31/07/98 - Day Off. Rochester, NY.

I wake up in the afternoon and head out of the dolphin to Greg's room to use his shower.

"Man that's some big assed bus you got there. You guys in a band?"

America is obsessed by ass. A continual stream of ass. Stupid ass, wild ass, crazy ass, lame ass, big ass, I'll kick your ass, kiss my ass. Ass this, ass that. Everyone's ass mad. I find this surprising as it's one of the most openly homophobic countries I've been to. Why is everyone so obsessed with ass? Answers on a postcard to 'Why America is obsessed with Ass competition', PO Box 59, Nottingham, NG2 4BQ. All entries must arrive before December 1st and all winners will be notified by post.

Day off. Ass. Here we are in Rochester. The lack of blood around Greg's lips suggests that doesn't appear to have had an aneurysm this morning, and so I'm assuming he made that date with the Canadian consulate while I slumbered like a babe in my bunk. Like it or lump it kids - Pitchshifter are coming to Canada.

As I finished my Chinese meal today (for breakfast - thank you) I started to realise that fortune cookies are beginning to take a hold of this tour. As we don't have a stove, we eat out a lot. We are all vegetarian and so the choices are limited in the great melting pot (of meat). There's usually a Chinese restaurant in most towns and they usually have a few death free noodle dishes, and miraculously they fully understand the art of cooking without cheese (please take note Denny's Wendy's etc.). So we hit the Chinese a lot. The problem is they always give you a fortune cookie. Times that by the nine people in our crew and it only takes a few visits to the Chinese a week and suddenly you have a pile of fortunes. They're supposed to be fun, but they always seem to be so ominous. Today's offering read:

'YOU WILL PASS A DIFFICULT TEST THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPIER'

(Accompanied by two 'smiley' acid house faces.) I don't like it. That sounds evil. What's the test going to be? Cavity search test? No, I don't like it. Then I got to thinking. How cool it would be to produce the cookies. Think of all the minds you could warp if you had a control over the fortune papers. I could try and get people to actually think. It could revolutionise dining:

'YOU WILL REALISE THAT BLACK PEOPLE ARE NO DIFFERENT ON THE INSIDE' 'YOU WILL SEE THAT NOT EVERYTHING ON THE NEWS IS NECESSARILY TRUE'
'ONLY BY READING BOOKS BY BURROUGHS AND THOMPSON WILL YOU LIVE LONG AND PROSPER '

What the fuck am I thinking? It'll never work. Not enough meat dishes. If you could stain those slogans right into the veins of red meat straight from the cow's back . . . now you're talking. You could hit all the fast food joints too. There's no way they could escape you. Propaganda laden Blackpool rock meat. I like it. The picture: I wanted to show you the glamorous life we lead on the tour bus. This is one of those luxurious bunks on the dolphin I keep mentioning. Please note the ceiling height, yes it does take you a few days to remember to duck when you wake up.

30/07/98 - Intersection. Grand Rapids, MI.

Grand rapids is a weird place. It's Thursday afternoon and everything is closed. I guess people here don't get hungry on Thursdays. Me? I'm bloody starving and I've been confined to consuming the despair of a Subway. Lord have mercy.
So tonight I get the full story about Sam the drummer from Cold. Last night their driver pulled over to re-fuel while everyone was asleep. Sam got out to take a dump, and the driver, who thought everyone was still asleep (and didn't get a note from Sam) left after filling up. So there our boy is, no shoes, no T-shirt, wearing only shorts, sitting at a truckstop in Iowa. One dollar in his pocket, 500 miles from the rest of his band. He had to beg for cash to eat and someone gave him a pair of boots. Cowboy boots. The band didn't realise he was gone until they got to the gig. Our boy had to hitch hike in shorts and cowboy boots with no socks or T-shirt. A trucker took him most of the way. The trucker had his delivery to make at the steel mill and so our boy had to sit there and wait somewhere in Iowa while the trucker strapped steel girders to the wagon. It took Sam 23 hours to get back with his crew. The poor bastard. He looks visibly weakened.

My arm hurts like hell from the burn (see pic) but he gig is great. I have a great gig simply because I can clearly hear my voice perfectly clearly in the monitors. A rare occurrence. The tone is perfect and the level is great. It might have sounded awful out front, but on stage it sounded amazing.

"I went to see Pitchshifter last night."
"Yeah? What were they like?"
"They sounded great on stage."

After the show we have to drive to Buffalo. We have to get to the Canadian embassy. We didn't find out that we were going to play the Canadian gig until four weeks ago. It takes six weeks to process an entry request to play in Canada. We couldn't obviously couldn't get it done in the allotted time. Now we have to physically bring our passports to the nearest Canadian embassy, which happens to be in Buffalo. It's 500 miles from Grand Rapids to Buffalo. They embassy gave us a window from 8.30 am to 11.30 am to get there and process the passports. The lady said it would probably take a few hours and so it's best for us to get there at 8.30 am. We pack up fast and leave the gig at 1.30 am. That's gives us 7 hours to drive 500 miles. By my calculation we have to drive at 71 miles an hour continually for seven hours to get there. One mile over the speed limit all the way for seven hours. It doesn't look good does it? I'll let you know what happens tomorrow. If we miss the Canadian embassy we can't play in Canada. Wish us luck.

Just before I crash out in my bunk I hear Bo the driver calling me from the front seat.

"Jon! Jon c'mere!"
"What?"
"I'm sick of listening to these assholes talk shit on the CB. Give 'em some of that crazy stuff you talk. I wanna make their heads hurt."

I take charge of the CB, my best late Fifties English newsreader voice in full force:

"ROLL UP, ROLL UP: SINGLE CELL ORGANISMS TO THE FRONT! HORSES TO THE WALL! YOUR SNICKERS AND COKE WILL LANCE THE KAISER'S CYST AS THE WEASEL OF THE APOCALYPSE STALKS US IN THIS FIELD OF DESPAIR! THROW YOURSELVES INTO THE AFFRAY! THE FINAL HARVEST IS COMINGGGGGG!"
"Thanks Jon that should do it."
"Good night Bo."
"G'night Jon."

29/07/98 - Emerson Theatre. Indianapolis, IN.

When I wake up in the afternoon I discover that the bandage has slipped off my arm and onto the bus floor. My duvet is by my feet and the tape tape that was holding the bandage to my arm has managed to attach itself to my penis. What the hell do I do in my sleep? Don't answer that. There's a trickle of green cream cheese running from my arm. The burn has gone septic. Yummy. I clean it up and head for the gig. 'Cold' who have recently joined the tour can't play tonight. Not because of 'Injury Day' or anything, they seem immune to all that. They can't play because they lost the drummer. I don't how they lost him, something to do with a truck stop, but they lost him all the same. Very odd. We've been playing together for nine years and we've never lost each other. We lost our soundman once but never the band, etiquette forbids. The show itself is good (sick of hearing that yet?). The crowd seem to like Pitchshifter and all is well. We've sold a few records here and it's nice to know that people are prepared to support the music live too. I stick a bandage on my arm to keep it clean while we play. The damn thing burns like hell all the way through. It's the sweat. It keeps running into it. Apparently 'chics dig scars' and so I'm going to be OK from now on. Dinner dates coming out of my ears and a full dance card. Better cancel my computer dating membership tomorrow.

After the show I meet a very large doctor. At first I thought she was a transvestite. Not because she's overtly ugly or anything, but because she's taller than me and she looks harder than me. She is in fact a woman, and a doctor at that. Doc Morrison takes a look at my burnt arm. She tells me it's a second degree burn and I should take care to keep it clean.

"Tell me straight Doc, how long have I got?"
"You'll live."
(I had to ask her, it was bigger than me, I just want to say the words once before I die.)

The picture? It's a picture of myself and the Butler boys: James and Biff. They're really nice lads and they both dig Pitchshifter. Their Mum is a very nice lady and their Dad is one of the Lords of Heavy Rock. Functional Heavy Metal family - I like it!

28/07/98 - Safari Club. Des Moines, IA.

Injury day has become Injury Week. As we pull up to the Safari Club I am greeted by Doug from Gravity Kills. Two sentences into our conversation he tells me about Chris (Gravity Kills stage tech). Chris has damaged his back lifting the equipment, he can hardly walk properly. Chris is a nice guy. I feel bad for him. I hope he can finish the tour. Another winner for Injury week:

"Chris, do you stick with your damaged spine or gamble the lot for a much worse and potentialy fatal injury? . . . I'm going to have to hurry you Chris . . . injury week can't last forever!"

The gig is one of the hottest shows we have ever played. The place is rammed (although sadly I see no pith helmets) and there's no air conditioning. The only AC is coming from the two fans we have on stage to cool ourselves down. We die up there. We slash songs out of the set every other song. It's just too hot to play properly. During the show a kid pulls me down as I try to get back on stage after a stage dive. I get away from him but my hand starts to really hurt me. I guess I twisted it. We play hard and fast and exit through the crowd. Not bad for no sound check. I guess we still have the juice, major label or no change in our pockets.

After the show my hand starts to really hurt. Burning. It looks all fucked up. I remember what happened now. I got pulled onto one of the halogen stage lights standing on the floor. I stuck my hand into the light to save my face and now it's all burnt. There's a blister on the side of my hand and a section of my skin missing from the wrist. Very nice. Injury week strolls ever onward. To recap: the soundman has broken his big toe, Johnny has cracked his head, Chris has fucked his back and now I've singed my hand. Get a hold of George Cloony will ya?! It's an episode of ER. The Gravity Kills and Pitchshifter Emergency Room Show. Come one, come all, only ten American dollars to see the travelling hospital Freak Show. All ages welcome. Book early to avoid disappointment. Also available for children's parties. Very reasonable rates.

27/07/98 - Day off. Minneapolis, MN.

The tour itinerary shouldn't read 'Day Off', it should read 'Injury Day'. Two of us are down. Michael Caine is telling the Zulu's to stop chucking their bloody spears at him in 'Zulu' the movie playing on the bus satellite TV. The dolphin has become a rolling hospital. An omen? Are we to expect more? Johnny woke up with a cut on his forehead (see pic) and he feels [sic] 'weird'. Shirt (the soundman) looks like he's broken his big toe (see pic). It's all purple and horrible looking and to top it off he's twisted his knee on the same leg. He has to hobble to the toilet and back like the wounded soldiers in Zulu. I don't ask either of them how it happened. A man's injuries are his own affair, like his French fries. Never eat another man's French fries. People like to suffer on their own.

During the day we take the dolphin to Universal records and say hello to the people from the Minneapolis office. They are all friendly types and I leave with a good enough selection of jazz and blues to annoy the rest of the boys with for the remainder of the tour. (The bloody heathens.)

At night I take a jaunt with Greg to see Siouxie and the Creatures at a local venue. John Cale(who was the original guitarist in the Velvet Underground) was on first, then Siouxie came out and strutted her stuff. And where did it all go my friends? Right over my head, or rather I should say right through me. It all washed completely through me and I left after 15 minutes. From what I can remember both of these artists started off punk and now they've become the total antithesis of that; endless rambling lyrics and overly dramatic synth music. It's just my point of view. I don't want to bea critic. I'm just telling it like I saw it. They were not my people.

Injury day rolls on. On the overnight ride to Des Moines my brother tells me that Jim and he saw a woman get run over in the street today. A bus hit her in the head. She was lying in the street not moving with her eyes open as the shoppers filed by. On the local news I saw that three people got shot in Minneapolis today. On the national news I see that a rack of scaffolding has fallen off the side of a building in New York City and killed another three people. 'Injury Day' spreads over into a national holiday. The whole block has been cordoned off for safety reasons. The weird bit? Both our tour agent and our travel agent are housed in that block. Neither of them can get into their offices. We can t find out anything about the upcoming hotels or gigs. We are effectively blind. Tooling around the country in a blind dolphin looking for gigs. What are the odds of that happening? A million to one? You've got to laugh. As long as I am safely housed in the belly of the dolphin and I have food money I don't concern myself with all that. What will be will be, me losing my hair over it won't change a thing. Onward to Des Moines!

26/07/98 - Mall of America. Minneapolis, MN.

Today is technically a day off. We don't have a gig but we have something to do. We have to go to the Mall of America. None of us have any concept of what the Mall of America is and so we unsuspectingly await the arrival of the record company representative for Minneapolis. He's a nice guy and he wouldn't steer us wrong. The Mall of America must be OK.

CLANG! The Mall of America is a giant puss filled dripping sore on the face of the Earth. Forget the Ribfest, that's small potatoes next to this baby. The Mall of America is the new epicentre of evil for the Mid West. Let me explain: the Mall of America is a mall, obviously, except that this fucker is as big a town. There are thousands of completely normal people . . . shopping. The sickness is endless. There's even a theme park inside the mall (see pic). Ferris wheels, a roller coaster, rides, stalls, hot-dogs, trees? It's a fucking nightmare, some twisted combination of 'Stepford Wives' and 'They Live'. We (of course) are the Antichrist in this environment. Jim got totally drunk last night and let some lesbians die his hair luminous green. Mark's dreadlocks are sticking straight up and Greg's full 'rude boy' ska attire and his 'Made in England' neck tattoo go down a treat with the white trash. God help us. They're going to lynch us.

Our mission in this gateway to the underworld is to sign a few autographs and say hello to the folks at an alternative store deep in the heart of the Mall. The folks in the stall are very friendly and they are 'one of us'. An alternative oasis in a sea of shit. We gladly sign a few posters and CDs and generally mill around and look useful. How they survive being encircled by the relentless, pointless, consumer hell I'll never know. My hat goes off to you all. The second we can leave the Mall of America we run out of there. I actually have a headache. I haven't had one for ages. This safe haven for endless ineffectuality has damaged my mind.

Lynch/Kafka - 1, Pitchshifter - 0.

25/07/98 - Day off. Minneapolis.

I'd just like to stick my tongue out to all the net sceptics out there. "The internet is an over-hyped pile of rubbish that's only good for porn."

Yeah well I've heard that a million times and it's a load of bollocks.

I woke up, I logged onto the Vegetarian's guide to America' and I found the Minneapolis page. It listed the top 20 restaurants with veggie dishes in town and each one had a map to click on and a star rating. Try getting all that info on the telephone on a local call number. I don' think so. I ate a delicious veggie meal and didn't have to wait. Naa naah. The 'Ribfest' is real.

The Jamaican taxi driver from yesterday wasn't crazy. Minneapolis is holding a festival in praise of ribs. There is a whole portion of the city centre cordoned off for rib stalls. Inumerous tents shelter huge skillets continually cooking dead pig bones. The city is voluntarily rejoicing in the eating of pig ribs. People have driven in from out of town to eat pig. Whole families are here. Baseball capped fathers eat ribs with their freckled goofy teethed children sitting on their shoulders . . . eating ribs. The smell is making me sick. There's a giant inflatable pig to welcome the carnivorous horde. The pig is smiling and holding a plate . . . of ribs. This place is all fucked up. Each stall has it's 'Ribfest' trophies on display. Large sporting trophies on ornate stands with little silver and gold pigs at their pinnacle. Huge things, five feet tall. I have to get away from here. I've stepped into an episode of 'Sliders' without noticing.As I swiftly exit the Ribfest area of town I am confronted by another horror. Beach volleyball. These sick bastards have gone and brought in tons of sand and nets and crowd seating for inland beach volleyball. The living embodiment of Hell has manifested itself in downtown Minneapolis. Twin towns? You betcha. Twinned with Hades. Thousands of half asleep working stiffs are milling around a state sponsored bloodfest and they have to heighten the depravity by adding tan happy nuclear family types playing beach volleyball? Satan is at work in Minneapolis. It's the epicentre of evil for the Mid West. I say kill two birds with one stone. Eat the beach volleyball players and you still get to have a Ribfest. I'm a fair man. You could give them a sporting chance. Line them up after the game. Give them three chances to live:

"1 - What do the 13 stripes stand for on the American flag? . . . No? Next chance."
"2 - What's the square root of minus one? . . . No idea? last chance."
"3 - How many sides does a dodecahedron have? . . . No?"
BLAMM!
"YOU'RE RIB MEAT!"

Maybe I'm being a little extreme. I know, I know, I need professional help. I can see the CNN special now:

"LONE PASTY LOOKING ENGLISH GUNMAN KILLS HEALTHY TAN AMERICAN KIDS CELEBRATING NATIONAL MEATHOLIDAY."

They'd start with a character profile:
"He was a loner sinceschool days. Other kids would be playing team sports while Jonathan would be smoking marijuana alone in his bedroom and listening to brainwashing punk rock music."

Then they'd move onto a summary:
" Obviously this hideous crime was a cry for help, Jonathan just wanted to be one of those healthy happy meat eating kids but he couldn't be because he was a pinko-lefty weirdo and so he had to destroy the thing he craved."

And of course the obligatory comment from a next door neighbour to finish the piece:
"He was such a quite man. He kept himself to himself. You would have never thought that he was a homicidal maniac. We used to let him baby-sit the kids."

Atnight we console ourselves from the beach volley ball and dead pig revelry by getting hammered. It's not big or clever, but we have three (count them, three) days off in a row and here we are in the heart of a pig slaughtering state holiday. So we invite ourselves to the very accommodating record company representative's house, drink his booze, play his stereo loud and then leave. I don't think we broke anything and his girlfriend was still smiling as we left so we must have behaved ourselves.

The weird bit: when I got up the next day I found a picture of a KISS painting (see pic) on my camera that I have no recollection of taking. I think it was from the record company guy's house, but I can't be sure. Very strange. What does it mean? You wanted the best, you've got the best.

24/07/98 - Ground Zero. Minneapolis, MN.

In the cab on the way from the hotel to the venue the Jamaican cab driver keeps shouting about ribs: "Many ribs! No cover charge! Festival of ribs! Big stage! Many ribs!"

Whatever, just get me to the gig my friend. You can't shout about ribs all day weirdo.

Before the gig Jim and I do a video interview for some local boys. They set
us their lights and clip mics in the back of the bus and we talk about the
new LP. The interviewer is a very genuine man and it's a pleasure to be
asked some intelligent questions about the band and ourselves as people (a
point which many folks seem to forget - that we are actually autonomous
individuals as well as being band members). During the interview I take a
picture of the camera man (see pic). He doesn't know what to do. Poetic.

The gig is raging for about the first three songs. The crowd are digging us
and things are hotting up. Then my monitors fizzle, distort, cut out and
everything fucks up for me. I give up in the middle of one song. I just
can't hear what I'm doing. I don't think the crowd notice. I take a stage
dive instead. I figure it's all the same. If I sing or if I dive into the
crowd. As long as there's something to look at. It's not the house
engineer's fault. The monitors suck because the equipment sucks. At least he
is sitting by the desk and trying to make it work for us instead of sucking face with some girl. During the show there are a couple of gay guys waggling
their middle fingers in their mouths at me. Being boring and heterosexual I
don't know the specifics of the gesture but I figure it's overtly sexual and
it's directed at me. Sponge or stone? I guess I'd have to be stone boys,
sorry.

We try our best to salvage the gig but it's too late for us. We've lost the
flow tonight. We should just play our bit and get the fuck off stage so that
Gravity Kills can maybe save the day. The crowd genuinely cheer us as we
scuttle away. I guess they enjoyed it. The highlight for me personally was
leaning down and giving a condom to two girls locked in a kiss. Well, I
thought it was funny. No offence intended.

After the show we head to a local club for a good time. Denied. They're
playing some god awful house music and it's a real cattle market. Under the
guise of going to the toilet I manage to slip away from everyone else and
sneak back to the hotel room I've booked. I can't sleep on the damn dolphin
tonight. I need to stretch my legs out and sprawl around. There's only so
much Captain Ahab a man can take and I'm all bunked out.

23/07/98 - The Ranch Bowl. Omaha, NE.

The Ranch Bowl is a venue and a bowling alley.
During the day they let the bands bowl for free.
I like these 'theme' venues. There's a gig in Seattle that's a launderette and a venue. Wash and go. Today it's bowling. I hook up with Matt (guitarist from Gravity Kills) and we shoot a round. I've only ever been bowling once before and so I don't hold up much hope as to my performance. I got 107. Whatever the hell that means. The big Claydowski I am not.

After a Chinese meal I crack open the fortune cookie and read the tiny paper enclosed within: 'DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED'

Hello Thomas Selby Jnr! Do I need a fortune cookie to tell me that I'm trapped on this dolphin for the next five months? I don't think so. But thanks for rubbing it in. A quick glance around the other tables reveals no Kafka. I read the cookie again. What kind of grammar is that? 'which fate has you assigned'. Does Yoda write these things. Try reading that sucker back with a Yoda accent and it all fits in. Mr Lynch? Table for two? Right this way Sir.

The gig is another good one. I wish I had something more interesting to tell you, like the crowd hated us and we had to leave under a police escort, but it's just not true. We had a great gig. We really enjoyed ourselves. We realise how lucky we are to be able to do this instead of a shitty job and the crowd really liked us. Thank you Omaha. During the show Geoff (vocals for Gravity Kills) bobs up in the front row of the crowd and gets down to a few Pitchshifter tunes. Yeehaaaw. There is the obligatory flash of knocker and I'm tonight's victim.

I swear to you we don't ask them to do it, they just do. It's some weird mammary cult. During the gig I notice a gap in the back doors of the venue. Through the doors and outside I can see the day light. These 'All Ages' shows are early and so it's still light. There, just outside the venue, in the day light, are two beach volleyball courts, and there are people playing on them. Some twisted cracker spawn has constructed two full beach volleyball courts, with sand, outside the venue. There are dozens of demon seed shiny happy tan smug beach people bobbling around as we play. Here I am trying to get that spark of creativity going, that first thought with the youth of a nation and Satan waiting outside with ice cold Coke-a-cola and beach volleyball. The scales are tipped.

After the show we meet Rob. He works at a bike shop and he builds his own bikes. He's also constructed a large metal clock frame in the shape of the Pitchshifter eye logo (see pic) and had the decency to lug the thing half way across town to our gig and present it to us as a gift. What a guy. I don't know how in the hell we are going to get this monster home but we appreciate the gift. It's nice to receive gifts from genuinely cool people instead of threats from deranged lunatics. Thanks Rob. Bonus ball tonight, another two cool PSI fans, Mark and Braden show up and present me with a copy of 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut Jnr. (yes he did write 'Slaughterhouse Five'). You just keep the cool gifts coming my friends. Here I am in the supposed turgid hell of the Mid West, the area of the country that the rest of the country makes fun of, and I get a copy of an excellent book and a large hand made Pitchshifter clock! Gimme Nebraska or gimme death!

22/07/98 - Ogden Theatre. Denver, CO.

Uh oh. We've all lost it. The insanity of the road has crept into our
dreams. Last night Johnny dreamt that a meteorite crashed into the Earth. He
was standing in a crowd and he saw a meteorite hit the horizon. The
shockwave hit him first. Then he heard the sound of a jumbo jet hitting an
apartment block, then the cloud of debris and dust hit him in the face as
people ran screaming all around him. Later he said that it was like Mad Max,
people killing each other for a bottle of water and a can of petrol.

I, on the other hand, dreamt that the little curtain had fallen off my bunk.
In my sleep I had kicked off my duvet and was lying there naked . . . with
an early morning hard on (EMH to the initiated). The rest of the band and
all the crew were all standing in a line next to my bunk, pointing and
laughing at my erection. Johnny gets the end of the world as we know it and
I get sexual ridicule. It's so unfair.

Denver is a mile above sea level. A city of super lunged athletes. A genetic
experiment. They win. After the first song I'm dying. I just can't get
enough oxygen in my lungs. Feeble. The crowd are great tonight though. They
really dig Pitchshifter and they want us to know it. They throw money,
cigarettes, chewing gum and one condom. Thanks guys. I stick the dollar
bills in my shorts like some cheap titty dancer and give the cigarettes to
the band. Well, waist not want not. I can be a whore for 45 minutes and live
with myself in the morning.

After the show we hide from the rain in the dolphin. The dolphin likes the
rain in all it's bluey goodness. Soon there are some girls on the bus. I
don't know how they got there but they want signatures . . . from the crew.
This tour is just getting plain silly now. Women want the crew's signatures?
Where will it end? Stilly (our stage tech) has a 'logo' instead of a
signature. He always makes a line drawing of a mug tree. You know, the
little wooden thing you can hang four coffee mugs from in the kitchen.
Whatever. Soon I'm confronted with two stomachs (see pic) for a photograph.
As the designated impartial observer and holder of the digital camera I am
obliged to document the tour and all it's lunacy. I don't know why these
things happen or what they mean. I'm just the bag man.

As the dolphin pulls out of the parking lot. I finally mange to get rid of
the last straggler. The boys soon got scared and ran away from her. There's
a woman singing happy birthday in Spanish to me and intermittently telling
me how smoking as much crack as she does makes her very aggressive.
"Do you ever get really aggressive Jon? Do you ever feel like you could
kill? Do you ever stop typing on that computer?" (I'm typing this as she
rants) "Do you ever stop the tippety tap of the tappety tipping? A moment of
your brain scored to the keys - and who has the keys? I can't find them - I
need a guide. Can you take me there Jon? Would you marry me? You are so
very handsome. Want some coke?"

I get the tour manager to get rid of her. Who the hell is he anyway? Why me?
I was just typing on the computer and now some demented female Stanley Unwin
wants to shoot me full of crack and marry me? Sorry to say again and about
such a cool city, BUT GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

21/07/98 - DV8. Salt Lake City.

The only things I can remember about the last time I came to Salt Lake City
are odd. I got stoned. I sat on the corner of the street. A couple pulled up
in a battered car and asked me if I wanted to be in a movie. When I stood up
to talk to them they backed their car away and drove off. The other thing I
can remember is buying the biggest pair of shorts I ever owned. What any of
that means I'm not sure but that's Utah for you.

Before the show Greg finds a black and white photobooth in a mall. He's been
looking for one for days. We need 8 passport sized photos each for all the
visas and papers for this year of touring. We're off to Australia, Japan,
Europe and Canada that means a lot of photos. In the store we meet a gaggle
of girls who duly get put on the guest list. They're young and fun and
they're bored in Salt Lake City (and who can blame them?).

The show goes really well (don't I just always say that?). The crowd are
ready to roll in Salt Lake and we are the boys to ease down the handbrake. I
guess the restrictive Mormon control from the parents goes out the window at
gigs and the kids get to let their hair down. The blacony (ironically) is
reserved for drinkers. I guess drinkers are nearer to God at club DV8
despite the fact that Mormons don't drink. Very odd.

After the show we all hang out with some of the kids who have waited a long
time to see us play. I like the genuine ones. The ones who just want to say
hello and thanks for playing. Makes me feel like there is some worth in this
stupid thing we do. It transpires that the gaggle of young girls are all
Mormons. Here they are in vest tops with pierced tongues and crazy hair at
an alternative show and they're all fucking Mormons. This religious thing is
killing me over America. These kids don't want to live like monks, they get
indoctrinated into that shit by their extremist parents. I smoke drugs, I
have sex before marraige, I masturbate, I drink alcohol and I enjoy all of
it. Does that make me a bad person? Hell no, look at me, I'm a fucking
pillar of the community! I pity these kids. Do you think that them never
realising their full sexual potential and always feeling guilty about
perfectly normal feelings like feeling hrny is going to assure them a place
in the after life? What if there is no fucking after life? What if man
created heaven because he's afraid to die?

I liked it when the lines were drawn. Christians used to keep to themselves
and only hassle you out in the street or on your doorstep. And they looked
like Christians too. You could tell they were Christians. They wore tank
tops and goofy glasses. The lines were drawn. These days you get Christian
punk bands and Mormon girls who look like they're 'one of us'. Fetch me my
lions and get me the hell out of here! Back to the East coast. Drugs, porn,
Satan, and guilt free masturbation!

20-07-98 Day off. Boise, ID.

Daaaaaayyyyyyyyy offfffffffffffff! Shit. Boise Idaho is the only thing between Seattle and Salt Lake City. Spare us. Spare us all. Boise Idaho is one of those towns where people have to burn dogs and get drunk with their parents to aleviate the mind crushing boredom. I live in an unmittigated shit hole but even I pity these people.

In the day Stilly gets so bored he decides to paint the Buddha statue we stole from one of the gigs in the style of KISS facepaint. I just watch. I figure it's some symbolic thing he must do to be able to tour all year round. When he's done he places Buddha in the front window of the bus. Our new figure head. To recap: we are tooling around the country in a large cuddley blue dolphin with a Buddha figure head wearing Gene Simmonds' stage make up. I feel so effectual.

Out in the street I stumble into a skate shop. There in the corner of the shop is a T-shrt rack. The first shirt I can see on the rack is a grey T-shirt with the words 'BORED' printed on the front in flames. I buy the shirt. It's fate. I put it straight on and head out into the 'city center'. I find a bar called the Neurolux and get a drink. There's a semi-clad man playing table tennis with two women simultaneously and every score gets a round of applause from the crowd. Very strange. David Lynch and reverse dwarf just out of shot.

After drinking a few free beers from a Goa trance DJ and a woman in a Union Jack T-shirt I head back to the bus. We leave at 2 am and I am sitting in the dolphin just waiting for the clock to spin around. I'm starting to realise that it's only the gigs that keep our minds together. Days off are the work of the Dark One. Many more days off like this and I'm going to have to quit this crazy life style and settle down with a good woman. Rocket scientist supermodel? . . . you know the address.

19/07/98 - Day off.

During the day Alex Newport (ex Fudgetunnel/Nailbomb) turns up at the bus and takes Johnny, D and I into town. We walk past the fish throwing market and into the Sub Pop 'megamart'. We mill around looking at CDs and then get our picture taken by the sales assistant for the wall of fame they have going. We're next to BIS, Gavin from Bush and someone's dog. Top of the world Ma.

In the late afternoon some people we met last night arrive at the bus. They've come to take us back to their place for dinner. Steve, Jen and Craig. They're very nice people. They are the kind of people that make all of this worth while. On the way to their place Craig pulls the car over under a bridge.

"Wanna see the troll?"
"what?"

Under the bridge there's a giant concrete sculpture of a troll with a VW Beetle under it's left hand. Very odd. We head to the house. There Steve and Jen have prepared a veggie Mexican feast for us. There's all kinds of food and drink and we have a great time. Steve (see pic) has every Pitchshifter CD, cassette and LP except for two items. We sign all his stuff and he's a happy man. This guy even has a second generation copy the first Pitchshifter demo on cassette. Originally there were only 75 of those tapes made nine years ago. Steve is a serious collector. He's got more Pitchshifter stuff than me. I had to buy a copy of our first LP from a music shop because I couldn't squeeze a copy from the label and here's a guy living 4000 miles away with a copy of the first demo. It's a mad world.
On the way back to the bus there are hundreds of Garth Brooks fans lining the pavement. He's been in town for some festival and there are millions of his demon cracker spawn swarming the city. I can't resist it. I wind the window down as we drive by:

"Garth Brooks is a homosexual! . . . GARTH BROOKS IS GAY FOR SATAN!"

The horde hurl their abuse right back at me. Garth Brooks can't be gay.

He's white and he believes in God and he wears a cowboy hat just like John Wayne. More Snickers, more Coke. Yankee doodle doo.

18/07/98 - RCKNDY. Seattle, WA.

Seattle is a very chilled out city. I guess because it's near Canada. The people are very helpful and the mood is mellow. I manage to log on for the first time in days, send my fifty emails and all is well with the world. Before the show Alex Newport shows up, an old friend from England. Since his band 'Fudgetunnel' split up he's been living out here doing production work. That boy knows a thing or two about guitars let me tell you. It's good to see him.

The gig is great. I guess they're familiar with heavy music around these parts. The crowd are very responsive. There is stage diving and pogo-ing and a healthy pit. We like Seattle. We'll be back. Some of the people I meet tell me they've been waiting six years to see us play. Six years? These are some dedicated fans. I feel kind of guilty that we haven't made it up here before. There's a guy in the crowd with a home made Pitchshifter T-shirt. I like that.

As I stroll to the bus after we play I run into a couple of fans. One of them ask me if I've seen his back. I don't think he's lost it so I figure there's something he wants me to see on it. As he turns around and takes his shirt off I can see he has a big Pitchshifter 'eye' logo tattooed on his back with the song title 'To die is gain' across the top of it (see pic). Wow. This guy really likes us. He has a logo I designed in my bedroom nine years ago and some words I wrote permanently marked across his flesh. I don't know how that makes me feel. On the one hand it's very flattering that people like our music so much that they are prepared to wear it for life, but on the other hand I feel kind of responsible and somehow that I'm tainting their bodies. The worst bit is that we didn't even play 'To die is gain' tonight. It's an old song and we're all sick of it. How bad does that make me feel? We could have at least played the damn song for the guy. The pain he endured and the six year wait and we don't play the fucking song.

After the show a woman I just met tries to convince me that I really should go with her to a club called the colourbox. She looks like 'Misery' material to me so instead Jim and I catch a lift with my Greek friend Denny over to a local club called the Showbox. Ed Rush and Optical are DJing drum'n'bass tonight and we get in their and dance it up for a couple of hours before the club closes at 2 am. 2 AM? What the hell is that all about. My first Saturday night free for months and the town closes at 2 am? Rubbish. Denny knows of an after party so we head over there. I flash them the laminate and we get in. Inside there's an American version of Jameroquai (or 'Genericwhy' as we call him) noodling around in the corner of a warehouse. Great. As we order a drink at the makeshift bar the police arrive and swiftly the booze is gone and so are we. Situation we like, citations we don't. It's bed time for democracy in Washington State.

17/07/98 - Day off. Klamath, OR.

Yeah, that's what I said to Greg the tour manager when I saw the name on the day sheet. "Where the hell is Klamath?" The people are nice enough but Klamath is nowhere. I swim in the pool. I sit in the hot tub. I do my laundry. I use the phone. For some reason I can't log on in Oregon. I haven't logged on in 3 days. I have 50 emails to send and pile to receive. Klamath. The only reason we stop in these nowhere towns is to save money. We have to pay the driver double on every day he has to drive over a certain mileage. So we stop in Buttfuck Oregon or wherever to save money. The glamorous life we lead.

"I saw you guys on MTV - you must be millionaires."

Yeah right.

After another tough day in the pool I eat at a Chinese restaurant with Greg. It seems the staff know who the band are and they know who I am and they want autographs. I get the boys to sign some posters with me as I eat my mock duck and noodles. I never figured Klamath Oregon as a big Pitchshifter town. Maybe that's just my fault. People can like good music no matter where they live. I used to listen to the Dead Kennedy¹s and Big Black when I lived in the armpits of the Earth. More power to you all. Excuse my arrogance.

We head for Seattle at 1 am. By 10 p.m. in Klamath I can't take it anymore. I can't get on the internet and I've played all the pool one man can endure in one evening. Even a brief conversation with a deranged one legged Vietnam vet in a pool emporium can't hit the spot. I'm no big drinker but I have to get drunk. I find the bottle of Tequila I bought in Mexico stashed in one of the cupboards in the bus and pour out shots for the boys. What else can we do? The computers are useless. We've done our laundry. We can't play pool. TV sucks. I'd rather get drunk than watch TV. At least by getting drunk we might find some interesting morsel of our psyche we've never discovered rather than sit their and absorb someone else's sanitised point of view leaking from a cathode tube. The tequila flows and the hours 'till departure dwindle.

At 11 p.m. there's a knock on the bus door. It's three girls and a bottle of Jack Daniels. They want us all to go to their apartment and help them to finish it. Well why not? Here we are in the middle of nowhere with a couple of hours to kill. Inside their apartment we find a frantic persian kitty and a big bag of Jamaican rolling tobacco. We roll some of our own and soon Klamath doesn't seem that bad and suddenly it's time to go. Funny that. We thank the generous ladies and scuttle off to the war dolphin. Ramming speed Mr Ennis. Seattle here we come.

16/07/98 - Del Mar Station. Reno, NV.

Driving through the beautiful mountains of Nevada on the way to Reno I can see snow on the mountain tops. The sun is beating down on the bus roof and yet there's snow on the mountain tops. Mad.

As we turn another sweeping corner on the motorway into another beautiful valley I can also see blood on the road. A couple in their Ford have hit something. Their car is pressed against the barrier and their effects are strewn across the road. Their blood is all over them and they look really fucked up. There are a couple of people looking after them. We stop and ask if they need help but they say they're OK. They don't look OK to me. They're lying on the side of the road covered in their own blood. We call for an ambulance on the CB anyway.

Good morning Vietnam. Reno is like a fat free Vegas. You can gamble everywhere and their are titty bars but the big money doesn't go there and the place is a hole. In fact it would seem that the only way to get a meal in Reno is to eat at a titty bar. Call me old fashioned but I don't want to have to go through all that just for a plate of badly prepared vegetables. Reno is kind of lame. The gig by contrast is good. There are some old school Pitchshifter fans in the audience and they're happy to see us in the USA again after four years. Tonight I am honoured with the obligatory flash of knocker. Braces and breasts. Oh what a night. After the show we stop at a truck stop for food. Truck stop food is really getting to me now. They call veggie-burgers 'garden-burgers' in the USA. I am all garden burgered out. The choices are always (if you're lucky): garden burger, pancakes, egg sandwich, cheese sandwich or omelette. I am pig sick of every one of those options and it's only half way though the tour. Tempeh stir fry? No fucking chance mate.

The truck stop has a gambling hall in it. (Well we are in Nevada.) The cashier where you pay for your sweets and sodas and magazines, is carrying a gun. In fact the entire place is surrounded by guns. The four walls of the truck stop are covered in guns behind glass cases. Big guns, little guns, short guns, long guns. Guns and gambling, a nice combination. We order our garden burgers (please no more) and split.

"You want guns with that?"
"No thanks I'm on diet."

15/07/98 - Bottom of the hill. San Francisco, CA.

We are staying at the Phoenix hotel. It's the famous band hotel in San Francisco. The maid carts are all covered in band stickers, the decor is ultra 50s. This place looks like the Jettsons designed it, or David Hockney. The rooms all have bamboo xylophones for some reason and the pool looks like the pool from his famous 'splash' painting. 'Totally rad dude.'

The gig is punk. The support are a local band called 'The Sick' the guitarist wears a bowler hat and the bass player has tattoos all over his neck. I like them. The PA is minuscule tonight and we just have a laugh and jump around. I like the crowd in San Francisco. I guess having bands like the Dead Kennedys in their midst makes the crowd receptive to freaks like us.

After the show I'm talking to a few fans and a man comes up to me to say hello and tell me we played a good set. I thank him, shake him by the hand and turn back around to my other conversation. DOUBLE TAKE! Who is it who's just said hello and shook me by the hand? . . . Jello Biafra. The singer from the Dead Kennedys just came to tell me he liked the gig. Let me just say that again for those of you out there that missed that. JELLO BIAFRA CAME DOWN TO SEE PITCHSHIFTER PLAY. Fucking hell. I have every Dead Kennedys record. We all do. I love that band. It means so much to me to have him come to a Pitchshifter show. Jello wants to meet the rest of the boys and so I take him to the bus. Their jaws drop as I stroll on with Jello Biafra. We know everything about the Dead Kennedys. We take photos of Jello and us and get him to sign our DK's CDs. This is heaven. The man is one of the most brilliant lyricists. Next to him I am a telentless charlatan. In my dreams I write lyrics as good as his. As Jello has to leave I bid him farewell and walk him off the bus.

"Well Jon, it's been a pleasure. Keep in touch and if you still want me to do any singing or spoken stuff on your next album then gimme a call, here's my phone number."

If you would have come up to me and told me nine years ago when I first started playing that Jello Biafra would be at one of our gigs, tell me he'd think about singing on one of our tunes and give his phone number, I would have died laughing. But here I am and here he is and it's happening.

It's a mad world.

14/07/98 - Troubadour. Los Angeles, CA.

Last night, just before bed time. I saw a vision of gothicness. Suzie Sue from Suzie and the Banshees was in the hotel lobby room. I guess she's on tour with The Creatures. Weird to see old alternative Icons from England's past swanning around in the lobby of gay hotels in Hollyweird. Today is a press day combined with a gig. Can it be real? An actual gig. No day off. I love it. I get the call from the management who've flown over from London to LA for the show:

"Jon, this is the most important gig the band will ever play. You guys have to show the record company how good you really are tonight. It could be make or break. I don't want you guys to feel any pressure but you just need to play the best you've ever played in your lives."

I don't feel pressurised. Would you? The last 'this has to be the best gig you've ever played' was to get signed. I wonder how many other 'best gig you've ever played' gigs we'll have to do? Is there a limit? Who judges what 'the best' is? It's kind of oxymoronic. Like giving a lifetime achievement award to someone who's still alive.

The gig is good. I don't know if it's the best gig that we've ever done, but it was good. Although this might sound really arrogant, I think that we have really good gigs nearly every night. We all love to play, we all know the songs, we've been playing them solidly for months. Why would we not have a good gig most nights? The management are happy and the label people seem happy and so all is well in LA.

After the show Tairre B and the boys from Tura Satana show up. Tairre gives me a video from our tour around Europe earlier in the year. It's a lot of footage of the two bands interspersed with footage of Tairre and I. I don't remember doing half of the stuff on there but when you watch it back it's really funny. And for the record y'all . . . I didn't get ill in Europe by making out with Tairre B. I'm sick of hearing that rumour. We didn't make out at all. We were just friends and we had a good laugh. Underneath all that media hype bullshit of being the scariest woman in rock she's just a cuddly teddy bear, but I guess I shouldn't say that because it'll ruin her image. oops.

13/07/98 - Press Day. Los Angeles.

'Press Day' is a cunning way of saying 'Day off'. It's a way to fool the band into thinking that they will be doing something instead of a day off. Day off just means anything that isn't a gig to me. Another rhythm breaking day. You get into the stride of gigging and then it's murdered by two consecutive days without a gig. Nightmare! Stilly, Johnny and Jim head off to Ibanez to talk guitars. They're the lucky ones. Rob from Ibanez is a cool guy and we love his guitars anyway so if he decides to endorse us in any way we'lll be even happier.

Press days usually involve lots of running around and today is no exception. I get ferried out to various cable TV and radio stations. The interviewers and the staff are all very pleasant and it's no hassle. The schedule (like every press day I've ever done) gets continually changed around though and I have no idea who I'm talking to most of the time as the name on the list doesn't correspond with the face in front of me. I bluff my way though it all with a smile.
One show consists of almost entirely station ID's. I just have to sit there with two nice gentlemen and read out the ID's as they give them to me. A piece of cake. My job is to sit in front of a camera and read pieces of paper. I used to shovel gravel for money and drive a truck. I used to demean myself to assholes for a few quid. Now all I have to do is sit on a couch and read cards for the day.

"Hi! This is J.S.Clayden from Pitchshifter and you're watching our latest video on the V Network."
"That's great Jon. Now could you just these other twenty four."
"Hi! This is J.S.Calyden from Pitchshifter and I used to shovel gravel in the cold for a living but now all I have to do it get driven around LA and sit on big couches and read cue cards. Stay tuned!"

Later back at the record company office I read some of the press. I start with the negative pile (and it is a pile). Some these reviewers HATE our LP. I'm not talking a slight disliking here, I'm talking full blown hate.

"Like the Prodigy with all the fun taken out."
" . . . a band far too happy to cater to the pulsing masses . . . "
"Pitchshifter's lyrics aren't the kind to be remembered for their poetic value; nonetheless, they are neither cliched nor meaningless and that's all you can really expect from a techno band."
"Pitchshifter are quick to update their already shitty guitar playing with layers of computer driven racket that fail not only to improve their overall sound but to even to distract one from all the other terrible aspects at work in their music."

Geez. Any chance I could get that gravel shovelling job back? You know the number.

12/07/98 - Day off. Los Angeles, CA

Another fecking day off. As I wake up in the morning I follow my usual routine. Crawl out of the bunk, brush my teeth, turn my computer on. Today as I hit that power button there is a resounding sound of . . . nothing. My finger must have missed the button. I hit it again. Nothing. The battery must be flat. I plug in the mains power from the bus. Nothing. Fear growing. The plug must be damaged. I switch it. Nothing. Fear biting my throat. I try another plug. Nothing. Shit. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT! My fucking computer is dead! What am I going to do? I can't believe it. I feel sick. The thought of not having a computer makes my teeth hurt. This thing is definitely dead. Kafka's little helpers have poured vodka down the keyboard and pooed on the CPU. Doom. Despondency and Doom. Brand spanking new computer murdered by a dead Czech's evil horde. I don't seem to remember any ancestors of mine opening Tutan Karmun's tomb, and so it must be the little men with hammers. Luckily I have a back up laptop to save the day and so the tour diary will continue. I can hear you all sighing with relief (yeah right).

The day gets worse. France beat Brazil in the world cup. How in the hell can that happen? France have NEVER won the world cup. I think it was rigged. If I said to you: "France are gonna beat Brazil (the five times world champions) 3-0 in the World Cup" you would die laughing - and so would the bookies. Someone made A LOT of money from that game. I bet the odds for Brazil loosing 3-0 to France were phenomenal. Just a thought. At night the band have a dinner date with Suzanne from the record company. We take a cab to the restaurant. The cab driver has a video camera in the front window. He asks us if we'd like to participate in a 'people study'. Well, why not. He puts his headphones on and pulls the cover from the camera and starts to ask us questions as he films. Who are we? Why are we here? How do we like LA? Suddenly we drive by a crowd of French people celebrating their victory at the World Cup. Our natural reaction is to wind down the windows and shout abuse as we cruise by.

"Bollox!"
"You didn't even have to qualify anyway you bastards!"
"It was fixed! Fuck off back to France!"

We all stick our heads back in the taxi window laughing and still shouting. Then we realise the whole thing has been caught on camera. Great. Pitchshifter the anti-French band . . . on TV. We love playing in France.

The crowds are always really good to us and we always have a laugh. If this film comes out then the nation of France is going to think we hate them. It's not that at all. It's just a football thing (and that's football not soccer you bastards). Whoever wins the World Cup has to get abuse from all the losers. England hasn't won the damn thing since the 60's (even though we invented the bloody game) so we know a lot about abuse. The meal itself is very nice and Suzanne from Geffen is very helpful. The whole thing softens the blow of a knackered brand new computer and a French victory in football.

Bloody days off.

11/07/98 - Cane's. San Diego, CA.

Uh oh, I think Jello may have been right. The first thing I see in California is a series of signs along the pavement: "NO SKATEBOARDING". It seems that it's OK to stumble around like a spastic skier on roller blades, and it's OK to for the athleto-frisby goons to tool around. They even let people play beach volley ball legally but if you want to skate to your shitty job in the morning because you can't afford a car then you get arrested. I bet Jerry Brown never had to skate to work.

The club is 20 feet from the beach. San Diego beach is an episode from 'Chips'. I keep looking for Eric Estrada but he must be off today. There are fake breasts and there are low riders and there are some of the worst dressed people I've seen in a long time. Rainbow mirrored cycling shades are my personal favourite. I take a swim in the sea (oh the hard life) while Gravity Kills soundcheck. You'd think the sea would be lovely in San Diego, with all the prosthetic breasts and roller blade warriors, but it's not, it's bloody freezing. I fly 4000 miles to the land of opportunity to find that the sea is as cold as it is at home. What a rip off. It's nipple hardeningly cold. My penis has managed to shrink to a quarter of it's original size by the time I have to stroll up the beach past all the bikini babes to sound check. Franz Kafka is on life guard duty today. I can see him staring at me through his binoculars from the observation tower. He gives me a little salute. The bastard. He ordered the cold sea. He can ruin anything. I fear for the gig.

The gig is a bag of arse. It had to be a shit one. Two important people from the record company are here and Franz Kafka is on life guard duty. That'll always guarantee an appalling gig with no crowd and a terrible atmosphere. Tonight is no exception. It's one of those 'the promoter is on holiday and we didn't even know there were two bands' kind of gigs. We've been playing together long enough now to be able to enjoy playing for ourselves when the crowd is sparse. We know the show's going to be quiet before we go on and so we just goof around and amuse ourselves on stage. Someone in the 'crowd' buys us all a beer while we are playing. A welcome consolation.

After the show we get thrown out of a local bar for telling the doorman that he's an insufferable arse. Well, he was an insufferable arse. Him and all the happy beach volleyball bastards can go to hell. What I want to see is goths playing beach volleyball. Two teams of goths in full length leather overcoats and face paint with black lipstick and sunglasses, smiling like Coke advert happy TV people and athletically whacking the ball over the net in the sand. Just a thought.

10/07/98 - The Huntridge Theatre. Las Vegas, NV.

Last time I came to Las Vegas I was shunned. I got really drunk the night before and thrown up on myself in my bunk. The rest of the boys had left me in disgrace on the bus and gone out to have fun without the asshole. So I woke up in my bunk, in my own vomit. Unfortunately, being a dirty soap dodging punker at the time, I had come on tour with only one full set of clothes. A full set of clothes now covered in vomit. Try as I might I couldn't find a launderette. There aren't any public launderettes in Vegas. The want you to gamble not wash. Eventually in my still drunken stupor I stumbled across an apartment building, broke into the laundry room and set my washing going. The room was so hot and I was so hung over I passed out in there wearing only my shorts. I don't know how long I was out but when I woke up my clothes were done and I wasn't arrested so I legged it out of there.

On the way back to the bus (to try and get some grace back with the boys) I'm sudden stricken with the pain. My digestive system has kicked back in after all the alcohol and I need a beer shit. Stumbling, still half drunk, crazy eyed with my sack of washing I blather up to the entrance of the nearest casino where I am told in no uncertain terms to immediately turn around and get the hell out of there before they call cops. Well hell, you can't blame them with this bag of washing and drunken leer I look like the Santa Claus Antichrist. I can't hold it in so I sneak around the back and do a poo in the parking lot. Not everything in Las Vegas in golden. Fortunately this time I manage to stay sober and house trained. We play a storming gig at the Huntridge Theatre. Which, incidentally, has it's roof cave in not long ago DURING a show and no one was hurt.

Carcass get a dead rat thrown at them in this venue and then the roof caves in during a show. Does anyone else get the impression that this gig isn't meant to be? Very strange. During the show Jim gets his usual flash of knockers from some freaky woman in the crowd and I get a lot of arm waving and my hair pulled.Go figure.

After the show we head off to the Stratosphere tower. It's a mini CN tower in the middle of Vegas. We are drawn to it. Thrill seeking moths to a 1000 ft concrete flame. We ride the elevator to the top floor. There's a roller coaster and a 'Big Shot' up there. We ask the woman at the counter up there which ride is the worst.

"The roller coaster is pretty cool, but if you wanna feel like you're gonna die then you should check out the 'big shot'." Freaks that we are, we go for the 'Big Shot'. Some fool has built a rocket tower with ejector seats on all sides and called it a Big Shot. We pay our dollars, we get strapped in next to each other. Our legs are dangling from the tiny chairs and we can see all of Vegas in it's night time glory from where we are sitting 1000 ft above the city. A red light flashes and "Viva Las Vegas!" blasts out of a stereo system far too loud then WHOOOOOOOOSH! Up we go 125 ft in 2.5 seconds. G force 4. It's like being strapped onto a rocket and lighting the fuse.

We all scream like children on the way up and then relax as we catch a second of zero G at the top of the tower. Only to shit our pants as the thing plummets back down to the ground, which feels like driving your car off a cliff. The thing that really gets you about the whole thing is that you're already 1000 ft above the ground BEFORE you rocket the extra 125 ft in a couple of seconds. That ride is sick. Take a peek at the picture above. Please take special care to note the look of extreme terror in my brother's face and the clenched teethed "SHIT!" coming from Jim's mouth. I thank you.

09/07/98 - Gibsons. Tempe, AZ.

Man is it hot in Arizona. They have misters outside all the shops to spray water over the customers because they don't want them to die from heat exhaustion before they reach their credit limits on those cards. Before the show I go shopping with Jim. We need some tacky useless shit to take home for our loved ones. My dad (the Reverend D Clayden) likes hats, so I buy him a Tempe Sun Devils baseball cap. I'm sure he's going to love that.
I already got my Mum a jewellery box with a picture of Elvis shaking hands with President Nixon on the top from Gracelands. I thank you. That's possibly the classiest piece of tacky shit on the planet. I'm such a good son. Jim buys his Dad a paper weight with a scorpion encased within in. Classy.

The show is amazing. It's a 750 capacity venue totally sold out. There are a lot of goths in the crowd which I find unusual for somewhere so hot. How the hell can you walk around in the desert with a full length black leather overcoat and face paint? There must be pools of melted goth on every street corner. The ones who couldn't make it back to their coffin. People must tread in them like melted chewing gum stuck to their boots. "look out! melting goth!"

For the first time in my musical career underwear is hurled at me from the crowd. Someone threw a black lacy underwired bra at me while we were playing. I couldn't see who it was because of the bright lights. She could have been a doll, she could have been a beast. I guess I'll never know. That thing was big though. I don't really know that much about bras being your average dumb male, but that thing looked sizeable. 'C' or a 'D'? whatever the hell those letters mean. That thing looks like it could be WAY further down the alphabet. We're talkin Omega here. It's hanging up in the bus somewhere. A shrine to fast living. After the show I give the rest of the band the slip and run off with a car full of people I just met to a live hip hop night at a little local hideaway. The tunes were fat, the break dancing was funny, the pitchers were unending. Before I knew it I was up there dance hall style whooping it up with B boys and girls. Wiggle and wine! Back on the bus I ask Stilly (Pitchshifter's stage tech) what the gig is going to be like tomorrow because he's done it before.

"Last time I came here with the band Carcass someone threw a bag ofmushrooms up on the stage at Geoff the singer."
"Cool."
"Yeah, only it wasn't a bag of mushrooms."
"No? What was it then?"
"A dead rat."

Viva Las Vegas?