Escape from Escape from L.A. / Ogallala...
(Amended May 16, 2007; photos added May 18.)
Insane fucking drive day today... And insanely beautiful sights along the way: the sun-bleached, bombed-out trailer hitch burbs of Vegas, the Painted Hills, the Rockies... It began snowing at 9,000 feet. Perfect, dazzling serenity.
The Pehrspace gig was well out of hand. We debuted the TLASILA dectet: Ben, Graham, Misty, Rat and I, with guests Damien Romero, Scott Kinsey, Ren Schofield, Tom Van Dyke, and Billy Taylor, who, as you may recall from previous posts, was a member of Shave group from 1997-8. Our inner-meta-circle pal Oscar Perez was on hand (we spent the day with him at Ben's flat); O.P. created the artwork for Noon and Eternity, and labors by day as an increasingly successful industrial designer. His (gorgeous) girlfriend may soon be heading for a film career in Bollywood, so we may lose Oscar yet again... America, take note!
It was great hanging with one of the four original cover stars of the 1991 Spatters of a Royal Sperm poster campaign. O. and I go way back, through folded space (tagged with long-curdled ex-wife anecdotes) to the lobbies of long-gutted beachfront retirement hotels, and further still to South Beach prehistory...
(The second of the quartet of POI poster children, director Syd Garon, showed up at Pehrspace a mere handful of minutes after we'd wrapped the gig. He had a very good excuse, however, though one I'm not at liberty to divulge. Those who haven't yet viewed Syd's amazing Wave Twisters film have missed the fuck out.)
Anyhow, the gig was a maelstrom of sweat and disruptive sleight-of-hand. Pleased beyond reason...
(The mighty Oscar Perez. He starred with me - and an ex-wive apiece - in Doris Wishman's hallucinatory 1993 treatment of the very first TLASILA-styled EP, Spatters of a Royal Sperm. Although credited to Peach of Immortality, the ultimately shelved four-song single sounded very much like mannercreme... O. is another Day One ally; it was great hanging with him again...)
(Our heady high priestess, the implacable, irreducible, incalcuable Misty Martinez.)
(Gams - an essential and necessary attribute of local color... These ladies were a welcome sight. Can't comment on the stems of the hooded dude.)
(A procession of UFOs pierces the sanctity of the Tom-Liz farewell cam-mug.)
(A dwindling twelve-pack, a bag, a Rat, and a Romero...)
(TS with yet another Day One co-conspirator from our South Beach days, the mega-multi-talented Syd Garon. Ain't it great when your friends do well?)
--
I've been getting progressively out-of-body along the tour path, getting completely soaked during the gig, changing wet shirts in cold drafts, and generally abrading immune defenses. The spot on my upper lip that's been bashed most often by various venues' mic shells has developed into a distressingly mutant cold sore. (Guess there'll be no rebel odor party play for certain of us in Minneapolis...) I look pretty gnarly on the best of days, but after twelve performances in ten days and a 22-hour drive to Ogallala, I appear to have had my ass handed to me by a wheat thresher possessed by the spirit of Winnetou.
Oh well. Now, I retire, respectfully,
TS
Insane fucking drive day today... And insanely beautiful sights along the way: the sun-bleached, bombed-out trailer hitch burbs of Vegas, the Painted Hills, the Rockies... It began snowing at 9,000 feet. Perfect, dazzling serenity.
The Pehrspace gig was well out of hand. We debuted the TLASILA dectet: Ben, Graham, Misty, Rat and I, with guests Damien Romero, Scott Kinsey, Ren Schofield, Tom Van Dyke, and Billy Taylor, who, as you may recall from previous posts, was a member of Shave group from 1997-8. Our inner-meta-circle pal Oscar Perez was on hand (we spent the day with him at Ben's flat); O.P. created the artwork for Noon and Eternity, and labors by day as an increasingly successful industrial designer. His (gorgeous) girlfriend may soon be heading for a film career in Bollywood, so we may lose Oscar yet again... America, take note!
It was great hanging with one of the four original cover stars of the 1991 Spatters of a Royal Sperm poster campaign. O. and I go way back, through folded space (tagged with long-curdled ex-wife anecdotes) to the lobbies of long-gutted beachfront retirement hotels, and further still to South Beach prehistory...
(The second of the quartet of POI poster children, director Syd Garon, showed up at Pehrspace a mere handful of minutes after we'd wrapped the gig. He had a very good excuse, however, though one I'm not at liberty to divulge. Those who haven't yet viewed Syd's amazing Wave Twisters film have missed the fuck out.)
Anyhow, the gig was a maelstrom of sweat and disruptive sleight-of-hand. Pleased beyond reason...
(The mighty Oscar Perez. He starred with me - and an ex-wive apiece - in Doris Wishman's hallucinatory 1993 treatment of the very first TLASILA-styled EP, Spatters of a Royal Sperm. Although credited to Peach of Immortality, the ultimately shelved four-song single sounded very much like mannercreme... O. is another Day One ally; it was great hanging with him again...)
(Our heady high priestess, the implacable, irreducible, incalcuable Misty Martinez.)
(Gams - an essential and necessary attribute of local color... These ladies were a welcome sight. Can't comment on the stems of the hooded dude.)
(A procession of UFOs pierces the sanctity of the Tom-Liz farewell cam-mug.)
(A dwindling twelve-pack, a bag, a Rat, and a Romero...)
(TS with yet another Day One co-conspirator from our South Beach days, the mega-multi-talented Syd Garon. Ain't it great when your friends do well?)
--
I've been getting progressively out-of-body along the tour path, getting completely soaked during the gig, changing wet shirts in cold drafts, and generally abrading immune defenses. The spot on my upper lip that's been bashed most often by various venues' mic shells has developed into a distressingly mutant cold sore. (Guess there'll be no rebel odor party play for certain of us in Minneapolis...) I look pretty gnarly on the best of days, but after twelve performances in ten days and a 22-hour drive to Ogallala, I appear to have had my ass handed to me by a wheat thresher possessed by the spirit of Winnetou.
Oh well. Now, I retire, respectfully,
TS
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