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Buried Treasure 2: More Memories in the Junk

This is the aftermath of the category 5 hurricane that swept through my apartment, as I turned my life wrongside up preparing to move to Spain.

Within the pictured chaos, I found yet more 40th Day memorabilia, including 2,000-plus band photographs spanning nine years. Some of them depicted moments so forgotten, so swallowed up in the dusts of time, that looking at them was exquisitely painful. Other shots were absurd, and a few were plain incomprehensible, like the one of our bass player Jim fellating a footlong dildo.

Below, you see the largest crowd 40th Day ever played for—7,000 people in Dallas, Texas. This was part of probably the most star-crossed tour in musical history, during which we—an alternative rock band that sounded like Siouxsie & the Banshees—opened for oldsters like Molly Hatchet, ELO and Eddie Money. We're pretty sure someone in Molly Hatchet stole one of our guitars. The day we opened for Eddie Money it was 100 degrees and concertgoers were sunbaked into a stupor. Many of the shows were lousy, with listless turnouts, surly clubowners, and generally uncomprehending crowds of yokels who did not get us. In fact, if I posted a shot of the crowd in Gunnison, Colorado, and put a thought bubble above every head, there would not be enough words contained within to form a coherent sentence. But this crowd in Dallas was great, and the club scene in Deep Ellum was excellent.

The next photo is of the sign for Rod's, in Madison, Wisconsin. If I remember correctly, Rod's was the upstairs section of the club we played. It was gay, while the downstairs section was straight. In reality all clubs are mixed, of course, so I never got the gay club/straight club thing, but whatever. There was nothing memorable about our show, but this penis-themed sign was priceless.

The coolest city we ever played was New Orleans, which is why I chose the below photo of a random courtyard somewhere in the French Quarter. Our shows in the Big Easy weren't well-attended, but the city was magical. Things have changed there. Since the hurricane, blackhearted Friedmanite economists and developers have been given lease by the State government to remake the city. Whatever they create will be a weak, pale distillation of the place I remember. I know this because that's what economists and developers do whenever they get their dirty hooks into a place—ruin it. I hope this little courtyard survives.

Choosing the worst restroom ever was a tough decision. The bathroom at CGBG was a reeking cretaceous swamp, complete with mosquitoes, and there was a rest stop in Nebraska so horrible that I shat on the floor rather than approach the toilet. Also, I used to hang out at a place down in Guatemala that had a bullet hole in the urinal, but that doesn't count because it wasn't tour related. So the filth-encrusted cubical you see below wins the repugnancy award by a pubic hair.

The craziest groupie award goes to the girl below and right. I don't remember her name, but I do remember she was a firecracker. She teased our bass player Jim to within an inch of his life without actually putting out. The blonde was interested in me, but I wasn't putting out either, so nobody scored. Girls like this are always loaded with cash. I have no idea why. But they bought the drinks and that's really all I cared about. There was a time in my life when I would have lamented this night as a missed opportunity—now I only lament that it took me so long to meet my fiancée, the lovely slice of German pastry I call Miss Diana.

Last but not least, below I've posted my all-time favorite band photo. It shows our lead singer Shawn Strub, in full ecstasy, at a show we played in Denver, Colorado during the RMMA music festival.

The shot is part of a roll that also produced the Icon cover I uploaded to an earlier post. I've seen other shots that impart a palpable sense of the band's essence, but none of them can surpass this grainy close-up, snapped by a photographer whose name I do not remember. He deserves major kudos, whoever he was, because his image captures the magic, power, and dreamy mysticism of a band that was weird, wild, and a bit ahead of its time.

We sometimes used The Church as our entry music. This was the scene: The lights would dim, the crowd would hush, and as the charge of anticipation built, the lyrics would float through the club:

"Oh, what an ending baby,
promise you'll remember me.
I'm not pretending baby,
your sweet and wicked treachery.
Water all my orchids,
save my dynasty.
I'm never, never coming back again.
I said I'm never coming back again."

Labels: 40th Day, Dallas, Denver, Molly Hatchet, The Church

posted by Egan Ehlers @ 3:25 PM