Je suis L'Homme à tête de chou

I am on the train from Liege to Lille listening to the first Kluster album. A creepy wash of early 70’s German electronic music roars and blips around my cranium like a bad surf. It blends well with the sound of the train. I find it oddly soothing. I am back in the womb for a little while. The manic energy of the first week of the tour has waned a bit and I have receded into introspection. Micah and I is getting over a cold and I am fighting one. I have fallen behind on my entries, so I’m writing 3 in one. Here goes…

FRIDAY: NIJMEGEN, NETHERLANDS: THE ONDERBROEK
The train rides (there were several transfers) to Nijmegen are made arduous by my pathetic and ineffectual luggage cart. I do my best to lash my accordion, merch, laptop and kick pedal to the flimsy little bastard, using straps, rubber bands, chewing gum, cum and spit, but the whole operation disintegrates whenever I encounter any stairs….and there are a lot of stairs. The cart has become severely misshapen due to the weight of my equipment and my accordion case is dragging on the rainy pavement and making card-in-the-spokes-style scraping sounds.
We are met by Wim (a different Wim than the aforementioned Wim in Ghent) at the Nijmegen station. We’re exhausted and starving so he buys us each an egg roll from a nearby vendor. I devour mine (chicken) and the grease runs down the sleeve of my pea coat. It’s a ten minute walk to the venue and every second of it sucks. The cart drops a different item every ten feet and I have to disassemble and reassemble the fucker every time. Micah just shakes his head and laughs. He seems to find my trainwreck nature entertaining for the time being, though I bet that the charm will wear off before this tour is over. I am trying to be conscientious, but I am as God made me.
We arrive at the venue in one piece, but I am feeling seriously fried. I dismantle the cart and scatter my equipment and personal effects all over the place. I attempt to practice a bit, but my nerves are shot and my hands are weak. We are served huge, steaming plates of cous-cous and vegetables and drink several cups of coffee. I am revived to some extent, but my voice is ruined from smoke and my hands are shot to shit from dragging the awkward cart all day. The place is a clean and very well organized squat (or former squat…I’m not sure) and the performance space, which is in the basement, is called The Underbroek ( which is Dutch for “underpants”). I decide to use my Line 6 pedal to make some drone loops to provide a little extra menace, but it all goes horribly wrong. The dumbass salesman at the Radio Shack back in Providence sold me the wrong kind of voltage converter and the Line 6 is fried before I can even finish the soundcheck…another item to jettison and another 300 dollars down the drain. This is turning into an expensive tour.
I don’t play particularly well at this show, but the small audience is very generous. I even get a few laughs, which is rare in Europe due to my very American sense of humor. Micah’s set also goes pretty well despite the fact that he is afloat in a sea of snot. His voice maintains its clarity and power. After the gig, Micah, Wim and I argue over whether or not humanity is inherently evil. Micah is an optimist and feels that despite our history, mankind is ultimately, or at least has the potential to be, a benevolent race. I am a nihilist, so I believe that good and evil are arbitrary terms but I feel that humanity is a brutal and pathetic self serving cancer upon the earth . Wim falls somewhere in the middle. We agree to disagree.
We forsake the Netherlands’s many exciting tourist attractions (hash, whores and other bad craziness) for an early night, but I am feeling fairly restless. I pace around on the roof of the building where we are staying, chain-smoking and glaring at the gigantic eerie clock tower across the street with it’s two neon clock faces glowing blue in the grey rainy mist and displaying two different times, both wrong.
Afterwards, I go inside and re-read about half of Steven Jesse Bernstein’s “I AM SECRETLY AN IMPORTANT MAN”. SJB was a Seattle area poet who had struggled with drug addiction and mental illness for most of his life. Sub Pop released a record of his poetry set to music by Steve Fisk in 1991 entitled "Prison". It's one of the darkest and most disturbing CDs that's ever been released and it's definitely the best thing that Sub Pop every released (though that's not saying a lot*). He never got to hear the recording, because he suicided, stabbing himself in the throat 3 times with a kitchen knife before most of the music was finished. It's a damn shame. I would have liked to have met him, though he was rumored to be fond of chasing his friends out of his squalid apartment with various weapons.
The next morning, Bart, our host for the evening, a friendly and idealistic young fellow accompanies us into town so that Micah can buy a sim card for his cell phone and I can replace the worthless cocksucking, motherfucking, piece of shit baggage cart, that is ruining my life, with something a bit more practical. We find a rolling suitcase in a department store and pack it up right in the aisle. I leave the corpse of the Target cart on a shelf for the stock boys to dispose of, pay and roll on out. It’s smooth sailing. The new cart is a dream. The sun comes out and I suddenly feel and look years younger than I am. There is a gleam in my eye and a spring my step. My cart and I skip down the street hand in hand and I quietly sing “Eruption” to myself in honor of Nijmegen’s wunderkind cheese-metal progeny.
I stand outside of the phone shop guarding the gear as Micah buys a sim card. I briefly consider buying one of the gigantic black dildos that I am looking at in the window of the adjacent sex shop for a friend’s birthday gift but then I imagine the conversation at the customs desk and think better of it.
Then it’s goodbye to Bart and more trains, stations, cigarettes, coffee, metal toilets, eye candy, stairs and reading. We head back into Belgium.

SATURDAY: LOUVAIN LA NEUVE, BELGIUM: FERME DU BIEREAU

This is a very intense night for me. The electricity is palpable. I shoot a movie in my brain and pan the camera long and slow, trying to absorb everything and burn it deeply into the memory banks to be enjoyed many years from now when my brain is dissolving into the foggy grey mush of Alzheimer’s that I will surely have due to all the crack I smoked out of metal pipes and soda cans in the 90‘s. I’m not sure that I can or even want to put it all into words, so I’ll keep this one brief.
I rarely feel this much warmth and love from a group of people on tour. The people at La Ferme are a kind and nurturing lot. The gig goes very well, the best yet, really. I feel like I am finally able to effectively command the audience as a solo act. A moment of comic relief happens in the middle of the set when I accidentally inhale saliva during a jaw harp solo and I erupt into a frightening and consumptive coughing fit onstage which last for about three minutes. The audience roars with hysterical laughter at the out of control coughing that is emerging from the very sphincter of my soul. Hot tears of pain are streaming down my face, but I recover (barely) and finish the set to wild applause.
(scene missing)


SUNDAY AND MONDAY: LIEGE, BELGIUM: L’AN VERT AND A DAY OFF

Liege has always felt like a second home to me even though I have never spent more than a few days there. I first came here with The Eyesores in 2003. We had contacted a promoter named Katrin by way of an Italian drummer friend of mine named Jacopo Andreini. Since we had a day off, so Katrin suggested that we play at her friend's party. Katrin called Denis and Stephanie who were throwing the party and mentioned that she had a few American musicians with her and that we were interested in playing a few tunes. Without realizing that we were a seven-piece band who hadn't bathed or eaten recently, Denis and Stephanie obliged. They were incredibly accommodating, despite the fact that they had to cook a separate meal for us due to our ridiculously fussy dietary needs (several of us were dabbling with a vegan diet. I've since come to my senses and have grown more comfortable with my place in the food chain: the top). We all loaded into their tiny living room and ended up playing for close to 2 hours. They loved us and it was a great night. Nicolas is Denis' brother. We have visited them on every European tour since and they have been extremely kind and hospitable. Denis and Nicolas are in a fantastic band called Cyclo whom you all check out.
We play at a club called L'An Vert. It's a great show. I sell the rest of my merch ( I sold most of it at La Ferme). Belleclose, who open the show, end with a cover of Fern Knight's "Awake Angel Snake" translated into French. Our friend Joel plays the accordion part that I played on the record. We have the next day off. I hang out with Ingrid while Nicolas was at work and she gives me an awkward crash course in French with much fumbling through the Anglais/Francais Dictionaire for both of us. Over the course of several tours, Denis, Nicolas, Stephanie and Ingrid have taught me most of the French I know and they have been infinitely patient with me forgetting basically all of it. Micah and I go out to do laundry and get coffee and vitamins and I am forced to hold several conversations in French. I try, but it's a struggle.
We have dinner with Joel, Denis, Stephanie, Ingrid and Nicolas. It's a much needed moment of calm.
By now, I have arrived in Lille, France and I am crammed into a tiny pantry where I am typing this missive. I am hungry and my voice is going. We play in a few hours. Bon Nuit.


*Apologies to my friends in Combustible Edison, Six Finger Satellite, Death Vessel and the ghost of Mr. Cobain. Sub Pop has released some fairly adventurous records, but I can never forgive them for spawning the egregious and atavistic "grunge" movement. Grunge marked the official death of punk rock as far as I am concerned. It was a bullshit movement that was more about posturing than anything else. I had no time for it in '89 and I certainly have no time for it now.