A Long Way to the Top (?) If You Wanna OXBOW

"Snake? Snake Pliskin?! We thought you was DEAD..."

On Golden Pond. On a funeral pyre. (Photo by Phil Sharp)

Time gets slippery.

Someone says “when was the last time you played here?” and suddenly you find yourself doing what almost seems to be impossible math. Because, in the life cycle of a musical moment, how is it possible that six years becomes indistinguishable from 10 and 10 could just have easily been 30?

So best to say “no idea” and keep it moving on down the road.

Initially I told myself I’d do this “music thing” just a week longer than my “enemies”. But my enemy listing has grown and even though they’ve mostly fallen by the wayside there might be serious questions regarding who won, and what, when you’re climbing into a van three days after your birthday after having not had the strength of character to resist in-flight entertainment and not slept at all.

But if you haven’t figured it out yet, and this is, specifically for that one guy in New York who reads this Substack but hates when I segue into tour diary mode, I am about to segue into tour diary mode. Because? Because OXBOW is on tour this time. Not BUNUEL. And well, attention must be paid. (Extra points just now if you just caught the Willy Loman call out.)

[W]e’ve learned that fentanyl is a horrible recreational drug. We’ve learned that clubs in Denver will rob you. We’ve learned that telling your tattoo guy to “hurry up”? Bad idea.

And not only is OXBOW on tour but the memoir is out October 10th and so book shows are happening even now. So Brexit or not, the UK is the place in space where we’re plying the trade we’ve plied since 1988 and like Henry James used to wonder at every chapter’s end, what have we learned?

Well, we’ve learned that fentanyl is a horrible recreational drug. We’ve learned that clubs in Denver will rob you. We’ve learned that telling your tattoo guy to “hurry up”? Bad idea. As is getting tattoos during tour. We’ve learned that doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu on days when you have shows? Really short sighted.

Anything else? Yes! Having your wife explain to your ex that “sucking his dick ONCE doesn’t make you friends!” right before the former punches the latter out? Really slows down merch table business.

And so it goes: there is no “later” when it comes to getting paid, gummy bears are not a foodstuff though they may be on the deli tray, and oh yeah, maybe most importantly, if the hotel where you’re having us stay has rancid pools of standing water on the floor near loose electrical wires in the darkened shower stall, we might be a little salty about having to say there. Moreover when you call us “luxury lovers” for choosing not to stay there it should be expected that I will publicly threaten to stab you in the neck with a butter knife next time we meet.

Not for the luxury lovers bit but for the social media snitching that almost got us thrown off social media for…threatening to stab you in the neck with a butter knife.

These are all things that we have learned.

So three shows into what will be 22 some-odd shows before the year ends we’re playing into our, at least for some of us, our 43rd year of making music of some kind or another. Don’t think there’s a difference between playing shows in 1980 and playing them in 2023? If you weren’t a fetus in 1980, lean over and ask your knees if there’s a difference.

If you can’t hear your knees saying “fuck you” now it’s because you can’t hear them over the screaming of your back, neck and wrists.

But the same thing that used to get us snickered at and dismissed as “jocks” has kept us in it. Running? Check. CrossFit? Check. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seven days a week? If you can’t hear your knees saying “fuck you” now it’s because you can’t hear them over the screaming of your back, neck and wrists.

You also watch old video clips of Dean Martin swilling it up and not breaking a sweat with a certain amount of envy.

However, having the music and the performance meet the dictates of your soul is not, nor was it ever, going to be easy. You want easy? Play cards.

GLASGOW: Someone once told us that, on account of an ill-timed shotgunning that he thought they were now calling his city of Glasgow, Shotgun City. While that did seem more a hope of his than an actuality, Glasgow IS the only city I’ve ever been in where I almost got into a fistfight in a VEGAN restaurant. So there is that.

We play a club called Broadcast though with a precipitous stone-floored load in down into a basement of possible fiery death.

“I don’t like cocaine guys.”

The club owner has ridden up on a bicycle and starts in complaining about the club we last played in Glasgow. I try to make an argument for the cocaine guys since I remember the show being fairly pleasant. “Sure…we’ve all had our cocaine problems…” he concedes.

“I know! I mean who among us hasn’t performed sex acts for a few lines!”

He doesn’t laugh. Possibly on account of not knowing whether or not I am joking. What’s not a joke though is that the house sound guy is not here, or even close to being on time. On account of? Some sort of mass transit strike the owner says, right as I see a city bus drive by.

He eventually shows, and I grow concerned watching him put pool noodles on the I-beams that frame the stage. At head level. A cast iron square of possible mid-show death. I try to make a mental note to keep my head away from them though this is the functional equivalent of me saying to myself “hit your head on the I-beams.”

Now if you’re a regular reader you know I published rules of the road, specifically for the UK, on how to survive an OXBOW show. The UK, repeat offenders as they have been, needed this and so when show starts I still harbor concerns.

Concerns?

Yes. That someone will get hurt before show end. And I wouldn’t be talking about feelings.

However, the show starts and continues without incident. We play new songs and mostly remember how to. The new songs, slower in pace though they are, are well received and the audience is enthusiastic, not more so than when I refer to myself as the “Fat Elvis.” Yeah, they laughed a little too hard at that one. But starting the tour at 230 pounds, they might be right.

Jay Soos showed up though. A man with a plan. And pockets that were full. Of? Tattoo gear, since Bad Idea #307 was to get another tattoo at tour start. Just on the back of the hand. Since I believe I am done with office work in perpetuity it’s time for what I used to call “rich guy tattoos.” Tattoos that will signal you no longer need a job since you most assuredly won’t be getting one now. However with all of this workplace hoohah about “authentic selves” being welcome should I really be worried?

Me + Jay Soos. He saves.

Maybe if I hadn’t gotten a pistol. Yeah: maybe.

In any case we wander over to his hotel and he tells me a hair-raising story about the unwinding of his marriage before he wonders at my total silence.

“Well, the hands kind of hurt,” I say. But his work is so solid I start to wish I had asked him to do more.

Mid-way through the show though I start to wonder why my hand is stinging and then I remember Bad Idea #307. That is why. Dumbass.

The upside? We were 10 tickets away from selling the joint out, no one got their feelings, or anything else, hurt, and most importantly, the hotel breakfast had pudding. Not a big deal in 1988. Very much a big deal in 2023. Had they only also had Bingo night, then the tableaux would have been complete.

BIRMINGHAM: Supersonic Festival is wonderful. Our friends in Godflesh are playing on the same stage, the same stage, in fact, that BUNUEL played on last July. Some of the staff not knowing about the crossover between BUNUEL and OXBOW stare at me and wonder why they know me before they click on BUNUEL.

Still and all it’s a big stage and then there’s the downside: a line check. Given the complexity of our new songs a line check is not enough but it’s what we get. Moreover, I do a book chat for the memoir in another part of the festival so I’ll be pressed for time. It’s crowded too and it recalls nothing for me but a section of the memoir when I talk about selling the first version of The Birth of Tragedy Magazine to an audience of people who had no idea they were about to read the rankest shit I could laugh my way through writing.

So I decide to tell this audience the truth because I want no surprises.

“I thought she was going to stab me for not having sex with her…” I hold forth and tell the rankest shit ever as I laughed my way through it. There was applause and by lights the enthusiasm dipped a scad only when I segued into talking about male-on-male rape.

Am I going to leave that just hanging there? Yes. I am.

But the show at Supersonic was super sonically strange. We couldn’t hear much of what we were doing on stage and I was in the deepest misery because of it, estimating that it was the worst show I’d ever played. I am beside myself with self-contempt and loathing.

Right up until everyone starts telling me how great it was.

I search their eyes for traces of falsehood and find none there. Merch sales, the real indicator, bears this out and we sell five times what we’ve ever sold at Supersonic.

So…what I do know?

Could it be, perhaps, that people were being too polite and it was throwing me off? Might it be said that in actual fact I feel much better about disdain and dark energy than the absence of?

Maaayyyybbeeee.

But we watch Godflesh crush and kill it, right after meeting Justin from Godflesh’s wonderful wife and 12 year old son. Before their set is finished though, but toward the end, we’ve felt a need to wander back to the hotel. Morpheus mostly. And the need to get in bed before 2 in the morning since tomorrow it is Leeds and a challenge jiu jitsu match that fully constitutes Bad Idea #308.

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