Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Jammin' in Jerusalem

We like to go to places that other bands don't go, like Sardinia or, in this case, Israel. The guys at Vice in the journalist part of the magazine wanted to coordinate their trip to Israel with our trip, so we all left on the same airplane from London.

When you get to Tel Aviv, the first thing you notice is that the entire city is overrun with stray cats. You can walk down the street and see like six stray cats just fighting and running around. It's crazy. We played in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and Haifa is a beautiful city. The show they set up for us was in the main square of the town. We got to meet the mayor and the chief of police of Haifa, and they served us up a dinner after we played. There were all these little kids going crazy, little seven-year-old kids jumping around and screaming. There was even one of them crowd-surfing, which was awesome. It was the first time we ever came across any paparazzi. We were sitting around talking and, all of the sudden in the distance, we see these people with telescopic lens in the bushes taking pictures of us.

One of our main hosts was from Jerusalem, so we went to go play there. One thing about Jerusalem, it's three-fourths surrounded by the West Bank. Of course you have the Dome of the Rock, which is a very religious place for any Islamic person, and for Muslims and Christians and Hebrews the city of Jerusalem is a holy place, but there's a really strong tension in the air. You can feel it. There's all these different types of people walking around and you never know quite what to expect. Right next to Jerusalem is the sister city of Bethlehem, and they'd basically be the same city except for these twenty foot guard walls that separate the West Bank from the rest of Israel. It's really ominous to see these walls. When we were driving by the Dead Sea we went right by them. You'd look over and see these massive guard towers and plenty of people with guns, civilians and the army alike.

The Vice guys and us cooked up this idea that we were going to play on the street in Jerusalem as well as on the street in Bethlehem, so we'd have played on both Israel and the West Bank. Unfortunately we never got around to Bethlehem, but we got a minivan and drove across the checkpoint, just flashed our passports and they waved us right into the West Bank. We drove into the West Bank and found some random square with a mosque in it. In the middle of the afternoon we just set up on the street with a bunch of guitars and started playing some of our songs. All of these old cops were looking at us, giving us dirty looks. Eventually all of these little kids came out of the woodwork and they were all standing around watching. Every so often a little girl would show up, but her father would quickly snatch her away from the performance—because rock and roll is not for girls, particularly not on the West Bank.

We played about five songs, and the kids were having a good time, and they just wanted to play our guitars and drums and stuff. To top it off we ended with playing "Johnny B. Goode." That was the one song that the kids actually recognized, so they tried to sing along and we gave them the guitars, and they started singing a Hamas chant to the tune of "Johnny B. Goode." It was really funny.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The Bad Ol' Days

Hey Y'all. This is ex-Black Lips champion Jack. Swilley dropped me a line asking me to pen some of my most shamefully sublime memories from my tenure with the group. I know that I must live it up because I will never live it down. So, here goes....

I'll begin with the tall tale of my first tour with them boys. I was living in New York City when it all began. The ultimate ex-Black Lips champion, not to mention one of my best buddies, Ben Eberbaugh (r.i.p.), had just passed on in a tragic car crash. I returned to Atlanta to pay my respects and, while I was there, the dudes asked me to come on tour with them. In my mournful state it was an easy decision. I quit my NYC job and took off on the road with the Black Lips. From the outset I knew I had made the most irresponsible decision of my young life.

Ben's funeral had wrapped up only a couple of days prior to the scheduled beginning of the tour. Every bad kid in Atlanta turned out for it. It was just like the scene in "Suburbia" where all the punk kids fuck up the funeral of the dead girl, except there was about three times that many kids and none of the "parents" got pissed at us. It was actually quite touching.

The sadness of the whole affair was made particularly poignant by the fact that the Black Lips had just signed a record deal with Bomp!. I'm sure all y'all know about it, but that fact made it really heart breaking. We (the Black Lips and all us teenage buddies from Dunwoody) had always been way into Bomp! and all that type of shit, and it hurt everybody’s feelings to lose Ben right on the cusp of all that.

In spite of their sadness, the Black Lips decided to do what they thought "Old Gentle Ben" would want them to do and tour as a three-piece. Three days after the Old Boy's funeral they were scheduled to drive out for Chicago with the Carbonas. We got a huge party going at Die SlaughterHaus and a bunch of people came over to see us off. After a few cases of Busch, we set out on tour.

That night of driving would prove to be one of the most harrowing of my continuously mobile young life. It began at about 11 p.m. Atlanta time with everyone, except the perpetually responsible Joe Bradley, completely wasted. We were driving northwest toward Chicago. By the time we had reached Nashville the freeway was frozen solid. The van was slipping and wiggling as the tires tried uselessly to grab onto the ice. We kept morale up by inventing bawdy campfire versions of the entire Hank Williams canon. Jared had taken a leak out of one of the van windows and the pee created a sheet of yellow ice splattered in a wondrous, wind-swept pattern along the side of the van.

In northern Kentucky the drivers had to stop and rest their eyes. We stopped in some hillbilly burg called London. It must have been about two in the morning. We all piled out of the vans (Black Lips, Carbonas, Bobby Eubangi, Kevin Lee, Allen Suh, Alix Brown, myself) and started slipping and busting our asses on the icy parking lot.

Somehow, some of the guys got to talking to the late night Arby’s employees and told them that we were in bands. Well, these hicks were pretty impressed. I guess they thought that we were famous or something. I think it was Dave Rahn (Carbonas drummer) who worked out a swap of a couple of 7-inches for, like, 20 Arby’s sandwiches. We were all quite stoked on this deal as our beer was wearing off and it was high time we glutted ourselves with partial-meat product of some sort or another.

After the group gorging we returned to the vans and set out again on our treacherous journey. The snow was still driving hard into the windshield and visibility was down to about 18 inches, but we pressed on. I don’t know who was driving the Carbonas van, but Joe was getting the job done like a seasoned pro. I think a bit of Adderall might have been giving him the assistance that he needed.

As we struggled to find even filthier words to replace Hank’s lyrics we all began to notice that Jared was acting like a Down’s syndrome kid on a sugar rush. I mean, even more than usual. He was screaming and yelling and stumbling all over the van. He kept trying to sing along, but he sounded like his tongue was stapled to the roof of his mouth.

Jared’s behavior soon started pissing Joe Bradley off quite a bit. He was already having enough trouble seeing the road without a mongoloid mangling the English language at 55 decibels in his ear. So they started arguing.

Joe was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you, Jared.”

Jared responded, “You just tank um floom!”

Exchanges of this type proceeded for way, way too long. After a while, when everyone was fed up with trying to figure out what the fuck WAS wrong with Jared, we decided that some reefer might be just the thing to knock out his lights, so we lit a large joint.

After smoking the joint Jared normalized a little bit. It was then that he revealed to us what had so distorted his mind. Apparently, the backwater Arby’s boys had invited him into he back of the place to “do a line.” Jared assumed, as most urban dwellers would, that these humperdinks were offering him some coke. He was to tragically find out that he was wrong. This was a one truck stop, Kentucky shit-hole town and these cud-chewers were snorting METH.

So, as we proceeded to Chicago at around thirty-five miles per hour over the ice-bound interstate, Jared was twitching and fast-tempo foot tapping the entire way. The obscene honky-tonk rolled on and I think we may have stopped for more beer at one point. Eventually we reached Chicago safely and were greeted by friends new and old. The Black Lips and Carbonas played a few shows with the Tyrades and Chicago’s love affair with them was consummated.

The tour continued, many more shows were played and much more poison consumed. In the next few weeks every member of our entourage would have a chance to prove what he or she was made of as we sloughed our way through the jungles and mires of America. In Ohio, Kevin Lee extinguished the flames on the back of a burning truck driver while barrels of some caustic chemical exploded all around him. In New York, Alberto of Wowsville saw the Black Lips for the first time and is rumored to have exclaimed, “This is the future.” When we all returned to Atlanta I joined the band and the adventure proceeded.


More to come……

Monday, August 20, 2007

Euro Jams!!!

Well, here we go again. Back in the olde country. Just landed in England and we're trollin around searching for adventure. Tomorrow we go to our little paradise we call Sardinia. So we'll have some killer beach and food stories to tell ya'll about. For now it's cold and cloudy and there's no waves in sight. Get ready for our new beef with 50 cent, kanye, and that little cracker ass motherfucker Kenny Chesney. They're all bitches. Currently listening to CCR, and that makes me happy and love the USA for all the right reasons. My highlight of the trip so far was standing in the British Airways check in line with that delightful fellow "DENNIS RODMAN" I almost iced that motherfucker but Jesus got me feeling bad so I left that triflin' ass fool alone. He should consider himself the luckiest man on earth. I gotta go now my "ZIMA" is getting warm.
wordz of wizdom-" if you play.....you lose"-Inez

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Wilderness Treatment Center

When I was 16 years old I got expelled from school and got into a bit of trouble with the law. As a result my parents and the courts thought it would be a good idea for me to spend some time at a ranch outside of Marion Montana near Glacier national park. I spent three months there. Half the time working on the ranch living in a cabin heated by a wood stove, and the other half dragging a sled on cross-country skis through Glacier park camping and mountain climbing and wiping my ass with compacted snow. It was February. It sucked hard. Here's a letter I Cole wrote me that I found today while cleaning my room.

Dear Jared,
sorry it took me so long to write back. The show at the Earl went excellent. We are starting to get a good reputation around town. The El Caminos got a write up in the Creative Loafing(free Atlanta weekly paper) and we got mentione. Your mom and Jim(ex- stepdad of mine) came to Alpha Soda(diner cole washed dishes at) and said that you might get sent to a halfway house for three months, that's ridiculous! you need to work hard at whatever you need to do to get out of there. Jim also said that you wouldn't be playing with the Blacklips anymore when you got back, and I was about to tell him to shut the fuck up, but I figured I'd play it cool. Well I hope you make it back on the 27th. Don't forget the Blacklips and the house.
later,
Cole

I did make it back on the 27th, and kept playing with the blacklips and moved into die slaughterhaus. I'm really glad i did.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Tight Bro's

Randy runs it. Travis rules.
shit russia.
F.T.W.

its my party?

it's my birthday and i haven't slept. I've been on some free computer talk thing with my pal king khan and his family and our spanish buddy isidro who we lovingly refer to as snacks. It's been 5 hours of nonsense, which i love. All my loving. I've got Berlin in my bedroom. I've been talking to King Khan's 5 year old daughter and i convinced her to put her debut single out on
robs haus/die slaughterhaus(our label)
you can convince kids to do anything. Actually it was a pretty hard deal to seal. Kids posess an innocent clarity that can outwit you and blow your mind, and it's always confusing as hell. Damn. She won. But it's still coming out. That's why Cole always beats me. It's called "first day of school" and it's written from experience. I've taken her there, so I know. Look for it on Halloween. Saba-lou Kahn.

the Mighty Hannibal and I

I love soul music. I also love Atlanta. Combine those two and you have the Mighty Hannibal.
I've loved his music for years, and thank god the wonderful folks at Norton records made it possible for me and countless others to hear what we probably never would have.
We lucked out and got invited to play a new years show with the A-Bones(Norton folks) in 2004 going on 05, and the Mighty Hannibal was the MC for the night. I was super stoked to meet him and we hit it off right away. Both of us from Atlanta and all, we figured out pretty quick that our families were loosely connected through the Atlanta preaching, Gospel, and civil rights scene(it's a small town) Me and him both coming from a long line of preachers and gospel singers, and both from families that helped initiate the Atlanta constitution(a plea to the president to end jim crow laws and other bullshit in the south) I decided right then and there that it was my mission to bring Hannibal back to his home that he hadn't graced with his presence since the mid 70's. It was a hell of a task, but it was more than worth it.
We got to know each other pretty fast. Mainly because he called, and still calls, about four times a day(he does this because he went blind about three years ago and other than what little music he listens to, talking is his main form of entertainment). He's told me amazing stories. From his days pimping with Larry Williams, to growing up with Gladys Knight and James Brown, even letting Ray Charles drive his car in downtown LA. Not to mention he taught marvin Gaye to dance.
I always had trouble believing what he told me because it was so unreal. But it's all true, he proved it and blew me away. I worked my ass off for months trying to work out this first show, while touring my own ass off myself. I put up almost my entire savings to garuntee his pay,hotel, and everything else.
And, we had to be the backing band.After endless deliberations(those dudes got fucked back in the day so it takes a while to earn their trust, can you blame em?) and practice preperation we were set. We had a date-January 12th. Hannibal calls me and says the city has a proclomation for him. I had no idea what that meant, and did'nt pay no mind either. I did'nt know Hannibal like i should have yet. The day finally came and i was nervous as shit. I picked him up from the airport and took him to the Highland Inn, where all the bands coming through ATlanta stay, and got him settled. It was instanly Hannibal time. First stop was moustache trims at the most amazing forgotten in time barbaer shop-which without Hannibal i would never be allowed in in a million years-we chilled and talked shit about people who'd been dead for decades, and ripped on eachother. Some of his old nation of islam and black panther buddies(hannibal was both, his islamic name is Walid) came up to meet us screaming "black power" and "africa now" as they rolled in. It was pretty magical, and an experience most young white kids miss out on. After a few hours of recounting tales from Atlanta in the sixties,lester maddox,james brown and throwing bricks in Selma it was off to our first practice. That was the hardest musical experience of my entire life. He was brutal on us, and there was a good 30 minutes where i thought it was over. we got past it though, and we all learned alot. Those soul guys worked their asses off. They don't fuck around. the show was amazing.
The "ATlanta proclomation" he kept hollerin about was no slouch either. The mayor Shirley Franklin, and the city council, including civil rights hero, Julian Bond had unanimously approved a bill making january 12th 2006, the MIGHTY HANNIBAL day in atlanta. It was official. It hangs in city hall. The show was incredible, and magical. Him and the Reigning Sound killed it. It was the most worth it pain in my ass of all time, and one of the best nights of my life.
Me and Hannibal have since become very close friends. He calls me his protege(sp)(i suck at spelling) and son and he's my(inhis words) mentor. He's been back to Atlanta tons and I always go up to the Bronx to catch up when i'm there. He's the last of a dying breed, but he's still turnin that mother out. He turns 68 tomorrow, and blindness, drug addiction, and fuckupedness isn't slowin him down a bit.
Happy Birthday Hannibal

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Southern Comfort

there's a great 24-hour trucker bar just outside the perimeter(I-285 the perimeter highway that encircles atlanta) me and some pals are going there tonight foe celebrations. There's an inhouse country band called the joe tucker band, fronted by joe tucker himself. his pedal steel player, Steve Jones, played on a track on our new album. Joe Tucker actually came and paid us a visit in the studio and it was awesome. Anyways, it's full of coboys and truckers and derelicts and they have really long tables and it's super cheap. And, everyone dances. they get up, dance, and when the song is done they sit down. Then they repeat. All night. Cole and me ran into one of our junior high school teachers there and she was really drunk and nice. In the school days she was really sober and mean. I'm gonna dance the night away with old ladies, and probably pick a fight because i've never seen or been in one of those "roadhouse" kind of bar brawls. wish me luick.

One Fine Day

I was reading deerhunter's blog today and i thought it sucked so i decided to start our own(welcome to the future)
lol jk hahaha. No, it is the future and alot of funny stuff happens to us on tour and we go alot of places, and we forget about what happens then it's lost forever and i'm sick of that happening. so here we go.
we are on summer break right now until the 20th of august. I've been swimming, playing tennis, going to six flags(got a season pass) and other fun summer things i never get to do on the endless tour(been on tour since may?) we're also working on getting things done here. new album is coming out on september 11th and everything is DONE! finally. Also finishing up our spooks album which has been way overdue....got practice tomorrow and a show this friday where we're donating all the proceeds to the local kids for some playground shit. also been working on two new gaye blades singles(my other band) and playing a show on saturday that we totally aren't ready 4. trey just walked in and is waiting for me to finish this. and i think cole finished his solo album. i saw him last night but we were drunk and i forgot what we talked about. and we're playing at the clermont lounge with the subsonics next week. it's a crazy strip club in atlanta where they basically go to retire and die. after that it's back on tour for the next 4 months, starting on the scenic italian paradise known as sardinia. so we'll probably be around you soon. now i gotta go practice. tomorrows my birthday, and my mom bailed on our plans because i'm a bad son.....haha lol, got milk? so i hope i don't get wasted and write stuff that i'll regret later. but i probably will. stay tuned. get high.
love
Jared