Just got back from a 4-day tour filling in on drums for LiveFastDie, a band fronted by New Hampshire’s own Ethan Campbell, who was the guitar player for my old band Some Action.

We were in the supporting slot for King Khan & the Shrines, who are one of the most amazing live bands out there. Pure garage soul, like a punk rock James Brown fronting a German punk wedding band.

Highlights include:

• Seeing Khan’s junk on two occasions — once when meeting him for the first time (he was stretching it backstage for optimum length before taking the stage in his arabian bike shorts) and again when he ran out of the venue in the middle of the song to tell his friend he had just shit himself, and pulled down his pants to prove it before running inside as a police car cruised down the street. This was shortly before he jumped on a moving dump truck and rode down the street. To describe each and every crazy stunt he pulled would be exhausting, but nudity and interfering with scheduled garbage pickup always rank high on the punk points scorecard.
• Rocking out to hundreds of people — three of the four shows were sold out and overflowing. We had a frontline of fist-pumping fans and a packed house behind them. The sets were a Bud-soaked blur, and everyone just ’shredded’ in between songs so there would be no silence. Sometimes Ethan would teach us how to play the songs on stage. The crowd was there to be entertained but also annoyed into remembering that all things are not comfy bourgeois yuppie Ikea peace symbol vinyl collection Starbucks okey-dokey.
• Always bring a chicken suit on tour, but burn it afterwards because you’ll never want to put your head in there again.
• On the first night we were partying on the Motel 6 balcony after trying to duct tape a plastic bag over the broken window on King Khan’s van in a downpour. It was late and we were loud, and suddenly our neighbor flung his door open and screamed at us to keep it down. After we all just kind of stared back, his tone became more forceful: “I mean, really guys. Let me give you a suggestion: for instance, SHUT THE FUCK UP!”. The door slammed behind him.
• The King Khan guys wanted to go to what they said was a ’50’s rockabilly diner’ down the street from the motel. It turned out to be a truck stop with a diner called ’50’s diner’. I caught a couple more hours of sleep in the van while the band went in and tried to order fresh-squeeze orange juice, mineral water and a green tea. “Orange juice? We got a jug,” was all the waitress could think to say.
• By the end of the tour, we had accumulated about three yards of reflective metal foil (retrieved from a dumpster in Boston and worn as a helmet by LiveFastDie shred guitarist Sarim), the aforementioned chicken suit (also often worn by Sarim to approach people stuck in city traffic) and a stolen Pizza Hut sign that said, “It’s all about the cheese” with the words “drugs in the” written between “the” and “cheese”. Of course there were various illustrations of crack pipes on the cheese and it was used as sort of a backdrop for the LiveFastDie merch table.
• (told in a completely exaggerated New Jersey nice guy voice:) “Hello, My name is Anthony Piscanelli, and I heard you like cheeseburgers! How do I know you ask? A little birdie told me! No matter! I’m here to tell you about a great deal from MacDonalds. Two cheeseburgers for ninety-nine cents! You can’t go wrong! MacDonalds. You can’t… go… wrong.” I’m probably butchering it but that was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard and if you don’t understand why, think about all the stupid shit you were laughing at the last time you had to drive several hours a day.
• Everyone was awesome yet again, from the people who let us crash to the random strangers who we found something in common with, albeit usually for only a few minutes. I saw a lot of old friends from the Some Action days and was glad to see everyone is doing well. In fact, we still had much more in common that I had expected, running along parallel paths as it were through getting older.
• To me, music is music. I don’t see any conflict in having a crazy pop-metal band on one hand and then go play with a power punk band on the other hand. All of these experiences feed off one another. I would love to be the one that figures out a way to bring both scenes together. But until then, on with the show…

I’ll be checking back in sometime next week as we’re entering the studio tomorrow to start tracking the new Dead Unicorn album, Global Thermonuclear War. Following that I’ll be wrapping up an EP with Morgan Evans under the Acid Arrow name, nailing down the Ads project with Joe Maggio and preparing the Stage Select debut LP. Oh yeah, and a little thing called writing an entire business plan before the week’s out… wish me luck.