Seattle, WA – “Boys Night Out” -RockWindow – June 24, 2000

The difference between a hotel and a motel is not that significant, but when you’ve been on the road for a couple of months in motels, you do not turn down the Rockwindow.com promoter’s offer to be put up in the Paramount Hotel in Seattle WA. The difference between the motel and hotel room lies mostly in the expense of the room and in the complimentary amenities provided therein. In a motel, you’re lucky to get a complimentary bar of ivory soap next to the sink. In a hotel, you get shampoo, conditioner, lotion, a shower cap, q-tips, and sometimes one of those nice little sewing kits I like so much. In a hotel, you get a comfy bed, thick, almost fightproof, walls, a bath that’s probably been sanitized, and a nice lobby with classical music playing. In hotels, you get lights that don’t hiss when you turn them on and there’s less bolted-down furniture and more cable channels on the TV. But the AC still grumbles like an old man in a hotel, and the views still overlook out to the parking lot and the maid still enters the room at 7 am despite the DO NOT DISTURB sign on your door. We were in Seattle for the launch celebration of Rockwindow’s streaming media company (check it out by the way. It’s very cool).

By the time we’d found our hotel and checked in we only had 15 minutes before we had to be at the venue for sound check. I rifled through my bag for something to wear. I’ve lost everything on this tour! I swear the boys must be playing a joke on me. So far my lost list includes:

1 left sneaker
1 black and gray high heel
My favorite beige python silk shirt
My book “Into the Wild” 15 pages left to go to the end
My set of keys to Moby
Oh yeah, and my mind is pretty much gone too.

I tugged a black dress out of my bag and the last intact pair of shoes I own and ran downstairs. The lobby was full of pretty people moving in slow, graceful motions to the classical music surrounding us like water against the cold immaculate marble walls and floors.

The theater we were sound checking, “The Big Picture,” is a new “internet venue.” It’s set up specifically for filming and streaming live performances for the World Wide Web. It’s a small space, 60 seats or so, but comfortable with good sound. We’d be playing with Edwin McCain, a very talented musician and showman whose song, “I’ll Be,” has no doubt been on the radio every single f*ing time you’ve turned it on this year.

We met Edwin outside the backstage door strumming on a Gibson and immediately fell in love with him. He was hysterical and slightly magical in that naughty, twinkle-in-the-eye sort of way.

The event we were playing for was a private party for music industry people only — managers, record label execs., and the higher-ups involved in the newly launched “Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum.” The lights stayed on in the room for the whole performance on account of the live-to-internet filming, which was a little awkward. An inebriated couple fondled one another in the front row and the stage manager cued laughter and applause but even without prompting, people seemed to dig our act and we were praised for what I thought was only a “so-so” performance. We were invited to a big mansion party which the boys ended up making it to, but after hanging with Edwin & co. for a couple of hours in the hotel bar I was exhausted and felt like I needed to sleep off the tail end of my cold before our 5th show in a row so Edwin and I were the only two not to make it out on the town.

Here’s Chris Soucy’s account of the rest of the night:

We had all received these little invitation cards with an art deco-looking, martini-sipping woman and the words “Party on the Patio” on the front. We were told it was going to be a “must do” Seattle scene party, with live music and some of the surviving members of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden in attendance. We all bounced around the idea of going, or maybe just staying back at the hotel for a good night’s sleep for a change. For some reason, at about 1:30 am going to the party seemed to be a fine idea to some of us, so Kyle, Chris Delucchi, and I picked ourselves up out of our stools at the hotel bar, and away we went.

It was a big house overlooking the downtown area perched high upon a hill and we could hear it long before we could see it. True to Seattle style, there were few lights on inside, each room like a darker and darker chamber, deeper and deeper into the depths of the cavern. Upstairs, people dressed in black, adorned in chains, multiply pierced, and covered in tattoos hung out on the balcony by the bar, lounged on the couches inside, and waited in line for the bathroom.

I met a woman from Norway in the bathroom line named “H” who was simultaneously smoking a clove cigarette, drinking a beer from a plastic cup, eating a huge onion and mayonnaise sandwich, and holding a conversation with me. As we chatted, two couples emerged from the bathroom, red-faced and giggling. Hmmmm?

“H” and some other friends from Norway were here in Seattle to get their band launched into rock and roll stardom. One of her bandmates, another woman with a name that sounded like maybe it began with a “G,” but was otherwise unintelligible to me, came up to her looking very excited. Apparently, there were some fellows there at the party from a Yugoslavian techno-trash-thrash-industrial-alternative-acid-hop band whom “G” had been wanting to meet for some time. She told “H” in her broken English that she had been kissing the drummer for a very long time. “H” shot back at her, “Hey, how come you are never kissing me?” “G” knocked the sandwich out of H’s hand, grabbed her hair at the back of her head, and laid a very long, wet, and seemingly passionate kiss all over her. “G” let her go after a while and just walked away. “H” looked in my direction and said, “She never does that to me. Really.” The bathroom door was opening at that time, so I headed off toward my next adventure.

Entering the bathroom I had to pass the three girls who were leaving it. I don’t know how they snuck into the bathroom in front of me or why they all needed to be in there together ­ some sort of pack instinct women at parties seem to have. I must have been distracted by the behavior of the Norwegians. I made my visit to the bathroom as short as possible: the floor was pooled in what appeared to be vomit.

I regrouped with Kyle and Chris Delucchi outside. They had found some entertainment of their own. On the patio, a fully clothed couple was engaged in an activity that, had they been in public would certainly have gotten them arrested in most states. Why they couldn’t just go get a room, or how they were able to pull that off without removing their clothing were mysteries we were unable to solve.

Downstairs there was indeed live music. Two unbelievably out-of-tune guitarists, a bassist who appeared to be playing to some other music not connected at all to the music being played around him, and a drummer who struggled to push the beat along. Kyle made a remark that went something like, “Just because the guy is playing triplets, that doesn’t mean he’s actually playing a shuffle AT ALL.” They were butchering some blues so bad that it was almost art. Delucchi commented that it reminded him of some early Velvet Underground records ­ performance art of the highest order, all based on extremely poor performances. I was tempted (and in fact encouraged by my two friends) to grab the microphone and recite some beat poetry. The music was begging for it, but the only thing I could think of to shout out was the scientific names of various birds of prey. Imagine it. A dark basement, drunken dancers, awful music, and some guy half singing, half chanting, “Bubo virginianus, Otis asio, Tyto alba pratincola, Falco sparverius, FALCO PEREGRINUS!!!” I think it really could have worked, but I’m a shy guy, and I didn’t do it.

The musicians rotated around from time to time. A few came close to getting the guitars in tune. The Yugoslavs took over at one point, and since they were actually a band they played more or less together, albeit in some radically non-American sounding time signature and in some freakish Phrygian mode. There was at least one party-goer who was enthralled by this music however, and he sat in the corner of the room making out with an empty guitar case throughout their entire performance.

Kyle and I attempted to commandeer the guitar and drums once. As he pointed out, there were a lot of girls standing around trying to dance, and when that happens he, responsible drummer that he is, feels compelled to lay down funky drum grooves for the people’s enjoyment. Delucchi even took hold of the microphone and shouted, “Kyle Comerford and Chris Soucy to the stage! Kyle and Chris to the stage please!” No one seemed to care, least of all the guys holding the instruments, so the music remained undanceable. We tried to help. Really, we did.

A faint bluish glow began to appear in the east and we realized that dawn was approaching. We had not recognized even one bonafide rock star member of any influential Seattle grunge scene band, so we decided to bail. We had to step over a man sleeping in the driveway on our way out ­ Kyle thought it was perhaps the guy who was getting it on with the empty guitar case. Could be; he was definitely headed in that direction when we saw him.

We stopped at Seattle’s famous Space Needle on the way back to the hotel to watch the sunrise. Sunrise at the Space Needle is an eerie and strangely surreal experience and it seemed just the kind of thing to finish off the kind of evening we had just had.