IT'S A LIVING… BUT IT'S NOT A LIFE #13.7
J Church or Honey Bear or Some Hope - Fuck Summer - Fuck Me

JAPAN HO!

Okay, I decided to knock one more out. Call me superstitious, but I didn't want to have my last newsletter before boarding end with a black box dialog of a crash. For those of you who still don't know and might actually care, here are the dates:

MAY
26 Kanagawa, Yokohama ­ Club 24 West w/ Hard Skin
27 Tokyo ­ Red Cloth w/ Hard Skin
28 Sendai ­ Birdland w/ The Urchin, Deeds Not Words
29 Niigata ­ Nile Studio w/ The Urchin, Spraypaint
30 Kyoto ­ Kiyamachi East w/ The Urchin, I Excuse
31 Nagoya ­ Huck Finn w/ The Urchin, Navel

JUNE
1 Mie Ise ­ Question w/ The Urchin, The Because, Drift Age
2 Matsuyama ­ Jet w/ The Because, Drift Age
3 Tokushima ­ Crowbar w/ The Because, Drift Age
4 Osaka ­ Saomai w/ The Because, Drift Age, I Excuse
5 Tokyo ­ Match Vox w/ The Because, Drift Age, Blotto

SUMMER TOUR!

I hate touring in the Summer. Everyone knows it. But somehow, we always get tricked into it. We were meant to do this big thing with Dillinger Four. Now I don't know if they're gonna do any of the dates with us outside of the club they own. That's the D4 organizational system for ya. Anyway, here are the tentative dates.

JUNE
30 Dallas

JULY
1 Memphis
2 Chicago ­ The Bottom Lounge w/ Groovie Ghoulies, Methadones
3 Milwaukee
4 Minneapolis, MN ­ Triple Rock w/Dillinger Four
5 Carbondale, IL ­ The Lost Cross house
6 Lawrence, KS
7 Oklahoma City, OK
8 Denton, TX ­ w/The Pedestrians
9 Austin, TX ­ Beerland w/ Marked Men, Soviettes, Grabass Charlestons, Apeshits
10 Austin, TX ­ Emos w/DaDa Swing (Rome, Italy)
14 Austin, TX ­ Beerland w/Modern Machines, The Ergs, Modern Needs (folks from Signal Lost and Storm The Tower)

I should have more details next week. That one week of shows in Austin is sorta ridiculous. But we'll make up for it by not playing at all until the end of the year. With any luck, we'll be able to sort out a West Coast tour early winter.

SPLITS AND SHIT

We've got a few new 7"s coming out. They're probably gonna be in pretty limited supply as is usually the case with vinyl today.

First off is the split 7" with the Plungers. This one is going to be out on Chunksaah which is the label started by some of the Bouncing Souls guys. Our songs are Who Killed Pasolini? and a cover of Psycho Mafia by the Fall. Last I heard, they were reworking the cover art. You can find out the exact details at www.chunksaah.com.

The second split is on Underground Communique. It's a split with Japan's Minority Blues Band. Our tracks are Aeroplane Angel and a cover of Ex Lion Tamer by Wire. That one should be out any day and you can find out more from www.undercomm.org.

The last one is on grateful… records. It's a split with England's Flamingo 50. Our tracks are Near 600 Pages and a cover of Just What I Needed by the Cars. I don't think they actually have a website at the moment. If you're on MySpace, you can reach them through that. Otherwise, just keep looking here and I'll keep you posted. [Webmaster's note: they do have a site at, unurprisingly, www.flamingo50.co.uk]

2004 "SOCIETE EST UNE FLEUR CARNIVORE" EUROPEAN TOUR DIARY PT. 5

DECEMBER 17th ­ NURNBERG, Germany (K4)
Tonight was hilarious. First off, my pal Urte set up the gig so I knew we would at least have fun. K4 is in a great old building that had been meeting place for the Nazis and was later converted into Germany's first autonomous center. Now it's an art space with many stories and rooms for painting, sculpture, music, whatever.

We play with a great Euro old school hardcore band called Anti-Control. Real cool guys and totally refreshing. Our set is great. Ben thinks it might even be better than Zagreb. In the meantime, his blue-balls saga continues. Working his way through many 6.5% beers, he starts to flirt with one of the hottest punk girls at the show. When he starts to make his move she says, "don't do that", which is funny now. But at the time it put Ben on the A Train.

In the meantime, the DJ starts playing awesome new wave and the pogo punk (I swear) start to limbo. It evolves into an all night dance party with everything from the Housemartins to the Epoxies blasting.

At some point Ben disappears. A good 15 beers and he has cracked. Walking to Urte's place he starts kicking all the cars yelling "what are they gonna do!?! Kick me out of Germany!?! I hop they do!! I'm sick of Germany!! I wanna go home!! I'm sick of Lance and Chris and Sasha and James!!!"

James, who can't stop lauging, asks, "Ben, do you need a puppy?"
Ben, "Yeah, for me to kick!"
Urte, "You need to be quiet `cos there's a baby…"
Ben, "I'll kick the baby!"

It went on like this for an hour, which was all pretty funny. We all knew he was drunk and just needed to let off steam after being away from home for so long.

DECEMBER 18th ­ MUNICH, Germany (Kafe Kult)
Who doesn't love the great human sobriety safety net? Ben didn't remember much this morning. He didn't even remember barfing between two cars outside of Urte's place.

I get a copy of More Than Music? photozine from Urte. There's a great photo from the last show of our last Euro tour with all the gear knocked over with Andee lying on a pile of drums.

I swear I've been to Kafe Kult before. It seems so familiar. It's a crazy old building that was a Nazi hospital in it's former incarnation. This place has got to be haunted. We even found a scary 6" spider in the room we were to sleep in.

The show is excellent with good sets by Purden and Jakov Goodnight. People are throwing confetti during our set and we get two encores that actually feel sort of deserved. Some guy told me it was his favorite show in 10 years! I met this cool girl named Nine from Scotland. Not only does she know my friend Gordon back in Frisco, but also she tried to see us in Belfast. I felt really bad about that. Hopefully we will stay in touch.

DECEMBER 19th ­ FREIBURG, Germany (Kiel)
Last night was my crazy tour dream. We had gone to an old abandoned theater to score some drugs. Turns out the guy we're scoring from is Atom from Atom and His Package. But he's a tough guy pushing me around. So, I pull out a gun and point it at him. He says, "you think I' fucking scared?!? I've had a lot of fucking guns pointed at me and you don't look like…" Before he can finish I start shooting. He runs off and I chase him. He makes a wrong turn and is face to face with me. I shoot him in the head. Suddenly we are surrounded by a hundred dark figures. A skinny woman with a bob and horned rims takes me by the arm as we are all led to a room. I ask her, "am I ready?" She says, "of course you are." The room is a small dark chamber with no floor and I slowly float down until I wake up.

It snowed last night. The graffiti, beer bottles and tour van all look beautiful in the virgin snow. We eat breakfast to the sounds of Coltrane and Dolphy. This from the same guy who was playing Kraftwerk on reel to reel the night before.

K.T.S. is a cool little squat with a nicer band room and an info center. The stage has a massive heater that nearly gave me a stroke while we were playing. The show rocks. The kids are cool. But my mind is already on the plane. Two nights without a working shower; the van is gonna smell sweet tomorrow.

DECEMBER 20th ­ BONN, Germany (Bla)
Woah. A lot of people in this little club. Bonn seems like a good a place as any for the show. It's funny, but the guy promoting the show is the same guy that Ben got yelled at by some years ago when Forstella Ford played at Sound Exchange and nobody showed up. Everything is cool as he turns out to be a nice guy. Tour makes you do crazy things sometimes and we are cooked enough to understand it.

Great show and everything, but last shows are never real. Especially on a tour this long, we were all miles away. It was still fun. We stayed up all night before making the flights back to London. We have a nice goodbye with Sasha and Ingo (he came down for the last show). I'm gonna really miss these guys.

DECEMBER 21st ­ LONDON
Tour is over and it's fun time. We get breakfast at the Gypsy Rose. It all ends how it starts. No point in sleeping. When you're in London you wanna do as much as you can as you never know when you'll be back. Chris and I head out to catch Hard Skin with the Clashettes. Hard Skin was touring around Europe just like us, so they're pretty tight and the crowd goes mad. Time to go home.

IN THE J CHURCH LISTENING ROOM

ARMY OF JESUS - Rats In The Walls 7"

Okay, here is what happens if you don't buy this record. Bad scenario: you miss out on a great Texas hardcore band's debut vinyl featuring Doug who sang for Kids In Service to Satan. Worse scenario: Army of Jesus go on to do many great things and you have to settle for the repress of this record on some larger and less collectible label. Worst case scenario: like so many great contemporary hardcore bands, this could be the only thing they EVER do, it will be gone and you'll be like the sad suckers who didn't get the Little Princess 7" when they had the chance.
(chokecore@yahoo.com)

TACHYCARDIA - Tachycardia CD

More Texas noise, and this one is from Wade Driver, one of the best drummers I've ever seen in my life. Imagine if Chuck Biscuits got heavy into Han Bennink and Sunny Murray. This improvised disc also features Walter Daniels (Jack O' Fire) and Carl Smith. These guys can fuckin' play and you get a broad spectrum of new sounds introduced to the avant-garde improvisational field with harmonicas, whistles, bugles and a nose flute (Rahsaan?). It's a serious workout and you've gotta spend some time with it. It was a bit much for me to soak up first time through. The length of the improvisations are staggering and tangents get fully explored. But spend a day with it and it's a really rewarding experience.
(Pecan Crazy Records)

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