March 16, 2008
Tour Blog: St. Louis, Night Two — Parental Advisory
Written by Girth McDürchstein on March 16, 2008 10:17 PM
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Happy Heartland Tour -- The Midwest '08
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After the awesomeness of last night’s show, I decided to check out the local newspapers to see how the public reacted to our genius. I found this:
What…the fuck?
Was that supposed to be a review? It’s in the “entertainment” section, not the “news” section, but aside from a one-sentence assessment of last night’s show from this “Turk” guy, the whole thing is about some crazy protests. What kind of parents of college students protest concerts? Back when I was in college, all kinds of crazy, fucked-up musical acts performed, from Sir Mix-a-Lot to Lady Entangle (an exotic dancer/R&B singer). Kids today are too sensitive. Or, more accurately, their parents are too sensitive.
First thing, I called up Lacey. This had an unexpected result: I heard her cell phone ringing in our motel room. I scoured the place for the source of the sound, calling three or four times before I finally found it…sitting in the palm of Lacey’s hand. She was naked and asleep in our bathtub. Don’t ask; I didn’t. (I have a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to naked women sleeping in my bathtub. I don’t know if I should be honored or ashamed to admit this has happened often enough for me to form a policy on the issue.)
I tried to shake her awake gently, but when that didn’t work I shoved her head against the tiled wall.
“What the fuck?!” she whispered, voice hoarse with sleep and booze.
I held the newspaper in front of her face.
After reading for a couple of seconds, she said, “Shit.”
“What are we going to do?”
Lacey sighed. “Theoretically, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. They seemed to like you guys last night, and Brent says he’s not gonna bump you. Just play the show. You’ve been protested before, and I’m sure you’ll be protested again.”
She had a point.
“And speaking of which,” I said, “this dude says he saw us in ‘96. Why’s he downplaying the riot?”
“He’s probably saving it for the Sunday edition after you guys cause another one.”
“Oh, that’s hilarious,” I said sarcastically. It sounded like a funnier comeback in my head.
Nonetheless, I obeyed Lacey. I got Abysmal together to rehearse yesterday afternoon, but when we went down to the Billiken (we left our instruments overnight—say what you will about Brent, but I’d trust the security of his place), but protesters were already picketing the place. As soon as they saw me and my thunderous manhood, the middle-aged fogies turned on us and gave surprisingly spry chase.
The five of us ducked into an alley nearby, but it was a dead-end. Fortunately, an unlocked side-door led us into an old blues club. An old, abandoned blues club where several bums slept. They stirred at the sound of us slamming the door shut, but none of them awakened.
“What the hell, Girth?” Mikey whisper-shouted. “I thought you said everything would be smooth!”
“Apparently, I was mistaken,” I said.
“Well, bra-fucking-vo,” Mikey grunted.
“What are we supposed to do?” Carl asked.
Riffs said, “I think we need to make a compromise.”
We all stared at him, baffled.
“What?” Margo asked.
“Well,” Riffs explained, “the parents are pissed about us, but Brent won’t budge. Why don’t we call Brent up and tell him to have the parents’ chaperone their kids?”
“Why would we do that?” I asked.
“First, they’ll stop protesting if they think they have some control,” Riffs said. “Second, they’ll think we’d never have the nerve to play our normal material with them waiting in the audience—”
“Third, we’ll win them over with our greatness!” I proclaimed. “I love this plan!”
So we called Brent, who acted a little uneasy but went ahead with it. He called back about 20 minutes later saying yes, they called off the protest. We went in to rehearse, and everything went smoothly…
…until showtime. We took the stage the same way we did the night before, with the “Sax on the Beach” boat opening (a leftover from the Backseat Delightlah! world tour). The song ended to thundering silence.
I peered past the lights, into the audience, and saw sullen young men and women, looking as if they wanted to clap and cheer and get hammered, flanked by older men and women giving us stern looks of hostility.
“Get ready to have your balls rocked off,” I sneered into the microphone, and we launched into “Put It Where It Doesn’t Belong.” Again, nothing from the audience. None of the energy or vitality of last night. We went through half our catalog with the same result.
I decided we’d close with “Meth Amp City,” and when we got through it, I had a minor surprise—a few people clapped. I tried to scan the audience and see who, but the lights were too bright.
Thinking that maybe they’d be more responsive to our “issues” songs, we launched into “Gangster Lovestick” and followed that up with “Rolling in It” (both of which we’ve removed from our usual setlist to concentrate on raunchier material). Each time, the applause increased.
It confused me that we had such a poor response to our anti-immigration epic “Put It Where It Doesn’t Belong,” but we tried another anti-immigration song, “¡Paz, Hombre!” which got a warm response from a surprisingly Spanish-savvy audience. Our official closer became “Thunderbird,” a negative depiction of alcohol abuse, fortified wine, and Ford cars.
This resulted in roof-shaking cheers and applause. We’d actually won the parents over, and the kids felt confident cheering for us now.
I still think kids these days are too overprotected—seriously, college kids having a parent chaperone?—but if we can touch such a wide cross-section of humanity, I can’t understand why we aren’t more possible. Maybe Margo was right when she told me we missed our window. Fuckin’ Tommy.
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