It's Not Over 'Till the Fat Lady Sings |
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It's Not Over 'Till the Fat Lady Sings |
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...The game's not ten hours old yet they're already calling it one of the greatest ever. We're talking primetime Monday NightFootball. Gridiron. The NFL. New York Jets 40 Miami Dolphins 37. In overtime. Touchdown bombs. Length-of-the-field runs. Fist fights. Penalties galore. Interceptions. Fumbles. Even interceptions and fumbles in the same play. 70 million viewers. 1.20am local time finish. High f*cking drama. Yes, my team (the Dolphins for those that need reminding) blew a 30-7 lead going into the fourth quarter. The Jets looked dead and buried, playing like they were running in quicksand. In actual fact, most Jets fans thought their team was done at this stage too - 30,000 of them left the stadium early in the fourth quarter only to come scurrying back from the parking lot when they heard the Jets were on the comeback trail. Somehow, behind the golden arm of quarterback Vinny Testaverde, they pulled off a miracle. The Jets staged their biggest comeback ever and scored more points in one quarter (30 in the fourth) than ever before in their history, relagating the 'Phins to second place in their division. But my jaw is still firmly on the ground in admiration for the way in which the Jets pulled this one off. Remember when Manchester United won the European Cup in 1998 with that amazing comeback in injury time against Bayern Munich? Well, double the energy, double the tension and double the drama and you might be halfway there. I need a lie down... ...And just keeping with the gridiron theme. You may recall back at the start of September that I gave you some tips for the Superbowl in Jan 2001. I tipped the Oakland Raiders and the Dolphins (of course). The Raiders now boast a won5-lost1 record and are 11-1 for the title - although if you'd followed my advice you would have got them at 25-1...The Phins have a respectable 5-2 record although because of their loss against the Jets they have slipped back to 40-1 for the 'Bowl. **That represents excellent value**. Mark my words - the 'Phins will go much further than last night's game suggests... ...And just to finish off here, you'll find the complete unedited text of my summer-long roadtrip around the States. The story appeared in Revolution magazine - well, sort of. Due to a monumental printing balls-up, a page of text corrupted and got printed twice and so the story - one of the biggest things I've ever written - didn't finish in the mag. So you're getting to see it first. There's a main story (mainly about the "Groundhog Day" psychology of touring), some artist profiles (of the DJs and producers that went on the tour) and seven quirky tour anecdotes. There are also about 90 pictures - but rather than clog up your email with those, they are in the process of being uploaded to the misf website. Check back there in a few days for the visual evidence... http://www.diffdrum.demon.co.uk/maninsf Namaste, Kieran --------------------------------- Main feature The brief was both simple and deliciously enticing. Get on board a state-of-the-art tour bus and careen around the country with a bunch of DJs and techno producers. Take some photos, write down some notes, and make sense of the touring machine. Travel some 9,000 miles, visit almost 30 cities, hear some of the best dance music around. Oh yes, and get paid. Where do I sign? I first met the bus at Revolution HQ, a few miles south of San Francisco. It's a beast of a vehicle: 45 feet long, 12 feet high, 12 sleeping berths, two lounges, a kitchen, two CD players, DVD, video and satellite TV. It's worth $600,000 and is shrink-wrapped in bright yellow with the words "Revolution" emblazoned across each side. It's both strange and comforting stepping on board, knowing this will be my home for the next five weeks. Brimming with both excitement and trepidation, I feel like a little kid being dropped off by his parents on the first day of school. Fittingly, Darrell, the driver, is the first person I meet. He's been doing this touring malarkey for the past 17 years, for everyone from Teena Marie to country rock bore Kenny Logins. His soft New Orleans brogue is comforting: whatever else may happen on the tour, I can be sure we'll get from A to B in one piece. Then the other members of the tour - none of whom have met before - gradually come into the picture. There's tech-house duo Swayzak (James and Broon) who'll be performing live at every gig; two guys from Mixman who'll be demoing their music software in the clubs; another two who'll be doing the visuals; and a tour manager. The DJs (Stacey Pullen, Robbie Hardkiss and Juan Atkins) will join us at various points throughout the tour. Everyone is friendly, if a little cagey. But the realisation that we're all going to be pretty intimate for the next five weeks has a remarkable levelling effect. On the bus there's no place for a hierarchy, no room for egos. It doesn't matter if you're the DJ, a member of the band, the merchandise guy, the person who works the lights or just the penniless journalist - we're all equals. We claim our coffin-style bunks and get ready to roll. Driving down Highway 5 to Los Angeles in a bus makes us feel invincible, like we're being escorted in an armoured personnel carrier. Naturally I start the tour with the best of intentions: Read a half dozen thought-provoking novels. Eat only health-conscious food. Give up alcohol. Soak up the cultural highpoints of each city. Meditate on the romance of the American Road Experience. But although it's all rather new and exciting, the boredom of road travel soon becomes apparent. We haven't gotten halfway to L.A. before we've put aside out good intentions and settled into our bad old ways. On come the no-budget made-for-television movies, out comes the cheap booze, and junk food. Our books slowly gather dust at the bottom of our suitcases. (Someone even brought The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare with him - it remains unopened to this day.) It's surprising how this state of affairs transpires so quickly but there's something so hypnotic about the slow grind of the bus. It doesn't matter if you're Motley Crue or DJ Nobody, there's no escaping the fact that travelling across such a great expanse as North America is going to involve a heck of a lot of sitting around doing nothing, staring out of bus windows. And tinted windows at that, so you can't really see the sights roll by. The tour was designed to ease us into things, so the first few gigs - San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, Miami - are fairly spread out, allowing us plenty of time to amble across the country. The drive through Texas is long, dry and energy-sapping. Miles and miles of tinder stick desert, so hot even the vultures seem to have taken a day off. The only other fools out in the sun at this time of day are legions of grizzly truckers, similarly dazed and confused by the relentless magnitude of it all. A few of the trucks up ahead on the freeway swerve from side to side, their drivers nodding off in the heat of the midday sun. And that hits home the fact that out here, in the blazing sun, it's back to basics. What's socially important, the cut of your jeans or whatever, doesn't matter here. People just care about getting water and getting out of the heat. The landscape feels apocalyptic, like the end of an age. But then again, we are driving through the hottest part of the States during the hottest part of the day. In the middle of summer. Atlanta is the first truly rocking gig. Held at the Nomenclature Museum - a club that resembles a converted Victorian house with décor by a bunch of crazed psychedelic painters - it's one of Swayzak's strongholds. Their records are in all the stores, gig flyers are everywhere and people come out in force to show support. Atlanta is also the third gig we've all done together so by now we're laying down our routine. We can set up the gear, do the soundcheck and grab something to eat in no time at all. Things are running smoothly, just the way they should. However, the seemingly endless travel on the road begins to take its toll. You feel like you're cocooned, like you're travelling in some sort of tin can space satellite. You get on the bus at ten in the morning and then enter this sort of state of suspended animation for the next eight hours. You loll around the lounge trying to snatch a few minutes of sleep here and there before the jolting of the road wakes you up again. You look at your fellow travellers with glazed eyes, never too sure where you are or what time it is, like you've been drugged or taken a few slugs of whiskey. Eat, sleep, read, watch movies, get drunk. It's like prison but with alcohol. Inside the bus, the inter-personal dynamics begin to develop. By week two people band into certain groups. As everyone seems to have a digital camera, it seems like The Real World without the expensive make-up. These factions aren't pitted against each other - it would take more than five weeks for that to happen - but certainly some people bond more closely than others. Being the journalist is a curious position to be in. Some people clearly think it's a writer's job to misquote people and generally spread disinformation, so they're pretty evasive in my presence. Others, though, realize journalists are good listeners and bounce ideas, thoughts and feelings off me. I feel like part-Devil Incarnate and part-Agony Aunt. I develop a remarkable ability to cat-nap at the drop of a hat. I'm soon one step removed from being a total narcoleptic, only opening my eyes when we roll into the next truck stop. The truck stops actually provide a welcome respite from the monotony of the road (the bus may hold 150 gallons but only does five miles to the gallon - so we get at least one stop a day). Whenever we pull into one, I all crawl out of the bus looking totally dishevelled, blinking in the harsh sunlight like I've been living underground for the past decade. Halfway through the tour I know the layout of the truck stops by heart. They're all home to the same selection of CB radios (yes they do still exist), oversized checked shirts, and moldy sandwiches. And for some reasons the stores are always out of cream cheese and onion Pringles. Bastards. Compared to the gnarly old truckers who crowd the aisles (they all seem to sport a standard road uniform of too-tight denims, pot bellies, facial hair and bad mullet haircuts), we must look like we've just stepped off the catwalk. Or a Martian spaceship. By now, we're used to the looks people give us. For some - especially those living in the outback towns - the Revolution bus is the brightest thing to enter their lives in years. We give guided tours to interested ravers and hold numerous after-party sessions on board. And people like to rant about their local electronic music scenes or their own bizarre clubbing experiences. One waiter starts gushing forth with a slew of drug anecdotes. Apparently he likes to cover himself in peppermint lotion and stand in front of a fan while high on Ecstasy. Another time he "was at this party and I'd done six hits of acid and this DJ came on and just blew my fucking mind." No shit dude. You're talking at a hundred miles an hour about hydrophonic weed, psychedelics and spreading the trance gospel in the Bible Belt. I think we worked the mind-blowing bit out for ourselves. As the tour progresses, the gigs get more frequent. Our lives begin to settle into a familiar pattern: sleep, travel, truck stop, more travel, gig, sleep, travelŠ Of course, there's always the danger that the road routine and listening to the same DJs and same live acts night in night out can get boring. And the truth is that on occasion it does, especially at the gigs that don't go off as expected. Electronic music is all about a synergy betweendancers and DJ and when they're faced with a lame crowd it shows in their faces, their music and their performance. Take the gig in Philadelphia for example, held at a warehouse-cum-clubspace on the outskirts of town. There can't be more than about 50 people there, milling around the club in over-sized pants and hoodies, absent-mindedly waving glowsticks. Sure, they're all dedicated ravers (and doubly so seeing as it's a Sunday night) but performing to such a spartan turn-out is demoralising. Stacey Pullen even goes so far as to say it's one of the worst gigs he's ever played - and he's been DJing for over ten years. Back on the bus the mood is grim, everyone realising it's been a duff show. Visitors to the bus looking for a raging after-party are swiftly sent packing. We just want to sleep, pull out of town and head on to the next gig. Still, the good gigs more than make up for the bad ones. They become like safety valves, welcome chances to let off steam after being cooped up like chickens for days on end. The shows in the latter half of the tour - in dance music heartlands like Detroit, Chicago, Vancouver and Portland - rock the hardest and we all feed off that. When Swayzak and the DJs fire on all cylinders, when they respond
to a crowd's enthusiasm, then it feels like some sort of communal transcendence,
like everyone in the room is part of one big living organism.
I get to know their sets inside out, recognising the precise
moment when Stacey Pullen is going to drop that killer house dubplate
or when Swayzak are about to cut the beats out and surf on a swell
of bass. At the Portland show the crowd are crammed onto the dancefloor,
lapping up Swayzak's tech-tinged beat odysseys. Taylor and Broon
are beaming huge smiles, confident in their ability to take a
crowd to a euphoric state through the power of their music. And as Pullen
closes out his turntable session he's so overcome by the crowd's
whooping and hollering that he drops to his knees in thanks,
Since this is the final week of the tour, everyone is feeling a little bit frazzled. It's cabin fever, a combination of the mind-numbing repetition of the road, and umpteen nights of hard partying. And it's all compounded by a final week schedule of six gigs in seven days. By now we're caning it until seven every morning, fuelled on cheap vodka and Rolling Rock (who as one of the tour's sponsors gives us an endless supply of the stuff). It's small surprise that nerves are a little frayed. And then all of a sudden, Blam. It's over. Finished. Ended. Finito. Even though the last date of the tour has been etched in all our minds for weeks, we're still not quite prepared for it. I'm flooded with a mix of emotions. Sure, I can't wait to get home, to a decent bed, to my friends, to the bright lights of city living. But there's also this niggling feeling at the back of my brain that I don't really want it to end. I've just travelled 9,000 miles with ten people who started off as total strangers but who I now regard as family. I don't know whether to feel happy or sad, to laugh or cry. And although the after-party for the last gig in Portland rages well into the wee hours, there's no one big send-off for everyone. Everyone just drifts away to catch their flights, to do their own thing, to get back to their own lives. What was it again that Charlie Brown said in the very last Peanuts strip? "I hate goodbyes. Why aren't there more hellos?" Re-acclimatising to "normal" life is challenging. I'm mentally and physically drained. Although it has taken its toll, road life is also remarkably simple and now I have to do things like pay bills, make my own bed, talk to my housemates, and cook my own food. Things I've had nothing to do with for 38 days. And even though I've seen sights many Americans won't get to see in a lifetime, I know deep down that that I've only scratched the surface of this bizarre country. For surely as TS Eliot once remarked, "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Postscript A few days after the end of the tour I speak with Swayzak to see if they, like me, are struggling to make sense of it all. Broon reckons you should "never share your bunk with a stranger" while Taylor says his perception of America has become fuzzier. The tour has only reinforced his misconceptions. So I ask him to sum the tour up in a sound. "Distortion" is the reply. Quite. -------------------------------- Profiles Swayzak Juan Atkins Stacey Pullen Robbie Hardkiss ------------------------------------ Seven Tour Stories Detroit New York City Vancouver, Portland, Boulder & Detroit San Diego The Canadian border crossing Atlanta Salt Lake City He was born with a gift of laughter Rafael Sabatini |
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