29-06-98 Nashville, TN. Day off

D (drums) and Stilly (tech) are the lucky ones. It's a day off but they have something to do. They've been invited to the Pearl drums factory in town to scope out some kind of a deal. Pearl have already graciously lent us a drum kit for the whole American tour and now the boys are off to the factory to check out the swag. They return triumphant in the late afternoon with a full set of symbols and a collection of roadie-esque clothing apparel. A sizeable horde. Most impressive. The technological rock and roll swindle continues. All we need now is a sponsorship from Apple Mac, Jaguar, and the Bank of England.

I think I've cracked the jet lag from the Ozzfest today. I managed to get up before 7pm. I can join the land of the living once more. I've just looked at Pitchshifter's schedule for the rest of the year and it runs back to back from America to Europe to Australia to Japan to England, and then back to America, finishing at Christmas. I guess I'd better get used to jet lag.

I lock the money away safely in my bunk where I can't hear it yelping. Instead I watch a footy game on the TV, spend a few hours trying to get my bloody computer to work, shoot a couple of pics of the new merch for the website, take a swim in the hotel pool. A middle aged married man with his wife and son corners me in the deep end:

"Lemme just ask ya one thing son . . . did it hurt getting that ring put in >your nose?"
"Not at all . . . it's the one through the end of my penis that really hurt"
"No shit!"

His jaw hits the water. As I swim off I can hear him repeating the story to his wife. I'm such a cheap liar. I would never get a ring in my penis, I'm too much of a chicken. I had to lie to him. SuperId. He wanted to hear something shocking. I was just hitting the spot. I was a Hershey bar or a cigarette.

Later I catch some UK news on the internet:

'Britain is funding biological organisms to attack opium poppies as part of the battle against the drug trade. The sunday times reported that Britain was helping to develop a strain of fungus which destroys the poppies at a laboratory at Uzbekistan.

They are planning to produce enough fungus to infect poppy fields in Asia, the source of 90% of Britain's heroin. The project is part of the UK's drug control programme based in Vienna.'

What? Hello? Didn't we learn anything from Anthrax and the introduction of other 'biological solutions'? There's no way that breeding a fungus to eat a certain plant is good for the environment. That thing is going to have an adverse effect on the ecosystem just like every other harebrained scheme put into practise by Western 'experts' this Century. Genetic misengineering nightmare. And where will all this socio-genetic cleansing end anyway? Biological eugenics? Get rid of the drug users so there'll be no demand for the drug in the first place? Lets read that story again:

'Britain is funding biological organisms to attack drug users as part of the battle against the drug trade. The sunday times reported that Britain was helping to develop a strain of fungus which destroys junkies at a laboratory at Uzbekistan. They are planning to produce enough fungus to infect even recreational drug users in America and the UK, the source of 90% of the world's drug users. The project is part of the UK's drug control programme based in Vienna.'

28-06-98 The Point. Atlanta, GA.

We played Atlanta twice four years ago. The crowd loved us here last time. Hopefully it'll be like seeing old friends tonight. The first time we played at the Masquerade there were 700 people there and none of them decided to applaud. You could hear a pin drop. I guess the death metal crowd didn't quite get it. The second time we played at the Mid Town Music Venue. The crowd really dug us and we were rockin'. A woman came up to me with a question written on a piece of paper back then. It said something like:

"CAN YOU CONQUER YOUR OWN HATRED AND BE A LEADER FOR THOSE OF US WHO NEED A GUIDE?"

As you can imagine. We didn't hang out much. I hope she's not here tonight. Last thing I need is a Negative Zen cryptic clue stalker who's prepared to wait four years. I can imagine her pulling me from the pit and taking me back to her place. She'll hobble me and make me re-write the tour diary on the website. Atlanta punk Misery. You dirty birdy. Spare me.

The Point is a punk venue. There's a flashing early Eighties neon sign to that effect behind the stage. The sound system is knackered and so is everything else, but the atmosphere is electric and the crowd dig us. There are a lot of freaks in the audience and we feel at home. I ask them if oral sex is really illegal in Georgia. The answer is a resounding "YES!". What's wrong with America? You can't drink in the street. You can't drink until you're 21. You can't drive fast and now you can't have oral sex. It seems like the powers that be don't want the populous to do anything that might possibly be any fun. I don't get it. All these things are society's pressure release valves. You block up all the valves and you get 'leakage'.
This tour is a slew of 'leakage', an environmental disaster. Send in Greenpeace.

After the show I watch the kids play hackie in the street. It's so humid in Georgia. They must be dying. I meet a guy with a green Pitchshifter eye tattooed on the back of his neck (see pic) and then sneak off to the bus after signing a few autographs and shaking a few hands. We'll be glad to come back to Atlanta. I like it here. My problem isn't Atlanta. My problem >is the bus. The new bus is exactly the same as the last one. Same plush interior, same couches and TVs.

The problem is it's identity. It is definitely a dolphin. The last bus was a purple shark and the light blue of this bus just makes it a dolphin. I tried hard to believe it was something else, something more impressive, something that would look cool when I refered to it in the tour diary. A stingray, an eel or a killer whale. But there's no escaping it. I've been deluding myself. The new bus is ocean blue with a big wave-like swirl on the side and there's a big dome on the front of the roof (where a dolphin's nose hump would be) for the satellite. We are cruising the highways to the apocalypse in a giant cuddly dolphin. Flipper's porno circus. Help us.

26-06-98 Respectable Street Cafe. West Palm Beach, FL.

It's overcast. It's over cast and raining. I'm Florida and the weather is shit. Hundreds of days off in buttfuck Idaho where it's red hot and there's absolutely nothing to do and no days off in West Palm Beach where there's A BEACH and it's raining. ???

Inside the club I meet more residential Florida haters. Everyone who lives here hates it. The taxes must be cheap or they put crack in the water or something to hold the populous. The crowd are as lame as the weather. Brain dead surfers. I might as well be reading DaDa poetry to these fuckers, they'd be just as excited. I knew it was going to be bad when I glanced up and saw Franz Kafka mixing the lights. Doomed. We blast through our set as fast as possible and run off to the bus. Just one more gig in this flat wasteland state before we get back to the real world.

There are a couple of cool people. One of them is a 55 year old Congressman's assistant called Dan. Dan heard our tune 'Genius' on a CMJ give-away Cd and decided to come down to the gig. I like Dan. He knows what he likes and he doesn't give a toss that he doesn't look like everyone else here and he's twice as old. More power to real people like him. "You get any visa or passport problems while you're in the States then just gimme a call Jon, I can sort all that stuff out, my pleasure."
"Thanks Dan."

After show there's a thunder storm. Thunder, rain, Florida - it just doesn't sound right does it? We get really drunk in a local bar and take random shots on the digital camera of dancers quirking around to atrocious Eighties music on the floor. You bowl up to someone you don't know, take a photo of them on the digital camera, and then show them the result on the camera's LCD screen, all in the space of a few seconds, all while they're still dancing. I think they hated us, but we had a good time. The Eighties were a mistake best glossed over in my opinion and if you're dumb enough to voluntarily get up and shake you booty to the sounds of that era, then you're fair game for abuse.

Just one more day of Florida. Wind the clocks forward and lets get the fuck out of here.

25-06-98 The Rubb. Tampa, FL.

Everyone I meet of my age in Florida wants to leave. They all hate it. It appears to be a place for fat old people to crisp in the sun and then die. Tampa though seems to be a place for MTV's 'The Grind' to be permanently filmed. The streets are packed with fake breasted women in crop tops and pierced belly buttons strutting around looking plastic. Jocks in shorts make the counter part and the whole thing is most definitely not my bag (daddy-o).

Pre-show I do an interview with a video jockey. He's a nice enough guy. Very interested in the band, very enthusiastic. I don't mind doing interviews. I see it as an opportunity to air the band's views, and I am gratefully and respectful to people who have the guts to put weird music like ours in their programmes. The bit that gets me is the station IDs. You know the kind of thing: "Hi, this is J.S.Clayden from Pitchshifter and you're watching KNRTV." If only it were that simple. The problem is that these guys always have ludicrously long station names and show names and it's simply impossible for someone as fried as me to remember the whole thing and convincingly reel it all off in a smooth enough manner so as to appear like I know what the hell I'm doing. Tonight is no exception my friends:

"Can you just do some station IDs for me Jon?"
"Sure."
"OK so I just want you to say - 'Hi this is J.S.Clayden from Pitchshifter and you're tuned to Superrock Alternative Punk Indie Noise Half Hour on KNRZZT TV, Crazy Terry's Mega Metal Mania Better Music America Meg Mix 11705, DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!"

Good god. I'll need electro-convulsive therapy to remember half of that shit. Eight takes later and I finally get it.

"Hi, I'm Jon the singer from Pitchshifter. You're tuned to . . . the TV. I like to make a complete tit of myself regularly by messing up station IDs whilst filming in the street so that members of the general public get to share my agony - DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!"

The gig is full. We go on to a rapturous applause, which is still catches me by surprise no matter how many times it happens. I like it, but it still catches me by surprise. Someone has found the 'Arctic' setting on the air conditioning and the hall is freezing. The crowd are easy going and they get into the gig with a little breaking in. We even get a couple dancing on stage. They're so cute, both strutting their fancy foot work. I dig them for about half a song, then I get bored of being nice and trip the girl over and boot the guy off stage. Well, what did they expect?

After our set I go onto the side balcony before Gravity Kills play and look at the crowd with Kurt (GK's drummer). Some folks catch a sight of us and start to applaud! Crazy. I go back stage and grab a hand full of cookies and throw them out. The crowd keep cheering and ask for more cookies. I throw the whole box down. I feel more robin Hood then Mary Antoinette, but who the hell am I to judge anyway? Bloody foreigner.

After show I cruise the strip with two old friends that I haven't seen since the last time we played the USA. Greg and Big daddy. The stage manger and drum tech for Florida death metal act 'Obituary'. They're still the same. They still smoke weed. They still look at girls. They still like to have a laugh. We go for a slice and stare at the prosthetic harvest strutting the pavements. Land of the free (nose job).

Back on the bus there are two gothic girls. One of them just turned 21 and Johnny and D are giving her her first legal beer while the other one is 33 (although she doesn't look a day over 16) and has a 2 year old son waiting at home (in the dark I guess). They are sweet enough and we stick them on the guest list for the next few shows.

On the way out of town we drive down the main strip. As I'm sitting their looking out of the window one of the girls sitting outside a club on a bench seat jumps up, sticks her twelve and a half inch tongue out and hikes her skirt up to her knees. She's not wearing any panties and her pubic hair is shaved into a vertical strip. Her eyes are wide like she's tripping and she's sporting a very chemical smile. This place is just as fucked as Lake Buena Vista, only instead of plastic Mickey Mouse ears, everyone's got plastic knockers. Get me out of here.

24-06-98 House Of Blues. Lake Buena Vista, FL.

I wake up on Gravity Kills' bus. No one else is around but the bus is still rolling. I can't figure out what's going on. I must have slept about ten hours. Maybe the rest of the guys got dropped off somewhere and the driver is taking the bus to get something fixed. I ask the driver what time it is.

"Six thirty."
"Six thirty at night? I went to bed at 4 am I've slept for fourteen hours?"
"No, six thirty am. You've been in bed for two and a half hours, everyone else is still asleep."

Great. My body isn't even running on UK time. 4 am here is 10 am at home. Who goes to bed at 10am and gets up at 12.30? I've lost it. It's Black Sabbath's fault. Aw what the hell. Playing with Black Sabbath is worth losing your mind for. I go back to bed. ". . . just like witches at black masses . . .

The House of Blues is on Disney property. Deeply embedded in disney property to be precise. Lake Buena Vista is exactly the bit of America that the rest of the world laughs at. Fat holiday makers in baseball caps and shorts with their white socks to their knees, ambling around buying Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and drinking milkshakes. Lake Buena Vista is a plastic coated facade and I fucking hate it. The security guard asks me:

"Why is everybody so down on Disney man? It's all just harmless fun for the kids. What's your problem with a little fun"
"Walt Disney had a giant syringe that he used to suck the imagination of a nation's youth straight out of their heads. Kids don't need to think anymore, they can experience someone else's imagination. Combine that with the fact that Disney's new animal theme park 'accidentally' killed about 12 rare animals this year, he ripped off the poor cow who did the original voice overs for Snow White and the fucker's head is probably cryogenically preserved in a tank with a set of alien Mickey Mouse ears unceremoniously grafted to it and you can understand why everyone's 'so down' on Walt-fucking-Disney - OK!"
"OK."

This guy hates me now. It just all came out in a burst. I came over all Rumpole of the Bailey for a second there. It's the lack of sleep. " . . . sorcerers of death's construction . . ."

The show is great. The crowd already know who Pitchshifter are and they show their appreciation for us throughout the set. Thank you all. My leg is still really hurting and so I take it easy tonight. No balcony jumping. I wear bondage trousers to limit my leg movements and force me to slow down. When the music gets going I find it hard to sit still. I ask the crowd if Walt Disney is their Dad. I tell them that tonight's show is another attraction:

'Pitchshifter Land - real live punks from England, please don't feed." I think they got it, no one threw anything.

After the show we hang out upstairs in the House Of Blues. Someone tries to convince me that we should go the 'Pleasure Island' a Disney run fun Island where you pay $20 to get in and then you can go to any of the bars and clubs therein without cover charge all night. Greg (Pitchshifter's tour manager) has worked out a deal so we can all get in free because we're the band. Fuck all that. I can't see any difference between MacDonalds and Disney and I'd rather not fund either thank you very much. You can shove your plastic Mickey ears up your arse and I don't believe there's ANY pleasure on 'Pleasure Island'.

It's one million degrees in lake Buena Vista. I get snagged by some fans on the way to the bus. They are young and excited and happy and genuine, and it's a pleasure to talk to them. They just really like the music and they just want to tell me to come back and play again soon so they can bring their friends. They don't want to tell me how 'Kick ass' I am or how much they fancy the bass player or ask me if I'm from London. They just wanted to tell me that they really like the new songs and can we come back and play again soon so they>can enjoy the music live again. They're too young to have developed any pretensions yet. I like them. The kids are all right Mr Daltry.

It's my first night on our new bus. I've been travelling with Gravity Kills and so I haven't experienced the new bus. I crawl into my bunk. It's six inches shorter than my bunk on the other bus. i can't physically lie down straight. My head and feet get jammed on the wooden boards at each end.

Spine-o-biffida here I come. Seven and a half weeks left. I like it.

23-06-98 Travel Day . New Orleans to Orlando.

Personal records just keep falling on this tour. I get up at 7pm. Well I'm woken up actually, I could've slept another six hours. I am still alive. I drank the coloured drinks, I smoked the smokes, I crossed paths with those of little agenda. I got out alive. Nice place to visit.

I go out to eat with Gravity Kills. I don't know what's going on. I can't believe it's 7pm. I keep asking people what time it is. Dallas-London-New Orleans. I'm fucked. The waitress doesn't like me. She thinks I'm on drugs. She could be right. I don't know what's going on. Help.

Later we hit a truck stop on the freeway in Alabama. We need rolling papers. They don't sell rolling papers. We get desperate. We start to ask people at the gas station if they have any papers. They don't. Mr Kafka is pumping gas in the next lane. Things don't look so good. He's tracking me.

I get really desperate and start to ask truckers.

"I don't have any rolling papers sonny but I've got a pipe."
"Thanks anyway."
"My friend has some papers though, but he's in the cab of his truck with his wife and I don't wanna disturb 'em, they're probably fucking."
"Thanks for your help."

I get to bed early (before 10am). Better take it easy tonight. My left leg is really hurting. I think I must have destroyed it at the gig last night. It's painful to walk. Feels like a hernia. Great.

22-06-98 House of Blues. New Orleans, LA...

I wake up at 5pm. Coo coo ka choo, I am the space man. The jet lag has mashed my brain. I have no idea what time my body clock is running at.

It's 100 degrees and full humidity outside. We have to change busses today. Some Country and Western singer wants the best bus and we're paying less than her and so we have to change buses. Land of the free (enterprise). The new bus is the same as the other bus. The only visible difference is that the seat covers aren't leather and the bus is blue instead of purple. I don't need to recline on dead cow skin to relax and I prefer blue to purple, it goes with my eyes, so what do I care? 'Let her have, the dawgone bus - it jus aint, wurth tha fuss' (sung in a country style).

The House of Blues is pretty full. During their set Junkie XL get pelted with various food items by Gravity Kills. The dressing rooms are up in the balcony facing the sides of the stage so it's easy. It's Junkie XL's last night of the tour and so they traditionally have to get hassled.

Junkie XL's singer 'Rude Boy' throws his microphone at Gravity Kills, right through the dressing room window. A perfect shot. It's all harmless fun.
We pelt them with lemons.

We have a lot of laughs on stage. The crowd are into PSI in New Orleans. I dive over the security, run along the monitors (knocking them off the stage (oops)) and pull folks out of the crowd onto the stage. I love a good gig crowd. It's the balconies that kill me. Clubs should only let people into their balconies when the main floor is full. People get lazy in balconies. They don't clap, they sit their resting their heads in their hands. There's one guy resting his head in both hands, looking at me. He knows I can't reach him. He knows he's safe in the balcony. He can look at me and yawn. He's safe. He's wrong. I push past Jim and climb up the PA, over the rail and onto the balcony. I sit next to the bored, safe balcony guy. His head isn't in his hands anymore and his mouth is wide open.

I sing half of the tune up there next to him and jump back down.

During Gravity Kills' set a guy finds me in the crowd. "Phil Anselmo from Pantera told me to say hello. He's over in the UK playing the Ozzfest so he couldn't come to the gig." OK.
After show there is a floor show for the bands. We get dragged inside. Two women with G-strings work their way across the room to cheesy dance music. There are two other girls in the room. I watch their faces as they watch the spectacle with all the men. They aren't watching the girls, they're watching the men's faces. They must feel really uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable and I'm not even a woman. I hide behind a table and sip and stare. But am I allowed to hide? I am dragged from behind the table into a big easy chair. Some fool slips our CD into the player and the woman gyrates around in close proximity to my face in time with the music.

Luckily the bouncer who's looking after the two girls calls for a five minute break in the middle of my turn. I escape to a bar with Chris (the main tech for Gravity Kills) under the guise of going to the toilet.

The bar is all fucked up. New Orleans is all fucked. The people are all fucked up. What do you expect? Anyone who voluntarily moves to a place that is renowned for people getting fucked up in, is bound to be fucked up. My ex-girlfriend's sister's new boyfriend is working the bar. Small world. I forget the advice given to me at the club earlier on and drink a series of multicoloured free shots at the bar. 'Desensitized' (an old Pitchshifter CD) is on the duke box. Nice.

At the bar I meet a girl with a lip piercing who wants to read my Tarot cards. I thank her but decline. We get into a conversation.

"I used to be at college. I was a grade A. But I left and moved down to New Orleans."
"Why?"
"To get drunk."
"Oh."

The Tarot girl introduces me to a friend of hers.

"Jon, this is my friend Lucy."
"Hello I'm Jon, how ya doing?"
(Crying) "My fucking boyfriend ran off to Baton Rouge for two months with another woman and left me here with our son."
"Nice to meet you."

This place is fucked. I escape back to the safety of the bus with Chris.

Unfortunately the bus isn't too safe right now, because it's gone. Nice. I guess I'll have to take that 12hr ride to Florida with the Gravity kills boys. I stay up watch weird movies on their bus with Doug (keyboard player) and then drop dead in the bunk they've set aside for me at 10am (my current tour record).

21-06-98 Travel day. London - Dallas - Baton Rouge, LA.

Kafka's little men with hammers have had a field day this weekend. I'm woken up by their tapping on my ankles again. I can hear them laughing.
It's 6am.

We get to the airport at 8am. Since the airline messed up the guitars and the equipment it's all already waiting at the airport. The problem now is that UK Customs won't give us the guitars back. They think we bought them in America and we're trying to sneak them into the UK without paying the rip off import duties. Those dumb bastards. The guitars are ten years old.

They are all battered and dirty and have obviously had a good kicking around the world. A blind, drunken cretin could tell that these guitars aren't brand new. Customs men are soft cops man.

"Where we the guitars bought?"
"England."
"Do you have proof of purchase?"
"Do you have proof of purchase for anything you bought ten years ago?"
"Just answer the questions please Mr Clayden."
"No, I do not have proof of purchase."
"Where were the guitars made?"
"What?"
"Where were the guitars made?"
"I dunno, where ever Ibanez makes them . . . Japan?"
"So they weren't made in England."

This guy is a pituary retard. How did he get a job at customs?

I have to let the manager deal with it. I'll stab this guy if we go on.

Ten hours in the air later and we are back in America, back on the silver shark, back on the way to baton Rouge. The air conditioning has broken down on the bus. The thermometer reads 91 degrees Celsius. Ten miles down the road from the airport and he bus driver starts shouting. We all run down to see what the emergency is. The road is on fire. It's so hot that the scrub inbetween the opposing lanes of the freeway has caught fire. The cars and trucks have to drive through a cloud of smoke. The thermometer is up to 93 degrees. Welcome back to America.
I feel weird. No sleep. Continent hopping. I have to stop and take stock of the fact that we've just played a gig with Black Sabbath to 20,000 people. Seems like a dream now. A few hours ago I was watching Tony Iommi work his magic. Now I'm back in the USA on the way to New Orleans. I even managed to stop in with Mark and say hello to our parents when were in the UK. One minute I'm in Dallas, the next I'm chatting to my Dad, then I'm on stage to 20,000 people in a super bowl, then I'm back on the bus in Texas. Quantam fluxing.

BANG! As I'm mulling over the weekend's events there's a massive crunch on the other side of the freeway. As I watch a car full of people hits a lamp post and rolls over a couple of times grinding to a halt in a cloud of texan dust. We call the emergency services but the people are OK.

Man, this is the Highway to Hell. Road fires, car wrecks, ACDC would have a field day.

We decide to fuck the road off for today. 93 degrees is too much for us.

We've only slept 4 hours a night for the last 3 nights. We need a shower, air conditioning, a pool and veggie food. Hello Motel 6!

20-06-98 Ozzfest. Milton Keynes Bowl, UK.

The little men with hammers only let us get a few hours sleep before they start whacking away at my feet. "Six am! Six am! Six am!" bastards. Kafka pays them to follow us.

We get to the Milton Keynes bowl at 10am. We're on at 12 mid day. It's raining as we sound check. This place is going to be a mud bath. Standing behind the backdrop as our intro tape plays us in I can hear a chant from the crowd. It gets louder and louder as the tape draws to an end. . . "PITCH-FUCKING-SHIFTER! PITCH-FUCKING-SHIFTER!" Wow.
These people haven't mistaken us for some other band on the bill, they really are here at 12 mid day so see us play. I run out from behind the backdrop and I'm greeted by a cheer from 20,000 people. Insane. The rest of the boys are all looking at each other. This is the biggest gig we have ever done. It feels mad. I'm wearing a vicar's shirt and bondage wrist bands. I figure I'll try and mess their heads up a little. The last thing you expect to see at a Black Sabbath gig is a priest singing for Pitchshifter.

We go down great. The crowd is loving this stuff. The atmosphere is so charged you can feel it. I take a leap off the stage and run along the edge of the barrier. Soon the mud comes flying. The rain has permeated the soil. The kids have figured out that they can compact it into balls and it will reach the stage. By the end of the 3rd song everything we own is covered in mud. The backdrop, the equipment, the stage crew. Johnny took a direct hit on his leg, but I managed to avoid them all, ducking and diving as I sung the tunes. Mud flies past my ears and through my legs. After every song the crowd applauds like crazy and then the mud keeps flying.

It's a sign of heavy metal affection. The lowest common denominator of affection. Like girls who hit boys they like in the school playground. "I love your band . . . EAT MUD!"
The set flies by as fast as the mud and too soon it's all over. We get ripped off by the stage manager and we don't get to play our last song. It doesn't matter. We had a great time, the crowd loved it and no one got me in the face with a mud ball. Na na na na naa.
After the show we are herded over to the 'Signing tent' to sign autographs and chat to fans. There is a queue of about 500 people who want their programs signing. Mad. I've never felt like a rock star before. I mean sure, people recognize us at gigs and clubs and we do signatures and photos, but this is mad. People queuing up for half an hour just to say hello? Total madness.
After 15 minutes we have to stop to go and do interviews and there's still a good few hundred people left in line. We apologise and sneak away. I did a lot of apologising today. Every time I went outside the backstage area I got mobbed by people. I signed as many stickers as I could and I shook a lot of hands and I got squeezed by a lot of girls in photos taken by their boyfriends. But there's only so much of that stuff you can do before you need the reality of your friends. Friends aren't impressed by what you do and aren't afraid to tell you you >look like shit when you look like shit. Know what i mean?

The best bit of the day? D, myself, Billy and Terry (from Stimulator) sneak onto the main stage while Black Sabbath are playing 'Paranoid'. Can I just say that again? Black Sabbath are standing a few feet away from us cranking out one of their best tunes to 50,000 adoring fans! Pure electricity. I get goose pimples up both arms. Geezer Butler is all over the bass and head banging like a mad man, and Tony Iommi is effortlessly cranking out those riffs. Those guys are amazing. The guitar sounded perfect. The tone of it. I didn't hear one mistake. Both Tony and Geezer looked great. Weird beards, long hair and black leather jackets. I am not worthy oh masters of the universe.

Out in the crowd I stand with our manager Juli and marvel at the majesty of the guitar work. I wonder to myself if any of these kids give a toss about the most influential band in the history of heavy music, or if they just came to see Coal Chamber, Slayer and all the other American stuff. Pitchshifter were the only other British band to play. What's up with that?
A kid behind me turns to his friend and points to the stage,
"Is this Black Sabbath?" Forgive them Oh mighty Sabbaths, for they know not what they say . . .

19-06-98 Travel day. Dalles - Chigago - London.

We get on a plane at 6am. We finished packing up the gear from the gig at 2am. We didn't bother to go to sleep. We'll sleep on the plane (yeah right). On the plane johnny is seated next to Martin from Therapy? who is flying back to play . . . you guessed it, the Ozzfest. WAY higher up the bill than us of course. Small world eh?

Midnight arrival at heathrow airport in London. "BING BONG - Could Messers Carter, Clayden, Clayden, Davies and Walters please report to the baggage claim attendant." Doom. We are doomed. They don't announce your name unless there's a big barrel of doom waiting for you. We drag ourselves to the baggage claim. Franz Kafka is working the counter. It looks bad. Our spare guitars are still in Dallas. They didn't even make it from the conveyor belt to the plane. The woman at the check in was so damn lazy I had to put the guitars on the conveyor belt myself. All they had to do was get the fuckers from the 20 yards from the conveyor belt to the plane. Bastards.

We get to London at 11pm and I get a promise from the woman at the bag reclaim that the guitars will get delivered by 1pm tomorrow at the latest. Yeah. We're on at 12 mid day, so a fuck load of use that'll do us anyway.
In anticipation of this situation we all carried the main guitars onto the plane in soft bags and stowed them in the overhead lockers. Not that our lack of confidence in airline efficiency is in any way justified regularly . . . We all crawl into bed at 2am. The van is coming for us at 6am. Nice.

18-06-98 Deep Ellum Live. Dallas, Texas.

Texas is mad. It's the heat. It makes people crackers. It's 100 degrees outside the air-conditioning of the chrome shark. I hide in it.

The club is big and full and we have a great show. I manage to dive over the security and the 6 foot barrier into the crowd without getting my shirt sleeve torn or my skin scraped by fingernails. A small triumph.

I can hear people singing the words to the songs again. This is turning into an epidemic. The Southern ladies here again tonight, the Dallas chapter. They bounce and gyrate and wiggle and scream. Very odd.

We finish playing and run off to the beautiful cold of the bus. I am accosted by a clutch of autograph hunters before I make it to the shark. They came prepared, marker pens in hand. For some reason none of the girls want their posters or stickers signed. They only want their bodies signed. Very odd.

I sign a couple of stomachs and a thigh before one woman wants her breast signed. I sign the top of her breast so she doesn't have to expose herself. She smiles and thanks me and then whispers in my ear,

"Do you wanna little toot toot?"
"A what?"
"A toot toot," (she points to her nose).
"Marijuana?"
"No, a toot toot."
"Cocaine?"
"No, a toot toot."
"What?"
"Crack. It's good stuff. It'll keep ya awake all night."
"No thanks. I'm fine for crack just now thanks very much for asking."

WHOAH! Now we have fans that know all the words to our songs, want my signature on their knockers, and smoke crack while we play. Land of the free . . . basers.

After show I hook up with Shelley ( the guy who does all those cool silk screen gig posters for bands like 'Clutch' and 'L7'). He takes me to a bar across the street where the 'clone' band of 'Man or Astroman' are thumping out their psychobilly meets Devo madness. Sean from White Zombie is there with her other band (a collection of 'female monster super heroes'). I say hello and head back to the bus ride of madness.

The madness is a 6am flight to London from Dallas airport. We fly home tonight . . . for one gig. The gig is with BLACK SABBATH and it's an honour to play with the most influential guitar band of the latter part of this century. The down side is a 10 hour flight each way with a few hours sleep on the plane and then straight back to New Orleans to rejoin the Gravity kills tour the next day! Madness!

17-06-98 Will Rogers Theatre. Oklahoma City.

I think the suffix to Oklahoma was a little adventurous? We are still entrenched in the Bible Belt. I'm still wearing a pentagram T-shirt. It's still funny.

Pre-show I go to the tailors right across the street from the club. I need to get the sleeve sewn back together on the shirt that got ripped by the girl with no shoes (see columbia date). I look kinda weird wearing a pentagram T-shirt with one sleeve torn along the seem. The tailor is a jazz drummer. We talk about music and he doesn't charge me. Music truly is the universal language . . . of blagging.
I do an interview for a Texan radio station. There's no production office >at this gig and so I have to do the interview from a payphone out in the street. I can't find my shoes but the ground is warm and my T-shirt has two matching sleeves now. The wind is high and I can only just hear what the DJ is saying.

"You boys are heroes round these parts."
"What?"
"You boys are heroes, h-e-r-o-e-s in these parts."
"Why?"
"Genius is the most requested song on our station."
"Cool."
"You come down here to 'kfgwyfgbf' (indecipherable name of a town in Texas) and well throw a party for ya the whole town'll never forget."
"Cool."

I never figured Pitchshifter as town heroes. Maybe we should all marry >cheerleaders and quit being so cynical. (Sorry, I lost my mind for a second there.)

The show goes (surprisingly) well. Before the show it was looking bad. Not too many people and a tepid atmosphere. When we take to the stage everything hots up. We are rocking tonight. The crowd know the words to a lot of the songs (!) and we all have a good one. Jim was getting a little embarrassed about the group of screaming young girls circling his section of the stage and the young guitar freaks who shouted every time he hit a solo, but he soon got over it. Singers never get that kind of attention of course.

After the show the Christian girl from last night turns up again with her Christian sister. Jim and I make devil signs out the bus window at them. She starts making the sign of the cross. How much do these fuckers need to belt the bible out here? Last night she was belting the bishop and tonight she's belting the bible, at me. Marilyn Manson must have had a real blast when he played here. . .

"Antichrist superstar? wears make up and acts like a girl? Burn the witch! Burn the witch! Burn the witch!"

I get in my bunk at 6.00am. The lone female survivor killing the psychopathic killer and safely landing the 747 in the disaster movie the boys are watching with some new friends. Tracking satellite TV on this beast. Hundreds of channels. All at your fingers tips. You aren't safe anywhere anymore.

"I'M CONVINCED YOU WILL NEVER ANOTHER ABDOMINAL PRODUCT!"

Get me to Dallas.

15/06/98 - Juanitas. Little Rock, Ark.

The good news is I don't have a hang over. The bad news is I'm still in Clinton country. I watched a
UK TV documentary called 'Gang banging in Little Rock' once about how fucked
up Clinton country is, likening it to Washington DC. Nice.

Juanitas is a cafe/restaurant/bar gig. There are 'normal' people drinking
their margaritas on this'Margarita Monday' as we sound check. There stare at us blank faced as we
blast through our digital punk rock faggot noise music. The best description I've heard from a
'normal' person about what kind of music Pitchshifter was: 'soulless white garbage'.
Thank you one and all.

The gig rolls by really fast. Half the crowd stay seated by the restaurant
tables and chairs and the other half fill the floor. I ask the seated half how the fish is, but I
don't think anybody got it. Of the dancing half, the front two rows is made up almost entirely of girls
gyrating with their hands above their heads. They must think we're Gravity Kills. We don't usually get
much gyrating. Don't get me wrong, I like it. If you want to gyrate away at one of our gigs don't
let me stop you, it's just that we usually just get a lot of 'pogo-ing'.

After show we hook up with some lovely ladies we met in Hot Springs. They
have a big car, they have long hair, they have to be at work by 7.30am.

"I went to work drunk one day and I lost $5000."
"What?"
"I work in a bank. I made a mistake in counting and lost $5000 somewhere. I found it again later,
but I was really worried for a while."
One of them looks like Posh Spice. We tell her, she is not amused. I see how far I can take it,
" . . . and you look a little like Sporty Spice."
"I don't wanna be Sporty Spice."
"Why not?"
"She's got fucked up teeth."

We wave goodbye to the lovely ladies from Arkansas and head off back off on the road to freedom.
The bad news is we have ANOTHER day off . . .

"And why did the band split up Jon? Over exhausting schedule? Extended
periods away from home? Inter band friction? Drug habits?"
"No actually is was the days off. We just couldn't handle the days off man, it was horrible."

14-06-98 Day off. Hot Springs, Ark.

Hot springs was a massive town . . . in the 60s.
When they took the free gambling laws away they took the town away. Now it's a third rate tourist town famous for 'amphibious vehicle duck rides' and a sex pest who didn't inhale.

We swim in the day and drink at night. There's a no alcohol on the table law in Arkansas after 10pm on Sundays. Great. We hook up with a guy called Alan. Alan is drunk, he's driving us to a bar in his Cadillac and he's full of shit.

"I've got 3 houses in this area and four in the State. I'm a real estate man. Sure does pay well. I'll be retiring soon. Made all my money. You guys buy me a beer for the ride?"

The bullshitter takes us to Goodtime Charlie's Pool House and Bar. It's a massive place, virtually deserted. On the far wall the DJ booth is made from the front end of an Arkansas fire truck. A desperation of women from Wendy's (I guess that's the correct collective pronoun) are line dancing to 'Kiss' by the artist former known as Prince. Sassy. One more ride from the bullshitter and we're at Gaiter's Bar. There's a live band playing Back in Black by ACDC and the Wendy's girls are line dancing to it again. How the hell did they get here before us? Scary. By the time the band hits 'Cold Gin' by Kiss I've had enough and I call a cab back to the bus. Gimme the Shark over the Gaiter any day.

I just can't understand Bill Clinton. If I'd have lived in Hot Springs when I was growing up I would've inhaled. This place is so boring I would've inhaled ANYTHING. Lighter fuel, ether, petrol fumes, marker pens.
Please get me away from here.

13-6-98 Day off. Memphis, Tn.

Elvis sold over a billion records. If you laid all the records Elvis has sold end to end they would circle the Earth over 2 times. He died at the age of 42. According to the Elvis estate he died after a rigorous game of squash (or racket ball as they call it). According to the tabloid media he died on the toilet after a 2 million calorie fried peanut butter sandwich. There are no pictures of Elvis as a fat man at Gracelands. There is no mention of his drug taking or excesses. They can rewrite history in Memphis. He who controls the past controls the future.

To be brutally honest, Elvis' place isn't that impressive. The pool is small, the rooms are small, the decor is average for someone with so much money. The interesting bits are still there. Elvis' extensive collection of police, special agent and narcotics badges are still there. The king could do what ever the hell he wanted in whatever the hell state he wanted whenever the hell he wanted to and iT was all legal. There's a note from the chief of one police squad:

IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE IN THESE SEAMLESSLY LAWLESS TIMES TO SEE A PERFORMER OF YOUR CALIBRE TAKING AN ACTIVE INTEREST IN LAW AND ORDER. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS SPECIAL ENFORCEMENT AGENT BADGE AS A GIFT FROM ME TO YOU, AND MAY I WISH YOU EVERY SUCCESS IN YOUR RECORDING CAREER

Elvis had it made. He could have walked down the street butt naked smoking weed toting a machine gun in each hand and the cops would have let him clean off. Strange then that they deemed it necessary to engrave a 'copyright' symbol at the bottom of his tombstone after a lovely lamenting poem. The ultimate product. Elvis Presley. Even got a copyright symbol on his grave stone. Raking in the bucks long after his death. The posthumous king. You quote the touching passage from Elvis' grave stone as a tribute to the king of rock and roll . . . you get your ass sued boy. More Elvis, more Snickers, more Coke.

12-6-98 The Blue Note. Columbia, Mo

Shirt (the soundman's name is 'Shirt') has done 2 things this morning. Firstly he's decided that he doesn't need his hair anymore and he's shaved it all with a razor (and now looks like Ming the Merciless of Mongo from the Flash Gordon comics). Secondly he threw up at 10am. It transpires that my brother released a cloud of flatulent vapour so evil it caused Shirt to run to the balcony and hurl over the edge the second it touched his nostrils. Bizarre . . . impressive, yet bizarre.

Columbia is slap in the middle of America. People talk through their noses and like to get really drunk. The gig goes really well and we all enjoy it. During one stage dive I get my shirt sleeve torn by the crowd. Oh the kids love to maim us.

I notice that every time a girl gets up to stage dive she gets molested by all the geeky no date death metal masturbaters in the crowd. They feel em up and try to pull their skirts and t-shirts up. Terribly sad. I ask them to stop, to no avail of course.

After the show I sneak off on my own to grab a shower at the hotel before we split for Elvis country. I am spied by one of the teenage girls who surfed and got mauled. She decides she's going walk me to my hotel safely because I put on " . . . one kick ass show man."
The girl is wearing a tartan mini-skirt and knee high white socks. She isn't wearing any shoes. Her socks are filthy.

"Why aren't you wearing any shoes?"
"I took them off to crowd surf and they got stolen."
"Unlucky."
"Not really, it's my karma."
"What?"
"I was the one who ripped your shirt."
"What?"
"I was trying to rip the sleeve off so I could keep it. But then I got my ass grabbed by a hundred desperate geeks and someone stole my shoes. It's my karma."

The Shark arrives and I climb on board. I lose the shirt ripper in the affray and we roll on. Tomorrow is a day off and we're heading for Elvis country. Down with the King.

5 minutes up the road to freedom and we pull over to refuel. A woman is tapping her high heeled shoes on the bus door window. What is it with crazy women and shoes tonight? Missouri foot fetish.
The woman is a 45 year old lunatic in a summer dress. I open the door to see what she wants and she bowls straight into the front lounge.

"Are you guys a band? I know you're a band. My daughter came to see you guys tonight. You guys rock. I just love your accent. Who's the lead singer? I just love lead singers. Are you the lead singer?"
"No I'm the guitarist."
"I just love guitarists too."

Five minutes later and the 45 year old lunatic has her summer dress pulled up over her shoulders and her bra by her knees. She's not wearing any panties.

"Are you the guitar tech? I just love guitar techs. Anything to do with guitars. Guitars get me horny. Are you the guitar tech? "
"No I'm the singer."

I sign her notebook as 'Johnny Gravity Kills' and usher her off the bus. We continue down the road to Elvis country. Good bye Missouri foot fetishists. Goodbye middle aged flasher.

11-06-98 Day off. Lawrence, KS.

Aarrggghhh! more days off. More days off than gigs this week. Save us, SAVE US!
I wake up at 2pm. My body clock has successfully shifted to a 6.30am shut down. Ahh, life on the road. There's sod all to do in Lawrence Kansas. Everyone I ask who lives here says there's nothing to so and that we should go to Kansas City if we want to hav any fun. Great.
D is alive and tattooless. Very impressive. I must have made an impression on him last night. He looks really hung over though. Excellent day to get a massive tattoo on his chest. Get some of that liquor blood to the surface under the needle, heh heh.
Brent the tattooist is alive and seemingly hangoverless. I grab a seat as he gets stuck into Jim's leg. Jim has decided he needs to have the Pitchshifter eye logo tattooed on his leg. The rest of the band have it tattooed there too, except me.

I designed that damn logo I don't have it tatooed on my body. Go figure. Both tattoos go down smoothly.

The lake of whiskey brent sank last night doesn't seem to have impeeded his skills. D and Jim both sit there without crying and all goes well. Later D and I head to a house party in the neighbourhood. Two punk bands are playing in the front room and a mob of desperate looking agressive lonely men are crowding the garden. We leave them to their territorial pissing and head back to the bus.
By 9.30am I can't snog the girl in my bunk any longer. Her tongue must be a foot long but her eyes are half closed and my mind's a mess. She's very cute but I'm tired. She tucks me in and stumbles out to her car.

Does anybody drive sober in this country?

SCHOOL BUS DRIVER WANTED. MUST LIKE GETTING REALLY DRUNK AND DRIVING FAST. APPLY WITHIN.

10-06-98 The Bottle Neck. Lawrence Kansas.

Hello middle America. This is the country boy, and boy are there some BIG people. If you don't like meat then you'd better like pancakes or you're going to starve. So I order pancakes at the local diner. Half way through the dish I notice that one of the bits of pecan nut on my pancakes has a head. As I look closer it becomes apparent that it's a dead chrysalis that looks like a piece of nut. Very nice.

"Hey boss we got some vegetarians on table 12."
"Pour some maggots in the pecans. That'll get rid of those European beatnik faggots."

10 weeks left to get me boys. . .

We play to a healthy crowd through a thunder storm in a dark hole. The microphone cable breaks and they replace it. . . with another broken cable. Maggots, cables, Kansas.

People like to get wasted in Lawrence Kansas. I ask a stocky women why that is,

"Wellll therezz fuck all else to do around here."

Thank you madam.

After the show I head off to a bar with a guy from the record label and a few retailers. All nice people. We order drinks. There's something seriously wrong in this place. No one else seems to notice and they happily sit and sip. There's a guy leaning on a pin ball machine with a broken nose. A freshly broken nose. Still bleeding. There's another guy in a trilby hat over by the video game machine with two black eyes and a broken nose. There's blood on the windows and band gear over the floor. It's either a punk's wedding reception or one hell of a gig. I don't like to mix blood with alcohol these days, so I return to the gig. Only D (drums) and Greg (tour manger) remain, with a host of wated Lawrencians. There's a drunken tattoo artist sitting with them. They're all leaving. I sidle up to D.

"Where you going D?"
"Back to my friend the tattoo artist's house."
"He's gonna tattoo us."
"No matter how much of a good idea that might sound, don't get a tattoo tonight. Remember Mick? Got that tattoo when he was drunk and the woman who did it was so wasted she tattooed 'MUCK' instead of MICK on his arm?"
"Yeah."
"And then when he wanted to get it covered over the only thing the guy had big enough to cover it was a full colour bald eagle that went half way up his arm."
"Yeah."
"Remember what I'm telling you."
"Yeah OK."
"G'night."
"G'night."

09-06-98 Day off. Wildwood Missouri.

Days off. They keep giving us days off. Torture. Days off get you into trouble. The tour manager stuffs the daily money into your hand and it sits there screaming at you: "Day off, DAY OFF! Whatcha gonna do Johnny boy? No gig tonight. Nothing to keep you occupied. Can't get that kick from playing tonight Johnny boy. Whatcha gonna do? Spend me, SPEND ME! Cds, clothes, cabs, booze, drugs, girls! SPEND MEEEEEEEEEE!"

Today we're lucky. The double Id on my shoulder can scream blue murder all day because we're in the country. We've stopped off in Wildwood Missouri to spend the day at a friend of the tour managers. Everyone in the neighbourhood has come out to see what the hell a 45 foot long block of chrome on wheels is doing parked outside one of their front lawns. The Euro-Freakniks have come to down baby. The tour manager's friends are a nice couple. We eat their food, we drink their beer, we swim in their neighbour's pool, we torture their kids with water pistols and we sneak joints around the back of the house when they're not looking. A dysfunctional family outing with Pitchshifter. Should've been made into a holiday. It's national 'Let the stoned lunatic punk rock band from England corrupt your children Day'. Lovely. After the barbecue Scott decides to take us out in his new 4x4. We drive up the hill to a secluded field.

"I thought you guys might like to see these . . ."
"Holy shit!"
"Wow!"
"Whoah!"

What's up there in the top field minding it's own business as we fall out of the car to take a closer look? . . . A herd of buffalo. Not content with the deer that roam free all over the hill and the turtles that swim in the lake by the bottom of the houses. The people of Wildwood Missouri have a real live heard of buffalo roaming around in a field out back. Rolling, rolling, rolling . . .

The granddaddy buffalo's head is as big as my upper torso as I try to get a photo without getting too close. This thing is a car with a heart beat. We marvel at it's enormity for a while then head back to the house to torture the kids some more. The time to leave has come and we say goodbye to the kids and thanks to Scott and Lorrie for letting us corrupt their children and ruin their lives. We disappear into the belly of the chrome beast once more and head off back on the road in search of depravity and evil. Rolling, rolling, rolling . .

08-06-98 Day off. Chigago, IL.

Day off? We all hate days off. We fly 4000 miles to spend 11 weeks in another country and they keep giving us days off. We're here to play. All we want to do is play, but we keep getting days off.

Torture! The road crew hate days off even worse than the band. The only reason they are here is to set us up for gigs. No gigs, nothing AT ALL for them to do. Drives them crazy. Days off suck.
Today at least there is something to do.

Slayer are playing at the Metro. We played there last night and the nice people there let us in for free tonight with our laminates (thank you). It's a sell out crowd again and Slayer are very . . . metal.

The only 2 dicipherable songs are 'Reign in Blood' and ' South of Heaven'. I know I'm going to get a lot of stick for this but I have to say that I was bored shitless and I left. Sorry lords of metal and devoted Satanist hordes. We decide instead to visit the punk club downstairs and bother the Dj into playing all our old punk classics. Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys and the Subhumans. Upstairs the legions of the undead pummel ever on with their scary tattoos and cut off T-shirts. Downstairs Jim and I manage to avoid the advances of a certain young lady and return to the Shark unscathed, and (unlike Arsenal) without having 'done the double'.

07/06/98 - Chicago, IL. The Metro.

It's getting weird to play in venues where we've played before, four years ago.

I have the worst memory.

I forget to meet people, I lose my wallet, I lose my Keys. I put toast on and sit behind the computer and forget about it until the house reeks of burning. I even run baths and forget about it and soak the bathroom.

But I can walk into a venue I haven't been in for four years and remember the last gig there, where the dressing room is and the face of the runner. Mutated neural pathways? Lemme know.
The show is incredible. It's another sell out crowd and there are 1100 people crammed into this place tonight. As we take to the stage there is a cheer, which is very nice.

At home they usually wait to hear if you suck or not before you get any credit. Tonight we get to hang our newly finished backdrop for the first time. A massive melting union jack with our logo splashed across it. You can't get punker than that. Hopefully everyone is getting the fact that we fly the flag with a great sense of IRONY. It is melting for a reason . . .
I got to stage dive a good few times and Jim (guitar) almost surprised me with a splendid dive of his own during the last tune. I got so excited I dived in with him. Tag team double whammy!

After show I hooked with a couple of old Chicago friends Andy and Sean (aka The Windy City Cartel). Andy was driving his 'Swinger', smoking pot in a one hitter and looking at me for extended periods of time whilst ignoring the road and other cars. All the while we're listening to the new Public Enemy LP (which sounded damn fine, check it out). A few beers and a few bars later we are heading back to the Shark. Andy has gone and I'm bumming a lift from his friend who I just met, and who's name I can't remember. He's a massive guy in a leather hat driving an old police car.

"Nice car."
"Yeah, I never get pulled over."
"Nice."
"I've got a monster truck too. Cost me $31,000. I fucking love that truck. I can crawl underneath it on my hands and
knees and I'm six foot four! I bought it to transport horses. I just hooked up with the finest woman I ever had in my life
and she loves horses. So I've sold everything to buy a farm and horses and a monster truck to tow 'em."
"Nice."
My friend takes another drag on the one hitter as we pull up next to a cop car one lane over at the lights.
"I love to take a hit next to the man."
"Ha ha ha ha ha."

The couple in the back seat laugh out. Chicago is full of cops. It's cop land.
A national theme park for cops. 'COP LAND'. A new kind of theme park where you constantly get pulled over on all the rides,
and fat ,ugly, thin lipped, woman less men in tight blue uniforms shine torches in your face and ask you where you've been.
Who polices the police? . .

06-06-98 Detroit, MI. The Shelter.

Last time Pitchshifter hit Detroit we bagged a gig with The Melvins upstairs in the same venue.

This time we play downstairs with Gravity Kills. It's a small world.

Before the show we attempt to eat. I find that eating helps me to stay upright on stage and I try and do it before every show. We pull into the nearest restaurant. One vegetarian dish. We sit down and order. "No veggie dish today boys, it's off."
We hit the next restaurant.

A two thousand year old woman drags her corpse over to our table. The seats are broken. The table is dirty. The place smells like rotting meat. The waitress is rotting meat.

"What can I get you boys?"

As I lift up the menu to read it I notice the dead cockroach lying on its back next to knife and fork.

"A sick bag?"
"Excuse me?"

We leave. The anti-veggie detroit cartel wins.

The gig is weird.

Between us and the crowd are four big security guards instead of a barrier. They are all wearing FBI style in ear monitors with microphones and they all look mean. Now I know how Jim Morrison felt."WANTED, J.S.CLAYDEN AND PITCHSHIFTER FOR PUNK AND DISORDERLY BEHAVIOUR IN THE STATE OF OHIO."

We play our best around the security and I think we made our point. The people of Detroit dug our stuff and no one got billy clubbed.
Our only friend the end.

After show I watch the club next door get shut down by the police. I ask what the deal is.

"Last week they were fighting with 2x4
chunks of wood and a few weeks before that there was a shoot out. We're just trying to keep it down a little"
"Yeah."

I sneak back to the safety of the Shark.

My bunk is always patiently waiting.

05-06-98 Cleveland, OH. Peabody's Downunder.

On the 'Mad Magazine' board game (it plays like Monopoly) when you land on the unluckiest square on the board, it tells you to "lose $200 and jump 12 places to nowhere". When you count out the 12 places the square you land on reads:

"WELCOME TO NOWHERE, TOLEDO OHIO". . .

Pitchshifter played in cleveland, in Ohio, in Peabody's Downunder, four years ago with Carcass. Then the surrounding area was virtually waste ground and the club stood alone for music with only a Hooters for company - oh the class. Now there are a host of clubs and things down there and it's turned into a college boy's night out.
Mad Magazine was wrong about Ohio. The gig was a stormer. We booted out the tunes and the crowd got rolling. I managed to get a couple of dives in yet again (to further my quest across the USA).

Four years absence has definitely made the Cleveland Hearts grow fonder. Thanks.
After the show a plague of mosquitoes invaded the water front. Hundreds of thousands of the little bleeders swarmed all over the street and the club. The tour bus was covered in them. We had to stick the windscreen wipers on to see out. Freaky. Real life Hitchcock. Ohio disaster movie.

In the bar above the venue Johnny and I had a game of pool on an 'L' shaped pool table (take a look at the picture).
It had 8 pockets and 6 cushions and you could break from either end. A whole new set of angles. Must have had that thing specially made.
Are there any 'L' >shaped pool table hustlers?

"Eight ball into the sixth pocket on the left wing"
"What?"

Goodnight Cleveland. Four year itch.

04-06-98 Pittsburgh, PA. Club Laga.

When we spoke to the promoter on the telephone earlier in the day we thought he said 'Club Lager' (as in beer) so we figured this show would be a crock of shite. I mean, how good a show can you expect to have in a club named after a type of beer?

Anyway it's Club 'LAGA' not 'LAGER' and the gig was rocking. The crowd were into us and we had a blast. I got to stage dive in Pennsylvania. 2 down 58 to go. Stage diving across America with Pitchshifter. Anybody seen the film "The Swimmer" starring Burt Lancaster? We're remaking it . . . but with stage diving.

Before the show I picked up a copy of a local Pittsburgh newspaper. I like to see how different places cover the news and how biased or unbiased they are. The difference can be amazing. I read in a French newspaper once that 25% of English men were gay. One in four? I don't think so Mr. Chirac, and we all have good teeth thank you very much.

Flicking through the pages of the paper I found the live music section.

It ran: "Pitchshifter. Club Laga Thursday night.You shouldn't let your children go and see this band"

I like to think we bring out the best in people. My Mum is so proud of us.

"You still getting reviews in the papers where they tell the parents not to let their kids come and see your shows son?"
"Yes Mum."
"I'm so proud of you."

Thank you and good night Pittsburgh.

After show we got taken to a house club in town where a few scary women in blue disco wigs were wiggling around on podiums
to god awful house music.
Oh the rock and roll life style.
We left.

03-06-98 Cambridge, MA. The Middle East Club.

"ANYONE CAUGHT STAGEDIVING WILL BE IMMEDIATELY EJECTED".

I saw it. I read it. I dived in. I didn't get immediately ejected.

The sign should actually read: "ANYONE CAUGHT STAGEDIVING WILL BE IMMEDIATELY EJECTED UNLESS THEY ARE ONE OF THE BANDS BECAUSE WE'D BE STUPID TO THROW THEM OUT DURING THEIR SET BECAUSE YOU'VE PAID TO SEE THEM PLAY".
We came, we saw, we stagedived. Naa naa na naa naa.

The tour bus is amazing. The last US tour bus we had got nick named 'The Whale'. This bus is so sleek it's more of a shark.

It is (to my shame) better than any house I've ever lived in. This thing is large. It has a microwave, 12 bunks, 2 lounges, 2 sound systems, a toilet, refrigerator, coffee machine, air conditioning, wardrobes and a satellite TV tracking system.

After the tour we're going to kill the driver, steal the bus and re-write 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'.

The after show party was interesting. Gravity Kills gave us a bottle of champagne as a welcome gift to the tour (thanks lads). Then a drunken woman accosted me near the bar: "I didn't get a chance to do this during your show Jon, so I'll do it now . . . WHOOOOOOO!"
As her T-shirt flipped up her massive white mammaries eclipsed the conversation. No one has ever shown me their breasts at the bar after a show before.

This woman looks like she could put out electrical fires with those things and I've got to get to Pennsylvania unscathed.
I thank her and escape to the safety of the bus.

Come on Pittsburgh. The weird bit: Miles Hunt (from the Wonderstuff) was playing an acoustic set in the same venue in
another room tonight, and I found out that the woman who manages Gravity Kills is Geezer Butler's wife and their son is a
big Pitchshsifter fan. Mad world.

02-06-98 New York City. Day Off

Greetings fellow degenerates.

In a few days we start Pitchshifter's eleven week tour of North America and Canada with Junkie XL and Gravity Kills. We're on an aeroplane over the Atlantic at this moment in time.
In the last ten days we've done: Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Nurnberg, London and New York.

None of us have a clue what time zone our bodies want to sleep in, but we're all still alive and fairly lucid. We've already had to pay $850 in excess baggage charges so far (thank you so much British Airways) and we've had to buy a whole new backline in the
States because it works out cheaper than renting. So we're already skint before the first show.

Any body out there reading this who's coming to any of the shows, please bring us money (we promise not to spend it on drugs).
European tales: As for Europe we had a real blast this time around. We played a festival where 'GENESIS' were headlining (we didn't know that cryogenics had progressed so far as to actually being able to animate corpses, but apparently it has) and tore it up. We played with PRIMUS in Paris (wearing priest clothes) and had ourselves a ball.

So far only Johnny has had any real hassle. An irate German slapped him around the back of the head in a service station for no apparent reason. We attempted to kill him but the military were there and so we thought we'd better leave it. The German police also did a flying raid on our van at a service station looking for drugs, but obviously law abiding pillars of the community like ourselves would never do anything as illegal as taking drugs . . .

That's all freaks. Bookmark this page and check it out every few days or so.
We're going to send a page everyday - the fun is just beginning.
ps: A word to European promoters vegetarians do eat food substances other than cheese . . . EVER HEARD OF TOFU?
AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! NO MORE CHEESE!!!!!!!!!