THIS MORNING—wait, no—yesterday morning I was unsteady, not yet caffeinated at the cappuccino-email dump up on Avenue A. Clicked on something and a lead line read, “The Unband officially new American shame.” I thought: That was quick. But, we’re all what we are. After a sip or two of the espresso-crank the place serves I realized I was just misreading the name of the band we’re replacing on the Motörhead tour. No mention of why the tour became Shame-less. The photo was not of us but of that band. Conspicuous tattoos, spiky hair, eyeliner, on-the-nose rock dudes. What Matt, Eug, and I were expected to look like when we were first introduced around the TVT office, tattooless and piercing-free in suit jackets. Almost no one believed we were who we were. The “rocker” look is akin to the fat Italian chef kissing his fingers on a pizza box. Some people need to be reassured, I guess.

Sitting at the bar now, perusing the anemic local weekly while Motörhead soundchecks, louder than everyone ever. Hold a page of the paper vertically and the bass vibrations will rip it in half.

Of the bands considered part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal—Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Raven (“new” twenty, twenty-five years ago)—Motörhead is by far the rawest, most punk rock.. But the real difference between Motörhead and their peers, as well as any more recent American metal band—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer—is very pronounced when you hear them play “Be My Baby,” which they’re doing right now, faithfully. It sounds natural, and like Ronnie Spector would sound perfectly appropriate over it (when Phil Spector said Wall of Sound he had no idea; might as well be blasting out of a jet engine twenty feet away, lifts your balls off the barstool). There’s a genuine reverence that wouldn’t translate if there were the usual heavy metal trappings in the way. Not that a little posturing and pretention can’t go a long way—e.g. Iron Maiden—but Motörhead’s lack of it is why [Motörhead’s lead singer] Lemmy Kilmister is often referred to as “God” in heavy metal and hard rock circles, where Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson is merely a ‘genius’. And why we’re comfortable on the bill, not being a metal band—Motorhead aren’t either, far as I’m concerned. From where I stand we don’t sound much like Motörhead, but whenever someone says we do, which is fairly often nowadays, it’s a compliment.

Then, nobody else in the room, I’m drawn to the sweet spot, front and center between the speaker columns, “We Are the Road Crew,” coming out like a gale. Yes. That’s the stuff.

SEPTEMBER 29 / SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

Full house here. We’ve played San Antonio a few times; I remember the first time vividly. One willowy ginger girl alone in the middle of the room smiling. No one else in the building except the grousing club owner, who kept slamming his palm against a handwritten sign: NO COVERS! Per order of the “Mangement” [sic]. We snuck in a verse or so of a Trio song, and later “Wheels of Steel” (Saxon), figuring what are the odds of a doddering, alky Chicano in a deserted dive bar recognizing those, much less from our adaptations, but both times he slapped the sign and wagged his finger. We were onstage for two hours in front of the tinsel curtain there and the girl hardly moved. I don’t even think she drank anything. Afterward she hung around while we loaded out and got our fifty dollars or whatever it was, then she showed us to her favorite taco place, where she asked us a ton of questions about New York, and a few about Los Angeles, and told us about how someday she was planning to move to a big city, anywhere but Texas. The tacos were good. We went back to the hotel relatively sober, read for a while, and went to sleep.

What might not be obvious is, that’s just the type of night that refills your sails when the party won’t.

This time is a different San Antonio. The denim horde is also beautiful. Less oblique.

OCTOBER 1 / AUSTIN, TEXAS

Austin, the outer rim, in a strip mall. We hung around the load-in dock with the Nashville Pussies for a while and they seem all right. Friendly, southern, jaded. Tattooed as you please, of course.

Bass amp is fucking off again and so again we’re off on the wrong foot. I went to one of the stage guys at the club and, for the three thousandth time in my life, introduced myself then right away asked to borrow some piece of equipment I can’t do my job without. You don’t impress a lot of people this way. This time I was met with sim- ple acknowledgment of the stated problem, followed by immediate action. The stage guy and a Motörhead tech began pulling my amp apart, testing wires with a tester. Lights blinked or didn’t. They con- sulted and agreed on something—capacitor, whatever—then Nash- ville’s tech appeared with a new bass amp, put it onstage for me, plugged it in, tested it with my bass, clapped me on the back, and said, “All set, dude.” He jumped off the stage saying that he was sure he could have my amp up and running tomorrow. No eye-rolling, no mini-lecture, no judgment, no impending consequences. Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened, ever.

A few minutes later I was standing outside the dressing room savoring the absence of pre-show technical panic when another guy, Motörhead laminate flapping, set down a case of beer on our table, pointed to me, and said, “Rock and fuckin’ roll, man!” and jogged off. I am a stranger in a strange land.

OCTOBER 2 / DALLAS

Sold out, madhouse. Matt’s uncle Rick in the crowd. Matt’s more into Nashville Pussy’s thing than I am, as with Turbo Negro, et al. But Nashville are less gimmicky than they look, and I see what Matt means about the guitarist. Most people who can solo that well are shit rhythm players; not her.

After ours I walked offstage feeling good. Very little guff from the crowd, what there was was good-natured. As we packed up Eug was summoned by Lemmy, via denim footman. Eug laughed—his sarcastic laugh reserved for impending failure. “Well, it was a good tour while it lasted!” he said, and moseyed (Eug mosays generally) over to the bar, where Lemmy sat being Lemmy. He told Eugene we were a good band and handed him a shot of Jack. Like a Grammy, but real—a Lemmy.

Dallas is “Big D,” and Denver is known as “Little D,” Matt’s uncle Rick said, distributing Silver Bullets to us at his place in the suburbs. Uncle Rick used to be from Syracuse, New York, but now he’s from Texas.

Rick got out his .357 and we took turns firing it into the woods. Then we climbed into his cherry-red convertible—midlife Chrysler—and sped down the interstate drinking the beer, as is a man’s legal right in Texas, with a good Waylon Jennings song on the radio, Steve belting out a harmony. (We don’t do harmonics). At the entrance to the strip club a red carpet led up to a tinted door between two plaster Chinese lions. Next to one of the lions was a stand-up ad announcing an upcoming special appearance by a woman known worldwide for the being a quintuple-D. The sign said, “Everything’s bigger in Texas!” But chances are her tits are the same size when she’s in Alabama.

Inside, Rick, proud hand on his Matt’s shoulder, introduced the maître d’ and said, “Rock-and-roll VIPs here. These boys are on tour with the Motörheads.” The maître d’ smiled. “Ah! Please tell Mr. Kilmister regards, from me. I’m Benmont.”

Benmont showed us to a VIP area near the stage. At the next table an Asian woman in a thong was bent over in what the yoga people call “in downward dog,” meaning less than it meant here, licking her thumb counting through a stack of bills near the floor (mentally give her a green visor and an adding machine with register tape curling out of it); her other business end she wagged in the face of her customer, a barrel of lard with a neck rash, close-set eyes, and pumpkin-shaped head topped with a ten-gallon hat.

Strippers in Texas are especially courteous, making the so-called reputable places seem almost not-disreputable—I don’t forget that this is a state with a legendary cheerleading squad. Eugene has an aversion to strip clubs, AKA “the ballet.” Has his fill of this scene with his girl back home working in one, down in Springton, the Yan- kee Wankee. These places don’t do much for me, either. Mostly strip clubs needle my Irish half: my ingrained response to a watered-down drink at thrice the price, plus the generalized heartbreak equals a scrotum-tightening inability to stop myself from thinking, Where’s your kid right now? We’re in these places all the time; where we live now it’s the social equivalent of a coffee shop.

Matt’s got no beef, though. Shyanne (her spelling, as in shy Anne) was hired to give him a lap dance. “You have a big nose,” she said. “Are you Jewish or something?”

“Why,” said Matt. “Are you anti-Semitic or something?”

 “No.”
“Kind of a weird question,” Matt said. “Don’t you think?”
She humped the air, her next move, automatic as a car wash. “I

could never date someone like you.”
“What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn’t mean anything, I just wouldn’t,” said Shyanne, circling

her ass above his crotch. Then she speculated about Matt’s manhood. Negatively, in detail.

“What the fuck!” Matt said. “You’re supposed to make me feel good! Lie like you’re supposed to!”

“Then tip me, asshole.”

We all immediately emptied our pockets and made it rain. As in, a brief sun shower. Really, it was more like dew, or condensation. (Making it hail, with toll change would have more generous techni- cally). Shyanne obliged with the most flatly abusive lap dance in his- tory. Later I ran into her on my way to the restroom. “The singers are all the same,” she said, poking the air with her finger. “All the same buttons.”

No question Shyanne was in serious breach of the unwritten, hard rock singer-stripper contract—Wimpy would no sooner expect betrayal from a hamburger—Matt griped continuously as we sped back up the highway. Few people are as funny as Matt, and when it comes to diatribes, harangues, and beating dead horses, no one is. Side-splitting. Eug, elated, shouted through the ragtop gale that that was the best thirteen dollars he’d ever spent.

Next morning I stumbled into the kitchen in time to hear Rick say to Matt, “She thinks the moon and stars fell out of New Jersey’s ass.” I thought I’d interrupted Rick reciting Lawrence Ferlinghetti or something, revealing some new side. No, that’s just how Rick refers to Matt’s aunt’s stubborn refusal to accept Texas as the center of the universe. Part of the holiday entertainment at Matt’s house is his aunt Jean, chain-smoking her lollipop-stick Capris and prodding Rick into a Texas versus New Jersey battle royale. I always make a special effort to stop by when Jean’s around.

We drove through Dealey Plaza on the way out of town. Staring out the vansion’s rear window suckling a Foster’s oil can the sleep deprivation took me. In a bright burst it was revealed to me how the name of the plaza itself was the key to the whole swirling plot surrounding the JFK assassination. Just like that, I once and for all connected the CIA, the Mafia, Masons, Boy Scouts of America, Castro, the Illiterati, everybody. How did we miss it? Dealey Plaza— for secret deals.

I snapped out of it, into an intellectual shame spiral that slowed— no sign of stopping—only when I reassured myself that at least I hadn’t said all of that nonsense out loud. Eugene looked up from his book and said, “Actually, you did.”

OCTOBER 3 / MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

Motörhead’s added “Orgasmatron” to their set. Lights go down except for Lemmy underlit like he’s telling a ghost story. I revel in this.

In the small bar attached to the venue, an old, hippyish guy led a band in the corner through some unusually respectable blues rock. He was good, the old guy. We watched the rest of his set and closed the place out with him and the band. In the morning I woke in a hotel room I’d never seen before, looking out on a parking lot I didn’t feel good about and a clip of skyline I couldn’t place. Vaguely remem- bered the bar at the club. I couldn’t quite fit drinking with Harry (Matt’s dad) into the picture, though I was sure he’d been with us, until I drank some water and remembered it had been Country Joe, of Country Joe and the Fish playing in the little bar, and Harry is a big fan. The Gideon’s was open on the nightstand, certain passages notated. Didn’t look like my writing. Took a shower, for punctua- tion, unrumpled a couple dollars for the maid, and went out. I had no sunglasses. Luckily Milwaukee has no sun.

OCTOBER 4 / KANSAS CITY

Motörhead named the tour “Everything Louder Than Everyone Else.” Until today I thought it was “everything louder than every- thing else,” which sounds like a production guideline. Either way something we can get behind.

If there isn’t a video poker machine at the venue you don’t see Lemmy until just before showtime; I assume he is at the nearest place that does have a video poker machine. Normally when you walk in for soundcheck he’s already on a barstool poking graph- ics on the little swivel television with a Jack-and-Coke next to it. Starting to suspect he doesn’t actually travel on the bus with the rest of the band at all, but somehow knows video poker machines well enough to use them to access wormholes between venues. Some combo of solitaire moves that sucks him in and pops him out five hundred miles away at another little swivel television with a Jack-and-Coke next to it. I have a habit for the trivia games on those things, but I’m just chipping; I abstain unless there’s two machines.

Party in the burbs here, courtesy our new friend Cody, at his place. He went all out. The house was shaking, people hanging off everything, massive drinks activity. I do a thing now where I fall asleep standing up. Not the split-second-catch-yourself thing. Asleep. Woke up standing in the kitchen at the party, tattooed kid looking at me. I said, “How long was I out?”

“A fuckin’ while, dude. We kept thinking you were gonna drop that drink.”

I told him, “I was asleep, not dead.” Sacked out in the van

ADIOS, MOTHERFUCKER 137 OCTOBER 5 / DENVER, COLORADO.

“Food is great. . . .”

—Eugene Ferrari, “Food is Great,” from Food Is Great, 1990 (cassette only)

Motel is a Bates job on the edge of town on a hill overlooking an amusement park, and downtown. Only one room—the budget’s shrinking fast. Raced into town to get some food before everything closed, got in under the wire to a place claiming “the Best Tapas in Colorado!” Imagining the best hot wings in Andalusia.

Every so often you do find yourself free from any pressing crisis and in an area where, thanks to regional history, a university, or a fixed ethnic population, you can spend your buyout of seven dollars on interesting food that your body might not reject four miles down the road. When you are in a position to do so, you do well to spend your several buyouts in advance on a serious meal of people-food. Chew slowly, savor every bite—the sense memory has more nutritional value than the gas-station taco you would have otherwise been forced to eat. Every once in a while, thanks to a flat tire or bad directions, you happen to come across, for example, mind-blowing Ethiopian food in a strip mall in bumfuck Nebraska. Orgasmic kibee or whatever at a hole-in-the-wall in Dearborn. But there’s almost never time to drive around secondary roads on a hunch or a tip. The schedule rarely permits more than vending machine lesser-evils, learning to accept colors as flavors and to appreciate certain subtleties thereof. Also, the difference between a buffet or other self-serve trough and a bio-weapon is: none. (Consider the “sneeze guard.”) In the future the fully evolved rock band will feed by means of a nutrient-absorbing secretion. Until then, just as the early natives learned their hunting and foraging skills from the eagle and the bear, we must become like the maggot that digs into whichever turd it finds itself squirming upon. The tube worm that blindly snatches whatever floats close enough.

It was late afternoon in the hotel when I woke up, after a blues bar, a late dinner. . . . remembered I’d ordered the clam chowder. It was good, I ate it. I waited. After a while I felt fine, so we ordered clams on the half-shell. In Denver. We weren’t thinking straight. It can be a day, even two days later before you know for sure you’re not poisoned. Eighteen hours later now and Steve talking about how we were really rolling the dice last night. Not on the obviously grifting women, or the guy with the prosthetic leg full of weird, homemade- looking pills. “I just hope we didn’t blow all our good luck on a couple plates of shellfish in Denver,” he said warily. We pay him to be wary.

OCTOBER 6 / LAWRENCE, KANSAS

Straightaway, every promoter takes us to a strip club, or dispatches his best man available to do so. I appreciate the thought, but— again—what’s wanted is an uncomplicated drink at a reasonable price if not for free somewhere you don’t have to do anything but drink it. The idea between shows, and drives, is to relax, not fling away all your money into a hole, least of all one that’s blasting Tool, or worse, if that’s possible. Which it is, thanks to Korn, and Slipknot—no, not worse, just additionally bad. One could stay in the room and nap, watch TV, or sit quietly in the dark doing nothing at all, if one remembered it was a choice. I had that revelation here, but as it happened our free time coincided with Motörhead’s (nobody had interviews scheduled, etc), and as we’ve learned, attending the ballet with Motörhead, that’s a Thing. This is their domain. Lemmy walks into a strip club, people trip over themselves; even the poles straighten up.

Over the years we’ve learned that alcohol consumption onstage can’t be controlled any more than the weather, but the idea lately (another revelation) is to curb the pre-show drinking, at least in front of rooms big enough where being entertainingly wasted won’t play to the back row. Alas. Last night on walkabout I met some people who were doing shots of “special tequila,” whatever that means in Kansas. By showtime I was onstage with severely compromised equilibrium, in front of a sold-out theater. My legs carried me in directions away from where I wanted to go. Watched my hand behave in ways I had not instructed it to, and would not have predicted. All the while I wondered in full sentences in my head just what the hell was going on. I was having a mind-body problem. Easy to see why philosophers have such a hard time with this one.

OCTOBER 7 / WICHITA, KANSAS

I made the call to the promoter in Wichita to advance the show because Steve isn’t feeling well, possibly due to Denver shellfish; maybe we have some luck left in reserve after all. He’s British, the Wichita guy. None of the usual, preemptive exasperation in his voice. We talked for a while. The shorthand of how he came to be booking bands in Wichita, Kansas, does as he said, sound like something out of Dostoevsky, but with freight cars full of drugs. He bid beyond his means for this show but says he doesn’t care, he’s desperate for some “proper” rock and roll. “All I get is this fucking rap-metal shit. It’s like some kind of unending fucking nightmare.” Need more guys like this.

OCTOBER 8

The crowd have been showing up earlier the past few shows, I’m sure in no small part due to Lemmy name-checking us every night with- out fail—word travels—and mentioning us favorably in an interview or two. After our set we’re often get individual critiques from the crowd, people noting certain areas of our set where they’d like to see some improvement, recommending certain adjustments, asking questions, even weighing the relevance of their own advice. Pro- duction notes, basically. After one such critique here the guy said, “Prolly not gonna buy this first album from you guys but I look for- ward to seeing you develop. I’ll keep an eye out. Lemmy is God. Later, dudes.”

Read about some street kids, little huffers, in Africa somewhere, Sierra Leone or something. They collect human waste in bottles, cap the bottle with a balloon and set it in the sun to ferment, then huff the gasses collected in the balloon. I imagine the effect is similar to riding in this van. Also the clunking and the stalling continues. Every few hours we’re on the side of the road, Eugene and Steve out there staring at the engine, occasionally twiddling something that doesn’t respond as they’d hoped. Two-day hole in the schedule so there’s talk of putting the thing in the shop in Olathe, depending on what a shop in Olathe looks like.

Things are a little strained with Nashville Pussy at the moment. I think Ruyter might be pissed-off—not faux, actually. Bicker- ing decidedly less jokey past few days, silent treatment backstage earlier. I asked her bandmate Blaine Cartwright and he said, “Ahhh . . . I don’t know, man,” as usual. As usual, I’m not quite sure what he meant. They’re having—in record label parlance— “interpersonal” difficulty, industry-speak for problems due to drug habits or significant others. As opposed to “creative differ- ences,” which are about money. None of my business. But I notice Lemmy’s been stepping in here and there in a sort of counseling capacity for them, very capably as far as I can tell. The thing about Lemmy, whatever else he’s known for—five women at once, Jack Daniel’s on his Weetabix, ice-cream scoops full of speed—all of which is true, or true-ish, he takes his tea at four. Yesterday we were backstage and someone brought him a new tour poster for his approval, and Lemmy’s there with his tea—not to suggest he wasn’t also banjaxed on space amphetamine, but he’s there with his tea— and he says, it’s a “bit derogatory,” and ultimately no, can’t use it, it’s too much. I didn’t see what the artwork was but you have to imag- ine it was pretty grim indeed. Whatever scale Lemmy Kilmister uses to define “too much”—probably the same one Zeus uses, and Thor—you can count on one hand, maybe one finger, how many heavy metal dressing rooms you’ll hear the word “derogatory” in, not as a joke, or followed by “enough.” A few days ago I’m walk- ing, if I may call it that, through the backstage area and here comes Lemmy, draining a bottle of whiskey like it’s a fucking cherry soda, and he suggests I need to eat something. Insists, actually, so I fol- low him into the Motörhead dressing room where he gets me two sandwiches from their deli tray, one for later. All of this is relative, I realize. But for a guy whose blood could probably liquify a tank, Lemmy is a mindful host.

Didn’t make it out of town after the show, vansion fucked. We dropped it off this morning at a shop—the only shop, and not one that inspired trust. The way Cletus there was wiping his hands with his rag it was clear we weren’t making it out of Olathe easily. Waiting on a part now, from Oz, evidently. No show tonight, so it just means making up some drive time later.

OCTOBER 9 / OLATHE, KANSAS

Eight hours so far kicking around the strange but friendly Kansas town. Getting to know the local Applebee’s a little too well.

OCTOBER 10

No van part yet. I get the felling Cletus is stringing us along. As one has to expect when one drops off one’s van at a repair shop in Kansas while wearing leather pants (Steve did the talking but we couldn’t exactly hide). The motel’s cheap enough so we rented an additional room and split up; it was getting cramped, and hideous with stink. Happy to be in the fresh room. Closed out Applebee’s and some waitresses hung around afterward. Nice Kansas girls. They asked us if we knew Limp Bizkit. We said no, not personally, but we that we knew for a fact the name was something the singer thought of while looking at his penis. I think they bought it, even- tually.

OCTOBER ?

Time has stopped. Have given up getting a straight answer regard- ing today’s date—I don’t know how long we’ve been here. Feels like months. We acclimated quickly, as we do, to this new life in a small town in Middle America. There’s nothing “middle” about the peo- ple. Pretty extreme as far as I’m concerned. Personable folks though, most of them. Ran into Brandon, the newsie kid, down at Apple- bee’s. Says his mom’s doing a bit better but now Enos (a Lab) is sick. I said I didn’t think viruses jumped species like that, but maybe he should have Haylee (shit—Kaylee?) look in on the dog because she’s in vet school, I think she said. And he goes, “Yeah but I don’t know, she’s got tryouts next week, and the parade’s on Sunday and every- thing.” So negative sometimes, this kid. “Well,” I said, “it couldn’t hurt to ask.” But he’s right, she’ll probably blow him off. She’s got her reasons.

OCTOBER ??

There was a sign in a restaurant window about a dish job. I peeked in, just in case. Somebody was getting yelled at in there . . . my future self. The chapel-like local movie house: a sun-bleached poster for the all-star asteroid movie—one showing, weekends only. Hung around the hardware store talking with people about these dadgum new- fangled so-called energy-saving lightbulbs, specifically about how much they suck, then went by Applebee’s for a quick one on my way home to the motel. Marcus (manager) was stapling up a bunch of posters for a metal show: Voivod. Which is a noise-metal band or something. I said, “That’s seems weird, man. Why is Voivod playing a show at Applebee’s?”

Marcus got frustrated with me. “Dude! Why do you keep calling this place Applebee’s? It’s a rock club—you played here.”
“Well, excuse me, it looks like an Applebee’s, dude.”

I swear, this town sometimes. I just don’t know what.

OCTOBER 11

Back on the interstate, the vansion riding smooth, the new Honky Toast record at volume, ice and beer in the cooler—seven bells and all is well . . .

Nashville Pussy has cut out for Europe; we’ll catch up with Motörhead in Minneapolis, if Cletus has done his job.

OCTOBER 12 / MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

Parts of Canada are less Canadian than Minnesota. The club is Prince’s, last seen in Purple Rain. Did interviews all afternoon.

Music writer: “So let me get this straight. You guys actually want me to believe that your record was recorded twenty-five years ago, when you were, let’s see—one.

Matt: “We were wise beyond our year.”

Rolling Stone did us all right, majority of press has been positive (too positive?) . . . Nebula, ex-Fu Manchu guys, were playing down- stairs. They’re good; a little nebulous. Discussed with Matt, again: the unresolvable fact that demographically speaking, on paper, it would maybe seem that we ought to be playing downstairs, not nec- essarily with stoner rockers, but . . . Here a wastoid gearhead hopped into the dressing room door frame, raised his arms, and screamed “Rock and fuckin’ roll, motherfuckers!” then hopped away. A con- versation we’ve had before, resolved in the usual way.

We were obliged to switch instruments and play “Purple Rain,” Eug singing the lead and playing guitar. It went over well, in a sense.

OCTOBER 13 / MILWAUKEE

In yet another instance of life imitating The Twilight Zone, we repeat Milwaukee. Stayed at the hotel I found myself in last time we were here, and it all came back to me: how I had no idea how I’d gotten there.

OCTOBER 14 / MADISON, WISCONSIN

The Loudest Band in the World is fairly quiet before nightfall. The darkened venue pre-soundcheck is library-quiet, just electronic blips of Lemmy at his poker machine, and lately, farts from Phil Camp- bell’s fart machine, a handheld device that makes different fart sounds depending which button you press. Phil has all but replaced common English words and phrases with fart sounds. I saw him using it to communicate with one of the local techs earlier. I’m pretty sure the diarrhea fart sound means “I don’t care.”

Goes without saying that the Motörhead road crew is as practiced as they come. Unflappable, unfazed by any procedural glitch—been there, done that, ’nother day at the office, mate . . . But there is a panic button, as we discovered a few hours ago. Motörhead’s rider clearly states that a case of Maker’s Mark is to be delivered to their bus, on arrival. This has to be done before they’ll put boots on the ground. Period, full stop. It’s a subsistence-level request, nonnegotiable. We know now, anything offsides with the bourbon and the Motörhead crew goes to DEFCON 1. You’d think the crew was Secret Service and president had just been shot. Hustling boots, furiously jangling keys, walkies squelching and distorting agitated codewords—in my memory I hear a crescendoing air raid siren. We were kicking around in an alley, this mad activity and yelling and running finally subsid-

ing, and Phil came by and said (chewing gum, always), “Not playing here.”

“No show tonight?” Steve asked.

“No, there’s a show. Movin’ it to a place not run by articulating mental fucking midgets.” He handed Steve a piece of paper with the address of the new venue. “Cheers, gents.”

“Thanks,” said Steve. “By the way, what was all the commotion? We saw about ten guys run through here. Looked pretty fucking tense.”

“Fucking promoter got cheeky with the rider,” Phil said, incredu- lous. (Delivered only half a case, Jim Beam, and late.) As Phil saun- tered off Steve called after him. “Hey, Phil. You happen to know if there’s gonna be a soundcheck?” Without turning around Phil held up his machine; the diarrhea fart.

OCTOBER 15 / 70, MISSOURI

Poison apple hibernation. Just woke and the van is enveloped in a strange mist in a mountain pass. Hard to tell what time of day. No music, just the rubbery pulse of the wipers—a vital sign. Steve driv- ing, silent, bent into the wheel. Deep in his road groove. In the back Eug and Matt dead to the world, rigor setting in.

“Where are we?”
Steve didn’t say anything.
“Steve.”
Nothing.
Lenny reached us in the motel. “I just got a phone call from the

hotel in Milwaukee. Know anything about anything maybe happen- ing in the room, damage-wise?”

“I might have scribbled in the Bible,” I said, then remembered, “In a different room. A few months ago.”

“Yeah. Matty there?” I said he was indisposed. “Ask him something for me,” Lenny said.

I listened, then yelled to Matt. “Lenny wants to know if some- body shit on the bed in Milwaukee, at the hotel.” Matt stepped out of the bathroom brushing his teeth, shrugged how the fuck should I know, and went back into the bathroom.

“He says maybe. Was that all?”

“You’re asking what. ‘Was the room perfectly fine except some- one took a dump on the bed?’ The answer is no.”

If anybody on our team has ever deliberately trashed a rental accommodation, it’s news to me. Traveling like this you’re deeply grateful to sleep lying down and stationary, sanely watch a late-night with whoever. Most of the time you’re protective of that. But not all the time.

“I mean, funny and all—kinda. The label’s had a long-standing business relationship with Ramada, know what I’m saying? This isn’t good. You guys kinda maybe fucked us here. A little bit. But thanks for waiting to go animal till after I left.”

“Left? You were in Milwaukee?”

“Yeah I was in fuckin’ Milwaukee, man. The chicken shack— remember?”

“Chicken what?” There’s a lot going on these days, easy to miss a file or two in the mental inbox.

Some of us had gone out for a drink after the show, some apoc- alyptic strip club Lemmy knew about. Remarkably dicey place. According to the Bluster guys, an emo-ish band Lenny just signed, locals, the place is notorious. High-risk, for white people, particularly. Maybe so, but the rules were the same anywhere: Don’t be a dick. (Eugene tells the story of my “coming to” in a bar out of bounds, in Harlem, the sole white man standing on the bar in a suddenly silent barroom, and delivering some tension-breaker that kept me not only alive but in drinks til dawn. He heard it second hand, and I heard it from him, so whatever I said is well lost to the ages, but I imagine I defaulted to that cardinal rule—somehow. Not foolproof, of course.) Whatever the actual risk-level, at the place crackheads a go-go, the sound system sounded like budget kickers salvaged from a car fire, just one blown-out, sub-bass, thud after another—808, 909, whatever it takes—and the floor work going on was borderline, on all possible borders. Most of the dancers were plus-size, and most of those contact could easily crush a man to death, unless he was one of the eight-foot hulks covered in bullet wounds tending bar or posted around the room like homicidal mo’ai. Even Lemmy wasn’t exactly grooving on the place. But, as Matt observed, Lemmy does seem to approach drinking at strip clubs with “steely resolve.” Matt bought Lemmy a bourbon, and a round for us. There was no ice for the drinks, the place didn’t keep ice.

At some point there was a commotion involving one of the danc- ers and someone in our party (possibly Lenny, who may only have been trying to resolve whatever the issue was), during which fracas an older black gentleman approached and asked would anyone like to buy some cocaine for ten dollars. Ten dollars? For cocaine? Matt, knowing a bargain when he heard one, gave the man ten dollars, and the man left. For good. It happens. Doesn’t mean you have to put up with it.

Some time later, after he was nice and primed, Matt, accompa- nied or maybe pursued by Lenny, well in the bag himself and with a terrified emo band in tow, went off into the ghetto, seeking satis- faction. The emo band was having no luck deterring anybody from stumbling drunk through murder town.

“We’ll be fine,” Lenny assured them. “Strength in numbers.” “You guys are gonna get us killed.”
“Listen. Milwaukee’s social problems aren’t my concern, man.

I’m artists and repertoire. These are my artists, this is their reper- toire. Seriously, it’ll be fine.” A couple of the emo guys turned back.

Not far from the strip club was, as Lenny described it later, “this crazy friend chicken takeout, just stickin’ up outta the middle of this fucking wasteland. It was all bulletproof glass, like a cross between an aquarium and a bank.” (All entertainment executives describe anything unfamiliar as a hybrid of two familiar things. Hootie meets G. G. Allin. Sophie’s Choice meets Weekend At Bernie’s. Etcetera.) Matt corroborates: “Kinda talismanic, and swarming with crack- heads.”

Lenny, suddenly hungry, went into the aquarium bank for some fried chicken, tailed by the remaining emo guy, who wanted to do almost anything but that. Meanwhile outside Matt found and con- fronted his man.

“Oh, shit! Yeah, man. I got robbed!” said the old man.
“Robbed, you say.”
“That’s right. Took everything. Hard out here, yo. Real hard.” “All the same, we had a deal, did we not? There’s a principle

involved.”
“I told you. I got robbed.”
“Yo,” said a nearby crackhead. “You looking for a rock?”
“Well, I was under the impression I was purchasing some cocaine

from this gentleman here, but our arrangement seems to have gone awry.”

The second crackhead grinned at Matt holding a crack rock in his grill. Lenny, in view behind in the chicken takeout, was visibly agi- tated about the status of his order. Matt produced another ten-spot and the second crackhead spit the rock into Matt’s hand.

“See?” Matt said to the first crackhead. “Now that’s a business- man.”

Lenny, now doing a full-blown Mrs. Robinson pounding with both fists, on the bulletproof order window of the chicken shack, and the panicking emo guy, who was unprepared for any of this, trying to stop him were starting to draw unwanted attention. As Matt said later, “Things got a little sketchy at that point.” The emo guys who left earlier reappeared, very worked up, in a Civic, and Lenny got

into it with his box of fried chicken (“See? Whaditellya. No prob- lem.”) Matty was collected through a window as they hightailed it.

Sometime before dawn Matt stumbled into the hotel room laughing uncontrollably, and once everyone was awake, produced the thing Crackie had spit into his hand, which might have been a heav- ily decayed tooth. We fixed up a beercan, smoked the rank pebble out of existence in four hits, and were high for about as many min- utes, rolling with laughter as Matt recounted some of the highlights, noted above. Then we tuned television to one of the dozen evange- lists pacing and blabbering at that hour, and hit the hay.

I remember having a booze with Lemmy at the strip club, and being told there was no ice, and that none was expected. My fuzzy recollection ends there, abruptly for some reason. A cat yanked up by its scruff and chucked into Schrödinger’s box—leaving open the possibility that Matt’s account, in which I was asleep or resting or otherwise occupied at the hotel all night, is true, and Lenny’s ver- sion of events, in which I was not at the hotel at all but roaming the shadowlands of Milwaukee accumulating narcotics for, and or with, Lemmy, is also true. This is called quantum indeterminacy. And there’s a hell of a lot of it out here.