2002"ELECTROAPOCALYPSE" TOUR

Full details & war stories below, but first we'd like to thank:

Gretchen at the Chameleon Club, Dan & Amy of I Am The World Trade Center, Paula & Eli in Wycombe, Erik at Kork, Steve in Brooklyn, Bobby & The Boys in Jamaica Plain, Trance Love Airways in Jersey, Mike in Albany, Rob Gillis, Mrs. Gillis in White Plains, Washington in Chapel Hill, Monica & Her Friends in Raleigh, Q, Casey in Spartanburg, David in Columbia, The State in Columbia, Victoria & Chris in Columbia, AAA motor club and Jim the locksmith, Sarah in CIncinnati, Dan in Saginaw, all the club owners, all the bartenders who gave us drinks even when they weren't supposed to, all the sound guys, all the bands we played with, and all the fans who came out!

BEST SHOW

Our best show by far was in Saginaw, Michigan on the last night of the tour. We played in the basement of a comedy club to about 75 teenagers, many of whom had come there specifically to see us (the club had been playing our CD between sets for a few weeks, generating some very positive word-of-mouth).

The band before us, this nu-metal/punk group called Midori (who I guess had asked to open for us), had gotten all glammed-up with face paint and costumes and whipped the audience into a screaming, moshing frenzy before announcing “Stick around for the Mystechs!”.

Between the opening band’s strong performance and the crowd’s high expectations for us, I actually felt a bit nervous when it came our time to set up and play. There were some technical problems during the sound check (one of the venue’s cables had shorted out) which heightened my edginess. As the sound guy searched for a replacement, I gave a rather lame rendition of my old “fuck you, clown” joke (say what you will – it’s good for killing time). There was light heckling from the audience about our costumes and our laptop (“Guess you’re just too high-tech for us!”) and my stupid joke, which is to be expected whenever we’re forced to stand up there in our weird clothes without being able to rock n’ roll.

Finally we got everything working, and immediately launched into “Showtime at the Apocalypse”, during which Nick went nuts and cracked the fake blood capsule he’d been saving all tour, playing the rest of the show with red gunk oozing from his mouth.

At first, the audience just stood there and stared at us. Initially, I thought they weren’t digging it, so I just played harder, bombarding them with all our heaviest songs while squeezing every weird sound I could out of the Moog. In retrospect, though, what I mistook for apathy on the part of the crowd was actually a stunned, deer-in-headlights reaction. By the fifth song, “Pressure”, they were going absolutely wild and boogying down. Maybe it was the size of the room or maybe it was my exhausted imagination, but I’ve never heard louder applause after one of our sets.

The minute the set was over and we brought out the CDs, people were handing us money faster than we could keep track of it. We sold out all our copies of the new record plus several of the old records, signed dozens of autographs, and were asked to pose for more than a couple pictures with newly converted fans.

Wow.

Runner-up for best crowd would have to be Spartanburg, South Carolina, at another all-ages punk/metal club, where the crowd was actually singing the choruses of the songs back to us by the second or third repetition, dancing like crazy people, and jumping onstage to sing along on the Sex Pistols and Bad
Religion covers. If nothing else, the experiences I had in Spartanburg and Saginaw have convinced me to forget about the 21+ bars next time around and book as many all-ages shows as possible. Heck, even at the 17+ and 18+ venues, the reaction was markedly better than at the 21+ venues… The kids are definitely all right.

WORST SHOW

If by “worst show” you mean which show did I walk away feeling the worst about, that would have to be Atlanta. We were on a five-band bill with two other touring acts and two local bands. The local bands both cancelled, and only two or three people from Atlanta came to watch the show. Granted, between the three locals, two employees, and dozen-odd members of the other bands this was hardly our smallest audience (that distinction goes to the five souls we played to in Chapel Hill, NC), there was a weird, depressing vibe about the whole evening… maybe it came from the collective blues of three struggling touring bands knowing they’re not going to get paid a dime for their efforts; maybe it was the fact that the venue was a cold, damp, cavern (they had an unusually high ceiling for such a relatively small room) barely lit by a few harsh, fluorescent lights and permeated by the stench from the broken toilets in the restrooms.

This was the one and only night that – may Wayne Newton, Sammy Davis Jr., and all the other gods of show business forgive me – I didn’t give it my all. I only set up a couple of lights, acted like a prick, sang like a wino, and (much to Suzy’s bewilderment and consternation) frequently ended songs by drowning them out in waves of pure static and ear-splitting synthesizer noise, which I sometimes dragged out for several minutes before moving on to the next song.

We cut the set short, had a beer on the house, and got the hell out of there. Strangely, though, one of the other bands present found our set quite compelling and interrogated me at length about my equipment, songwriting, and our stage show afterwards, with a mind towards how they could work a bit of our style
into their own music. Go figure.

MOST GRACIOUS HOSTS

As much as we deeply appreciated all the couches, floors, and cots people offered to us, I feel the most indebted to all the folks in Boston who bailed us out on what could easily have become the most hellish night of the tour.

We were booked in Boston to play before an open blues jam at this little dive bar. Don’t ask me why I booked it in the first place: at the time, I had good reason to believe the venue was a fairly standard alterna-rock club – an impression shattered the instant we arrived. They had this ancient sound system installed in 1972 which somehow managed to blow out my Novation BassStation keyboard (and, just my luck, it blew out a component that can only be acquired via mail order from Germany). Beyond that, the PA was so beat-up and worn-out that all our harder songs – like “Showtime at the Apocalypse” – came out distorted beyond all recognition.

The set was awful in every respect. It was our first night without Nick [he had to go home for a couple of days, to attend some idiotic seminar for his day job], and Suzy and I had yet to recover our confidence as a duo. We couldn’t play the loud songs, so the set was generally low-energy and sedated. Worst of all, I was forced to play the Moog instead of my Novation, and at the time I didn’t have a clue how to get any decent sounds out of the thing (though I’ve since gotten damned good at it). So the show was shit by our own standards and, while they were polite, our style of music obviously wasn’t the audience’s cup of tea.

However, after the show, all the blues, country, and rock musicians who’d come for the jam started telling us about their own tough nights on the road (all together, these guys had probably spent over a hundred years touring). They bought us two orders of chicken wings, passed the hat to get us some gas money (we were flat broke at this point), let us crash in this empty apartment in a building one of them owned, and this organ/keyboard player helped me pinpoint exactly what was wrong with my synth. Not only that, but they entertained us with some kick-ass Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett covers.

God bless those guys: they’re all angels in my book.

HIGHEST PRAISE RECEIVED

It’s a draw. On one hand, there were the two kids in Spartanburg, South Carolina, who are in a band called Wake Up September that they describe as “the B-52s meet industrial”. They said that, after seeing our show, they felt inspired to run home and finish their demo CD as soon as possible. On the other hand, in Cincinnati, we played our cover of Bad Religion’s “21st Century Digital Boy”, to an audience that – unbeknownst to us – included Greg Hetson, guitarist for Bad Religion and the Circle Jerks (who’d played across the street the night before). Greg said he loved the cover, and asked me to mail him a copy of it so he can play it for the rest of the band. I’m not sure if he liked it as music or as comedy, but who cares? BR has done so much to entertain me over the years, I’m happy to return the favor any way I can.

FAVORITE CITY APART FROM THE SHOW

New York. After finally visiting the place, I reached the same conclusion I did after the first time I had sex: no, it wasn’t as end-all, be-all, incredibly, unbelievably, mind-blowingly cool as people said it.would be... but it was still pretty fuckin’ cool. On a Monday night, there were more interesting places to go, people to watch, things to eat, bands to hear, and weird adventures to get tangled up in on any single block of the Village than in all Wicker Park or Lakeview (Chicago’s trendy neighborhoods) on a weekend. And not only that, the Village is five times the size of all Chicago’s hipster neighborhoods put together – which is to say nothing of Brooklyn, which has an equally vibrant nightlife of its own.

However, I must say the NYC music/art scene seems to be hopelessly stuck in 1976-1980... endlessly trying to revive the glory days of the Ramones and Television by imitating the actual sound and style of those bands, rather than by adopting the wildly experimental, devil-may-care spirit that lead those bands to develop their sound and style in the first place. And while there are certainly exceptions, the Big Apple as a whole definitely seems afflicted by what I call the Strokes Syndrome.

WILDEST PARTY KIDS

Oh, probably the kids from New Jersey… first they tell us to follow them to this party in another town, then on the way there they start drag-racing each other down an unlit section of the NJ turnpike, in the middle of the night with all their running lights turned off. Then there was the pair of hotel chefs in NYC who started play-fighting with each other in the back room of this bar, then grew increasingly serious about it until the one guy cracked a rib – at which point they both laughed it off and bought another round of beers (meanwhile, these three other people were having a menage et trois in a corner of the room).

I and the Pat Benetar impersonator / comedienne I was talking to found all the goings-on quite amusing, and started giving a Monday Night Football-style play-by-play of all the shenanigans for the amusement of the others at our table. Other than that, though, everywhere we went it was pretty much people on couches smoking pot, drinking, and chatting about random subjects… no wild orgies or rockstar cocaine binges to report.

BEST PAYCHECK

Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA opening for Soviet and Stereo Total. We made $125 off the door, which is good as we sold just one lousy record (to a friend, no less). Saginaw came second: $110 when you add up the merch sales + the room the venue got for us.

WORST PAYCHECK

Atlanta: $0. -$15.00 if you count what we paid to eat in the cajun restaurant upstairs.

BEST BAND WE PLAYED WITH

Stereo Total - they ROCK! Francois is SO COOL! (I'm sure Bretzel, the other member, is too but I didn't get a chance to talk to him) And, best of all, they speak with such adorably thick French and German accents that you might think they're faking it, but they're not!

For those of you who don't know, ST is this European electronic pop band on Momus' record label who sing very silly, very peppy songs about three-way sex and Communism in a variety of languages.

WORST BAND WE PLAYED WITH

Hockey Night: They were an electro-rock band from Minneapolis - that is, until half their band (the two synthesizer people) quit just before the tour. The rest of them (the guitarist, bassist, and drummer) did the tour anyway as a rock band, which might have been a noble display of gumpsion, if they didn't act like such assholes.

They spent most of their show standing around laughing at their own jokes about how much they sucked, rolling drunk on the floor, plucking randomly at their instruments as if they'd touched a guitar or drumstick before, and throwing crash cymbals at the thousand-dollar house lights.

I realize there's such a thing as "so bad it's good", but this was "so bad, it's sad".

WEIRDEST BAND WE PLAYED WITH

Night Wigga - about twelve freaks dressed like a cross between Parliament, Tarzan, and I Dream of Genie doing reggae mix-and-match medleys of classic rock songs (for example: "Helter Shelter"). It got kinda
monotonous and boring after awhile, but at least it was a change of pace from standard indie rock.

MOST INTERESTING ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

George's Famous Dinner Bell Diner in Plainville, Ohio…Where else can you enjoy complimentary cinnamon sticky-buns and five-inch-deep “cups” of chicken noodle soup while sitting beside an eight-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty in the shadow of a 30-foot-tall American flag? I loved it so much, I left a $10 tip on an $18 bill.

THING I MISS MOST

Actually playing the shows. If I didn’t mind playing live before, I love it now.

THING I MISS LEAST

The stink that hung around me by the end of the tour. I swear, the two outfits I wore onstage for the whole
two and a half weeks will probably have to be burned for sanitation’s sake.

hursday 10/31/02	Chicago, IL; My Grinder @ No Exit (6970 N Glenwood Chicago, IL 773-743-3355) w/ Scott Free 9:00 P.M. ALL AGES!!!
Friday 11/1/02	Eastpointe (Detroit), MI @ The Wired Frog (21145 Gratiot Ave, Eastpointe, MI 48021 586-498-9500) 8:00 P.M. ALL AGES!!!
Saturday 11/2/02	Lancaster, PA @ Chameleon Club(223 N. Water St. Lancaster, PA 17603 717-393-7133) 9:00 P.M. w/ Stereo Total and Soviet 18 and over!
Sunday 11/3/02	Philadelphia, PA @ North Star Bar(2639 Poplar St.,Philadelphia, PA 19130 215-684-0808) 9:00 P.M. w/ I Am The World Trade Center 21 and over.
Monday 11/4/02	New York City, NY @ Meow Mix (269 Houston St New York, NY 10002-1012 212-254-0688) 9:00 P.M. 21 and over.
Tuesday 11/5/02	Jamaica Plain (Boston), MA @ Midway Cafe (3496 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 617 524-9038) 8:00 P.M. 21 and over.
Wednesday 11/6/02	Long Branch, NJ @ Brighton Bar(121 Brighton Ave. Long Branch, NJ 07740 732-222-9684) 9:00 P.M. 18 and over!
Thursday 11/7/02	Albany, NY @ Valentine's (Downstairs)(17 New Scotland Ave., NY 12208 518-432-6572) 9:30 P.M. 18 and over!
Friday 11/8/02	Brooklyn, NY @ Freddy's(485 Dean Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 718-622-7035) 9:00 P.M. 21 and over.
Sunday 11/10/02	Chapel Hill, NC @ Skylight Exchange (405 1/2 W. Rosemary St. Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-933-5550) 8:30 P.M. ALL AGES!!!
Monday 11/11/02	Spartanburg, SC @ Ground Zero (3059 Howard Street Spartanburg, SC 29303 864-948-1661) 8:00 P.M. ALL AGES!!!
Tuesday 11/12/02	Columbia, SC @ Art Bar (1211 Park St. Columbia, SC 29201 803-929-0198) 11:00 P.M. 21 and over.
Wednesday 11/13/02	Atlanta, GA @ The Somber Reptile (842 Marietta St NW, Atlanta, GA, 30318 404-881-9701) 8:00 P.M. ALL AGES!!!
Thursday 11/14/02	Cincinnati, OH @ Sudsy Malone's Laundry & Bar (2626 Vine St. Cincinnati, OH, 513-751-2300) 10:00 P.M. 21 and over.
Friday 11/15/02	Buffalo, NY Venue Changed!@ The Continental* (212 Franklin Street Buffalo NY 14201 716-855-3938) 11:00 P.M. 18 and over!
Saturday 11/16/02	Saginaw, MI @ The Pit (220 N. Hamilton Saginaw, MI, 48602) 6:00 P.M. w/ Midori and Can't Think To Breathe17 and over!