take part in so infrequently that it's almost heartbreaking.

I suspected the key of some songs was changed to accommodate the fact that voices have changed in the past twenty years and wonder if anyone else noticed. The omnipresent, monosyllabic chanting vocals (see "Hangin Tough", "The Right Stuff" and "Games") seemed like it was an attempt at New Kid's "hook" or "thing" as much so as a fresh rap from Donnie Wahlberg or wicked falsetto from Joey McIntyre. Certainly there's enough of a cultish edge to their fans that getting them to just grunt along is hardly a challenge.

It was awkward that Wahlberg non-consecutively kissed (on the lips) no less than four women from the crowd. It was badass they let Jordan and McIntyre perform the hits from their solo careers and I particularly enjoyed "Give it To You" with its syncopated start/stops. It was no surprise I spotted no more than twenty men in the audience. It was 17 years since their last performance in Nashville.

It seemed that their dance routines had not changed in that time. They were still doing the "both hands on belt-buckle and shake legs like an Elvis clock" thing for "The Right Stuff" and a few other moves that seemed sneakingly familiar. It brings up a bevy of questions…first, if these are the same routines, how much did they remember after 17 years? If nothing at all, do they employ the same choreographers? If not, do they refer to videos of old performances and take notes? Who in the New Kids' camp is the keeper of old performance vids? What are their band meetings like? How do they split their $18 million gross from the first leg of the tour? How come this is so incoherent? What am I trying to prove here? Does any of this make any sense? Are you with me?

I guess, in short, being in a different town made me want to try different things.

(Does anyone else remember Hard Copy story from the era where a runaway/kidnapped girl was supposedly spotted in the crowd of the "Hangin' Tough" video? How did that story end up?)

Jams I DJ'd Wednesday Night...

All played from original issue 7"s...

The Monks - Complication
The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
MC5 - Looking at You (A-Square version)
The One Way Streets - Jack the Ripper
Crime - Hot Wire My Heart
Nirvana - Love Buzz
Kack Klick - One More Day, One More Night
Psycho Surgeons - Horizontal Action
Tyvek - Duck Blinds
The Gories - Baby Say Unh!
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
Nick and the Jaguars - Ich-I-Bon #1
Sonic Rendezvous Band - City Slang (stereo)
Ralph Nielsen and the Chancellors - Scream
Beck - Gamma Ray
The Monks - Cuckoo
Dansette Damage - NME
? and the Mysterians - 96 Tears (Pa-Go-Go version)
The Victims - TV Freak
The Buzzards - The Shiver

ATP 2008 The Year of Touring is Finally Fucking Over...

(Exactly one year ago today the Dirtbombs started off 2008 with a record release show at the Magic Stick in Detroit. There was an eviction notice on our practice space that day. Surprisingly, we didn't get kicked out and besides omitting "I Hear the Sirens" from our set of the entire album front-to-back, everything went off without a hitch.

After the show, Ralph, the night manager of the Magic Stick appeared backstage with champagne to celebrate the occasion. It was unexpected and decidedly classy and honestly, the only time in my life I've ever thought alcohol tasted good. The Magic Stick has always done right by the Dirtbombs.)

Seemed like we drove all day to get to Berlin after dark. I bought a monkey calculator along the way…equally offended and enthralled by the tin toy's mere existence. The show was lively and refreshing…the crowd mobilized and vibrant was a welcome reaction. Zack jumped into the mass at some point and came down hard on his ankle. I kept telling the dude he should be doing pre-game stretches.

After the show we're backstage and Zack's looking for some ice for his ankle. Somehow this leads to an argument between him and Ko. Then, with a bottle of Coke in-hand, he was looking for a bottle opener. Unable to find one, he slammed the bottle to the ground out of frustration and it exploded into hundreds of tiny little pieces. Part of me thought, "Wow…barely been on tour two months and he's already turning into a rock star." I said nothing, as I'm wont to do in such situations, and an argument between Z and Pat soon developed.

Their argument didn't really resolve. I talked to some fans onstage after the show and some dick literally lights a match under my ass. I go off on him, posing hypothetical parental questions like "Do you think that's funny?" and "What's wrong with you?" until I angrily grab his arm and forcibly remove him from the establishment.

At the hotel Pat knocks on our door asks Zack into the hallway and picks up where the argument had left off. I'm nervous because the volume of their exchange is too much for a modest German hotel hallway at 3am, but also excited because it's so seldom that actual verbal confrontations happen in this band. I forget how it ends, but I was clearly entertained for a few minutes.

The Paradiso and its surrounding neighborhood in Amsterdam are so familiar at this point that they fail to feel like foreign land. After soundcheck Mick and I do an interview for an upcoming documentary titled "It's A Long Way to the Top…" and our general demeanor is one of negativity.


The show was fine. Spent time afterward looking over the prospective layout of an upcoming White Stripes fan website and then hoofing it over to our hotel. Had an expensive telephone call and, unable to sleep and the Internet failing to interest me, I went down early for breakfast, at lots of toast, cereal and orange juice and then tramped around town.

(Live photo from Amsterdam...the best Zack has ever looked on-stage)


Hit up my favorite antique store and bought some cool prints from the early 1900's. Found a familiar vintage clothing store and bought a new striped Breton sweater made by the same company (Pop) that made the Dirtbombs' matching jackets from the cover of If You Don't…

Basically, time off in Amsterdam to walk around was refreshing and therapeutic. I could gather my thoughts and scatter them simultaneously. The layout of the city and relevant landmarks (Paradiso, Febo, massive postcard store, outdoor stall selling tulip bulbs) are permanently burned into my brain, yet I'm still able to explore and discover new places.

Our final show in Antwerp was mostly forgettable. I do remember ordering a steak "medium-well" and having it served to me bloody. I also remember a guy in a wheelchair at the front of the stage, totally into our jam.

On our drive through the UK back to London a solid argument about the merits of liquor-license requirements in the city of Detroit and heavy-handed enforcement thereof. We find Zack is not one to back down or let go of an argument and in the midst of all this we were pulled over.

The constable who stopped us expressed concern that our vehicle was overweight. He checked the limit on the inside of the driver's door and shook the frame of the vehicle a bit with his hands. We all had a good laugh and then followed the cop back to the nearest weigh station where we indeed were a good 800 pounds overweight.

Zack "Smash the State" Weedon remarked "I bet your on the cops side, right?"

According to our tour manager Matthew, if our van in this situation was overweight, then almost anyone who ever rents any van of the same size is overweight. We barely had anything with us. Jeez, and SVT alone would put that shit in the red. As we left the weigh station Matthew says we have to go to a car park and somehow jettison the offending 800 pounds before we can continue on our way.

What.the.fuck. How in the hell are we supposed to do this? 800 pounds? That's like a drumset and two bass players? What in the shit are we supposed to do to get the rest of the offending weight home? We certainly can't discard the Guinness, Matt would throw a fit. We are racking our brains trying to figure out how to make this work, all the while Matthew's still driving along the motorway. After a good twenty minutes or so, he lets us in on the fact that he was fucking with us. Well-played.

We had minor time to kill in London and I used it to walk around a street market and buy Jammie Dodgers. From there we walked to the Agency Group's offices and got paid in a room lined with Pink Floyd gold records. Off to Finchley to drop off the gear and then reconvene at casa de Viner to tie-up the rest of our loose ends.

Ma and Pa Viner were back from the hospital where their first grandchild was just born that day. They wanted to celebrate and popped open the celebratory champagne and fancy Italian cheese. We stayed at a hotel outside Heathrow that night, took a shuttle to the airport the next morn and I personally bought $60 worth of UK candy bars before an easy flight to an uneasy home. But really, I think of the tour ending there in the familiar kitchen in Finchley, everyone happy and congratulatory with a toast of champagne, just like it had started.

2008: A Year in Numbers

Trips to the Emergency Room – 1
Trips to museums – 2
Significant, reconsider career-path injuries – 3
In-Store performances – 3
Records released – 5
Tour managers – 6
Shows played – 156
Shows played in NYC area - 9
Bands played with (excluding festivals) – 134
Days off on tour – 29
Flights – 26
Countries visited – 19
Records remaining unreleased – 2
Most people crammed in our van at once – 9
Continents we hung out with the guys from the Datsuns on – 3
Chipped teeth – 1
Trips to the beach – 3
Ferry rides – 11
Times pulled over by the police – 3

(don't look back in anger)

MFIC: A Closer Look at the Musical Taste of Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr...

I'll forgive the guy for spelling Pasty Cline's name wrong, not including a thunderbolt in listing those guys who wrote "Dirty Deeds: Done Dirt Cheap" and adding an unnecessary "e" for Alicia Keys. Otherwise, I don't think Detroit has ever been in more-capable hands. Did he seriously just name drop Gang of Four and Black Flag? The last band on his list ain't too shabby either. Taken from his questionnaire posted at www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=13664 and I haven't felt so happy in quite some time.

"I like too (much) music to pick a favorite but if I was stuck on a desert island I'd want an Ipod loaded with a generous helping of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Johnny Cash (especially "At Folsom Prison"), Patsy Kline(sic), Marvin Gaye, Pink Floyd, the Who, ACDC, Peter Frampton (specifically "Frampton Comes Alive"), Foghat, The Clash, Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order, Black Flag, Public Enemy ("Fear of a Black Planet" changed my life), Ice Cube, Run DMC, Tupac, DMX, Jay Z, Notorious B.I.G., Moby, The Chemical Brothers, DJ Shadow, The Crystal Method, Lil Jon and the East Side Boys, Alicia Keyes, Jill Scott, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and last but not least Detroit's own Dirtbombs."

ATP Part Four: The Worst Possible Phone Call...

We get into Oslo early and the town is nipple-twistingly cold. Freezing…as in "this place is far too north for civilization" bone-numbing, hate-your-life frost. For some reason this made me feel like I should shave off my beard and just as I had that thought I noticed a classic, old-school, old-man type barber shop outside the van window, as if beckoning to me and my facial follicle folly. I put a pin on that location of my mental map of Oslo with hopes of trekking back there to get clean, but by the time we arrived at the hotel, we were beyond feasible walking distance. A cursory internet search of "Oslo barber" possibly even with "old-school" attached failed to turn up my white whale.

Instead, the fellas in the touring party hopped up the street to an army surplus store. All I can say is if ever given the chance to visit this kind of establishment, in Oslo, you really must. While their vintage regalia is jaw-droppingly expansive (Mick scored a pin from the 1936 Berlin Olympics) it's the inclusion of all types of broadswords, chain mail, full-body armor and other assorted Viking recreations that truly do take you into a mystic mind wonderland of elf slaying and wench-napping.

From there we skipped across the street to one of the most expansive post card shops I've ever seen. The mere size and scope of their stock was paralyzing so much so in that I did not buy a single thing. It was located in a collection of assorted antique/junk shops all sharing a similar plaza/courtyard. The band coterie split at this point as Pat and I got separated from Mick and Zack and went to find the Munch Museum on our own.

I was particularly tired that day and felt somewhat pressured into hitting the museum and the main thing pushing me to go was being able to cross Edward Munch's The Scream off the "Classic Paintings I've Viewed In Person" checklist. I mean, I was already in Oslo, it was (just barely) walking distance from the hotel…I'd be a fool not to.

So Pantano, armed with a city map, ably guided us to the Munch Museum. Back in 2004 it was the site of a brazen, broad daylight robbery where without much force two men stole The Scream and Madonna off the wall and seemingly pulled off one of the higher-profile art heists in recent memory. Both paintings were eventually recovered and after the museum was shuttered for ten months and a $6 million security update both works were put on display to the public again earlier this year.

As we enter the museum an older woman at the counter smiles and says to me "Let me guess…you're here for the Nobel Prize awards?" My laughter was uncontrollable. While I knew the Scarlett Johansson/Diana Ross hosted ceremony would be taking place in Oslo in mere days, it was the idea that, to her, my long-haired, scruffy-faced visage said to her "Nobel Prize."

"No," I responded, "actually the complete opposite…I'm here with a rock band." We made small talk about the club we were playing and having been to town twice before and the good-natured folks there seemed genuinely interested that some fools from an under-the-radar American rock band would choose to visit their museum.

Our trip through the collection was enjoyable. We caught up with Mick and Zack and were able to view a large selection of Munch's works spanning mainly the early portion of his career. The recreation of his scandalous Berlin showing was interesting in trying to discern what exactly was scandalous about it all…apparently his work appeared "unfinished" to the old guard and to display it was a travesty that ultimately worked in Munch's favor as the resultant press/closing of the exhibit enabled him to keep showing his work elsewhere in town.

As we exited the redone Berlin expo we were right back at the front desk/gift shop. With Zack standing there I tell him "I think we missed something…" to which he replied "It's not here."

Fucking hell. Nothing against Munch and his museum, but I really only came to see
The Scream and was under the impression, from what I'd read online, that it was on display there. I hereby declare this the first time I've been royally screwed by Wikipedia.

The kind women at the front desk go on to tell us The Scream is on display at the National Gallery and give us directions how to get there, oblivious to the fact that we've no energy for ANOTHER museum this day. They excitedly get us to sign their guestbook, complete with a picture of us printed from our website taped to the page.

As a sign of gratitude they give us one copy of a lux Taschen Munch book "to share." Hadn't they ever seen the Radioactive Man #1 episode of "The Simpsons"? This can only end in disaster, barring us taping the spine of the book to the tour van floor so that is always accessible during those mind-erasing long drives.

From there we traipse around a little neighborhood we're told has lots of interesting vintage shops and the like, but all I really remember is how fucking cold it was. Seriously, the shit was bananas…frozen bananas.

Back at the hotel with nary a minute to spare before lobby call. We're waiting for Zack and he's not around so we head to the club and load-in without him. Matt goes back to the hotel a little later and grabs Zack, we soundcheck and I sleep until it's time for us to play. Our show was decent, if vaguely unmemorable on this drummer's end.

On to Gothenburg where the venue-prepared food gave everyone in the band diarrhea. Again, 'twas cold beyond belief and while no opening band was quite a bonus, the crowd was dead and the encore we played was unnecessary. Talked with some locals who've made a handful of vacations to Detroit and promised to tell all their acquaintances (local club owners and bartenders) they say "hi."

Reading Vanity Fair while eating candlelit breakfast solo was the high-point of time spent in G-burg.

The snowy, morale-killing drive to Stockholm was only saved by the remote possibility that Pelle from the Hives would possibly be at the show. Luckily, not only did Pelle show up and chat with us, but the club was happily packed and the crowd went apeshit in a moshpit sort of way that made Zack's eyes light up. We played magnificent and it helped redeem us from the bummer in Gothenburg.

Stayed up all night in Stockholm basement hotel room cruising the internet. Went to free breakfast at 7am and ate so much bacon that I think I smelled like a pig pen. The hotel was stylishly modern in that Scandinavian way and it made me feel all the more important while shoving yogurt mixed with granola into my face.

I slept most of the six hour drive from Stockholm to Lund, leaving the van only once to buy some ice cream.

We arrived at the club and my phone buzzed with a call from the Shopinski's, the family that lives next door to my mom's house. I was confused, but let it go to voice mail, still groggy from the drive.

As I slowly began to process the information, I realized that for them to be calling me was peculiar and before I could call them back they were ringing me again.

There'd been a fire at my mom's house. Both her and my brother went to the hospital for smoke inhalation and were expected to be alright and they needed my permission, being of the family, to start the emergency boarding up of the house.

To describe the thoughts racing through one's head at this moment is pretty difficult. It really does feel surreal, like it's all happening in a bad dream and that you just can't wait to wake-up. Trying to imagine the house I grew up in, where ALL my shit still is, on fire, in need of boarding up, it's not really sad, it's just confusing, unexpected and being stuck in Sweden thousands of miles away just left me feeling utterly helpless.

I called my dad and he was on his way there. I called my sister and she didn't answer her phone. I sat and waited as my stomach turned knots on itself. My dad called once he arrived and somberly said "It'll be a long-time before someone's staying at 3424 (the street address)" and it just pierced my heart.

He handed the phone to my Uncle Steve who gave me a brief rundown of the damages (two front rooms, burned, badly…pretty much all of my books destroyed) and asked what of mine needed to be taken from the house for safe-keeping.

The first thing to come to mind was the "fire" boxes, two high-quality, wooden 45 carrying cases, one with all of my White Stripes 7"s and the other with all the most-expensive, least-replaceable singles in my collection.

They're called the "fire" boxes because I so often tell anyone who'd listen that, in case of a fire, grab those two boxes and we won't need to worry about paying for another house and only be partially kidding. The fire was so intense that my brother had to climb out a basement window (just like he used to in high school so he could sneak out and drink) and my mom had a carbon monoxide level of 20% in her lungs, so they could be forgiven for forgetting about the boxes.

After those boxes, I couldn't really muster anything that absolutely HAD to be saved. While there are thousands of LP's and other singles, it all seemed pretty unimportant at that point. They're just records. I remembered my fire-proof safe, filled with years of hand-written journals and one-of-a-kind White Stripes paper ephemera. It's heavy as fuck and partially obscured from view, so I didn't even think it'd be an issue…it could just sit in the house for a couple of days until I got home.

My uncle Steve then offered the possibility of some punks busting into the house after it's boarded up, looking to run off with some shit and just tearing the place up. And that's what really messed with my head. The fire, the damage, the loss…that was all easy to cope with. But the idea of people breaking into the singed house and going through my shit…the mere possibility of that violation made me want to vomit.

I would call back a little while later, after soundcheck, and subsequently tell him to take anything that was already in boxes, which includes a good chunk of 45's, more White Stripes goodies, all of my photos, massive amounts of post cards and other stuff that I'm probably forgetting.

I wouldn't eat anything the rest of the day. I talked to my sister, living in Chicago, and told her if she needed anything to get home (money, credit card, etc) to just let me know and I could take care of it. I talked to various aunts and uncles, all concerned and wanting to know if there was anything they could do to help. It's times like this where one really cherishes being part of a big family. Petty differences and squabbles are instantly put aside and instead they come together to get through the adversity.

I managed to get through the show that night, but clearly my mind was elsewhere. It was the same place we ended the Euro Stoltz tour of '06 and I remember an equally small and tepid crowd back then. After a perfunctory encore I went backstage and continued the litany of phone calls and text messages with family back in Detroit.

Zack let me take larger, non-top-bunk bed in the room that night, clearly sensitive to the fact that I'd had a rough day.

ATP Part Three: "We Should've Ended at ATP..."

Rotterdam was fine. Played some Star Wars video pinball with Pat to pass the time. Didn't watch the first opening band, Beyond Lickin', and the second, Dead Letters was one of the more confused, offensive things I've seen of late.

Our set was ordinary and the crowd enjoyed it, but once backstage some uttered the slogan for the rest of our time in Europe, "We should've ended at ATP." It didn't seem like that big a deal when we'd booked the gigs, but now in the middle of it all it was clear. Why would you go to the equivalent of rock and roll summer camp for all kinds of fun and hang out time and then follow that with MORE shows? Ugh.

From Rotterdam to Hamburg, home of the Reeperbahn, where sex shops, prostitutes, gambling and all other naughty possibilities abound. We've reached a level of recognition at the Molotov club where our name is included in the list of "notable" bands that have played there and have their name painted above the front entrance. That's a good sign, right? It feels like we're family, coming home for the holidays.

With time to kill after load-in/soundcheck, I decide to sample the cornucopia of delights the neighborhood had to offer. It only takes a few minutes in a German sex shop for me to realize how milquetoast or vanilla I really am. I mean…this stuff would make Marilyn Manson say "Whoa, hey, why don't you tone it down there a little?"

With no desire for life-sized rubber fists or stud-encrusted ball-gags, I made my way to the outdoor holiday market, festively decorated with Christmas lights and the inviting smell of food being cooked over open fires all the complete opposite of what one would expect in this civic municipality of inequity. So I found myself surprised when I unknowingly walked into the "adult" section of the market only to stumble upon, I shit you not, a stall selling wooden vibrators.

At this point, I call "too far" and order all guilty sex toy manufacturers back to their respective "time-out" corners to sit and think about what their service to society is. Have we come so far that…these things need to be made out of wood? Is this the "greening" of the sex industry or the opposite of it? I hate a world where I am now saddled with the knowledge that such a peculiar object even exists. I want to quit life at this point.

Before we hit the stage we all got individual pizzas to eat after the show. As we sat there waiting for who-in-the-hell remembers what, I got the nerve to munch and minutes later found myself with no pizza left and being prodded to hit the stage. For some inexplicable reason, I find this hilarious.

Molotov was packed and I felt we kinda blew it. There were some tuning issues for a good portion of the set and I just didn't feel that "oomph" that usually permeates the friendly, constricting confines of Molotov. Mick attempted to bring ladies onstage to dance during "Theme" but it didn't work out too well and it just becomes excruciating seeing him struggle with that task.

Upon completion of the main set we were locked out of our own dressing room, left to stand there in the crowd, thumbs-up-our-butts, until we somehow managed to unlock the "Being John Malkovich"-sized door. We reluctantly came back for an encore and "Sherlock Holmes" suffered from Mick's mic shorting out, Zack stopping playing bass to bring HIS mic over to Mick, said mic engaging Mick's synth pedal all resulting in an all-encompassing feeling of embarrassment to wash over me and most likely my bandmates as well.

After a somewhat redeeming "I Can't Stop Thinking About It" complete with a floorshow from the stage-right drummer, we retreated (this time easily) backstage. The roar for more songs was insistent and in our minds uncalled for. Really? We deliver a steaming pile of shit and you still want more? Ok. We ended with "Granny's Little Chicken" and I played the entire song on the floor. From there, the crowd was either satisfied or fed up with our act and we sat backstage in peace.

Until this loud, brash, annoying voice keeps booming through complaining that we didn't play "Pretty Princess Day" to the point where the dude yelling it actually got backstage and I got within seconds of confronting him to say "Who in the FUCK are you?"

Turns out it was Jim Hassler, someone I did not know personally, but a Detroit rock veteran who did time in Cum Dumpster (Finally! a reason to mention them here) and was along for the Gories' entire implosive 1992 European tour as he was Peg's boyfriend at the time. He and Mick talked at length and I merely wished I had another pizza to eat.

Lodging that night was provided at the Molotov's "punk but tidy" apartment a few miles away. The shower was traditional Euro removable nozzle head. These are almost always lacking a hook or attachment to suspend from and instead find the bather trying to awkwardly complete a shower with use of only one hand.

This punk flat would prove to be no exception. But with my MacGyver-like skills, I manage to precariously wedge the nozzle behind some unidentified plastic box structure and I bathe with relative ease. I tell the rest of the band to thank me later.

With everyone tired and Mick's snoring at a fever pitch there was a moment where there were five of us (luggage included) squeezed into one room with six beds, all hoping to escape the EARNOSETHROAT resonance emanating from him. But being so entirely cramped in there, I got out and bunked with Mick, rightfully figuring I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway and more so needing an available power outlet to charge my phone and computer.

So I sat and typed and the with the bar downstairs still open and music blaring I couldn't help but listen along to what was being played. At one point a familiar, lilting melody came through the system and I was racking my brain trying to name the tune. I vaguely discerned the lyrics "and I'll always love you" and fed them through Google and iTunes with no help.

With no recourse, I got fully dressed and marched down to the bar and confronted the DJ. He pointed to a picture disc copy of Thurston Moore's Trees Outside the Academy and the track "Honest James" and I thanked him, told him he was playing good jams and marched back upstairs to go lay in bed and type as Mick snored next to me.

After Hamburg was a much-needed day off. We first made a short drive to the short ferry that took us to Denmark, which is kind of a short country. With approximately a half-hour to kill, we made way to the pseudo-anarchist/hippie/off-the-grid commune of Christiania, located smack dab in the middle of Copenhagen.

Started in the late 1960's and situated around abandoned army barracks, the space is most widely known for Pusher Street, an avenue in the middle of the place where an open drug market at one time flourished. Marijuana, mushrooms, hash (and probably more) were indiscreetly sold in stalls on Pusher Street, supposedly controlled by the Russian mob.

The Dirtbombs played the Loppen club in Christiania in 2002 and since that time there was marked increase in police presence and while every time I've heard anything about the place since then it's always been along the lines of "the Danish government finally shut 'em down." Seriously, I must've heard that at least a half-dozen times in as many years.

So I'm here to report that on the surface, Christiania is alive and well. The only visible difference is that there seems to be no more narcotics dealing on Pusher Street. That feels good to say and apparently the residents there feel the same way, as the drug trade detracted away from the original tenets and purpose behind the inception of the place.

We didn't get much done in our half-hour…there was an indoor holiday market where I contemplated for 5 minutes whether or not to buy a bootleg White Stripes DVD from the Icky Thump tour and ultimately decided against it.

From Copenhagen we'd take an overnight ferry to Oslo on a ship fully equipped with sleeping cabins, several restaurants, bars, dance clubs, a movie theater and a wide-range of other crap to offer. Once inside the state room with Pat (bunk beds!) I immediately konked out.

Pat would pop back in later and say that if I was hungry that he'd be eating at the fancy restaurant on board. I demurred and he came back soon after to say that because said establishment only took reservations that he would be eating in 45 minutes…the soonest available opening they had, while empty tables plentiful.

We ordered on note cards that we had to fill out ourselves. I'm sorry, but if I'm eating at a spensive place I certainly am hoping that I'm not required to write anything down or check a box even. My chicken Caesar salad was almost too filling and my steak (the cheapest one they had) was good enough. Matt had given each of us a stipend in Norwegian Kroner for the ferry and mine was completely eaten up by dinner, probably the equivalent of $50. No, I don't think it was worth it.

From dinner back to our quarters where I tried to stomach the over-indulgencies of the Daydream Nation entry in Continuum's 33 1/3rd series. As a die-hard Sonic Youth fan, I recommend all avoid this book at all costs. I'd sleep a little but would spend most of the night awake either staring at the underside of the bunk suspended over me, listening to the Duchess and the Duke on the iPod, reading the wretched SY book or tweaking the intricacies of my White Blood Cells book proposal for Continuum.

After shifting between those activities for hours I noticed my laptop power running low and grabbed for my power cord to plug in. I frantically searched through my man bag, the only place I ever keep the charger, and cannot find it. I get nervous and a little sweaty, if only because I pride myself on not losing shit on tour. With no more power on the PowerBook I just sit and stare for the next hour or so, trying to remember where in the hell I lost the damn thing.

When time to disembark the ship, Zack knocks on our door and hands me my charger saying "It fell out of your bag and I accidentally though it was mine." Granted, it only fell out of my bag in the van, but I still think I can pride myself on the lack of losing things skills. Hell, I'm continually amazed that I've still managed to maintain possession over that little rubber/plastic protective cover for the pointy computer end of my wall charger.

ATP Part Two: The Only Parties I'll Ever Need...

Awake the next morning and before shoving off in Dublin Zack, Pat and I pay our respects at the Phil Lynott statue. Consider our ode, to this black man, delivered.

Arrival in Galway was marked with rain, as was every other thing we would do for the three days we were in Irish land. Club provided an apartment around the corner, we dropped off our bags there and caught our breath before heading back for soundcheck.

My main memory of this apartment will be having tracked dirty water onto the hardwood floor and not caring about cleaning it up, as there was no matt to wipe my heels on anyway.

Post check we sit around and bask in the glory of free internet at the club. Ventured across the street for a medium pepperoni pizza that was satisfying. Opening band Disconnect4 wasn't my cup of tea and for the 25 or so people there the Dirtbombs were only vaguely theirs.

Post-show rainy load-out and then back to the apartment where Zack, Pat, Ko and I watched a reality show about producing porn movies, "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and the VH1's "Supergroup" all while downing orange juice and Cadbury chocolate (me) or 3/4's of a big bag of Doritos (Pat).

Woke up early to shower and the joy of having my own room that night was that I also had my own shower. Turn on the faucet and let it run to get the hot water flowing…after twenty minutes it's apparent there's no hot water and the extremity of the cold water (read: biting) means I won't be showering this morn.

Breakfast at Subway, spicy Italian. Worldwide consistency must be admired in a franchise.

I saw approximately two blocks of Belfast. The club was a decent enough place and after soundcheck we checked into our hotel a block away. With absolutely no energy, we nap for the two hours before our set. We play swell enough to warrant an encore, but just barely.

Straight back to the hotel and watching Ewen McGregor's Long Way Down continent-spanning motorcycle trip through Africa that is truly inspiring and interesting and makes me feel that any complaining I have about touring is nothing compared to what these guys have gone through. See also Austin Vince's extraordinary (and earlier) documentaries Terra Circa and Terra Firma. In fact, I need copies of those too if you're looking to cross me off your Christmas list.

Early lobby call at 6:15 so we can make the ferry. All goes well and I space out on the boat while listening to the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz and I don't recall much else 'til we arrive at the Faversham after dark.

The club was a step above most other English spaces, with attached restaurant, free internet it was seemingly constructed to actually be a performance space. How uncommon. Backstage was ill-lit and crowded, but had a good talk with the Hipshakes (last-minute add-ons to the gig) before they did their high-energy, mid-Nineties Midwest-style garage punk rock. They're released more records I can keep track of and they will only get better with age.

I stayed backstage for thee Vicars, but was told they ended their set by all piling on top of each other, as if we needed to top it.

The first run of the set was not very good…there's been a weird drop-out on one of the strings on Zack's bass and it happens at the oddest and most infrequent times. Mick bungled the intro to "Underdog" and Zack's mic wasn't on for the intro to "Ode to a Black Man". I think there was a string broken somewhere.

At that point, we could've just as easily dialed it in and I'm sure the crowd would not have known any better. We trudged through and it got easier, but by no means a fantastic performance. We redeemed ourselves with a particularly spirited encore which found both drumsets on the dance floor, facing each other with bass drums abutting, rolling off the lilt of "Granny's Little Chicken" to a suddenly juvenated (there was nothing "re" about it) crowd. We'd salvaged it. Yipee.

Stayed that night at some guest house with Rockdentist crashing on the floor. Woke early for breakfast, was told I was too late. Couldn't find bath towels, only once the front desk handed me some did I see the ones in our room (and why they weren't located in the bathroom is beyond me). Password for the Internet didn't work. They made all of us breakfast late as we'd been misinformed as to the time…I rocked beans and toast and jam and orange juice.

Drive to Minehead would be punctuated by us dropping off former tour manager Louisa at the Sheffield train station, as she'd had tequila the night before and couldn't bring herself to make it to ATP with us like she'd planned. Conversation between Zack and I on the reasoning behind record collecting was spirited and civil.

We arrived at the festival after dark and due to my sleeping habits, I wouldn't see daylight at Minehead at all during my time there. We walked into the main room just in time to hear the 1983 version of the Melvins finish their set. Big Business followed them the inevitable momentum loss of blowing an amp, I enjoyed watching them.

We played next and our performance was, in my opinion, flawless. I think we managed to win over some metalheads, which is always an accomplishment.

After breakdown/load-out, we made way to our respective chalets. I don't know what image that conjures to the British, but for me it means a stand-alone cabin with a quaint fireplace, made of wood, somehow related to skiing. At ATP, your chalet resembles a Super 8 motel, one unit tacked next to another in a long line of ticky-tacky little boxes. Apartment, maybe, chalet…come on.

After a hearty beef stew meal at the artists' food compound, made way to check out the bands. The Locust was completely unlike anything I could ever see myself listening to…with costumes. Isis was equally as uninteresting. The two minutes I watched of White Noise looked not to have any qualities resembling intriguing.

Excited for the Meat Puppets, once they started playing I instantly reminded myself "oh yeah…they're like acid country or something." The highlights, not only of the night, but what I'd assume to be their entire catalog, were "Oh Me", "Plateau", "Backwater" and "Lake of Fire."

Discerning eyes will say "But Ben, those are the only Meat Puppets' songs you know." And to that, I cannot argue. But the reason I know them is because those seem to be only songs of theirs that do not have a 3-minute long, noodle-y guitar breakdown tucked smack dab in the middle of something enjoyable. Those four songs are perfect in their succinct, clear and digestible presentation and I didn't mind sifting through their other (read: long) songs to hear them.

I was encouraged by Coady from the Melvins to come and join Porn onstage for their big, noisy finale…to just grab a drum and just start banging sort of thing. He also passed on the hot tip that Thurston Moore would most likely be joining them as well. Hot shit.

Unluckily, my pass only granted me backstage access (or stage access, I guess) to the big room upstairs while Porn was playing the small room downstairs. I had no way to get ahold of anyone to sneak me in, so instead I watched enviously as Thurston jammed drum sticks underneath his bass strings. Sigh.

I was really geeked to catch Os Mutantes. Once I got upstairs to see them I was immediately smacked with the aura of a bad 1970's Las Vegas review. Lots of flashy costumes, bad sound, possible plastic surgery and music that was completely unfamiliar to me found me lasting no more than four songs. Had I the patience to wait another hour and twenty minutes to see "Bat Macumba" and/or the other hit (or if they just put them earlier in the set) I'm sure I'd have been satisfied. Why Sergio Dias' guitar was not the loudest thing in the mix was also befuddling…his fuzztone single-handedly shook the foundation of the Brazilian establishment in the 1960's. His guitar mixed so low was akin to asking Jimi Hendrix to play acoustic.

Skipped out to the cinema to catch Salo as had been recommended by some friends years ago. Let's just say it's not really a rah-rah party time movie. I watched no more than ten minutes before scooting out of there. Spent the rest of the night watching Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. and Schwartzman in Spun and didn't fall asleep until around 5:45am.

I woke up at 5pm and loved it.

Walked in just in time to catch the Melvins set. What a blistering, bad-ass statement as to who's the boss. They focused mainly on shit from the past two albums, save for a sludge-tastic version of "Eyes Flies", and it really warmed my heart. They owned that stage.

The most fun thing about their set was the rest of the Dirtbombs getting to watch them. Ko and Zack had never seen them before, Pat not in 15 years or so. I honestly wouldn't peg ANY of them to like the show, but when I met up with them it was such an uplift to hear ALL of them gush about how much they loved it. The Dirtbombs, as a band, love the Melvins as a band and unanimously agree that they were the best performance of the weekend.

I was really excited to see the Butthole Surfers. I think most people in the room were, but for anyone who never saw them live the first time around it was probably solely based on Michael Azzerad's genius chapter dedicated to them in "Our Band Could Be Your Life." If ever was a piece of writing that could instantly make one adore a band, that is it.

After reading I searched out their early work religiously and when telling a friend I'd recently gotten into them, received the reply "Are into acid now too?"

They were old and boring live and didn't play any songs I recognized. I was hoping for at "Sweet Loaf" at least, but instead just got bad 80's freak rock. The performance soiled my once-high opinion of them. I wish I had not watched them.

I was equally as unimpressed by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. I didn't think I would recognize any of their songs, but nothing about their performance had the smallest hint of captivation. It was more going-through-the-motions. Lydia Lunch, whom I had perceived to be this razor-sharp, effete queen of the No Wave scene instead came off as a surly, foul-mouthed Jersey housewife cursing out the referee at her son's soccer match.

Back at the Super 8 for dinner (Chinese beef and rice) and spinning records with Rockdentist. Was a good time just laying about not worried about the schedule as there was nothing else that eve I wanted to see, although felt a need to try and check out the Soul Savers with some of the Spiritualized band doing time there.

Instead, I fell asleep. Woke up and Zack, Rockdentist and I ventured to Crazy Horse. En route we were warned of a house gig by a group dubbing themselves Bad Guys, right down the block from our room. The badly British dance party at Crazy Horse was laughable. Points for dropping Saul Williams' "List of Demands" and was cool to chat with Manish from MOJO for a second.

We left quickly, poised to check out the house party. We ran into Jared from the Melvins and told him to follow. By the time we got to the room there were a good Pied Piper amount following. We walked into a solidly packed room where a drummer, guitarist and singer were playing for about twenty people. I was slowly able to get further and further in as people filed out.

I quite liked the music they were playing…the guitarist especially with wicked fuzz leads taking control of it all. After a bit people started to climb in through the window and someone stepped on the plug for the amplifier in doing so, rendering the guitar done for the night.

While dudes fruitlessly tried to fix the plug, someone plugged in an Ipod and started jamming AC/DC. Zack and Jared had climbed through the window at this point and raided the kitchen. Out of nowhere, I feel myself hit by chunks of bread, thrown by those two. More and more people begin to file in through the window and what had started as a full room had quickly turned into a room with absolutely not an extra square foot to move. In a spot that would compare to the size of most people's living room there were roughly thirty freaks, just waiting for something.

Zack and Jared then began throwing handfuls of corn flakes. It seemed to degenerate into complete mayhem at that point. The drummer from Torche had commandeered the kit and began pounding out a crowd-riling rhythm that, when coupled with the background noise of the Ipod, found the room erupt into full-fledged chaos.

People crowd surfing with their bodies mere inches from the ceiling, falling into the drums, any available liquid poured onto the drum skins for maximal mid-Eighties metal video effects, taking long swigs from bottles of booze handed to them by random strangers, immediately vomiting said booze…it was so retarded and exciting and foreign at the same time that all I could do was sit there wide-eyed, smiling, enjoying the absurdity of it all.

After a spell (was it twenty minutes? Forty-five?) it became apparent that this drum explosion would continue whether it actually should or not and our crew dispersed from the scene. I guess it would be another half-hour or so before security would finally show up and shut the thing down. Rumor was that the guys were even saying "Yeah, just come back in ten minutes, we'll have the party going again."

My time spent in the middle of that anarchy was the most fun I'd have the whole weekend and probably my entire year of touring.

With van call at 5am we didn't have much time after the house party to do much else. We packed our bags and said goodbye to Rockdentist as we filed down the long, confusing route to the van. Looking through the window of the party room as we passed by was a handful of the Bad Guys dudes surveying the damages to a table and trying to prop it up so as to hopefully momentarily fool someone into thinking everything was the norm.

Zack had apparently stopped to take photos through some windows and got separated from the rest of the group. Instead of searching us out he went back to our room and waited for us to grab him there. This took about 15 minutes in the 5am freeze. Once we'd gathered our stray little sheep, it was in the van for the interminable drive/ferry to Rotterdam.

All Tomorrow's Parties Part One: Nighting Irish...

The flights over to London were effortless. Despite the layover in Chicago (I hate indirect flights overseas) we were rewarded with a half-full flight and none of us had to sit next to each other, or anyone else for that matter. I watched most of "The Love Guru" and can't help but contemplate how much Mike Myers' star has fallen.

Baggage and customs went off almost too easily…as if someone was making everything particularly carefree in hopes of sneaking up on us and suddenly requiring us to do calculus equations before allowed entry into the country. Easily found Matthew, our new tour manager over here, and made way to the storage space in Finchley to pick up our equipment.

The dark, dank garage is just as I remembered it…dark and dank. We had trouble remembering what gear, particularly guitar amplifiers, we'd used back in June, but figured that out fairly easily. Of more concern and importance was availability of only one drum set. We'd distinctly left two sets of drums and two assortments of hardware and now there was merely one. We'd later find out the problem, so often the person I look to point a finger at when things go sour in my life: Ben Swank.

So despite Swank's having taken the drums we'd planned on using we sorted things out. Matthew offered up the use of a drum set that was just sitting at his house. Seeing as we had to go back to his home in Sheffield anyway to pick up our merch, this was a relatively quick and easy solve. On our way there, Matthew asks if we like Vitamin Water.

"Yeah, why do you ask?"

"Well, I've got about ten cases of it stacked up in my living room"

With the reality of not having to pay to pay for any V-dubs for the next two weeks it became apparent very early on that Matthew rules.

From his crib in Sheffield to the streets of Bangor and Royal Tandoori curry restaurant. I indulged in chicken korma and garlic nan bread and 'twas heavenly. Pat commented that his chicken tikka masala was the best he'd ever had. We all lay heavy, heavy praise at their doorstep.

We'd crash that night at the Travelodge in Holyhead. Zack and I inexplicably found ourselves watching Samuel L. Jackson's film "SWAT" and after a brief period were physically unable to change the channel. Upon the film's climactic end (SPOILER ALERT: the good guys win) I doze off into dreamland around 11pm.

I awake again at 3:30am and will not be able to fall back asleep before we leave at 7:30am. I lay and stare at the ceiling for an hour, spend another two writing and killing time on my laptop, then spend another hour hoping I may at least get some ounce of sleep before we shove off on the early morning ferry.

I would get no sleep and the ferry would be very anticlimactic, other than Pat's mild hallucinations from the motion of the waves. We arrived in Dublin about 11am with ample time to kill and I led Pat and Zack to the string of record shops I remember finding when in town with Stoltz back in 2006.

I dig Euro shops and their propensity for stocking bootlegs. I thought long and hard about a 2xLP Nirvana boot Seattle Sound Sounds Great (who's name had weirdly been in my heard during part of my two hours of staring at the ceiling the previous evening) but decided against it as I couldn't see myself listening to the thing more than once. But the idea of a vinyl bootleg, to me, seems so counter-intuitive and backwards that I couldn't help but feel like I NEEDED to have it.

I also passed on the bootleg pressing of the White Stripes "Jolene" 7" as I thought 15 euro was a lot to be handing over to out-and-out pirates.

We walked up the block and found ourselves eating at Gallagher's Boxty House. I'd commented that I'd wanted to have some traditional Irish food, Pat recommended the trad seven course meal (a six-pack of Guinness and a potato) but instead we mange on boxty's. I'd understood them to be sort of like a burrito or a crepe…I ordered the Gaelic boxty and that had steak and mushrooms in some rich gravy-type sauce.

The confusing part for me was that the "boxty" bread or pancake or whatever you want to call it, was merely folded over and placed on top of the meat. Nothing was stuffed inside, it wasn't cooked all at once and frankly, its taste didn't seem to match up with its 20 euro price tag.

Unsatisfied, I reluctantly asked for the dessert menu. The sticky toffee pudding was calling my name…not only does the acronym "STP" rule when used for anything other than in-hindsight shitty 1990's alternative bands, but each word individually is something I really enjoy, so coupled together, it was a no-brainer.

Served with a dollop of cream and a side of ice cream, this hot structure of some bread/toffee concoction with a wisp of sugary sauce zig-zagged over it was, by far, the richest and most delectable dessert that I have had in the past ten months of touring. It clearly made up for the lackluster boxty and I wished that I had just ordered three servings of STP as I would've been a much more satisfied customer.

Pat didn't like his boxty either, but his cheese plate dessert, like my STP, also remedied his insufficient main course. Zack got grilled onions/mushrooms and soda bread and enjoyed that just fine.

Feeling invigorated by the glorious end to my meal, I marched back to Borderline Records and ponied up the plastic to get that bootleg Stripes single. Good food can make one change their position on just about anything, don't you think?

Checked into the hotel at 2pm and because the official check-in time was 3pm, had to pay a 10 euro service charge which makes absolutely no sense. The room is sitting there, empty, ready for us to use, what is the reason for charging an extra fee for us to get in there? I call bullshit on you Travelodge of Dublin.

With only one room ready at that time, the four of us in the band who hadn't invented garage rock took to the two twin beds pushed together and crashed hardcore. I thought it was a pretty funny example of how beat we all were, all four of us in a row, konked out, no regard or care for how little room there was to be shared between the mattresses…we'd truly reached a state of extreme comfort (or ambivalence) towards/with each other.

Soundcheck at Whelan's was the most comfortable I've felt while playing drums in recent memory. The tension of the heads, the timbre of their strike, the resonance of their decay…it all sounded (and more importantly FELT) perfect.

Chilled upstairs for a spell before hanging with Sean Earley and crew and shooting the shit. Sean had so graciously designed and printed posters for the Dublin and Galway shows and seemed pretty excited about the gig. I didn't watch the Real Junk before us, but by the time we took the stage there was a sizeable, amped crowd ready for our jam.

We played a tad sloppy. Mick broke a string during the first song and we all seemed to be suffering from some slight disconnect. As if that insight even matters because the crowd loved the shit out of the show. There was a clear affinity for songs off Ultraglide and with the only other time we'd played town being in 2002 I guess it made sense.

Zack took a magnificent spill while standing on top of Pat's bass drum during the breakdown in "Candyass" and we all had a hearty laugh at him taking out a good portion of Pat's kit, but not before Pat moved out of the way to avoid injury and then quickly reassembled the mangled bits to come in right where he was supposed to. It was almost, dare I say, poetic.

Encored with "Can't Stop Thinking About It" and "Granny's Little Chicken" and once I brought my drums onto the main floor it seemed I could do no wrong with the crowd. They adored every last thing I could muster, whether hearty two-handed snare slams posturing as a drum solo or fumbly attempts at Bonham-sized tom flams those Irish freaks made me feel like I was Gene Krupa.

After show I felt no twinge of tiredness and instead cruised the internet for a couple of hours. An email from mom hipped me to some weird celestial happenings in regards to Venus and the gibbous moon and with nothing else better to do at 5:30am, I put my shoes on in hopes of finding those heavenly bodies amidst the orange glow of Dublin street lamps.

Up and down the street, foraying into an alley or too all proved fruitless. Back at the hotel and roof access was apparently restricted by "Emergency-Only" alarmed doors. I ventured to a section of our floor that was under renovation and snuck into an eerily empty open-doored room with hopes of scoping the moon from the window. I had to precariously climb over some boxes and tools to even get to the window, but had no luck in finding any special skyward occurances.

I guess the point of it all was that at least I'd tried. I've never really shown interest in eclipses or anything of that sort, but as I hope is clearly apparent by reading here, more often than not it's the journey, not the destination, that you remember.

TVOTR Part Ten: Finale...

Arrival at Jupiter Hotel was late and through some possibly illegal methods, I discover that the Breeders are lodging there that evening as well.

The Ben Blackwell of 2002 in this situation would have shit his pants followed immediately by the cleaning of said shit pants and a surreptitious casing of the joint to find which room Kim Deal was staying in. Once I determined what room, I would nervously stare at its door for a half-hour before slipping a Dirtbombs CD accompanied by a hand-written note underneath. My heart rate would rise. I would feel like I'd accomplished something.

The Ben Blackwell of 2008 was tired and went to sleep.

Woke up early to enjoy as many of the Portland delights as possible. Voodoo Donuts delivered with its trusty, yummy morning goodness (a cruller and a bacon-covered maple log) and an exploratory visit into Powell's was nice and quick and left me prepared for later.

Would spend time walking dogs and waiting in the parking lot of BMW repair shop to finish the replacement of a broken headlight all while sitting on the concrete and discussing the individualistic perils and pet peeves of the touring musician. Grilled cheese lunch at the restaurant attached to the Jupiter was sufficient.

After lunch I was dropped off at Powell's. I picked up three books in the 33 1/3rd series…DAYDREAM NATION, KICK OUT THE JAMS and the self-titled Ramones record. I also got a book about the cultural history of blue jeans, another about the influx of amateur content creators and the supposed negative effect it's having on culture, vis a vis blogs and other new media (a text Mick dubbed "reactionary"), the thick, non-Stevie Chick Sonic Youth bio and a New York Times almanac-type tome called their "Guide to Essential Knowledge."

Was surprised they did not have a copy of Sugrue's ORIGIN OF THE URBAN CRISIS and still need to grab a copy for myself.

Walked to Berbati's for soundcheck and after that partook in a healthy debate about documentarians and their possible love/detachment from their subjects, in regards to people like Rodney King, Errol Morris, Michael Moore and others. After an entire month of relentless Ian Mackaye, vegan, straight-edge and "new guy in the band" barbs, it took my questioning of Zack's pronunciation of "Truman Capote" (which, to me, sounded like "Truman Compote") for him to finally go off.

It seems the hazing is finally complete.

Little Claw opened and was glad to see them. Wasn't expecting the violin and wish there were a tad more people to see them, but I enjoyed it and that's all that matters. Didn't watch as much of Eat Skull as I should've, but it seemed like the line-up was, barring one person, completely different from the one I'd seen in Detroit in September.

While not expecting much from the show I think all of us in the band were pleasantly surprised. It seemed the crowd in Portland had come to dance. Such is a beautiful sight from the stage. We'd forgotten that when headlining our own shows, as opposed to opening for other groups, people actually know what they're in for and have showed up (usually) expressly for your performance. It's a nice thing to be reminded of every once in awhile.

While loading out after the show made my second trip of the day to Voodoo Donuts and bought an Old Dirty Bastard…a chocolate donut with bits of Oreo cookie on top and some peanut butter (as a topping? Filling? I cannot remember) and it might be the best donut I've had there yet. Zack was excited about vegan donuts available at 2am.

Breakfast the next morn at the hotel restaurant was scrumptious and crowded and still left me with an overwhelming desire to play the Doug Fir lounge downstairs. Made a third visit to Powell's after that and bought 33 1/3's IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA.

Drove straight to the club, Chop Suey, in Seattle and enjoyed the fact that I could order Chinese food from a little kitchen situated inside the club. I thought the meal was tasty but my bowels seemed to disagree a little while later. Has anyone ever followed these "eat right for your blood type" recommendations? Just now in life I've begun to realize that particular foods have an adverse effect on my insides and that maybe I could prevent it.

Didn't watch the opening acts and instead spent time catching up with Henry from Chunklet who happened to be in town promoting his new book "The Rock Bible." We, as a band, bought four copies. Ko had apparently already received one for free. He also came up with the single best Zach joke yet.

Q: What's the difference between a straight-edge vegan and a bucket of shit?

A: You can at least party with a bucket of shit.

This after having met Zach for all of five minutes.

The show in Seattle was even more good-time-dancing-fun-vibes. For the encore I brought my drums onto the floor and riled up the crowd with pale (Dale) Crover imitations. To end it all, I grabbed my floor tom and threw it head-side down onto my ride cymbal, intending to puncture the drum skin with an exciting boom. While it failed to "boom" as much as I would've liked, I made a quick exit and went to catch my breath backstage.

While sitting backstage I heard pained moans coming from the hallway. Henry, standing halfway in the door showed signs of genuine revulsion on his face and then whispered, "There's a lot of blood" to me.

As it happened, one of the workers at Chop Suey was right there with me when I'd brought my drums into the crowd to make sure no one would fuck with my set. With split-second imprecision, he managed to slide his hand between my floor tom and ride cymbal as I was marrying the two in unholy bliss.

I ventured out into the hallway and there was an adequate amount of blood…way less than Henry'd led me to believe. The tip of his forefinger was just barely still attached. He was given a cup of ice to shove said digit into in preparation for reattaching it. I was freaked out but clearly not as much as the guy who was losing blood. I apologized and asked if there was anything I could do for him, but he seemed in genuine shock and other than telling me not to worry about it, didn't have anything else to say to me.

His bosses said the club would pay for the emergency room visit and his co-workers said if he played his cards right he could get workman's comp. After he was whisked away I got everyone in the band to autograph an LP for him and everyone wrote top-notch, witty and heartfelt inscriptions to the guy. We left him a t-shirt too. I didn't know what else we could do. I truly hope he's alright and I hope he doesn't mind that I don't plan on washing his blood off my bass drum.

Met Kim from the Dutchess and the Duke backstage and went totally fanboy gushing about how much I loved everything that band has done. She was humble and gracious and almost caught off-guard about how much I liked her "faggot-y folk band." When her and Dean from the Stoltz band were looking for beer after closing time, it was an honor for me to buy them a six-pack from the bar, as two finer people in Seattle you will not meet.

Stayed at the Crowne Plaza hotel and were charged $34 to park the van overnight.

Next morn was a requisite trip to the downtown Guitar Center (me: snare wires and floor tom head, Pat: crash cymbal, others: don't know) and then plunked down the big money for a meal from Whole Foods. I focused on dessert with cheese cake AND bread pudding. My main course was orange peel chicken on a bed of rice with some tofu thrown in for kicks. I ate both desserts and barely half of the rest and with a Odwalla I'd spent approximately $21 on lunch. Damn.

Showed up in Misssoula to find that the Badlander is the same room I knew as the Ritz where the infamous Jack White birthday riot went down back in 2001. Luckily, new ownership meant there would be no repeat of that night's shenanigans.

Local openers Rooster Sauce and Victory Smokes were exactly what I'd expected of bands from Missoula. The Sauce even premiered the video for their song "Snakeskin Monkey" this night and that too was everything I'd expected for a self-produced music video for a band from Missoula.

The stage was particularly small and coupled with not having played the town in over four years found us with an absolutely manic crowd completely up-front and in our faces. What upon booking felt like an unnecessary roadblock on our route home would prove to be the best of our headlining shows of this run…all the genuine excitement and dancing of Seattle and Portland increased tenfold and Missoula, despite what one may think, proved it can rock with the best of them. The encore was Zach's first-ever shot at "Granny's Little Chicken" and that devolved into Ko, Mick and I jiving in the crowd (Ko playing fuzz while I balanced her on my shoulders for a spell) and it ALL ended with me saying into the mic "Happy fucking birthday Jack."

The route back to Detroit would prove daunting. The first day of driving found us getting gas across the street from, I shit you not, a place with signage declaring it a used COW lot. Being the beginning of hunting season and Montana being kind-of a hunting state, it was fairly common to find ourselves driving behind a pick-up truck with 12 deer legs just sticking up in the air with the bodies completely obscured from sight. Most establishments had signs saying hunters were not allowed to bring their guns inside and I couldn't imagine why that even needed to be said.

We later stopped at a gas station that happened to be on an Indian reservation and it was one of the more depressing places we'd been in recent memory. The Kentucky Fried Chicken there carried only a bare-bones menu (scuttling my plans to rock a Famous Bowl) and the cash register sported a hand-written sign saying, in pen, "No credit cards…machine is messed up." The chicken strips were more breading than chicken and there were no fewer than three public service posters in view touting the dangers of methamphetamine use.

At the same time, Zach made a sullen declaration of not being able to dream in this establishment and after a suitable pause, pointed to the window of the gift shop completely filled with dream catchers and said "They just keep getting caught over there." There was a picturesque sunset and across the street was an advertisement for "Cuts-the-Hair." Weird, weird times.

That evening found us staying in Chamberlain, South Dakota. We'd GPS'd a Days Inn at the exit, but noticed the West River Inn and Suites offering 24-hour pool and spa. As frequent lodgers, this is not an everyday offer, and as night owls, it was an something we had to take them up on.

The hotel didn't appear to be a chain but it was clean and comfortable and very, very inviting. While making my way to the pool, Zach said the lady at the front desk said to let her know if we'd be swimming, as she would then turn the lights off for us. Having no idea what this meant I failed to notify her and instead just walked down to the pool by myself.

The indoor, heated pool and hot tub were accented not only by a stereo system that was playing light house music (and later, breezy classical) but by a second floor reminiscent of a projection booth with no less than three club-quality lighting systems in full-effect. We had managed to find the only 24-hour disco pool in all the world and it was in South Dakota.

After requisite hand-stands and underwater stretching I made way to the hot tub and marinated in there. There was no reason a place like this should exist, yet I was reveling in it. The thin, green laser lights coalescing into a circuit of geometric patterns was particularly spellbinding.

After ample time boiling in the tub I made back into the pool and stood in the middle, motionless, focusing on the colors and patterns the lights formed on the floor of the pool, benefiting from the unpredictable refraction caused by the still, chlorinated four feet of water. This is as close as I come to getting stoned, meditating or finding any other higher state of (un)consciousness.

(I later surmised that the only logical reason to have such a set up for a pool was that they probably host orgies there)

Having been away from home for so long, we'd planned to drive the remaining fifteen hours back to Detroit while only stopping for food, gas and pee breaks. And through the remainder of South Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois this proved fine. It wasn't until we'd reached Indiana that shit got messy.

We reached a portion on I-94 where the road was just closed…all cars being forced to exit and most of them winding up at a Flying J Travel Plaza trying to plan alternate routes. Our GPS system helped us to get to the next open entrance ramp and once back on the freeway we were literally in a caravan on a road that was a sheet of ice with a flashing-lights police cruiser as the pace car.

While the icy conditions of the road became somewhat less daunting, the snow storm at that point had reached white-out conditions just around our crossing of the Michigan border. It was a nightmare…all of us had hopes of sleeping in our own beds that night and with home not even three hours away we could almost taste it. At the same time, we could not see more than a couple of feet ahead of our van in these conditions.

None of us wanted to stop, yet we all knew there was no other option.

We exited in Sawyer, Michigan and got rooms at the Super 8. Once checked in Zack (he of hole in his canvas shoe) and I trudged through the snow to eat at the 24-hour Country Pride restaurant at the truck stop across the street. At this point, the snow had ceased.

With nothing but time we had a long, languorous meal/conversation before heading back to grab some sleep. We'd all agreed to leave at 8am as getting home earlier was getting home better.

7:50 rolls around…Zack opens the curtains and coldly says "Fucking hell."

It seemed since we'd fallen asleep another four inches of snow had fallen. Thoughts of not making it home THAT day briefly entered my mind and I trembled. We loaded the van and Pat skillfully and cautiously maneuvered the van through more blizzard and icy road conditions until that spot where I-94 jags eastbound and we were free from the immobilizing grip of lake-effect snow. We would be home in no time and home ain't no time at all.

TVOTR Part Nine: We Are Apparently Pimps and Prostitutes Too...

We stopped at some desert town on the Grapevine. Woke up in the morning and paid the one-armed man at Subway before hitting Starbucks for a milkshake that they besmirch by with the name Frappuccino.

The Warfield is a dignified place of performance and everything ran smoothly, bar Pat in a shouting match with some club worker about the guestlist. For our last show with TVOTR we played strong and floor-tom in-the-crowd/deconstructionist-stage-load-out seemed to really impress the crowd.

While cleaning out my bag in our dressing room between sets I happened upon a handful of "Fart Bombs" I'd bought at a corner store in Providence. Having not utilized any of the ammunition on the entire trip, I figured then was as good a time as any.

I cracked the bag of chemical as sealed in a gaudy mylar packaging. The two previously separated substances would soon join and commingle in an unholy pong. After starting the process, I blindly tossed the packet into the adjoining room. It landed at Mick's feet, he surveyed it curiously and it erupted with an inauspicious "pop" in his face.

While I would in any other circumstance consider myself a tomfooler of the utmost caliber, I can, with the joy of hindsight, offer that stinkbombing your own dressing room is a faux pas as gauche as recreating a silent film-era slapstick and having the protagonist slip on a plantain peel.

Everyone backstage from the TV on the Radio dudes, our guests, the security guards and the somewhat abrasive Jon Dwyer all found time to comment on the overpowering stench. It was clearly in bad form on my behalf, but, to be fair, I made sure to sit there throughout the tang's duration rather than escape to more fragrant pastures.

Joined TVOTR for their encore with the rest of the Dirtbombs and reveled in the massive percussive happening. Snuck out without saying goodbye to most and after-the-fact felt it was a tad impolite.

Ko would find herself on Danzig's tour bus later that evening. Clearly she wins.

The next day would prove to be a scheduling miracle…a day off in San Francisco, the likes of which we'd only dreamt of. Staying with Kelley Stoltz and he'd bought me half-a-dozen donuts as he revels in the fact that they're my breakfast food of choice. We met up with Mick and made time cruising the shops on Valencia.

After stocking up on postcards at the McSweeney's storefront, gawking at the taxidermy next door at Paxton's Gate and picking up a package containing a Kevin Ayers' solo record at Stoltz's PO box we made our way to the myriad of record shops in the Haight.

First to Rooky Ricardo's…I stocked up on pins of old record labels (Fortune, Palmer, others) and bought an LP that was visually reminiscent of the first Stripes' album cover. From there to some other record shop where I bought nothing, then onward to Amoeba, the temple.

Bought CD copy of the Dion album that was recommended as "sounds like Spiritualized" (produced by Phil Spector), the Cool Kids full-length, used copy of the Langley Schools CD, the Figures of Light CD (FINALLY!) and possibly other things that've since slipped my mind. Had good chats with all the requisite employees too…Tom Lynch, Shayde Sartin, Brock Whateverhislastnameis.

From there to Burma Superstar. Crowded as all get-out on a Monday night, this grub was the real deal. The tea leaf salad was enjoyed by vegan, vegetarian and real-people alike at our table. I personally delighted in my Nan Gyi Dok. Dining with Stoltz and his star-power found us enjoying complimentary dessert. The establishment gets utmost praise from all in our dining party.

Then down the street to Green Apple Books…I finally cross the LP copy of Beck's Mutations with bonus 7" and issue #6 of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern off my audio and literary want lists, respectively.

We spent downtime at a bar and caught up with various Stoltz band members while watching assorted sports highlights.

Stoltz drove us up to a hill overlooking the whole of San Francisco, a twinkling vista that made the burg seem smaller more than anything else. Zack and I soaked it in with Kel while Mick talked on the phone.

Back at Stoltz's to enjoy his "spatially inappropriate" Altec movie theater speakers and original pressings of Revolver and Black Monk Time.

The next morn we pick up Mick and him and Kel chow fish tacos while I'd early indulged in leftover donuts.

We then hit up Grooves, Kel's place of employment. I scored vinyl copies of the Flat Duo Jets' Go Go Harlem Baby and a mono copy of Mitch Ryder's Take a Ride LP. I also won some cool knick-knacks in the old-style crane-game in the shop…a slide whistle and a miniature cast of Nipper, the RCA Records logo dog.

From there back to the Haight to Groove Merchant Records that'd been closed on Monday. I got a Lorri Randolph 45 on Tri-Phi and a peculiar single by a band called Water Melon that's rambunctious weird '69-'70 rock with organ and the side "African Song" kills. After that we eat at a Pakistani (?) place in the Mission, on the same block as the Kil-o-Watt. Naan bread delicious, the rest of my meal not terribly so.

Big plan for the eve was a pizza party at Mike Gabriel's. Having attended one before, I knew what fun I was in for. Mike and his gal Jen prep with pre-portioned slabs of dough and assorted topping possibilities. Each person takes a turn assembling their own ideal pie and the rest of the party samples it with the requisite critique, ribbing and general good-hearted fun. The dough and I weren't getting along, but I still stand by my prime "How-To" example of a pepperoni pizza. Lots of stories told, records listened to and a general appreciation of life was shared by all.

Next morning Mick and I spent approximately 45 seconds inside Revolver (our distributor) to pick up copies of We Have You Surrounded on CD and LP. This is a new record as trips here usually become protracted bouts of scouring the racks for long-forgotten or mis-filed gems.

Slowly met up with the rest of the band and soon made our way out of the city.

After hours of driving and the lavatorial needs of one and the lodging needs of all was best squelched by a stop at a PETRO truck stop in Medvale, just inside the Oregon border. I made quick way to the bathroom, followed shortly thereafter by Pat who says "Ben…you should buy a "Greatest Hits" CD."

"Why?" I respond.

"Just do it," he says with a smile.

As I head back toward the register, I see a cardboard CD display case for the "Playlist: The Very Best of…" series of green-friendly repackaging of certain Sony-related artists' greatest hits. On top of the four-foot display was a mini billboard topper, listing the series title and its affordable $9.98 price. But neither the name nor the price could obscure the mind-boggling jaw-drop of seeing a picture of THE DIRTBOMBS on this advertisement.

Mick spotted it first. He was buying something at the register when his eyes caught the picture (one of our silhouette promo shots for...Surrounded) and he just stood there dumbfounded. When pressed by the cashier, Mick flipped the whole display around for the worker to see and said, "You'll never believe this…but that's ME!"

Zack nimbly negotiated the exchange of one CD copy of …Surrounded for the portion of the unit depicting his bandmates while we all just sat there kinda befuddled. No, they were not selling any Dirtbombs records at the stop. No, the records were not bootleg. No, no one in the band or at the label or even the photog had signed off on this.

We made a pledge to stop at any more PETRO's we saw the rest of the trip (with hopes of procuring more of the ads) and we saw not a one. A call to our record label and a call from him to friends in the photo licensing biz were encouraging, but apparently without the Sony logo anywhere on our visage, we've apparently been pimped without hope of retribution.

So here's a call to you faithful readers: If anyone can shed ANY light on this situation, if you know who does the layouts for the "Playlist" in-store advertising, if you find any more instances of this pic


at PETRO (or other) truckstop CD displays, if you steal/buy/barter for its possession or can just simply explain what-the-fuck is going on, please let us know and you will be rewarded HANDSOMELY by the band.

It's not that I don't like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash or Heart…it's just that I never in a million truckstops thought that the band's picture (and to a degree, my image) would be used to shill products without any regard for consent or permission. Does this mean we're big time? Once we start getting screwed over? Surreal does not even begin to describe the situation. Two weeks later and it's still completely flummoxing and aggravating all at the same time.

At the same stop, Ko was utilizing the free WiFi to try and book hotels for the night. With our sights set on Portland, we'd discussed just straight booking rooms at the Jupiter Hotel, but with their quoted price as $150 per room, per night, we decided to take our chances with Priceline.

When the $60 per room, per night option for a 2 1/2 star hotel near downtown and the convention center popped up, we were a bit skeptical. Two and a half stars? Really? The luxury of the stay would be not having to check out the first morning…oh what a deep, restful luxury it is. We threw caution to the wind, booked it and were elated to find out we'd been placed at none other than…the Jupiter Hotel.

You win this round Shatner.

Interstitial: Dirtbombs Propaganda from Recent Times...

To tide y'all over until I get some more writing done.

First, from our in-store at Amoeba SF back in May. Two thoughts after I viewed this:
1: Tom Lynch conducts conducts (possibly) the best Dirtbombs interview ever

and

2. During this performance, more often than not, we look completely bored onstage

http://www.amoeba.com/live-shows/videos/dirtbombs.html


Second, Mick and I got interviewed by Jesse Thorn of "The Sound of Young America" which may or may not be syndicated by your local public radio station. I get to geek out on the Gories, which is fun. Listen to it here:

http://earideas.com/earideas/explore/show/58505/The+Dirtbombs

TVOTR Part Eight: A Police Situation...

Wake-up in post-election happiness. Breakfast at Auntie Em's in Eagle Rock and owner/operator/former Red Aunt Terri Wahl comps the meal. Mick and I then did a solid interview for the Sound of Young America radio show, a nationally syndicated program that we've actually listened to in the van before. With downtime after that we hit Amoeba Records in Hollywood. I feel equally ashamed and proud in saying that I bought nothing there.

Headlining the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa ain't too shabby. After soundcheck we ate at the Mexican place next door. It was decent. From there, we ventured to the Borders up the road. When touring, a Borders or Barnes and Noble is the equivalent of "goal" in a game of tag. It's somewhere you can go and relax without fear of reprisals or persecution. Each and every one of these chain locations feels the same as the others and thus, in the grand scheme of things, vaguely familiar. We easily kill an hour there without even noticing.

Opening band Pistolero wasn't to my liking. But with Starlite Desperation as the middle band I was quite geeked. I hadn't seen them in about four years and their newest material on both Don't Do Time and Take It Personally stacks up to their best work in my opinion.

They opened with "Spirit Army" and I dug it, slinky bassline and all. They'd play one old tune, "Our Product" off their first 7" and dedicated it to me. Watching them play makes me feel like I'm still a senior in high school and Go Kill Mice was played to death/witnessed live that year more than you'd care to believe. Someday, maybe even here, I'll recall the days of hanging out at their crib on Commonwealth. What strange, strange days.

With a small hole in my floor tom head I asked Jeff from Starlite if I could borrow his floor tom. He said he was planning to leave during our set, that he had to be up early the next morning…and then just offered me his floor tom head. Dude literally gave me the head off his tom. It doesn't get any deeper than that for drummers.

Any detractive comments about our performance clearly stemmed from confusion between bandmates about doing our "headliner" set or our "opener" set. We'd agreed on an amended "opener" set beforehand but certain band members fell into "headliner" actions. This was, for all intents and purposes, completely unnoticeable to the audience.

Trying to get myself into "Start the Party" I'd accidentally biffed myself in the corner of my right eye with my drumstick. So hard that I managed to throw myself off the beat and have to play most of the song with my both my eyes closed…equal parts coping mechanism for the excruciating pain and hope that my eyeball would stay inside my ocular cavity. I was surprised there was no blood.

Drive back to LA to crash at the label HQ in Eagle Rock. I grab the couch, as I always do there, and it becomes a vague point of contention in the band. Pat asks why I always get the couch and I don't have a reason, just that I do. Never mind the fact that I claimed it first that night. It would not have been an issue had there been anything more than floor space available that night. Tired, I kinda snapped at him…told him he was free to find a hotel or someone else's place to stay that night, that no one was making him sleep on the floor. He responded acquiesced with "I'm just tired" to which I countered "I know Pat. We all are."

We were able to take the next day lazy…doing laundry, showering, loading mp3's into our laptops, enjoying the unfailing California sunshine and just generally relaxing before heading to the Wiltern around 6pm.

We were excited because catering was still up AND we got our $10 buy-outs. This never happens. We loaded up on the "make-your-own-fajitas" and cookies and ice cream as if we hadn't seen food in days. The thing with a catered club is that you have to view it that way…like you'll never see food again.

Our set, by all accounts, killed. With Larry from In the Red and Dale from the Melvins as the two people who've seen 100% of our Los Angeles area shows in our career in agreement, we clearly won over many people in the crowd. I feel confident in saying we could not have played a better show.

Afterwards we hung backstage and chatted with friends from Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Rainn Wilson was there and Ko apparently thinks he's kinda weird.

Back to Larry's and to a comfortable night on the couch outside of Detroit that I've spent the most time on. Woke in the morning with and extreme lack of plans and responsibilities. Ate lunch at the Oinkster…chocolate malt and pastrami sandwich was delightful. Relented and finally did some laundry, having lasted just about a month without having to. Made plans for dinner with my buddy Josh. Larry, also with plans for dinner, put on the new Beefheart reissue It Comes to You in a Brown Paper Bag and we sat in his living room chatting leisurely.

I see what appears to be a spotlight searching around Larry's street. We then realize we've been hearing a helicopter overheard for a bit of time. It then becomes clear there is some sort of situation. Out in his backyard we hear from the chopper "Please surrender and give up your weapons."

I was half-hoping to hear them say "We have you surrounded."

Larry lives right at a "T" of two streets, with one end marked off with police tape and the other two blocked by police cars with their flashing lights. Despite all of this, he figured he'd be able to leave without a hitch. As he walked to his car he was informed that not only was he not able to leave, but that he wasn't even supposed to be outside his house.

According to the police officer, there were people in the neighborhood with weapons and the police couldn't find them.

We sat, metaphorical prisoners. Larry finally told his date to just come and pick him up and while they didn't let her past the police line, they did let Larry walk up the street toward the safe zone, but only if he would walk on the opposite side of the street.

We'd later find out that there was a car chase in the neighborhood and that the perps crashed the vehicle and scattered. The cops nabbed one of the suspects but the other was loose, so they blocked off the neighborhood and slowly combed through each block searching for him. I do not know if he was apprehended or not.

I managed to sneak out of the abode the same way Larry did and Josh and I hit up Local (the name of the restaurant and not an indicator of it's caloric content) in Echo Park for grub. I'm told the premise of the restaurant is that everything is made from fresh, local ingredients. I had the braised lamb tips and it was alright, but mainly had me wondering who in the hell is raising lamb in the city? The lemonade was clearly fresh, but too tart for my taste. I did find myself completely floored by their apple-cream chesse-caramel-sea salt hot desert…that dish totally made the meal.

From there we went back to Josh's crib and shot the shit, connecting over the fact that we both owned the same weird Mudhoney t-shirt when we were teenagers (with the band depicted on a TV set on the front and fake TV Guide listings on the reverse). Josh showed me the missing chord to "Cold Brains" that'd been bugging me for a couple of years, all while a video of him backing Beck back in 2003 played on the television.

Our buddy Steve came over and 3/4's of the band Kore Krew was in full-effect. There's unreleased recordings of us that, if Steve ever gets off his ass, might even be worth releasing. Called it a night and searching for Steve's car on the street for about 20 minutes was kinda hilarious.

Steve dropped me off back at Larry's, but not before taking me to the 7-11 in Eagle Rock, where for the third night in a row, I bought a pink-frosted donut with sprinkles. I think said donuts contain crack, as I was fucking hooked on these things like schadenfreude enthusiasts to Amy Winehouse.

We left from Larry's the next afternoon, but not before I worked out a trade for his out-of-print Cotton Museum 10" that was high atop my want list. Drive to San Diego seemed quicker and easier than usual.

The show that eve was a birthday party for a local radio station with two more bands on the bill than we're used to on the TVOTR/DBOMBS chuckwagon. We would be the second band. Noticing that TVOTR's soundcheck ran a little late, I figured there was no way we'd even get a chance to soundcheck, so I walked up the street to the mall.

The only store I'd visit was Levi's. While still never having bought a new pair of them in my life, I still always give them a chance. They had Orange Tab reissues that were absent when I visited my sister's store in Chicago, so I took the bait and took a pair of skinny fit and a pair of flares, both 36x32, to the dressing room.

The skinny fit was almost a joke on my end…with the circumference of one of my thighs hovering around that of a moderate-sized oak tree, there's hardly a "cut" that can diminish their impact. But after I found the flares were GASP, baggy and I contemplated the benefits of diversifying my blue jean reserves, no doubt inspired by an article I'd just read in GQ. $80 later and I'm the proud/confused owner of a new pair of Levis slim fit Orange Tab jeans. Weird.

While in line at Levis I got a call that it was time to soundcheck. Unexpectedly, TVOTR's tour manager had thrown some weight to get us the luxury so I hoofed it quickly back to the club and marveled at the monitor engineer walking around barefoot with the most vile, gouted, purple, misshapen feet I'd ever seen. Gross.

Zack and I walked up the street to Pokez for burritos that were offensively large. It is my hope with the new administration in Washington that someone steps up and puts and end to burrito inflation. I don't think, with our economy in the state that it is, that we can afford to keep making these things the size of one of Jupiter's more substantial moons. Zack wants me to mention that I could not even finish mine and that it should be a source of pride for Pokez. If he has any other input he can start his own blog.

Opening band was made up of DJ's from the sponsoring radio station, including John "Speedo" Reis of Rocket From the Crypt/Swami Records notoriety. They did all covers and I didn't quite know what to make of it…song selection was good with VU, the Who, Elvis Costello and other hip choices. Mick came out and sang "I Wanna Be Your Dog" as their final number and the rest of us D'bombs commented on how easy it is to forget what a commanding frontman the guy is.

Being in the unfavorable 2nd of four bands slot, we came at it with a bit of spite, not at any particular person, but just the situation. Thankfully, it translated, the crowd dug it and when I threw my floor tom from the audience back onto the stage and it unpredictably landed perfectly balanced on top of my bass drum (a feat of skill that could not be matched if I tried to replicate it a thousand times) I knew that the gods were on our side that night.

The third band (the generally inoffensive Delta Spirit) was clearly daunted by their spot on the bill. The fun thing was with us having to make it to San Fran for the show the next night, we didn't even stick around to watch them flail. We loaded up and hit I-5 for about four hours before we'd get our slumber that night, knowing full well that we'd rocked to the fullest of our capabilities.