Broodings from Bear

1/19/97 - NYC BARRY JOINS THE FRAY

Yo diehards. Yeah, you. If you weren't a diehard, you wouldn't be reading this. You wouldn't give a clueless mallrat's ass. But you do, so read on. I always laugh a little, secret snicker when people say 'So you guys are really big in Japan, huh?'. I mean, yeah, we are. I can tell because our tour posters and our audiences get larger every year. But being really big in Japan has a different connotation for moi. I am way too large for Japan. I raised my hand above my head in a small club (redundancy) in Tokyo during a show and banged one of the spot lights. I was treated to a shower or Roppongi club dust, lots of fairly petite people tittered politely, and once again I felt like Gulliver, singing basslines in Lilliput. We have seven albums out in a country I can barely squeeze into sideways. I spend weeks sleeping on the floors of beautiful hotel rooms because too much of me hangs too far over the sides of the bed in too many directions, and the floors are usually less lumpy. I returned from our first tour covered with bruises from banging into things like door frames, chandeliers, and trucks. This last swing through the islands of Nihon was more rigorous than ever. We didn't have a single day off in the whole tour. Not one. True, we agreed to the schedule, fully aware that we would be ground to bloody nubs by the last note of the last encore of the last show. But we did it, and I was rewarded with one whole day at home, albeit with no hot water, before flying down to Miami to sing in the Orange Bowl Parade and do the National Anthem at the Orange Bowl.
And speaking of the Orange Bowl, someone should have made a movie of Rockapella trying to get to the parade. We were scheduled to sing in front of, and then ride through the parade on the float for the Port of Miami. After much discussion, they decked us out in white suits, colored shirts and white (oh dear) patent leather shoes (the kind they have matching belts for in New Jersey). The one thing they forgot was a magic pass to get us by the Miami police, who had blocked off every street within a mile of the parade route. After a nightmare of begging, pleading, whining, gesticulating, rising panic, illegal U-turns and ultimately being refused entry by every cop in town, we ditched the van and RAN through crowds and down the side of the parade route itself for endless blocks until we arrived, panting and sweating, at the appointed spot to lip-synch our way to glory in front of a bunch of semi-nude beauty queens riding on a disguised truck. None of us had ever ridden on a float before, and after the experience I can only say that one of the worst punishments in hell must be riding on a float for eternity, smiling and waving to people who don't know who you are, don't care who you are, and would rather wolf-whistle at the beauty queens surrounding you. To make matters even more ridiculous, the sound system on the truck, er, float, which was supposed to play "Falling Over You" on a perpetual tape loop, didn't function at all, making our presence on the float even more mysterious and ancillary. Look it up.
All was redeemed when we sang our National Anthem at the Orange Bowl. The redemption was a long time in coming. My first gig with Rockapella was singing the very same tune at Madison Square Garden for a Rangers game. We were booed. Yes, booed. We found out the hard way that hockey crowds don't like slow, soulful versions of our glorious flag-waver. They like to hear, "Oh say can you see the home of the brave" versions. The Orange Bowl was different. We took out time, huddled up close so we could hear each other over the crowd and the one-second delay between singing the notes and hearing them in the mammoth stadium, and as we sang the last chord, a roar arose from sixty thousand throats that erased any trace of vestigial (look it up) bitterness still clinging to the memory of my first engagement with the group.
But I digress, Back to Japan. Did you know that a new entertainment channel called 'WE', an obvious knockoff of our 'E' channel, is airing an hour -and-a-half special on Rockapella? They video taped two of our concerts, and we spent a day on location shooting in the streets, record shops, toy stores, restaurants, and boutiques of Tokyo. Between locations we did little interviews in the bus. I must have been doing something wrong, because they told me that I was coming across too scary and I had better lighten up. It had something to do with my size and my voice, and maybe the way my eyes gleamed when I talked about sharpening my machete. So I scrunched up in my seat, kicked into falsetto, and played with cute little origami dolls on the next go around. Later that day, I was again deflated while clothes shopping with Elliott and Scott near "Fashion Alley' in the Harajuku district. Scott directed us to the trendiest shop, where I found all sorts of cool clothes for the more diminutive. Look it up. I gave up after El tried on a beautiful sweater which fit him a little snugly. He asked if they had a larger size in the shop and was told that he was modeling the largest size they carried. My feelings were injured only slightly, and I realized again, sadly, that I'm just too big for the place.
By the way, send us your old, used Nike's. We saw used sneakers going for four or five hundred bucks in shops in Tokyo. You could help significantly to defray the cost of our next Asian junket by contributing your smelly, worn gym shoes to the cause. Go figure.
-- Barry

OK, so maybe you didn't have to look up every one of 'em. I didn't use a thesaurus. So there. Ooooh, words. Ooooh, ooooh, mmmmm. I've been a word-addict since before birth, and the third inescapable irony, has me singing my own mostly word-less part while my colleagues get to sing great heaping gobs of words. Cosmic humor? Karmic payback? Remedial Irony Appreciation 101? You decide. I still sing in a dozen languages when I'm holed up in my cozy studio with soundproof walls, or when I'm doing dishes. Sometimes when I'm in absolutely pristine voice I can shatter a tumbler or two. Real vocal satisfaction. Let's see...Italian, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Slavonic, English, Latin, alright, so maybe eleven languages, but I'll remember the last one later.
Hey, remember Miami? We sang at the Massachusetts, Maine & New Hampshire Inaugural Ball last week, and just trying to get to the Old Post Office, where the shebang was going to be, was like a really bad instant replay, except we weren't going to be on live national tv in twenty minutes. So two hours after we arrived in DC, we finally were allowed to go to the place. Our sound check had evaporated in endless snarls of secret service checks, cross-checks, searches, sniffings, screenings, credentials-finding, identifying, blood-typing, finger printing, mug shooting, and you get it. What the hell; they were only trying to protect the Leader of the Free World. I mean, you couldn't visit the loo without the proper official document. We did eventually get a quick sound check, but somehow those little in-between-sound-check-and-show gremlins got into the board, and the monitors were a nightmare of honks, squeals, and we were all trashed in forty minutes. Out front, people were hanging over the balconies, cheering, dancing; Bill and Hil and Al and Tipper were definitely grooving. So hopefully the whole excercise, which was gratis, folks, cuz we're such patriotic fellas, was worth it because it made a bunch of people who had worked very hard feel very good. Gosh.
And by the way, the excercise included changing a tire on our rentavan, which blew out with a loud bang somewhere in Jersey. I was sitting right over the tire, and my first thought was, "Have I gained that much weight?" Our dear buddy Prince Among Men Phil saved our collective ass by getting us over to the shoulder in one piece, and we mobilized like a well-drilled platoon. This is actually true. It was sub-zero, with a wind whipped up by the semi's screaming by a few feet away. The tire had blown almost completely off the rim, folks. But we were back in the van with the heater going full-blast in about a half-hour. A Rockapella first. Talk about your good times, manly men doing manly things....actually we were spurred on by the pathetic vision of seven guys (us and Phil and Fred the Soundman) huddled in a van, waiting for triple-A to show up. I mean, what would the guy in the tow truck think? Seven guys and nobody could change a damn tire? C'mon.
And one more thing: These aren't postcards. Sean writes postcards. I muse, vent, ramble, brood, ponder, theorize, fantasize, concatenate, caterwaul, rave, converse, implode, equivocate, spar, explain, reveal, but I DO NOT write postcards.

We here in New York City, where 'up yours' isn't just an attitude, it's a way of life, are calling 1997 the beginning of the era of ASS, which stands for After Sean Split. We're going to miss the Condiment King and his unique 'condimentia', and we're already anticipating an enormous windfall in the area of our touring mustard budget. No more of those unwieldy five-gallon squeeze bottles of grey poupon. Besides, they took up all the room in Phil's suitcase. Those of you who saw us on tour might have wondered why the usually spiffy Phil always sported the same threadbare togs at concerts. You probably thought he'd taken a vow of tastelessness. Actually he had foresworn his fabulous wardrobe of hand-embroidered Looney Toons sox and jox so Sean could drown his daily pressed-turkey-gristle-on-Wonderbread-with-lettuce, tomato, and whatever-the-rest-of-us-left in insipid, puce-colored uck. What a guy. Phil, I mean.
After four thrilling shows and a shameless photo-op in a matchbox dressing room this past weekend at the Bottom Line with THE Kevin Bacon and his equally incredibly talented brother Michael and their band, we can now count ourselves among the vast firmament of luminaries who are somehow connected through Mr. Movie Star. Kudos to you brassy, sassy diehards who, undaunted by the incipient threat of the fetid urban jungle, braved the nasty weather and even nastier cabbies to come and see history being made. This was the first time we a cappella stalwarts had ever split a bill with a stage full of guitars, drums, and other assorted mechanical noisemakers. This should lay to rest, once and for all, the scurrilous slander which occasionally slimes us when people (impeccable taste prevents us from mentioning names) infer that we have some sort of irrational grudge against musical instruments. It's not true. We simply haven't any use for them. So what if we smashed a guitar in a video once upon a time. It was a cheap guitar. And it was Sean's.

Dearest Diehards;
Nosiree. Nothing like a couple of days of being swung back and forth in a hammock strung between a couple of palm trees next to crashing blue surf by a couple of wahines in thongs and cocoa butter to brighten up the old weltanschauung. Look it up. It ain't what you think it is, you of the decidedly twisted turn of mind. Tack on first class travel and we are rapidly approaching a Nirvana-like state from which I am not bloody likely to return.
It doesn't take too much of that kind of kindly treatment to juice me to the point where I don't give a rabid wharf rat's mangy arse about anything except the next tall green cocktail with a little parasol and pineapple slices. Fortunately for all of us, the name Dole conjures up a significantly different image over there than it does here in the contiguous 48. Fly in the ointment: Had to sit in front of Oliver Platt (you know, the actor) on the final LA-NY flight, and let me tell you, he snores like a tubercular dachshund. Things we wish we didn't know.
But all was not leisure. I did some fairly exhaustive research into new and interesting uses for cocoa butter. Aloha not only means hello and goodbye, but it also means please, thank you, 'more cocoa butter', 'a lot more cocoa butter', 'you are definitely the hottest wahine on the beach', 'come here often?', 'what's your sign?', and 'you're totally unlike anyone I've ever met'. You gotta love the language.
Right now I'm recuperating from an overnight whirlwind trip to Atlanta for one of our fabled 'industrial' gigs, where we sing oldies with new words which glamorize products and companies we know nothing about. We had about two days after Hawaii to adjust to being home before jetting off to the Peach State for a very early morning of silliness and standing ovations. It was kind of like a combination of a bad acid trip and Carmen Sandiego redux, but isn't that somewhat redundant? I mean, what's the common thread between lasers, pajamas, and regurgitation? Us.

OK. I admit. I give in. I'm whupped. Uncle. I'll never have the incredibly improbable descriptive talents of my nearly-departed bandmate. I'm just too cogent. I'm probably more covertly mercenary, have my own fondness for condiments, jailbait, crude and licentious behaviour, and triple features at converted berlesque houses. But seeing as how I don't gnaw my digits to pulp searching for that extra bit of calcium, I can't possibly be maladjusted enough to be as irascibly entertaining. Being a lunar personality, I admit that most of my light is reflected. I'm not a leader, I'm one of the pathetic ovines out standing in the field and bahing for Lassie to come and herd me into the pen for shearing and eventual accompaniment to a wad of mint jelly.
I live the American dream instead of the urban nightmare. Oh yeah, I stare mortality in its ugly face most days by daring the Reaper to snatch me off my snarling two-wheeler, but otherwise I am just another pedestrian shmuck. My songs are a small, take-out side dish to the whopping banquet confected by my colleagues, my writing a pedestrian relating of facts larded with fifty-cent words that sound like a cheap graduate thesis. My mind is nearly as uncluttered as an Alzheimer's ward, and the last time I had an original thought was several lifetimes ago, I think. At this point, anyone who really knows what's behind my psychopathic, self-pitying facade will be snickering in their absinthe. A hot-tub philosopher with a heart of sulphur, a grinning mask hiding a slag-heap soul, a crystal-gazing sociopath bent on perverting the libidos of the innocent through the perfidious insinuation of subsonic autosuggestion. What's he really saying when he go bum-biddy-bum-biddy-bum? Suggesting the cohabitation of the elderly and the indigent? A salacious mantra detailing my lecherous taste for tight, tiny tuchases? Just another Tevye wannabe? Aargh.
Ya know how some days end the second your feet hit the floor? I got lost in my own neuro-lint on the short, straight path from my dent in the pallet to the unheated two-holer down by the crick. I've been groping through swollen lids to thrash my way back to a simulacrum of redemption by singling out one good thing to cling to, some piece of flotsam in the shipwreck of my life to which I might cling 'til the angel of the useless plucks me from the frigid sea of self-pity, 'til the goddess of horribly mixed metaphors amputates my fingers and snatches my Windows '95 keyboard from 'neath the stumps. Praise and trumpets! I've got it!!!!

Happy Valentines Day !

Rockapella has never been reviewed by the New York Times. This is a fact. It's not an oversight or an omission. It's on purpose. All the music critics over there got together one day and decided that there couldn't possibly be any real musical merit to a group that had the temerity to appear regularly on anything as vulgar and cheap as television. So you have never seen a New York Times review, good or bad, of any of our Bottom Line shows. Anything that makes people feel that good can't possibly be worth reviewing, right? What can you slam when everyone walks out of the show with a big grin pasted on their collective face?
Ah well, Look at the bright side of it. You inside-trackers, you folks whose finely-tuned ears are hooked up to your song-loving hearts, your sybaritic spirits, your je ne sais quoi: you would be a far less exclusive cadre of coolness if the New York Times had trumpeted officially that we were, uh, Good.
At this moment, I feel myself being sucked back through the uncomfortable, taffy-like vortex of space/time to a rehearsal at New York City Opera. Lloyd, the conductor, halted in mid-stroke to read a particularly scathing piece of critical wankery which totally eviscerated the previous night's performance. After his reading, which was in itself a performance, Lloyd dropped the paper, looked up and said through a persimmony pucker, "well, critics perform much the same function as eunuchs at an orgy.......they watch."

Disclaimer required by legal counsel:
I know that was a cheap shot. We've had mostly great reviews for our entire career. Rockapella has no ax to grind with any critics, even the pathetic few who don't get it. All this has to do with are my personal problems with authority (but gee, isn't that one of the, like, Big Problems of Life that rocknroll, like, uh, deals with?), my awe of the power of the media and my own admittedly skewed take on the strange, stygian depths of the music biz (watcha gotta go through just to sing a few tunes, I mean it's so stressful), but I'll deal with that stuff some other time. Gotta go read the Sunday New York Times.
Today's Arts & Leisure section has a big article on all the hot new alternative bands.

Yee ha

Just a quickie on the bounce. Trying to catch my breath between storming through Texas and wallowing in Southern California. Austin, Ft. Worth, Dallas, Houston and finally New Orleans, after a spectacular drive through the Atchafalaya swamp. If you like swamps. I happen to like them a lot, so it was a spectacular drive. OK? The House of Blues in N'awlins is the Coolest Club in the World. I could go into all the different reasons why it's the Coolest, but I don't have time so you'll just have to take my word for it.
Also stayed in two of the Skankiest Motels in the Universe. The 'Park Central' in Ft. Worth was a three-star mold-culture with broken plumbing, and the manager I shall affectionately refer to as Mr. Fungus. His idea of humor was a traffic accident. And then there was the Day's Inn in Lake Charles, LA. We rolled in at 2 am after driving for hours on a two-lane, lightless detour through nowhere with semi's blowing by in the opposite direction. No place else had any vacancies, but the night manager, Andy Ghandi (I swear I could not possibly be making this up) assured us that we would be happy and satisfied. He showed us a computer screen which showed reservations. I told him I couldn't read. The guys backed me up. He gave us fifteen minutes to look at the rooms and make up our minds. After checking out a couple of cells, both of which were done in early Singsing, we raced desperately to every damn motel in that roadside traveler's nightmare and ended up rolling miserably back to the inevitable. Slept with my Swiss Army knife and a can of Raid.
And another thing. No Phil That traditorino, as we'd call him in his florid native tongue, was out on the road with Ladysmith Black Mombazo. We drove. We schlepped. We drove some more. We schlepped endlessly. It's a good thing we don't have instruments and whatnot. We're all more toned from constantly hefting three racks of electronic gear, two bags of stuff and our own personal garbage, which seemed to mysteriously expand with each outlet mall we passed. But the shows were great, our audiences were wonderful, a hardcore Texas contingent of the Chickapellas came to EVERY concert and gave us wonderful support, t-shirts and stuff, and we never locked the keys inside the van.
Gotta catch a plane. More soon.......
Bear

Under wind-scrubbed skies, on the roof of the Capitol Records Building at the skank cross-roads of the Universe, Hollywood and Vine, we stand, shivering against the backdrop of the huge HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill. Cameras are rolling. Scott jumps up on the railing, fourteen floors up. There's a two-foot ledge on the other side and then it's straight down to the stars on the sidewalk. The director is freaking. Kevin has to demonstrate how it would be cool for all of us to pop up from behind the rail, so he hops over the wall onto the two-foot ledge. The director's mouth is moving but all that comes out are little squeaks We have to wrap anyway and race to Dodger Stadium to do the Anthem (as in National) , hereafter referred to as the NA.
I had one of those 'only in LA' experiences. Drove out to Malibu with Mom and her two huge, drooling dogs for a brisk romp on the beach. It turned out to be a beautiful section of beach, a place where megastars shoulders with the merely wealthy. Our jogging guide and hostess was telling us who owned the houses the dogs were irrigating. I feel really connected to Bruce Willis now that one of the dogs has peed on his kids' slide.
Other highlights from the LA trip: The riot outside the Troubador for tix, following our history-making debut on Tinseltown's top morning radio show with wild and crazy guys Mark and Brian, which featured my now famous duel with that creature from beyond the river Styx, Pinhead; rehearsing under the bleachers at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, standing in ankle-deep mud and freezing; singing the NA out on the field, freezing in ankle-deep mud; all five of us trying to change clothes in a tiny, tiny bathroom also being used by the Padres' version of cheerleaders, and the death-defying Mach 1 maneuvering back to LA that same night for a live radio broadcast at KPFK in LA, which also turned out to be Kevin's debut midway through "I'm Your Man", when Sean gave up the mic. The transition was seamless, of course. And how about the live simulcast of the Troubador show on the Internet? I was told that the sound was good but the stop motion of the video made us look like 'The Five Little Jerks'. I love technology.
Tomorrow we hop on a brutally early flight for Chicago. Next weekend we're off to Huntsville Alabama. The fun never ends. And as always, you'll read it here first.
Wearily yours,

Kevin has survived his trial by fire with only minor burns, singed eyebrows and a peeling nose. The rest of us hard and hardened veterans of the Rockapella Road are unwinding in our separate pool-side Jacuzzis. Not. Actually we all deserve a moment of sheer back-slapping, gut-busting, suspender-popping congrats for having completed a tour that made boot camp look like a weekend at Elizabeth Arden. Saturday the 3rd was the kickoff, with a pre-dawn flight to Atlanta for a performance at the Midtown Music Festival, a mammoth undertaking with four stages, Big Name Acts, herds of avid moshers, every pierced navel within a hundred miles and Kevin's First Concert (KFC). Needless to say and said needlessly, the man came through with the proverbial flying colors and raves from the critics. After a flurry of signings and hellos from some of our staunch cadre of traveling Chickapellas, we fled to the airport for a late, cushy flight to San Diego. On a sad note, we bid adieu to Phil, whose duties with another vocal group (couldn't ya just hurl?) have made it impossible for him to continue to do the handsprings and backflips required of our employees. ttfn, Phil. Don't think you'll be rid of us so easily. We know where you work..
Aaah, San Diego. Actually La Jolla. Well, Torrey Pines, really. Class place. Since every morning was early, rude and raw, my fave moment was about five minutes after the nerve-destroying wake up call, when a geek in a tailcoat would knock on my door and deliver the fresh-brewed caffeine fix without which I couldn't even begin to phonate. Four days of that and I nearly had myself fooled into believing I was somebody. Our global audience (everything was being simultaneously translated into several languages, including Mandarin Chinese) was appropriately wowed, but many of them were stymied in their attempts to communicate their fervid appreciation, so we suggested that they simply give us all new cars. They took the idea to a focus group and we should hear something by the millennium.
By the end of our all-too-short sojourn to the land of eternally perfect weather, I was crazy for some simple, untrendy food. Since Scott and Kevin spent all their off-time swinging their putters, they forgot about food. Jeff was delighted with the odd varieties and massive quantities, and El grimly stuck to his bark-and-berries regimen. I went slightly daft after the third go-around with an insufferably coy waiter and a foo-foo menu featuring such items as 'Roast Duck burrito with roasted mango salsa, flaming raisins and ahi tuna chunks in a red wine-raspberry infusion with baby eggplant croquettes wrapped in seaweed and bulgur wheat dust. After that it was burgers and fries.
Evacuating San Diego involved another rude pre-dawn limo/flight to Providence, Rhode Island and another stretch in a stretch to the legendary Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. We arrived with barely an hour to spare before our first show, all of us slightly green around the gills from a flight that made the phrase 'barf bucket' sound benign. As the maelstrom in my stomach was replaced by the din of C -major slot machines, I realized that we hadn't had a sound check, or dinner, or sleep, or workouts. I was desperately searching for some way to close my eyes and drift off during one of the slower tunes in the set. Brain fade didn't actually hit until the second show of the second night, when I forgot where I was in 'Sixty Minute Man'. How many times have I sung that tune? Me, I think it's an omen. Time to 86 that one.
Two nights of two shows, during which we even wore these cunning little light-sensor packs clipped to our shirts so the robo-spots could follow us around the stage, and then bam!, another nasty, sleep-deprived early morning longass ride in a stretchasaurus to ANOTHER airport in ANOTHER town for ANOTHER airplane ride to ANOTHER city for ANOTHER show. WHAT? And give up showbiz? Are we having fun or what here? Actually........we hit St. Louie on Mother's Day afternoon. (Yes, we all called Mom. Did you even have to ask? If we were a real rock band, our parents would have disowned us.) To honor all the moms, our hotel was having a special boofay lunch. Having been awake since putz o'clock with naught but the stupefyingly awful bagels at the airport in Hartford, CT., (what exactly did you expect?), we chowed seriously before heading over to the Americas Center-maybe it had an apostrophe, I don't remember.-for a terminal rehearsal. I returned to my small but dingy room to take a shower in the newly renovated green marble crapper, and discovered that the renovators had neglected to install the hardware, like knobs, ya know, so I could turn on the water. Mild bummer. 'Hello, front desk?. Could you please send someone up to my room to show me how to operate the shower? Thank you. Yes, I'll wait.' The painter shows up and sez, 'Well no wonder you can't turn it on. It ain't got no knobs.' So I got my yuks and they moved me to one of the really cushy huge corner suites, which I showed to Jeff just so he'd be bugged cuz my crib was more festive than his own. Heh. Heh.
Then, thankfully, home, BUT we still had to deal with needing new photos and videos with Kevin, sooooooooooo we knocked off for two days and then bashed through two gruelling days of concentrated studio slash street-guerilla-style still and video shooting. We did well. Only got kicked out of, or actually off of, one place. Working with a CD jambox, Scott harassed and confused hapless straphangers emerging from the 3 train at Astor place. El amused a small crowd of construction workers and nannies in front of a graffiti-covered wall in the East Village. Kevin tied up pay phones all over the lower East Side, causing a nasty altercation between two cab drivers from some mysterious other-hemispherical country in which the natives must play the game 'Chicken' in taxis in order to preserve their family's honor. I had my ego inflated to the size of a dirigible by a few onlookers who kept on saying, 'phat, phresh and phyne' , as I sat upon my mighty ST1100 while we shot an update of the tune mentioned a couple of paragraphs back. And while they walked away, I overheard, 'damn, what a phyne motorcycle.' Quick as a flatus, my ego withered back to its normal steroidal mass.
With El's Big Day breathing down his neck, he's picked up a couple of troubling new habits. We've noticed him sitting and staring at a point on a wall for hours at a time, all the while chanting a one-word mantra under his breath. It sounds like 'help' most of the time, although occasionally it just trails off to a long 'aaaaaaaargh'. More troubling is his new dietary restriction. He's sworn off water. Claims he can hear protozoa screaming when he drinks. Hang in there, guy. It's gonna be a long summer.

Bear

Romance, thy name is El. From the ruby engagement ring cunningly nestled in a chafing dish full of Sag Paneer to the torrid honeymoon in Hawaii, the storybook tale of El and Deb will stand for all time as a monolithic testament to Amor, the chubby, naked and mischievous god of love. Just close your eyes and imagine a perfect Spring evening in New York's famous Central Park, the sky just beginning to take on the magical tinge of a picture book sunset: El in his carefully pressed jodhpurs and bowler, Deb in flowing cream-colored silk with seed pearls at the decolletage, the Scottish men in their kilts and black ties, the Scottish ladies in their oh-so-chapeaux, the audience in their seats and all the curious onlookers in their cutoffs and tank tops toasting each other with their tallboys as the non-denominational ministerette tied the proverbial knot. The sincerity quotient of the ceremony, with the bride and groom speaking their thoughtful, homemade vows as they gazed into each other's eyes, made everyone a little misty. Even the usually hardened and oblivious Park Rangers were holding hands and weeping. I hear that the Kingdom of Shy is advertising for a new CEO.
It was also a convocation of Rockapella past and present. Of course Sean was there, of course with his trusty videocamera. Kevin was there, and so was Scott's predecessor, Steve Keyes. When it came time for the group to pay tribute to the Happy Couple, everyone joined in. After a few numbers, the great, funky band cranked up and everyone danced 'til dawn, happily taking breaks to enjoy the lavish catering. The feasting even included a tray of fat-free lint for El and a tureen of haggis for the Scots. Talk about thoughtful. But then, that's El.

Well, our good weather luck finally ran out. After two years of fair and warmer, we're being pursued across the country by El Nino and his pal, El Flatulato (more on that one later). I think we've had about twenty minutes of sunlight since we left LA. We also bagged our first road kill. Well, we didn't exactly bag it, but we did, oh geez, hit a deer in the middle of the night in the middle of the road in the middle of Montana. Gross. It just jumped in front of us. Phil, who's been pounding out the miles like a veteran trucker, barely had time for one of his famous womanly shrieks, and we had to temporarily stop watching "Throw Mama from the Train" and have a few minutes of silence for the gentle soul that had been so quickly, unexpectedly and violently liberated by the grille of our van. I don't mean to sound cavalier about it. We were all pretty upset, especially El, to whom the very thought of venison is enough to make him break out in hives.
So we've been getting close and cozy on these long, long drives. Eight-hundred gritty miles a day have a way of melding us into a fearsomely tight, razor-sharp, chummy machine. But there's always a dark cloud inside every silver lining, and that fearsome, malodorous cumulus is in this case the result of the mathematics of mulch. The equation is thus: Taco Bell x 20 + McDonalds x 10 + Pizza Hut + Burger King x 12 + Dairy Queen x 40 + truck stop snacks x 60 + stress x 1000 + a small enclosed space = poison gas attacks that violate the Geneva Convention, and make Saddam's arsenal look like the closeout bin at Toys R Us. There wouldn't be a problem if we had a real tour bus or we were shooting a remake of 'Blazing Saddles'. We don't and we aren't. We have a tiny, dainty, deer-dented van, and only a few of the windows open. There's only so much you can blame on skunks and feedlots. Sooner or later the fickle finger of flatulant fate wags in your direction. Every few hours the interior of the van becomes enveloped in a greenish Beavis and Butthead miasma and we simply have to pull over and evacuate...the van, I mean. Oh sure, blame gets thrown right and left, but hey, we're all human. Right now we're watching a real bowwow - "Heartbreak Ridge", a man's movie starring good ol' Clint. So what's a little chemical weaponry between buddies watching a war flick? Well, every one of my mates has a different tolerance level for foul odors, me having the highest because I've changed the most diapers, which means I don't puke but I gag occasionally. Ah, life on the road. It's a blast.
If all it was about was concerts, touring would be a fairly straightforward, uncomplicated affair, but it isn't. Thirteen concerts in twenty two days may not seem like a lot, but it sure feels like a lot, especially when we're jamming in radio interviews, TV shows, print interviews, driving, conference calls, business meetings, workouts, driving, large meals, laundry, occasional fitful broken sleep, movies, driving, more movies, more workouts, check-ins, check-outs, driving, sound-checks, meet and greets, so it really is a lot. That's what my long, thick vocal cords are telling me these days every time they attempt to bang together. And then there's all the excitement. Did I mention driving? Yesterday, driving through Kansas, a nearly perfectly rectangular state with ruler-straight roads and the flattest vistas this side of the Big Ditch, we shared a breathless moment when we actually drove up a hill, then made a turn!

[Webmaster's Note: This posting arrived in my mailbox on September 29. It was delayed in getting posted here while I devoted my limited time and energies to replacing my computer's hard drive, and restoring as much of its contents as I could. (I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having a good workable plan to recover speedily from a hard drive failure. No hard drive is immortal.) Sorry for the delay. --Bob]

Make no mistake; Community Concerts is a Noble Institution. They've undertaken the sysiphean task of bringing culture to America's outback, an endeavor in which we fervently believe. Between the philistine holders of our nation's purse-strings and our collective obliviousness to the plight of the arts, it's amazing that C.C. even exists. All these towns tucked away in the dales and dingles of the continental 48 are the backbone of the US of A, and they have a more-or-less permanent cultural scoliosis which is relieved occasionally and temporarily by small infusions of artistic palliative. As with everything on this plane of existence, there exists here a duality, a yin and yang, a Laurel and Hardy.
First off, most of the acts that show up on their annual playbills are the likes of 'Muffy and Marie - easy listening flute and harp duo play the Andew Lloyd Weber songbook', 'The Warsaw Conservatory kazoo quintet', 'Wyndon Gilles and his tap-dancing polar bears', and of course, 'The Mongolian Sand-block Orchestra'. So what is a spiffy, hip, phresh, rockin' act like us doing prowling the hinterlands, sandwiched in between these blandishments for the necrotic? Here's a laugh, albeit more of a stifled smirk than a real guffaw: they're trying to attract a younger audience. A splendid concept, but the execution is fatally flawed. See, these concerts are mostly always sold only as a season series, so if you wanted to see us, you'd have to splash out for the entire season, whether you wanted to see the rest of the acts or not. And for most younger (pre-retirement) people,that's a pretty definite not. And they don't publicize the concerts, at least not ours, at least not that I'm aware of, so their audiences stay pretty much the same sea of bifocals, blue hair and blazers, except for the occasional really game family or the gutsy college students whose parents will pony up the bucks so their coeds can have a genyoowine peek at the guys who were on 'that show they used to watch before they went away to college'.
Take this evening's concert, for example (and I wish you would): Huge hall, yawning at us like the maw of oblivion, into which we were expected to (and did) fling our considerable massed energies with wit, abandon, and grace, only to be met, as the house lights came up, by a surge of seniors frantically hobbling for the exits as we sang the encores demanded by common courtesy and by the smattering of concertgoers who were on their feet cheering for more. Demoralizing? You bet! Fun? No effin way! The cherry on this sanguine sundae was another long, bumpy midnight ride, this time to Memphis, armpit of the South. I just looked at the local phone book. How's this for an oxymoron - 'greater Memphis'? Hey, we been to Graceland and payed homage to the King. Yeah, it was his town - still is, by the looks of it - but that doesn't make it a pretty place, even to spend the night, or what's left of it, in a run-down motel out by the airport with incoming jets thundering overhead every few minutes. It's at moments like this when I close my eyes and try to conjure up the kind of juice that you dear, darling diehards pump at us when we're all engaged in that magical energy transaction we call a concert. Thousands of screaming, stomping, moshing, adoring pals helping us to create that mystical cone of delicious zipzap from which everyone gets legally high; that's the joyous sensation I'm trying to reconstruct right this moment in my wrung out, week-old Dorito of a brain. O Jumpin' Jack Flash, where art thou? I am definitely looking forward to the day when I can look backward on this one and smile and say, 'It was worth it'.
"Millions cry a fountain, just in time for sunrise..."

The word is spreading, albeit as slowly as cold syrup on a frozen waffle. After triumphant concerts in such widespread,disparate and frozen places as Laramie, and Duluth, mighty urbane centers like Philly and DC, and our own New York playpen, the Bottom Line, who can doubt that the mighty undertow of public awareness is beginning to swirl around our toes, preparing to yank our feet out from under us and suck us out in to the surging maelstrom of tabloid notoriety.

Prowling the squalid afterhours underbelly of LA's downtown, praying for an onramp to the Harbor Fwy South, Kevin, El and Jeff are numb and muddled from helpless overindulgence. The simple four-block, straight-line trip to the freeway has become a tour of JapanTown, Watts, El Barrio, and El's Nightmare. After mountains of celestial dumplings at Yang Chow come miles of hostile asphalt before our boys are safe in their cells at the Days Inn. I'm happily conning the freeways, the savvy native. Hey, I survived teenhood with a hot head and a lead foot on the canyons and superslabs of lala. It takes our trio two hours to finally make it out of the DMZ. I'm fast asleep on the floor of mom's art gallery, dreaming of ambrosial dumplings that taste great but are less filling.
We set a new record for morning tour abuse this trip. Reveille at suck o'clock every morning, rain or shine. It was for the cause, but it hurt anyhow. Morning media appearances are fun once you're there. Getting up bites. It takes me ten or fifteen minutes to steam and gargle out the one dog hair that got stuck back there somewhere, and then I still have to get out of bed. The Mark and Brian Show is, well, high-stress. I get stuck in traffic caused by downed power lines across one of the busiest freeways in the world. Arrive at KLOS ten minutes before show time. Barely time for a soundcheck before we're on the air live with unrehearsed music. Kevin has that 'deer-in-headlights' look . Jeff has missed his early feeding. Scott is vibrating like a harp-string. El is wondering if he can golf after the show and I'm just sleep-deprived. Collective bad acid-trip nightmare ensues, with much ass-covering, stalling, fudging and sound fx. Things level out after a few minutes. We end in triumph, but walk away cursing our mistakes and flaying our perfectionist souls. Just for that, no Dairy Queen tonight.
The KTLA morning TV show is a different vibe. Sound check and rehearsal this time, so we're relaxed but everyone else is bent. They have this weather dude who is so tweaked that he keeps a mirror on his desk and whips it out during commercial breaks to make sure he's still there. He's hyping El Nino like it's a new Ahhnold action thriller. So LA. Same ol' suck o'clock, fumble around in the dark, burn my mouth on too-hot, too-strong java but not care because without the jump-start, I'm meat kinda morning, but with big fat rainclouds crowding out the usual brownish SoCal miasma. Showtime and the streets are swimming, traffic is welded, but somehow there's a rowdy crowd at the Troubador. It's a miracle.
I know it's a miracle because I'm from there, and Angelinos don't go out in the rain. They're a city of dessicated hydrophobes. Now that's a statement. But I can back it up. Everybody there freaks when it rains. It's murder on Gucci's and wax jobs. The streets are engineered to flood, and they do. People drive in collective denial that it's wet and there's lots of smasho's. Then you get Road Rage Rodeo. So when it rains, they all stay in and do tofuburgers and like I said, it's a miracle. I guess it's the season.....
Plunging a head....
Time for the next episode of 'SushiGate'. Every year, preparations for our annual pilgrimage to the Grand Central of Asian whizz-bangs seem to become more frenzied and baroque, rather than less. Somehow, this year, through a long corridor of confusion, all 6' 4" of me is in coach-class for the first time on this forfrigginever flight. Rather than sprint back down that corridor swinging a bloody machete, I've looked inward, to that deep well of Self, hoping to be shown the value in this potentially hobbling and humbling experience. After fasting for twenty minutes and taking a brisk roll in the snow in the buff, I've been graced by a message. 'If I truly desire to be comfortable for 14 hours in a coach-class seat, I must undertake the study of Origami. Therein shall I find a way to fold my extremities, like some large, annoying paper crane, into a seat meant for a sub-compact personette.' Fascinating. Next year, maybe a FlightKennel. Much cheaper ticket, but the food is cold and your seat-mate's a bitch.
Time to pack.

As we hunch another shaky step toward the millenium, it seems appropriate to take a nanosecond to drain some vitriol, feed our Gigapets, and light a tiny taper for The Year That Was. We lost a guy, we gained a guy. We killed a deer, we made a record. We were cartoon pigs. We made the American guilt pilgrimage to Hiroshima, and then sang in a shopping mall there. We rehearsed 'White Christmas' in the buff in a giganto marble hot tub in Miyazaki, and finally aced the penultimate chord. We cancelled a concert, and did shows we didn't even know about. We made our first DVD, and joined the mad fray of commercial hucksterism with our own 888- number. El's sweetheart, Debbie, became his blushing bride and then his bluesy golf widow. Jeff finally worked out all the bugs in his super-hi-tech-top-secret vocal percussion gizmo thing, but he's still trying to figure out how to tell time on the cool new watches he brought back from Nihon. Kevin ate life forms he never knew existed on his first trip to Japan. Scott found a palmtop 8-track, so he can work out and write tunes at the same time. I made my first crossing of the Big Ditch in Coach Class, sitting next to another guy with Business Class shoulders. We didn't talk much, but I know he was nice 'cuz he opened my barf bags for me. Phil the Irrascible gifted me with a second alimentary opening for even inferring that he likes 'Taz' anything. OK, he hates 'Taz'.
Now we are tired. Scott and Kev are out on the links in sunny Fla; El and his honey are hunkered down in a quaint little B&B in the Berkshires; Jeff is re-igniting his peripatetic Manhattan bachelor existence, and I am trying to find a few fitting words of thanks to you, our incredible, loyal, loving, enthusiastic fans for all your support and help through what has been a real roller coaster episode in our soon-to-be-a-legend-or-at-the-very-least-a-trashy-best-seller history. We think that this coming year will finally see the payoff for all the hard work - ours and yours - and you'll be able to either smirk smugly our guffaw openly when the rest of the world opens it's opiated ears and hears what you've been groovin' on all along.
So from all of us to all of you; Merry Christmas a little late, Happy Hanukkah a bissel tardy but nu, it's betta den nuttin', and Happy New Year right on time!

Love,

Bear