The Mmmm Tissss of Youth, a Migraine For Me

I'm 32 years old, give or take. According to my girlfriend I have one gray hair, but I haven't seen it and therefor, like Santa Claus or Satan, I'm skeptical of its existence. Though if Satan does exist, I'm sure he is an electronica DJ, but I'll return to that sentiment in a little (I just lost all the Heavy Guilt's techno fans in one fell swoop, don't worry, we'll win you back with a Paul Oakenfold remix cd in a few years). Anyway, 32 isn't exactly old, I see people with more than one grain of salt in their pepper, running, biking, playing basketball and doing a variety of strenuous activities slightly beyond my reach, but my 32, for whatever reason, feels doubled. I'd like to blame Lymes Disease, but that's just one piece of my young elderly puzzle.
Last night we played at a trendy Club in North Park and every 10-minutes I spent within its walls, I felt about one year older. I had a very brief love affair with techno in the late nineties, I dated a woman who was really into it and happened to be pretty awesome. In fact, she was awesome enough that I even went to a rave or two. I was there and I still can't picture myself at a rave, so I'm hoping you cats have a more active imagination than I. I can fault her epic hotness and my lack of sobriety for my presence in some New York City warehouse at 4 a.m., immense speakers pulsing, glow-sticks trailing figure eights, shady street pharmacist in bathroom stalls and me trying my hardest not to look too foolish (thank God that was the nineties, before everyone was filming everything at all times, otherwise there'd be some version of me on youtube gyrating awkwardly like Elaine Benes on speed in a wind tunnel, little brother is watching). Fortunately she dumped me one sad Christmas eve and I burned all my techno cds (old school burning, in a fire, not on a laptop) and I was officially and bitterly, yet blissfully, divorced from electronica. When we loaded into the club last night, the mmmm tissss of techno was thoroughly present, its loudness eclipsed all the whispered complaints I tried to share with my guilty cohorts. We tucked ourselves discretely into the welcome silence of the Green Room and bided our time til our set. Every once in a while I would creep out to check the vibe of the audience. the Techno was bumping, young people danced and I prepared for the worst. In my mind I had the scenario all laid out. The Saturday night club filled with youthful party goers, dressed in their weekend finest would have their current and fully functioning electro-dance-party interrupted by the slow dark balladry of the Heavy Guilt. When we launched into our stark funeral procession of sound, a young and sexy asian girl would throw a tomato at us. I would contemplate on stage "where did she get that tomato" as more fruits and vegetables pelted the band from a Benetton add of races. I knew we were doomed when the cdj (that's my term for djs who use cds instead of vinyl, I could also use the term Lazy, but cdj will suffice) played a 50 Cent cut and the crowd got hyped. In my closed and naive mind you can't like fitty cent and the Heavy Guilt, there's just not enough room on the mental playground for both and 50 Cent is tough. Back to the sanctity of the greenroom, laughing and enjoying the presence of the band and the long journey from load in til downbeat. 10:30 rolled around and we stepped to the stage. We were missing our singer who's appendix exploded on wednesday and knocked him out of commission (moment of silence for Erik's fallen appendix). The techno faded into nothing, the crowd, hungry for sound, beat with the pulse of dialogue as we eased into our set of quiet loud quiet post rock. And though we were as far from House Music as I am from 1997 the Guilt instrumental set went over pretty well, no tomatoes at all, only applause. The Guilt even got a little funky and lit a live spark to the Club (not unlike Great White, except fro the lack of casualties). The set was short and sweet and upon its end we made haste so the next band could get set up.
As I was facing the stage, placing my equipment away, something strange happened. I felt a hand on my buttocks, it went past a congratulatory ass-tap when the hand closed. I thought / hoped / prayed / assumed it was my girlfriend messing with me, or at least some member of the band playing a joke that would need to be addressed at the next band meeting. Before I turned around (I was really trying to focus on putting all my stuff away and getting it off stage), I noticed that someone was quite literally dry humping my leg. I'm known for hyperbole and this is not it. Just like when a dog is feeling that instinctual motivation towards release and bear hugs the neighbor's unexpecting leg, someone latched on to my back at started to "freak" me (I believe that's what the children call it). I turned around cause as certain as I wanted to be that it was my lady, the hand on my hip felt considerably larger with a more powerful grip than hers. When I turned around there was a young bald man standing there, looking at me with an expression that seemed to say "WTF, why did you interrupt me while I was making sweet inappropriate love to your back side." What is the correct action in said situation? Seriously, if you have any suggestions please email us at info@theheavyguilt.com, we'll post the best suggestions on our website. I was so thunderstruck with befuddlement I just slunked away like a mopey tenderfoot, carrying my shame like an 80 pound collar. Apparently there is something in the hypnotic rhythms of a trance track that send a pulse to the brain which says "dry hump the man in front of you", it was like a real life Axe Body Spray commercial and equally annoying. When I made it to the safety of techo-less outside, one of the cats from the crowd took the reward for drunk fool of the night. It was an upset of grand proportions, it was like a 16 seed coming from nowhere to beat Duke (I love that I could skip NCAA hoops for a solid decade and I just assume that Duke is a #1 seed and be correct) because by this point of the night, I was absolutely certain that the drunk fool of the night award would go to the young man who gave me a new vivid memory to repress. And then, as sudden as a buzzer beating three point half court shot for victory, this dude walks up to Josh's electric piano (as he breaks it down outside) and asks not only if a) it was a grill, but b) if he could get a couple of fish tacos. "No kind sir, this isn't a grill, it is a fender rhodes electric piano, in fact you just watched us, from the very front row, play our set a mere 3 minutes ago." Although, in hindsight, I wish Josh had said "Sure, that will be $5" and we just took the guys money and ran. I probably could have sold him a piece of newspaper with some authentic urban refuse wrapped in it and called it rolled tacos, just don't ask me for a Mountain Dew. Josh and I missed missed a golden opportunity to make some extra cash. Just call it a toll for stupidity, I've paid plenty in my 32 years.

Colorado My First Tour 2005

the Heavy Guilt has a newer old song called Colorado. The song was written by Sean Martin and I in 2007, long before the Heavy Guilt was born. There is even an early version out there with me singing it, but I'll let you mine the spacious caverns of myspace to find that one, and if you do, I apologize for my vocals. If you want to hear the version where Erik sings it it exists in the following locale.
http://www.archive.org/details/thg2010-02-12.matrix.flac16

I wrote this story at the library back in 05 before I had a computer or any means to save it, so you’ll have to get it from memory, but I promise only slightly blurred authenticity. So, I was in Aspen, rich, walking down the street with Penelope Cruz after lifting weights, and I pulled this gold bar out, after a recent fight with Kanye West......... Let me start again, dig a little deeper.
Due to primacy and recency, I mostly remember the bookends of the trip, fortunately those were the most important parts. This trip, still to this date, was the most treacherous and arduous tour I’ve ever been a part of (excluding all the other treacherous and arduous tours that you'll read about in these pages). It’s the kind of trip that could quite easily derail a young band from the tracks of existence. It started off in Flagstaff Arizona, on New Years Day.

If I was ever considering shooting an apocalyptic zombie movie and I was on the minimal budget that I’d assume I’d be on, I would just film any town on New Years day. All cities move at the slow pace of an extreme hangover. Tumbleweed owns the streets all through the a.m., and once people start to limp out of their foggy haze in noon bloom, they move in a drearily languid fashion through mostly empty roads. I would need no terrifyingly intricate makeup jobs to shoot this film, no detailed directions, I’d simply set up a camera and capture the slow midday march to the coffee shop and the fighting for position in line. In our band mailer I referred to the show as a “FREE ASPRIN GIVEAWAY”, hoping to bait all those owning headaches to come hear some peaking loud rock music.
Only the truly dedicated fans come out to a show on new years day, unless of course you have the drawing power of a Jimi Hendrix resurrection show sponsored by Myspace with Prince opening, or a boy band reunion tour. But even the dedicated K23 fans were facing other obstacles, mainly the blizzard that began to dump snow during our early sound check, accompanied with a frigid wind that bitch slapped you like a trifling hooker in a seventies flick and low temperatures, so low that if they were a person’s age, you couldn’t legally date them (unless you were Jerry Lee Lewis).
For some reason on this pass through Flagstaff we were playing in a very large antique theatre as opposed to the usual tiny dive bar that we’ve frequented over the years. I like the little dive bar because if you put 23 people in there it feels like a packed and energetic house, whereas the 23 people speckled lightly in the Orpheum (which can and hold closer to 800) felt a little awkward. I remember finishing a song and questioning if it was applause I was hearing off in the distance or if it was just phantom white noise from an old busted guitar amp, the claps took a while to get from the distant hands to my eardrum. I think a black panther meeting in rural Kansas would have drawn a larger crowd, but either way it was cool to stand on stage in a history soaked, gorgeous old theatre and hear the reverb of our band echo huge throughout the room.
The Orpheum has one of the most difficult load ins we have yet to face. Nimble gymnast would struggle navigating its twist and turns, especially with the addition of heavy and often awkwardly shaped instruments and amplifiers, not to mention the extreme snowfall that had accumulated during our sets. After the show, by the time we got packed up, had a snowball fight, took a quick drive and set up our sleeping bags on the floor of our friend’s house it was approaching 2 a.m. We had to be up and out by 5 a.m. to make the long drive to Breckinridge, under normal circumstances, a 10-hour drive.
I got about 1 hour of sleep because I watched some dumb movie (Van Helsing, more later) that I had to finish until about 4 a.m. When the various chimes of cell phone alarms began to ring at 5am, we made a quick escape. This was the early pre-band-van days of the K23 and we were in a three-car caravan, 7-people, a ton of equipment and a bunch of gas tanks to fill. I remember the briskness that child-slapped me upon opening the door to wintry Flagstaff and the wind had knocked a tree down blocking us into the driveway. We took the needed time to work our way out onto the road and head east through the kind or treacherous weather one leaves behind when one moves to San Diego.
Ice, sleet and snow fell steadily all the way to Breckinridge. I was in the one vehicle that had no cell phone owner and naturally we got separated from the pack in Denver. Our truck felt doomed like the young wildebeest with a sprained ankle who costarred in a number of Discovery channel hits. I was also one of two drivers in our truck, but the fact that I didn’t know how to drive stick shift meant that I was as useless as a remote control on top of a television. All the way through Colorado was the litter of car accidents. Drivers had met the ice, but didn’t befriend it and the ice was vengeful. Jeremy, who was driving our car, was a San Diego native who was only seeing snow for the second time, the first being the previous night in Flagstaff, so navigating the slippery terrain was a brand new challenge for him. All the spinning and careening eclipsed my ability to nap, so I was getting delirious from 1-hour of sleep. My batteries were far from charged. This was the first time I ever heard Wilco’s Ghost is Born album. It fit in with the streaking echo of street lamps and the slow cold madness of the day, it would also change my approach to writing lyrics immensely, moving from too much is never enough towards a less is more mentality.
We managed to get into Breckinridge, s-a-f-e-l-y, at about 10pm, just in time to load in our equipment down an ice slicked flight of stairs and start playing from 10:40-2am. The bar was filled with a bunch of rowdy frat boy Texans who were out there on a College sponsored ski trip. Their priorities didn’t necessarily coincide with our lefty-protest-jam-rock, but we made a few local converts. It was perhaps the longest marathon set of under-appreciated music ever churned out on 1-hr of sleep after 18+ hours of driving through obstacles worthy of their own video game. The polite light trill of golf claps and conversations stings awful, but we were inches from rest and that knowledge pulled us through. After the set. After the load out up the icy steps. After a few arguments sponsored by fatigue and distain. After packing the vehicles. After filling up the tanks, we were ready to make one more drive, short in the grand scheme of things, but at least a couple of hours. We were headed to Glenwood Springs Colorado to sleep at Josh’s brother’s house. At this point sleep was like dropping the ring of power into the depths of mount doom (sorry, I’m a nerd), like waking up from a coma and having the first food in a long time enter your mouth (strawberry milkshake), like a member of the chess club finally getting lucky on prom night with a non-unattractive girl, sleep was to be my heaven. The drive was slow through snow, but we were nearing Glenwood springs, I could feel the pillow against my face gently smothering me into oblivion (even if the driver just gave up and it was an airbag). At this point we begin seeing a number of brake lights, we started to lose speed ourselves and 15-minutes from our destination, we came to a complete stop. This frigid stop, this stop that stomped our will like an eager fat man atop grapes at a vineyard, this unexpected punctuation, the three exclamation points which follow the word SHIT!!!, this closed road due to an overturned truck in a one way tunnel would set the exhausted pace which we would move at through the remainder of our first extended tour. Somewhere around 9am we would find solace at Josh’s brother’s, a little more than a day after we left Flagstaff, Arizona.
What little I remember about the rest of the tour is what you might expect from a young band’s first time that far from home, playing shows during the workweek. It was similar to any mid-western town on new years day, except the tumbleweed was actually inside the bars we were performing in. You take that kind of stuff in stride and learn to expect it on the road, but after a rather extreme opening to the run, we were pretty beat up. The last day of the tour was in Denver, opening for Digital Underground and as exciting as that would have been when I was in 7th grade, when the Humpty Dance was the soundtrack for adolescence, it was rather anti-climactic nearing 30 years of age.
The venue was supposed to provide a keyboard for Digital Underground, but through the fine art of miscommunication, the keyboard never made it. They offered us $50 to borrow ours, which meant that we had to stay until last call. Fifty bucks meant a tank of gas and since some of the gigs earlier in the week were less profitable than a short-lived paper route (we were literally paid in peanuts in Carbondale, Colorado, no salt and we had to open them), we opted to loan them the keyboard. We played our set and time passed very slowly after that. I wound up making out with a very drunk girl to help speed up the time. She eventually threw up (hopefully due to alcohol consumption as opposed to her bad decisions in evening companionship) on the bar and was escorted out by men the size of the Bronco’s offensive line. Once again the minute hand lost a race to frozen molasses dripping uphill. Since the venue is in a neighborhood where the police don’t really care about (you know, the kind where a bunch of minorities live) the venue stayed open late and we didn’t make our escape until well after 3 a.m.
When forced with the decision to either a) ferret out a hotel in Denver or b) make the 16-hour drive to the place where our beds and televisions resided. The decision was quick and unanimous. About 15-hours into the harrowing all-nighter we met a torrential downpour which made an attempt on our lives. Apparently we were still on our epic quest to destroy the one ring of power (nerd remember). We were driving next to a semi and we basically hit a lake in the middle of Interstate 15, just outside of Temecula, California. It seemed like an eternity, but for a few seconds the van I was in and the 18-wheeler hydroplaned out of control and somehow managed not to hit each other. We breathed a collective sigh of relief and strayed into silence for the remainder of the drive. Sleep never tasted so good.

Colorado
Haven’t seen the sun for days
And all I know is Rocky gray
Awake for almost 48
This ghost awaits sleeps slim embrace

Wind blows shadows through the black
Those shadows settle into cracks
Beneath my eyes and on my back
A worn will searches for the track

Sleepless lids that long to meet
Left turn down this icy street
These naked trees have lost their leaves
Reminds me of my home back east

A sunrise split apart by clouds
A thousand beams break on this town
Hard rain beats against the ground
I need to dream before I drown

My bed is calling out my name
Whipped around by wind and rain
Drifting in the center lane
Break lights just a fading flame

The sky is blackened by night’s cloak
A fork ahead divides the road
One way leading us towards home
The other points towards the unknown

Is this the way the story ends
Is this the way the story ends
Is this the way the story ends
As long as I am with my friends

Is this the way the story ends
Is this the way the story ends
Is this the way the story ends
As long as I am with my friends

Lay down and dream this noon away
Just burn the blue that turns to gray
A star in bloom would guide our way
It’s time to move I’d rather stay
What’s stranger than this gray friction
To sacrifice the space between
When ego ran through the quicksand
And silence burst instead of screams
The same source feeds my love and hate
These times when youth evaporates
Between the moon and suns first rays
I didn’t kneel this time to pray
Just threw a hope into the sky
The daylight pounds me into dream
Rearview mirror eye to eye
And silence burst instead of screams

Mamma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Sword Swallowers (no this has no metaphorical association to prop 8)

My mouth is a low rent ghetto-housing tenement populated by microscopic thugs, jaundiced hoodlums and Cavity Creeps. The Super (superintendant for those of you who didn’t grow up in the inner city) is a slum lord and 3 wisdom teeth will soon be evicted (they are bad substance abusing tenants, replace bags of crack with baggies of powdered sugar, including a brief collegiate phase where I used to steal the crystals from the bottom of the Sour Patch Kid’s bin), maybe not worthy of the attention of David Simon (creator of the Wire), but definitely a troubling neighborhood of the mouth.

Sorry, I’m just bitter, freshly home from the Dentist and the verdict was not pleasant. X-rays and an intense cleaning process, coupled with an intolerable sound, 7-cavities and three impacted wisdom teeth that incite the wrath the Gods from cold beverages. But alas, I’ve digressed before even starting. This is a band mailer about sword swallowing. I was going to try to use metaphor to segue the dental experience to that of a sword swallower and honestly, I don’t know which is more harrowing, and even though they both occur in the mouth, it seemed like a bit of an abrupt leap.

Last week at the Heavy Guilt show we had a surprise during the intermission. All it takes to derail the momentum of an evening is one glanced over email. In this case I missed the all-important message containing the knowledge that there would be an extreme performance during our set break. Now, to set this story up appropriately, I have to describe our singer Erik a little bit. We’ll see what happens to the following text because I recently found out Erik edits these things before they hit the streets. In fact I found out he turned the word “@#*!%*” to “child” in one band mailer, but you may not even be reading this sentence, so I got nothing to loose. Erik is clean. Imagine the opposite of the earlier description of my corroded and left behind post sugar-cane-Katrina mouth. If I was at Erik’s house and I dropped a slice of pizza on the ground and said slice landed cheese first, I would feel comfortable eating it after 10 seconds, in fact, I would feel fine if I dropped the slice before a gig, came back after the gig and happened to be hungry, and if by miracle the pizza was still there, I would also feel comfortable eating it. At the same time, I’m not allowed at Erik’s because I’m the kind of dirt-bag who drops pizza on people’s floors and leaves it there for several hours.

Erik recently purchased a microphone, because a.) as a singer it is important to have your own mic and b.) microphones are perhaps the most filthy, germ ridden places on earth, a war ravaged third world space bombed to attrition by bacteria and hurricane rains of musician spittle (who knows where we’ve been). Alright, time to re-rail my train of thought. Erik’s shiny new safe haven of a microphone made its debut last week. When we took our set break we stepped outside for a breather. We could all see inside as the barroom lights lit up the lone microphone in the glory of its shimmering virgin newness. At this point the set break performance began. The sword swallower/sideshow took the stage. He grabbed Erik’s pristine, unsullied microphone and busted into his routine which began with him flossing his teeth with a condom. WOW!!! The defeated look on Erik’s face was incredible. If there is a band out there called “the Disappointment” please email us, we’ll send you the photo, it can be your album cover, touring poster and bumper sticker.

So, on Erik’s mic, he swallowed 4 swords, yelled deafeningly loud, told some foul tales, the aforementioned condom flossing incident (and after the dental visit, I’m all about flossing, but that’s just a bit much), he stuck 4 spiked rods through his stomach (and yes, we witnessed them pushing against the skin and popping out his backside, G-R-O-S-S, I would have rather watched a Sandra Bullock / Keanu Reeves film) and the coup de grace was when he invited audience members to staple money to various body parts, $5 bought most real estate, but the head shot with a staple gun cost $20. This is an interesting approach, because as the sideshow act went on for about 40-long-minutes, the last ten minutes were particularly infuriating to our band. We paced around the shadows of street lamps and waited for our second and truncated set. I secretly was willing to pay money to staple this guy in the face, “how much for an eye shot” I thought to myself “I know where I can get a nail gun, how much longer will you be on?” By the end of the night he was covered in blood, staples and money.

I bet if you pulled Erik aside earlier in the day and said “What three things won’t touch your new mic tonight?” his answer would have been “I don’t know, but if I had to guess, hmmmm, blood, money and staples.” WRONG!!!! So, to you folks planning on coming down to see the Guilt this weekend, we’ll likely have an iPod crooning between us and the next band, but if you want to staple $100 to my pinky toe, I’m totally fine with that, I’ll have some grocery money left after my copay.



PS. If I ever wind up "accidentally" impaled, please notify the good people at Unsolved mysteries, or the cat who wrote and or directed Zodiac. (and don't let Jamie Foxx play me)

Some Apologies to Shrimp (an ode to the shrimp not responsible for our singer's hospitalization)

Just watched the movie Up in the Air and drank too much hot chocolate and thus I'm awake at 1.37 a.m. I had other plans to play a gig this evening, but they were derailed by our singer's hospitalization. No, nothing worthy of the annals of rock legend, neither coke, nor hooker, no drunken brawl with bouncers shaped like early 90s american gladiators (Nitro was not involved), no drug addled dance with nudity and broken glass, no irate outburst towards an intrusive paparazzi, no, the initial blame for this one fell on the back of a small salt water crustacean and an ignored expiration date. We were lead to believe that some form of food poisoning placed Erik Canzona in hospital, it was attributed to shrimp, but upon further investigation it was appendicitis (each time I spell this correctly I am completely shocked with hubris). We are happy to say that his operation went even smoother than this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYRAVw8Op8Q

So we would like to offer absolution to the jumbo shrimps initially blamed for the offense. Take them off death row, they committed no such crime. I've heard so many incidences of little shrimp taking on and crushing the stomachs of full grown adults, perhaps there was some profiling involved in this quick and direct finger pointing which took place. In fact I must admit biases of my own. Having heard that Erik ate some bad shrimp my anger was instant, the enemy certain.

I went through my entire life eating shrimp. It wasn't exactly a "shrimp cocktails on the yacht" everyday kind of thing, but the occasional shrimp delight would swim down my gullet with no problems. Then I turned 20. I remember the night well. I was home from Boston College on Christmas vacation and my mom had cooked up a shrimp and scallop dinner. This was the early stages of an antisocial phase which has lasted until up til now, so as opposed to catching up with my high school friends on a Friday night, I was eating seafood and watching the Simpsons with my door closed. The itchy feeling came on slowly at first, though it quickly turned into a excited fevered frenzy of scratching. This was when there were back to back episodes of the Simpsons at 6pm and 6:30. By 6:30 I was absolutely certain that something fishy (if you read this I owe you a quarter for the bad pun) was transpiring, but as the clouds parted over Springfield I realized that it was the Monorail episode and though I had seen it 15 times, there was no way I was pulling my eyes off the t.v. to check the bathroom mirror. When 7pm finally came I went to the bathroom to check and see if something weird was happening. When I looked in the mirror I saw a fat dude lookin back at me. It was like an episode of Quantum Leap, where the main cat checks the mirror and is like "who's this fat ass black dude looking back at me." I looked like Al Roker circa that time, with the addition of a plush afro. I screamed like a Culkin with aftershave and my mom took me to the hospital. Apparently I was newly allergic to either shrimp or scallops and the reaction cause my head to balloon out so much the fatness pushed my eyes closed. I found out that it was shrimp after a Paul Simon / Brian Wilson concert in the early 2000s. Upon exiting the concert I noticed that the New Orleans food vendor was throwing his rice away. Having started my career as a broke ass musician I gravitated magnetic towards the prospect of free food. In fact it is something I have developed so sharply and acutely at this point that I would call it the next sense. I approached the guy running the booth and politely asked if I could take some free rice. He said "sure, you want some shrimp?" The prospect of free shrimp completely eclipsed my memory of the "incident". When I sheepishly reached into the vat of butter sauce and grabbed one shrimp he looked at me like an asshole and said "Damnit SON! If you want some shrimp, GRAB SOME SHRIMP". So I did the logical thing, I pulled my sleeves up, put both arms in the tray, threw all caution to the wind and GRABBED SOME SHRIMP. My arms dripped butter all the way back to the car, but I had scored at least 40 bucks worth of bounty. I've never eaten so much of anything in my life and the only thing I've regretted more instantaneously was chugging a liter of vodka to show off on a date (but that's a blog for another restless night and why my two front teeth are fake). Yes, that night, there was a whole lot of scratching going on. In fact as I type this I'm kinda startin to itch from mere memory. So in closing, cause it's way past my non gig night bedtime, not all shrimp are hoodlums. Just because the shrimp I eat are Raiders fans and roam the streets drunken, with shotguns in hand and vengeance on the mind, the shrimp with the expired date that Erik consumed this afternoon were gentle students of life, known to help elderly ladies across and toss change into the coffee cans of the homeless. Just watch out for those God Damn Peanuts.