FEBRUARY 21 1988

Hello. Right now it's a day off. February 21st, around a quarter to five in the PM, and the first of two days off, just to hang around Boston. And I'm back to fill you in on the last two days, February 19 and 20.

The last thing Scott said to me when I left his room was "make sure I don't sleep too late." So I said "OK." And of course on February 19 I got a call around 12:30 PM from Scott - I had slept later than he - and the first thing I heard when I picked up the telephone was the word "awakedness." That was Scott's way of saying "get up now." And he said "we've got a lunch date" and I said "oh, no." So I met him and we went to Friday's on Exeter where a girlfriend of a friend of a guy Scott used to be in a band with, or something like that, was supposed to meet us. We were sitting there ordering malts and Mexican food, and Scott's friend's friend's girlfriend Liz showed up and we had lunch. It was getting kind of late, and Scott had everything that he needed to go straight to the theater with him, and of course I didn't. So I got a cab back to the hotel to gather my stuff, and then went off to rehearsal.

At rehearsal we performed "Tengo Na Minchia Tanta", "T'Mershi Duween", "Why Don'tcha Do Me Right", "Brown Moses", "Sinister Footwear", "Sy Borg" and "Token Of My Extreme". "Sy Borg" was one we had never played before, and fortunately I knew the chords, so we were able to do a reasonable version of it and give Frank the overriding feeling that it was a doable song, which is good because it's a very nice song.

But there was a lot of trouble getting soundcheck started because we weren't getting electricity to the recording truck, and Chad and Ed get their electronic percussion fed back to their monitors through the truck, so they weren't get any level on their electronic stuff. So the soundcheck ran extremely late, late to the point that we were still on stage when the audience started to file in. And it was really funny: Frank was just sitting at the front of the stage talking to audience members, and the rest of us were milling around, and Frank actually wrote that night's setlist on the apron of the stage, just sitting there. Eventually we got everything happening with the electronics and we played "Sinister Footwear" as a soundcheck in front of the audience. And then we walked away and made believe that we were coming onstage to do a show and that the audience hadn't already seen us soundchecking, and we came back and did a show.

And the show consisted of: "Black Page", "Peace Corps", "Dickie", "Lies", "Baritone Women", "Any Pain", "Jesus", "Sofa", "Tiny Lites" and "Pound" for set one. The second set was going to start with "Sinister", but since we'd already sort of done it, we started with "Orange County", into "Bacon Fat", "Stolen Moments", "Trouble Every Day", "Penguin", "Green Hotel" and "Baltimore". And the encore, which was originally going to be divided into two or three encores, eventually became one long one, consisting of "Whipping Post", "I Am The Walrus", "Advance Romance", "Stairway To Heaven" and "Strictly Genteel".

Now, the audience in Boston was largely made up, it seemed, of people who attend the Berklee School Of Music mere blocks away. And so Frank mentioned that to the members of the band, that there's going to be people out there who know every note, they're students of the music, they know what's right and what's wrong. And who's naughty and who's nice. And Frank had told [name deleted] specifically during the huddle that there was a melody in the beginning of "Black Page" that he was consistently messing up. And [name deleted] said don't worry, I've burned it into my memory. We got out on stage and [name deleted] played it WILDLY wrong, AMAZINGLY wrong, and that was part one of a series of mishaps which took place throughout the night, people just forgetting stuff left and right. Funnily enough, after it was over, everybody was telling us that it was a really fantastic show. The show went over well. In fact at the end of "Stairway" there was a larger response from this crowd of musicians than I would ever have expected, a larger response than that song has gotten on the tour yet. But the single most interesting moment was in "Advance Romance" when Bobby realized he forgot the words to the fifth verse, and he called Ike over to tell him what they were and Ike told him the wrong ones. So when the time came around for the fifth verse Bobby just didn't sing a thing. And Frank walked up to the microphone and said "[name deleted], ladies and gentlemen!", as though [name deleted] didn't feel bad enough. But he made up for it: during his solo in "Stolen Moments" [name deleted] inserted the troublesome line from "Black Page", and both the audience and the band gave him a rousing ovation. Ultimately there were so many mishaps that it became funny, and it was quite an enjoyable evening.

After the show, Ike and Bruce and Walt and Albert and I went to a recording studio called TCB. Adjacent to the studio was a guitar shop called The Guitar Garage which had an unbelievable array of vintage instruments. There was a band in the studio called Scam or something like that. They were doing movie soundtracks in there. Ike and I were giving them pep talks, and I recorded a two-track improvised keyboard piece into their computer which they enjoyed, it was my gift to them. Someday they'll make dozens of dollars from it. It was very late then, and I came back to the hotel.

The next day, I woke up late and went down to the restaurant in the lobby, which is called James Michael, and got a sandwich, came back up, took a shower and went off to rehearsal. Rehearsal on the second day in Boston consisted of "Yo Cats", which is actually just a Synclavier track with Ike singing over it and the rest of the band making believe they're playing. We also did "Find Her Finer", "Disco Boy", "Teenage Wind" and "Truck Driver Divorce." The show that evening was as follows: "Stink Foot", "Turning Again", "Alien", "Inca", "Any Pain", "Jesus", "Sofa", "Lucille", "Big Swifty" and "Packard Goose" for set one. Set two was "Find Her Finer", "Disco Boy", "Teenage Wind", "Truck Driver Divorce", "Why Don't You Like Me", "Outside Now", "Joe's Garage" and "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?" Encore number one: "Yo Cats", "Catholic Girls" and "Crew Slut"; second encore, "Strictly Genteel" and "Illinois Enema Bandit", where I once again went up on the horn riser. I think, in terms of tour premieres, this is the first show where we did "Find Her Finer", "Outside Now" and "Yo Cats."

After the show there was a party for the band at a club called The Axis, right next to the recording studio where I'd been the night before. At 3:00 AM we went to a restaurant, the name of which I can't remember, to get some Chinese food. And I came back to the hotel, turned on the TV, sat on the couch and fell asleep. And this tape is about to run out. 'Bye.

Next episode:
FEBRUARY 22 1988

Last episode:
FEBRUARY 19 1988