Toby Keith: Maybe I'm Amazed....

His video was on TV in the gym in the hotel in Vancouver.

Will someone please stop this fatheaded muncher?

Please?

Have you seen the video? it's the one where a woman is tied to the chair and Toby bricks her up in a cellar, all the while keeping her quiet? There's no cute punchline, no clever "out", just a guy murdering his girlfriend, with the only joke seeming to be that it's of course what the bitch deserves, for, like, talking to much or something. Wouldn't you all want to do that, eh guys? (tangentally, British Sea Power had a song refused by MTV standards because it contained the line “Makes us wetter, wetter” mumbled in the outro, yet Keith can show a woman being bricked-up in a cellar…) He also had that song “I Wanna’ Talk About Me” a few years ago; the one where his girlfriend/wife etc. wouldn’t shut up and he’s complaining he’s not getting enough attention or something.

What’s the problem Toby?

F***wit.

London, Ontario: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.


In London, ON it’s the last day on the tour for one of the crew. He is leaving us for a few days to get married. The rest of the crew decide to take him out to a strip club as a celebration. I stay out of the planning, chiefly because if I do it then it’s not like anyone really made any effort—it’s too easy to get the Tour Manager to arrange everything; and its good for everyone to make some kind of effort. Besides, I try to arrange as little as I can outside of work. It’s easy to get fucked-off with being the one who always makes all the arrangements.

In my life I’ve been to about three strip clubs and had exactly one lap dance. They’re just not my thing. I can’t deny that if there’s a woman nearby either wearing very little or removing her clothes then I’ll watch—even if (and I say this not to be coy) I don’t really want to. This place is no exception and while some of the women are good looking mostly the whole environment is cold and completely devoid of any erotic feeling. The pedestrian attempts at atmosphere, such as the low red and UV purple lighting, do not compensate for the lack of heart in the place. Women dance on the stage dressed as schoolgirls or as dominatrix. Sometimes they involve the audience in their dances—say, by grabbing some guy around the head with their knees and shaking him with their thighs while his friends cheer--sometimes they just strip. I feel an obligation to be aroused, but I’m not. I’m all for people having guilt-free fun and enjoying their bodies (even if I can't), and it’s not as if the women dancing in costumes or even—and get this for zany AND erotic--in a giant champagne glass offend me, but it’s just all a bit tired and tawdry. A schoolgirl? Null points for imagination. Still, we’re dealing with primitive urges here so maybe I’m overthinking things…its not as though someone dancing a scene out of a Rene Magritte painting would improve the quality of an erection, would it?

(Or would it?…..)

Cindy says hello to me, or rather to my money, and asks my money if I’d like a dance—she lets me know I’d better be quick as she’s finishing soon. She has a good sales patter; one hand is proffered to shake mine and establish rapport, the other drapes over my shoulder and all the time she stares me down. I wonder if this is how she overwhelms the nervous men who are afraid to initiate any contact. It probably works very well, I thank her kindly and decline. She totters off in her gold bikini and heels but tells me again not to wait too long.

Several patrons are getting private dances in the booths. The women are working hard – looking at the clientele you can’t think otherwise: imagine for a moment you are wearing only your underpants—got that? Now imagine you have to wave your bum in some fat bloke’s face for three minutes at a time, all night long. That’s hard work, however you slice it. I can’t imagine what tips might compensate for this kind of work; ones bodyweight in krugerands at the end of every shift maybe?

All the men in the club appear to think they are players. I can’t think why, they all, to a man, look like wankers--us included, I daresay. I hang around but leave after a polite half an hour. I was relieved to see that almost everyone who had come with our group looked as if they had stones in their shoes. No one looked comfortable or particularly excited to be there.

All that said, I can’t deny I felt a certain charge in the air—women were (technically) available and walking around in their underwear. One doesn’t have an intellectual reaction to that… However, the reality of someone writhing around in front of your face for money just lacks a certain….is it romance, for me? I know someone rented one of the women to go back to his hotel room. He didn’t sleep with her; he just wanted a trophy or maybe company. He got both, on the meter. She got paid and left after four hours. Doesn’t that strike you as abominably sad? And I understand it too, which is what spins me out the most. I think we hate it most when we see someone else’s weakness and it resonates within us. And no one wants to see even a sliver of their own loneliness and sexual insecurity shone back at them, not for a moment. In many ways I’m surprised the guy in question wasn’t burnt as a way of exorcising a certain collective shame…or maybe that’s a little over dramatic. It’s that Catholic spooky-ritual fixation rearing its head again, isn’t it?

My first strip club was in New Orleans at lunchtime. The sallow dancer looked exhausted as she wriggled around in front of us. My friend at the time was very excited and tipped well. I didn’t know where to look. I mean that. Certainly the bony groin in front of us wasn’t an option. Call me strange.

My one lap dance was a couple of years ago. It was embarrassing not only because it was at a stag-party and was therefore a very visible event—I think in some ways being seen by other men to have a lap dance is as much a part of the dance as the dance is, from what I can tell. You are supposed to emanate “I am enjoying this” vibes to the other men so they can admire your prowess. It was also embarrassing because the woman dancing was being very nice and chatty while simulating oral sex and swinging and shaking her breasts around inches from the tip of my nose. The dance may have looked like sex but it lacked any eroticism. Instead of being a public display of red-blooded masculinity it felt like a public charade that I wasn’t buying into. I waited for the song to stop and said thank you. Afterwards I felt stupid; stupid for sitting through it and stupid for not being more into it--I felt like I'd failed some male test: (Doesn't like lap-dances! Hah! What a sap!). The whole premise just felt absurd. It wasn’t foreplay. It wasn’t anything. I guess good dancers are the ones who can make you feel they like doing it for you (and maybe some do? What do I know? And maybe some men don’t care and are happy to be paying for it?). However, I don’t think I can suspend my disbelief that much. Or maybe I’m just so uptight about sex that I can’t deal with someone who’s comfortable with their body when they wave it around very much in my face? Maybe it’s a bit of harmless fun? After all, naked women look great. Who wouldn’t want one dancing only inches away? If I try to imagine when this would feel okay I can only think of somewhere very private with someone I knew was really into it…And even then I'm not sure…

Judging from the clientele at Solid Gold in London Ontario, I am in a minority. Plenty of people seem to enjoy such pleasures just fine. And good luck to them. It wouldn’t do for us all to be the same now.

Canadia:

After an overnight bus journey we cross the border at 9:30AM. Canadian immigration ask us to get off the bus and while they examine our passports and work visas three of the officers inspect the bus. They are always only looking for two things:

1. To see what kind of fancy bus we’re on.
2. To check for any drugs.

The only question I am asked when the three officers get off is. “What movie were you guys all watching?” (Coming back into the US once from Canada about 8 US INS officers got on the bus. Of course, it takes 8 people to inspect a bus. The only way we can get 8 people on our bus is by having people either sit down and watch TV or get into their bunks, so I’m fucked if I know how 8 immigration all fit…)

The guy stamping the passports is friendly and chatty (The Canadian borders have some of the most genteel immigration officers I’ve encountered) and he tells me about what it’s like at the border when the New York Yankees play in Toronto and all the Yankee’s fans cross over. “There’s always a few bad ones,” he says. “But it took me a while to realize that they’re not all trying to be rude. Most Americans say ‘Okay’ when they really mean ‘thank You’. You can’t get mad at them, they don’t know any better.”


After two late nights (which counts as after 3AM in my book) I am in a coma as soon as we leave Toronto. I wake at 7AM as we pull into the Montreal hotel feeling rested and full of beans.

Montreal is a glass of cool water after a few months in the US. The City feels like a town on the French / Swiss border. I love hearing French spoken, I love the variety of cuisines here, I love the clean air and the scenery—even for an isolated Northern City it feels good and actually not quite as creepy as places just as remote in the USA. Maybe it’s something to do with the specific character of the City; namely that it has some.


I spend a lazy afternoon eating lunch at an amazing French Café, wandering around the different neighbourhoods, and eventually running (it’s a very loose description) to the top of Mont Royal. Running along the wooded track felt amazing and even gulping for air wasn’t too bad because the air felt so clean. The view over Quebec and the St Lawrence River from the Mont was spectacular; the isolation of the city apparent in the flat flat landscape surrounding it—the three dark mountains on the Southeastern horizon and aside. There was nothing to see until the sky in every direction I looked.

At the top of the Mont is a cross. It’s about sixty feet high and at night it lights-up. It reminds me of the one in Rio De Janiero. Because it’s among the trees alongside the track it has a kind of spooky presence and somewhere in my reptile-Catholic brain I get a spooky thrill from it. Crosses in forests are pretty eerie. I run down the hill at sunset, amusing myself with a Hammer Horror narrative about escaping the forest before sunset. Later I feast (there is no other word for it) on legendary Portuguese food from a place called Ferreira on Peel Street. I eat for a solid hour. I feel like I’m on vacation. I feel stuffed. I get paid for this, at least today I do.

But the vacation doesn’t last for long – the next day we drive to Ottawa and resume to our tour of strip-malls and concrete stadiums.

Tucson: No time for anything but nothing.


I’ve never spent any time in the desert. I’d like to, it has a lot of romance about it. I think all places that have space have a lot of romance in them--I think the space allows us to fill them with what we'd like to find there. From my Tucson hotel room the city looks flat and dry but beyond the mountains rise up like every Western I saw as a child back in England. I might come back to visit the locale when I have some down time; maybe in February when the Northeastern winter is at its most suckingest.

I get a taste of the desert backstage by the trailers. The ground is mostly dust. It’s not really the place to be wearing a pinstripe suit and black leather ankle-boots from Jermyn Street but I have discovered a sartorial stubborn streak, usually only evidenced in teenagers and self-martyring Goths. Aside from the gig-in-a-dustbowl vibe, the stage is also a short stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant and depending upon the direction of the wind the atmosphere changes dramatically. Add in the fact that the sewage plant looms beind the stage and as the sun sets its industrial-scale sodium lighting acts a counterpoint to the stage light show and you have a smelly, dirty painfully orange example of Genius Show Planning. All of that desert out there and this is the best place for the gig? The heat and the dirt does give me pause for thought about what I’ll wear in place of suits at the summer festivals this year. I have such shallow concerns. I am very passionate about my shallow concerns. Is that irony?

We have to fly to Los Angeles the next day for the band to shoot a video. We barely get to see the city; we go from the airport to the shoot, from the shoot to the hotel at 1AM, and then back to the airport 12 hours later. Video and film shoots are all about waiting around in a kind of semi-on-call state. I don’t have the disposition for either, I’m too abrasive and impatient. Its strange how different entertainment professions are populated by fundamentally different people. Music people are abrasive and direct (read: crass). Movie people are smooth and positive, even when they’re not (read: oily). I used to think in "entertainment" it would be easy to flit between disciplines – I don’t think it really is. We're like cousins who can hang-out occasionally but end up bitching about each other when we go home to our mum's houses. I’m a music person. I have a music person’s sense of what’s appropriate. I tried other fields but they’re not me. I sense it when people from other areas come to our shows and don't quite get it or can't quite find a place to be without being in the way. I feel like that at shoots, even when I'm working. It's like I don't understand why it works the way it does or something, even though, on paper, I do understand completely.

The only quiet time I get this weekend is at breakfast before we leave. I order an cheesey-bacon omelet at Mel’s Drive-In on Sunset. I like the warm morning sun, I like being in California. I think I’ll move here for a while when we’ve got a break. I chew on the thought for hours on the flight home like it is juicy toffee. It is such a luxury to be able to decide to go live somewhere else for a few weeks. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I am already fantasizing about living in Beijing at the end of the tour for a couple of months. Maybe I’d be smarter to concentrate on that? Such worries. I am a lucky boy, there’s no doubt about it. And crass. Really fucking crass.

Tucson—A Long Days Journey Into Night:

We leave New York on a Friday and hit the rush-hour traffic into the Holland Tunnel. How people do this on a daily basis never ceases to amaze me, as does the lack of random homicides at the tunnel mouth every night. Everything today is late and I sit sullenly in the front seat of the van watching the traffic inch down Broome Street, quietly wishing slow, public deaths on every muncher blocking an intersection ahead of us. At one point I get so antsy that I get out and walk a block because sitting staring at the back of the immobile truck in front is driving me to distraction, and murder.

We make the airport with three minutes to spare in which to check-in. I pay the skycap the requisite two dollars per bag for the curbside check-in, then I tip him. I’m very English and I am frequently resentful when tipping. I understand tipping in a restaurant, and tipping someone who takes your coat, or tipping someone who delivers something to your house, but tipping someone to check-in your bags after you’ve paid? Or tipping someone to pour a two-dollar cup of coffee? I mean, what does the airline ticket pay for, or the subsequent curbside check-in fee? And the two dollars for the coffee? I feel guilty about feeling so cheap but at the same time I feel as though walking down the street can give you a nose-bleed in America. It’s not that I mind paying for things or rewarding service per se, but these are such quasi-obligatory tariffs for something that seems part of the initial service. Everyone’s working an angle. And I know that people don’t get paid what they should either. But couldn’t everything just cost what it costs to produce / provide—or am I being naïve? I half expect coffee houses to start charging for cups next—and I’ll wager they will slide it in as a discount for anyone using their own coffee mug first; within a few months the coffee will be cheaper but the cups will become more expensive (just like with headphones on planes—the movie is 'free' nowadays, but the headphones aren’t-altough that could have been a response to all the walkman headphones people have. Conspiracy theories...I love 'em).

Why only bring Scrooge out at Christmas, I say? Bah! Humbug to May, June and July too.

At Dallas/Fort Worth Airport (DFW) I learn our connection is delayed – at first by thirty minutes, and then by nearly two hours. Suddenly everyone becomes an expert on travel planning, on how we could have missed the rush hour, on better airports to fly into (because, like, storms in the southwest notoriously only affect DFW…. every other airport has clear skies and smooth landing 24/7/365—everyone knows that; except me, of course). Everyone is pissed-off, it is turning into a long journey. There’s not much open at any airport at 10pm at the best of times, at DFW there’s even less. Finally, settling into TGI Fridays with a leaden sense of resignation (TGI F***ing Fridays!) I order some food—although it seems half the menu isn’t available; between us we try several times before being able to order anything beyond an oversized maguerita.


Seated next to us are some new Army recruits. They're fresh out of basic training and en route to Tucson to start their training proper. They are all to a man and woman pleasant people. They are friendly and eager to chat—I think nine weeks cooped up on an Army base without any outside contact has given them a thirst for contact with anyone--and of course they get to meet a rock band at the airport. I am sure we are as curious to them as they are to us. (I’d think so if I ran into David Bowie at TGI Fridays in Dallas, or Beyonce at Sizzlers in Fort Lauderdale. I did run into Nick Cave in a coffee shop in Brussels once nearly a decade ago, and I can still remember it. I couldn’t think of anything cool to say so I said nothing, which was the right thing to do. It was an uncharacteristic response on my part. Normally, I’m a garrulous twonk in such situations.)

A couple of the soldiers seemed quite lost, as thought they’d be doing nothing if they weren’t in the army. I wonder how many recruits are in a similar position? I feel sad talking to them—aware that in a few months they might be killed in a car bomb outside Basra. The one thing that does strike me is how specific their vernacular is—they talk of "helping-out" and going “over there” to see what they can do. Certainly they don’t view themselves as anything but a positive presence over there. I’m ignorant, maybe they are going to be helping-out, but it’s the only time I’ve heard words like “helping” used in context with the conflict there. They certainly didn’t seem overly idealistic about the situation, but they viewed their role as a positive one. I’ve never encountered such an attitude elsewhere.

I hope they all get the education they seek in the Army, and find a sense of purpose, if that’s what they are looking for. Mostly I hope they get to grow old to enjoy a future with their families and all their limbs. Really I do. They seemed like good people.

I don’t recommend anyone arrives in Tucson at 2AM. When I finally get to my room--which I know is the last room available in the hotel—I discover that someone had indeed just been sleeping in my bed. The room hasn’t been cleaned since the last occupant left, the bed is unmade, the towels sop on the bathroom floor. My shoulders drooped to a curve and I hauled my luggage back to the elevator and down into reception where I politely, through the tighest whitest lips I could muster, requested someone Sort. This. Out. Now. As evidence of a God with a sense of irony, the hotel discovered they had double-booked one of my group and, proving that two negatives make a positive, I got a room.