2 March 2006
  
Touring America With Two Plastic Bags

  
It's taking me a long time to update the site, breaking in to other people's wireless networks with a borrowed wireless card. So this might be out of date but it's the best I can do. And before anyone complains that I'm insulting Amy and Marti let me explain that plastic bags refers to my choice of designer luggage for the tour. In the old days that was all I needed - every time I entered a motel room I just tipped the contents out on the floor, and every so often I found a new plastic bag. Last time I came to America the airline mislaid my luggage and for a couple of days I was strangely liberated - I bought a toothbrush and didn't worry about a thing. So for this tour I decided to go back to my roots and travel with a toothbrush, a change of t-shirt, a paperback and a pullover in case it gets cold. The other plastic bag contains a stolen hotel robe. I might get to the reason for that later on.

  
Amy and I set off from Cleveland on Friday morning and met up with Marti in a desolate truckstop somewhere out in the freezing Ohio sunshine. It was a reminded of how touring used to be over here when I first did it back in the late seventies. But the diner had long since closed for business, the petrol pumps were dried up and vandalised and there was a lap dancing club next door.
Things have changed dramatically in the past twenty five years. But perhaps blandly might be a more appropriate choice of word. In those days we'd take our lives in our hands walking into a truckstop - they were always full of large dinner-eating truck drivers. It didn't seem to matter what time of day or night we walked in - heads would turn, conversation stopped and I could quite often imagine I heard the sound of a safety catch or two being clicked off. Then one of us would have to speak and it'd be - Hey! Are you guys from England? - and we'd be off on a weird geographical bonanza - questions about Lundon, Ingland, and did we live near Big Ben. Except when things went wrong and we were asked to leave.
Now it's just like everywhere else - or is it that everywhere else is just like America? America provided the template after all. The truckstops are disappearing, replaced by dull, uniform service areas. It's just like walking into the a services on the M1 motorway in England. They've even got Starbucks over here now...

The sun shone all the way to Annapolis. I drove most of the way while the girls discussed alterations to their set and we arrived arround three o'clock. I've been to the Rams Head Tavern before, with Amy just after Christmas. It's like a confused English theme pub and restaurant from the horrible nineteen eighties. Pinched-butted is an expression I've heard used to describe the people who run it.
The sound engineer was very nice at the soundcheck. He couldn't have been more obliging so I could forgive the monitors sounding to me as though the graphic was incorrectly set. I found out subsequently that it was his first time at the Ram's Head - leastways he carried the can for the venue's appalling behaviour towards me. I got the impression that they didn't give a damn whether I played or not, which is fair enough but if only out of respect for Amy and Marti they should have treated me with a little more consideration. They didn't even put my name on the handwritten poster which they taped to the entrance door before the show.
The place was close to full up when I went on and stayed that way for the duration of my set. There was a table of four women at the back near the entrance door who kept talking while I was playing but some of the other audience members told them to shut up and eventually they left. (They came back when I'd finished which was bad luck for Amy because they didn't like her singing one of Marti's songs. Morons.)
Everything sounded fine when I went on, there were obvious quite a few people in the audience who'd come especially to see me so I was very happy. I found the sudden interjection of high-end feedback about three songs in a bit disturbing - it hurt my ears - and I wondered why the soundman was adjusting stuff when it had been sounding alright as it was.
Things took a drastic turn for the worse when I got onto my electric guitar - I'll admit that I had the amplifier turned up to loud. I'm still getting to grips with the amplifier, it's mine but I don't get to use it that often because it lives in the States and I don't. And it's got a volume control that goes from inaudible to deafening in the space of about three millimetres. There's a place about one and a half millimetres in where you can hear it but it sounds horribly wafty and ineffectual. I don't actually know why I'm justifying myself at this point because nobody complained at the soundcheck. When I got back onto my acoustic guitar the sound had changed beyond belief so I had to do the best I could.
Suddenly there was a middle-aged man with grey hair and a pink face shouting at me from the back of the room. He was making some kind of point and when he'd finished he stumped out on short little legs. I wasn't too worried - five people had walked out, him and the four rude women - but everybody else stayed put and we seemed to be getting along fine apart from the sound engineer who was huffing around and fiddling with the monitor desk.
I was in the end section of 33s &45s, just winding up to the end of the set, when I felt a prod in my back. I turned round and there was a middle-aged woman on the stage that I'd never seen before, and behind her a large, burly-looking shadow that I took to being a security man. I was quite un-nerved so I curtailed things and quickly left.
After the show was over I went out to the front desk with Marti and Amy to where the merchandising stall was. On my way there several people wanted to talk to me. Suddenly the woman who prodded me in the back was in my face telling me I couldn't talk to anyone where I was standing (as if I was in anybody's way, which I wasn't). She said there were people who wanted me to autograph copies of my book and I must stand behind the computer and sign them. She was extremely belligerant. And she said all this in front of people who were obviously fans of mine, in front of the general public if you like. I found her behaviour appalling so I said, 'In my life I've learned to stand exactly where I fucking like and nobody orders me to stand behind a fucking computer.' I sold the most merchandise of the three of us. The Rams Head of course took their percentage.
I looked after the guitars for Marti and Amy during their set and went on later as The Man Next Door who'd come to complain about the noise. I wore a large dressing-gown that we found in a hotel. And a pair of spectacles as well. I don't think the audience recognised me, which would be just as well given the email I received later on:

ERIC

After reading this quote from your web site, I wish I would have known it appropriate to toss furniture at you, because I would have along with more than half of the audience at the Rams Head Last night.

“I was a bit uneasy about playing in Cleveland - about playing anywhere in America outside of New York in fact - but particularly Cleveland because the last time was 1979 supporting Rory Gallagher at the Agora Ballroom. The reception was the most hostile I've ever encountered over here - they threw bottles, cans and furniture at us and afterwards someone tried to run me down in a car outside the venue. when we got back to the hotel there were abusive phone calls and even a couple of death threats. I didn't mind at the time but I could do without a repeat. Rory Gallagher was very nice to us though. So after that you can imagine I was approaching Cleveland with a certain trepidation even though I couldn't quite imagine Amy and Marti's audience chucking furniture at me ”

That was the most awful performance I ever heard in my life, you have no business being on stage or even near Marti Jones.

I think it came from the bloke at the back who shouted at me. He also sent emails to Marti and Amy's agent and to the head of Amy's record label recommending that I be removed from the tour. In those emails he said I had no talent and described me as 'a bitter and vulgar man'. (I like vulgar - it reminds me of a gig I did with Ian Dury at the Guildhall in Portsmouth: he wrapped up the evening by saying, 'that's it then, thanks for coming, I hope I haven't been too vulgar...')
I replied to his email:

dear twit

I think my proximity to Marti is Marti's business, not yours. I presume you were the obnoxious little tub in the horrible brown leather jacket who shouted at me from the back of the room. Check out my site in the next few days if you want to know what I really think.

Otherwise just fuck off and stop playing at being a policeman.

Just in case anyone feels they'd like to say anything to the man who says I have no business being near Marti Jones, his name is Larry Gaetano and his email address is
For Chum Larry's benefit I should make it clear that Marti has no problem hanging out or working with me.
And on the positive side there's this posting on Amy's site:
Wreckless Eric was wonderful and hilarious and charming and we were thrilled to finally see him live. "Whole wide world" was a favorite song of ours before we ever heard Amy cover it live. After his brief opening act, Eric joined Marti and Amy in a funny skit that ended with them all playing his wonderful Stiff days song "Take the Cash"...All and all, it was a perfect show. If you get a chance to catch this tour, don't miss it.

The next night at the World Cafe in Philadelphia was a lot easier. The sound was great and the audience were very enthusiastic. I'm afraid I enjoyed it too much and played for too long. Amy got a gentle email of complaint about that, amongst other things (but not to do with me), from a gentleman who it seemed had timed each section of the show with a stopwatch.
In Dayton (home of the astronaut John Glen) I got it right - subdued volume and a shorter set - I played well although I was suffering from a severe depression brought on by antibiotics I was taking for a mouth infection and a cut on my finger that was turning septic. (Doctors never believe me when I tell them that strong antibiotics put me into a severe depression, so I always take them by trying to convince myself I'm just imagining it. Until I start freaking-out and fall into a black hole.)

That sounds a bit depressing but things are fine - I just stopped taking the medication and things got better of their own accord. And the sun came out too.
 
   
27 March 2006
  
It seems to me that I spend most of my time trying to keep up with a backlog of unanswered emails – it doesn’t matter how many I answer I can’t keep up to date with it. It’s like painting the Forth Road Bridge – when you get to the end you’ve got to start at the beginning again. I waste large amounts of my life fuck-arsing about with the vagaries of technology, and in between times I sit in a moving vehicle looking through the front window at whatever scenery is going past.
And all the time I’m in a vague state of panic because there are things to be done that haven’t been done yet, opportunities that are about to be missed, bills left unpaid through lack of money, other bills left unpaid through lack of money in the relevant account, money transfers that arrive too late, and a whole world of financial ruin about to crash in and wreck havoc on my already precarious existence.
I’ve convinced myself that when I get home the building society will have foreclosed on my mortgage, that the gas, electricity and telephone will all be disconnected and the Inland Revenue will be demanding an explanation of my tax return along with an enormous sum of money. In the meantime I’ve had an email from the website host telling me my subscription is due – actually overdue by the time I got the email. And that’s why the site has been down for a few days. I had a moment of panic there because I couldn’t remember my password. It’s a life’s work in itself trying to remember so many passwords and pin numbers. (What a fucking joke it is - I can’t write them down somewhere because someone might find them and spend all my money behind my back, invade my computer and bugger my life up to the very depths of its foundations.) Something like that, I don’t know. I couldn’t change my password because I’ve been running this site for years now and I can’t remember what credit card I used to pay my subscription in the first place. Fortunately I found the original password by typing in every ludicrous word I could think of until one of them did the trick. Just so that it won’t happen again the password is:
  
*********
  
In between times, when I’m feeling strong, I push it all away. I think: what’s the worst that could happen? I might die. And then none of this would matter anyway. So life has to be about more than all this crap. I’m a musician, an artist, a writer – I should be doing something creative every day. But creativity seems to be too special to fit into this mundane idiocy so it doesn’t get done. It turns into a guilty pleasure, something to do when all the chores are done – well, not done, they’re never done – but when enough’s been done to ever so slightly relieve the pressure. And I’m too tired to do anything else anyway.

But it’s not always like that. Amy and I took a drive round downtown Cleveland the other night, looking for something to eat. A bit of a mistake at 11 o’clock at night because Cleveland just isn’t that sort of place. There wasn’t anything, or if there was it had already closed.
We drove round a corner and heard music coming from a large, glass-fronted bar. There was a band set up in the window - a boogie band - old school r‘n’b at its very worst. We were powerless to resist.
Once we got inside I knew exactly what had happened – we’d obviously been hit by a runaway truck or something as we came round the corner, and now we were dead. And as dead musicians this was where we had to go while the celestial authorities sorted out what to do with us.
It was the final day of Mardi Gras – Mardi Gras in Cleveland?? – so there was much drunkenness. Drinking had been going on all day, since 11 o’clock in the morning, and the staff were busy sluicing the floor in between the dancers. I had the impression that they were trying to wash away a lot of vomit. People were festooned with cheap plastic Mardi Gras paraphernalia and due perhaps to a trick of the light, their faces had a subtle green tinge.
But that was no trick of the light – the green tinge was because they were dead, they were zombies. I looked at Amy but she was the same colour as I hoped I was but I knew this was probably about to change.
The band had been dead for longer than anybody else. That must have been how they got the job. They presented a terrifying spectacle. They were fronted by a woman in her fifties with wild blonde-from-a-bottle hair, a would-be Janis Joplin from the trailer park in a grubby black T-shirt and ill-fitting jeans. The guitar player was nondescript, grey with an unhealthy suntan, blanding out on a Fender Strat with custom pick-ups. The King of the Zombies was on bass - pastel green face and protruding chin, set off with a little white moustache.
And here I’ve noticed a phenomenon – the simplicity of the musical form offends the sensibilities of bass players in bands like this so they compensate by adding another string – it’s the truly dreadful cult of the five string bass. It’s just what The Blues needs, an extra low note here and there.
But the keyboard player was the star of the show - a blonde woman in her sixties, wearing a black stretch trouser suit. Tall and bony with extremely long legs, she perched on a bar stool, one leg launched into the air at an alarmingly acute angle, knee at chin height. The other leg stretched out in front and over to one side in a long, straight line. Her feet were encased in huge black platform trainers. She had a pronounced chin. A lantern jaw. They all had lantern jaws (except the singer – she didn’t really have a chin). They must have all been related. Or maybe it was just a side effect of being dead for a long time.
The first number bumped and ground to a finish and the singer burbled some semi-intelligible stuff into the hubbub – something about a busy schedule and checking out their website. Amy and I looked at each other open-mouthed –they’ve got a busy schedule and we’re hanging around trying to get our kicks in Cleveland.
Then they launched into a slow blues. The keyboard lady sang while the singer wailed on a thankfully almost inaudible harmonica. It was a masterpiece of the genre in that it seemed to encompass a snatch of every famous blues song ever written without actually have any form of its own. When everyone in the band except the drummer had taken a solo or two and we’d woken up this morning, walked all the way to Chicago and gambled our existence away in a whorehouse in New Orleans, the first lady of the keyboard brought the number to a halt by thrusting a bony fist into the air. The band stopped then she pulled her arm sharply downwards and the band went into a swirling, gurgling finish. I was thrilled to bits – she’d flushed the song down an imaginary toilet.
They couldn’t possibly have topped that, or if they could we didn’t need to know about it, so we left.
  
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Next time I'll try and write some stuff about the gigs and the great times I've had travelling and playing with Amy and Marti. For the moment it seems so monumental that I don't know where to start. I'm going home on Tuesday and I don't want to.
 
 
5 April 2006
  
It's a miracle that I got this site back again. I forgot to renew the subscription. They only gave me five days notice that it was due and I was roaming around the USA at the time so it isn't entirely my fault. I paid up on the sixth day but by then they'd taken it down and parked it up in a used site lot. It might have been only a matter of days before someone bought it secondhand.
But now I'm back it almost isn't too late to announce my World Cafe transmission - http://worldcafe.org on WXPN (broadcasting from Philadelphia). I recorded it during the Cynical Girls tour. It consists of an in-depth interview about what I really don't want to call my career, and four songs - Joe Meek, Reconnez Cherie, Same and 33s & 45s. I also give a demonstration of the dreadful speeded-up Whole Wide World that still sometimes crops up - they pushed the pitch up from E to F in the cutting room and made me sound like I'd been at the helium. It's all there but I don't quite know what time it'll be on.
Now I've got to drive to Gatwick to pick Amy up. Then we're off to Bristol for the St Bonaventures gig. It's half past six in the morning. I started doing this pop thing because I didn't want to have to get up early for work. Something must have gone wrong.
This site could really do with some pictures. I'll attend to it when I get back.