Dispatch #4 - Feb, 1995



Currently in Chicago, and jetlagged as all hell. Maggie flew out here. I amoverjoyed.

We said goodbye to Gus after a little tour of a few East Coastcities--Boston, D.C., New York, Philadelphia. Great little tour; suddenlyeveryone knows the words, everyone's jumping up and down, there's this wholefrenzy thing going on. Now we know where the sweet spots are in thesongs--the jazz section at the end of "Bus," the switch from the freestylesection into the fadeout in "True Dreams," the bass breaks in "Blueeyed". Wehit these points and it's like we've jiggled some kind of switch; everyonesuddenly howls. At each show, four songs in, I kept thinking something screwywas happening with my monitor. Like there was a high, hissy echo on the vocalsound. It took me that long to figure out that that sound was the audience,singing.

Gus is going to Australia with Belly--"All I have to do is tune guitarsinconspicuously and pick up the money at the end of the night," he says.We're sad about this, but Gus has always wanted to go to Australia, and we'rehappy for him.

So we went to Denmark.

Denmark is cool if you like fish. Personally, I can't stand fish. I amtotally unable to eat it. I've always been this way; I've never known why.

I'm partially Scandinavian, so all through the Denmark shows I keptsaying "That's my people, man." This could be prompted by a particularly finedeli tray, or, as in Arhus, at which there were very few people, the crazedyouths jumping on and off the stage and shouting for "Janine." We never play"Janine". To do so, we'd have to bring an answering machine on the road withus, and we hadn't the foresight to do that. That's my people, man.

Handy Danish phrase; "Har de Dukker, kan der go og tale?" = "Do youhave any dolls that can walk or talk?"

Europe--or Yurp, as our dear departed Gus spells it--is Hell for tworeasons. Firstly, there's nothing Yuval can eat. For Yuval, Europe meanslearning to ask "Yo, G, is dere lard in dis?" in four or five differentlanguages. Secondly, Europeans relate to American culture much the same waywhite Americans have related to black culture; they love it and consume itwith much gluttony, but hate the people. Invariably after the shows, I'd endup talking to some local about a) How brilliant they think we are and b) Howawful Americans in general are. It gets pretty disconcerting.

In Sonderborg, a small town a few hours outside of Copenhagen, a placeso remote and conservative it confounded even the citizens of Arhus that wewould be playing there, nobody showed up at the gig. The joint was two-thirdsempty. These are always the best shows, the fuck-it shows. We barely stuck tothe set list, went off on peculiar tangents, tore shit up to shreds.

Afterwards, I ended up accepting the invitation of a 17 year old girlprone to spouting L7 and Cypress Hill lyrics in a thick Danish accent and hermom, and went to a Danish karaoke bar. The Danes were crazy drunk, yelpingthe lyrics to "Born to Be Wild." From there, we went to a bar where an awfulGerman blues band played "Sweet Home Alabama" to fierce applause. The wholetime we were pursued by the 17 year old girl's drunken boyfriend, whoapparently was incensed at the prospect of his girlfriend and her mom hangingout with some American guitar player. He trailed us at twenty feet, screamingthe whole time, weeping and moaning. At one point, on some desertedresidential street, the cops drove up. "I'm an American musician returning tomy hotel," I said. "Everything is fine here." They eyed the moaning boy andthen drove off.

Onward to Berlin, where we sold out a club called the Loft, arelatively large place. Still, the bass sound onstage was awful and the crowdwas sedate until after we finished playing. This is sort of the pattern inEurope--you get offstage thinking they hated it, and then they all file up toyou and ask why you only played for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Various names of condoms sold in vending machines in Germany--BillyBoy, Action Box, Safe Surfer, Tropicana, Black Nero.

New songs on the setlist--"Lemon Lime," "I Got Lost In the ParkingLot." Other ones we've played for awhile but aren't on the record--"Blow MyOnly," "Laff On, Fatboy," "Collapse, Unload It," "Woolly Imbibe," and theever-popular "White Girl."

From there, Amsterdam and Antwerp, and then onward to Paris, home ofour favorite European record company, Barclay. They're quite cool over there.Stephane Verite, the honcho, has a dapper little French goatee and dresseslike the pinnacle of French indie rock couture. Last time we were in France,he got very drunk and kept apologizing for being very drunk, and thenexplaining in great detail his affection for women that looked like twelveyear old boys. This time, he took us to a bar in Paris where a woman in acowboy hat and holsters holding tequila bottles and shotglasses would, for afew francs, whip out a shot, slam it on the table, and yelp"AIYIYIYI--TEQUILA!" in a faux-cowboy howl.

I don't drink at all, so this was all particularly amusing for me.

For some absurd reason, we are regarded as Important in France.Journalists ask us very serious questions. It's difficult for me to pull myusual Oh, the lyrics mean nothing lie. They won't have it. They know thewords, they question references. They ask about our obvious connections toFrank Zappa and Morphine, an idea which totally confounds me. I've neverlistened to Zappa, personally.

We have been listening to a tremendous amount of Portishead, which weplayed no fewer than three times daily in the van, getting all stoned andweepy to it. It's an incredibly sad, beautiful record. If you know the song"Glory Box," I think the section near the end, where the singer screams"Forever and ever" and the lumbering ugly beat slams in, is the closestmusical description of the horror of Getting Dumped that I've ever heard.

On through Switzerland, unnotable other than that we did Laundry thereand we had a gig that was sort of a snottier version of Sonderborg in Zurich.Then to Italy, lovely Italy. The border guard got out the hash-sniffing dogin our honor, but only found our soundman Larry's pornography.

In Cesena, a tiny town redolent of fascism and the forties, in thefront row, there was a kid lip-synching to "Blow My Only." He's probablyheard it--as we've never been to Italy--on a bootleg of a radio session wedid in Amsterdam a couple months back. If you've been to our AOL folder, youprobably know that this is a pretty widely circulated bootleg. We lovebootlegs. But, uh, they're against the law, so, uh, don't do it, okay,officially? We, the members of Soul Coughing, surely wouldn't endorseanything illegal. Of course not.

After Milan, in which we all fell in love with all things Italian, theinsanely beautiful language, the food, we flew to Minneapolis.

Time to wake up, Soul Coughing kids.

Actually, the show was great, even though it was an over-21 show, whichwe all despise. Suddenly, we were back in the land of the crazed audience,shaking and pushing and yelling. I felt like Ian MacKaye--I started out witha diatribe against non-all-ages shows, and we kept having to tell theaudience to stop crushing the women in the front row. They didn't listen.Whenever I had two seconds in which I wasn't playing guitar, I would pullsome woman out of the audience that was getting smooshed against the lip ofthe stage. The crowd kept flipping over the monitors and accidentally pushingMark's keyboard out from under him. It was truly insane.

Sadly, my friend Sam, whom I met on AOL and was the absolute firstperson to buy the record in Minneapolis, couldn't make it in, as she'sunderage. This over-21 thing is a real, real drag.

Now we're in Chicago, where we're all in a haze of jetlag. Ourgirlfriends have all flown out, we're all restful and happy. Maggie is here,and I'm happier than I can tell you.

The first thing Maggie ever said to me was, "Hey, aren't you SoulCoughing guy?"