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
Buried Treasure 1: 40th Day
Back in 1999 most of my possessions went into storage, and when I left the U.S. in 2002, I decided to keep them there. Through the years I occasionally considered clearing the space out, but for various reasons always chose not to. But my decision to move to Spain (or Portugal) changed that. So last month I emptied the space.
The inexorable march of time had erased all memory of what was stored there. As it turns out, what I uncovered were the artifacts of a life that had been so completely supplanted by newer experiences that going through the old possessions was like snooping in a stranger's attic. Every box I opened was filled with surprises. I realized I had to post some of the items, and tell some of the stories.
The photo at the top of this post is me, back when I was a real live goth. Oh, yes, there are black goths. I've know several. Note the hat. Dig how I'm way too aloof to show my face. Yes, that is a different person. It's my body, alright, but inhabited by a decidedly more ethereal personality, and shaped by experiences that were fantastic in some ways, but were also sorely lacking in breadth and diversity. Even so, it's a cool shot.
I used the image as a poster for my band 40th Day. There were five of us in the group, and we enjoyed a fair amount of regional success. We released two CDs, went on some tours, threw a lot of parties, and two of us ingested
mounds of drugs. Back then I was all about drug cocktails—mixing two or more substances to achieve various effects. I was the pied piper of LSD. I was so well-known for carrying it that sometimes at the bars I would be approached by female friends, who would wordlessly open their mouths for me to place a tab directly on their tongues.
I think the posters hold up nicely, considering I had no computer at the time and slapped them together with tape, glue and magic marker. The image for the poster above and left is from a video I made of our bassist
Jim Nasi, photographed from a television screen. The one next to it uses a friend's dental x-ray. These are typical goth images, but we weren't a goth band—we rocked harder than that, and were more organic in terms of the sounds we chose. That's probably why we got to open for the Smashing Pumpkins. You see the poster, designed by an artist at the club, below.
The Pumpkins show was magical. With rock luminaries like Perry Farrell, Siouxsie Sioux, and Henry Rollins in attendance, it couldn't help but be. At one point, Jim and I found ourselves sitting at a table with Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, and Billy Corgan, and I told myself I would never forget that moment. But I did—it had completely fled my memory, along with the rest of that amazing night, until these posters stared up at me from a storage box.
I spent a few days with Jim recently, and we started talking about our paths, and he said that what we both took from the band was the conviction that life should be lived at a certain velocity. I thought that was insightful. Maybe that's why I forgot so much. When the scenery keeps speeding past how can you remember any of it?
Below at right you see one of my favorite 40th Day images, of our lead singer Shawn Strub, shot for the cover of
Icon magazine. By this time we were an extremely accomplished group. In fact, I remember one review that began: "These guys know how to play and they want you to know it." It wasn't true, though. Virtuosity was not what drove us. We simply loved to perform, and practiced for hours and hours every week, and eventually became adept at our instruments. But we were never cheesy. Instead, having that kind of ability made us more confident about simplifying our sound. As we did so, people who saw us play live responded more passionately.
The success was both blessing and curse. We came to the attention of bigwigs in the music industry, but the pressure widened the fault lines in the band. Sometimes it seemed like people were deliberately trying to pull us apart. We had no idea at the time, of course, that doubts and fears were normal, and breakups on the cusp of success were the rule rather than the exception. If we'd known, we might have held it together. But no—we split up. One day we were there, and the next we weren't.
In addition to the posters, my storage space also contained a couple of thousand photographs. That really brought it all back. I sat there on a loading dock looking at faces and places long gone, and asked myself, "Did I really know these people? Did we really play CBGB? Did we really play for 7,000 people in Dallas? Did we really cross the Continental Divide during a lightning storm while tripping on acid?"
Another surprise in the storage space was my old folder of lyric sheets. God, but I was filled with angst. I suppose a lot of us are at that age. I wasn't the only one wandering around in all black, that's for sure. No regrets, though. I had way too much fun. And somewhere along the way I learned that life is not an impossible burden, at least not for me. Virtually any type of lyrics can work for rock music, but I tried hard to create a mood of yearning, of being embarked on a lifelong journey for answers. In particular, the last lines of "The End of a Day" still resonate:
Saw the Reivers in the south,
just a pair of eyes,
and an open mouth,
and time pushed out of mind.
Saw a beauty dancing,
down the path of vanished starlets,
heard an old romantic,
singing love but thinking debt.I like those lines. And I liked those days. But I guess
40th Day was always destined to be just a detour in life, because from the time I was a junior high schooler what I really wanted was to be a writer. Actually, I wanted to be a writer who lived in an exotic land filled with romance and danger, and I'd drink and fight and love like there was no tomorrow. A childish wish, certainly, but I never outgrew it and guess what? It came wildly true.
Labels: 40th Day, Jim Nasi, Smashing Pumpkins
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.
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.
