“So, what should I be prepared for?” I asked Stellar Corpses bass player Dan Lamothe, looking around the room at the various posters from previous tours while we waited for lead singer and guitarist Dusty Grave to wrap up last-minute trip preparations.
“Ha! Wellll,” he said, taking a swig from a frosty beer, “last year when we traveled across the country our trailer kept falling apart. The damn thing kept coming unhinged from the frame. Whenever we’d drive you could see our equipment catching air and bouncing around. We had to get it welded in five different states. But don’t worry—we have a new trailer and even a couple new tires. Everything should be fine.”
Two hours into the 152 en route to Fresno, around 7pm, we started noticing a funny bounce in the back of the van. As cars drove by, the occupants would point to our trailer as they mouthed dreaded words that we couldn’t hear but didn’t need to. Dusty pulled to the side of the road next to acres of green fields and, sure enough, there was our first blown tire, ripped all the way around. And that’s how we kicked off the Stellar Corpses 2011 Western tour.
True Sounds of Legends
We were supposed to leave from Fresno and drive to Phoenix for a friend’s birthday, then to El Paso the next night—quite a trek, but manageable with plenty of time for rest. When you’re asked to play with legendary L.A. punk band T.S.O.L. in Redondo Beach, though, you don’t turn down the offer, no matter what kind of hellish California–to–Texas haul lies in store because of it.
The Brixton is a dimly lit sea of blood-red leather booths sitting adjacent to a dark oak bar. It sits at the entrance to the Redondo Pier, and the bar upstairs has a great view of the aqua green ocean. Beautiful women in tight outfits slung the booze and the bouncers were good people.
First up was down-and-dirty rock & roll five-piece J.J. and The Real Jerks, a mix between the New York Dolls and the Rolling Stones with a dash of speed from the Ramones. Hollywood sons Harmful If Swallowed was up next with a blend of pop punk. By the time the Corpses were ready to play, the venue was packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
In a moment everything went black and “Cry Little Sister,” the theme song from The Lost Boys and the Stellar Corpses intro, blasted over the audience. A few bars into the music and the guys emerged from their green room lair with a crunchy note from Emilio Menze’s guitar. The guys delivered a powerful performance that brought plenty of people to the merch booth after, keeping me busy between sets. By the time T.S.O.L. played, I was drenched in sweat.
I have seen T.S.O.L. a handful of times and even interviewed them once a few years back. Middle-aged and chiseled with scars, the toll from living the weathering punk rock life, T.S.O.L. still play a set so powerfully packed with energy one has to sit back and admire it before going back into the ever-spinning circle mosh pit. Singer Jack Grisham, in a suit jacket and plaid kilt, served his usual dish of crass jokes leading into the next song on the list. They finished up the set with their biggest hit, “Code Blue,” a wonderful little ditty about the joys of necrophilia.
After the show, Dusty left to pull the van around as we waited out front. Five minutes went by, then 10 and then 15. Finally the van pulled around and Dusty emerged from it with a glazed look.
“So, I fucked up—I fucked up real bad,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at the trailer.”
I walked around to find the front of the trailer’s roof ripped open from end to end. It wasn’t torn quite like a sardine can, but the damage was definitely significant. The gate to the garage where we had parked was partially closed because of the late hour, and there were no attendants around, so Dusty had decided to take his chances and almost cleared it. Almost.
“Well, now we have a moon roof,” he sighed.
Blown Fuses
At 2:30am we jumped on the 91 heading East. I was behind the wheel, hopped up on Red Bull, Adderall and the raw excitement from the night’s show. Dusty and drummer Kyle Moore slept in the back on the makeshift bunk bed while Dan and Emilio were the last two up, talking about previous tours, girls they saw at the show and horror movies. By the time we passed Pomona, I was the only one awake in the Land of Nod.
Sixteen hours after we left Redondo Beach, we finally pulled into El Paso. When the Corpses took the stage at Miss Lips Lounge, El Paso’s premier lesbian bar, the place was packed with a mix of punks, greasers, transvestites and street kids that looked like they couldn’t have been older than 15.
The band exploded into its first song, a new one called “Evil Dead” with uncharacteristic harmonizing vocals, but after the fourth the sound tech, pissed because the band members had to ask him to turn up one mic or the other after each song, gave up, walking away from the sound booth in a huff.
And that’s when it happened.
BOOM! Everything went black. Only Kyle’s fast-paced drumming could be heard. Apparently, the Stellar Corpses’ mighty sound had blown the building’s circuits.
While the dumbstruck bartender rushed around the venue searching for the sound guy, Dan started to slap out a walking bass solo. The poor bastard’s fingers had already blistered over and popped twice from the past couple of shows. A slight grimace stretched across his face. Dusty and Emilio picked up on it right away and led the audience in a chorus of “Mothman,” Dan’s nickname. When Dan couldn’t take anymore, Kyle took over in a wicked drum solo until the power came back on.
Then, two more songs in, the power died once more.
The sound guy was finally back and brought back the power for good, but it was too late—half of the audience had left for other adventures.
Texas Fold ’Em
“Uh, no,” Dusty, on the phone with the promoter in San Antonio, scoffed. “Don’t cancel it, we’re driving eight hours to get there. We’re going to play.”
It’s 555 miles from El Paso to San Antonio. When we crawled out of the van, nine hours after we got in it, we were met by a guy who could have been Kevin Federline’s clone, complete with a bad fedora, baggy parachute pants and horrible gold chain.
“Yo Gs, I pulled the show.”
“What?!?” Kyle exclaimed, his face growing red.
“Well, you know, like, the opening bands cancelled and I’d have to pay the club if you play. So I just pulled it. Sorry.”
The venue’s sound tech ended up convincing the manager to let the band play in a different room—but they had to play for free.
The Stellar Corpses ripped through the flesh of their hour-long set with added intensity that was a mix between anger at the promoter and a passion to prove to the bar’s manager that they should be asked back. By the end of the night, the staff had given us more free and nearly-free booze than any of us could handle and the manager even paid the band an extra $50 out of his own pocket, commenting on the “jackass” of a promoter.
K-Fed, meanwhile, continued to show his impeccable character by drinking himself into a stumbling mess of slurs (with money he still owed the band) and then talking trash on the band, the venue and anyone that came in sight, all while trying to help us load the equipment back into the trailer (for what reason I’ll never know).
When he finally realized he wasn’t welcome, he wandered down the street muttering about how “this isn’t how he does business.” One can only hope that he was arrested for public intoxication and had to spend the night in the drunk tank next to a couple of nice skinheads who would want to take turns being the “big spoon.”
Even after everything that had happened that night, Steve Salcido, a longtime fiendish friend of the Corpses, still made the entire household a hearty meal of spaghetti while we talked about previous shows, horror movies and the finer things in life until the first rays of the sun began to show.
Long Road Home
From San Antonio, we had three more shows in the surprisingly humid Texas heat: in San Angelo at the Dead Horse, the coolest bar you never heard of; in Austin, the state’s capital, fueled by alcohol-soaked music venues where the Corpses played on a stage the great Johnny Cash once graced; and Dallas, where our protagonists in black shared the bill with a street punk and psychobilly band. That final night I loaded up on Red Bull and coffee, then started the 13-hour drive to Denver, where some friends of the band who own a rock & roll salon set us up with showers and fresh ’dos before packing us off to play at a joint called Moe’s. From Denver we made our way through Utah, land of Mormons and rocking kids who appreciate anything that comes through town, then down to Phoenix and, finally, back home to California.
The final stop of the tour, the San Bernardino show was held in a storage unit converted into a venue by the local punks who ran it. Everything was DIY and groups of people hung outside drinking cheap beer and smoking cigarette after cigarette. We were all sad and nostalgic for the last show, but the band gave 110 percent like they had every night and left the crowd sweaty and hoarse from too much cheering. Not wanting to leave, we hung around for an hour or so after, watching the night’s previous bands practice (venue and practice space—never underestimate the practicality of punks) through a cover set of old hip-hop tunes including “Baby Got Back” while Dan and Dusty skated around the parking lot on their Santa Cruz boards. When it was finally time to leave, we ate at the local IHOP with some friends from the Redondo Beach show that had driven out that night, then made our way back to our beloved Santa Cruz during the darkest part of night, just before the dawn. When we arrived home, we had driven 5,420 miles across five states, consumed gallons of Red Bull, made some new friends, reconnected with old ones, inspired multiple mosh pits and shredded several sound systems—and against all odds, emerged unscathed to tell the tale.
Read more tales of the tour at http://beatscape.wordpress.com.
STELLAR CORPSES with the Brains, the Chop Tops and Nekromantix
Thursday 8pm
Catalyst Atrium
$13 adv/$15 door
