Day 4 – May 19th - Detroit
Woke up with the exhaustion embedded deep within my bones. Par for the course with touring, but it’s impossible to recall how full throttle it envelopes you until you physically experience it again. Late checkout, good writing. It’s Sunday and there are no vegan places open in Detroit that I’m seeing. So knowing Detroit Filling Station in Ann Arbor has a good Power Bowl, I drive 55 minutes out of the way, followed up with a really good blueberry cheesecake, none too sweet. I’m reading Brian Kramp’s This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick, an incredibly detailed account of their prehistory, and the young waitress points this out. She claims she only knows I Want You To Want Me to which I try to convince her that she must’ve heard Surrender before, to no avail. Literati next, book buyer not in, and Your Media Exchange, my friend Sam not working until tomorrow. So on to Detroit, but first a stop at CVS for some water and sunblock. I was not expecting it to hit 94 degrees today and wow is it hot. Heading to Book Beat where despite Cary not liking The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass and hesitant about Sporting Moustaches, he was cool to chat with and took a couple copies on consignment because I made the effort and his right hand man book blogger Tom Bowden gave BCA a good review. First hitting the Kroger across the way for a banana and to really stock up on water. They also have RIND dried fruits which is a treat. Then to Found Sound who hosted my reading last year. Great to chat to Ray about records and bands and he hooked me up with two of their shirts, one bearing Found Sound in the Cheap Trick font. Much needed as the shirt I was wearing was drenched in sweat. By the time I got to Book Suey I was ripe. Woo! First a stop down to UHF Records where they don’t even have the books I left last year in the system, need to investigate this. And into Paper Trail, the used shop down the road, to look for more Wodehouse, though none there. Meditate for 5 minutes in my car to ward off the exhaustion. For some reason I then think it a good idea to pop into City Ramen for their delicious vegan dish. Perhaps not ideal for this 94 degree day. When I get to Book Suey I am bloated beyond belief, think I might actually pass out, and consider lying down for a while when I see they have a stage with pillows. The shop, a cool co-op, is technically in Hamtramck, pronounced with a ghost vowel between the M & C for three syllables. It takes me a couple tries to get this. Eli and Cat are very nice, as is Grant, one of their friends who came out for the reading. Much appreciated. As the 7PM reading time arrives, the heavens break, quite torrential. I realize no one else is coming out in this so we get on with it. I tell a bunch of stories, including an extended version of Nick Cave’s Bar. Really enjoy chatting and hanging out. Talking to Grant about music, Eli about books. Eli is super supportive, even wearing an Eli Manning jersey for the whole Sporting theme of my book. They buy books and this helps a lot. Finished Van Halen Rising right when I got there, so I put on Hanif’s new one - There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension - for the drive to Kalamazoo, another two hours. And man, it's freaking great. I knew it would take a lot to break me away from just continuing the VH rabbit hole. Whatever was going to do that had to be strong and this is it. Hanif’s prose is so powerful it seems to build and build and build and just when you think it’s the peak of the crescendo at the end of the sentence, that this has to be the stopping point, it goes on for another space between the commas, hitting even higher and higher heights, doing this multiple – numerous – times. Another EconoLodge. Looking forward to hitting Chicago tomorrow. I haven’t been since 1997
Day 5 - May 20th - Enter Chicago
Can’t fall asleep until after 4, up shortly after 9. Write. Go to shower around 11:30, rust coloured water shooting out and a large ball of hair. Let it run for a long while until it’s definitely clear, no time to ask for another room. Hope for the best. To Kazoo Books, where Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass has been selling. John, who I usually deal with, isn’t in, but Gloria, the owner, is really cool. Bought 3 books, showed me around. Houses full of books, very clean too. Reminded me of Connecticut’s Book Barn in Niantic. Then on to Anna’s House for a delicious breakfast. And off to Chicago. Listening to Hanif’s book and Shellac. First stop Quimby’s. Awesome. I’ve heard so much about this place, and despite not being able to set up a reading there, Nick Cave’s Bar selling had them offer to take all my other books. I could’ve browsed there for a much longer while too. But so much to fit in. On to Tone Deaf Records. Cool to hang with Tony and check out his shop. He’s stocked BCA since it came out, and buys a copy of Sporting Moustaches for himself. Tony has a cool chemical symbol for Silver tattooed on his arm. I’m always intrigued by the Ag, saying that ‘Aug’ is a combo of the chemical symbols for gold - Au - and silver - Ag. BCA on the shelf. Then on to my Rodeway Inn in Evanston. Much nicer and with a much more comfortable bed than my previous stays. I head out to meet Sasha at Myopic Books. I always say you can tell a good bookstore if they carry J.P. Donleavy, and Myopic has the biggest Donleavy section I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t read any, get on that.
It’s great to see and catch up with Sasha. I met him in London around 2008/09 when some Swedish friends came over with Sasha for his birthday and we have many similar interests. His parents had a rad place in London we used to hang at, and one summer night a couple years later he introduced me to Serge Gainsbourg’s TV clip only Dents de lait, dents de loup, Alizée’s poptastic J’en ai marre, and Yura Yura Teikoku’s gorgeous Hoshi ni Nareta. It was a great evening of friends sharing our loves of music, books, and film. I hadn’t seen him since R. Stevie Moore played in London in 2011. He’s been living in Chicago for a while now, heading up the Polish Studies department at the university. We grab a smoothie, head to the lake, and I really love the whole vibe here. The shore, the Moon, people swimming. Stop to pee at The Drake hotel, it is a landmark after all. Back to the Rodeway Inn to shower. I reek. And still so tired. I see Andy’s written up his cool feature on me and Thursday’s show at Matter News
Day 6 – May 21st - Chicago
I allow myself to sleep in, which is a blessing though it turns out to be a day of many blockages and difficulties. I haven’t received $200 from my Workman’s Comp that should’ve been paid by now and I was counting on for the tour. The woman who’s been handling my case is on vacation. I call and speak to someone, who is very unhelpful. Like the kind of unhelpful and uncaring who really shouldn’t be dealing with people who are going through medical and financial hardships. Looks like the money won’t be there until I get back. Okay, I really need to sell some more books tonight to get through this tour. I also wanna hit the local shops to see if they’ll take copies. Tim from Squeezebox Books & Records has been really supportive since BCA so I head there and it’s great to see SM on display, though Tim’s away.
As if resonating with the greater obstructive whole I’ve been feeling, their street was all construction too , to the point where at first I thought it was closed. And Chicago traffic is so bad - like rivaling NYC bad - this would be the only store I could get to today and make it on time to the reading. So I head to Logan Square early. En route I really need to pee and spy a park with a restroom. Turns out to be locked. A passerby tells me they keep them closed but points out a porta-potty. I go in, lid is down. I’m not touching that. So I return to the car and grab a handful of tissues and stuff my bottle of hand sanitizer in my back pocket. Lift up the lid again with with the tissues and it is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. Seems to sum up the day and difficulties of this trip. No vegan food in the area near The Whistler. Feeling the need for something solid in my stomach, but have to settle for a smoothie. But The Whistler is a cool bar, very nice inside. And I’m billed on their menu although Mal Smart is the one who set it all up
Mal interviewed me for her Textual Healing podcast last year for Buttery Cake Ass and we had a blast chatting. The two places I didn’t get to on the BCA tour that I really wanted to hit were Chicago and LA. I’m determined to rectify that this year. So when SM was coming out, I messaged Mal and she set up this rad evening of readers, and a singer, at The Whistler. I very much enjoyed everyone’s performances and the crowd seemed to take to mine as well. Only thing was no one bought any books. That and most of the people I was hoping to see/meet couldn’t make it. Sasha came though, and my friend Vicky, who I hadn’t seen in 30 years, drove down 2 hours from Wisconsin. Great to see her again. I credit her with getting me into Martin Newell and The Cleaners From Venus, who I wrote a lot about and introduced to a lot of new listeners via my early Quietus pieces. Sometime in the summer of 2010 I had my usual insomnia and was scrolling through the blogs one 3 AM and saw an album called Living With Victoria Grey. I thought the Cleaners From Venus was an interesting band name and ‘hey! I went to high school with a Vicky Grey’ so I gave it a chance and the rest is history.
(photo by Eric Ziegenhagen)
We all go to the Chicago Diner down the street afterwards, which is all vegan, I just hadn’t realized earlier, and OMG I was so thankful to be eating. Even more so when Vicky buys my dinner. She and Sasha buy books too which is great. Vicky has to head back to Wisconsin so Sasha and I head down the block to a bar where he used to DJ. And this is where it all starts to get a little weird. For starters, the bar is called Cafe Mustache.
So Sasha and I are sitting at the bar, talking Eastern European literature, and I look down the end and notice what the only other patron in the place is wearing.
“Is that a Cleaners From Venus t-shirt?”
“It is.”
Now I’m guessing you might not have heard of the Cleaners until I mentioned them a couple paragraphs ago. And if you have heard of them, then you know how rare it would be to see a t-shirt out in the wild. This chap, Scott, and I get to talking, and he’s quoting my interviews back to me. This is great but very strange, especially after just seeing Vicky for the first time in 30 years and her being responsible for all this. Scott and I move on to bands we’re looking forward to seeing this year and The Damned come up. I tell him about the time I saw them play at the Kentish Town Forum in 2014 where for Captain’s Birthday Bash tickets were 1978 prices, less than £2. I mention that Captain Sensible and I share the same birthday. Scott says “wait a minute, Captain and I share the same birthday!” All too weird. It’s close to midnight and I’m beyond exhausted so I have to push off but I give Sasha and Scott copies of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass before I leave, especially since I mention The Cleaners in it.
I remember Robert Anton Wilson saying that when you find yourself noticing a lot of so-called ‘co-incidences’ that you’re going through a period of brain change, and quite a few people who I love have told me that they are a sign you’re on the right track. And usually I love to take heart by these things. But I’m feeling so down about my money situation and the lack of attendance on the tour that I just can’t bring myself to be buoyed up by this. Instead, despite the exhaustion, I’m kept awake with worry watching the clock turn 3AM, 4AM, 5AM…. Until I wake up at 8 and…