2nd night: Kansas City. Opening band: 9-piece dark country outfit who set up for 90 minutes and played for 30. I kept my mouth shut. (They outnumbered us 4.5 to 1.) Tony was there. He's steadfast and true. Thanks Tony. So far so good. No disasters, except Zandlo's viewfinder's gone out. Tonight: Omaha, Saddle Creek rock city.

16 July 2002
5th night: After no monitors in Omaha and Des Moines (a particular hardship for us, as we loop our rhythm section and play to our own accompaniment – without monitors we’re flying blind) we reach Spearfish, South Dakota. It’s as bleak as it sounds. We’re playing the pavilion at the city park with a slate of teenage bands, including one doing Metallica and Blink 182 covers. This is the cultural life of rural American teens. Music which doesn’t sound like the radio makes no sense. The small crowd of 14 – 18 year olds have mostly departed by the time we play, followed, shortly thereafter by the soundman. He couldn’t get the mix loud enough for us to hear it without it feeding back. When M. went to help him, his crystalline ego fractured beyond repair, he skulked off into the night.

Our hopes for Denver ride on monitors.

Meanwhile, the Wyoming plains are quite a sight for eyes trained to accept el tracks and homeless men in alleys picking through dumpsters. I understand why Woodie Guthrie sang. Califone’s new album (unfinished, as yet) accompanied us on the descent from the Black Hills. Lush amalgam, rented tux, chalice of red wine tipped over at night. If there is a meaning to all this, it must be in the music. It must be. In The Last Waltz, Levon Helm says that the road is a "goddamned impossible way of life." I’m not sure it’s impossible, but I do know that I never like myself less than when I’m on tour. There’s 45 minutes of purpose a day. The rest is eating and

shitting and sleeping. When I’m home I’m fairly disciplined about writing an hour a day. In the van it just doesn’t happen. The landscape rolls by like the most boring movie that’s ever been made. But it’s hard to keep my head down. I can’t read. Either I fall asleep or I’m too distracted by Wall Drug billboards, the Rand McNally Road Atlas and my bladder. Touring is not the

art part of rock. Touring is all commerce. The idea is to bring your music to people who’ve never had the slightest interest in it and convince them that they ought to. I guess there are people who have shown interest too. For them it’s a matter of showing up in person, as if to say. ‘yes, people

made this music, people who drive around in a big white van and eat corn nuts and fill their ashtrays with candy wrappers; who arrive in shorts and change into trousers for the show, who play soccer at rest stops and drink coffee in the morning and bourbon at night.’ There is that part – the part about proof of the existence of meaning and effort and good intentions. I guess that’s why we’re on Highway 85 in southern Wyoming. I guess that’s why Levon Helm isn’t quite right. It’s damn near impossible. But it’s damn near possible too.

19 July 2002
Is it just me or is comedy not funny? Neil Hamburger and Pleaseasaur opened in Denver. They’re both comedy acts. Stuff’s only funny to me if it happens in the midst of life’s flow. When someone announces "I will now be funny" I have the urge to flee. Neil Hamburger tries to capitalize on that tension by being "ironic" (wink wink). Get it? He’s funny because he’s not funny, when he’s supposed to be funny. Well, no. I was insulted to be on the same bill with all of them. I found myself asking the audience "don’t you have friends who are funnier than this?" But I asked it silently and internally so no one answered.

Idaho is the most beautiful state in the continental USA. We’ve driven through some remarkable, otherworldly landscapes in Colorado and Utah and this morning in Washington, but Idaho offers the most breathtaking dramagraphy (dramatic geography) I’ve ever seen.

Last night: Moscow (Idaho). Played in campus movie theater with great local band, Echo Ave. A movie was booked to open the show, but the VHS tape was uncooperative, so we showed Mike’s video clips from Saint The Fire Show. It was cool to see on the big screen. Mike was excited to have the opportunity and the audience responded really well. The crowd was small but involved, foregoing the comfortable movie seating to stand up at the stage’s edge. After no monitors in Omaha, Des Moines, and Spearfish the sound was good and loud and, as a result we played with some energy and investment. We are more at the mercy of sound systems than your average band – if the monitors are quiet (worse yet, non-existent) we’re in big trouble.

Touring is a really weird thing. The long, hypnotic drives, during which you’re prone to sink deeply into yourself, to try to preserve a sense of your own perspective and your own space in a van with 2 other guys. Then, suddenly, like you’ve fallen through the rabbit hole, you’re on stage. The

transition can take as little as 20 minutes. (10 hours driving/20 minutes set up/45 minutes playing/back in the van.) That’s how it happened in Salt Lake City. One night you’re the much-anticipated headliner. One night you’re first of 4 bands, tagged on to an already-existing bill at the last minute. One night you play with a band who has never played before and who try a

faithful cover of Radiohead’s The Bends. Another night you play with Wayne Kramer, veteran of the MC5. You go from absolute isolation in the plains or the mountains – not seeing another human being for hours at a time to being squeezed into a smoky club, shoulder to moshing shoulder with a room full of teenagers. Why do we do this again? Oh, yeah – the music. The music, right. The music.

22 July 2002
I guess it was Robbie who said touring was a goddamned impossible way of life. Robbie must have played Eureka, CA on a Sunday night. The show at The Vista was this tour’s low point so far (I’m leaving room for lower points in Arizona and South Carolina). Again, no monitors. Please, if you’re reading this and you have anything to do with any of our upcoming shows, please make

sure you have some monitors. I’m not being a pris. We loop our rhythm section and run it though the monitors and play to that. Without monitors we’re a blind man playing Twister in a mine field. Anyway, Eureka: no monitors, squealing feedback, uncontrollable bursts of random noise, etc. We couldn’t be good and we weren’t.

Tonight : M.'s birthday and no show. Chico, CA is a bad place. We've "played" here twice before. Bad shows, people dumping beers on our head, etc. Tonight: no monitors, no listing in the paper, no people, so we decided not to "play for tips" as the gal at the coffee shop suggested. We drove to San Francisco to see our old friend and bass player, John Przyborowski. He sells software.

During the day today, we stopped and swam in the Trinity River in Northern California. It was an idyllic, remote mountain paradise. (I’m no nature writer.) We basked in tranquil pools and body surfed some pretty strong currents and rapids. It was the best hour of the tour thus far. If it weren’t for believing in this music we’ve made and in it’s ultimate (apparently inert) ability to mean something to someone somewhere, I’d have pawned my equipment and flown to London to be with my beautiful Jules. But, listen, there is value in this. Here’s an excerpt from an email we got from Tom Caw (thanks, Tom):

...all of those bags of corn nuts have a purpose.

Thomas Mann used Adorno as the Devil in Doktor Faustus. "What is art today?", asks Adorno as Devil, and declares: "the decent impotence of those who scorn to cloak the general sickness under colour of a dignified mummery."

See you in the land of loonies,

-Tom

See you in the land of the loonies.

Perhaps I’ve been remiss. The tour’s been in remission. After a good show in San Francisco and a nice reunion with Christian and Erik, our diligent booking agents (booking is a thankless task [thanks, Christian and Erik]) we drove to San Diego to play the Casbah with Wayne Kramer of MC5 fame. Some history: we’ve had 2 tours end abruptly in San Diego – one when the band we

were touring with spontaneously combusted there, one when the second half of our tour, booked by the notorious and infamous Michael Dutcher (if you see him give him a swift kick in the pajamas for us) mysteriously evaporated, leaving us with nothing between San Diego and Chicago. I’d have to check a map to be sure, but I don’t think you can get farther from Chicago in the continental US than San Diego. On top of that San Diego shows have always sucked. The people there seem to have better things to do with their time (shopping, the beach?) than paying attention to music. We talked to Wayne Kramer after our set and before his. He was eloquent and gracious and said some very interesting things about a 40 year life in music. He said that the Fire Show might have a future in the art business, but that we were doomed in the music business. Who am I to argue? Then he played and all his charm turned to a John Hiatt-esque muck of half-funny "real life" observations and standard bar band, blues-based, uninspired, MOR riffings. Musically he’s living on fumes.

Then LA. We had a great show at Spaceland. We stayed with our old friend, Sara Cody, who is a delight. The audience was really attentive and appreciative and we, in return, were even more enthusiastic and passionate than usual. We played a couple of songs we’d temporarily shelved (F. Pilate and Neil Young’s Don’t Let It Bring You Down). All in all, the most rewarding show to date. (Brad Wood, where are you?)

Tucson was a nice vacation experience: put up in the Congress Hotel, fed a nice dinner, and cut down to a 25 minute set at Club Congress. It’s a great place, almost European in it’s apparent regard for musicians. Unfortunately the sound system is sub par and the sound man was surly.

Last night: Phoenix. Played Modified Arts, a co-op all ages gallery/performance space. All hail Leslie for giving Phoenix something to live for. We intersected with no fewer than 3 other bands whose shows had fallen through and were looking to get added to our bill. Only Dälek wasadded. They’re a 3 piece hip hop group from New Jersey who gave me a reason to believe hip hop might once again be art. The DJ and laptop operator were amazing and the aesthetic veered closer to early 80’s noise bands than Timbaland. It was a sonic onslaught, peppered with string and piano samples. It reminded me of a hip hop Fire Show. We were duly impressed.

Drive day today. Oklahoma City on Monday. Fingers crossed.

Thanks to Poppy for updating the tour report and web mastering.

-O. Nil

TFS

4 August 2002
Okay. After a while one loses the will to report the victorious tragedies that constitute each night on tour. Dirty Walt of Fishbone liked us. What more can I say? Here's what I told the 7th Street Entry (for their in-house fanzine):

Apropos of the end of the Fire Show:

It's not that the world is too small a place or too petty a place (although, at times, it seems that both are true), it is in fact, the opposite. In every eye, a gleam. We (Resplendent/Nil) aren't so young anymore. We've jumped and stumbled and yelled our hearts out at hundreds of shows over more than a decade in places as far-flung as Spearfish, South Dakota and Paris, France. We've played for one person and we've played for five thousand. But, while lives are held in

hock, while single-minded passions are pursued single-mindedly, the world and all the eyes in it have not held still.

There never was a reason to land here rather than there - except for some naive hope that this might matter. If we once said from a stage: "if the world was a better place, we'd still be a band." We probably meant: "if we were a better band, the world would be a better place."

As John Berryman (who plunged from a Minneapolis bridge into the Mississippi River) said, "It was the thought they thought they could do it/made Henry wicked and away." It's not that "they" have sent us cowering, tails between legs, into some dark, ignored corner. It is, instead, that we've hurled what stones we had to hurl and we haven't changed their minds. We're searching

for new stones now. And, as you are our witness, once new stones are turned, we will hurl them with renewed fury.

We've tried to be a band in earnest search of meaning. Music, more and more, falls under the spell of men with marketing in their hearts and clubs disavow sound checks so they can pay sound men less. All we sought was a connection to others who cared. But the "world" and the "industry" and the dissonance of hearts and minds addled and saddled by the advertopolis, insert

themselves in the space between us. Messages return: "user unknown." No users, please; no consumers. Let's just be humans and human and let's try to give a little and take a little and let's not die in vain.

Love.

Seth and Michael

The Fire Show

14 August, 2002
Staring at the ceiling of Room 208>Days Inn>Toronto. Me and Tonto (the loneliest stranger in town). He calls me kemosabi and I call him green paste (wasabi). Why would I want to be? ...and the hotel maid opens the door and says she knocked, but I have headphones on (Mitchell Akiyama's Temporary Music) and didn't hear. I am in boxer shorts, prone. She is embarrassed and backs out asking if we need fresh towels. We don't. Today is a "day off." Yesterday was a day on and we played the Horseshoe in Toronto and people seemed to give a damn. Thanks. Two nights before that (both of them) with Werbo in Montreal and Ottawa. They are a good band of good people and we like them. So, sad to see them go (even if it was us that went). Miche, we'd like you even cabinless. And people have coordinated visits from the US to Canada, so as to see us play. That's a flatter. Jason and Tom and Eric and Laura: This willingness to share is rare, hearts less apart because. Merci.

3 more. 3, 2, 1, oblivion. What a strange reality. Thanks for reading and, perhaps, caring. Our hearts, ever-threatening to fly free of our sleeves, will, no doubt, be winged here out. No chest could hold them. London, Chicago, Minneapolis. Then wing, I, to London (the other). More will happen. You can be sure. Check here for news. I will write again.

-Seth

TFS

15 August 2002
Our paths cross again with Dalek. Their noise-hop blew our noses in Phoenix and again in Toronto. So we said "would you play our last show in Chicago?" and they said "yes." So the handset has not returned to the cradle as yet, yo. We will be at the Hideout tomorrow night, Friday, the 16th with our new friends Dalek. Please see.

-TFS

15 August 2002 (later)
London, Ontario is a dismal dreary place. We started our set to no one. There was a soundman of course, and a bartender, but other than them there was no one. Halfway through, the requisite Number One Cup fan came in with his girlfriend. So we played for them. Even as the final moments come, we are subject to the whims of indifference.

On the way home we stopped at a convenience store for Cheetos and Perrier. Phil Collins played on the radio, jamming the dagger further into my groin. We got back in the van and scanned the radio for something to cleanse our palette, when I picked up the tones of a familiar voice. It was Patti Schmidt of Nanobot Auxiliary Ballet, with whom we played and stayed in Montreal. We enjoyed our time with Patti and breakfast. And Patti hosts Brave New Waves on CBC radio. And as her welcome voice wafted through the Canadian night salving our broken hearts, we heard her say Mission of Burma. And then she played Trem Two from their Vs. album. We pulled into the

Econolodge parking lot and Michael and I sat in the van in the dark with the engine off and listened to Roger Miller and Clint Conley and Peter Prescott and Martin Swope. And we felt not so alone. They too played adventurous music to indifferent and sometimes non-existent audiences. And they were great. Mission of Burma were great. They were fucking great. Whether anyone was listening is not the decider. Talent will out you if nothing else will.

Now we will sleep.

-Seth

TFS

17 August 2002
Spitter. Spatter. Little bits of us strewn about. A piece of my forehead (or was it my guitar?) gone missing. We've left little bits of us behind. Our hope has always been that someone finds them and takes them home (to heart) and loves them as we once did. Thank you, Chicago. Michael sang about undoing "the harm of folded arms" and last night it happened. It wasn't a Seam show (ca. 1993) or a Tortoise show (ca. 1998). Holy fuck, it had absolutely nothing to do with Jim O'Rourke. There was beauty in the truth of the end; truth in the end of the beauty. Thank you, Chicago. My first shows here are now 12 years past. 12 years in the future is downright impossible to imagine. I, for one, plan to be more fulfilled, more honest; to understand more, to do and have done more. This should be the goal: to always be able to look back and say "it was good." I'm there now and saying it. Thank you, Chicago.

18 August 2002
The Fire Show is dead.

We have returned to Chicago after a cathartic final show in Minneapolis. Three guitars were sacrificed for the cause, bringing to five, the total number of precious compilations of wood and metal which didn't make it home. I'm moving to England to be with the girl I love (2 more days, Jules) and to go to grad school. So, at the risk of being prematurely self-referential and solipsistic, allow me to quote myself (from the first album we ever released - Number One Cup's Possum Trot Plan):

"This is one way of getting there

Tempted to say the little word it

In referring to it.

Pulling up short, asking instead:

'What field was it wherein the lustrous poppies shone?'"

There's always more than one it. What's been poured into one will seep into the next and maybe, somewhere, on an unexpectedly sunny afternoon in London or Madrid or Seoul, I'll lie down in a field or in my bed or I'll see a movie or hear a song and all the poppies will converge, no longer unrelated and separated by time and category, but epiphanously a constellation of fiery petals burning in the reflection of the midday sun; the reflection of people I've known, and all those lustrous poppies will provide the feast of open hearts and flowing wines, the diluvian satisfaction of all my desires.

It is with profound thanks, that I wish all of you the same. I believe it is possible. I believe art can be it. For me, it has been. I've been fortunate to have spent these last nine years making music with M. Resplendent (aka Michael Lenzi). His is a heart which demands a voice and, miraculously, his is a body and a brain which can accommodate. I'm a better artist and person for having known him. Keep an ear out for M.'s new endeavors.

Thanks and goodbye.

Olias Nil (Seth Cohen)

TFS