We got to Portland, but I never got the boots. We did get to see Sunny Day again, which was ultracool. They're such nice kids, those Sunny Day boys. When we got to the venue, they and the Shudder to Think kids were standing around, and much hugs were exchanged. Jeremy from Sunny Day requested we do "Sugar Free Jazz" in sound check. Nice to know when you're appreciated by those fine Sunny Day kids.
Backstage, the Shudder to Think stage guy, known to us and the world as Angry Dave, was sitting on the backstage couch with his arms folded. "Why are you so angry, Dave?" we keep asking him. He's a medium-height dirty-blonde guy with dreadlocks.
"I'm not angry," he always says, raising his eyebrows.
At some point in the middle of Sunny Day's set, Angry Dave very calmly walked up to the side of the stage, removed his coat, and then suddenly ran out between Jeremy and Nate the bass player and dove into the crowd. Five minutes later, he emerged, looking as serenely angry as he always does.
On to Seattle, Land of Sunny Day. We did a radio interview on KCMU, with a cat named Mike D. (different guy) who asked us all these cogent questions about the differences between East and West Coast hiphop. Weird how some people consider us a hiphop band, others a rock band. We don't really consider ourselves to be anything. Mike had us grab CD's we wanted to play, and sometime after we put on the Jungle Brothers' "My Jimmy Weighs a Ton" some guy called up, asking bewilderedly, "I love you guys--why are they playing all this music that sucks?" We berated him. Afterwards, Mark did a point-by-point dissection of the samples in "Sugar Free Jazz", pointing out exactly where the samples of the streets of Hong Kong and the escalator at Macy's were. I wandered through the CD shelves, found my girlfriend Maggie's CD, and stole a picture of her off a CD single of hers. Love is weird, G.
(Just as an aside; people keep sending me e-mail asking me to confirm this rumour that Infamous World Renowned Award Winning Poet Maggie Estep is my girlfriend, and she is indeed. We started really seeing each other when the Soul C's were touring with Cop Shoot Cop--she was on tour with her band opening for Hole at the time, and for a while we were trailing each other on the road. Gus would drive me out to Rochester to see her when we were playing Buffalo. It became sort of the tour miniscandal--Cop Shoot Cop's shirt-selling guy came up to me backstage in Detroit, and, completely out of the blue, said, "So--does she talk a lot?" Uh, no. Why?)
That night, the house was packed. The backstage area apparently used to be a gym--there were all these awards and citations pertaining to the National Drug-Free Youth Powerlifting Association on the walls. Dave Grohl was wandering around back there, and Gus walked up to him and said "Hey, Nirvana Boy." Gotta love that Gus.
We've been played on the radio quite a bit up there--I can always tell this during "Screenwriters", our Big Spoken Word Radio Hit. When I get to the part where it goes "...and the radioman fucks a model too," everybody goes nuts. He said fuck! He said fuck! As opposed to the towns where they haven't been bombarded with the radio version, which mutes the bad word in the middle. In those towns, everyone just looks slightly confused at the sudden profanity.
I drove around with a friend of mine afterwards, listening to the big Commercial Alternative station. "Screenwriters' Blues" was number 7 or 8 on some sort of Big Countdown or other. "That was Soul Coughing, a band from Los Angeles," the DJ said. I made my friend stop the car. I got out, went to the payphone, looked up the radio station request line in the yellow pages, and called the DJ. "Um, I just wanted to clear up this misconception that we're from Los Angeles," I said.
"Oh, uh," the DJ said. "How was your show?"
During Shudder's set, there was a dramatic pause in the middle of one of the songs. Craig, Shudder's flamboyant lead singer boy, looked around the house coyly.
"I FUCKING LOVE YOU!" some guy yelled.
Startled, Craig looked up and seemed to compose some kind of rejoinder in his mind, and was about to say it, when the guy screamed "YOU FUCKING ROCK MY FUCKING WORLD!"
Sunny Day's set was uncanny. They are truly an amazing band. There's something about watching them live that brings every pinch of heartbreak you've ever felt in your life to the surface. William, the drummer, is perhaps the most emotionally intense drummer I've ever seen in my life. He looks lost when he plays. Between songs he just sort of sits there behind the drums, wild look in his eyes, looking like he's about to collapse, his hands covered in blood. He gets so worked up that steam actually rises from his body. I kept thinking--Hey, is William on fire? But in fact, it was just his sweat transforming itself into a ghostly form and wisping away.
At the end of the last song of the last encore, the chords crashed into a single shimmering note of feedback. Dan, the guitar player who won't go to California, put his guitar down and walked offstage. So did Nate the bass player. William just sat there, looking like someone had told him the most horrifying thing anyone had told him in his life. Jeremy was mumbling something into the microphone, squeezing that one note out of his guitar. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it sounded like a prayer.
And then, as this amazing band does every night, William snapped the cymbals and bolted offstage; Jeremy put his guitar down, did a meek little wave and smile to the audience, and walked awkwardly away.
Everybody hung out backstage for awhile; it was pretty emotional. We were flying to Europe the next day, while Shudder and Sunny Day continued across the U.S. I hung out with Stuart, the Shudder bass player for awhile, talking about all the women we were too nervous to talk to at the show in Austin. I went upstairs with my friend Sara and watched Jeremy sheepishly sign autographs on peoples' bookbags. I myself signed the left leg of a trembling blonde girl's jeans--Jeremy had signed the right side. If we ever get out of this idiot music business, Jeremy and I, I think, are going to make buddy movies together--Jeremy and Doughty, Toughest Cops On The Street.
"You know," Sara said, "I met Jeremy when I was working at K-Mart. He came in to buy some sort of action figure that I helped him find. He's like a little boy. I hear he's a born again Christian."
I went over to William, who wrote his address down in my address book with bloody hands.
Ten hours later, and we were all standing around the SeaTac airport, checking our baggage and contemplating the long flight over the North Pole to London. It was this sort of weird contemplative moment between all of us--very quiet, but very communicative. It was kind of this realization that here we were, and this was our life. I think it was gradually dawning on us that this band was slowly turning into a sort of family.
Next week--exciting adventures in London, Amsterdam, France, and Beyond.
Soul Coughing can be reached via e-mail at SOULCGHING@aol.com
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