post from santa barbara

“We were dancing and loud. We snuck our way down to the secondfloor section. One girl joined us, she came by herself and she knew all the words. Then later we were joined by a dancing frog, and sexy cow girl.” “I sat down in the beginning (with the crowd) for a couple songs, but then couldn’t stand it, it was wrong… you can’t sit at a rock concert, so once I committed to screwing the people behind me” “…i came up with the acronym, ” Pioneers under negative komments” (PUNK).” “…a good antidote to all the 9/11 media crap we’ll have to tolerate. Everyone must feel for the victim’s families and communities but the thought of watching Bush and Blair bullshitting about their anti-terrorist achievements while doing the suitably sympathetic and dignified thing – yeeucch.” “Thank GOD the market crashed.” ” F anyone who says/implicates you’ve sold out – what are you supposed to do, live in other people’s attics/couches and steal bread from friends’ cabinets (i got a 47 year old one-of-those in my attic right now! Nice, sweet guy, but…)?” “AOL sucks. i keep losing my coonection ” “SHAYLA LIVES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” “Please tell me that you guys are at least getting paid for the Mazda commericals featuring “One way or another”?” “…I could use my binoculars to focus on your hands and try to steal some licks. Guess what…I have no idea what you are doing” “…for our 8 year anniversary he booked us a suite at the Silver Legacy in Reno for the night of the show. He made me promise I wouldn’t roam the corridors and elevators in search of the band, though. Damn. ” thought i’d include a few choice comments from the e-mails i get… unless some major event or other drives me to the computer i think this is the last of the tour messages for now… i think there are two shows left… i really had a good time at pretty much every gig, all in all this tour has been very enlightening, i’ve gotten even more involved with the website and i feel more hopeful about the future of the band in general, that we may actually be able to keep on doing live shows for longer than id anticipated going into this… i’ve met a lot of great people, last nite we played in Kelseyville CA at some kind of resort deal, this was an odd choice for a venue, bordering on a dinner theater, (at least they cleared the tables before the show) problem with these situations is that people show up because they just attend anything thats at the place, not because they want to see whoever is playing, i guess this is good for making converts but we’d like to think people are there to see us… (this doesnt mean we aren’t aware of all the fans who come to the shows in out of the way locations, i always can get a vibe from the people in the audience who are there for blondie even if they’re not yelling and carrying on, just more cosmic energy stuff)… anyway last night right at a table in the front was a young girl who was so moved by the whole thing that she was literally in tears for the entire set, i in turn was caught up in her enthusiasm and handed her my finger picks as we got off stage, by sheer coincidence i walked right into her and her father as i was heading for the bus… turns out ‘Lacy’ was there for her 18th birthday present, (her birthday was sept 11 no less) and was a huge fan… i brought her on the bus for a bit, she got to talk to DH and watch me play grand theft auto some more (punch line of the grand theft saga is that the fucking copy of the game im using which was borrowed from Jinsoo [the knife] our keyboard tech, has a glitch of some kind so that everytime i’d get all the three ‘caporegimes’ [see the godfather] to the meeting at the dons house, while fleeing from the triads in a ‘stretch’ limosine that was really miserable to handle, every time i’d succesfully complete the damn ‘mission’ the stupid game would crash, what this means in english is that one cant finish that particular copy of the game no matter what [yes i tried cleaning off the disk, no, it IS actually the disk itself thats screwed up, weird] i still am not sure if ill ever buy it, im scared of not doing anything else if i have it around)…Lacy was so sweet and knocked out at being around Debbie, we were all pleased we could do something for her that meant so much… i am really psyched that we are getting so many young fans here in the US, this too makes me feel hopeful that maybe at least some of the kids here will be able to get past the GAP style media brainwashing thats attempting to produce a generation of safe clones who will act out their ‘animal house’ spring break safe legal wildness and then settle into dull middle class life with no questions asked (people dont get that the ‘aquarian age’ technically is, according to the doctrines of western astrology, a very orderly period, ask your friends who are into it… have you seen ‘starship troopers’? where everyone is part of the global government system and all live a mode of communal fascism? i thought that portrayal of the future was really fantastic, and im often afraid that thats exactly where things are headed, only difference is that i dont think the enemy is gonna be outer space bugs its gonna be us, other humans, one would think that world leaders would appreciate the inherent schizophrenic nature of the time now, that the “enemy” cant be destroyed without also committing suicide… i just spent about 45 futile minutes trying to find a quote from writer Theodore Dreiser… to paraphrase its basically that man isnt high enough to be totally human and not low enough to be totally animal,(of course i give animals more credit but you get the idea) somewhere in a limbo sort of non committed transitional state… right this minute in the hotel room here the two talking heads on tv are debating the “target iraq” headline with the sound turned off…well thats fucking inevitable, good as done… one of the people quoted above asked a question about my playing style and guitar influences, the finger pick thing goes back to my liking Earl Scruggs and playing five string banjo early on, also the first electric band i ever saw was “The Blues Project” who most of you probably havent heard of except maybe for keyboardist Al Cooper who went on to play with the pretty awful Blood Sweat and Tears and who is redeemed for playing on Dylans “Highway 61 Revisited” and i think other of Dylans records from the period…the guitarist of the blues project, the late Danny Kalb was the first person i saw using fingerpicks on an electric guitar, the second was the guitarist of a very obscure band called “the Spike Drivers” who i saw open for the Velvets… a really major influence on my playing besides of course Hendrix is John Fahey who is a kind of unclassifiable blues/folk guitarist master who has a lot of solo recordings available that go back to the early sixties, finally the guy who wrote me mentions Jorma Kaukonen who i dont often think of but who was an influence in that i always loved the Airplanes psychedelic approach to guitar, how guitars functioned in their mixes etc in other news something about some fish that is climbing out of the water and eating everything in sight back east and even weirder to me is some dude arrested with a garage full of short range missles in ROSWELL NM of all places… i could probably think of more stuff but i’ve got to sort through all the junk i’ve accumulated on the road today and figure out what to send back to new york and what to take to burning man… so have a good rest of summer i’ll get back on in sept some time thanks again for y’all support and keep those cards and letters coming in folks… also again: SEND PICTURES love chris

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