Tour Round UP and OUT

The end of this tour is nigh, and I thought I should talk a little more about it. I last left off in Vegas, the heart of darkness. The next day we were in California which made everything awesome. The morning of the 30th we did Morning Becomes Eclectic at KCRW (which you can listen to/watch here). Our L.A. gig was great; we got to meet a lot of our fans afterwards and hung with friends. We also got this incredible room that night at the London Hotel in West Hollywood…which might not seem interesting but the little luxuries are rejuvenating after two weeks of touring.

The next day was Hallow’een. We rented a car (essential to an enjoyable L.A. visit) and headed out to Buzznet/Stereogum for an acoustic session (which is probably somewhere on the internet but I can’t find it). Then we visited the Dangerbird office, went for lunch, then headed back to the bus. It was getting late in the afternoon and we were invited by Steve Nice out to Pasadena for trick-or-treating with his family. Back home we are used to bundling up under our costumes because it sometimes snows on Hallow’een, but out in L.A. that is not necessary. Neptune’s crinolined-and-winged fairy costume was just fine. It was very cute and very fun and by the end of it we were all exhausted. We got back to the bus and a very different kind of Hallow’een was underway in West Hollywood…revelers were just heading out to the annual street party thing that goes down. It was just weird to see so many grown adults dressed up…they take Hallow’een very seriously in Hollywood, I guess.

The next day we woke up in Solana Beach, a seaside suburb of San Diego. We went down to the beach with the intention of just checking it out. But being Canadian and all, we found the water a bit cool but totally swim-able. The whole band spent the day on the beach, swimming, jogging, chilling, laughing that people thought they needed wetsuits; Neptune dug in the sand and went in to, playing the classic “chase the waves” game. That really mellowed us out and Murray and I questioned why we didn’t live closer to the ocean? The next day some sunburns revealed themselves.

Then it was San Francisco. Awesome city but the weather changes so frequently throughout the day. We walked to the park, then went to the theatre to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno because the song You and I (Are a Gang of Losers) is in it. I went to see Hollywood Chihuahua with Neptune so I didn’t see it but apparently the song is right at the end and really prominently used. Anyhow, the next day was our show, which was interesting because the power went out twice: first during the opening band’s set, then again during changeover. We waited a long time for the power to come back on (apparently they were doing maintence and the whole block was out), during which we sat backstage with some acoustic guitars trying to figure out what we could do with no PA, no lights. Then all of a sudden the crowd cheered under the one emergency light and Murray was on stage with an acoustic. He sang Missiles and There Goes My Outfit and the lights came back on halfway through Deuxieme Partie (Second Part). We played a makeshift Bandwagoneers while Laura and my keyboards loaded, the hammered through the rest of the set.

We were parked in some small town in Southern Oregon on election day. The front TV on the bus was CNN and the back TV was Fox News…but eventually they were both on CNN because a Canadian can only take so much Fox News. We ordered pizza and beer and watched Barack Obama destroy the competition. Good job, USA. You’re coming back.

Nas vs. O’Reilly

Fox News has never been one for being particularly impartial or unbiased: I find it hard to watch because everything they say is so heavily spun. I’m of the mind where news should be unfiltered information, details and facts of an event. Sadly no American news is delivered without some editorial spin, which is why I try to read lots of different versions of the same story: so I can strip down the bullcrap and take away the facts I need to make my own opinion.

Recently, Nas was involved in a protest calling out Fox news and especially commentator Bill O’Reilly (Fox’s Rush Limbaugh) as racist. Then O’Reilly hit back with child-like name-calling, and saying Nas is just getting involved to boost his record sales.

The story I read was that Nas retorted with the zinger: “It’s what he’s supposed to do. He has an image to uphold. He’s a racist. Everybody has a marketing plan; his marketing plan is racism”. But apparently this is a quote from an earlier battle between the two in 2007. Still, an excellent remark. Zung.

So there you go. Nas is a smart dude, O’Reilly is a whiny dinosaur, and all media can be twisted to tell a better story.

Performance Enhancing Drugs

They buried actor Heath Ledger today. He had died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs: a cocktail of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and pain killers. I’m no big Heath Ledger fan or anything, but the story of his death is all over the news, and is somewhat unavoidable. There have been a lot of news stories on drugs and our “entertainers” and it’s got me to thinking about the new buzz phrase of “performance enhancing drugs.”

It’s all over sports: you name a sport and someone out there is “cheating” by using steroids to be a stronger, bigger, better athlete. Football players are supposed to be raging animals with veins pulsing from their sweaty foreheads, ready to tear the opponent’s head off at coach’s first instruction. They are our gladiators, our entertainers and are we not entertained? Was the Super Bowl not more fun than Super Tuesday? So it’s no surprise that steroid use has leaked over into other equally physical but less violent sports. Anything to get ahead, to make that extra million, really.

But I was a little puzzled by the intentions of another somewhat-related investigation: Steroids Beyond Sports, accusing a handful of musicians of using these same performance enhancing drugs and, thusly, faking audiences out. Now let’s think about this: what does a steroid do except build muscles and maybe boost energy? They make you stronger, they don’t make you a better singer, a better songwriter, more coordinated as a dancer. They don’t enhance tone, rhythm or pitch. So how, exactly, are we being faked out? If this were the case then shouldn’t, each and every celebrity that’s had a Botox treatment or cosmetic surgery be incriminated as well? That’s not real either.

The most troubling part of this story was the fact that each person they incriminated was black. And, of course, ultra-conservy Fox News was all over it. Luckily no one followed suit, and the sensationalised nothingness faded beneath the frenzy of a false American stock market crash.

So should Heath Ledger be posthumously stripped of his Acadamey Award, seeing as how it’s now proven that he was influenced by all those drugs? An altered demeanour or temperament surely could be categorised as “performance enhancing”? What is a celebrity without their, well, personality? Notice, also, that Britney has never once been accused of existing in an “enhanced” state: her wasted charisma is everything that we hang on to.

And then shouldn’t we sue food companies for putting turnips in our French fries, corn in our hamburgers and plastic in our low-fat oil? That’s all fake too. And don’t our politicians lie and never keep their word? Oh, quality and honesty of performance is a much a deeper problem than anyone is prepared to admit to.

It’s ridiculous to live in a fairytale reality where the entertainment industry – music, movies, sport, even online gaming – is not plagued by drug use, cheating and other social anomalies. We love to watch the failure of others, just as we adore the fictionalisation of success. Keeping up appearances and scratching our way to the top: all just part of a human nature that we cannot live without.