Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
March 6, 2010
Oi, Rio!; More inclement weather; Sizzla now featuring all-you-can-eat shrimp.
Lapa District, Rio
I’m backstage at the massive Fundicao Progresso theater in Lapa, Rio’s equivallent of Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Most nights, Rio makes New Orleans look pretty tame, though a string of beads will only get you a kiss here in Brazil. The Carnaval floats are in storage now, but this town never loses its taste for a party. Ponto de Equilibrio is onstage right now, their hundreds of fans singing along with every lyric. Ponto is probably Brazil’s most popular reggae group, and I can vouch for their talent. It’s a packed house, even though the ticket price is too high for most people in this city.
Sizzla: conscious artist?
Robert Mugabe: "Let them eat lobster!"
What kind of consciousness is required to celebrate a thief and dictator? Well, there is always the consciousness of pride and avarice, and the allure of star treatment, which many successful musicians succumb to. Whatever the case, I was happy to see Bob Marley’s “Zimbabwe” on Groundation’s setlist for tonight, which just sold out. It should be mentioned that Bob was fooled by Mugabe as well, though this was way back in the eighties, when his true colors had not yet shown, and this fact gives me hope that Sizzla and the world will see the foolishness of supporting this traitor to his own people.
San Francisco, California
March 3, 2010
Winter in Boulder, Colorado
The penultimate show of the Bob Marley tribute tour was at the Aggie Theater in Fort Collins, Colorado. The snow had fallen throughout the previous day on that flat, frontier town, but at night, the temperature dropped to seventeen degrees and the drifts iced over. Kim and Kerry Ann hated the cold even more than I did. A few nights before we’d joked about it when Kim sang “Summertime” at our sound check.
“Kim! Kim! You can’t sing “Summertime” right now, it’s February and it’s freezing cold.”
“It’s summer in Jamaica.”
“It’s always summer in Jamaica, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Kerry Ann Morgan: snow angel.
That night, after we packed up our gear, Kim emerged from the backstage shivering. We’d seen snow almost every day since we’d left Asheville over a week before. Even on the RV Kim was shaking with cold, so, though she squirmed a little, we made a point of sitting almost on top of her ’til she warmed up. Our hotel was ten minutes away, and we would be leaving for the airport in less than three hours.
When I finally saw my wife at the door of our building in the sunny Mission District I was one happy guy, even though I was still suffering from the head cold I often get on winter tours. I was cheered, however, when I found out that our show the next night in my hometown was already sold out. I slept most of the day and blew my nose a lot. I wished I had my horn, but I’d stowed it with the rest of our instruments on the trailer, which then on its way, so I drank tea all day slept.
Don't break out the beachwear just yet, Kelsey.
I awoke groggy and sick on the morning of February 23rd. It had begun raining in the night, and it had continued on into the afternoon. More unusual weather. Our sound check at the Independent was scheduled for six o’clock, and as night fell it was raining harder than ever, and despite my pathetic, sneezy state of dripping nose and watery eyes, I walked out to catch the bus uptown. Half an hour later I was the first band member to arrive at the Independent, where a hundred precious feet of San Francisco parking were blocked off by orange traffic cones awaiting the arrival of tour manager Rich, driver Scotty, and my fellow in the horn section, trombonist Kelsey Howard. He’d ridden with the crew in order to see off his girlfriend Christa at her home in Salt Lake City. I sat in the cold backstage with more tea and waited.
I’d had a call from Harrison earlier that day. There was bad news, the RV had been delayed. Kelsey, Rich, and Scotty were OK, but we didn’t know for sure when they would arrive with our equipment.
Harrison was the next person to walk backstage at the Independent.
“They lost the trailer,” he said.
“What?”
“The wheel fell off coming across Donner Pass.”
Taking a few spare moments to re-enact American history. Photo by TM Rich
Donner Pass. The little notch in the Sierra Nevada where Interstate 80 climbs to 7,085 feet. It got its name from the disastrous journey of one hundred and fifty settlers who found themselves helplessly snowed in near the lake east of the pass; nearly all of them starved, and those that survived did so by eating the frozen flesh of their companions. When I talked to him later, Scotty was typically matter of fact. He’d piloted that giant vehicle and its trailer from California to Florida, Boston, Chicago and back without a mishap, and snow on the ground everywhere north of the Carolinas.
“Jeez, I looked in the rearview and saw that the fender was gone,” he said. “Then I saw the wheel rolling down the freeway, bouncing off the guardrail.” Everyone aboard was fine, and they found someone to tow the trailer, but they were still in the mountains, and they were going to be very, very late.
At the club, Shannon arrived next carrying a huge pot of corn soup. I gratefully ate my fill, and we had a meaningless conversation about the difference between soup and chowder, all of us worried privately about the show, wondering if anything else could go wrong.
Gradually, the cold, damp rooms of The Independent warmed up as one old friend after another arrived. Conrad brought a phenomenal apple pie, which Shannon lit into. Hossein was there, spreading cheer as always. He told a story about how some marketing people had mistaken him for Michael Franti and did a photoshoot with models and gave him a catalog worth of free gear before he told them who he really was. In the front of the house Marcus’ parents were staking out their customary table, as close as possible to stage left. They were aggressively saving a seat in the packed house for my beautiful wife, Gillian, who rarely gets to come to our shows. As the hours slipped by I let the DJ know he was going to have to try to keep the unruly crowd happy a lot longer than he’d planned. More and more records got cued up, and more heads filed in.
The show was scheduled for nine. A little after 10:30 the gear arrived, minus the trailer. I blew my nose a few more times before going to help with the load-in, but there was little to do with honorary roadies like LoLo, Frank, John, Zach and Umku around. Before the evening was over, and with the band finally on stage, Zach, who has hosted many Jamaican guests of Groundation in his home, would see his girlfriend through a seizure and a related head injury.
There was no soundcheck, though our sensitive musical gear had been thrown across the trailer at seventy miles an hour after having driven seven hundred miles through the snowy mountains and vast salt lakes of the West. If anything went wrong, there would be no time to fix it. My horn felt frozen when I took it back to the rear hallway and tried to warm it up and coax some music out of it.
The band opened with Marley’s “Soul Rebel”. I took the solo, stumbling a little. I was sick, exhausted and worried as hell about my friend Kim dancing on stage across from me. At that moment, her troubles made mine look completely insubstantial, and I marveled again at how Bob Marley’s songs can sometimes cushion the blows, great and small, that strike us throughout our lives. This is just what I felt when I first played on stage with Groundation at a Tribute show ten years ago. Bob can’t heal our wounds or cure us or rebuild us, but the hope and the humanity in his poetry and music can ease the pain for a while, and remind us that we can expect the dawn.
On that note, I have the sad duty to express the deepest condolences, on the part of all of Groundation, at the passing of Robert Pommell of Kingston, Jamaica. He was the father of Kim Pommell, Groundation singer. I’m sure I speak on behalf of many thousands of Groundation fans who would wish to express their deepest sympathy for Kim and her family, and their sincere hope for their future peace and well-being. This news is doubly regrettable coming so soon after the death of Linda Haereiti, mother of Groundation drummer Rufus Haereiti.
“Love would never leave us alone
And in the darkness there must come out a light
Could you be loved and be loved?”
Bob Marley
San Francisco, California
October 15, 2009
The Hollywood experience; guests onstage and backstage; Take it easy, Tigers
Home is in sight
The Peas killing time at OutsideLands while having their studios redecorated.
I was glancing through the L.A. Times before our show in Hollywood a few days ago. The cover of the “Home” section featured will.i.am posing with the expensive interior decorator he’d hired to make his multi-million dollar house look ‘elegantly pimped out’. Will.I.am, the Black Eyed Peas and their subsidiary interests get more love from the mainstream American media in one day than Groundation has had in the ten years of its existence, and this was no exception: there was a second article in the business section about how the Peas are now doing exclusive concerts on airplane flights.
L.A. Is the hometown of the Peas, which is appropriate, because they’re a Hollywood entity through and through: Non-confrontational, mild, and mainstream as they come. Plato would have loved them, because he believed all music should serve the needs of the state. In his day, he advocated banning everything but military marches so the common people would have war constantly on their minds and be ready to strap on their shields when the king told them to. He couldn’t have foreseen the rise of the American capitalist consumer state (some would call it a kleptocracy, but who’s counting?), but he would have praised the way the Peas’ music vaunts the careless, narcissistic, acquisitive values that our corporate masters want us to adopt these days.
Trying to make it in L.A., the hard way.
Despite the mind-boggling success of corporate-backed enterprises like the Peas, LA is home to more struggling bands than any city in the world, I’ll bet, specializing in rock, heavy metal, punk and rap. Many of the bands are really good, and they work their asses off to get signed by big record labels. Meanwhile, they play shows for free (preferably for crowds consisting of benevolent entertainment lawyers and A&R reps) and camp out in front of office buildings with their demos. The ones that work their way up through the clubs (like Ozomatli or the Red Hot Chili Peppers) are the lucky exceptions. Beautiful, hungry people are thick on the streets here, hustling their looks and talent, looking to break in, trade up, sell out. I saw a famous actor followed by his fawning assistant in Book Soup, the nationally famous bookstore on Sunset Boulevard. “This is the real American heartland,” said Kelsey as we were walking* back up the Strip. On our left was the Viper Room and to our right was the Whiskey a Go Go. “Welcome to the American dream,” he said, and I had to agree.
Ryan and Marcus, making music the (relatively) old fashioned way.
Northern Californians like myself are indoctrinated from a young age to poop on our southern neighbors, but I’m happy to give credit where it’s due. The fact is, Los Angeles a great city, an indivisible facet of contemporary America. The drama of its troubles, its people, and its extraordinary creative powers are equal to those of any city you care to mention. Still, the lifestyle of the people who coined the term ‘lifestyle’ deserves a certain amount of criticism. I don’t think that Hollywood is the heart and soul of the Babylon system, but it’s a part of it.
At the risk of sounding like Mickey Spillane, LA feels like an old love affair these days, a rocky one, an amour fou. Now when I’m in town I try to keep our relationship on a formal footing; a light business brunch conducted by phone from a sunny table at a Melrose cafe (one with good sightlines, please, waiter). There’s always a bigger fish than you out here (if not, one will be along in under five minutes, I promise), and they’re not gonna let you forget it, so just enjoy the sunshine, have your picture taken next to Paula Abdul’s star on the Walk of Fame, and get out of town before rush hour**.
Ironically, Groundation got the star treatment at our show in Hollywood. A series of coincidences resulted in our taking a stretch limousine to the show. Rich, our uberroadie, worked out an under-the-table deal with the driver, who hadn’t cleaned up the champagne glasses and ashtrays from his previous clients. I wonder what our fans waiting behind the velvet rope in front of the Key Club must have thought when Harrison and the rest of us stepped out of a stretch limousine packed with empty champagne bottles . I really hope no one got the wrong idea. The tabloids probably could care less, but just in case, let me set the record straight: Groundation and Hollywood? We’re just friends.
Are you kidding? Purple goes with anything!
Back on our home turf, Groundation had lots of friends backstage. Some folks from Spearhead were at the Hollywood show, they’re a NorCal band like us. Rufus’ friend Keli Ross Ma’u contributed mesmerizing music on the steel drums during our set at The Belly Up in Solano Beach. Though steel drums are a Caribbean instrument, you don’t often hear them in reggae. Superfan Frank brought some pro athlete friends to that show as well, who immediately started talking to me excitedly about the prospects of fourth-ranked Louisiana State University’s contest with number one Florida the coming Saturday. I asked for it, I was wearing an LSU baseball cap. I considered my possible responses:
“Well, if they’re gonna win it, they’ll have to focus on putting points on the board…” This is what I always say when I find myself in a conversation about sports. ___ gave me a squinty look, so I tried a different track.
“Ok, Ok. I admit it. I’m not a real LSU fan. I just happen to have this hat,” I said.
There's only one color on game day in Athens, Georgia.
He nodded his head, but that squint never went completely away. The fact is, it was hot as hell in Lafeyette, Louisiana where I bought this thing, and I needed a hat, and since I’m a fan of Louisiana in general (my dad’s from there), I bought it as a souvenir, and it was only $5.99 and it was the only kind of hat they sold at that gas station. Little did I know it would cause people to wish me dead in places like Athens, Georgia and Orlando, Florida where football is a way of life. I think if our band had sucked, I would have been lynched wearing this hat. Come to think of it, the people down in Tiger country were just as unimpressed. Years ago I played in a Santa Rosa sports bar where the band never knew if people were clapping for our impassioned improvisations or a touchdown by the 49ers. I guess music and football don’t mix that well. Maybe that’s why they still haven’t called us back about playing this year’s Super Bowl halftime.
Palm trees and my beautiful wife, two sure signs I'm home.
The tour finally wound its way back up to Northern California. The last night of the tour was on the campus of Sonoma State University, which was appropriate, because that’s where half the band received their musical education. I had the honor of lighting an indeterminate number of candles on the birthday cake of Mr. Nick Harris, who’s been our tour manager this last six weeks. He looked a bit tired, a bit of the cynic coiled discreetly in his warm smile. Another wild ride, and the journey’s just beginning, but it sure is good to be home.
“Diesel” Dave Chachere
Groundation
*Just a bit of anthropological trivia for those of you who live in LA. Walking is the principal mode of locomotion for primitive bipedal hominids that don’t have cars. I once asked the clerk in a West Hollywood gas station if there was a public telephone within walking distance. She said, “What’s walking distance?” That story’s getting old, I realize. If it happened today she would have asked, “What’s a public telephone?” ; )
**If you’re inclined, you can also find Bob Marley’s star in front of #7080 Hollywood Boulevard. It’s just that Paula would probably be flattered, and Bob would probably think you were wasting your time. He’s the only reggae artist I could find among nearly 2,400 on the Walk of Fame.
Even my wife's grandma has a star. Sorry, Jimmy Cliff.
The Diesel Diaries 