The Fly-In II: Chicago

~ CH3

No matter what time we get off stage, it is always seems to be 3 a.m. when we get back to the motel.
Late night set?  Matinee at 4 pm?  No matter. 

They like to push the set times back on these out of towners, sensibly trying to time the last song with last call, keep the crowd drinking until the last minute.
I don’t blame them, the club owners, really. 
Since that pesky little Covid episode, it has becoming increasingly difficult to coax people out of the house.-hell, out of their pajamas!-so ingrained has this whole shelter at home and let the world come to me mindset taken hold.

I salute each and every one of these hardy souls who venture out of the house after dark.
The faithful who enter the clubs and put up with our nonsense, support the local clubs and the traveling bands. 
Sometimes I see someone holding up a smartphone for longer than a quick photo, and realize they are streaming the show on some social media site. 
Stop it, I think. 
If those fuckers didn’t show up, they don’t deserve to lie in bed and watch us play forty year old punk songs slightly out of tune.
That privilege is your own reward buddy!


By the time I have draped my soaking stage clothes across the shower rod and flossed my teeth, the clock is clicking toward 4 a.m.. 
And, still, I cannot sleep. 
Too wired from the set, the conversations and laughter with friends, a great night in Indianapolis.

I roll over and reach for my phone, seeing if I look fat or tired in the gig photos already posted online.
Then I open an app, a game in which you take screws out of wooden boards, trying to make them drop and clear the screen. It is idiotic and addicting, infuriating when I hit a dead end have to start the level yet again.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror then, a 63 year old man in a Rick & Morty tee shirt, reading glasses perched upon the bridge of my nose, squinting at a glowing screen in my hand.
Swiping at the phone like a chimp pushing the red button that causes another peanut to drop.

And that is when I think of my father, a distinguished physician at this age, a veteran of a war that defined his generation as the greatest. What would he think of this little tableau?

I switch off the light and try to sleep as dawn breaks, light leaking around the blackout shades like shame.

We’ve slept through the breakfast service, of course.
The front desk clerk tells us that they stop serving at 9 a.m. and apologizes. (Though I detect a slight Midwestern superiority in her tone, for they must be genetically trained to rise with the sun and feed the hogs or whatever the hell it is they do out here.)
Walking through the lobby on our way out I see the tell tale traces of pancake mix crusted on the Formica counter.
Stray Fruit Loops crunch underfoot, but there is no trace of food. 
No coffee. 

The ride to Chicago is pleasant, if not a bit flat.
The landscape tends to farmland, long stretches of blank highway occasionally interrupted by a riot of gas stations and fast food joints clustered around a clovered interchange.
Sometimes a huge complex looms on the horizon, yet another Amazon warehouse sprouted up from the fecund soil.
These monstrosities that serve as our modern day cathedrals, Prime membership our religion.

I’ve bluetoothed the iPhone though the minivan’s stereo, and the Spotify account provides a varied soundtrack to the miles scrolling under the wheels:  Starz and Discharge, Big Star and Slayer. 
But I find I am muting the stereo often, tilting my head back to hear the conversation.
For there is nothing finer than whiling away a Saturday with mindless van chatter, the close quarters urging confession and filthy jokes.
I eventually switch off the stereo as we talk through the miles.
.A heated debate on Chinese guitars, the historical season of Shohei Ohtani, insane shit Trump popped off with this week. 
But, as usual, the conversation seems to eventually settle on our favorite shared topic: food. 

We recount meals we’ve shared on past travels, restaurants to avoid back home.
And today’s destination being Chicago, we naturally end up arguing over deep dish pizza versus New York style for thirty minutes. (New York wins.)
And then, naturally, (after dissecting that puzzling third season of The Bear), we craze each other with descriptions of that most sacred of sandwiches, the Italian Beef.

We make it into the city and beeline it to Al’s #1 Italian Beef.
Yeah yeah, I know name checking any one food joint just invites a lot of shit talking from the locals (What? You ate at Pat’s and/or Genos? What are ya, fucking tooorists?) but just fuck off a minute.
I mean, we don’t get all judgmental when you kooks come into our neck and try to tell us the best breakfast burrito do we? (Nick’s on Main Street.)

Soon we are seated at a picnic table, silenced by the soggy masterpieces we shove into our waiting mouths.
We are rewarded with fingers that will slide easily across the fret board tonight!

We end up in a tiny Italian bakery just up Taylor Street, just window shopping as our bellies are stretched with those gravy soaked rolls and chapters of sliced meats.
We cannot resist though, and are soon sipping Americanos and eating freshly filled cannoli.
I take a moment to ponder that just a decade ago this would be not a cheery little bakery but a dark dive bar that we while away the afternoon before the gig.
Have we grown old? Or perhaps grown up?

Arriving at Liars Club we find the stage decorated as a crazed medical office, each flat surface cluttered with oversized prescription bottles. Seems the Destroy Everything fellas have a new theme cooked up for the night, the mad Doctor Cheddar and his band of Nurse Ratchets!
I turn my head sideways to read one bottle, PhenoFuckItAll, it reads.
“Yeah,” Brooks sheepishly admits, “they really shouldn’t let us play first, Gives us too much time to set up this kind of shit on stage, right?”


They take stage and run through a manic set, spilling gel capsules into their mouths and all over the stage, leaving heaps of cellulose detritus that will dissolve into a sickening goo that is melted into our waffled soles still.

It has become a tradition, to drop in to the Liar’s Club and play a Riot Fest after-party show.
Riot Fest? Have you heard of this giant corporate festival?
Sort of a Coachella for the near-sighted, it has come a long ways from the scrappy little punk show we first played in 2005.
Now a mainstream fest, we have steadfastly boycotted this bloated showcase, and shall not play there until we asked to again.

Besides, we need to check into Liars Club each year to see the latest dumpster finds from Gary, await his entrance and see which pimp loafers and flared trousers he will wow us with tonight.

And then Herb comes rolling in and all bets are off.
Between Herb’s manic monologue and Gary’s crazed decorations, my head begins spinning.
Fastplants play a blistering set, and then Electric Frankenstein takes the stage.

Outside the club, it is a constant Uber drop off zone,.
Each ride pulling to the curb and depositing another couple of Riot Fest survivors.
It was bloody hot day, and their raccooned sunglass rings and sunburnt noses give them the look of life raft survivors finally landed ashore.
Bur god bless em, they’ve rallied for a late night show, made their way from a full day festival to this crazed bar for yet more sonic assault.
Our old pal Jeff corners Anthony and pleads with him to play Indian Summer and Manzanar first, so he can slink off to bed.

Then, (1:45 a.m. now) we play.
We honor Jeff’s request and flip the the setlist around, play Manzanar and I Got a Gun first.
I then say good night and excuse these burned out souls, tell them to go home and get to bed.
But no one leaves, seems they have found that second wind, and then we have to play all the other songs too. Damn.

The guitars blazing, the walls sweating, Gary’s wacky lighting and thrift store fog machine pumping out the smoke.
Herb jumps on stage and shouts along with the songs.
Our fingers hit wrong chords, still coated with a fine layer of au jus.
I slip on one of Cheddar’s fake pills, and it is wonderful..
And when we get done, there’s Jeff, still, with us til the very end.

It becomes another late night, another early morning by the time we escape the bar’s clutches, say goodbye to the same dear friends for the fifth time each.
We say our farewells to our weekend traveling pals, wish the Electric Frankenstein crew safe travels to Japan.
It is too late even for a stop at Wiener’s Circle, and we resign ourselves to vending machine honeybuns and tap water back at the motel.

I lay in bed, wide awake as the day breaks grey and drizzly Sunday.
Today will be another long one, the Fly-Out, as it were.
Everything done in reverse of the last 48 hours, the rental car returned, the security lines endured, the delayed departure, the negotiation of hogging up the overheads with guitar cases and left over merch.

I pick up my phone then, surrender to its pull, and open that fucking game.
And then I touch it.
And when the final board drops, I smile, and then finally sleep.

Published by CH3

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