tour is winding down with a few more shows
i think some of you occasionally misconstrue what i mean, either that or im just not clear which is also a distinct possibility...for example my point about commercials in the cinema was that though i'd first seen them in the UK, showing them is now common practice in the US,
   thanks to all the game freaks who sent me tips about grand theft auto, i've gotten all the nuances and tricks figured out so you needent send any more info... (one thing i didnt see on any of the game cheat sites was the very surrealistic thing one can do with the tanks which is to try and fill up the whole city with them, i found that i could keep producing more and more tanks which would just pile up on top of each other making a huge pile of crunching burning tank flesh, one time the game crashed as a result)
   i really dont have many thoughts on us playing with INXS, i hope its not too bad a bill, again i never was really familiar with their music and we werent involved with putting the bill together (at this juncture {point} id like to suggest that anyone with complaints about stuff like this address them to Laure Dunham <laured@lbank.com> and let her as a management rep know what you think... i'm always getting messages that i dont know how to respond to)
   one guy out there wanted to know (sigh!) if i thought Johnny Ramone would play a 6500 hundred dollar guitar... well of course not but ol' JR is a very specific case in point who proudly told me that he never plays guitar unless he's on stage or recording... also dude presumes i paid for the guitar im using... i have bought and own plenty of expensive equipment and junk however and if someone wants to accuse me of being greedy and or capatalistic i'd much prefer they come directly to the point rather than resort to implication... this stuff is painfully ironic and makes me want to bitch and whine about how much money we've generated for others that we never shared in, certainly a big conflict for yours truly as i've never been in this for money, at the same time feeling anger for being so financially screwed over the years... you can believe this or not, i think the majority of you know that im honest with you all, i think it would be really horrendously bad karma to bullshit about oneself en masse like this... debbie and i talk about sometime writing a more detailed account of the band history from our point of view (dont write asking when it's coming out!! go back and read the precedeing sentence again before you do)
   my old buddy from brooklyn Mike "the psych" who lives out here in maniac mode just showed me a clipping from a local paper which once fucking again refers to the "next Blondie album 'Drive'" again this is not, and never was the name of the next record...
the media is like playing that game 'telephone' where one person whispers in the next ones ear etc etc and like five, six, whatever number of people later a completely warped version of what the first one said comes out of their mouth
   someone else asked what i think about bands doing covers of other peoples material... personally i always liked hearing an artist with a specific sound/style redefine a piece of music by another, sometimes it works, sometimes not, for me a great example is hendrix doing the beatles 'sgt.peppers lonely hearts club...' which i never liked and doing bob dylans 'all along the watchtower' which is for me is an absolute masterpiece of pop music... a piece of advice i've always given bands starting out is to do a lot of cover songs, i think it enables you to get into the head and hands of another musician as it were, also as far as doing a demo for the rest of the world people are able to connect with a familiar song, sometimes especially for record co. people its hard to hear a new band and a piece of familiar music is sometimes a good bridge
   san francisco is a great place i was here in the summers of '67 and '68 and i oftimes wonder why i dont live here... new york has just been wrecked by ghouliannies regime and i wonder if and how much it will ever be able to swing back... ten years ago i couldn't tolerate los angeles, now that new york has become so plasticised even LA feels refreshing, as ive said before people cant have a future without a past and the elimination of so much history in new york is terrible to me, landmarking has nothing to do with reality, is only about money and i've seen just fantastic old buildings torn down and replaced with grotesque 'modern' structures that look more like futuristic prisons than anything else...san fran is still possesed of a lot of atmosphere, alleys and run down old structures are beautiful in their noble decay, maybe its like old age, cities shouldn't be the victims of 'ageism'
   by now im a little bit worn out and im quite looking forward to heading into the desert for burning man, im going with barbs and some others a week early leaving from sacramento the day after the tour ends, im easily found out there at the post office and i'd be amused by anyone who said theyd seen the site here (im meeting more people at the shows who say they've seen it) i'll probably get a chance for another post before the end after that i'll get back on in sept-oct
      love
   chris