The Corn Story
Friday, November 26 2004
Posted by brockito

I got an email today which contained a transcript of an MSN chat between Rob and his cousin. It pertained to a show I played many years ago in (I think) Regina at a place referred to by some as the Crackhouse. It went as follows:

geez says: (7:20:07 PM)
   (There's a totally imfamous brock story from the crackhouse dayz)

icarus says: (7:20:31 PM)
   he remembers the crack house

geez says: (7:20:37 PM)
   hahaha

icarus says: (7:20:49 PM)
   was it the corn story?

geez says: (7:20:53 PM)
   hahaha

geez says: (7:21:02 PM)
   ridiculous

icarus says: (7:21:10 PM)
   tell me again

geez says: (7:22:58 PM)
   short version: a very tired , post-gig brock interupts a heavy knife session at the stove to take over the only working element and steam a single cob of corn in a bamboo steamer; he proceeds to consume it, in silence, sans salt and butter

geez says: (7:23:05 PM)
   and then crash out

icarus says: (7:23:31 PM)
   awesome !

geez says: (7:23:49 PM)
   its one of those stoned moments you can't really explain

geez says: (7:24:30 PM)
   E.A. immediately brought that up when I mentioned you had hooked up with brock
icarus says: (7:25:03 PM)
   that's so funny

geez says: (7:26:00 PM)
   its part of the whole mythology

The guys who wrote the above may have found my corn eating funny, but it was definitely better than the time we pulled over at a Taco Hell somewhere on the road to Lawrence, KS or Omaha, NE.

Bond Head and I were entirely avoiding any Taco Hell food at that point (there are only so many taco salads you can eat) but it remained a favourite of Mr. Kastner and he was driving...Anyway, Jon and I decided we would wait in the van, but also being hungry, we decided to forage in the corn field for some ripe cobs to eat. We were completely disheartened to discover that there was nary a cob to be found which was free of worms. Skippy, the good old Virginia boy that he was, had a good laugh upon finding us lamenting and pointed out that that field there was field corn only meant for cows to eat.

Anyone else have another corn story ?

Willie Nelson Sucks ?!
Friday, November 19 2004
Posted by brockito

"You're thinking... Willie Nelson is an American hero," Bob Pollard bantered about an hour into Guided By Voices' set last night at Neumo in Seattle, "Well not any more, he isn't !"

At times it was heartbreaking to be there listening to the sold out crowd singing along to his every word, while he and the band went through Miller Lites in plastic bottles faster than the staff could bring them on stage. Most of them wound up in the hands of audience members in the front rows so quickly that drummer Kevin March frequently had a hard time getting one for himself. Pollard charged with zeal through an enormous setlist he revealed upon taking the stage, repeatedly launching the band into song after brilliant song, pausing only to slur out its name and a, "One Two Three Four" without so much as a glance back. Nor did Gillard and the rest of the band miss a beat.

I can't remember the last time I've been bounced up and down by the floorboards and the elation of the audience, but it was a long time ago. Another amazing thing worth noting was the band's playing steadily through three hours and fifteen minutes of set and encores (GBV's first encore was about the length of many bands' entire performance) without a single guitar change. I was mentally comparing this to the Ministry show on Monday (see below) where there were nine guitars on stage left alone, and nearly every tune had a new guitar handed over strap open by a guitar tech.

From time to time GBV would stop while Bob went off on some rant or other about the sorry state of the music business, starting with the Stone Temple Pilots "riding on the back of 'Eddie' ", and moving on to lament Alien Ant Farm, once an intolerable development in the world of pop music, now a nostalgic bright spot compared to the paucity of today's current acts (Matchbox 20 got top honours there, but even REM did not escape Pollard's sights).

All I can say is, anyone who can play for that long, bringing the audience with them all the way without repeating themselves or playing a single lame song, can say all they want. Even that Willie Nelson sucks. Funniest thing is, when you look at things through the window of Bob Pollard's world, he's got a point.

Watch Out for the Tabasco Sauce !
Tuesday, November 16 2004
Posted by brockito

Conversation overheard in the Commodore Ballroom green room yesterday between two Ministry crew guys:

"What are you doin ?"
"Eating"
"Is that all you do all day, eat, do drugs, and put $hit in your hair ?"
(long pause) "I don't have anything in my hair..."

Later that night after Ministry was done sonically bludgeoning their audience, I took to the stage with the rest of the crew and was first told (by local crew dude) to start taking down one of the Mac600's on top of the SL side-fill. I was subsequently called a retard by grumpy tour crew guy for doing same, and then rescued and put to work by Roy (guitar tech).

Roy first asked me to collect various pedals, power supplys, and stuff that was velcroed and gafferred to the floor. After getting all that stuff back in the workbox, he then asked me to get an orangey coloured loom (see definition in e-tape makes your hands dirty blog) that ran from a rack upstage left underneath the drum riser. As I turn to do this he added, "Watch out for the tabasco sauce..." which kind of puzzled me. I began wrapping the loom and as I followed it and freed it from a mess of other cables underneath the riser, I discovered a big puddle of some ketchup-like substance smeared around on the stage and covering the ends of these (pretty good quality and somewhat costly) cables.

Carefully, leaving the last few feet unwrapped, I returned to guitar world where Roy inquired as to the extent of tabasco damage as he presented a brown towel (for some reason House Of Blues always seems to supply brown towels to the artists) like a knowing parent, and wiped off the ends of the loom.