The Fire
Show Tour Diary Final Tour, Summer 2002 by Olias Nil
13 July 2002
1st night: Minneapolis. After a 7 hour drive we waited in traffic 1 block
from the club (the 7th Street Entry) while George W. Bush was spirited
away from a Republican fundraiser nearby. It's not enough that he's poisoned
the soul of the world, now he's made us late for our gig. Show went well, though.
The 7th Street Entry's always been kind to us (Nate and Sonia, in particular).
We'll be back to close the tour (and the band).
14 July 2002
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 andshitting 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 theart 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, peoplemade 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. Thetransition 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 afaithful 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 makesure 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.
26 July 2002
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 wewere 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 inhock, 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 searchingfor 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, insertthemselves 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
theEconolodge 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
thereTempted to say the little
word itIn 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 Kim-Cohen)
TFS