Power Rangers in the off season... I never thought I'd be smuggling myself... the beach the people walk upon... hookahs, hippies, road bikes... the first parable...

Where the Buffalo Roamed - Ponchos From Peru - Mountain Lion - February 20th @ the Juggling Gypsy (Wilmington)

4:00 pm - we're headed East on 40, we're close to I-95, and Niq realizes he should have grabbed a sleeping bag.

Not for the night, no... we're not crashing on any couches tonight. The sleeping bag in question is one of those Army surplus mummy bags, those deep green jesuses that stay comfortable down to 20 below. He needed it for the ride.

This is how he was riding.

I'm told it was balls cold back there... what with the wind and all, but were we going to show up to the show without a bassist?

Ridiculous. That would just be uncivilized. The trio set is sounding way too good. Besides, the Millennium Falcon is the only vehicle any of us have that can fit all the gear. Shit, I left one of my amps behind for this date (the Peavey Pacer) and it was still pretty packed.

So Andy and Niq had showed up and we'd packed and rolled, freebasing at an alarming rate towards Wilmington. "Freebasing" means moving really fast on a freeway, right? Thought so.

It was an easy drive for me, no traffic to speak of and we were in Wilmington at 6:30. We rolled through town to Wrightsville, tried to catch the sunset at the beach but just missed it by fifteen minutes. Also, we couldn't get to the beach because of some pretty dramatic dredging efforts. Beach replenishment I think? Andy and Niq were ahead of me, I'd gone back for the camera. I was headed in the direction of the dunes when I saw them coming back.

They had been turned back.

"I was walking up to the gate, I could almost see the ocean," Andy lamented. Turns out we're going to have to drive a mile or so down the road to get to a beach access. So we drove until we came to a beach house with the gate left open and we parked near it to commandeer access.

We practically hi-fived the "no trespassing" sign on the way in. At the back of the parking lot a path cut off to the right, across the false electric glow of the Blockade Runner's poolside boardwalk. So we walked among non-native palms, hoodies in three colors like Power Rangers down on their luck, with hoods pulled tight around cold ears, under the steady smoldering glare of the hotel bartender. He did not leave his post, he stood by the plate glass. It's his world, we just trespass in it. Servers adrift hither and yon. Why the fuck am I still here? This place is absolutely dead. They didn't care. But the bartender is family with the owners. Or maybe he's just miserable. Maybe it comes out of his pay if people cut across the sickening brightness of their empty dunefront. I'll show those motherfuckers to walk here. Even though no one else's feet would grace the space. It's the principle of the thing. They didn't PAY for the privilege to walk across this sandy acre. Andy mentioned that private beaches work like this: that the property line extends 50 feet out into the sea.

***

We made it to the beach without incident and encountered the dredge pipe. It said this to us:

Within was the gristly rumble of untold tons of sand and, as we climbed over the thing, we felt it shudder. Shai Hulud. The old man of the desert. Insert further Frank Herbert references...

So we walked up the beach.
"So, do you think you could walk all the way to Florida?" Niq asked. Maybe he said South Carolina or Georgia.
"Probably not," I said. I mentioned inlets, rivers.
"Oh, I know you'd have to cross a bridge or two," he said. "I just was thinking that would be cool as shit, sleeping on the beach every night."
"Waking up every morning with sharks in your pants," I said.
That was the approximate level of our conversation. I was doing my best to make a joke out of everything.

So eventually we got hungry and turned around. Andy and I found a public beach access right next to the Blockade Runner (how did we miss that?) and we were soon traveling at sublight speeds back into the port city. I got my dad on the phone, and he sent us down Airlie Road. The directions were good and within a few minutes we had arrived at the Juggling Gypsy.

It's a hookah joint - a place that still, somehow, skirts the smoking ban. It hasn't been long since smoking bars existed, but I've already gotten used to their absence. I dug the place, but I smelled like 8,000 cigarettes after the show.

The venue fed and beered us and soon we were very comfortable.

***

The show started a little after 9:00 with Mountain Lion, a bleary-eyed pack of roommates who needed to go ahead and play so they could get to the Soapbox and see a more important show. Their eyes reflected more than just beer and weed, there was a jittering hunger in several of their number that set them pinballing around the room when they weren't onstage.

They played for 25 or 30 minutes. It was funky instrumental party rock, it reminded Andy and me of Spy Satellite circa 2007... when the band had a revolving set of members and played guerrilla gypsy gigs around the AVL. I was outside with my dad, right by the door, and I could see and hear them just fine. They weren't as loud as they had promised to be, and somehow the cloud of people who had arrived appearing to be the band condensed into a more manageable number when it came time to play.

Then they were done and they packed up and left - taking their audience with them and very nearly taking Andy's hi-hats. They were a hurricane of intoxication, unaware of any other band on the bill, apologizing to us even as they packed up and left before we played. When they were gone it was as if their show had finished and our show could begin.

***

Behind the Juggling Gypsy is a really cool courtyard with this wild, haunted carnival-style stage. It looks like it could handle the very imagination of Tom Waits and I wanted to play our set out there.

***

We took a few minutes to set up and got started with "Golgotha '98." Andy wanted to start off strong, and I agreed with him. Our set went well overall - there were a few stumbles, sure - but it was still a good set. People kept their seats (except for this one drunk girl who occasionally came Motley Crüe dancing towards the stage and was constantly accusing people of "not having a good time") but they appeared to enjoy themselves.

High points in the set were "Permafrost" and the instrumentals - "Southport" and "Dirty Bomb Stratocaster." "Permafrost" we played thick and mean, and I'm starting to really understand a lot of the emotion that song. It's dense - really dense - and it's not always easy to convey what I'm trying to say with it. Hell, I don't always know what I'm trying to say. Here are the lyrics - what do you think I'm trying to say?

once there was a frozen waste
once there was a startled heart
the bears survive by going underground
hawks, like meteors, hit the ground


she didn't say why, she just took the axe
and gave it to him in a lethal way
six months of night, six months of day
the best of us will go insane


she cut her hair, she dyed it blonde
she left him in a hidden pond
and when the trees and boulders froze
she burned all of her summer clothes


I'll be your cold weather friend
fall through the ice and take my hand
a four-wheeler follows the demarcation
the line of instinct and fear
farther and farther into the wilds
every animal leaves some kind of track 

Right. See what I mean? I'm fascinated with writing about the darkest of us all, yet when it comes to properly expressing that stuff I get kind of intimidated sometimes... and now that I feel like I'm actually inhabiting that song when I sing it, so to speak, well... I don't know and I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess this kind of self-analysis belongs elsewhere.

Don't worry, I'm not losing my mind. I just write like I am.

"Southport" was epic, motherfucking epic. I did a very silly thing - I brought my Japanese flag and at the point in the song where it slows down and goes into the epic riff I put it on as a cape. I know, I've done this before, but it's a totally silly gesture.

Niq and I worked off each other nicely, musically and performance-wise. There came a point where we were playing back to back, leaning against each other, attacking the unholy shit out of our poor instruments and it felt like rock and roll. Then there, at the end, I let myself collapse backwards through the kit and I'll be damned if I didn't get stuck. Niq had to pull me out.

***

I stepped up to the bar to get a drink and a guy beside me was puffing away on a hookah. Evidently he'd blown smoke in my face (I hadn't noticed - it was really hazy in there) so he apologized to me and I shrugged. No worries. He offered to share his hookah with me and I told him I didn't smoke. He told me he didn't either, and explained that hookahs were not bad for you and it was kind of like smoking candy. So I took a puff and then I coughed quite a bit. Somehow I doubt that hookahs are good for you. It's just like the cloves that were all the rage back in 2000, when I first went to college. They were what enlightened people smoked instead of cigarettes until they realized the fucking things had more fiberglass in them than a racing boat.

***

Ponchos' drummer Will was setting up his kit in the courtyard and we thought this grill was part of his kit, but it was just nearby. Note to self: set up a drumkit with a grill where the floor tom should be. Will's kit is this crazy transparent Ludwig (!!!) and apparently he and his dad collect old Ludwig kits. I told him about my late '70s Ludwig and we talked drums for a minute.

I am not a drummer. I just started percussing this year. Will, however, is a drummer. Read on...

*** 

The first time I played with Ponchos was in 2008... November 9th, to be exact. They've had some lineup changes since then and the sound has changed as well, to reflect the different members and their different writing styles. They've gone more instrumental than they were a year and a half ago, but then they had a period of readjustment. Somewhere in these months they lost two members and gained a drummer. They came back lean, optimistic, and fearless. Will, the new drummer, plays with a frenetic, hyperlogical virtuosity that lends this disarming little band a surprising urgency.

Matt, Will, and Adam ooze talent, but they're not on this planet to rub it in your face. They're on this planet to write intellectual exercises in melody and to fuck, ever so gently, with rock convention. That sounded dirty, but I'm keeping it.

Much like the righteous Blag'ard, I can't describe Ponchos From Peru. I have no idea what the hell they are, other than to say they're essential. I like the glockenspiel, I like the distorted acoustic/electric, I like the unbelievable drumming. I like the precisely picked chords. I like this band.

these fucking buffoons...

Afterwards I met members of Fractal Farm, very nice guys, and we talked about Spiritualized until it was time to go.

***

From here it gets pretty hazy. We had to drive back to Pittsboro... not for lack of places to stay (the porty city was kind to us, there were several good people out there who would have helped us out) but because Trooper Andy had to work the next day we made the interstate move under our weary wheels. I don't understand how he does it, how he operates on so little sleep. I can put off sleep indefinitely, sure, but things get bad when it hits the 24 hour mark or when I have to operate on minimal sleep. If I know sleep is coming, I can push on... one more mile... dear god, one more mile means one less mile to go...

So I was fine to drive us the 3-odd hours back to Chatham, but I was happy to have Niq up there to keep me company. Poor Andy took to the back for the ride home and he was cold as hell. Somehow we made it... I fought exhaustion by talking with Niq and I babbled half-cocked ideas, the kind of shit that crosses your mind when you're in that semilucid halfzone. I decided he needed to hear some of my soundscape recordings - an entire album's worth, in fact. I must have been pretty tired to suggest that.

I got to bed about 4:00 and was awake at 10:00, but Andy and Niq were long gone. Sleep and rock music rarely ride in the same taxi.

parable, 1986

Public places like public beaches but what the fuck is a private beach? This concept confused my shit when I was maybe 5, but I can still remember the first time I encountered a private beach. I was walking down the beach road - maybe Holden Beach? No, Holden Beach is all public - whatever it was, we were walking down the beach road and we came to this gatehouse with tall white metal gates and beyond it a street lined with white houses tat I now realize were probably condos. It's one of my earliest memories, but most of my earliest memories involve the beach. We lived less than five miles from the ocean until I was 7 and we were there all the time.
Mom and I had to turn around and I straight up KNEW that we were almost to the end of the island and I wanted to walk all the way, but Mom explained to me that this was a private beach, starting here where we stood, and it struck me as an enormous injustice that I couldn't walk farther. I was baffled. How can one own the beach? I still think this way, where sea meets sand should never be held like that-but it was this day, probably in 1986 or 1987, that I felt the first sour pangs, the cold knives on a warm day.