If You Hate Bunuel + You Know It…
...Clap your hands and stop reading. IMMEDIATELY.
Ed was my friend. Ed was my friend maybe solely on the basis of our first meeting where I saw him writing in five-foot tall lettering a legend that read: HAVE NO FEAR, ED IS HERE! This was being done on a fogged over mirror at Gold’s Gym. Upon the conclusion of his missive, Ed did a jumping spin kick and went back to his workout.
Did I mention he was wearing a loincloth when he did so? And no shirt?
Look, there are several types of “out there” but the champagne of “out there’s” is the kind where whatever you’re on so baffles all within viewing distance that they don’t sanction your behavior. At all.
Though they eventually changed gym rules to shutdown workout shirtlessness, Ed persevered with the loin cloth. And in an excess of “a friend of an enemy of decorum is my friend” Ed and I had become friends. Not the least of which was over his explanation of the loin cloth which was so simple, it was almost artful: “I’m a Native American.”
One day he had come over to me, a little less animated than usual. But clearly peeved.
“Hey, you know what this girl just said to me?” I knew, without him saying, what she had said to him. As a proud wearer of Speedos, posing trunks and other ball-hugging ephemera I was sure I knew clearly what she said to him.
“What did she say to you?”
“She came over and asked me if she could give me a little advice.” He prepped the machine next to me for a set for tricep pushdowns.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘no.’”
Now this shocked me. But mostly because I find the advice given usually tells me more about the giver than me.
“Why didn’t you see what she had to say?”
“I KNOW what she was going to say. Fuck her advice.” And with that Ed was deep into his triceps and between sets doing snap kicks at a roll of tape he carried.
I tell this story for a reason.
In the comments of last week’s installment some wag cancelled his subscription and then wrote to tell me why he had done so by way of parting advice. Apparently he had been attracted by my pieces on the horrible OZY, but stayed for the coruscating brilliance of the rest of my takes on race in America, politics, culture theory and whatever else is here. Recently though he’s been chagrined by my focus on music that he doesn’t think much of.
The presumption here being that in order to get a bigger fan base — like maybe Madonna I guess — or more paying customers, and a serious seat at the table of American people of letters I should spend less time writing about Cheetos as a dinner entree and more about the sexy back office gossip connected to the now-departed Liz Truss.
To which I’d offer the immortal words of Bob Dylan: “I could sing better than Caruso…if I WANTED to…”
So for those who don’t dig tour diaries, George Will awaits (or does he?). And I will now talk about MILAN.
TALKING ABOUT MILAN
We drive by some Italian fascist architecture on the way into the city and Franz, BUNUEL’s drummer, gives it a finger while muttering, “fucking fascists.” With Giorgia Meloni in the news in Italy and a vote just being had for the Senate with another Far Right win, there’s already anticipation about the terrible hangover that always hits post-fascism.
But I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about Italian fascist architecture which, to my eye and before Franz started shooting the bird, I was finding pretty fantastic. Especially when compared to Nazi architecture, which was routinely, fairly dull. And while it’s no surprise that the Italian fascists should outpace the Germans when it came to architecture, what the hell happened with something else Italians are supposed to be so good at? Specifically: uniforms.
Take the Hugo Boss designed Nazi prey-a-porter, and you have to wonder how the Italians blew that so badly. How badly? Neo Nazis are STILL trying to pull off the snappy, killer set ups some 80 years later while most of you just had to look up Italian fascist uniforms.
Now I’m no Nazi but with KANYE WEST in the news so much these days it seemed to be something that couldn’t pass without comment.
But the show? Oh yeah. Milan was great, in no small part diminished by this being the show where I finally HAD IT. The compulsive cell phoning has to stop and after flipping out on an audience member who seemed to believe my pique was made up, we decided to post a sign. So that if I slap your phone across the room, you know why.
GETTING OVER IN GENOVA
Genova. A bridge gig. Meaning, one not booked by the booking agency but booked by us to help us avoid the hated “day off”. You get paid, sell merch, get a place to sleep and do what the hell you came over there to do: have people hear your music. The fact that it was in a modified coffee shop? Immaterial.
In fact if you tally the numbers of coffee shops (first show I ever played, ever), pizza parlors, weddings, and bowling alleys I’ve played the number is shockingly high. Let that sink in for a minute.
But I’ve given up hope of ever sleeping normally. The tour is too short to really adjust to euro time and not long enough that I want to. And usually getting only five to six hours of sleep normally has prepared me well for being under-rested and strange because I am under-rested since I am always under-rested. AND strange.
Of course, then there is the owl.
Stepping into the coffee shop club the totem that I try to not look at, at all, is a huge owl. With glowing eyes. Maybe not the biggest deal. For folks with no history of the use of hallucinogens. But for the rest of the world that does? This bird has a dark significance that’s weirding me out. So I sit right under it, the overwhelming theory being that the juju flies over my head and affects my enemies.
“I couldn’t decide if he was going to strangle me. Or fuck me.” An after-show critique by someone to Andrea, our bassist.
Doesn’t really seem like an either/or deal to me but stalking through the owl-entranced audience I guess I could feel this. After show though, like Cinderella, I had to hobble back to the one-star hotel where we were staying to do several work meetings. I imagined I might be asked what was going on with my design decor that I thought it made sense to have a rotary phone on the wall, but no.
Then? A fitful sleep and an early morning rise to get to the only city in Switzerland that feels like it’s worth playing: Geneve.
AGGRIEVED IN GENEVE
I talk shit about Switzerland but…well, actually, that’s it. I talk shit about Switzerland along the lines of it being like the worst sex you’ve had every time you have sex there. No matter how big the audiences are or how much money you make here, it’s populated by a nervous population and they don’t get any less so over the years.
However, Geneva, or how they amusingly call it, Geneve, because, well, fuck a vowel, is different. More French than Swiss the shows here are great and as great as the shows have been here the venue, one I’ve never played before, is fantastic. The backstage room is ripped from the pages of Architectural Digest and the vibe is mellow and solid.
“Is there any thing I can get you?” A dangerous and wildly open-ended question that when asked of me always gets a pause as I eliminate all of the socially unacceptable and yet totally needed things by me. But the back stage manager helps. “Tea? Coffee?”
I thank her for narrowing the options and ask for green tea. Sadly, given my woeful tea ignorance, I do not know that green tea is packed with caffeine so while I am drinking cup after cup of it for my ragged throat, I’m not calculating the inevitable feels that will come from drinking cup after cup of green tea.
The show? A shaky, jittery and animated blur. Post-show? Because the hotel is a multi-star deal I am dying to get back to it but the venue folks want to chat. In my animated state I don’t notice their animated state but I beg off and flee back to the hotel where I stare at the ceiling for six hours because: green tea. When we get to the venue in the morning to get our gear we find them as we left them: animated. On what I suspect wasn’t green tea.
Then fitful van non-sleep and into Paris traffic jams.
PARIS. THE CITY OF LIGHTS. AND CRACK.
The summer time Paris gig was a drag. So we were resolved to do it again. On the same night that Cave In was playing across town. Which would have seemed to spell certain doom and yet, this Paris show won.
The show promoter? A guy named Tom. Not the Frenchest sounding name but still. We show up, and the deli tray, which you count on as your second meal of the day, is just some shit scattered across a table top.
To describe me as ill-tempered now is an understatement. The Bunuel folks are so passionately good willed that about 90 percent of my just out-of-the-box act feels totally…inappropriate. That means my “normal” responses to just about everything seem/feel out of place. So I stew in silence, no more less than when one of the bar girls seems “surprised” that Tom is actually showing up tonight.
He rolls in and tour manager Annapaola greets him, and she’s wonderfully good tempered, and as he self-assuredly asks if there’s anything he can do for us I get in there before she can.
“Yeah. Food. Fucking food. That’s not Doritos. Or water.”
“There’s the deli tray…”
“…Of Doritos and water.”
He seems irked but my response here is always and remains shock that well-fed folks can’t seem to figure out why poorly fed ones are so angry.
On the menu tonight is Japanese food and since in a fit of pique I refuse to walk to the restaurant, instead deciding to save the scant calories I have available to me — I know, I know…I’m being a prick — and stay hunkered down in the “green” room just staring at the Doritos and the water until he brings me the food.
Fed now, I can pay attention to the bands. The first band is doing some great Detroit rock thing. The second band, who was walking on to the stage during the first band’s set, seems poised for a beating.
“Did you just walk on the stage to come back here to drop off your jacket?” I ask the guy from the second band by way of warning. But he seems oblivious to the protocol and the consequences of violating this protocol.
“Yeah. I had to put my jacket somewhere.” He looked at me and smiled. I just looked at him. People with no instinct for self-preservation I have no time for.
The show though? Great. More people than Paris in the summer, and the cherry on top was a 60-year-old woman front and center who rocked the whole show. I don’t know how she came to be there or who she was with as I never spoke to her, but the fact that we’re attracting matrons? A win in my book. To see a contemporary I mean (ouch).
“That place, Glazart, that you played last time?” A friend of my friend Phillippe Thiphaine asked. “So many crackheads there no one goes anymore.” And indeed Cave In played some converted techno disco rather than play there. Well now we know.
“Where are you playing tomorrow?” Thiphaine I’ve known since his band Heliogabale played with us back in the mid-90s.
“Namur.”
He doesn't know it and shakes his head.
“Namur,” I say a little louder. “NA-MUR!”
He still doesn’t know.
“It’s south of Brussels about 30 minutes.
“Ohhhh…you mean Namur.”
“You! What the fuck did I just say?!?!”
He laughs and shrugs and pronounces it the way he would have understood it: “Na-moo-r.”
“You see…this is why we bombed you people.” He laughs and I laugh because I know better than anyone that we never bombed France despite France sorely being in need of a bombing. Just to help with their pronunciation.
NA-MOO-R
Remember where they had that sex party in Eyes Wide Shut, that Kubrick movie everyone pretended to take seriously but then on subsequent viewings you realize, was a comedy? Well this is what that club and the hotel next to it recalled. Namur is like the tony Belgian suburb where the first thought I have is, “people are chained up in basements here for sure.”
But the guy who booked it had booked OXBOW before in Brussels, now has a radio show and is geeked beyond belief that BUNUEL is here. They have a chef to do dinner and the deli tray is an impressive array of bomb-ass cheeses. Outside of a friend showing up and telling me that eight family members of hers just died in a fire that was sparked by short circuiting electrical connected to the metal window shutters that then refused to open leaving all there destined to a fiery death, it was a blast.
Yeah. Outside of that.
SOULCRUSHED IN NIJMEGEN
A sold-out festival. Friends of ours in Cave In playing. Amenra too. Plus a handful of other folks we know and dig, and it’s the last show of the tour. Pacing backstage, 10 minutes before show time I get a text from my second daughter, her take felt therapy-fueled and was very much along the lines of…your constant ranting about losers was a tremendous burden for me to bear because my assumption was that were I to be a “loser” you’d not believe I was worthy of love. This, combined with your general lack of kindness and softness, has caused me great life distress, depression and a certain amount of anger.
Not at all what you’d expect from someone who you’ve publicly proclaimed as being one of the most talented humans you have ever met, and who you love more than you could ever possibly love anyone or anything. But my job here wasn’t to take measure of me and MY feelings but to acknowledge her perspective, and offer some version of “I’m sorry you feel that way. How should we proceed going forward?”
Minutes before show time though I fail to do this and offer point-by-point rebuttals to show that I am listening, understanding, but disagreeing with the assessment. The first part of the BUNUEL song “Hornets” starts, a song about the violent interplay of capital and those who love it, and I hit the stage.
Eight hundred? Nine hundred people there? I don’t know. Last shows are always dangerous. You play with the kind of abandon that can carry you well beyond the end of the show, injury-wise. And we do, the moments of the other shows playing in a reel in my head: Andrea jumping into the pit at one point, Xabi doing an impossible backbend while ripping off a seemingly effortless solo, and Franz moonwalking off the stage at set conclusion.
It’s been a wild and wonderful ride, this tour, and plans are made post-show for the future. Meanwhile the text discussion with my daughter continues and while we get closer to a resolve we also, in a lot of ways, don’t get any closer.
Leaving Namur BUNUEL took a break at Holy Sunshine, a tattoo parlor where the great Muzah Van Tricht works. He’s darkening the tattoo he just did on my hands back in July. Finger tattoos hurt like hell, and having to go over them again, while absolutely necessary also tested my resolve. In any case, he deepened and darkened what I had there and what I felt to be deeply emblematic of just about everything the right hand and the left hand could do, announcing as they now did: FINE LINE.
Yes, indeed. And someday maybe I’ll be lucky enough to know just where it is.
But now…2023…will be the year of OXBOW’s release of LOVE’S HOLIDAY [Ipecac] and A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer’s Row: A Memoir [Feral House] and a heartfelt desire that I blow it less than I did the year before.
Peace.
Love articles like these!!! Awesome!!