The first show back after the break is in Atlantic City--Las Vegas on Sea. Fortunately, the casino we’re playing in is the nicest in town so it’s the only place I’d want to be in Atlantic City. The first night I stay up until 6AM catching up with everyone, well, as much as you can catch up with everyone in a casino. I pay for this for the whole weekend.

The next day is overcast. I’m feeling strangely comforted sitting looking out of the 31st floor into a fog. That‘s not right. I remember the feeling from tours past; the sense of only being settled somewhere on tour.

After the show I play blackjack for a while – mostly as a way of hanging out with my friends. I hate losing so much that I’m not a good gambler. (A good friend of mine last year looked at me like I was crazy when I was explaining that I was ready to gamble $400 of an evening and that was my limit. I told her I was going to win enough to go shopping – she looked at me and said “Why don’t you just go shopping in the first place?”) After I go to bed one of my friends plays $1000 and gets Blackjack--spawny get.

I was glad to leave everyone to it. New Jersey is in the house and drunk downstairs. However nice this Casino is—and at least it doesn’t pretend to be anything but a casino, unlike the Hard Rock in Vegas—it’s still a Casino and I find myself mildly resentful when I have to hand over any money, even for a coffee in Starbucks. To compensate I eat four meals in the employees canteen (to which we were given access as part of our stay) just to be sure I take away more than I came with. Pathetic really, especially when this casino has been very accommodating towards us. I have a small, black heart. There’s no denying it.

I sleep fitfully in my bunk when we leave Cleveland. Eventually I clamber out and sit in the back lounge with the windows open. The air is cold and damp and the outside the new New Jersey morning is lush and misty. I’m excited to be going home-however briefly-and I watch the countryside pass.

Nearly a week off. Driving down Ninth Avenue on Saturday morning and there’s no traffic and I haven’t seen New York for six weeks and it looks fantastic. Better still, with no traffic, I’m home in no time.

My friend has been watering my plants and collecting my mail so I’ve a pile of bills all ready to be dealt with. Ah, and then there’s the simple joy of taking my suitcase to the cleaners and asking for it back clean that evening. It cost a fortune but it was worth it. Sitting in my apartment that first night and I can’t settle. In some ways, it could be another hotel (It is a New York apartment, after all. Many of the rooms I’ve had on tour have been bigger…).

The following day I’m on a plane to San Francisco. It’s a busman’s holiday but you have to take the breaks when you get them. I get to advance the next leg of the tour from a friend’s apartment. I spend two days frantically calling promoters and trying to calculate the drive times between cities and when the band will sleep where for the next six weeks. It’s the part of my job that I like a lot even if every time I do it I’m always racing a deadline and trying to keep too many details in my mind at once. The band will never be able to commit to travel times, preferred locations, etc, etc this far ahead of a show so I make best guestimates as to routings and timings based on practicalities and when we have to be in certain places. I know for a fact that at least fifty to seventy five percent of everything I’m doing now will likely be changed as we go along. However, if we don’t have it to start with then we’d be in poor shape. (don’t get it right, get it written!) I’ve finally realized (Doh!) that I can’t plan the tour as I would do it (leaving in good time, planning to arrive early, etc) as that rarely happens, but I have to plan the tour as the band would have it from the get go. It seems obvious when I write it now, but for some reason it took a while for me to figure this out. Now it’s a way of entertaining myself, I give myself a small, discreet round of applause every time a flight isn’t changed, or a departure time is kept. My inner monologue oft resembles Billy Liar’s in many ways. (And if you haven’t seen that movie featuring Tom Courtney and Julie Christie then you should, it’s a pearler.)

It’s relaxing in the California sunshine and it’s good not to be responsible for anyone for a few days. I like San Francisco a lot. The first time I came to America I sat on the Dock of The Bay and had one of those “Fuck Me! I’m HERE!” moments while looking at the Golden Gate Bridge—which quickly turned into one of those “Fuck me, I’M here…” moments; which then led to many more months of drinking too much in an attempt to remove the me from all the cool places I was visiting at the time. It didn’t work, but you work with what you’ve got, right?


It’s the centennial of the San Francisco Earthquake which is a strange thing to celebrate, especially as the city is still sitting on a time bomb. Looking at the devastation that happened in 1906, and reading reports of what would happen to the whole of the Bay Area today if/when another large quake occurs, made me wonder quite what people are thinking by living here. It’s a beautiful place, for sure, and the City has a great feeling to it but it’s permanently poised to liquefy and sink into the bay. Maybe that’s where the atmosphere comes from? I mean, there’s nothing edgy about Tulsa or Tucson and maybe that’s because there’s nothing dangerous in the air (or underground) there?

Cleveland:

I'm on a high floor of our schmancy hotel staring through white net curtains bordered with faux Louis XIV style valances. I'm tweaky from lack of regular sleep. Tonight we'll drive home after the show. Part of me doesn't want to go back - there'll be mail and laundry and an apartment to clean and an unstructured life ready to swamp me. It's strange how touring can institutionalise you...

I'm listening to Neko sing Dirty Knives and Fox Confessor on I-pod paralysis. I feel autistic but I love more than anything 'getting' something - a song, a book, a painting. It's special when you feel you've caught the essence of a song and it resonates within you. God bless the repeat function on my i-pod. I thank the person who realised that somewhere, sometime in the future, there would be someone who wanted to endlessly wallow in a song or a mood, ad infinitum.

Huge, monolithic, ocean-going freighters navigate the sinewy Cuyahoga river narrows. The ships inch along at walking pace--slower even--past the coal and stone heaps piled high under the overpasses, past the deserted boatyards full of empty hulls waiting for the summer. The ships look too big for the river's twists and turns. Bridges rise in sequence to let them pass, a grinding steel ballet. This is not a beautiful place, unless the rusty mechanics of industry appeal to you. The water is a foul olive brown, untouchable. Birds swoop down to the freighter's wake, feeding on whatever slurry is stirred up by the huge propellors that rake the river bottom. This river hides bad secrets. I am sure there are bodies in the black ooze on the riverbed. Suicides and murder victims staring hollow-eyed through the corroded sunked car-wrecks and chemical silt, waiting to be found.

I've got that Friday feeling again, huh?

St Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis:

Cities at night in the American heartland feel like islands in the darkness. Driving out of St Louis on our bus and I think I’m in a submarine. Through the smoked windows I see the proud new Cardinals stadium glide past, then our hotel complex, and soon the city lights thin and recede into the darkness around us. The Springsteen song made more sense – in England, the darkness on the edge of town is a pause between the cities. In America, the cities punctuate the darkness. And there’s nothing, really nothing, for miles and miles. It’s spooky. The protestant paranoia makes more sense here.

In Milwaukee the lake was bare – no boats, no running lights in the distance, no rigs or refineries. The water was a cold crystal turquoise and it caught the light like hard polished gemstones. With my back to the sun the sky to the north looked cold and dark. From the 23rd floor of our hotel the land stretched on three sides, flat and featureless forever (looking West from our Chicago hotel was the same). I felt isolated and alone there. The city felt too quiet for me and because of the space around town the usual quiet Sunday feeling was amplified tenfold. It reminded me of being a teenager and feeling trapped in my hometown, knowing that life was taking place elsewhere and that here, the only thing to do was kill time. I wondered what despair you might feel living there day in and day out.

The venue was across the road from the hotel where Jeffrey Dahmer murdered one of his victims. I guess I answered my own question, from both points of view.

The venue (Eagles Ballroom) also had ghost stories of its own, and as the building was old with a nineteen twenties gothic feel to it. There were basements and sub-basements we all wound ourselves up, trying to find the empty swimming pool where supposedly there’d been sightings of a ghost and where someone had been beaten to death over a bad debt. (To get to it you have to go through the “Kid Rock” room – a dressing room specially created for Kid Rock when he played there. When anyone at the venue mentioned this room they chuckled, as if they had first-hand knowledge of some debauchery. One can only imagine what Kid Rock does in a basement in Milwaukee for kicks: Go on now, imagine it…see? Creepy, yes?)
We never saw the ghost – the door to the pool was locked, but either way we all felt thrilled to have tried. Part of me didn’t want to see the deserted pool with its flashes of mysterious light and its nebulous shadows. Part of me was genuinely scared.

Days pass on tour sometimes before you realize a week has gone by, then a month. I listen to songs on my I-pod like they’re friends. For this tour I have a soundtrack that I’ve condensed to one play-list that will forever remind me of lying in my bunk, rumbling through the night, trying to sleep and half-dreaming along to the songs. Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by an almost sappy urge to write to the artists and to say thank you. I like being a fan; it reminds me of what my job is about. I like remembering that the point of all this creation, all this effort isn’t about shifting units or tickets or tee shirts but about finding emotional connections through music. And with my playlists on repeat, it’s a comfort and a vindication to realize that despite the yawning black American night flooding all around me, and no matter what I am feeling, I am not alone.

Not completely.

Seattle:


Puget sound reflects a puff-white cloud blue sky and the Olympic Mountains rise snow-capped beyond. Ferries and frieghters score white wakes across the water. The shoreline is like frayed fabric with wharves and jettys. Onland, Seattle is busy, like all large American cities, with a constant stream of cars along the I-5 that winds through the center of town.

I take a walk from the hotel and visit Pike market. Most places are closing by the time I arrive but I find a restaurant. The sign on the walls boast “as featured in Sleepless In Seattle” with photos of Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner in scenes from the movie). The view over the Sound is beautiful, every window a picture. The water is a rich blue. The harbor is busy unloading a container ship stacked high with rusty Hanjin containers from China. I eat seafood by myself and eavesdrop on a nearby family as they talk about school projects and home. The city feels homey to me then, warm. An outpost on the edge of America, somewhere for people to camp and stay safe.

On the way back to the hotel I pass through a street full of destitute drunks. Suddenly the promenade doesn’t seem so benign. It’s pretty heavy; certainly more full-on than New York is these days. The faces don’t beg here, they demand--or at least threaten to. I’m six feet tall and rarely intimidated by things on the street (at least in broad daylight!) but for these two blocks I walk taller and straighter and remove any warmth in my eyes just in case; just like I learnt to back in the Midlands.

Northern cities have a strange feel to them. I think it’s to do with being on the edge of nature. There’s an atmosphere created by the cold northern horizon, a reminder in the dark distance that there be monsters, or nothing else at all. (It’s the same facing South below the equater – something to do with facing away from the sun, perhaps....some primitive trigger?). In New York, Los Angeles or Chicago you can feel in the midst of things. You can feel connected. And in some way there’s a sense that you’re in a controlled environment. Central Park in New York is man-made and framed by the city. In LA unless you drive up to the wilderness by Mount Wilson, every life is caught and lived in a net of roads (even the Wilderness behind Mount Wilson to some extent. It is beautiful and remote but at the same time you can drive there in easily less than an hour from Hollywood). In Chicago there are derricks out on the lake and the buildings tower above the shoreline – thousands of tons of steel that men have driven into the ground like tent-pegs to anchor the sky over the Loop and make it secular.

In Seattle you can see the snow-capped mountains, the freighters roll in through the sound from China and Japan, safe again in the tranquil waters after crossing the world’s largest ocean. The city feels like an encampment on the edge of Terra Firma. There’s something intimidating about it that I like, even fopping around in my soft-soled city loafers and my tailored suits. Somewhere I fancy I’m an outdoorsman: in another life I’d burn my books, sell my laptop, grow a set of balls and go live in a cabin. But not quite just yet. I’m content to watch Grizzly Man for now.

I am unsettled all the time in Seattle, permanently melancholy. Dark clouds roll in over the city: rain threatens but never arrives. Something in the air here makes me feel small and humble. I can’t tell if it’s the climate, or if it’s part of the post-Californian come-down (going to California always feels like going on vacation) but when we leave I am relieved. I like Seattle, and I want to like Seattle, but this time it feels like an exit to the fun part of my tour instead of an entrance. Time to head back inland…

Los Angeles: I could go on for hours, and I probably will.....


I come from a small city in the middle of England much like many other small cities in England. In my town people don’t talk about themselves much. If asked how they’re doing they’ll say, “Oh, fair to middling.” even if they’ve just had their legs taken off in a freak farming accident. When the boys in my town want to impress the girls, they start fights with the other boys and use glasses and bottles to emphasize a point. People in my town don’t talk too big, because that would be vulgar. Imagine, for example, you’ve found a cure for cancer and are a little excited and feel pleased with yourself; talking about it would be seen as having airs and graces; someone will say, “Stop going on about that bloody cancer. You’re not the first person to cure some incurable disease. Who do you think you are, Louis Pasteur?”. In fact, one of the only ways to big yourself up in my town--medical genius or not--is to denigrate everything else. This isn’t without merit or fun but it does give you a limited palette to work from. People from my town censor their aspirations; to try and to fail (and from such a background who isn’t predisposed to failing?) would be too shameful. Better to keep your head down. Seen from the outside my town is weird. I thought I’d qualify myself and ‘fess-up straight away. I don’t come from anywhere so special. I’ve got issues. I’m just saying…

I’ve given in. I love LA. For years I hated it – at least the work side of it. The lifestyle side of LA, once you’re away from the business, is amazing; beaches, mountains, sunshine – what’s not to like? But the business side of it seemed feral and undignified to me. And it is, but so is business everywhere else--one of the biggest shocks when I worked outside f the music business for a while was how many petty egos there were outside in the real world. And who am I to judge anyway? I come from a place where sophistication is gauged by what flavour Bacardi Breezer you drink or whether you buy kebabs or chips on the way home.

Because I am only ever a visitor in LA, I am completely fascinated by its rules and etiquette. While it is feral and vulgar and unscrupulous it’s participants aspire, sometimes ruthlessly, to a magical reality that informs everything they do. The rules of the city dictate you respect this. If you go to LA, much like going to Vegas, you can only expect to join in. Neither place will ever accommodate you or your ways. LA has a charm, a neediness that it scrambles to cover-up with faux-satin sheets and brave talk. It shakes its tail at you while biting its lip so as not to ask if you think it looks fat in this. It’s slutty and aloof. It has issues. It’s driven by fear and ambition at the same time. It feeds on hope and aspires to magic. Vegas is a pimp by comparison; a dealer in stepped-on coke and shop-worn virgins.

And have you ever met one of those you like?

Los Angeles – One last time. I can’t help it; I’m besotted….

One of my job’s primary functions is to provide a tangible link between our small comedic traveling circus and everyone else. My job affords me a certain level of reflected glory. My job gets perks and privileges that I am fortunate to enjoy: complimentary upgrades, proactive service, fast-track treatment and common courtesies that only seem to come when you drop a lot of coin these days. (And how sad is it that good manners are a optional extra? Thin end of the wedge, I say.) People sometimes try to befriend my job, which, of course, is impossible; so they have to befriend me, and that makes me suspicious. I am aware of the Celebrity Currency I am perceived to have at my disposal (I don’t have any, not really).

Occasionally it’s understandable that we get a lot of attention (we spend a tremendous amount of money in/on hotels, for example – 22 rooms a night for three nights…go figure) and in such cases I’m not at all ashamed to say I appreciate service bordering on the obsequious. It makes my life that much easier. (And of course, sometimes we get stiffed like everyone else--see Las Vegas). However in all instances I am, at heart, a bloke trying to decide whether I get a kebab or chips on the way home every night. I feel fraudulent receiving favor because of my job. Sitting on an exclusive, well appointed terrace in Hollywood looking out at the city below feels faintly ludicrous to me. It’s a long way from my dad’s first job as a coal miner. My mother raised my brothers and I by working in a factory. Neither of them would ever have been invited to where I now work, nor allowed in should they have turned up. And now I get to decide what’s what. How weird is that?


(Side note: I could be a real fucker about things, couldn’t I? Were I to have, say, a big working-class chip on my shoulder…btw, sorry about that guest list place last time we were here, Paris.)


I’m as gladly shallow as the next person, but even just standing close to the reflected limelight it’s easy to see how addictive and how pointless fame is. People call you sir when you don’t feel like a sir; people help with/put up with your shit when they want the tip or the tickets; you like the yesness of everyone but rarely respect the yessers; and strangely, the more you hear yes, the less it satisfies. Some people--and their God bless them-- just want a momento, (I still wish I’d had a photo taken with Beyonce backstage that time at Jones Beach. No, not like that. There were other people there, I was just hanging out (see below for definition) with Beyonce at a Radio Show). Others want to obligate you in exchanges of kindness; they want to do you a favour, just to help you guys out, man. Complete strangers smile at you all the time. The world is a door opening ahead of you, a car waiting outside at the kerbside. Fame seems to me to be the world being nice to you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, whenever-it-damn-well-wants; and wanting a hug or a handout in return. Do things for the money, I say; it's cleaner.


The man renting me audio equipment tried hard, Ill give hime that much. When he asked whom the gear was for he asked neutrally, like anyone would. When I told him it was for the band on Leno later that day he brightened.
“Oh dude, The Strokes man, I love you guys, here….c’mon.” He holds out his hand for me to shake. I think he thinks I’m in the band because I’m wearing a suit at 9:45AM in an audio rental warehouse. “That’s rad. Are you guys playing here? You just played, right?”
“No, they played Anaheim and San Diego already. They're playing the Universal this weekend.”
He looks like he’s working out the pronouns. “Yeah, yeah. That’s right. I wanted to get tickets for that.”
I nodded. Bummer.
“So, cool. You guys are doing Leno?” Or I guess not, with the pronouns, I mean.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I think I met you guys before. I’m sure I met you last time you were here, we met, right?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, man. I remember you.”
I’m still waiting to get the gear I need. I’ve never seen this man before in my life.
“But you guys rock. That LP. That LP is awesome man.”
“Glad you like it. Room On Fire?”
“Yeah, man. I dig it. That’s the new one right?”
“No.” I’m being a prick. “That’s the last one. The new one is called First Impressions Of Earth.”
“I haven’t heard that. I’d love to hear it man. I’m such a big fan of you guys. I hear bits, y'know, and people talk, and I know that it’s awesome.”
We don’t hide them. They are available in every record store around the country. Big fans tend to have heard it. “Yep. It is.”
“Cool, so you must know Andy [Something-or-other]? I know he’s worked with you a bunch of times.”
“No. Afraid not.”
“Sure? He definitely knows you guys. Done a lot of stuff with you. Did some dates....”
“Well, I didn’t do the last tour.” I can’t be bothered to ask what job this invented connection is supposed to do.
“Yeah, must have been the last tour.”
“Must have.”
There’s a pause here. In New York he would have given me the gear and taken my credit card by now. But he ain't thinking about the rental gear.
“And you guys, you’ve just moved out to New York, right? From LA.”
“Nope. The band are from New York.”
“Really?” For the first time his game-face slips. Not one good pitch so far.
I pick up the box. “Really. Do you need me to sign anything else or can I take this?”
“No. You’re good man.”
“Thank you.”
I leave and the guy looks crestfallen. He’d rented me a piece of equipment but he hadn’t got himself any celebrity juice. Maybe I’m being harsh but the guy didn’t know me or the band at all, but he did want to hit on us for a lig. I mean, I can understand doing it for someone you're really into but for someone you're clueless about...? It made me wonder if there’s a certain strain of communication here where people indulge each other’s bullshit (I could have pretended to know Andy, for example) just to smooth things along? If everyone’s hustling, maybe you’d never get anywhere if you didn’t join in?

At the car rental place I judiciously spend some Celebrity Currency. I've arranged rental cars for four of us; specific brands, rates, etc, etc…we’re in LA for a week and everyone wants to drive something different. So I get all but one taken care of and it’s the latest model Mustang, the one that looks like the model Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt. I’m trying to get it delivered to an address (private, not a hotel) within a certain window of time. The woman who’s been helping is getting tired of me now. I want too much and I’m being too specific. I can hear it in her voice; her tone has hardened and she doesn’t give a monkey’s about what I’m telling her. She’s just about to tell me that’s how it is when I say.
“I’m sorry about this ma’am. But the person who’s renting the car has to be at Jay Leno today today by a certain time, that’s why it’s so tricky.”
Suddenly, the thunder clouds disperse from her voice. “Oh...right.”
“Yes. I know it’s difficult but this is for one of the band and they can’t get the car another time…”
“Oh, I see. I didn’t….”
“That’s okay, just.”
“No. You hold on now. I’m going to just check on something.”
I wait. Only a moment.
“Sir, hello. My name is Jim. I'm the client manager here. I ‘m sorry about the confusion. The problem is that the previous renter is still in Las Vegas and hasn't returned with the car yet.”
I get what I asked for.
But it took some irrelevant name-dropping to have it change from me being told to fuck-off, to the car rental place admitting to me they had a problem and weren’t giving me the service I needed, and then apologizing. While I'm lucky to be able to do this it makes me realise how shoddily I'd be treated if I was just some regular Joe off the street. Which in my mind, I am.


In the after show party in LA there are four levels of access. The venue has this aspect of it very well organized.

1> Band Dressing Room
2> V VIP
3> VIP
4> Not inside at all.

Everyone wants to be in the dressing room. It signifies status. There’s a rider in there. There are famous people in there. The band flit between all four places in LA but mainly they stay in their (very nice and large) dressing room; for the same reasons as everyone else. Plus, it’s their house for the day and their friends are there.

The VIP area is for people who get to feel a bit special. In LA we don’t’ know the VIP people. They are guests of the venue and the promoter, mainly.

The VVIP area is for those who get to feel loved. People who end up in here are guests of the band and crew and people we know who we want to have a bar to hang out in. My friends are in here.

The band’s dressing room is reserved for a very few people at first – family, very close friends. It’s where the band get to chill so it has to be managed. If everyone who wants to hang in here gets in then there’d be nowhere for the band to go – we’d have to find another room and start the whole process over again. Even twenty people wanting to be nice to you can be a bit overwhelming at times. Anyway, the dressing room is the Holy Grail of all backstage hangs, and tonight, like many other nights, ends up as an oversold hang room. The plates of deli meat become gnarled and scarred with cigarettes, coolers are drained of alcohol in direct proportion to how much it cost; champagne, liquor, beer--in that order. People are either close enough to be there and feel comfortable; or they lurk in corners as though they’re going to be busted and asked to leave. It’s like a busy house party. I always feel if you’re not friends with the people there it’s pretty boring once you’ve got past the sight of a couple of famous people chatting and drinking warm beer from plastic cups.

Hanging in LA is a genius thing though, and so malleable too. It has it's own rules:

My version:
I was at the Jay Leno show. Giselle was a guest on the show too. She and her husband, Dave Navarro, were coming out of the green room as I was coming in to get some water for the band. We passed in the hallway. I wasn’t paying attention so I barely noticed them.
Jay Leno stuck his head in the door to wish the band luck during the afternoon. We were all draped sloth-like over the furniture waiting for our call-time. Later, after the taping, we saw Jay Leno drive away in one of his collectible cars. The Parking Security told us Jay Leno collects them and has a hanger full of them and he drives a different car onto the lot, every day.


The LA Version:
Yeah, man. I was at Leno all afternoon. We were doing the show. We hung out with Jay backstage. He always drops by to shoot the shit, every time I’m there. He’s a cool guy. He was showing us his car collection; he was driving this funny little hot-rod his friend made. He told us he keeps, like, 300 of them in a hanger. Giselle was there with Dave. We were hanging out in the green room before she was interviewed. She’s so hot, man. But they’re cool. They might be going to the show tonight.

In LA, to Hang Out means to have been in the same proximity with someone, however briefly. I heard it used time and time and time again about situations that bore little resemblance to anything I’d witnessed. I got the feeling that if you wanted to you could go to watch Breakfast At Tiffanys and the next day tell everyone how you were hanging out with Audrey Hepburn.

I’m not complaining about this. It’s the culture in LA. And I wouldn’t laugh at Bayaka pygmies and their forest-God rituals now, would I?

Not much, anyway….



I love the simmering failure and disappointment that threatens to tarnish the veneer of every exchange in LA. So much need, so much want – so few successes (proportionately). But here’s the best thing: no one will admit it or talk about it. Except those reclining on their parents money and then they fail as a kind of stylistic affectation.

I like LA. I like the machinery- its so shameless. You get to watch it grind and clank front of you. No east coast sophistry here. I applaud those who can live here – it must take enormous energy to just take part in it every day. A tremendous amount of will to stave off the ever encroaching despair. The sun always shines, tomorrow. When your tits have sagged and your face is lined around the mouth and your youthful charm has hardened like yesterday’s bread. You still look good but each conversation reveals you’ve been on the shelf too long.

If not today, then what if it’s never?

And all of this to get into the hills. To be seen to be seen. First you have to be noticed, and you have to be noticed being noticed.

From Mullholland Drive the city spreads as far as you can see in every direction –hundreds of square miles, a glittering grid. A fake town, watered from hundreds of miles away by stolen water, created by a force of will in the desert. Peopled by people who only exist when they’re being seen to exist; a city stocked with overipening dreams. There’s the lucky few who get to do as they want but to most they're as mythical as Bigfoot or Griffins. Hanging out in this heady world is as pleasant or as anxious as life is anywhere else, although the luxury of things is the most tangible difference. But nothing dramatic really changes; you've still got spots or are predisposed to eating too many cakes; you still worry if you said the wrong thing if you're that way inclined; you're still a boring, pompus muncher if you're that way inclined too. You'll still probably feel deep down you don't deserve it. But you’ll never believe that, will you? It kind of makes a mockery of all that ambition, doesn’t it? Imagine, all that success fixing nothing? You just get to worry about being unsuccessful again, but in a nice, fleecy robe.

LA sustains itself by collective deceipt. Everyone wants to believe in the magic so the magic exists. I stand in a dressing room packed with people wanting to believe they are special and having a special time and who am I to argue? They are and they are. That’s what’s great about LA. You only have to believe it and, with the right props – a restricted area, a few rock stars hanging around, you too can live the dream. You can get to script and produce your own myths. Reality is malleable, here. Ask the forty-year old starlet pouring your coffee. And I’m not looking down my nose on it either. I wish I could be so pleased. With my job it would be easy, n’est pas? But I’m not good at joining in. I don’t play so nice with the other kids.

But I do like to watch. There’s a name for people like that, isn’t there?

I go to lunch with a favorite friend. This is a treat not only because she picks me up and pays (and that never gets old, does it?) and she's good company, but also because she works in film production here. I dribble on and on about my impressions of LA and I hear her stories of working in the city. It's then I realise that I only ever see a thin sliver of the full spectrum of this city, because of my job. I've settled into a genralisation of LA based on the neediest and flakiest merchants I've encountered. The city is full of people trying to do their thing with as much dignity and artistic integrity as a New York Novelist or a Parisian Philospher (probably not good examples, but you'll get the point) - the celebrity bullshit is the dressing, and not necessairly the fabric of everything here. There's just so much of it; LA is so much more dressing than substance, some might say. Thousands of people make their livings working hard producing films and music without getting clammy-handed over a backstage pass or a shoulder brushed by a supermodel. But as ever, it's the dumbest who shout loudest. And it's usually the dumbest who've pushed to the front of the line.

And subtlety is not Los Angeles' strong point.

I can't wait to go back. I should be concerned.

Los Angeles: Saturday March 25th


We’re in San Francisco all of 14 hours. The weather rolled in during the afternoon and the spring morning gave way to a late fall afternoon. And even while the backstage route to the buses was almost unbearably damp I still didn’t mind too much. (Even the stage got rained-on in San Francisco, I mean inside the venue…there’s a story there for someone else to tell, I am sure. We killed the power to the upstage lighting to keep the band alive. You’d never have known if you were in the audience). I console myself with the knowledge that later that night we’re driving to Los Angeles: it never rains in Southern California.

While both the city and the people of San Francisco feel real and dignified in comparison to its Southern counterpart, I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’m excited by the slutty appeal of Los Angeles. Almost ashamed. Los Angeles is the girl you shouldn’t want, but do; the girl who never calls you back until she’s bored, and yet you rush to go meet her when she does. Which is a long way around of saying that LA fucks with your head. Like all the ex-girlfriends you can’t shake do.

Another night on the bus, another night of rattling around listening to Neko, Fiona and Emiliana and sleeping in fits and starts in my clothes. Strangely, waking up at a truck-stop only five miles from Magic Mountain, I feel rested. It’s a fitting locale. The evening’s show will be near Disneyland. I browse the trucker hats, compilation CDs and mud-flap decals while the bus is refueled and feel shamefully expectant, like the protagonist in Jacques Brel’s Mathilde.

As we near the north of The Valley our driver points out which overpasses were destroyed in a quake and which towns were used as locations for the original Dukes of Hazzard series. Something about the commentary reminds me of being on the Universal City tour. If he were to add that the bus couldn’t slow to below forty-five miles and hour and Keanu is underneath trying to dislodge a bomb I don’t think I’d be surprised. I’d probably go to see where Sandra Bullock was hanging out in the back lounge, truth be told… Instead I watch the strip malls increase in frequency alongside the freeway, I see the suburbs sprawl up the hillsides like sink stains and I wonder for the first of a dozen times: what on earth do all these people do here?


From my hotel room I can see the Hollywood sign on the hill behind Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The street in front of the Chinese Theatre is busy with tourists and character look-alikes posing for pictures in tired costumes with worn cuffs. On the other side of the hotel I can see a large parking-lot trawled by the hopheads, the homeless, hookers and their johns. I take it in turns to watch both. It’s ten-thirty a.m.

Downstairs in the lobby it feels like the whole hotel is trying to out-cool itself, from the guests to the guys valeting cars. The effort is understated but unmistakable. In LA everyone checks everyone else out all the time. Anyone could be a someone. Women glance at you twice, so do the men. For a moment it’s easy to mistake this as flirting, and I’m sure, if you are a someone, it is. For the modern day Sodom that LA is supposed to be, it’s a tepid broil of middle-class anxiety. No one truly exists in their own world – only in a perceived context with everyone else. You are either more or less hip than others, with two responses available to you: aloofness and/or shameless huckstering.

To really set yourself apart in LA I think you need to ignore everyone else. It’s the one thing that everyone at our hotel couldn’t bring themselves to do.