Does Anyone Remember Screwing?
If you guessed that this was another BUNUEL Tour Diary, you'd have been right.
“By a show of hands,” I was looking out over an audience of maybe 800 people. “Who here has had sex?”
Sure there was the language gap, I’m not one of those Americans ignorant enough to believe that English suddenly becomes easier to understand the louder you speak it, but this, with the aid of a rebus of fingers should have been clear. Or clear enough that more than four people in a crowd of 800 raised their hands.
“What?!?! Only FOUR of you?!?!”
This beggared belief. That is to say, either this was a vampire sex offender’s dream of 796 virgins, I had died after crashing my plane into the World Trade Center and was living some sort of post-death fantasy, or someone was shy/telling lies.
“OK, well, listen. For the sake of…reality…let’s assume at least 50 percent of you have.”
The band is shifting nervously behind me. I’m not sure if the stage mix is good enough for them to hear me or they just, in a general way, have figured out that I’m saying something, but they are quiet, and still.
“Now, if you’re fucking and the person who you’re fucking or who was fucking you, suddenly leans over, grabs their ‘smart’ phone and holds it between your faces, you might think this was a little weird, right?”
Now, there is laughter.
Birthed in a desire to drill down on the ways that dread happens where and when it happens results in a show that’s as quicksilver as crime…
“I’m not saying to not film your fucking, heaven forbid. Prop the phone up on the nightstand if you must. But if you don’t, and insist on holding it between…our faces? Don’t be surprised if at least one of us thinks it’s…fucking creepy.”
Now there are nods of agreement before my eyes come to rest on one guy in particular. A guy who started filming the show on his phone from the second we got out on the stage until I started talking.
“I’m telling you this for a reason,” I say looking at him, unblinking. “It should also be noted that I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you it’s fucking creepy.”
So says a guy in a black rubber shirt and underwear emblazoned with the legend I ❤️ Money.
Though I hate this modern affectation where we displace the present reality by replacing it with the documenting of it. This corporate shit shield of protection and ersatz participation in “social” media is as antisocial as it gets. For one song, parts of a song, or during moments? Sure. Looking out at an audience of tourists wanting to show their separate social convoys what they half-did while we are whole-doing it, is a drag. Or maybe I just hate shitty audio and video.
But I haven’t slept since Tuesday night and it’s Wednesday night after 12 hours and two flights into Porto, Portugal. I will (spoiler alert) sleep only 3.5 hours after tonight’s show since the next day’s early flight to Italy has us rising at 4 a.m. All of which I think of as I sit in post-show sweat soaked torpor fielding a greeting from a former friend and his girlfriend who once, in fairly recent memory, lectured me about not understanding “the true spirit of rock and roll.”
There’s a lot I don’t understand. Quantum mechanics, golf, and the enduring “appeal” of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for example, but I started doing music in 1980 and feel, maybe largely correctly, that I might have at least a small portion of it nailed down.
I am polite to these two. And here remembered once a friend of mine getting incensed when she saw me pimp a similar act. “If you ‘act’ like you like someone when you don’t, how do I know that you’re not doing that with ME?!?!” She screamed and stalked off. And I let her. When I didn’t call or pursue, she re-established contact a few days later and I answered the question for her: “you don’t.”
But Sicilian style I figure it like this: I don’t fake like I like friends because once we’re friends, in my world, we’re friends forever. However, being friends forever means that we do the things that friends do. Or don’t do. Like lecture each other about the true spirit of fucking rock and roll. That is something friends don’t do. Especially not if one of those friends has been sleeping on dirty floors for scant recompense for 42 fucking years.
So I am unfailingly polite because there is no reason not to treat strangers any other way. I’m also tired like I’ve almost never been tired before. Jetlag, sure, but I’m only sleeping about five or six hours a night in the best of times. Which is the least I can get away with without having all of my reactions to everything be gross over-reactions to just about anything.
The show? The BUNUEL show for me is as different from the OXBOW show, though they share a singer, as night is from day and it all has to do with how they were born. The unspecified disasters that frame OXBOW, to be specified in this monster memoir I’m working on for next year, has cooled into a suave slick of, dare we say, hope? Hope and its necessary corollary, paranoia.
And BUNUEL? Birthed in a desire to drill down on the ways that dread happens where and when it happens results in a show that’s as quicksilver as crime so when I finally see the smart phones, at least in the first few rows, disappear, I’m happy.
Happy enough to no longer refer to Aaron Turner, who is here with Sumac, as Aaron Turner but, since he’s started training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, “white belt”. So happy that when I see Joe Preston, almost not at all deterred from hugging him even though he has COVID. I didn’t but I was happy enough to do so. Same with Nate Newton and the erstwhile Mr. Stephen Brodsky who is clear headed for the second time I’ve seen him now. It was a blast.
“Are you a singer?” All of the bands playing big stages are back stage and I take note of one cat almost helping load gear and I peg him as one of my own. “Cuz you know, union rules and all…”
“Union rules?”
“First to start talking, last to stop talking and never around to carry equipment. Union rules. So you must be a singer.”
And he hems and haws and sort of begrudgingly admits to being a singer, which is a sure sign that he is a singer. Just one that is unknown to me. Later when I see him onstage with Deafheaven I think “oh THAT’s the guy from Deafheaven.” I’d never seen them before and he looked different enough from their press photos that I thought he must be the new singer or something but he was a jolly guy and a hale fellow well met and I’m really just glad to always meet another union member who, if early indications meant anything, never intends to load even one piece of gear if he doesn’t have to.
ROLLING INTO RAVENNA
In Ravenna where we play next things get very hazed. Because now it’s since Tuesday that I’ve slept and 3.5 hours is not enough to keep you, really, or me, definitely, sane. We’re in Italy now, though, and I am with the lovely men of BUNUEL, so it’s calming.
And then there’s this in the restaurant where we’re eating dinner, pre-show.
“Eugene? This is Franz’ mother!”
Franz is the lanky powerhouse of a drummer and his mother is the nice-looking lady looking on with a certain amount of tangible pride at her son. I turn to whisper to Xabier, guitarist extraordinaire, and ask, foolishly, misguidedly, and now regretfully, “say…how old is his mom?”
To which Xabier responds by screaming across the room, “Hey FRANZ…EUGENE WANTS TO KNOW HOW OLD YOUR MOTHER IS?” A question that no matter the context nor the reason never sounds anything other than…creepy? Is that the word I am looking for? Or maybe, better: confusing.
Franz and his mother exchange looks before he screams back, “62!”
Yeah.
And then checkmate. “How old are you again Eugene?” And laughter as I note that his mother and I could have been classmates. I think yeah, under classmates of Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, fuck it. I’m throwing everybody under the old-age bus.
The show though? Solid, even as I marvel at the fluids flowing up from the floor boards. I wonder where they’re coming from and then notice I am drenched. So: from me.
Tonight though is the first night I can sleep though so naturally when I get back to the hotel I start answering work emails but at the end of it, six hours of sleep finally and no more dark dreams of murder.
TURIN VS. TURINO: DISCUSS
“I saw you before!” He was wearing a Melvins shirt, about 53 years old, with a healed gash on the left side of his forehead. “From Fuckfest to now I know OXBOW!” He’s broken into the backstage room where I sit shirtless and pants-less, air drying.
“Yes. I love OXBOW. But I HATE you.” He neither smiles nor frowns when he says this so I wait. “Because after my accident it seemed you were, excuse my bad English, but singing my life.”
Accident?
“Yeah, a car crash. It was 75 miles an hour. My brain was out and they had to put it back in. After then headaches. In a coma and the hospital. For three or two months.” He’s standing over me. I’d stand but, actually, no I couldn’t. He could also sit which he does eventually.
“But The Narcotic Story was my favorite,” I’m just happy to have him no longer towering over me now. “And I remember you back then…you were much bigger!”
“Yeah, I was lifting weights. Probably about 255. And…”
“Yes. MUCH bigger. But like this too…” And he draws a spasmodic line in the air to indicate a gut. A noticeable protrusion.
“Well, I mostly just switched over from heavy weightlifting to Brazilian jiu jitsu and…”
“…Really fat! Hahaha…” he powered on. “With an afro…but your face?”
“I, um…”
“Fat! Fucking fat! Hahahaha…and the, how you say?”
“Stomach?”
“Gut? Out to HERE! Hahaha…”
“Well, that was then and I’m training differently now…”
“Now? Hmmm…and you were actually training back then?!? To be FAT? Hahaha…”
I surrender. “Yeah.”
“Fat fat fatty fat fat…just big.” He, and the room finally quiet. “But I love you guys. And BUNUEL too. You know I was in jail too, you know?”
How can I say that I am not surprised here?
“Drinking too much. And driving. They took my license.”
“How are you getting home tonight?” I ask, finally standing.
“Oh. Driving. But can I hug you?” He asks, coughing out flecks of phlegm.
“Sure.” And the sweat from my stinking corpus seeps into the dirt and grime on his shirt and pants.
“I love you man.”
“I love you too.”
“But, man, you were FAT.”
When I got back to the hotel in Turin, I slept like a baby. Which is to say, I woke up every two hours crying and pissing myself. Do I have to tell you here that I am joking? I hope not.
Next stop? Milan and beyond.
This was very sweet. You could've put that fan back in the hospital. And you didn't!
Sorry, Eugene, but I've just cancelled my subscription. I signed up when you left OZY (or rather, when OZY imploded) thinking the content would be interesting and worthwhile. Unfortunately, the content is not appealing. Moreover, I've tried to listen to some of the "music" your "bands" play, and let's just say, I'm not your audience.
Nonetheless, I wish you continued good luck and all the best.