3:06
a.m. September 16, 2017
We
came for Pepper, Reed, Woody, and Mike. Sure, there were other bands on the
bill, but we just came to see COC. No, I’m not talking Clash of Clans, which is
just so wrong for popping up when someone types in COC at Google – I’m talking
the real namesake of COC, which has been and will always be: Corrosion of
Conformity.
That’s
the real reason why we went to the show. My best friend and her husband had told
me about the show, asking if I was going to go, but at the time, I didn’t know
I was going to be in town longer than expected. I was supposed to fly out
yesterday to go back down to Florida to go back to work after the hurricane,
but when there’s no power and work’s not opening til Monday, change the flight
to Sunday and have the opportunity to go to see one of your favorites: COC,
a.k.a. Corrosion of Conformity.
The
whole adventure really started a week ago, when heading up through North
Carolina – and COC’s got Carolina boys. However, when I think of COC, I usually
associate it with Pepper, who I know not only from touring on Ozzfest with him
in 2002 when he was playing for Down, and I was doing my motorcycle modeling
gig, but also from living in New Orleans after tour. Pepper owned a bar within
walking distance of my first apartment in New Orleans, and we would randomly
bump I to each other from time to time in New Orleans, so even though COC is
associated with the Carolina boys, my brain still thinks NOLA, as that’s where
I interfaced with Pepper the most, randomly.
Pepper
is like a Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, and I have often said this –
so often that he is mentioned in some of my earliest books as such, as they
were written in New Orleans. He appears with this big smile when you least
expect it, and he is always very nice, offering up a big hug, asking how things
are and genuinely caring to know. Next thing you know, he’s gone, and you begin
to think you hallucinated him.
People
assure you he was just there but nobody knows where, as he is just gone into
thin air seemingly. Just when you’re sure you’ve gone mad, he’s back with a big
smile and a head nod in your direction. Then he’s just gone, evaporated like a
mist into air.
It’s
because of Pepper that I got to know the Carolina connection of COC. From
bringing a vegetarian selection to Mike, to having Woody school me on why
appreciating bands outside on metal makes for a well-rounded musician-
literally going as far as to sitting me down to listen to Dwight Yokum, just so
I could hear a different side to country music. First time I met Reed, he had a
big smile and chatted as if he had known me for a thousand years, and that’s
part of the reason why I gave him my latest book.
Well,
that, combined with the fact that we just happened upon him on the sidewalk,
and I didn’t want the book to get lost in the mix of all the people. Put this
on the tour bus. Pass it around for whoever feels like reading it: “In the
Bathroom.”
So,
back to the Carolinas, specifically North Carolina, as that was the first place
we could actually stop after evacuating from the hurricane. It took 3 hours to
go 13 miles at 3 a.m., and Pepper knows what it’s like to have to evacuate – so
many people in the New Orleans music scene were effected by Hurricane Katrina,
from houses under water with dead bodies floating in the yard after canoeing
over a 10-foot glass shard and barbed wire fence, to being trapped in jail and
seeing inmates unable to hold on drown while rats swim by in water you can’t
drink, dying of thirst and forgotten about. We were not escaping Katrina this
time though; it was Irma, and I didn’t want to take chances with anything
ranking as a Category 5 after seeing what happened with Katrina.
We
left Southwest Florida around 10:30 p.m., hoping that most people had gone to
bed. Getting to Tampa was not as bad as we had heard, but after Tampa, it was
wall to wall, especially around where the turnpike cuts into I-75. There were
miles of cars lined up at any gas station with gas, bathrooms at gas stations
were broke or nasty if you could wait around for a couple hours to get in, and
don’t even think of stopping at the rest areas, because cars are triple and
quadruple parked along the highway with people hiking to get near a bathroom,
just to stretch their legs, and people so tired they just simply could not
drive any further without falling asleep at the wheel.
Get
off the main roads. Avoid Atlanta. That traffic’s bad without a hurricane.
That
means, head east, diagonally north, up to the Smokey Mountains. Cross into
Cherokee County in North Carolina. Take the mountains into Tennessee.
They're
having a classic car show there. Started
noticing classic cars when driving into NC, coming over the Smokey Mountains,
confirmed when crossed into Gatlinburg, and it continued to Sevierville: side
walks lined w chairs of people sitting in front of classic cars, watching other
cherry classics tooling down the main drag, cruising and meeting all sorts of
other people from FL, as well as people from other beach areas around the
coast, from the Georgia islands to the Carolinas- Myrtle Beach, Amelia Island,
all the waterfront communities from the Panhandle of Florida, to every southern
waterfront community, including Naples, Daytona Beach, and people living in
areas that had been struck by major storms before that knew enough to get out
of there as early as possible.
Though I had wanted to check out Dolly Parton’s new dinner
show, after being trapped in a car that long, the last thing you want is to sit
for even longer. Opt for Harpoon Harry’s instead, a place my students had told
me about the last time I went to Pigeon Forge, as the owners go between their
restaurants there and in Southwest Florida. Not only is the hand carved local
wood shaped into a slew of sea creatures, a mermaid, and totem pole-like
archways of gnarly art created painstakingly with love, but the food is
amazing, from sushi to steaks and everything in between, including perfectly
prepared squid salad, ahi tuna, gator bites, oysters, oh, and amazing smoked
trout dip with pita chips: yum!
We made our way over towards Margaritaville on the Island to
do some shopping, eyeing up the classic cars cruising past the massive Ferris
wheel that is changing colors in synch with lighted waterspouts. There’s all
kinds of stuff to do there, like climb up to face your fear of heights while
climbing higher and higher obstacles that make people look like M&M’s on
the ground, just specks of colors that blur from being so high up in the sky. I
had done that touristy stuff the last time I stayed at Margaritaville, so I
knew what trinkets I wanted at my favorite shops, like Earth Bound Trading
Company; that way, I could run to the shops and head back to La Quinta, one of
the only hotel chains that does not charge a pet fee, as I was evacuating with
my cats (it makes me mad when people leave pets behind in hurricanes).
In the morning, we get lost at Knife World: a place I
thought I could just duck into but wound up being too large to take in all at
once, with levels of all kinds of weapons and memorial from wars, hunting
stuff, jewelry, gemstones, cookware, all kinds of stuff you wouldn’t even
expect. I truly imagined that I could just waltz in to find a pocketknife to
cut some rope, and the next thing I know, I’m looking at stun guns, learning
that a hook on a knife is more likely for gutting a deer than cutting rope, and
getting totally distracted by the swords from my years spent learning about
Japanese swordsmanship. It’s the history stuff and war memorabilia, like
letters sent during wartimes, that make you stop to wonder what it had to have
been like with no Facetime, no Skype, no internet, no cell phones, walkie
talkies at best – if that – letters written out of fear, love, boredom, scared,
who knows, and that’s the intrigue that lingers.
September 22, 2017
Unfortunately, there was not much time to linger in the morning,
as it was said that Cincinnati had bad construction traffic, so we opted for
the beltloop around to the west, as the east was supposed to be tore up pretty
bad from accidents, traffic jams and construction, too; into Indiana we drove
peacefully. Then, cross right back into
Ohio. Head on up to Michigan, pointing
out casinos on the way home.
As much as I would love to say that evacuating was a fun
vacation, it was more like a time to earn your keep around the house: paint the back porch, the front porch, the
garage doors, the shed trim, the other house’s front and back porch – then run
out of time and paint. Have to pick up
again next time. I’m flying out
tomorrow, so ample opportunity then when I go up to get my cats and drive back
here.
That’s the joys of real estate that people don’t always talk
about, the upkeep. Maintenance helps the
value, so if you’re trying to buy and sell, a fresh coat of paint can hide a
number of sins. In Michigan, being that
it’s the fall already, it’s more like if you want anything painted, do it
before the snow flies.
I was literally painting a porch the afternoon of the COC
show with Danzig. My friend works at the
post office, and as I was going to ride up with her and her husband, I had to
wait for her to get done working anyway.
Keep busy, git-r-done, and muscle out as much paint up until the very
last minute before ya go.
Squeeze into the Camaro, zoom up to Detroit, get lost with
closed roads and detours, but find your way. We arrive late. Acid Witch already
played, and I really had wanted to see them, but it was just too late.
There was a band on stage when we walked in, so I headed up
to the front of the venue, photo pass in hand.
They had insisted that there were no photos that night, and I explained
that I was a photographer. They didn’t
believe me, even with a photo pass, so I had to get another guy from the front
to explain that I indeed was a photographer on assignment, even though they
were told there was no photos, I was there to shoot Corrosion of Conformity,
and by the time we had figured everything out, COC wound up being the only band
I would be able to photograph – even though I was supposed to photograph the
openers – but bureaucratic red tape halted the coverage of a show once again.
Then, of course, you have Glenn Danzig, who is really to
blame for the tight photo regulations.
Afterall, he has had this thing with cameras as if he is a vampire and
doesn’t want people to know that he does not show up in mirrors or
photographs. Seriously, the guy just
doesn’t like cameras taking his picture.
Even when I’ve had a photo pass to photograph him in the
past, he has always been like pictures only during said time or else. I’ve seen him get violent with people over
cameras, as well as his security. I’ve
seen enough people get tackled and roughed up to know better, but even with
warning, habit strikes.
For me, it was a tour with one of the original Misfits. He didn’t make his appearance until the
middle of the set, and photographers were supposed to only take pictures during
the first couple songs. Still, when the
dude came out, 25-year reunion deal, I had to at least try to take a picture of
them together.
Almost as soon as my arm twitched to even think about
grabbing my camera, venue security was there, taking the expensive rechargeable
battery out of my camera and putting it into his pocket, never to be seen
again. Did I get kicked out? I don’t remember that it went that far, as I
seen head of tour security I knew from working on Ozzfest, and he gave me a
t-shirt as a way to kind of calm my ruffled feathers.
Stupid battery cost more than the t-shirt. I was not amused. I had to special order another and wait.
That was years ago, literally more than a decade ago. Let’s just say I knew from then not to mess
around when it comes to Danzig. However,
even as I had been warned, I warned my friend’s husband not to take out his
cell phone, but even with the warning, sometimes, it’s just second nature to do
it.
Mind you, this is the same guy that I had taken backstage
when Pepper and the guys from COC were playing with Motorhead and Brand New Sin
at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland. We
all wound up over at Peabody’s, chilling with the guys from E’Nuff Z’Nuff,
White Lion, and other random 80’s-90’s bands.
Since that was the last time he and I had seen COC together, we had to
compare the two shows.
Thing is, I learned early on that Pepper is an amazing
musician. He convinced me of that when
we were on tour, listening to him give musical advice to aspiring musicians,
but especially when Down was recording the acoustic version of Stone the Crow
in the same hotel in Detroit where I was supposed to interview the Crocodile
Hunter, but he freaked out and left the tour to be with his family, only to wind
up dying not so distantly in the future by being stung by a stingray. While some musicians might get nervous,
Pepper is playing without looking, holding a conversation, and watching
television all at once.
In the jam scene, people sometimes call it noodling a
guitar, just seeing where a riff goes when you’re playing around with it,
letting it take on a life all of its own.
While most might not think of COC as a jam band, they do have that
southern groove inside of them, and if you don’t believe me, think back to the
tour when Stanton Moore from Galactic was filling in for Reed on the drums, and
while I like Galactic, especially with that new female singer they have been
working with, no offense Stanton, but Reed fits.
Reed was like the missing link when Stanton was
playing. Don’t get me wrong; he did a
good job. He just brought a slightly
different sound, and some people just don’t do too well with change sometimes.
When Reed came back, it was just like that little missing
piece was found again, made it whole again.
Sure, some might not think that Pepper and Stanton teaming up would be
likely, but they have that whole NOLA connection, where it doesn’t matter what
genre you play if you know how to play it well.
When Woody sat me down to listen to some Dwight Yokum, a friend of mine,
a bass player, was also made to sit down and watch Mike Gordon’s video, as a
way to expand his horizon beyond just metal.
Funny thing is, if you go to a hippie concert – you know,
the places where they spout the most about peace, love, and tolerance for
others – if you go there and start spouting off about Slayer and Danzig, you’ll
hear that love message turn off real quick.
You’ll get the bad vibes rant from the hippies. Blah blah, negativity, let me tell you how to
love, not hate, maybe something about sinner going to hell…
Go to a metal show, talk about the Grateful Dead, and a lot
of metalheads would probably just be like, “hey, they’re cool; I like them,
too.” Rather ironic: there’s more
tolerance with metalheads than hippies.
There’s not so much tolerance for photographers at a Danzig
concert. Just as I had to learn my
lesson the hard way, so did my friend’s husband. We had been dancing around to Corrosion of
Conformity, not paying attention, but when I looked behind us, her husband was
gone, and she had noticed him leave.
“That’s odd. Usually,
he’ll at least nudge me to let me know he is leaving. Maybe I didn’t notice,” she tried to reason,
thinking he must have just ran off to the restroom, which was in the basement
there.
We continued to dance and sing along from our little pocket
to the left side of the riser, claiming our territory by flinging our bodies to
the point where we keep accidentally bumping into people. They learn to back up and give you room. It’ll be all right, as they know to watch out
for your flailing arms.
Still, no Billy, and my brother has a joke that he would
tell about poor Billy being like a stoneface, not moving, not laughing, not
blinking, just blending into the background, but he next thing you know, Billy
would come alive. The joke started when
my brother saw Billy play for the first time on stage, as he had never seen our
friend’s husband move the way he did when he was on stage with a guitar in
hand. Being a writer, the joke extended
to other areas, and with any good story, things get a bit exaggerated.
So, turn your back, because Billy ripped a big one, and
you’re trying not to inhale, so you turn your back, and try to gasp your
breath, but as soon as you’re not paying attention, Billy come alive! He’s off, dancing on top of the bar,
stripping off his clothes to a sparkly white g-string diaper, with his bald
head, trying to act like Cupid with a bow and arrow, sniping people, putting
the bartender’s head to his crotch and shouting, “you will submit!” Security guards have to leave the stage just
to deal with this overgrown baby starting a revolution in the blinged out
revealing diaper, which makes Glenn Danzig mad, so he wants to jump off stage,
and thus starts the venue-wide mosh pit old school bar fight…
No, that’s not what happened. He just got kicked out. My friend’s butt started ringing.
She gets out her phone.
“Oh, dude, Billy got kicked out!”
If they go, I go; we rode together.
Try to plead with venue security. They say it’s Glenn’s policy. I point out it was when COC was on stage, and
that I actually did, indeed, have a photo pass for COC, but it doesn’t matter,
because we didn’t figure out the Billy was gone until COC was done playing, so
COC was done at that point; my job’s done.
Screw it; peace out.
Explain to Danzig why they don’t get any coverage. It was supposed to be the original members,
and I told my friends, if it had been Tommy playing, I would have stayed, but…
Did Tommy play? I
don’t know. I wasn’t there.
We walked over to the MGM Casino, where we parked, as it’s
free there, as opposed to paying a lot downtown by the Filmore. We talked about wanting to check out the room
where Chris Cornell died, do our own little ghost hunting tour, but they don’t
let you wander the hotel unless you have a room key. We tried to say my grandma was upstairs, but
they said tell grandma to come down and get you then.
Screw it. Head over
to the train station instead. Take
pictures with the lights shining in the windows, and try to guess what the heck
they are trying to spell out on the abandoned building that was just crumbling
to ruins only a few years ago, another abandominium where people could hole up
for whatever, from throwing toilets out of the top floor windows, to running
into scary guys in the dark.
Get up, do more painting, fly down to Florida, try to assess
the damage after the hurricane. Flying
into Fort Myers, rent a Mustang and drive around for a few. Head towards the beach, but the odd thing is
that there’s more water in the fields and flooding over roads out by the
airport than there is closer to the Gulf of Mexico; Fort Myers Beach buildings
looked more tore up from Charley than from Irma.
Still, Bonita Beach Road is flooded over by the dog track,
and the flea market by there is swimming.
There’s literally kayaks tied up to telephone poles in some places. Cars drive through three feet of water and
splash up 12 feet, knowing they must not stop after they’ve committed to drive
through the water.
There’s downed powerlines, signs are skeletons or flattened
to the ground, bent over at the base.
Trees are tipped over, roots popping out of the ground, or they have a
blanket of grass covering the roots like a modest woman pulling a skirt over her
exposed legs as she is sprawled out upon the ground. For once though, there’s no wait trying to
get to the north bridge, no line up to go over the bridge: ghost island.
The damage gets a little less the more north you go, but the
radio’s screaming don’t drink the water, don’t wash your clothes, don’t run the
dishwasher, boil water advisory, spend the money buying water. You see the transition of people from martial
law to keep looters away when the power’s out to those returning to
civilization as the power turns back on in their homes. Get home, and there’s no power.
Power must have just gone out though, because the Ben and
Jerry’s ice cream bars in the freezer are still about two-thirds frozen, good
enough to try. Eat it, don’t die, run to
the store a few blocks away, buy some ice, and put it into a roaster pan,
putting the items to keep cold inside of the ice pile. Hear the hum of generators down your block,
and see the lights from Sarasota country another block away.
Friends call the cell.
Come chow. Come hang in the A/C,
and you are eager to say hello.
Go home to a dark house.
Still no power and no A/C. Water
is boiling coming out of the faucet.
Somebody must make something that can cool the water off,
but it won’t help with no power. Can’t
order it online or do anything involving the internet. No movies, no music, unless you drive the
car.
You shouldn’t waste the gas, but you do, because it’s too
hot to sit and sweat in the house. Drive
to Englewood just to get gas to fill up the car, then take the car back in the
morning, try to start back to normal life, go to work, and try not to stress
about not having power at home when you had it at work. Give finals to the students, try to soothe
their ruffled feathers, hearing their horror stories of how their books got
flooded away, chewed up by animals, how their homework was done and lost in the
flood…
See the blink blink of blank eyes with doe looks. Of course, all their homework was done, and
they were not just waiting until the last minute during the week of finals to
remember they had final projects due.
Everyone was traumatized, so how could you expect them to think of
homework during a hurricane?
Facebook alert: Tommy
Victor’s Birthday, better say hi. He
writes back saying that he saw Pepper had the latest copy of your book, and
where’s his? You offer to send it on
over, and then you really start wondering if you had missed him playing with
Danzig; it was supposed to be all original members, but what else would he be
doing hanging out with Pepper, Reed, and the COC guys within a day of you?
To this day, Tommy Victor is the only rock star to read your
I-Ching reading. He did that back in
2002, literally days before you got the offer to tour on Ozzfest, and before
Ozzfest was ever a dream in your mind, Tommy had asked what you wanted to do,
and you responded by telling him you wanted to go on tour, just to see what it
was like, because you’ve heard so many musicians tell you about it in
interviews. He kind of looked at you
like you were crazy, but he got it; he understood, and you were given a chance.
Did Tommy do it? Was
it Rob Zombie? It was really a group
effort of sorts, maybe Drowning Pool?
Scheduled to cover the Detroit show for Drowning Pool, Rob
Zombie pulled you up on stage, and after getting off stage, you were offered a
job on tour as a Harley Girl, which you thought was a joke, but it was a legit
job, just not doing exactly what you thought you would be doing. It wasn’t selling Harley t-shirts or
keychains, not even motorcycles; it was doing modeling on a motorcycle. Now, you hadn’t thought of yourself as model
beautiful, and you had a friend a drop you off at the show before knowing fully
what you were going to be doing, so it was basically no turning back, try this
crazy tour for summer.
Get done with tour, and there’s Tommy. How was it?
Crazy.
Tommy kept your number for more than a decade, programmed
into his phone. Call him up earlier this
year for an interview, and your name pops up.
He answers by saying your first name before you say hi.
More than 15 years later, and all you can do is shake your
head and smile, maybe blush a little.
How often do two people on the road so much keep the same numbers for so
long? Less likely nowadays.
Truth be told, I had his number saved on my phone for years,
but then I had a phone that went for a swim in a toilet after having it in a
silk-lined pants’ pocket. That was the
end of that, so I had just assumed that he must have suffered some sort of
tragedy over the years. More people than
not lose or break phones, and before the cloud, that meant all their contacts
and pictures died with that phone.
More people forget my name than remember it, but Tommy
Victor was the one to tell me back in the day, “you’ve paid your dues. People know who you are, so you don’t have to
do dumb shit.” That was in reference to
me flaunting my body back when I had one when I was younger, saying I didn’t
have to flirt with people like Glenn Danzig, because enough other people knew
who I was, even when I was sitting on the bus with Glenn Danizg; that’s when I
just turned to the girl from Poland next to me, said, “jak sie masz,” and
practiced my very few Polish phrases on her, enough to have her feeling
welcome.
Is that a politically correct way of saying I didn’t need to
show artwork to Glenn? Not just any
artwork, but my personal artwork, which was enough to make Phil Anselmo’s jaw
drop, and for him to stare. He tried to
roll his eyes, wanted to not be impressed, but truth be told, I was a tad
unique back in the day.
You couldn’t ever tell by looking at me, especially now,
being a professor and all, but there’s days when my past catches up to me, like
when students beg to hear the story of how I wound up in a Lil Wayne
video. Of all the stories I have, that’s
the one they want to hear the most, and the students look up the video, watch
it, point me out, giggle, not wanting to believe that it’s me, pausing it,
comparing facial features, as I didn’t have my glasses on when I was in that
video, and that was back many moons ago.
That, of course, ties back into the NOLA scene, as Down’s Ozzfest tech
Chester was also in that video.
We totally wound up in it for different reasons. He must’ve known some people. I just happened to have a guy get me drunk
and tell me that I’m going to work with him but won’t tell me where he works.
Dude wound up being the camera guy, who happened to have
gone to school with Pepper. We wound up
running into him at one of the New Orleans bars, and he asks me what I’m doing
hanging out with a guy he went to school with.
Ah, Pepper, he’s a character - my Cheshire Cat character to be precise.
When Tommy said Pepper had one of my books, I had to explain
that Pepper has a lot of my books actually.
I don’t know if he physically kept every single one of them, but he had
quite a many of my books given to him at various points, as I just kept running
into him different places and would give one.
It wasn’t like Pepper and I ever hooked up intimately, as I first met
him, leaning in with a group of people, looking at pictures I had taken of Down
while on stage, and as just another member in the crowd, I hear a voice ask if
I had any pictures of that Pepper cat, as somebody said he’s real good…
I flip through the pictures, knowing that I have some, and
when I find it, I finally look up, only to see Pepper’s face inches from my own
and my camera, a big smile on his face.
There were just so many people trying to look at the pictures, I hadn’t
noticed him walking up. He had changed
clothes, so it wasn’t like he was wearing the exact same thing, or that I
would’ve known after taking pics all day.
I knew where to find him on my camera though, and when I
did, I felt like such a dork, looking up, seeing him smiling, amused, just trying
to blend in with the rest of the crowd, knowing he had been spotted. The stupid thing is that I don’t know exactly
how long he had been there, right next to me, while I had been zoned into the
photos on my camera, not paying attention, just hearing requests randomly. There’d be comments on photos by random
people, because digital photography was not as common as it was now, and for
people to see pictures instantly when digital first became a thing was like leading
a moth to the flame, as people couldn’t really fathom the instant gratification
of seeing a picture same day when they were used to having to wait like a week
to get film developed, then remember to get it.
When digital first came out, my newspaper editors tried to
say it was just a fad. Earlier this
year, (was it my editor or publisher?) an older dude tried saying that the
internet was just a fad, not really grasping the idea that the internet can be
used to make money when the newspaper subscriptions were down. In theory, the pictures from 35mm is better,
because it is not pixelated, so the darks are darker, not dotty when blown up;
thus, when I first was learning journalism, I was trained shooting a 35mm
camera, but my dad got me a digital camera, and I had to convince editors to
let me try using it for the paper.
Am I sounding old yet?
I feel old explaining this stuff to my students who don’t know what life
before cell phones were like. We didn’t
always have GPS and Facetime, and I don’t know what we did then.
The Stone Ages were a dark time. Amazon was just a jungle, like rainforest
area people wanted to save. Couldn’t
just get two-day shipping on things randomly like that unless you paid dearly
for the fees…
2:22 a.m. September 22, 2017
7:47 p.m. September 22, 2017
Everyone’s getting old.
Take a nap. If you’re old enough
to live, you only grow old.
Tommy Victor and Pepper Keenan I met within weeks of each
other – though I think I technically saw Pepper and COC in concert before I saw
Prong or Danzig with Tommy. Regardless
of which one I saw first, all of us are growing old. With musicians like Chris Cornell and Chester
Bennington dying - not to mention Lemmy from Motorhead, Prince, and all the tons
of others - people are dying each day, regardless of being a musician or not;
that’s the joke about life, each day is one step closer to death.
The ones that are still on the right side of the grass, the
pool of people from your era gets smaller each day as people continue to
die. Grandpa always said growing old is
not for sissies, and for all those hardcore freaks covered in ink and crazy
piercings: no tattoo or piercing is as bad as some surgeries that people get,
be it open heart surgery, or even an episiotomy after having a baby – that’s
real hardcore.
I used to think my artwork was hardcore, had some of the craziest
stuff around back in the day. Then, when
I got older, I had surgeries, and I just don’t feel that sort of pain compares
any of the worst sort of body art modification pain, because doctors go deeper,
they fish around and leave massive scars behind. Growing old is a painful process, and as
others grow old and experience their own kind of pains and joys right beside
you, it’s that coming together of understanding that we may differ, but as a
community, standing side by side each other, we look around and notice fewer
and fewer of our troops standing.
Watching people live, you notice changes over the years,
such as when COC played with Motorhead, they amped up their style a bit, and
when they played with Danzig, they opened with a creepy, melodic groove, similar
to that which Danzig has been known to do, slowing and dropping the notes down
a bit. Seeing Pepper play a ukulele,
watching Stanton play drums instead of Reed, all these little changes over the
years, to their set, like even in Detroit, they did a jam in the midst of their
last song “Clean My Wounds,” and it ventured into the realm of Michigan native
Ted Nugent, having a “Stranglehold” vibe.
These little changes do not go unnoticed - and neither does Pepper
venturing out in public, telling each person that he talks to that he’s from a
different 80’s band, and pointing out his “roadie” Rex, when he was touring
with Down – for these little differences are what’s remembered from show to
show.
Tommy Victor, whether he’s fronting his band Prong, or
filling in to play with bands like Danzig or Ministry, he’s another one that
can adapt his playing style accordingly, changing it up from set to set on each
tour. His capabilities are
underappreciated, as he can switch things up in a moment’s notice. He’s one of those guys that are a lot deeper
than people realize at first, and he has some crazy stories, too.
The first time I met Tommy, he was playing with Monte in
Prong, and I didn’t believe that Monte had been playing with Madonna, because
it seemed like such an odd pairing at first thought. The original Prong guys had been opening up
for Danzig, and as I followed Tommy around backstage for our interview, we
wound up chatting on all kinds of random topics that most people don’t know
about. From conspiracy theories to
darker topics, Tommy’s a guy you can talk deep theories with on the fly.
I think it was Howie who had been playing for Danzig at the
time. Each time I’ve seen Danzig, he’s
had different people with him, and while I will give him credit for taking people
out, pulling them out of whatever darkness that they had been hiding in, I
still say his photo policy is lame. Get
over it already.
You’d think after years of being on stage that he would be
used to cameras. You only live
once. Enjoy photos of your youth while
you can, or maybe that’s why he doesn’t want the cameras on him?
Regardless, not my liberty to say. I can imagine it’s annoying getting flashes
in the face all night; I get that. I’m
not unreasonable, but I am a photographer who has been burned by the policy a
few times.
You’d think I’d catch on by now, eh? The bottom line is that regardless of how the
night turned out, it still beat hunkering down in a hurricane. It was nice to escape to Michigan and get out
of the house to enjoy a concert; had I been in Florida, I was supposed to have
covered the Make America Rock Again festival, which had been cancelled in
southwest Florida last year, and was cancelled this year, too.
Maybe next year they’ll not schedule it in hurricane
season. At least my house wasn’t blown
12 feet off its foundation like my friend in the Keys, and at least my car wasn’t
washed away like hers was. While there’s
a lot of damage from the storm to clean up still, at least music is one of
those things that can take our minds off our problems for tiny bits at a time,
take us to a momentary escape from ourselves.
Hurricanes supercharge things. Just like when I saw Ministry and My Life
with the Thrill Kill Cult in New Orleans on the night they announced mandatory
evacuations for Hurricane Ivan, it was one of the best shows ever, as it was
supercharged by the thought of this could be the last concert we live through
if the hurricane is a direct hit, so live it up while you can. The vibe is unlike anything that is normally
experienced at an average show; there’s energy, then there’s the fear of the
last night on earth charge.
During natural disasters, you basically have to give up and
accept that there’s nothing you can do.
If it’s nature’s will to tear through your home and throw everything you
have up into the air, you’re not going to stop a tornado, hurricane, or
earthquake. If you had the equipment,
you might be able to stop a fire, but sometimes life throws curveballs, and all
we can try to do is dodge out of the way of being hit hard.
Even if we are unfortunate enough to get hit, music is one
of those things that can help take our mind off the pain as we try to regroup
our lives. Sometimes, you just have to
go out with friends and take your mind off of worrying about the worst-case
scenario. Enjoy the music and life while
you have it.
9:04 p.m. September 22, 2017
