Last night, K introduced me to DiG! the film's website) a movie about two almost-famous bands of the nineties: The Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre.
It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it. (I haven't even seen the end, my pirated version of the Gossip Girl season finale had finished downloading and I just couldn't wait). DiG! reminded me of the Metallica rockumentary, Some Kind of Monster, which is also awesome. What these films have in common is the uncanny ability to capture the rocky road to fleeting fame-- or in the case of Metallica, the aftermath. Brian Jonestown Massacre is easily the most relateable of the three bands, largely because you've never heard of them.
At the end of August last year, I went on tour with K and the band he'd been playing with all summer. Let's call them Rising Moon. Rising Moon is composed of two permanent members: Gary and his wife Maggie, thirty-somethings still trying to live the indie rock dream from their farmhouse in upstate New York. Gary even has his own record label and recording studio. (By which I mean his kitchen and front porch). K's roommate, Pete was playing bass while K was drumming, Gary always does lead vocals and guitar, and Maggie alternates between cello and violin.
The possibility of me singing backup was briefly considered, but quickly abandoned, and I was relegated to helping move things like tambourines and jugs of wine, and of course, playing the part of devoted groupie. Our tour schedule was as follows: Philadelphia, Wilmington DE, Carlyle PA, Washington DC, NYC. Not a bad line-up.
I rode in the middle back of Gary's white van for 95% of the entire trip, sandwiched between two sweaty boys, one of whom smelled really bad (not you, K). It's a bit intimidating being on the road with four musicians-- key signatures and obscure band references sail over your head, and you feel a little like the only kid in junior high who's never seen a rated-R movie.
Rising Moon is used to being not-famous-but-trying-really-hard-to-get-famous, and everywhere we played reflected that. There was our first show in Philly, where, by the end of the set, I was the only one watching, and Gary was drunk and hurling insults at the ever-diminishing audience . Or in Delaware, we had a huge crowd of aging bikers and teenaged rednecks who were there for other bands, but we played for a huge enthusiastic crowd by default. On a whim, Gary took a booking for a birthday party in Carlyle, and we ended up playing to a row of seated four-year-olds. One of them knew the words to Gary's songs, which was pretty creepy, even if he does get a lot of myspace traffic.
Last night I remarked to K, as the movie was finishing, that I was sorry we hadn't gone on a longer tour with Gary and the gang. Of course, I wasn't literally sorry because a longer fall tour didn't happen anyway, and as much as I like to pretend I'm super cool and can stay up late and subsist on beer and gas station eats for days on end, I can't. I get tired and low blood-sugared and cranky too easily.
It wasn't that BJM and The Dandy Warhols made trying-to-get-famous look really fun all of a sudden. Heroin, selling out, not having any real friends, and staying up late every night of the week don't appeal. What was appealing though, and what I miss, was (most obviously) not sitting at a desk three days of the week (I know, poor me, more on this later) but the actually pretty tangible sensation of: hey we're going somewhere and we don't know what it's going to be like, but there will be free drinks and someone's bound to let us crash on their floor, right?
I also like to pretend I'm freewheelin' enough to nonchalantly live this through stuff with a cigarette tucked behind my ear. I'm not, of course. But I wouldn't mind playing at it again for a week or two. Max, sixteen days. Anybody want to come? K plays lots of instruments. I'm good at sitting around and being judgemental, and I have a guitar, too.
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