internet place in brooklyn is straight out of Wm. Gibson, complete with dirty floors flickering neon and host of odd characters… returned from U.K. yesterday rush hour… as things progress i realize how hard it is to differentiate one show from another, was thinking that if something fell on my head during the set i might then be able to make a distinction, as it is though, the actual music parts of the separate events are all blurred together… what i remember is the cute girls, sometimes boys in the crowd, the streets of whatever city we’re in, sometimes what the backstage area looks like etc etc, that stuff… cause people ask me what i thought of such and such a concert and on the whole the answer is that i dont really know, some are better than others as a result of various intangibles the last show in London at wembley was good for me… (by the way i still dont have an internet account up and running which is why im in this place with my yahoo account…id had this hotmail account for years but of course as {with all good sleazy corporate entities} i tried to log on recently and discovered that since i hadnt used it in 30 days they expected me to pay for what was formerly a free service… yahoo seems to still be free) it was of course great to be back in the U.K. and briefly in Ireland, Scotland…i’d gotten a lot of e-mails from you all questioning the wisdom of us going out with INXS everyone being too polite to just say it was a fucked idea but i got the drift…i dont really know anything about those guys except that the singer managed to do himself in weirdly and naturally you were all right about it being an odd bill at best… they seemed like nice enough guys… the tour involved long blocks of down time, often after arriving at the venue for a sound check we’d have six hours of mind numbing blank space to fill… for whatever selfdestructive lack of foresight i didnt bring anything to do except for a ‘game boy “advance” ‘ on which i battled snails and tomatoes before advancing on to forks and evil cupcakes, this all in a game called “bomber man max” or some such, initially i had no aptitude for this whatsoever but after discovering that my approach had been all wrong (that i didnt have to blow up all the snails after all) i became appropriately obsessed… also there was a copy of grand theft auto 3 on the bus which was good for various moments of violent expression (ive gotten a copy of the new one ‘vice city’ which is more an extension of GTA3 than a new game, its got ‘atomic’ and i think ‘call me’ init as well as Debbies voice as a taxi dispatcher…seems they made so much fucking money with GTA3 that they could afford a whole bunch of big names as voices including Ray Liotta as the lead voice etc etc…{speaking of celebrities i was really plucked to meet Juliette Lewis when we were in L.A. the last time, its funny how one can get a sense of how people are from seeing them act, she’s one of the few people ive met who i could honestly say i was a fan of without being merely polite, had seen a lot of her work etc etc, she was so sweet and good natured and down to earth i was really knocked out, i havent had an encounter like that in ages. sooo many of ones heroes turn out to be disappointing when one finally meets them} so yeah a lot of time spent on the bus crashing virtual cars and murdering innocent bystanders) the U.K. is going the route of the USA in as much as the western economy is creating more fancy ass little cafes and galleries everywhere one looks…the last time we were over about 5 tears ago some of the now thriving areas were still uninhabited… Manchester was a real surprise and pleasure, we got a quick glimpse of the pumping youth culture as we walked around one afternoon, i wish i could spend more time there sometime, it reminds me of here in Williamsburg Brooklyn a great deal… im gonna wrap for now ive got a lot more stuff in my head that id like to put down here and hopefully ill have an account up in a week or so (all i can get where i am now is a satellite hookup or a dial-up ugh.) do keep writing i havent checked my mail from the site here for a while and expect to have to spend a day reading… oh yeah the one last thing for now is that i think it was Louis B. who gave me the “switchblade kitty” cd, anyway i really loved it especially the version of ‘my heart will go on’ , a huge improvement over celine thing, and we wound up playing the whole thing before we went on at some of the UK gigs and the sound guy Dave told me that quite a few people had approached him asking what it was… so switchblade kitty there is hope keep up the good work…. as for everyone else thanks all of you who said hello over there and i should be back here pretty soon love CHRIS