Your Band Sucks (31 page)

Well, this was it.

What to say? We hugged, and once we stepped back from each other, I repeated what I'd told Orestes: “We did it.”

Sooyoung nodded, smiling through his exhaustion. “And we did it
right
.”

Maybe we had.

He suggested that Laurel and I come meet him and Fiona for a vacation in Indonesia sometime. I said, sure.

I quickly hustled in and out of the shower, taking care to keep the tidy bathroom as neat as it was. Sooyoung's dad appeared with a luggage cart, and after I loaded it, we wheeled it into the elevator and to the garage, where I hefted my bags and our merch boxes into the trunk of his car and carefully placed the guitar cases on the immaculate tan leather backseat. Then we headed east on Lakeshore Drive toward downtown. Sooyoung's dad had aged well. Still trim, with a good head of hair. He and his wife had been incredibly welcoming, and I was moved by their kindness. Twenty-five summers ago, when Sooyoung and I fled Charlotte for Atlanta, I'd left their home under much worse circumstances. I rarely sit on the kind of soft leather found in expensive cars, and I gratefully sank into my seat and looked toward the lake.

A winter-bright morning. December weather in October. A day where the wind turned your face red and whipped up whitecaps and real waves. You could imagine, briefly, that this was the shoreline of some sea. A few clouds scudded quickly in and out of sight. We arrived at my hotel, where I shook hands with Sooyoung's dad, thanking him once more, and followed a bellman into the hotel.

My room had amazing eighties wall switches for the lights and TV, with one button actually marked
MOOD LIGHTING
. State of the art, for the Atari age. It would take time to figure it all out. But I took the elevator to a great room downstairs, ordered tea, opened my laptop, and started writing.

The cement tones of downtown Chicago outside the window. Grand, but terribly monochromatic. A sad pile of pumpkins in a courtyard provided the only natural color. No place could underscore the late-autumn feelings of finale better than Chicago. Portlandia for this kind of music. Where there was an endless procession of bands like ours. As such, it was our culture's best argument for
careful what you wish for
. Nerdy, earnest boys, dressing badly, trying desperately to rewrite the rules of rock—and generally failing, often egregiously. I was always just one left turn from ending up here and being a part of it, too. I always resisted, and shit-talked and belittled this city instead. And yet, while I stayed in Chicago after we played the Bottle, people I hadn't spoken to in years showed me around, bought me drinks, waved me into their shows for free, refused to let me eat any meal alone. This town took me in whenever I showed up. I always forgot that part.

I HAVEN'T YET MENTIONED HOW THE BUILD, PEAK, AND
afterglow of any performance and tour is much more visible today. Preshow chatter on Facebook and Twitter is an effective early-alert system, so you can sense how much interest is building. (I knew, for instance, that Hong Kong would be bad, that Singapore would be pretty good, and that London and Tokyo and New York would be really good.) And, after each show, there would be a day or so of Twitter and Facebook comments before the crowd flitted on to the next thing.

It always hurt a bit, watching the vapor trail of any tour's final show fade. You knew that it was inevitable, but that didn't make the absence of chatter and noise and anticipation and showtime feel any better. Chicago's traces would disappear, too. But they had a longer half-life than most, and while they were still fresh, I marveled over the kind things people posted online.

Like this, from Jay Ryan, who played bass for Dianogah:

Went to the Empty Bottle last night to see Bitch Magnet, a band whom I've loved for roughly 20 years, but whom I'd never seen before, as they broke up before I found them. They reunited for a handful of shows, and this was one of the best concerts I'd ever been to, ever. Insanely tight, especially for a bunch of old guys. The experience was only improved by being surrounded by friends I don't see nearly often enough, most of whom have made music which has been heavily influenced by this band.

Especially for a bunch of old guys?

Oh, the hell with it. He's right.

And this is where the story ends. A strange little band, oddly and briefly reunited two decades after it broke up. Kings of a few small clubhouses for a few more nights. Living a modest dream. But sometimes that's enough.

Almost nothing I'd hoped for twenty-five years ago had happened. The weirdos hadn't taken over. Our bands hadn't changed the world, or destroyed the big, bad major labels. (That was the Internet's job.) Or even changed the mainstream much. I'm not even going to get into how almost all of the places we most treasured, where we found each other and where we gathered—record stores, bookstores, mom-and-pop music shops, the dive bars and venues we all knew—long ago vanished. But believing that this culture's significance depends on fulfilling any ancient grandiose expectation is missing the point. Because, despite everything that happened and everything that didn't, we carved out—and nurtured and maintained—a place for bands like us.

Sometimes that's enough, too.

Sometimes.

And today, after all these years, when rock music means so much less than it once did, weird bands as different as Tortoise and Battles and Fucked Up and Swans and Shellac still play and thrive. In some cases, even make a living from music alone. A framework—a touring circuit and a culture—still stands for new generations of musicians like us. I haven't been paying attention, but I can feel them all out there, as the ocean feels the phases of the moon. As I can feel all those I've known forever who are still at it, like Ted Leo, Lightning Bolt, Yo La Tengo, the Ex, Will Oldham, Melvins, the Sea and Cake, Mudhoney, Uzeda . . . There are too many to list, and that's a small victory, too. I don't love all those bands, but that's not important. What's important is this: they're the people I recognized, long ago. The ones who made me realize I wasn't alone. Maybe they recognized me, too.

And sometimes that's enough.

No. It is enough. That's the happy ending. One far better than any of us ever dreamed, back when we crouched beside our parents' stereos, peeling shrink-wrap off the first record we bought by the Stooges or Wire or Black Flag or Hüsker Dü. Lonely, ignored, maybe even hated, but suddenly strangely excited.

“I ended up in a band that has a really small following. People with gigantic record collections. Who have socially maladapted lives because of their love for music,” Mission of Burma's Clint Conley once told me. “But those are the people I wanted.”

Those are the people I wanted, too.

Because those are the people we are.

A
fter our second Asian tour I stayed in Tokyo and booked myself into a fancy hotel for two nights. It was exorbitant, even after I found a crazily discounted rate, and not in the slightest bit punk rock. But I couldn't resist going grand after the madness and bruisings of this tour. All of which started receding as the cabbie, dressed in a suit and white gloves, sprang from the right-side driver's seat and began Tetris-ing my gear and luggage into the minuscule trunk and backseat.

I settled in and gave him the name of my hotel. Soon we passed the O-East, where we'd played the night before last, and a few moments after that we left behind the parts of Shibuya that light up like a pinball machine every night, garishly, blaringly, neon-soaked.

An overcast day in April, under a weak and tired sun. Only barely spring. Our friends here told us we'd just missed the cherry blossoms.
But we always just miss the cherry blossoms,
I thought. Combining touring and tourism never really works out.

The VIP wristband from yesterday's festival was still on my wrist, and my body was a catalog of ache and malady. Half of my back was balled up and crying: in your mid-forties, wearing heavy guitars night after night messes you up. My feet and calves still throbbed from all that bouncing up and down onstage. A small constellation of angry-looking blood blisters dotted my right forearm, friction welts from up-and-downing too hard on my guitar. I clicked my teeth together, testing, and felt jolts of pain. During the encore in Singapore—was that ten days ago?—I lunged toward Sooyoung's bass, trying to bite the strings, but missed, and my top front teeth smashed into the pickguard instead. They hurt like hell the next morning, and I checked them in mirrors for the rest of the tour, convinced they'd start turning black, but they didn't. On top of everything,
Jesus,
was I fried
.
Exhausted and place-shifted. Returning to the hotel the night before around 4 a.m., I asked the desk attendant for my room key, by number, in approximate Japanese.
Roku zero roku.
But then unfathomably added
s'il vous plaît?

I lolled against the white lace draped across the backseat to watch the order and correctness of Tokyo rolling by. The harmony of a thoughtfully designed city, especially on a quiet Sunday. When we arrived at the hotel, the driver pushed his magic button, and my door eased open. A small crowd of employees descended, all wearing suits. One asked the name on my reservation, two muscled the bags and guitars out of the car and onto a large luggage cart, and a fourth, speaking fluent unaccented English, escorted me in, through the entrance and into the teak-walled elevators that opened out into a grand vaulted space of the lobby bar and indoor bamboo garden. This was the kind of hotel where, once you stepped into the lobby, all the noise of the day falls away, submerging you in a deep, delicious, calming hush, a very expensive quiet for which I'll forever be a sucker, and never more so than after the strung-out extremes of a tour like this one. Every detail here was so thought-out that in the hallways the ceiling fixtures cast perfectly symmetrical round pools of light on the carpet. Ridiculous. But I loved it. As it was ridiculous I could even
be
here—that fortune had smiled on me so brightly that I could come to Asia for a wholly improbable ongoing reunion of my teenage punk rock band, and afterward sleep two nights in such a setting.

Just after I arrived in my room, the doorbell chimed—the bellman, who neatly propped open the door and hauled in everything, starting with the duffel bags and merch boxes. When he set the guitar cases down, he made his joke, asking whether or not they contained machine guns.

No, I told him. Guitars. But sometimes they're as
loud
as machine guns.

It wasn't funny, but he laughed anyway. We both bowed, and he left, gently closing the door behind him.

I looked out over the city.
So we'll do some shows in America this fall,
I thought,
and that'll be it
. Orestes and I were still talking about a new band, but nothing was coming of it, and I couldn't pretend I was dying to start all over again. Not even with him.

Some leftover tour anxiety fluttered, and I walked across the carpet to where the bellman had perfectly stacked the guitar cases atop one another. At the festival someone had packed up both Les Pauls for me—another first—and I wanted to check.

Each guitar was fine, nestled perfectly into a fake red velvet interior. But something tightened in my throat.

Every now and then I looked at one of my guitars, still marveling:
What a lovely thing
. Though this time it wasn't that. It was more like:
All the places we've been. Crazy
.

I strummed the open strings on the black Les Paul with my index finger. The D-A-D-G-A-D tuning that Sooyoung first showed me in late 1988, which I'd used off and on ever since, and the chord resonated in the case and through the body, hanging in the air for a long time, which is exactly what you want from a Les Paul:

Braaaaaaaannnnng.

How many times had I heard the gentle rise and fade of that open chord on an unamplified Les Paul and thought,
Wow
.
So beautiful
. No song—no recording—ever truly captured the subtleties and colors of its overtones sounding in a quiet room.

Braaaaaaaannnnng.

This magic wand that could dispel all bad feelings, turn the air electric, fill every empty space, be beautiful or brutal and every shade in between—and it all started with this unamplified, unadorned sound. A toddler would first play a parent's guitar like this: drawing a tiny, tentative finger across the open strings, amazed at the magic that follows.

Braaaaaaaannnnng.

***

IN MAY 2010 MY FRIENDS IN LCD SOUNDSYSTEM PLAYED FOUR
sold-out shows at New York's Terminal 5. Everything about those nights was perfect. They were a hometown send-off before the band left on a long international tour. They'd just released
This Is Happening
and were absolutely on fire. The opening act, their labelmates Holy Ghost!, were friends with all of us, too. I went to every show. Each night the audience went bananas. Each night the afterparty went very late.

Backstage and VIP sections of rock clubs generally suck, but at these shows it was different. Not because it was decadent and everyone was crazy on drugs and fucking in the bathrooms and broom closets. Because it was all old friends. Many of whom were my favorite people. We'd all known each other forever. Our bands played together. We all dragged out our adolescence for as long as possible before growing up, late, together. Saw each other get married. Gathered, blotchy-faced and sobbing, to bury a close friend. Met their kids when they were born. The VIP section was filled with the people you most wanted to invite to the party—the crew with whom you wanted to end every late night—all jumping and cheering and singing along with the
other
people you most wanted to invite to the party, who were tearing it up onstage. The occasional actual celebrity who dropped by often looked around and quickly calculated that it wasn't worth staying, because they weren't among their kind.

All during that enchanting time of year in New York when daylight keeps lasting longer and each night the late sunsets and warm evenings still surprise.

Like I said. Everything about it was perfect.

The final show was on a Sunday night, and after the last encores and the balloon drop left us sweaty and wrung-out, and after we clicked our iPhone cameras at the commemorative cake backstage, and after we stayed to the end of whatever final afterparty, I went home and slept a few hours, woke up around eight, showered, gulped caffeine and cereal, threw on clean jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a suit jacket, and rushed my worn-out, hungover ass out the door for a nine-o'clock meeting. It was time to get back to that other world. All that had happened over the course of the previous week was already growing lovelier in memory as I dashed down flights of stairs. But I was trying to push it aside and release the
PAUSE
button I'd pressed down again for a few lucky nights.

What came next never happens. Until it does.

Downstairs a bus idled at the curb. Then I saw Pat and Nick, the drummers from LCD Soundsystem and Holy Ghost!, finishing predeparture cigarettes.
Of course they're here,
I thought: James from LCD lived in my building. Our eyes met, and they cracked up and started waving and hollering and pointing at the bus.

Get on.

Get on that bus.

Come on!

Get on!

Fine!

You know you're getting on the bus.

Come on!

You're going!

Let's go!

I cracked up, too, made sounds of excuses—
reallybusy! toomuchwork! can'tgetaway!
—and went over to slap hands and hug and wish them a great tour. Tonight was Montreal, they said, and—arching eyebrows toward James's window—they were already running a little late.

As was I. So I said goodbye and took off.

Nothing happening here was
that
important,
I thought as I jogged toward the subway. But that wasn't why I was staying.

They probably didn't know how hard it was for me not to get on the bus that lovely May morning. Or how badly I hoped they were serious.

They probably didn't know how desperate I was not to lose the feeling of the past few days. That I'd do almost anything to hold on to it for a little bit longer.

The only sensible thing to do was walk away. Crank up the machinery of a more practical life, the one with far fewer highs and lows. If I got on that bus, I'd never, ever want to get off.

I kept running to the L train, sweating last night's booze into my jacket, swiped my way through the turnstile, lunged into a subway car crammed with cranky rush-hour commuters, and didn't look back.

I was forty-two, and married. You can't keep running away to join the circus.

***

THOUGH IF YOU'RE REALLY LUCKY, I THOUGHT, ALMOST TWO
years later, seven thousand miles from home in a fancy hotel, you might get to visit it again, for a little while.

Braaaaaaaaaang.

This odd and lovely little world. Which saved me, and then broke my heart. The world I'd been so determined to forget.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

But, of course, I couldn't.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

Even though, no matter what I expected, it always let me down.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

I mean: Really. You
motherfuckers
. All of you. I wasted
so much time
.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

But listen to me, for just a little longer.

Before I walk away again, and probably forever, it's important that you know how grateful I was for this chance to return.

No. I am grateful this whole raggedy culture was ever possible—ever thinkable—in the first place.

How madly, and how unreasonably, I loved every minute.

Well,
almost
every minute.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

Even if I understood all along that the hardest thing about picking up a guitar is knowing that, one day, you'll have to put it down.

Braaaaaaaaaaang
.

When I'm seventy, I'll hear a snatch of some song, somewhere, and duck my head and smile. Not because I remember. Because I still know.

Braaaaaaaaaaang.

One last time. The chord dropped away to reveal pure sound: overtones mingling, vibration purring through wood.

Then there was no sound at all, and I closed and locked the case.