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e23 chronicles the OVNI adventure Day 2: Driving, Listening, Looking, Farting It was now the wee AM hours and we decided to stop--after about 4 hours of continuous listening to Dick Hill's reading of "2001: A Space Odyssey"--at a motel in Wells, Nevada for a meager 5 hours of sleep. We were trying to beat the clock, after our late departure, of getting to Reno by 1:30pm to pick up BK. Fortunately, we would soon be crossing into the Pacific Time Zone, so we got a little boost in our favor. As we drove through what was mostly shrubby high desert, we listened to some audio of Robert Anton Wilson "Explains Everything" on Sounds True Audio. We chatted about Bucky Fuller and his forgotten dymaxion house and car. And then, synchronously, we passed by a large processing plant of some sort which had an enormous geodesic dome in the series of structures. "That the factory of future's past," I said. "The triumph of failure," dev agreed. Along the way, we listened to some audio dev had burned, some glitchy stuff on Stasisfield, some ol skool cassettes I'd brought along with classic material by artists like L.A. Synthesis, Cosmic Baby, Luke Slater, Plastikman, Giulini Tarnassi, G-man... I'd deliberately selected material which I'd recorded some years ago and hadn't listened to in a long time--some mix stuff, some tape compilation stuff, and some tapes I made of favorite trax off of discs that I'd sold or traded because the entirety of the albums weren't solid enough to merit keeping versus acquiring other new stuff. However, part of this selection back-fired on me, since some of the recordings I'd made had been on an old cassette of mine which only recorded in one channel. We discovered this to my chagrin as I slathered away over Cabaret Voltaire's "International Language" before popping it into the deck only to discover you could only hear it on the driver's side. Alas... We pulled into Reno at 1:30 on the nose. Finding a gas station off the highway with accomodations to piss was a little challenging; I guess once you've gambled your way into poverty in this town, they want to make you feel as unwelcome as possible. As fortune would have it, we were able to get into the airport just in time to bump into BK as he was heading towards the baggage claim. (We might have made it just minutes earlier had it not been for the parking attendant who told us he was going to have to search through every bag and case we had packed in the back of the Windstar--only about 20 of them. We refused, and he turned us away from the covered parking; of course, it was fine for us to park in the uncovered parking, so both of us were confused about what this security measure necessitated.) Our joy at seeing each other again was quickly transformed into concern over BK's bag, which came off the turnstile looking a little mangled, with Frontier Airlines tape holding i t together. He'd packed all his clothes and tapes for the video projections together in one bag, so it'd been stuffed pretty tight and it appeared the zipper had broken. He determined that not only was he missing every single piece of underwear, but also probably a couple of video tapes--including material he'd produced as a member of EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) in the early '90s, which he'd never be able to recover. Our emotions transformed again as BK swam through the sleep-deprived final hours of packing before boarding the plane from Boston. He now believed that possibly not only was he not missing any tapes, but he probably collected all his freshly laundered underwear and then packed it back away into his dresser back home. Joy! Now we could celebrate with lunch and some margaritas! Little did we know, La PiÀata, where we chose to dine in Reno, produced not only the most sour, distasteful margaritas we'd ever had, but also they packed their beans with the most putrefying fart-power imaginable. We'd be suffering the consequences for the next 12 hours. I used the line again about kitchen designers, and we got more snaps inside their back-end. Of course, after seeing us pose in a couple silly action shots, it became pretty clear to the manager that we were probably not kitchen designers, and that perhaps he was violating health code in some perverse way by allowing us to handle his spatulas. Next stop, Lake Tahoe. More putrid farts. We skipped the camp site with power in favor of the Peppertree Inn, with hot showers and soft beds. Here we set up all of the gear for a test run. This was the first time the 3 of us had actually gotten together for a rehearsal of any sort--and our first gig was a little less than 24 hours away! Up to now we'd been highly communicative via phone and email about the project, and we'd also sent BK a copy of our first album, "Unknowns" (which we later discovered he still hadn't listened to). Using my beat up old Sony jambox which I'd bought in 1986 as our sound system, me and dev jammed for about an hour while BK sorted through his laptop and various tapes, colating images which he thought would fit the atmosphere and direction of the music. Then, after a minimum of preparation, we did what all dedicated professional artists do: we headed out for more margs. (Besides, at this point, our room was in such desperate need of airation after the non-stop stinky marathon of fart-bombs that we absolutely needed to get into the open air.) This time at a little place over looking the lake called the Blue Agave. Their maragaritas were far superior to those we'd unearthed in Reno, and after a couple rounds we stumbled back to our digs for sleep and late night mud-flap ventilation.
Tour
Diary
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