China was a truly amazing experience. I went there with being open to everything and anything i could experience. It is a country of incredibly industrious people with a great work ethic, the ability to solve a problem, not dwell on ho it came to be or seemingly regret it having happened. It is a Country of fake fender amps and Nike runners but very real food and smiles, the class system has as big a gap as East Hastings to Robson St in Vancouver, tiny shanty homes open for business crammed together in the mat blackened street fronts with narrow alley ways that open up to a thousand vendors with everything and anything for sale you could imagine in one place ( i had the sense this was a place truly for the locals when in Wuhan ) I believe Gremlins really can be purchased for a birthday now. Then, not even one block up there was a gun metal gray Porche Cayenne parked out front of a lavish business with a one tonne jade panther and impeccably ornate gold leaf detail around each doorway and window.
Our schedule was quite intense actually, averaging 3 and 4 hours sleep with 5 and 6 am lobby calls after night performances in clubs, literally planes, trains, and automobiles but some days many of each. An average day was early am lobby call, bus, train, plane, back on a bus, into another lobby, then bus to venue, cab back to hotel sometime after midnight, actually allot of the time the venue was in walking distance to the hotel which made for a moment to take something in. I walked when i could especially on my day off in ShangHai, i was up a 6 and walked around until out 2pm, met Tod and went out to finally film something. For some fucked up reason, when i gave my camera to someone to shoot me, they would have it off during filming then turn it on at the end, it happened at least 5 times and it became clear to me it was how the interface of the camera worked. Tod had done this twice and felt awful, no need though as i have always felt that more things than not were never meant to be recorded but simply be a moment in time to forever be either remembered or eventually forgotten. Live shows should hold onto their mystique, just my opinion, the gods of rock lost their status when they brought us into their homes on MTV to reveal all of their common dysfunction and boring insecurities.
The bands i was with were all incredibly different in music and as people. There was a bit of school cool at first with some of them but i believe once they had all realized we were all in this together, they could no longer fight the kindness of others simply trying to get places to do what we all need to do, the common denominator was that we were foreigners in a foreign country performing foreign music……covers from the 4 On The Floor record by Foreigner……haha! By the 3rd or 4th show, we were basically all in support of one another and wanting one another to do well. My favorite band was Flash Lightnin’, a balls out rock assault trio, Darren lead vox electric guit, Chris drums and Darcy bass. Has a ZZ Top / Queens of The Stone Age melody and attack about it with a hint of Nazereth in Darren’s voice. I had met Darcy quickly and immediately enjoyed his kindness and perspective on things, never a dull conversation that ever really ran out with him, funny, when i saw him i had thought he would be the toughest nut with the most personal luggage containing days gone by of greatness that no one could ever match……..i like being wrong.
My favourite song of these bands was Parlovrs tune ( Pen To Paper ) even though i think their best song is one called ChuggaChugga ( not yet recorded ) The opening synth lead on this is incredibly great, intentional or not, highly representative of China and what i might understand being it’s traditional music, Louie’s guitar tone is massive and unique.
The sweetest band award go’s to the Raccoons ( soon will have penned a new name ) Matt ( lead vox and rhythm guit ) has a pretty original voice, kind of the right amount of not trying so hard to be good but worked enough at it to be nicely genuine, Murray ( vox / lead guit ) had professed to me in Hong Kong that he had met his now girlfriend at one of my shows in Victoria and Jeff ( percussion / pads / lap top ) is such a grounded young fucker, has David Usher good looks, but acts like a guy just wanting to enjoy every moment, always smiling and listening, you could see how they came together as they have a remarkable amount of weight in their shoes, silly good melodies and hooks in the tunes doesn’t hurt either.
My favourite ( i had no idea who did that song moment ) go’s to ill Scarlett’s Milkshakes and Razorblades, fucking deadly chorus! i stumbled accross this video in some hotel room on the road late at night, loved it outta the gates. I had an amazing conversation with front man Alex about war, he is a much deeper man than his pre Apocalypse Charlie Sheene swagger would lead us all to believe, it was refreshing speaking to someone who knows so much about the history of wars and has an educated perspective on it, he had finished our way too deep chat with ” why can’t we simply deal with right now and look around at who needs help instead of what already happened and where we want it all to end up?” something to that effect anyway, we had been kept well in beer, strong Chinese cigarettes and oreo cookies that night under the blue tarp in Guangzhou.
Ohbijou gets my ( tightest and most professional band ) award, they are so gentle and courteous in the music they perform and as people off the stage, you know when you hear a band truly perform together and there are not really any stand alone components, it’s soft and intelligent, i told Heather ( bass ) that i loved not being able to easily pick out what she was doing, her playing sat in and amongst the rest only supporting it all like a warm hand holding a church mouse. They had also managed to not drink themselves silly thus never winging about anything the next day other than simply saying they were tired which was accurate and true for us all.
In closing, i opened my head up and a shit load of life and a shit load of it fell in, i am in reflective mode right now attempting to right my sleeping patterns again, it was fast, unfortunately mostly poorly attended shows with some pretty sketchy gear yet thanks to Tod Cutler and our fearless leader CigaZhou, we always managed to get where and what we needed to be able to fire it up for some people who genuinely found something in some of us if not all of us, we moved people who were not accustomed to show being moved by western music, not country music, western, i felt all of us really killed it in Beijing. ShangHai was the big industry show with delegates but i fell victim to it feeling more like a 20 minute noon spot during just another music conference, thinking i have to try to impress tired industry people whom for the most part may not have been listening but bobbed their heads when being caught not doing so, my issue entirely, for a moment i felt old, not just experienced but old but managed to pull it back together and dig into my only reason for being there, to do what i know i was built to do well, be an artist.
i did not intend for this to be an awards announcement, but if i could, i would have provided some people with little statues now and again when ever they had manage to effect me in my life………that would have been a shit load of bowling trophies by now!
Thanks so much to Transmit for this experience i shall never forget.
wil ( lucky man )
Oh, a dishonourable mention go’s out to Dyson for keeping Tod and I in good constant stitches.
