Ho-Ho-Ho and a little TWR

(Originally posted on MySpace on Sunday, December 23, 2007)

It's the end of the year and I'm getting lazy. I know I promised you a full blog. I was planning on writing about either my Graves Brothers Deluxe tour of Spain or visit my high school years even further back. But I've decided to postpone both of those until early next year. I'm sorry, but I just don't have the enthusiasm to write a long blog at the moment.

Christmas is Tuesday. On Christmas Eve, Monday, Skip and I are going to dinner at the Pinot Bistro and then taking in a showing of "Sweeny Todd" at the Arclight Dome, my favorite theatre in Los Angeles. Then on Christmas Day, I'm cooking my goose, literally. I've never cooked a goose before, but I'm eager to try my hand at it. I consider myself to be a really good chef. When I put my mind to it, I can cook anything and cook it well. When I cook, I do everything homemade. Nothing is frozen and nothing comes out of a can. So here's my menu for Christmas Day:

Roasted Goose with Chestnut-Sweet Potato Stuffing and Gingered Plum Sauce

Dandelion Green Salad

Asparagus with Egg and Anchovy

Golden Apple Rhubarb Crunch

Honey Vanilla Ice Cream

Real Eggnog

I'm looking forward to it and hope it tops the best meal I ever made, which was a Filet Minion stuffed with Foie Gras in a Red Wine Wild Mushroom Sauce. Yum!

So, as you can see, I have my mind on other matters than writing. I'll probably feel the same way next week. I'll have a short note about New Years and a change of top friends, as well as my reviews of movies and such for the month of December. Then the weekend after, I'll be back on track with a slightly changed blog format which I'll explain later. But that first week I'll be talking about my favorite music CDs of the year, and that will be followed by the promised Graves Brothers Deluxe and High School tales, as well as more from my tours with Thin White Rope, Three O'clock, Redd Kross and The Young Fresh Fellows. And I'm sure there will be much more to entertain you with as various things unfold and happen that affect my life.

So, I hope you all have a great Holiday Season, however you feel about it. And before I go, I'd like to offer a little Christmas present in the form of a short tale about Thin White Rope. This is the tale of how I first met the band, while I was road managing the Three O'clock.

Towards the end of my stint working for Three O'clock, we played a show at a college in San Diego. The opening band was to be Thin White Rope and I was really excited about it. Lisa of Frontier had already dragged me to see the band do an instore at Texas Hotel Records in Santa Monica and given me their first album, which I was ecstatic about. I still hadn't officially met the band though and Lisa had promised to do so the next time they played in LA. But here was a chance to meet them earlier than that and let them know how much I liked what they were doing.

I don't remember much about the Three O'clock show. I do remember that it was packed in the hall we were playing and that the school had treated us well, wining and dining us as school tend to do, at least back then. The band's manager, my boss, was there as well. This was John Silva, who later went on to fame and fortune as the manager of Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Beck and a little band named Nirvana. All I remember of that show was Thin White Rope. I was so excited to see them, although I was official working and really shouldn't have been watching, and I remember that they played an amazing set that night.

Unfortunately, they also wouldn't stop playing that amazing set and a good ten minutes after the time they were supposed to end their set; they were still at it bending out amazing feedback notes. One of the aspects of my job as tour manager for a band is to protect their time on stage by making sure any support bands don't play overtime. Many times during my days with Thin White Rope, I had to remind a band that they needed to stop now and vacate the stage before I got mad. I was loving TWR at this show and didn't want to make them stop.

But I had the big problem of my boss, Silva, yelling at me to get them off the stage. I was reluctant, but I liked my job and didn't want to lose it by coddling a band that couldn't tell time, even if it was one of my favorite bands. And Silva was making it clear that if I didn't act soon, I would be losing my job. So, I dragged myself onstage and warned one of the members of the band, probably Guy or Roger, that they needed to stop playing and stop playing NOW or I would be forced to pull the plug. After a few snide comments, they did so and I hurried them offstage with their equipment so we could get the headliners on stage in time to do their full set.

I tried to apologize to TWR in the backstage area afterwards, but I don't think they were buying it. I was the big, professional roadie picking on the little independent band and nothing I could do at the time could convince them otherwise.

And that was my first face-to-face introduction to the guy's in the band. Close to a year later, the Three O'clock had imploded. I had also done one tour with Redd Kross and swore never to tour with them again. (That story will be told next year.) I wasn't sure what I was going to do next when Lisa called me and ask me if I wanted to tour with TWR. I jumped at the chance and the rest is history.

Somewhere along the line, I probably told them that I was the mean guy who pulled them off stage in San Diego, but I don't remember if I did or not. But I sure wish that my first real interaction with those guys could have been a more pleasant affair.

Well, it looks like I actually did feel like writing just a bit. As always, thanks for reading and I really wish you would subscribe if you haven't already. Have a great Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Eid Al-Adha or whatever Holiday you celebrate. I'll talk to you next week.