First off, GREAT show in Royal Oaks tonight... aside from Brian losing his
lighting board power due to some over-zealous dancers it was a blazing,
thundering show '81-Style with Lisa joining the band for the filler of
"Dancin' In The Streets" and "Hey Pocky Way". It was a nasty night here in
the Detroit area with freezing rain and chilling winds but you never would
have known it inside the Royal Oak Music Hall! Nearly 1300 Motor City 'Heads
cowed John into silence as he tried to announce the show date, cheering
louder every time he started to say a word...
The venue is beautiful and the sound system is some nice stuff to boot so
hopefully we'll be back again really soon... but enough of my ass kissing...
you want to know what's prompted this sudden installment, right?
I can't sleep so I thought I'd tell you all about what's going on at this
very minute...And folks, I can't make this stuff up.
As I carried my bag through the freezing rain to my room tonight after the
show, an older woman in a completely-too-short-too-tight white sequinned
dress got out of a Cadillac and stumbled up to the door next to mine key
in-hand.
"Charming" I thought.
She was followed by the driver of the car not too long after, a dapper young
man in what appeared to be (no kidding) a zoot suit complete with the
wide-brimmed hat and pocket chain, carrying a case of Miller High Life (the
30-Pack, of course) and some sort of pint bottle.
"Classy", I further opined to myself.
I know where this is headed, don't you? But stick with me for a minute.
I had the TV on for awhile, but the volume button's broken, and the remote's
volume function... uh... ain't functioning... and the thing is stuck at "Old
Folks Level". I mean it's LOUD.
Hazdra's trying to sleep with a pillow over his head. Add to this the fact
that there's absolutely nothing on (except softcore porno on Showtime or an
air disaster movie starring Robert Reid on TNT) and I just figured why fight
it? I'd crash too. Off goes the blaring TV.
So I'm laying here, and I hear this sound kind of like a telephone
transformer or a loose coil on the back of a refrigerator coming from the
wall across the room. Nothing odd there, sometimes we get rooms with 'fridges
in 'em.
Just this isn't one of those 'fridge-having rooms.
I'm an audio engineer. I've been making a living with my ears for fifteen
years, and I've taught myself to selectively listen to something like say, a
band... and mentally isolate one sound in a group of sounds like one
particular drum on the kits or a guitar... this is a standard skill developed
by most folks in my business for fine-tuning a mix during a show and a trick
that comes in handy from time to time even when I'm not working. I listened a
little closer, through the highway noise outside my door and Mike's
breathing... and what I at first mistook as a 'fridge was indeed a vibrator.
I'm not kidding, I can hear it right now, plain as day.
So there are loud vibration noises... and spanking sounds... loud spanking
sounds... coming through the wall. Moaning. The vibrator stops periodically,
but the spanking has been going on for over an hour now fairly consistently,
one every fifteen seconds or so.
I don't really know if I could make a word problem out of it ala grade school
math tests, like "Two people leave a bar at two O'clock, arrive at Three
O'clock in a hotel room. If the liquor store sells a pint for $5..."
... but with a 30-Pack figured into this equasion, I might be in for a
really, really long night.
So I'm trying to think of something, ANYTHING else at this moment. The mental
image of this zoot-suiter spanking and buzzing this woman while downing a
cool can of High Life is enough to put anyone off their Wheaties...
Just telling you-all about it makes me want to wash.
But that's the danger of hotel living... Hell, one night after we played
Rockford this last summer Tiny was riding up in the elevator of the hotel
after the show with an elderly woman when the doors opened and a naked and
quite drunk couple tried to get on. The elderly woman, predictably, freaked.
"Just what the Hell do you think you're doing?" Tiny bellowed at them.
"We just need to go up a floor."
"Not on THIS one you're not! Yer giving this woman a heart attack!!!" and he
forced the doors closed.
For Real.
Hotels are places where people do things they wouldn't do at home...
including but not limited to, peeing in the shower and everything DeSade came
up with in his idle moments. Listening to this nonsense next door just
reminds me of the possibility that this "loving couple" might have been in
THIS room LAST weekend. Or their friends and neighbors might have been here...
... spanking and buzzing.
I want to get out of this bed suddenly.
Scratch that, I want to get out of my SKIN.
But there are things we've done to make our rooms more hospitable or at the
very least less nightmare-inducing... Scott carries his own sheets, etc.
which I think I'll be doing from now on... and John wears earplugs so
housekeeping can vaccuum all they want outside his door... Lisa burns candles
like a scene from the "Kung Fu" TV show... there's the odd laptop for video
golf... boom boxes... we have ways of maintaining a balance in our nomadic
life to bring some continuity to chaos.
But this is a tough life to live in some respects.
We have fifteen active band members and crew on the road at any given time
now, all of which need to be housed, fed, transported, and looked after as
per the care instructions sewn into the collar of each one's shirt.
When you become a member of this band you give up a certain measure of
stability and Home Life not to mention certain basic privacies... you're on
the road for about two hundred days out of the year and so there are things
that you're just NOT GOING TO BE AROUND FOR... in three years I've missed a
whole mess of weddings, holidays, and funerals... some of us have lost touch
with friends or closer people in the pursuit of this expression... and it's
painful. At times even a concert hall full of people can seem like the
loneliest place on Earth... but when it comes down to it there's no place I'd
rather be than with these people making this music and there's precious
little which could ever entice me away from it. If you think about it I guess
I'm most "At Home" when we're on the road.
Periodically I get asked "How's Chicago?"
"I don't know, I'm not there anymore."
"So where are you living these days?"
"I don't know... where's the nearest (insert hotel chain name here)?"
That's my home, I guess. (Chain Name Here). But there are three distinct
advantages:
1. I don't have to buy shampoo.
2. Towel Service - I don't have towel service at my apartment.
3. There's no snack machine up the hall from my room at home.
The disadvantage is, as I've told you... Buzzy & Spanky...
... who, speaking of which, seem to have knocked it off finally.
And HEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!! it's only 7am!!!
See you later... I gotta get some sleep before I travel.