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!