Salon Wanderlust | On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Three

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Is it safe for women to travel alone? Swap success and horror stories in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Orchid ice cream
By Eric Hansen
An aficionado journeys to Turkey to discover the birthplace of this aphrodisiac treat
(11/17/98)
Another Africa
By Chinua Achebe
Beyond the stereotypes and clichés, a photographer and writer journey into the heart of the continent
(11/15/98)
This week in travel
Hostages at Club Med, strikes in Italy, a Paris renaissance, Mideast warnings and more news from the travel world
(11/13/98)
A fiume runs through it
By Thom Elkjer
An American on a fly-fishing pilgrimage learns that in Italy, it's who you know that counts
(11/12/98)
On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Two
By The King Teen
Shotguns and dead bunnies, pizza and beer -- a San Francisco band explores America
(11/11/98)

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ON THE ROAD WITH THE SMOKEJUMPERS: PART THREE | PAGE 1, 2
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After saying our goodbyes to Luckie Strike we drive to Tucson, a slogging trek through the desert that's reminiscent of the slogging trek through Nebraska and Iowa, only with cactus instead of cornfields. Plus it's warmer. I play and lose another scratcher ticket. I'd also played and lost one in Texas, so I'm now even on the lottery, having lost four times since my $4 score in Colorado.
We play at a place called 7 Black Cats, which is across the street from the city bus terminal, not far from the University of Arizona. This appears to me to be downtown, but not much is going on aside from this bar, and not much is going on here either. A few folks show up, but most of them leave during the set of Tarot Bandero, who play before us. We decide that there has to be a word for that phenomenon, and if there isn't we're going to make one up. It's pretty annoying when it happens, but Tarot Bandero, on the road from Washington, D.C., seem to be nice enough people who weren't trying to alienate the audience, and they stay to watch us, so we're not too mad. We give them some of our door money.
On Wednesday we drive to Los Angeles -- we honk the horn and cheer when we cross into California and the Pacific time zone -- for a show at Spaceland, an ultrahip club in the supercool neighborhood of Silverlake. The less said about this show the better. It was booked three months in advance, and I spent the entire three months trying to get someone to call me back with details on the show. It ends up being a slapped-together bill with a folk singer, a cabaret/blues band and us. We're last, which we call being the "sucker band," because if you're naive enough the promoter will try to convince you that because you're playing last, you're headlining. The blues band before us takes so long to get off stage -- 20 minutes, 30, 40 -- that everyone leaves before we play.
Welcome to L.A.
We're staying in Hollywood with my brother, who works for "Entertainment Tonight." He invites us to come down and watch them tape the show. We drive the Big Orange Van through the main gate at Paramount Studios and we feel like movie stars. We walk through the back lot -- Hey! Frasier's dad! -- and find the Mae West building, where the "ET" offices are, and are then escorted to a studio where they're taping the weekend show. We sit in the control room for a while and watch as they cobble together the pieces into a TV show.
"Kind of like watching paint dry, isn't it?" my brother says.
Then he takes us out into the actual studio, where we watch the anchors, Julie Moran and Bob Goen, read their scripts. During a break he takes us up onto the little stage and introduces us to the anchors and stagehands, saying we're on a U.S. tour. Everyone laughs a "yeah, right" kind of laugh. We tell them we're playing in Santa Ana, down the freeway past Disneyland, tonight, and Goen says, "Shouldn't you be on your way by now?"
"Well, the helicopter picks us up at 5," I say, and he nods and says, "Oh, you have a helicopter," before realizing I'm pulling his leg.
In Santa Ana, we play an all-ages show at Koo's Arts Cafe, which is in what looks like an old house across a major street from the biggest, brightest 99-cent store you'd ever want to see. The three other bands are all good and the kids seem to really like us. Two girls tell me they're great admirers of my outfit, which consists of a red shirt, red pants and a red jacket, all of which clash a bit, but not in the dark. Even more exciting than that, our two biggest fans come out: Jamie and Sara, who are mother and daughter, have recently moved here from the Bay Area. Sara, 9, is a veteran Smokejumpers T-shirt seller at all-ages shows, and Jamie's been to more shows than anyone except our wives and girlfriends. They invite us to stay at their place, and they sleep in the living room so we can have the two bedrooms and they won't wake us up when they go off to work and school. I tell you, there's just no believing people sometimes.

In San Diego we're playing last, after the headliners, at a divey joint near the airport called the Crowbar, which used to be the Velvet, and before that was the original Casbah, back when "they" were saying that San Diego was about to become the next Seattle. Not because of the place, which we like, but because we're playing after the headliner, Billyclub, and because the show's lineup has been in flux over the past few weeks, we're figuring this show's going to suck. And we think we're not going to get paid much because the Crowbar is one of those places that asks people who they're coming to see as they pay the cover, and pays each band accordingly. This sounds OK on paper, but in practice it doesn't work so well. What if you've had several chances to see Billyclub, say, but decide to come see them on this night because they're playing with, oh, let's say the Smokejumpers, and that's a good package? At the door, you'll say you're there to see Billyclub, and they'll get your money.
In spite of this impending long evening, we're happy to go to San Diego and see our pal Darren, who's putting us up for the evening. We met Darren when we played a gigantic street fair in Pacific Beach last spring, and last time we were in town he came to our show and offered us a place to stay conditional on our singing "My Baby Thinks She's Bettie Page" to his 5-year-old son, Brandon, in the morning. We accepted. Darren has the most amazing kitchen you've ever seen: It looks like a '50s diner from one end to the other, and the centerpiece is an old Kelvinator fridge painted black with flames, like a hot rod. This time, Darren and his girlfriend Lisa are hosting a "Tupperware and cocktails" party on the night of our show, and he's invited us to come over, drop off our stuff, get dressed and enjoy the party for a while before we go to the gig. I'm disabused of the notion that the Tupperware party is an ironic joke when the Tupperware lady shows up! We all get free samples: little toothbrush holders and bendy straws that whistle when you blow through them. We also convince several of the party-goers to come to the show.
At the Crowbar, I try to wiggle out of playing last. Billyclub is a band of punk veterans (ex-members of U.K. Subs and the Exploited) who live in Dallas. I ask the drummer if they'd mind if we played before them. He's nice, but he says no. They've just driven straight from Dallas and they want to go to bed. We ask them to mention us a lot while they're playing, which they do, and to get offstage quickly so we can jump on and start playing before everybody leaves, which they also do. As we're rushing our gear onto the stage, Tony, the club owner, hands me a pretty decent stack of money. A surprising number of people (I try not to look surprised) have come just to see us. And a surprising number who didn't come to see us are sticking around, including the tired lads of Billyclub. We're so hyped up from hurrying onto the stage, from watching Billyclub and two other good punk bands that played before them, D.S.F.N. and the U.K. Wongs -- who aren't from the U.K. -- and from having a crowd to play to that we play as loud, fast and crazy as we ever have, and the audience seems to love it. And so do we.
We're invited to an "afterparty" at a warehouse somewhere, but instead take the offer of Dani and Sunny, two girls we met at Darren's party, to take us out to dinner, or breakfast, or whatever you want to call it at 3 a.m. We go to Denny's and I order "Moons Over My Hammy," which I don't even particularly like; I just like saying "Moons Over My Hammy." The girls pay for dinner/breakfast, and Dani gets into a heavy-duty parking lot conversation with -- you won't believe this -- Double D.
In the morning we revive what is clearly becoming a San Diego tradition: the acoustic concert for Brandon. After some lounging we pack up, say our goodbyes to Darren, Lisa, Brandon and Salty Dog, their demure pooch, and head for the last show of the tour, in Bakersfield. We can't wait to get home. The Queen Teen, back home for a week now, is saying things to me like "Don't go away anymore." If this tour were going on for another four weeks, I'd be good to go, but since it's one day from ending, I'm itchy to go home. So is everybody else. We're going to play the show and then drive to San Francisco overnight, about 300 miles. We can sleep when we get there.

It's drizzling as we pull up to Narducci's Cafe, a family-style restaurant and bar where we're headlining the show in a room that during the day is a dining room. We're offered free food -- everything but an entree, meaning we get soup, salad, bread and pasta. But things turn weird: A waitress is explaining the situation to us when the owner of the place calls her away and chews her out for wasting time on nonpaying customers. Our reactions range from annoyed to pissed off at this rudeness. No food comes for a while, so all of us except Butta Fingers abandon the table to get dressed, set up the merchandise, etc. The club is filling up nicely when we hear what is clearly karaoke singing. I go into the main bar and see, standing on a little stage, holding a saxophone and singing "Footloose" or something -- the owner! He sings and plays sax on several songs, then several more, mostly hits from the '80s. The first band, Johnny Retsched and the Fabulous Martini Brothers, is setting up. People keep asking me when we, or somebody, anybody, is going to play and end the karaoke. It's out of my hands, friends.
The Martini Brothers play their rockabilly-swing set, and when they finish, the promoter, Skip, climbs onstage and says to them and us, "Not to put too fine a point on it, but the faster you guys change over, the less likely Jimmy will play his saxophone." But we're not successful. He starts in again before we can get ready. I'm not sure, but I think Skip introduces us and we start playing while he's in the middle of a song. Sorry, Jimmy: If somebody says, "The Smokejumpers," we start playing.
We've played Bakersfield before, and there's a pretty good crowd to see us. We play two sets and sell lots of CDs, more than at any other show on the trip. This last show, in fact, is by far the best on the tour, a fine way to end up. Lots of happy people and lots of money. We're offered an opening slot in two weeks for the Paladins, who would be the biggest band we've ever played with. We pack up and spend some time outside in the drizzle talking to friends, while inside Jimmy and a few pals have drunkenly started up the karaoke again.
A guy comes bursting out the front door and running down the street. "He's doing Hootie! Run for your lives!"

I'm lying down on the front bench seat as we head west from Bakersfield on state highways for about 50 miles before hooking up with Interstate 5, which will rocket us north toward home. Double D is driving, and he hits a ramp a little too fast on the slick pavement. First I hear "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." I sit up and look -- out the front window -- at a taxicab that's next to us, on the road we're merging onto. The driver is looking at us with this "fer-cryin'-out-loud" stare that only a cabby could give you in that situation. Now I'm looking behind us -- still out the front window. We're in a full spin. "Oh my God." I see the cab again out a different window. I wait for the side of the van to smack into something hard and unforgiving, or worse yet, for us to flip over. I can already picture us standing miserably in the rain, petals on a wet, black bough, waiting hours for a tow in the growing morning light.
And then everything stops. We're facing the right way. We haven't hit anything. While it was happening, it was too surreal for us to be scared. Now we're just freaked. We go over it again and again. "I just heard 'Oh my God, oh my God,'" someone says.
"Who was saying that?" Double D asks.
"You were."

When you get home from tour you can't just go home. First you have to stop off at the rehearsal space to drop off the gear. One last bit of torture: delayed gratification.
I walk in the door of our apartment around 10 a.m. The Queen Teen's pretending to sleep. I climb in bed and hold her and it feels like I'll never want to leave again, though I know I will want to eventually, because if I didn't do this, who would I be?
Later she takes me up the street for pancakes. We stop at the gas station and I buy one last lottery scratcher. I borrow a quarter from her to scratch it.
This time I'm a winner: I win a free lottery ticket.
SALON | Nov. 18, 1998
The King Teen sings and plays guitar for The Smokejumpers.


	T A B L E_T A L K Is it safe for women to travel alone? Swap success and horror stories in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Orchid ice cream By Eric Hansen An aficionado journeys to Turkey to discover the birthplace of this aphrodisiac treat (11/17/98) Another Africa By Chinua Achebe Beyond the stereotypes and clichés, a photographer and writer journey into the heart of the continent (11/15/98) This week in travel Hostages at Club Med, strikes in Italy, a Paris renaissance, Mideast warnings and more news from the travel world (11/13/98) A fiume runs through it By Thom Elkjer An American on a fly-fishing pilgrimage learns that in Italy, it's who you know that counts (11/12/98) On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Two By The King Teen Shotguns and dead bunnies, pizza and beer -- a San Francisco band explores America (11/11/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		ON THE ROAD WITH THE SMOKEJUMPERS: PART THREE \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - After saying our goodbyes to Luckie Strike we drive to Tucson, a slogging trek through the desert that's reminiscent of the slogging trek through Nebraska and Iowa, only with cactus instead of cornfields. Plus it's warmer. I play and lose another scratcher ticket. I'd also played and lost one in Texas, so I'm now even on the lottery, having lost four times since my $4 score in Colorado. We play at a place called 7 Black Cats, which is across the street from the city bus terminal, not far from the University of Arizona. This appears to me to be downtown, but not much is going on aside from this bar, and not much is going on here either. A few folks show up, but most of them leave during the set of Tarot Bandero, who play before us. We decide that there has to be a word for that phenomenon, and if there isn't we're going to make one up. It's pretty annoying when it happens, but Tarot Bandero, on the road from Washington, D.C., seem to be nice enough people who weren't trying to alienate the audience, and they stay to watch us, so we're not too mad. We give them some of our door money. On Wednesday we drive to Los Angeles -- we honk the horn and cheer when we cross into California and the Pacific time zone -- for a show at Spaceland, an ultrahip club in the supercool neighborhood of Silverlake. The less said about this show the better. It was booked three months in advance, and I spent the entire three months trying to get someone to call me back with details on the show. It ends up being a slapped-together bill with a folk singer, a cabaret/blues band and us. We're last, which we call being the "sucker band," because if you're naive enough the promoter will try to convince you that because you're playing last, you're headlining. The blues band before us takes so long to get off stage -- 20 minutes, 30, 40 -- that everyone leaves before we play. Welcome to L.A. We're staying in Hollywood with my brother, who works for "Entertainment Tonight." He invites us to come down and watch them tape the show. We drive the Big Orange Van through the main gate at Paramount Studios and we feel like movie stars. We walk through the back lot -- Hey! Frasier's dad! -- and find the Mae West building, where the "ET" offices are, and are then escorted to a studio where they're taping the weekend show. We sit in the control room for a while and watch as they cobble together the pieces into a TV show. "Kind of like watching paint dry, isn't it?" my brother says. Then he takes us out into the actual studio, where we watch the anchors, Julie Moran and Bob Goen, read their scripts. During a break he takes us up onto the little stage and introduces us to the anchors and stagehands, saying we're on a U.S. tour. Everyone laughs a "yeah, right" kind of laugh. We tell them we're playing in Santa Ana, down the freeway past Disneyland, tonight, and Goen says, "Shouldn't you be on your way by now?" "Well, the helicopter picks us up at 5," I say, and he nods and says, "Oh, you have a helicopter," before realizing I'm pulling his leg. In Santa Ana, we play an all-ages show at Koo's Arts Cafe, which is in what looks like an old house across a major street from the biggest, brightest 99-cent store you'd ever want to see. The three other bands are all good and the kids seem to really like us. Two girls tell me they're great admirers of my outfit, which consists of a red shirt, red pants and a red jacket, all of which clash a bit, but not in the dark. Even more exciting than that, our two biggest fans come out: Jamie and Sara, who are mother and daughter, have recently moved here from the Bay Area. Sara, 9, is a veteran Smokejumpers T-shirt seller at all-ages shows, and Jamie's been to more shows than anyone except our wives and girlfriends. They invite us to stay at their place, and they sleep in the living room so we can have the two bedrooms and they won't wake us up when they go off to work and school. I tell you, there's just no believing people sometimes. In San Diego we're playing last, after the headliners, at a divey joint near the airport called the Crowbar, which used to be the Velvet, and before that was the original Casbah, back when "they" were saying that San Diego was about to become the next Seattle. Not because of the place, which we like, but because we're playing after the headliner, Billyclub, and because the show's lineup has been in flux over the past few weeks, we're figuring this show's going to suck. And we think we're not going to get paid much because the Crowbar is one of those places that asks people who they're coming to see as they pay the cover, and pays each band accordingly. This sounds OK on paper, but in practice it doesn't work so well. What if you've had several chances to see Billyclub, say, but decide to come see them on this night because they're playing with, oh, let's say the Smokejumpers, and that's a good package? At the door, you'll say you're there to see Billyclub, and they'll get your money. In spite of this impending long evening, we're happy to go to San Diego and see our pal Darren, who's putting us up for the evening. We met Darren when we played a gigantic street fair in Pacific Beach last spring, and last time we were in town he came to our show and offered us a place to stay conditional on our singing "My Baby Thinks She's Bettie Page" to his 5-year-old son, Brandon, in the morning. We accepted. Darren has the most amazing kitchen you've ever seen: It looks like a '50s diner from one end to the other, and the centerpiece is an old Kelvinator fridge painted black with flames, like a hot rod. This time, Darren and his girlfriend Lisa are hosting a "Tupperware and cocktails" party on the night of our show, and he's invited us to come over, drop off our stuff, get dressed and enjoy the party for a while before we go to the gig. I'm disabused of the notion that the Tupperware party is an ironic joke when the Tupperware lady shows up! We all get free samples: little toothbrush holders and bendy straws that whistle when you blow through them. We also convince several of the party-goers to come to the show. At the Crowbar, I try to wiggle out of playing last. Billyclub is a band of punk veterans (ex-members of U.K. Subs and the Exploited) who live in Dallas. I ask the drummer if they'd mind if we played before them. He's nice, but he says no. They've just driven straight from Dallas and they want to go to bed. We ask them to mention us a lot while they're playing, which they do, and to get offstage quickly so we can jump on and start playing before everybody leaves, which they also do. As we're rushing our gear onto the stage, Tony, the club owner, hands me a pretty decent stack of money. A surprising number of people (I try not to look surprised) have come just to see us. And a surprising number who didn't come to see us are sticking around, including the tired lads of Billyclub. We're so hyped up from hurrying onto the stage, from watching Billyclub and two other good punk bands that played before them, D.S.F.N. and the U.K. Wongs -- who aren't from the U.K. -- and from having a crowd to play to that we play as loud, fast and crazy as we ever have, and the audience seems to love it. And so do we. We're invited to an "afterparty" at a warehouse somewhere, but instead take the offer of Dani and Sunny, two girls we met at Darren's party, to take us out to dinner, or breakfast, or whatever you want to call it at 3 a.m. We go to Denny's and I order "Moons Over My Hammy," which I don't even particularly like; I just like saying "Moons Over My Hammy." The girls pay for dinner/breakfast, and Dani gets into a heavy-duty parking lot conversation with -- you won't believe this -- Double D. In the morning we revive what is clearly becoming a San Diego tradition: the acoustic concert for Brandon. After some lounging we pack up, say our goodbyes to Darren, Lisa, Brandon and Salty Dog, their demure pooch, and head for the last show of the tour, in Bakersfield. We can't wait to get home. The Queen Teen, back home for a week now, is saying things to me like "Don't go away anymore." If this tour were going on for another four weeks, I'd be good to go, but since it's one day from ending, I'm itchy to go home. So is everybody else. We're going to play the show and then drive to San Francisco overnight, about 300 miles. We can sleep when we get there. It's drizzling as we pull up to Narducci's Cafe, a family-style restaurant and bar where we're headlining the show in a room that during the day is a dining room. We're offered free food -- everything but an entree, meaning we get soup, salad, bread and pasta. But things turn weird: A waitress is explaining the situation to us when the owner of the place calls her away and chews her out for wasting time on nonpaying customers. Our reactions range from annoyed to pissed off at this rudeness. No food comes for a while, so all of us except Butta Fingers abandon the table to get dressed, set up the merchandise, etc. The club is filling up nicely when we hear what is clearly karaoke singing. I go into the main bar and see, standing on a little stage, holding a saxophone and singing "Footloose" or something -- the owner! He sings and plays sax on several songs, then several more, mostly hits from the '80s. The first band, Johnny Retsched and the Fabulous Martini Brothers, is setting up. People keep asking me when we, or somebody, anybody, is going to play and end the karaoke. It's out of my hands, friends. The Martini Brothers play their rockabilly-swing set, and when they finish, the promoter, Skip, climbs onstage and says to them and us, "Not to put too fine a point on it, but the faster you guys change over, the less likely Jimmy will play his saxophone." But we're not successful. He starts in again before we can get ready. I'm not sure, but I think Skip introduces us and we start playing while he's in the middle of a song. Sorry, Jimmy: If somebody says, "The Smokejumpers," we start playing. We've played Bakersfield before, and there's a pretty good crowd to see us. We play two sets and sell lots of CDs, more than at any other show on the trip. This last show, in fact, is by far the best on the tour, a fine way to end up. Lots of happy people and lots of money. We're offered an opening slot in two weeks for the Paladins, who would be the biggest band we've ever played with. We pack up and spend some time outside in the drizzle talking to friends, while inside Jimmy and a few pals have drunkenly started up the karaoke again. A guy comes bursting out the front door and running down the street. "He's doing Hootie! Run for your lives!" I'm lying down on the front bench seat as we head west from Bakersfield on state highways for about 50 miles before hooking up with Interstate 5, which will rocket us north toward home. Double D is driving, and he hits a ramp a little too fast on the slick pavement. First I hear "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." I sit up and look -- out the front window -- at a taxicab that's next to us, on the road we're merging onto. The driver is looking at us with this "fer-cryin'-out-loud" stare that only a cabby could give you in that situation. Now I'm looking behind us -- still out the front window. We're in a full spin. "Oh my God." I see the cab again out a different window. I wait for the side of the van to smack into something hard and unforgiving, or worse yet, for us to flip over. I can already picture us standing miserably in the rain, petals on a wet, black bough, waiting hours for a tow in the growing morning light. And then everything stops. We're facing the right way. We haven't hit anything. While it was happening, it was too surreal for us to be scared. Now we're just freaked. We go over it again and again. "I just heard 'Oh my God, oh my God,'" someone says. "Who was saying that?" Double D asks. "You were." When you get home from tour you can't just go home. First you have to stop off at the rehearsal space to drop off the gear. One last bit of torture: delayed gratification. I walk in the door of our apartment around 10 a.m. The Queen Teen's pretending to sleep. I climb in bed and hold her and it feels like I'll never want to leave again, though I know I will want to eventually, because if I didn't do this, who would I be? Later she takes me up the street for pancakes. We stop at the gas station and I buy one last lottery scratcher. I borrow a quarter from her to scratch it. This time I'm a winner: I win a free lottery ticket. SALON \| Nov. 18, 1998 The King Teen sings and plays guitar for The Smokejumpers.