Jesus the Booking Agent & other True Tales (part 2)

2010-03-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

Last month began with part 1, "Mountain Men & Electric Zen."

"WATERFALL URINAL & THE MELTING MIND" (part 2)

The Highway 101 is an epic, mountainous, California coastline stretch that lies on the knife-edge of the romantic and the dangerous. The asphalt twists and careens like a crazed black worm over the cliffs and crashing waves, dangling Nathan and I over the precipice, then back again. The road twists so beautifully precarious that our tired touring eyes become red from not blinking. The rocky ocean sight over the edge is so striking I'm surprised that more people don't bust their SUV right over the guardrail. Caught in a rapturous stare at the crashing white and blue, the barking sea lions and the razor rocks, I imagine a motor-tourist meeting his demise like a careless zookeeper hypnotized by a tiger's stare.

It's the summer of 2002, and our two-man-band "Skyjacket" is touring south down Highway 101 with shows booked in Hollywood and other scattered towns along the coast. As we drive and watch the waves and sea lions, musical dreams begin to tickle our minds... who will we play for? Where could we travel? How far will music take us?

With these thoughts buzzing in our heads we pulled off the Highway 101 for some food. To our surprise we were greeted with the gaudy splendor of the "Madonna Inn," the most gloriously tacky hotel on the face of the planet. If there are any professional Barbie-collectors out there, you may want to consider scattering your ashes off the coast next door, because if Barbie lost her figure and became an old, sagging, gaudy grandma, she would model her new "Barbie Dream Hotel" after the Madonna Inn. But, however, if you drink shots of testosterone for breakfast and suffer allergic reactions to the color pink, anaphylactic shock might rock your body before you sit down for some heart-shaped pancakes.

Eating at the 'Inn' is definitely a once in a lifetime experience, but the novelty for me was quickly wearing off. Surrounded by infinite shades of putrid pink while munching on my onion rings, I imagined the swirling hues beginning to infiltrate my eyes, my mind, and my lower manhood. I felt a sudden urge to escape to the bathroom. "Perhaps," I thought, "perhaps within the 'john' will lie a safe haven devoid of the color pink. An oasis of manliness." Oh, how correct I was.

The urinal in the men's restroom is made of pure granite rock. When you 'step up to the plate' and finish your business, a furious waterfall rushes down in a gush to flush it all away... doubts, worries, memories of pink doilies and napkins, all of it goes down the drain and everything is right with the world again.

Miles after our escape from the Madonna Inn we rolled into Monterey, California. This is the historic town where Jimi Hendrix sacrificed his guitar in flaming effigy. It was 1 in the morning when we pulled into town and a hotel stay could buy a lot of gas in 2002, so Nathan and I pulled off into a high-class residential cul de sac, fluffed up the velour seats, and slept in the van.

Nathan's van is nice. It's comfortable and new, not like the one I took through the Death Valley desert in the late 90's. I was touring with a half Native American band called 'Speck,' and our niche was playing rock shows at Indian reservations all across the country. These concerts were quite unique... the climax to one show in Pine Ridge South Dakota was a drive-by shooting while we were packing up our gear. (Fortunately for the band the gangster was either extremely near-sighted, or not aiming at us.) One epic concert that will be forever etched in my mind was for 5,000 rock-n-roll-starved hyperactive kids in the middle of a field in Pennsylvania. A show like that invokes a glorious high for a while, but then just a few days later we were rocking out for FIVE people in a New Mexico high-school gymnasium. That's right, huge concert of five THOUSAND on one night, then FIVE. Two of the five were family. Ah... the fleeting fancy of fame.

"speck" circa 1998 (I'm on the far right)

The touring van for 'Speck' was unique as well, it could've been in a Mad-Max movie. Over the span of thousands of mile markers we ground that poor van into the asphalt like a trucker's cigarette. It looked like it had been spray-painted blue, driven into a lake, then pulled out years later to decompose in the reservation sun.

Another charming feature of the van was that it would overheat if you looked at it cross-eyed. Whether it was faith, stupidity, or a combination of the two, in the summer of '98 Speck braved a tour through the infamous Death Valley desert. 111 degrees of scorching sun. It was so grotesquely hot that we had to drive an excruciating 45 mph and turn on the van-heater full blast to keep the engine from melting. Who needs drugs? I hallucinated for hours rolling down the desert while my mind liquified and precious IQ points leaked out of mystery orifices.

Nathan and I woke up with a jump as a billy club tapped the van window.

next month: "Apple Brick"

Jesus the Booking Agent & other True Tales

2010-02-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

pic courtesy of Brian Carney

People are beautifully strange creatures. Put billions of us together in an earth-sized pot, stir, and all sorts of stories will steam and boil out the sides. Stories of the bizarre, the extreme, or the random seem to creep up on us slowly, or sometimes spontaneously ignite in a sudden fit of glory. Some of these stories that came to find me personally over the years are knocking inside my head, demanding to be released into the world, so... here I go.

I hope you enjoy.

"MOUNTAIN MEN & ELECTRIC ZEN" part 1 of ?

Nathan Johnson is an eclectic, musical soul. Always trolling the green earth for new experiences, the fun and the peculiar always seem to find him. He's like a quirky magnet. One phone conversation I had with Nathan went something like this:

Nathan: "Mike! I just flew into Denver to record an album... you have any interesting spices to add to the musical mix?"
Me: "Hmmmmm. I just got a taser."
Nathan: "Perfect."

"Spices" I brought to the recording session included an Udu drum (a ceramic drum that suspiciously looks like an obese bong), a vibraphone (the xylophone's saucier big brother), and a 400,000 volt taser. Successfully recording a taser is tricky... there's not much musical prowess involved, but you do have to make sure you don't electrocute your mic, your fingers, your face, or all three in an unfortunate white arc.

So you might be asking: why does a musician feel the need to own a taser? That's a great question. The short answer is that I've lived in a halfway house for 10 years... ah, I love saying that. The truth is I do in fact live in a complex full of former prisoners (free rent helps facilitate my musical obsession) but I'm the property manager of the house. When the feces hits the fan at 3 a.m., I'm the one who dials 911. I've never had any serious physical altercations with the surprisingly cool teenagers that live with me, but I'm convinced that the bar next door, a stone's toss from my bedroom window, is the sketchiest in all of Denver. El Torito.

That night, the one that inspired me to buy a 400,000 volt taser, I suspected nothing. A mountain of a man left El Torito and snuck into one of the rooms at the halfway house. I was checking in on the tenants, and like a huge shadow the man creeped up behind me, silently. then took me out. Without a word he hit me upside the head so hard it launched me across the room. After a brief flight through the air, I landed on the corner of an unlucky television set, separating my ribs. The monstrous man looked around in dazed confusion as to what had just happened... he was so high on so many things I'm not sure he realized what planet he was on. While watching me trying to put my ribs back together he finally figured out he had done something wrong, and took off into the night. I never saw him again.

After that night I felt like owning a taser might be good idea. To experience for yourself the musical talents of the taser as well as other aural oddities, check out the blissfully haunting album Firecracker by Katie Chastain, featuring the recording and production talents of Nathan Johnson.

So as you may have guessed, Nathan is not alone in his propensity for attracting the unexpected. I am also a virtual quirk-magnet: the unpredictable seems to jump over the hurdle of the humdrum and tackle me flat. (Usually without hurting me!) I truly love unique experiences and always crave more, so in anticipation of the new and the creative Nathan and I formed the experimental band 'Skyjacket.' With stars in our eyes and the bizarre in our hearts, in the summer of 2002 we took off together to tour the west coast of California via Highway 101.

to be continued next month:
"WATERFALL URINAL & THE MELTING MIND"

True Music Tales

Jesus the Booking Agent & other True Tales (part 2)

Jesus the Booking Agent & other True Tales