Ghetto Recorders, Jim's studio, is behind a non-descript door right around the block from what was, up to three weeks ago, the State Theater, but is now the Filmore, having been bought out by LiveNation, a proud if quiet member of the Clear Channel conglomerate. Actually, the door is not so much anonymous as it is forbidding, death black paint chipped and graffitied. Terribly metal.
The studio is up a flight of stairs, through what might best be described as a Green Room punctuated with a fish tank, past a conference room/dining hall and a kitchen pulled straight from the '50s, up another five steps and then into the recording room proper. A former chicken processing plant, the room itself is huge, its edges filled with a random assortment of instruments, amps, and music ephemera.
Outside the control room Kate has reached the end of the song, her voice a leaf in the chill wind of Fred's and my guitars. Poetics aside, it sounds rather spectacular, especially when run through a few vintage compressors onto 2" tape.
While listening to playback, I consider seppuku, the ancient Japanese art of saving face by killing yourself. Playback is tortuous, like losing an argument by having your own words tossed back at you, all snide and poorly said. The band is taking notes on what slide sounds best; my opinion is, in general, neither, but since, you know, we have to choose, the second attempt continues to be the better.
I need to stop smoking cigarettes. But how can I, when they taste so good? Also, between yesterday and the narrative now, I've finished most of a fifth of vodka, and nothing peaks the experience of an enjoyably woozy drunk like the filtered chemicals of a Camel 100. It is not fancy, the things I do.
Maybe I should stop drinking instead. But cold turkey is such a noonday dish, and it's Friday night in Detroit.
It was Chicago that welcomed me first. Having taken off work early (I make bookmarks, by the way. I used to be an Editor, but this pays more; I'm moving either up or down in the literary world, but I think I'm too close to judge the direction), I got dropped off at the airport three hours early, time I spent behind sunglasses, between headphones, and with mouth full of pizza. Sbarro. It was...carbohydrate rich.
Southwest, it turns out, actually offers decent snacking materials: a Nabisco sponsored box of peanuts, raisins and, the cherry, crackers and cheese. Topped off with a styrofoam eight-ounce of gram-ground coffee, it's less the usual threat than an implied taunt.
To land at Midway--an airport consistently overshadowed and overflown by O'Hare--we have to travel against the sun and through a thunderstorm. As a former Midwesterner, it's thunderstorms I miss most; after the turbulence, all I miss is flying through them. Thunderstorms are awesome in the biblical sense: bigger and more dangerous than you, ready and possibly deitically willed to smite you. If you can't respect them as beautiful natural occurences, at least fear them as spirit guides more than willing to steer your knife-wielding hand toward an ungrounded socket.
I landed in my suit (which, in case you were wondering, I was wearing when I got on the plane), insuring that my fellow travelers gave me commensurrate space and due dilligence, which is to say that no one gave a shit. Midway is in the middle of one of the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago -- Dave Chappelle: "Liquor store, liquor store, gun store, liquor store...yo, man, where we going?"
Into Lillydale was the answer, as that's where my friend Sarah lives with her roommate Amy. Two in the morning is not a high traffic time for Illinoisian commuters, so we arrive twenty-some minutes later at a familiar-looking apartment building two turns from a Jewel Osco.
The next day, Sarah gives me the tour. We pass through eight suburbs within six city blocks before we park in Naperville's posh downtown. Naperville, so Sarah tells me, is the Nation's safest city. They perform background checks before they allow anyone to move in, a gated community without the fence. One of the reasons why people move and feel safe there is the riverwalk, a five mile walkabout around the local river. The river itself is shallow, carpeted with rocks and frequented by ducks.
Nobody has ever attributed to me that charm they call "grace", so it shouldn't be too surprising that I punch Sarah in the nose as I run forward to fake tackle her. I roll the phrase "fake tackle" over my tongue like a clouded glass marble while I silently thank God for inventing coagulant. And baby animals.
And again it's her that drives me to her house, past forgettable subdivisions that resemble the ones from Normal, the town two hours South where I used to live. There is no part of the Midwest that is not Platonic, pulling from those same cave shapes throughout, making them perfectly familiar.
We ride a train into the windy city. It's the first time I've been on a train since seven years prior, when I rode one with my parents on Easter Sunday. The day previous (Easter eve), I had been secreted away from my house by friends after arguing my mother into such a huff she had to leave the house, on the phone to my father. Classic perspective issue: my mother saw me choosing the sinful pleasures of alcohol, drugs, and rock and roll; I saw my mother stopping me from looking cool in front of my friends. If Coldplay had disbanded after Parachutes, I'd probably respect my decision more today to see them then, and even then I had to hide in the bushes outside my house until my perennially late friends arrived.
Sarah and I arrive on time in the Metro's terminus located in Chicago's Southside. Matt meets us. Dill--what Sarah has shortened his last name "Diller" to--is my oldest friend. I met him in seventh grade at Chiddix Junior High. We were on the eighth grade wrestling team together and it was he--along with a few, nerdy others--who serenaded my leaving of Illinois in the midst of sophomore year with a spirited rendition of "Normal view, normal view, normal VIEW" from MST3K: The Movie. It probably goes without saying that girls were a mystery to me then.
Now, it takes twenty-seven blocks to travel a half hour. We finally settle on a pub called Timmy O'Tooles, some Irish drinking hole that Sarah knows by reputation and whose hostess offers us a choice between smoking and non. Dude. You can smoke in this bar. Right on.
Non-smoking section: we sit, talk, eat. Eventually we finish and head to the street. As we retrace our steps back to the train, we grab two rounds of $3 margaritas that are better than their price suggests. Pictures are taken. Hugs are exchanged. I wonder when I'll see Matt again. It's been five years since the last time I came back to Illinois.
Then we drive. I like driving, but not passengering. Driving gives me a purpose. If I'm not talking or paying attention to others in the car it is because I am driving. If I ask my co-pilot to adjust the radio or temperature to my liking they will do it because I am driving. Passengers respect the driver. The driver tolerates the passengers. I like driving.
Kate is driving. I am passengering. Chicago to Lansing is about ten hours, most of which we spend listening to a Houdini audiobio. Did you know he set up his own secret service, going so far as to purchase a nearby barbershop to secure the employ of one of his operatives, whom he had sent to Barberschool, all so he could give orders under the auspices of a trim? Houdini was badass.
Along the way, at a Bob Evans, I have the first in becomes a series of uncomfortable omelettes.
In Lansing, we rest, smoke, bullshit with Deming and his wife. I fear cigarettes and myself for wanting them. We do Detroit, listening to The Flaming Groovies on the way in and our demo and Neil Young on the way home.
Then we leave. From Washington to Illinois, up to Indiana and Michigan and then back through, back West, up into Wisconsin, Minnesota, and then through North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and back home. Taking shifts, Kate and I make it from Minneapolis to Seattle in 24 hours, some 1665 miles. We feel this number is good enough to break out in conversation should the subject of bad ideas seen through come up.
I spend my last paper money in Bismark, Montana. Coffee. We're marathoning it home, the sun spurring us on. I've got work to get to, which I do, on time and with no sleep. Monday.
The End Times.
The End Times play this Saturday at Kate's house in the Montlake district of Seattle. Keg, Seattle's premier metal man, will open proceedings with spirited cries for more rock. It is also an unbirthday party. Something for everyone, really. For directions, please contact me. Come around 7p.m., leave when we kick you out.
Listen to cuts from the new demo on our Myspace, or visit Thesearetheendtimes.com.
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