Day Three: Sunday 5 March

   Prelapse arrives around 8.30 and we hang out with them It's great seeing Mason & Megan again, and the rest of the guys in Prelapse are really nice and funny. Cool. Maybe things will be fine.
   We go on at 9.45, and though the sound onstage sucks (though we have hope the room is OK -- really, as with all shows, we never expect to get paid much, but godDAMN can't you at least make it good?), we play a good set gradually increasing Sunday night crowd. The unquestionable highlight (yet again) is when the Rev. Mason Wendell jumps up and joins us for our closing Zorn medley. We all feel an authentic Naked City vibe for those four minutes. It's fantastic.
   After us come local band Ennui, but all we care about is seeing Prelapse, who we didn't even know were ON this gig until a couple days ago (Mason doesn't book Prelapse, so he didn't know to tell us). They are very complimentary about our set, which feels good, and continues our perception: PopCanon, the band most people hate, but at least other musicians appreciate... Their young drummer told me: 'Damn! You guys were tight! You played those Zorn songs better than we would have!' I demurred, but did enjoy the compliment. Honestly, sometimes that's all we ever get out of our shows -- the appreciation of other musicians. It's a recurrent theme with this band, and one we think about more and more frequently lately: that somehow we're Too Inside, though we always think we're plenty accessible, even silly. And we ARE silly, but fun silly, not stupid silly -- and yet we often don't play certain songs (CaliMariAchi, Snossage, BrainStroll: hmm, my songs, imagine that) because we're afraid to freak out 'the audience'... ah, well, we should just do what we do. We like it, and we can NEVER tell what people want to hear, so why even bother?

   Anyway, speaking of Too Inside, Prelapse plays and kicks total and complete ass! Five complete badasses! Fuck, they're great! We are humbled and enthralled to see them play, and amused and enraged by their treatment by the SoundDick.
   (Note to non-band-type readers: though not EVERY soundperson is a total psycho dick -- Gainesville's Kristen Wanner and Pensacola's Sluggo's Ry-Mo-Dee are two of the finest people and best soundpersons you could ever hope to meet -- most sound 'engineers' hate their jobs and hate the bands that make them do it. They give bands -- who, unlike themselves, are not GUARANTEED pay at the end of the night, no matter how good, bad or indifferent their performance -- lots of grief, and are almost always psychotic unfriendlies who couldn't mix a salad. Tell me another artistic endeavor where the artist gives up nearly total control of their art/product/music over EVERY TIME to a complete IDIOT STRANGER! Fuck, if we EVER started to make any money the very first thing I would invest in is a fulltime soundperson. Some bands inspire hangers-on who will roadie and help the band for free just for the fun of hanging out -- but PopCanon has never inspired those kinds of fans. We do occasionally get treated to an amazing barbeque, but mostly our fans do things like send us cryptic email notifying us of minor differences between lyrics published on our website v. lyrics we freestyled at a recent show...)
   Sorry about that bitter aside -- anyway, Prelapse kick absolute ass, but here is just ONE remark that the dick soundguy said into his HOUSE microphone to the band, WHILE they were onstage playing!: (to the keyboardist/leader) 'I told you to turn the keyboard down twice already to even out your volume -- why don't we get a chair for you to put your amp on so YOU can hear how loud it is?' (said in the weary scolding tone of a parent addressing someone else's child he doesn't care for). And what's extra-tasteful about this remark is that the keyboardist actually IS hard-of-hearing -- classy! Again for the non-band-type people reading this Tour Diary (but, really, would a non-musician read a Tour Diary?), if a soundperson has a problem with a band's onstage volume or antics, the proper thing to do is come up to the sidestage and talk to them, or at worst, speak to them via the onstage monitor system. But one thing you DON'T do is harass the band over the house PA system. Scandalous! And the cherry atop this delicious tale is: after Prelapse's set, when Mason was in the midst of complaining to the owner about this guy's unacceptable behavior, SoundDick comes over and pats his back, saying 'You guys were great! I loved it! I hope you don't think I was too hard on you -- I just wanted it to sound good!' Oy...

   Anyway, it makes a good story, at least. M87, the band after Prelapse had a bagpiper (bagpipist?), but he only played on the first song (Jam in Approximately Dminor), so we loaded out and prepared to leave. But first we needed to undergo the band ritual even-more-humiliating-than-playing-to-nobody-with-bad-sound-to-boot: Getting Paid. The fat old Door Fuck comes up to me and says, while grinning unashamedly, 'Here, this is the split' and hands me $11US!
   Folks, that's not much money, even for a Sunday night, especially given the $6 cover charge. In fact, it's so little money as to be actually FUNNY rather than insulting. Michael wittily suggests we tip the guy $1 for doing such a good job keeping the riffraff (and everyone else) out, but in the end we realize we opt to keep the dollar.

   Which turns out to be a good idea, since less than a 1/2 hour later, when we make a Uturn on the deserted PA turnpike, we get stopped by alert troopers and are given a $93 ticket! The Tour is starting to take a nasty turn, which isn't helped when Michael & I have a short screaming fight in the van while we're waiting for the cops to decide to haul us in or not... short tempers and frayed nerves from tired, dirty people locked in a single vehicle for 9 days is to be expected, sure, but it's still startling when it happens. (Later, when I relate the story to Jason of ISG, he tells me not to worry too much about it -- on ISG's first tour a couple years ago, he almost punched Andy, which is pretty hilarious if you know what gentle, sweet people they are. Meaning: Touring brings out the worst in people, who are already at a deficit for niceness by being in a band together. So I try and forget about it, but the dark pellet lodges quietly within me...)

   Anyroad, we eventually make it to ISG's swanky Tim's Parents' Estate in Audubon PA (if this was hypertext I would have a snippet of Kraftwerk's Autobahn play here). It's like my inlaws' place in Duluth GA, except three stories, including a basement RockRoom with pool table.
   We stay up for a while with ISG, Rachel & Stef, eating an entire ham and drinking Snapple^TM & Nantucket Nectar^TM... we talk to them about our various rocking escapades and me about my cushy State Job, a job which allows me -- when I'm NOT away from home for weeks at a time working 16 hour days telling lies for The Man -- to make booking calls for this Tour and manage my voluminous email correspondence. Andy also has some incredibly specific questions about various PC songs which are charming in their intensity.
   Everyone is asleep by 4.30am and up around noon (rock band!) -- 11 people showering and trying to get to New York for our day off. It's amazing how something as simple as a good night's sleep and a shower can make something as futile and trying as touring seem kind of fun.

On to Day Four...