Sydney, AU (EMI MUSIC AUSTRALIA)-The City of San Francisco makes their parking inspectors, who cop a fair bit of flak as we all know, drive around in strange little golf buggies. Is this some sort of sick joke? Is their job not hard enough as it is, are they not on the receiving end of enough ridicule? The uniform sure doesn't help them out either. Our opening act at the Independent was local live hip-hop act Crown City Rockers. From what I heard later on, they once had a far worse immigration experience than I did.
They had a tour booked in Australia, had a problem with their VISAs on the way in. They were put in a detention centre for three days, then sent home and banned from the country for three years. Ouch. We had a really fun show that night, possibly the most together one we've had so far on the tour. Ollie's solo in Soly just kept on building, like he'd ordered thousands of minions to build an elaborate musical structure in his image. Luckily enough Will and I were still energetic enough to keep laying the foundations and reinforcing everything as the colossus of Rhodes climbed toward the sky.
From there we had a two-day journey to Boulder, Colorado. We stopped around halfway, in Salt Lake City, Utah. All I really know about the place is that it was founded by Mormons, there is not much alcohol around, and as the name suggests it is situated near a salt lake. We didn't learn much more, spending the whole night parked outside shopping mall. That's the only place you can really park a bus like ours. Wayne Carey came back at about 5am to continue the drive to Boulder, 5344 feet above sea level, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It is a big college town, and a bit of an earthy-natural-new-age town judging by some of the crazy shit we found at the supermarket. The guy in front of me in the queue bought two wheatgrass shots and a cinnamon scroll. They kind of cancel each other out, don't they? Boulder sure was a little easier on the eye than Salt Lake City. They have trees and a creek, and other such mountain-towny things. Our competition for the night was a reknowned Grateful Dead covers band who were playing one of their three sold-out nights. This is the land where the jam bands run free.
"What's this one?"
"Albacore."
"Ahh."
It was a fish I'd heard of, but I couldn't get its similarity in look and texture to raw chicken out of my head. I slapped on a few more slices of pickled ginger and some more wasabi and hoped for the best. This is when things started getting weird. The lights began to dim around me. They continued to dim past the point of accidentally-leaning-on-the-dimmer. Then the mirror ball sprang to life and the stars began swimming all around us. The wizened chef behind the bar pulled out a MIDI saxophone and started playing a barely-recognisable Happy Birthday. Everyone else in the restaurant seemed as shocked as I was. He bowed, everyone applauded, the lights came up, and he went back to the kitchen.
When we came out on stage the crowd went bananas. It was like a gig in Melbourne or something. As soon as we started playing, they were all shakin' it like there was no tomorrow. People started requesting songs, singing along (often to songs they didn't really know – always fun to watch from the stage), a few free spirits jumped up on stage, a security guard jumped up to catch them and pretty much wound up dancing too, and some guy lined up six Coronas for us on the front of the stage. Some of the intra-band communication left a little to be desired, but with a crowd like that it was hard not to have an awesome time up there.
"On the Road" mentions something about Des Moines, Iowa being home to the most beautiful girls in world. We were pretty excited about passing through there to see if it was true, but then we realised that the book was written in the 50's and things may be different now. Oh, and we're pretty sure Jack Kerouac was gay. We stopped at a servo in West Des Moines the next morning, but the only girl I saw was a truck driver stocking up on Mountain Dew. That's the last time I take ogling advice from Jack Kerouac.
The venue we played in Madison was the Majestic, which looked like a big old theatre that had been picked up and bent sideways by a malevolent, theatre-hating giant. Again we were AMAZED at how well everyone knew our stuff! They knew some of the words better than I do! It's hard not to have fun with a crowd like that. We met most of them after the show, and were told we had to check out some more of Madison's nightlife. There are a lot of bars in Madison. They all close at 2am and pretty much everyone goes straight to Ian's Pizza. By the time we got there, the place was so full that they had a bouncer out the front. A pizza-by-the-slice place with a bouncer. That's impressive.
