Gigantic.34

Big Cat Holiday

Six of the seven bands on the Big Cat Tour convoyed from city-to-city across Europe on three deluxe tour buses. Mercury Rev made our own way in a crappy van.

I’m not sure if this was our choice. The label may have come up with this solution to include the problem child on the tour without having to live with us.

Pavement was still at the top of the bill. A German band called Blumfeld had joined us back in the UK a few nights before and sort of adopted me. The traveling festival with all the bands began for real in Hamburg.

One of the other bands were my buddies, Lotion. It’d been over seven years since Bill and I had been in Elephant Gun together back in Syracuse. Now we were in two different bands, playing on the same tour.

My flirtation with tour buses began that first afternoon. Someone was nice enough to let me try taking a nap on their bus. Lying there, not able to sleep, I could hear a band starting up.

It was muffled, I couldn’t tell what song, couldn’t tell what band. But I could hear the bass cutting through, and I recognized it immediately: it was Bill.

Trying to get off the bus, I discovered I was locked in. While I pounded on the glass to draw someone’s attention, an assortment of people watched me as they passed by like I was some sort of zoo animal.

Eventually the driver came back and sprung me. I’d missed Lotion, but I’d have a dozen other chances to catch them before the tour finished.

That night after all the shows, Jonathan and I hung out and partied with the other bands at a local bar while the Rev van continued on. It took a bit of horse-trading at the end of the night because the drivers were Germans and had strict rules, but someone from the label switched buses or something so Jon and I could climb aboard.

I’d never actually ridden on a tour bus before. Joachim from Blumfeld was the one who taught me to sleep feet first so if we crashed it wouldn’t crush my skull.

The next morning we arrived, somewhere. I couldn’t remember where. I got off the bus and walked around this strange city. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what country I was in (it was Belgium.)

There was time for adventure in every city. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Louvre in Paris, it made the dysfunction on the van worth it, even if we couldn’t make it to a single venue or hotel without losing our way, or dealing with some drama or mechanical mishap.

We were crossing the badlands of Spain when the blowout happened. I was lying on the floor of the van. I think Joe was driving. He managed to steer us to the shoulder without further incident, but we were stuck by the roadside in desert heat for the next several hours. Flies everywhere, not enough water.

Maybe a passerby alerted the first tow-truck, who couldn’t help us, but called another one. We were running hours late by the time the next tow-truck came and actually fixed the tire.

Arriving at the venue in Madrid with minutes to spare, the guys from Pavement and other bands all helped lug our equipment in and on stage. We played a furious set.

There was a pool there. After we played, Grasshopper and I naturally jumped in along with Mick from Dirty Three. A huge German named Frank who worked for Big Cat yelled at us to get out. We frustrated him to no end by not listening.

The badlands blowout had not necessarily been a bonding experience. I was ready for a little break from my band and they were ready for a break from me. Bill had said something earlier about maybe I could ride on their bus that night, seemed like a plan.

Until I finally dried off after the pool and caught up with Bill again.

“Uh, Adam, our bus driver says you can’t ride on our bus…”

I went running out of the venue just in time to see the Mercury Rev van rounding the corner and out of sight. I was high, and suddenly marooned in Madrid.

Jochen from Blumfeld saw me standing in the middle of the street and asked what was up. I explained my predicament.

“That is bullshit,” were his exact words. “You will ride with us!”

Being German, Jochen had a slight in with the German driver. Unlike Americans, Germans do not have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to rules. But there are ways to get around rules, so long as you give the appearance of following them.

Once everyone boarded the bus, Jochen hid in the bathroom. The driver acted in a highly performative manner.

“Now, I am going to count everyone on this bus,” he said with great seriousness. “If there are more than twelve, someone will be getting off the bus. One, two, three…”

When he concluded the count at twelve, he nodded his head with satisfaction. He had followed the rules. From that point on, he didn’t bother counting again. I was on the bus.

I had randomly fallen into the seat next to Rachel, who was selling merch on the tour. A happy accident. I wasn’t feeling too well, and she sort of took care of me. When everyone else went to their bunks, she stayed up with me. We watched Spain go by and talked all night, instant friends.

It’s hard to imagine that even the people running the show in 95 didn’t have cellphones. But they did check in with the home office regularly. Which is how, at the first rest stop in the morning, Big Cat owner Abbo found out that our next show, in Italy, had been cancelled due to a heat wave.

The drivers of the three-bus convoy put their heads together and came up with a grand idea. Skipping Italy entirely, they found a family campground in the south of France that could easily accommodate all three buses.

The rest of Mercury Rev, meanwhile, continued driving in that crappy van toward record heat in Italy. There was no way to contact them, so they had no idea the show had been cancelled.

My problems seemed small by comparison. No money, smokes, or underwear. I might’ve even left my passport on the van. But I was unexpectedly on holiday in the south of France, so who cared.

At first, the culture clash was ridiculous. All these bands in rock star outfits surrounded by French-speaking families whose kids laughed at us. Gradually, everyone on the tour realized the cool thing to do was give into this.

We swam in the pool. Played a massive six-band volleyball game. Had cookouts. Ate baguettes. Drank red wine. Borrowed each others toiletries.

One night we amused the other campers and ourselves by doing karaoke in the rec center. I picked the schmaltziest song and sang it, completely tongue-in-cheek, but in a way it was good to open my chest and get it out:

Feelings, nothing more than feelings…

When the time came for the buses to hit the road, the happy camper spirit was still in the air. I was shmushed between Rachel and Andre from Blumfeld with one arm around each of them, it felt like we kept singing all the way to Zurich.

Big difference from the usual vibe on the van, which if anything had gotten more dour from having driven all the way to Italy before finding out the show’d been cancelled.

The lack of cellphones figures into the story another way too. If six indie bands wound up in a holiday campground together today, every last moment would be selfied, posted in real time on twenty different social media platforms. The whole thing would’ve become a virtual part of the act.

As it happened, the holiday campground was more like stepping out of time. No one knew about it except for the people who were there, and it lives on only in our dispersed, separate memories.

For me, those two days were a bright spot in what was a pretty dark first tour. A chance to come up for air. Probably it was what saved me.

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