happy re-birth, death of the god etc, pagan updated celebrations to all concerned… Did i mention that we had run into Uri Geller at an airport lounge..?. a guy drifting around the place with a really weird vibe, i actually pointed him out to DH “look this dude is a complete alien…” a few minutes later he approached and introduced himself, we had met once before years ago… a really nice person all around he bent 3 spoons for us… now as much as ‘i believe’ my innate skepticism kicks in, but the spoon bending (which he described as “parlor tricks”, the implication being that he is capable of much more) is really an impressive thing up close and personal… we’ve all seen it; he gently rubs the spoon and it bends towards his rubbing finger… almost more impressive than the act of bending it was that it really did seem to continue bending after he handed it to me… say from 45 to 90 degrees… (no, the spoons were there at the airport lounge, i took them out of the pile and handed them to him… everyone i’ve told this to all want to know if he provided the spoons himself) we sat around and talked for a while exchanged some anecdotes and ideas about ESP etc. (years ago in Australia, on our first tour there 1977-8, we found that Blondie was on the same circuit as was Uri… he was on tour doing what he does in many of the same theaters that we were playing in… i recall seeing graffiti backstage in one “URI GELLER LEVITATED THIS BUILDING”… one day we were sitting in an airport cafeteria (in those days we didnt get to go to the lounges) waiting for a flight and i was looking at a copy of the local free paper…. the cover was a shot of Uri’s face staring out intently… on the inside there was only a small article; it said that if one stared into Uri’s eyes on the cover photo ‘something’ would happen… i closed the cover and stared into the picture of the eyes and at that exact second a lady who worked at the airport dropped a huge tray of spoons, knives and forks producing a crash that made everyone in the vicinity turn and look…) finally he said that if i did a “simple drawing” he would try and copy it by mental connection… on the first page of ‘Money’ by Martin Amis i drew a picture of a cat face; two big circle eyes and J like lines indicating a mouth and whiskers… right before i put it down i thought “i bet everyone draws a house” while i was drawing Uri had his back turned, he couldn’t possibly have seen the thing… i covered it with my hand (yes completely) and gave him a copy of another Amis book “Times Arrow” for him to draw his version of what he “saw”, stared at him, thought of the image… well, he drew two circles pretty much the exact size of the ones i’d drawn then said he was having trouble picking up the rest as he started to use the circles as wheels for a crude car… in a way this deal was more impressive than the spoon bending…fantastically he said “many people draw a house”… so is this all psychology… am i a two circle type as opposed to a house type? even if that’s it it still was amazing and there was just that little “something” extra and out there about the whole encounter with him that left everyone buzzed after we parted company… regardless then of any nay sayers i for one am now a fan of Uri G. … above and beyond his tricks he is a really great positive person, we talked a bit about Michael Jackson who he supports… his take on Michaels converted looks is one that i hadn’t heard or considered and is the most reasonable explanation i’ve come across: simply that he (Jackson) was so pissed off at his father that he didn’t want to even look like him… so there’s that Uri was nice enough to put his own version of the meeting with us on his site http://www.uri-geller.com/index.htm lastly for now even though i am appalled by rampant consumerism, media and related stuff, one of the coolest things i’ve run into is only available in Germany-Austria apparently; that is BLACK ICE GATORADE… at one of the German gigs Mark our front of house sound mixer was sporting a bottle saying he always checks out weird flavors and variations of products… being a big gatorade fan i was quite impressed Black Ice gatorade is pretty much black in appearance, really a dark red but when all together in the bottle it easily passes for black, tastes fruity…label is black and silver… why this isnt available in the states is a complete mystery to your humble narrator, i found something on their website to write in suggestions and comments and of course have not heard anything back about Black Ice even though the site thing promises a reply… so if any of you are as intrigued as i am by this dumbass phenomena try going to gatorade.com and inundating them with queries about “BLACK ICE GATORADE!!!!”… i brought two bottles back, even though i hate advertising maybe i’ll put up a pcture… i mean how dare they only have this cool flavor only for sale in Germany??!!? anyway have a nice thingy and happy stuff love to you all chris

back in new york in one piece… anonymous rubber gloved hands reaching into saddams pathetic mouth… aren’t they looking for poison hidden in teeth?… the whole thing is so fucking pathetic its unreal… in europe i saw a news clip about one of the new opportunities for making a buck in iraq: kidnapping kids and selling them back to their parents, this apparently isn’t reserved for the rich or upper classes, just about anyone can get a kid swiped and then sold back for 5-10 grand, whatever… so the news dame is at the police station, she asks the top cop dude why they (the police) aren’t taking more action about this trend… the police gets genuinely pissed off, he looks really honestly angry, the camera follows his hand as he flicks on a light switch… nothing happens he says “we have no electricity, we have no guns!”… as i suspected little was made here in the states of the bush visit to London and the ensuing waves of British anti-war demonstrations the tour went well and we have the new set down… last show was in Dubai which is a strange place to say the least; the black robes with the veils that the girls wear are actually pretty sexy when you see them on prettier younger women than what one sees in the stereotypes… also fantastic was just going to a mall (late at night, everything goes late i guess to avoid the days heat) and seeing like half of the pedestrians wearing robes… but Dubai is a wealthy oil based country, sort of sin-less las vegas Belgrade also was an extreme, one of the best shows, biggest crowds, the city is still all scarred from the recent fighting and there is an atmosphere of tension and road rage all about but the more i travel around these days the more obvious it is to me that everyone is the same with just variations in background… in some countries, like France, there is a stronger sense of national identity than in others, but the human condition is really much more similar from place to place than one is led to believe by local propaganda… everything balances out, a great deal is lost as well as gained… its like in New York city where there used to be a distinct flavor from one neighborhood to another, now there is just one big homogeneous mass that is all the same… London reminds me of NYC more and more… but obviously there is no turning back now everyone is stuck in each others backyard ok what?… Monte Melnick of the RAMONES has spearheaded the absolute ultimate RAMONES text; a book called “On The Road With The RAMONES” that should be available everywhere… totally great! what a document! it’s pulled together from interviews with everyone involved (me too) and tells the story in a great funny personal way including details that i didnt even know, as a matter of fact i doubt that any one of the people who contributed to the book could possibly have known all of the crazy things contained therein… ‘on the road with the ramones’ should be a textbook for the study of rock and roll as well as used in psychology class… a monument, i cant imagine many people let alone musicians, celebrities with enough balls to actually tell it like it is like this… and ?… currently the big project is getting the baby to go to sleep, now that she’s been out on the road she doesn’t want to miss anything and resists going into dreamland quite vigorously… sooo ive gotten a lot of baby related messages from you all who’ve got em and would appreciate any tips on getting THEM (babies) to sleep with some kind of regular schedule… you know the drill she wont go to sleep by herself, wants to be held, can’t put her down or she starts to cry, takes an hour of walking around with till she drops off enough to be put down, goes to sleep in the car etc etc we havent tried putting her on the washing machine yet… barbara’s read a bunch of the books which of course all contradict each other, “let them cry it out” is one side the other is “pick them up over and over till they get to sleep”… she sleeps all night which is great but she doesnt take naps and gets over tired… so any suggestions… i probably have more stuff but cant think right now… do check out the Ramones book all 4 now love chris NY Dec. 16

i just got thru the 112 e-mails that barry forwarded, (im in Zurich, show tonight) mostly really nice comments on the shows, thanx as usual… so the various salient points: istanbul; after a lot of discussion among band and crew everyone figured it was best to leave it alone for now so no go, i was touched by various peoples concern about our going (Defi, i do read the stuff thanx for the caution)…related, we were glad to have missed the bush debacle in London… perusing of the sleazy brit press gave us daily updates on bullet proof limosines, how much the citizens of the US and UK were paying for this nonsense etc etc… how much coverage did the London protests get in the US?, i’d bet only a fraction of what wound up in the european media the record; when we initially got the deal going with Sony, there was no indication of the large amount of seasonal releases that they have now dumped on the market including ol’ wacko’s greatest hits as well as springsteens etc etc… i suspect that “the curse” is, will be somewhat overcome by all of this but it remains to be seen… on a related note, the record industry; one of the great ironies for us and an excellent example of how “the curse” plays out is that our current success is coinciding with the end of the recording biz as we know it… im pretty sure that recording as we now know it is going to undergo a tremendous change over the next 5-10 years, the whole thing is right now in upheaval, the company people are all looking for a direction as sales go thru the floor… if as soon as one copy of a recording is released everyone in the world has access to it then the nature of the whole beast is in need of adjustment, money and sales is just a small part of the issue, certainly punishing people for downloading and spending huge amounts of time and energy creating un-copyable recordings is the negative and useless side of the thing… what i see coming is a return to spontaneity, live forms, more improvisation, jazz… away from the ridgidity of top ten, lists, programming etc etc and towards a more organic approach… hopefully the internet will continue to be something for uniting people and ideas and will grope its way out of the primitive state that its now in (i’ll try and write more about this in the future, the discussion of the record biz is on going something we all are always dealing with) the tour, shows etc; we of course will be doing shows in the US after the new year, apparently the “Curse Of Blondie” will be released by Sanctuary records in the US in about March of ’04, its pretty fucking crazy that it’s taken so long but thats whats going on… the shows in europe have been great, variations for us, some have higher energy feel better than others etc but all in all i think the band and DH keep improving sometimes i surprise myself with what i’m playing… the fans and crowds are their usual great selves and also as usual im sorry we cant sign all the autographs, take pics with everyone who wants one etc lastly Jimmy D; is gonna have to make his own statements but suffice it to say that he had a lot to deal with and wasn’t able to do the shows i think that’s it for the basic questions… last night we were able to visit Giger at his studio/home here in Zurich… i havent been there for maybe 20 years, i think DH was there more recently… it was a very uplifting experience for your humble narrator… spending a lot of time in the gruesome straight world of western civilization makes a visit into the dimension of art and mysticism all the more valuable… Gigers realm is very timeless, ancient and spinning into the cyber-bio future of humanity… (i’m regularly angered when i remember that Giger is not represented in new yorks Modern Museum, Whitney etc but at the same time if that puts Blondie, who still isnt in the ‘hall of fame’ and who’s gotten very little recognition in the world of awards and junk in a similar place with H.R.G. then i’m also fine with that) Barbara and Akira went home to the US… Akira sat in on a couple of tv interviews, the first one (for VH1 i think) she got impatient and left (was removed) but in the second for the BBC she was very cool and put up with the whole thing occasionally squeeking at the camera and generally being rock and roll…she seemed to enjoy being out and by the end was considered a real ‘road dog’ right now i’m in Debbies room cause she has a high speed hook up, im trying to get her to say something… ok she says that “you shouldn’t spend money buying (her) presents” but rather “give it to charity or gamble”, since “both things are a chance anyway”… thats it, i’ll try and actually get her to write something in the near future… wait this just in: she gives me a “poem about the front row” “YOU’RE IN MY FIELD OF VISION YOU’RE STANDING RIGHT UP FRONT THE FIRST ROW YOUR DECISION THE CRUSH IS WHAT YOU GOT” i think that covers it for now, thanx, much love chris

shows are pretty consistent by now all the new material having been learned, crowds vary from place to place some are very demonstrative but i get the impression that the less physical audiences are still concentrating… liverpool and birmingham were really raving, belfast subdued, after all this time i still cant account for the variety of reactions, perhaps due to the day of the week, moon phases, climate, various factors… crowds are mixed ages, the younger kids seem to always manage to get up in the front… degrees of sing along to the new material as well as the hit stuff, overall people are getting familiar with the new record… thanks to all of you who’ve shown up thus far for supporting us… touring is tough, doing four shows in a row together with travelling after each one is tiring, everyones sleep patterns are wacked out major, just get to sleep on the bus a few hours after the buzz of the show finally wears off and there we’ve arrived at the hotel, wake up and try to get back to sleep inside etc… akira is here (with barbara), i dont think she knows that she’s in europe though, likes looking out of the bus window… england and the continent suffered through a really hot summer but the up side is a really mild fall and its quite beautiful over here now… (i’ve gotten some response from the troops out here and asked various people and the sentiment regarding advertising is pretty unanimously negative, a few people have been quick to point out that the band of course avails itself to forms of tv adverts but if it were up to me to choose id rather have none at all and do without it for us too… everybody really hates the ads in the movies, its somehow more obnoxious to pay to get into a film and then be subjected to the crap that one has supposedly left at home with the tv set… so as regards these invasions of artistic privacy, that is the miserable commercials one has to endure at ones local movie joint the solution is not that hard, far off etc. one thing i’ve learned is that the big corporate entities do live in a certain amount of fear of public opinion… if enough people wrote to some of the big chains like LOWES theaters saying how much offense they took at being bombarded by commercials at the movies i think that something might change…tv commercials are a harder nut to crack but the movie theater ones are a recent horror,) not much else right now, in need of sleep… some great apocalyptic dreams last night no doubt brought on by watching the special edition of “Independence Day” on the bus… oh did i mention that i’d gotten to meet Juliette Lewis who is currently starting up fronting a band, i’d known she was a musician from hearing her singing in films, i’ve heard some great recordings she’s done and i recommend people look out for her… over and out love chris

last report from the states, new laptop will accompany and perhaps if all goes i’ll post from ‘abroad’ (Groucho Marx to Jayne Mansfield; “How does it feel to be abroad?”). i’d like to steer everyone towards ADBUSTERS.org and magazine…which reminds me of one of many campaigns that i think about (actually this one goes back years and years) everybody hates tv commercials why not have a boycott of anything advertised on TV? perhaps for a month or a week or indefinitely if people could do without all the crap thats advertised… why should we be burdened with all this garbage??? TV is bad enough unto itself…another example: i guess about six or so years ago i went to some movie in London, and there for the first time was subjected to miserable advertisements for cars and soda whatever before the trailers for upcoming films and eventually the movie itself “ha!” thought i “no one in america would stand for this!” needless to say my consumer-oriented nationalistic fervor was of course short lived…so why doesnt anyone DO anything about this shit? have we really become such a world of sheep that we have to put up with junk on this level… this isnt even like going to a job you dont like… its just too screwed to pay for a movie and then have to suffer through the same jeans commercial for the tenth time… i really think that a product boycott and or letter writing campaign could actually do something… all the networks and big corporate monsters are shit scared of public opinion, and they all have websites and contact points… leaving this monday, let me know what you think about the above maybe we can get rid of TV commercials completly!!!! love, see you at shows chris

so there’s that… and i do watch the occasional baseball game like now with the yankee red sox deal, oh… years ago we were in las vegas (recently in amsterdam the utter hypocrisy of the vegas attempt to somehow make itself; the whore of babylon, a “family experience”, that at least in holland sex is not presented as educational or behind some dumbass facade of walt disney wholesomeness) and we wandered into siegfried and roys casino where two listless beautiful white tigers were lying behind a plastic window on an area covered in concrete in the blazing hot sun all the while gawked at by camera laden grotesque tourists who all seemed to be dressed in loud polyester hawaiian shirts which at the time were the uniform (now replaced by golf shirts)… i was really really disgusted then so i invite you to draw your own conclusions as to my feelings about what happened to roy, that is getting chewed severely by one of his (no doubt underpayed) employees… i may have mentioned that the interaction of humans and ‘animals’ should be, in my opinion, curtailed if not totally eliminated animals just get the short end of the deal… ok another one: minks that are raised for fur are pretty much starved so as to make their skin looser, we saw an item about some animal rights group freeing ten thousand or so starving minks which then went on a rampage eating everything in sight, dogs cats and i presume anything remotely edible in their path the “farmers” re captured about a thousand but the problem in returning them to captivity was that the minks then couldnt be caged as family units who get along so the remaining prisoners ate each other as well…pretty fucked up right?… finally the most absurd animal related news item i saw lately concerned some banquet for heads of state including ol’ bushy in thailand or someplace thereabouts, anyway concern there over poisoned food, and being that human life has gained enough status to forestall people being used as ‘tasters’ like the good old days, mice are going to be injected with samples of the fucking food , the mice will then either drop dead or not… now what comedian has to pay a writer with shit like this floating around? one can predict a whole bunch of mice addicted to mainlining beef bourgeon or spaghetti carbonara etc etc also why might’nt ‘the enemy’ slip some immune mice into the lab closer to home as i drive around this season, the roads are as usual littered with the corpses of little animals, chipmonks, squirrels, racoons, badgers, and others, i must have seen over twenty dead deer but the other smaller guys are not really countable in their profusion… now why not divert a few billion of the military budget to putting up little fences around and digging tunnels beneath the nations highways and various back roads, maybe some little bridges as well…really how much more absurd is this idea than what is going on already… yeah people shouldnt be allowed around animals, the animals always get fucked, at least one should have to take a test or be somehow ‘qualified’ what else… “survivor” in the south bronx, some more stuff i cant remember right now… thank you all for the positive comments about the record, baby, band etc send pictures, weird stories, dreams, found objects much love chris

first everyone seems to be liking the record, yes i really think its the best one at the moment, im back home after rehearsing in nyc for the tour, we are in a break, paul c is playing some shows with Ed Norton (the actors) sister, clem went back to LA… speaking of LA, a man walks into a bar with a blue pig… no seriously, why is anyone surprised by Arnolds election?? one would think that the party idiots would learn their lesson, the guys who run for these offices, the politicians are so blank and lifeless and dead, yes DEAD, DEAD DEAD DEAD, that anyone who comes along with even a shred of personality stands a better chance, someone as charming and bright as Arnold is a shoe-in, prediction: that in the years to come we will see a return to old style personality-politics, the rhetoric will change, no one gives a fuck about figures and political agendas, “a chicken in every pot yadda yadda”, after Regan and Jessie V and now Arnie one would think that the direction is clear, i’ve always thought that Richard Pryor would make a great president… meanwhile a tv program about children being used as soldiers in various third world military systems, Sierra Leone, south america etc, grim faces of young kids forced to kill their peers, and this is addressed as if it were not the side effect of the root problem namely poverty, that it’s like ‘well thats the way things are there…’ it just strikes me as insane that the reaction to world famine and misery in the west is still so absurdly slow, almost non existent… if its not true that the west needs a slave culture to make its sneakers and designer hand bags, devote land needed for food production to the growing of cut flowers etc etc then why isnt something done now instead of “soon, sometime in the near future”… continued t’mrow morning chris

post: cold war of rock, ufo’s etc i urge someone out there to write a screenplay wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes dictator of the united states, perhaps he’s rushed into office after his run as governor due to an invasion of alien space arab terrorists who come from some oil-rich desert planet, singlehandedly he crushes and mangles the evil hordes of slimy turbaned creatures all the while dressed in a smart but tasteful Armani suit cause after all he is the president… anyway the idea is to get Arnold to play himself… i think he’s much better suited to be a dictator than a president… (i recently heard that both hitler and idi amin each had only one testicle, this as a prerequisite for dictatorship could easily be checked in the case of prospective candidates) in other news we (the band) have just returned from a cheerful grind of media attention in Europe… all in all i have come away feeling very positive about the future of the whole thing, that maybe blondie is something beyond being one of the worlds biggest cult bands… the record has been well received by all the people we’ve talked to who heard it and those were mostly journalists and radio people i had a lot of revelations about the world of popular music after spending hours and hours discussing the same stuff with the press at large and the band members… let me see if i can remember some of this shit… wellll i think that the people who are into brittany and american i-dull and all of that stuff are not the people who are deep into music, i think that the ones who buy 15-20 cd’s a year as opposed to those who buy 100 cd’s a year are the ones who are into the superficial trends of music… unfortunatly the masses of people are the ones who in their sheepish following shape the trends of popular culture… i could swear that the dumbing down of the masses and the mainstreamization of popular music is a planned thing… “absurd!! paranoid conspiracy nut thou!!!” but all agree that the days of music as an anti-establishment force are over, that if one can hear heavy rock on a sneaker commercial thats as good or better than the stuff thats on the radio then why bother paying attention, its all become just a soundtrack, backing track for modern life always droning on without any uniqueness… i kept quoting Karl Marx who said something like ‘the way to undermine the bourgeoisies is to co-opt the avant garde’, that means that the way to control the masses is to make any new outstanding idea part of the system of control… in the UK they’ve been eating this ‘pop-idol’ garbage even longer than here, how anti-punk is this bunch of straight old farts telling these tearful young people that they suck or are good… wouldnt it be fantastic if the next time they had a ‘casting call’ for one of these shows nobody showed the fuck up!! one night in a hotel i was watching the brit version of ‘american idol’ (that or porno movies) as they laughingly played the clips of the ‘abject failures’ the people who they considered the worst, bottom etc etc and it struck me that some of these nuts with their quriky personal styles and weirdness were of course WAY better than the bland dull people who were the ‘winners’… and any way where the fuck does competition enter into art, i’ve always been very against the “spirit of competition” that chews its way through society… (years ago i saw a film on life in the rain forests of the amazon; there the older kid is happy to show his skills to the younger, the idea of holding back, competing is not in the vocabulary) the white stripes and the strokes, the white stripes and the strokes, over and over were these guys referred to in our discussions, do they represent a real breaking away from bland mass produced rock or are they just more cult stuff that will be followed up by cleaner more acceptable versions of what they do… this is all an odd very subtle struggle now, its perhaps the ‘cold war’ of rock, not as defined as it was in the days before MTV as the fellow says: “the enemy is us” what else have i got… ok, rather than going away my wife Barbara’s ufo tv spot that was done for SCI-FI TV here is still pulling in comment and e-mails… the main reason being that the thing was shot using the world trade center in new york as a location… now we’ve gotten to a place in the culture wherein my denial of the ‘reality’ of the thing will undoubtedly convince various people of its viability but even though i personally wish that indeed it had been evil aliens who destroyed the trade center, the blame is unfortunately a lot closer to home and the now famous tv spot is just that: a tv spot with a fake photoshop (or whatever) ufo etc etc etc so once again the sci-fi tv spot with the ufo at the world trade center is not a ‘real’ film of a ‘real’ ufo, barbara is the person in the helicopter but she was just pointing at empty sky and the ufo images were put in later, neither she nor i have had any alien encounters, been abducted by space. or other aliens, and we are currently not hanging out with any space aliens and to the best of my knowledge have nevr met any creatures from outer space, have never been on a flying saucer etc etc etc i had some more stuff i wanted to write but i cant remember at the moment… oh one thing is for those of you who read books (the things in book stores) i have been a fan of one Martin Amis of late, he is a pretty complicated writer but i suspect that his books are enjoyable on many levels, any way i really recommend one called “Times Arrow” which simply is the story of a persons life in reverse, a bit like “memento” the film, its much more though, now im into his “London Fields” which is very funny and clever i suggest any of you who indulge in literary pursuits check this stuff out… all for now, rehearsals start soon for the next part of the touring, keep the comments coming in, thank you all as usual love chris

the fifty greatest lists of 2003! we go to europe for two weeks to do promo, tv in various european markets, maybe i’ll see some of you all… Akira is really a great amazing little creature and im sorry too miss time of her as we are getting along great, she really is alert and adventurous, likes to go out and see stuff, we went to a party at bob gruens, she was fascinated by a lot of people in one place beyond that what? this that,… ive seen heard people take the view that the government, powers that be, are ‘too stupid’ to really do any of the insidious things that are suspected of them, it… bush is a clever decoy, his dumbness is certainly not indicative of the clever double think that is employed by those behind the throne… a good example: i just saw an article in the sunday times about a showing of the “Battle of Algiers” at the pentagon, this is a heavy anti war film about the french occupation of Algeria and all the underhanded methods, torture intimidation, coercion etc that were used to try and break the back of the Algerian national liberation front… even though the french won the battle of the films title, were successful in destroying the guerilla movement in the capitol city of Algiers they ultimately ‘lost’ the war and left the country…well its a simple point just dont underestimate these fuckers ( the times piece is easy to read put Battle of Algiers into GOOGLE, its one of the first things to come up) i see the site here is getting more elaborate, barry’s got a thing going that has old memorabilia and junk, i’ve got tons of this stuff, just have to get the scanner going… what else, not too much back soon chris

this is in reference to the comprehensive Blondie gig list which Barry is working on] jeez… good fucking luck with this…theres no way, i think you should somehow indicate that this is a partial list… the first actual blondie gig was at a place called monty pythons with the miamis, a later gig there was attended by some rich up towners who hired us to play a private party… various private parties and semi public events… there are just too many gigs and partial gigs to even get close to listing for ex the stilletos opened for the dolls someplace in midtown… 82 club was played many times… gigs at whites pub where debbie tended bar near wall street… blondie did the music for ingrassias rendition of the first act of jackie curtis’ vain victory at some loft spce in lower manhattan (clem, leaving a taxi for this event, opened the cab door in front of an oncoming car which nearly tore it off, told cops his name was joe dellasandro) gig with the dictators at the cuando gym on houston street… very famous jam in seattle with gary v. me and clem backing up iggy in the local ‘punk house’ after the idiot tour show there… first out of town gig was in phila…. many gigs in boston early on… with john cale at ‘my fathers place’ on long island, many gigs there ( there we were recorded by the FBI discussing illicit things with some promoter that they were after, they later interviewed us at our lawyers office)…. at the mabuhay gardens in san fran the first time we played there the dressing room walls were pristine white, we did THE VERY FIRST BITS OF GRAFFITI stuff about ronnie toast etc, on various returns not only were the walls dense with writing but in places they were actually worn away from layers of hacking and ink… played on some stupid roller derby tv show in LA…. at one point played cbgb’s every weekend for seven months… played various forgettable clubs in new jersey malls… any way etc etc you can see what you’re up against here… i didnt go over the whole list and this is just what comes to mind now , im sure im forgetting a lot of things i looked at the list and see some of the things i mention here… i guess the biggest problem is that we played sooo many times at cb’s and max’s and other places around nyc, im sure we played close to a hundred gigs at cb’s and max’s c