Dispatches: Bomb the Music Industry: Episode 2

Bomb the Music Industry! are continuing their first tour of the UK this week and are back for their second episode of Dispatches. Tonight, read up on Bomb's Jeff Rosenstock as he recounts the tour's first show and an interesting celebrity encounter. For the dates of the tour and Jeff's first dispatch, click here.
You can click Read More for the Dispatch.

Blog Two: The Surreal Life

After staying awake for so many hours and through so many time zones that you can't keep track, everything has an air of surreality about it. When I arrived at the Dusseldorf airport, with only minutes to connect to my flight to London, I felt like I was in some alternate universe. The toilets had these wavy lines between them, there was a foosball table at the gate, there were men who looked like they were in Devo or Kraftwerk cleaning all the windows. Every girl/woman who was speaking in English with a British accent sounded like Lily Allen to me and I was always disappointed when it was not. I don't even know what I would have said if it was Lily Allen. "Hey, let's get beers and become best friends!!"? Well, at least I didn't bump into Kate Nash. Yeesh. I can't tell you what time I got to Heathrow airport, because to be honest with you I haven't known what time it was until today.

My friend Chris from Chotto Ghetto picked me up at the airport. To make a long story short, Chris is Verne Troyer's assistant and Chris was staying in London while Verne was on Celebrity Big Brother. Verne got out of the house that night, so unfortunately Chris couldn't come to the show, but that didn't stop me from staying in a posh hotel, complete with waterfall lobby and heated towel rack. Because we are in our mid-twenties, we ironically had McDonalds for breakfast, bought some expensive ass spraypaint and knives and then I caught an hour and a half of the best of sleep of my life. I woke up and went down to print out inserts for the CD-Rs on this tour and helped a man who was trying to print something on the computer. After I told him I am from New York he said "man, New Yorkers are assholes." WHAT THE FUCK, GUY? I JUST HELPED YOU OUT! Anyway, walked half a mile to the tube station with bags and bags of spraypaint, knives, beer cartons, CD-Rs and other shit all over me. Got on the tube, got on the train, the venue in Brighton was thankfully right at the station. Buz, the promoter, took me out to get an amazing veggie burger. It had peanut butter and chili on it. I know that sounds crazy, but try it one day.

The show was amazing. The first show of a tour is always a nightmare for me -- there's a stencil to be cut, an explanation to be written and at this one, 45 CD cases to spraypaint as well as 45 CDs to burn and like 30 songs that I didn't get time to bounce down on the plane. We all assumed that the show wasn't gonna do all that well, 'cause y'know, I ain't shit and I've never been there before, so we were all surprised when people started showing up and piling in. Everyone was pretty nice, then kinda drunk, then slightly less nice but more generous so it all works out. Of course the only requests I got were for the four or five songs I hadn't programmed. I actually programmed "Ghost of Corporate Future" at the merch table, minutes before the set. Despite a bunch of technical difficulties at the beginning, it finally got going well after a little bit and I played until I had no more voice. Everyone I spoke to was so nice that I almost didn't want to get on the train back to London but all.

Chris from Chotto Ghetto had appeared on live television that night, and Verne Troyer was leaving the Big Brother house that night. After drinking beers and internetting alone 'til about 4 AM, Chris, Ray, Lonny and Verne show up at the hotel and we hung out and drank beers for a while. Despite it obviously being a strange experience to hang out with a celebrity, Verne was really nice and funny and it was just like hanging out with any other friend. We finally got to bed at 7 AM and I slept like six hours and it was amazing! I said goodbye to everyone this afternoon. There's a small chance that I will be heading back to London again tonight to attend a Coolio concert, but chances are I'll just continue moving west.

My body feels like it wants to kill me today. I don't think it helped that I just had to walk about two miles through London to my train station with my overpacked heavy ass bags, but I finally got all my shit off of my back, drank 32 ounces of water in one gulp and dried the sweat out of my t-shirt only to get in nice and gnarly again in a few hours.

soundtrack:

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - Both Sides of the Brain
Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster…