“Torch’d Circular!”

best w*sterns/c0mf0rt 1nns, trembling in anticipation!

soon we load, roll, unload. soon we panic-attack at random toll-plazas. soon we glory in empty carbohydrates, fuel additives and sticky carpeted monitors. soon we bring it to the kids and marvel at the myriad ways that parents break their children.  soon we strum, pluck, smash, scrape and holler.  soon we sleep like the dead in airtight sarcophagi, next to the interstate where the air-brakes growl…

march 16     bristol, GB  the fleece

march 17   birmingham, GB   asylum

march 18   dublin, ireland   the button factory

march 19   glasgow, scotland   the arts school

march 21   manchester, GB   academy3

march 22   leeds, GB   tj’s woodhouse social club

march 23   london, GB   electric ballroom

march 24   nottingham, GB   rescue rooms

march 25   sheffield, GB   corporation

march 26   oxford, GB   the regal

march 27   brighton, GB   st. george’s church

march 30   rennes, FR   ubu

march 31   paris, FR   alhambra

april 1        reims, FR   cartonnerie

april 2        bruxelles, BE   botanique

april 3        zottegem, BE   dunkfestival

april 4        munich, DE   feierwerk

april 6        padova, IT   unwound

april 7        roma, IT   circolo degli artisti

april 8        bologna, IT   locomotive

april 9        turino, IT   spazio 211

april 10      arezzo, IT   karemaski

april 11       varese, IT   twiggy

april 13       toulouse, FR   le bikini

april 14       marseille, FR   espace julien

april 15        nice, FR   theatre lino ventura

april 16        montpelier   la taf

april 17         lousanne, CH   impetus festival

april 18         luzern, CH   schurr

april 20        zurich, CH   rotefabrik

april 21         lyon, FR   grrnd zero

april 23         lille, FR   le splendid

april 24         groningen, NL   vera

april 25         amsterdam, NL   paradiso

no words.

there’s a haitian church across the road, where they abandoned a dismantled organ just before snowfall.  pastor’s name= “wilfrid estimable”.  on weekends they tear the roof off with joyous noise, and i linger in the alley with my ear to the window like a perv.

last night i dreamt that i dragged their abandoned organ into the basement and put it back together again. except when i went to go play it there was honey all over the keys and a smell like rotting bees.

this long-playing record, like all long-playing records, has a backstory=

Mick Mars of Motley Crue, alone in his unfinished condominium- the sun is setting, and there’s half an inch of rain lapping at his soles; i say “mickey, what’s with the state of your miserable digs?”; he says, “they ran out of money when the bottom fell out, couldn’t pay to put the glass in the fucking window-holes.”  “but mick, couldn’t you live in one of your other ones?”,  “i could yes i sure could but this one feels a little truer, and some mornings the birds just fly right in here and murmur to me with gentle coos and leave their downy feathers in my grim hair.”

a little later on, he plays me his legendary demos- and though the moment itself is awkward, and fraught with a clumsy sort of intimacy, the tunes passenger across the distance between us like wandering thunderclouds shot through with miniature fingers of gold, heavy as a drowned freezer, poignant as the beating of a squirrel’s heart, but ultimately (and tragically) square.  coughing into my sleeve, i scan the room, looking for exits.

eventually the silence lifts, and Mick Mars tells me the story about the time he strangled an english booking agent in the elevator of a midtown boutique hotel- “he had the type of potbelly that makes one think of pale weak lieutenants sending innocent boys to slaughter, like dull gluttony wed to lazy power.”, “but they all have potbellies like that.”, “yes, but this one had blonde streaks in his hair like a cruel teenage girl, and a dry clattering mouth that released foul-smelling winds.”  and then mick says, out of the blue, like a train bursting out of a tunnel somewhere quiet, with trees the only witnesses, just like that he says,  “goddamn, it’s hard to earn an honest living these days..”, and me, with my own wonderments and depressions in tow, i say “for reals, Mick Mars, for reals…”