Day 16, Capn's Log: No Faces Have Been Punched. Today.

Forewarned is forearmed and OXBOW's Love's Holiday Euro tour concludes with nary one act of unscheduled violence. To our chagrin.

At some point it’s dawned on me that I’ve met every member of my Polish cousin in-laws wearing this exact same outfit.

“How is it that you don’t know where you’ve been?”

The questioner is head of security at Adobe. Former FBI guy he’s called me, post a recent layoff, to quiz me as to the whereabouts of my company issued laptop computer. The order of go went like this though.

1] Laid off whilst on tour

2] I asked for time to get back off of tour to return it. Also would need time to pull copious amounts of personal stuff off of said computer.

3] Denial of request and an immediate demand to drop the computer off at FedEx the next day.

4] The computer gets stolen.

He calls, fired with the belief that I still have the computer, and begins issuing threats, which I welcome. But these threats are predicated on him believing my failure to know where I’ve been, to be…shady.

But you know…he’s just never been on tour because inevitably there’s a time during touring where and when you’re waking up with not a single reasonable idea of where you are, why you’re there, where you’re going and in some less casual cases, who you are.

I’m here now. But this one is easy. I’m in Aalborg, Denmark at the end of a 16 show run. The last show I remember, in tour during time, was in, um…KorJuJick…Belgium. But now, a city in Belgium whose name I can actually pronounce.

BELGIUM: As I walk along the steaming hot greenhouse that is the entry way to Botanique I also notice that I am on a walk of considerable fame. The names of the people who have played the venue spread out on the floor while temperatures in the glass enclosure are probably 100 degrees. Fahrenheit. If it was Celsius I’d assume I’d have been dead. But I’d never know because Celsius is some Harry Potter shit that I never bothered to learn.

Did I mention The Hitler Room? Does it seem even remotely strange to you that it would still be identified thusly?

The venue itself is in a theater pit with the stands rising up and over us but, as usual, my only concern is the size of the stage. If it’s a big stage I need to start gobbling aspirin so I can cover it. If it’s a small stage I also need to start gobbling aspirin but this is just so I can plan for the eventuality of me falling off of it. The stage is mid-size. So I gobble some pills I really probably should have marked before I packed them (in literary terms we call this “foreshadowing”).

But it is swank no less so because it actually has a washing machine and a dryer so the clothes that I’ve been wearing that would roast your nose hairs get what’s coming to them.

On top of this the backstage area, which I am now skulking around semi-nude like some cock wielding phantom of the opera, is also swank so I’m really feeling like I’ve come up in the world. A terribly tragic illusion. Philippe Thiphaine, one of our oldest French friends shows up (his band is playing support tonight) and huzzahs all around.

The dinner? Horrible vegan dreck even though I’ve stipulated aggressively that I am a pescatarian and there must be fish on the menu. The font size on this part of the contract will have to be blown out to 24 point type and have an added notation that makes it clear that WE ARE NOT KIDDING. If you do not have fish on the menu you will have to go get fish on the menu if you want the show to happen.

I know it sounds like a pointless rock star indulgence but no matter how good vegan slop is, vegan slop every night is not even a vegan’s idea of good.

The show itself though? Absolutely no memory of it as the light show itself was so insanely spasmodic that it literally, along with whatever “aspirin” I consumed, caused me to see trailers well after I was staggering along the streets of Belgium looking for our hotel. Reviews seem to indicate that it was good though I expect our name to no time soon be gracing the floors there.

Eternally thankful though for being able to no longer smell like a goat.

NIJMEGEN: No idea. Seriously. Not a single one. It should be noted that unusual habits start to accrete on tour. One, most notably for me, is that my usual loquaciousness is heeled because I need to save my voice. And if I am not talking? Well, I’m not usually listening.

In the instance of this tour I am reading. Books recommended to me by Biba Kopf from The Wire. So Irmgard Keun it is. Olga Tokarczuk it is. I have finished off Boston Teran, whose agent I once shared, at tour start, but now I am immersed, on the cusp of the release of my memoir. When I actually have it in my hands work will begin on my next book, which will either be an OXBOW compendium called ‘Til Death Do Us Part, or my “long awaited” porn travelogue Love? Love!

So, head out of the game? Not in the slightest. Just a little ahead of the game. And unless I really blow it, I tend to not remember…how we “did”.

[T]he last time I was in Luxembourg every one in a gas station we went into to piss thought I was Eddie Murphy…

What I do remember? Telling an audience member who thought my urging to put his phone away and stop filming was some peek-a-boo game, that I would “fuck him up.” He looked deeply into my eyes to see if I was “joking”. And then put his phone away.

And, oh yeah…I can’t pronounce Nig, nije, Nigh Mightey Jen either.

LUXEMBOURG: OH. Now this I remember. For all of the right/wrong reasons.

“I had a heart attack.” Pascal the show promoter for Tetange’s Human’s World Festival walked next to me as we strolled to our appointed dinner spot. “Yeah. I was a type A personality. Working super hard. Every hour of the night and day. Then I had the heart attack.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Yes,” he said but waving this off, “the doctor suggested I take things a little less seriously. So now? I just smoke weed. And hope things work out.”

Make believe you heard this from your surgeon. Or your pilot. Yeah: exactly.

Dinner is not vegan slop and accordingly I go nuts. But bad nuts. Like playing Russian roulette with five bullets nuts.

“I’ll have the ‘fruits d’mer” dish!” It’s mussels, clams, oysters, scallops, fish, and shrimp. All in one dish of I-dare-you-not-to-die from food poisoning. I eat every…single…bit of it. Mike, our Italian tour manager speaks up only once. Actually he and our sound guy Michele, also Italian. And a weightlifter. And it’s when I put parmesan cheese on it.

They actually start screaming. For an Italian adding cheese to a seafood dish is like putting maple syrup on it: nothing a sane person does. But no one’s ever accused me of this before now anyway so….

After the meal I call Pascal and he picks me up as I can’t be arsed to walk back to the venue. Also I don’t want to have to deal with the festival “crowds”.

Of which absolutely none materialized.

Not exactly none. That’s an exaggeration. But 10. And while 10 people might effectively constitute a gangbang, especially if you’re the one getting fucked, for a festival audience? No.

Let’s examine how we got here though. A long time ago we found that yielding to large amounts of money doesn’t always indicate that the promoters will actually promote the show. In fact, in places with state sponsored art and coffers chock full of cash, it could mean the exact opposite. However, even though most bands would rather play to full houses, promoters of this ilk mollify themselves with this idea that the money is enough.

Look, I can stay home and get ignored. I don’t have to go 6000 miles for that really special treat. But Pascal and the woman who is co-running the event seem like very cool people but when I peek at the support band, Divide and Dissolve, I see Takiaya from the band, mid-show offer a rendering that says it all: mid-song she just…yawns. It was perfect, perfectly placed and a perfect commentary on all of that Luxembourgian money.

And here’s something else: Luxembourgian is an actual language.

All in all though? Not a bad day off, and Chuck Dukowski’s words ring in my head: “It’s not the fault of those that show up that no one else showed up.” So we played hard, hotel’d it up and I laughed when I remember the last time I was in Luxembourg every one in a gas station we went into to piss thought I was Eddie Murphy.

BOCHUM: First show back in Germany. I rebel against the vegan slop and they bring me fish. Which is good because it shows me that they both know how to fish here, and moreover they know what fish look like and even how to cook them for those that want to eat them. I do my podcast The Show Stomper from an office I am told is occupied by the boss. Which is perfect as the seafood jubilee is almost making me regret it.

Which is to say I almost shit my pants several times but if I had to shit my pants much better to do it in his office than anywhere else. Instead I light it up. Flatulence galore.

The show itself? Grand. When I threaten cellphone filmers with bodily violence they relent, so all incidents, possible and probable, are avoided. The new songs off of Love’s Holiday that were derided by one publication as “dad rock” are also killing it.

VIENNA: You want high points? This was a high point. Show sold out weeks before this show had people scrambling asking me for guest list placements. Never one to miss an opportunity my line remains the same: if you help load gear in and out? You’re crew. Small price to pay to get in for free.

Especially when you see the place.

The place + the view from behind the mic. Like Twin Peaks meets Naked Lunch.

Did I mention The Hitler Room? Does it seem even remotely strange to you that it would still be identified thusly? Funny thing is I knew I was in it before I even knew what it was. Which was a room that they had prepared for a special visit from Hitler. He, in the end, never ended up showing but the room remains untouched. I guess awaiting his eventual arrival. I find it funny that it does…remain untouched. Seems like something you’d want to forget.

And then: oh yeah…we’re in AUSTRIA.

But the show? Stupendous. Great sound system, great audience. Two encores. No face punching.

Until…a feverish looking man struggles past the people who are trying to get the now naked me back to the dressing room in a building that to call it “maze-like” is an understatement. He corrals me by the elevator as I stand there with a towel barely covering my cock.

“Viennese audiences….!!!!” He is screaming now. “They need their music to be MORE EXPERIMENTAL!!!”

He looks like Alan Alda and his clothes are Land’s End, beyond a shadow of a doubt. I laugh in his face. He takes offense. So I laugh again. This time without the eyes. Which is what in nature is called a warning sign. The elevator comes, our handlers get me back to the backstage room, past the dancers and theater folks who are doing some other production somewhere else in this cavernous Hitlerian wonder and I find the room full of people. Most of whom I know and like.

I keep calling my friend Boris, Bruno. I keep calling Csabi, our former promoter of all shows Austrian fat. And I keep calling his ex-girlfriend Berit who is there with her new boyfriend and who hasn’t seen the old one since she dumped him “one of those lovebirds.” Everyone might be uncomfortable but I’m in high form, emphasis on the high, and enjoying myself fully. Paul Poet another former promoter is there and gifts me two of his most recent award winning movies.

Then he says something to me that I am not sure I heard or imagined: “I want you to be one of my whores now” is what I heard. Not knowing what this meant I chose to assume it meant to act in one of his movies to which I readily agree. We will discover in the fullness of time if this is actually what he meant.

WROCLAW: I am HOME. For this to make sense to you, you would have to know that my wife is Polish. One of my best friends in high school was Polish. The first batch of totally insane fans we ever adopted? Polish. The Poles, sort of Slavic Italians with the stereotypical overblown emotionalism, are perfect for OXBOW in general and me, specifically.

The only place I ever look out into the audience and see people sobbing during our shows? Routinely? Poland, and Japan.

So glad to be here.

“This is nothing like the palace you played last night.” The promoter is dour and looks worried and this is part of the Polish character too. Pessimism and negativity.

I look around the basement venue and tell him, truthfully, “this is more like what we’re used to.”

My wife’s cousin and her parents (pictured above) are planning to show, and before too long the club is packed. Another two encore night. I hang with the family a bit before heading back out to sign what I’ve been told should be autographs. Which I can never do plainly so I mark the merch they’ve bought with my standard admonition to NOT die and then my name.

Then the hugging and mobbing and tears, and mid-way through some guy challenges me to a fight so we start fighting and I get him in a standing headlock and there’s the kind of love afoot that makes me glad we came. One guy shows me a photo he took of us back in 2007 when we last played Wroclaw. So we took another one and I posted them side by side on my Instagram (MrSleep3 if you care).

He looks like he’s been listening to OXBOW since then and I look like I’ve been making it since then. Both of which, like it or not, are true.

WARSAW: Like Wroclaw but on steroids. Sadly though this is where I also found out that my friend Harley was slashed with a knife by three attackers while he stood at his merch table somewhere else on tour. The attackers accused him of sexually harassing someone. So they showed up to take revenge while he stood there, umawares.

He bandaged himself up and finished his show but still.

People who dismiss my efforts to never be unarmed should take note here.

In any case the club here, for us, is great, the food is not vegan slop and the audience? Insanely great. They’re crying, I’m crying, hugging and crying, something about getting older and being prone to a certain kind of sentimentality. These audiences are also age diverse, by the way. Which is always cool to see 70 year old ladies rocking out next to 18 year old trans kids.

I use a little bit of my limited Polish and they lose their minds. People are telling me they love me and I am telling them I love them too. It’s nothing short of glorious.

BERLIN: Packed house, friends from all over in it, Jamie and Angela from Xiu Xiu showed, Jason Honea from Social Unrest who has missed every OXBOW show in Berlin since he moved there 30 years ago and keeps his record by showing up BUT showing up after we played. Kiran the filmmaker following us for the new OXBOW documentary is in heaven as the club, Roadrunners Paradise looks even more Lynchian than the Vienna club.

And…well I sing my ass off. I’m using a new mic and I’d give them props if they hadn’t threatened to kick my ass back when I was the editor of EQ Magazine for giving one of their mics a less than positive review. But it’s phenomenal and has me trying things vocally I’ve never tried before. Because? Because I can actually HEAR what I am doing.

Jamie also, post-show, gives me his just released memoir. Which I finish reading in two days. Funny. It could have been subtitled the Diary of a Sex Addict. But the funny part is the memoir I have not written could also have been subtitled Diary of a Sex Addict. And funniest of all is that us two sex maniacs went on tour together as SAL MINEO and nothing even remotely sex addict-y happened.

But Jamie’s oeuvre is much more hardcore than mine. Don’t believe it? Ok try this on for size: whilst anally rimming someone he feels something in his mouth and looks and discovers? Get ready for a zig when you’re expecting a zag: a TAPEWORM. He flicks it off and keeps on keeping on.

That is Jamie for the win.

But Manuel, our old tour manager, sound guy and long time friend showed, Jadzia a friend from Poland, and bunches of more. I was gleeful and also sad that the pills I’d taken, acetominophen, kept me off of the wine tonight since tonight would have been a perfect night for it since I am lit anyways.

How lit? I refer to Angela’s dress as a “frock”. THAT is how lit.

In any case I lean on friends Pascal and Sandra and get them to take the puzzle boxes home with them since they drove, the puzzles have not shown up yet anyways and they didn’t seem to mind. So I am unencumbered and rush out into the Berlin night half dressed and in search of the van back to one of the best hotels in Berlin.

“Hey. When are you guys playing America again?”

HAMBURG: Great show dimmed only by the presence of vegan slop, which I tantrum my way out of eating. Mike gets me fish. I am sad when I find out he’s paid for it from his own pocket instead of making the promoter get it. But the fish is phenomenal.

There is also another band playing upstairs in the smaller venue. A punk band. Which is, in 2023, a curiosity to me. But they seem to be nice guys even if their penchant for vegan slop has them staying in the common room after I leave it.

Oliver, a photographer friend, later comes up to me and full on life and death biker style seriousness puts something in my hand.

“This is for you.” Like DeNiro in Taxi Driver when he gives the pimp some money. I see it’s a 50 and I make a move to give it back to him. “No. It’s yours.” Which is also the line from Taxi Driver. So I keep it.

I don’t remember anything else from the evening. The reasons for this could be many but more than likely the “sleep aids” I’ve been using and now have just run out of. If I take them when we get back to the hotel I stay awake too long. If I take them right after we play? Well, this might explain a whole lot.

AALBORG: Lasher Fest has all of the markings of a disaster. Lots of money and so on. But it’s great. Swank again. Though a young festival. Lots of people working it who were part of the crew that brought us in 24 years ago when we last played Aalborg. The building is where they usually have operas it seems but don’t let that fool you!

Vegan slop for dinner again.

The good news is: I didn’t eat it. I was doing a memoir interview with the Unsung Podcast guys out of Glasgow.

The bad news is: I didn’t eat anything.

But last shows of the tour are often dangerous. A swell of another kind of emotionalism and meditations on death and the shortening of our mortal coils abound. So I often want the shows to end with a bang. In one instance a bang that almost broke my spine.

In this instance though? Some good shit.

WHORES. the band that’s coming along on our upcoming West Coast US shows is playing so I get to see them for the first time. I watch them from the side of the very huge stage that they’re playing on. I listen to their next to last song in its entirety and see how totally great they are and happy to have them along on the US dates.

They’re about to start the last song and I start to scoot when the singer screams out…

“EUGENE!”

I stop, unaware that he had seen me or could even see me.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…THERE HE IS…EUGENE…THIS MAN IS A LEGEND!!!”

I wave wanly and to his credit and total genius he continues. In the same vein. I’m not prone to shyness but while I dig it I think I’m going Polish because I can’t imagine the audience knows or cares. So I dip.

Later chatting with him backstage we laugh about it and talk about our aches and pains like old men do.

But then it’s time for us to play and the packed house screams rapturously when we hit the stage and so maybe I was wrong.

We play. Get called for an encore. Load. Flee to the hotel where we get a scant three hours of sleep and then head to the airport. The rest of the band? Back to California. Me? To Spain to sign some papers to smooth my eventual move end of next year TO Spain, and then Istanbul to meet my sister and her husband who I have yet to meet so I have yet to give him the Big Brother Eyes of Judgment.

Writing now, this, what you’re reading, is the only thing keeping me awake as I wait for my plane in Schipol. So, sorry for being so prolix but I can’t afford to fall asleep and have my 20 year old laptop stolen.

And just now what did I get? A note from someone that their purchase of my memoir showed up. Which is…absolutely glorious.

So, we’ll see you next in the US. Just don’t do like that guy who JUST emailed me: “when are you all coming to Europe?”

Jesus.

---

OK…Have you pre-ordered the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon? Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?

Perfect: You will now get the book OCTOBER 12, 2023. OR even earlier (see above!).

And more GOOD news? Feral House is giving away SEXY and signed photographs with signed books to the first tranche of orders to come directly to THEM. So if you want to order STRAIGHT from FERAL HOUSE? Here you go!