Barry submits his quarterly report from the heat of a city I no longer inhabit.  I expect the usual catalogue of things broken & changed, things changed by the knowledge of brokenness.  But no.

"America...July...need driver....tattoos preferable...all expenses excepting legal and medical"

A request or an order?  Either way I have no choice.  Mr. Andrews has chosen well, for he knows my fascination with the mythical and the absurd.

"Neither snow nor rain, nor gloom of night, shall stay this courier from the swift completion of his appointed round."

Only later do I buy an atlas, and the epic and unrealistic nature of Barry's journey begins to unfold.  I plot distances clumsily with knotted string....

5000 miles...8000 miles...something tells me we are already following different maps; mine terrestrial, determined by space & time, schedules, deadlines, piss-stops, objectives.   Non-negotiable miles of four lane black top.

What devious and perverse knowledge of this tour do you have, Mr. Andrews, that you are not divulging?  I give 'Haunted Box of Switches' a closer listen.  Gone the slick Shriek sound, stripped down, luring me into a false sense of security. 

"we got the sugar, we got the tongs
"we know the chorus to a thousand happy songs
" we got the sirens, we got the chimes
"we have the motives for such enthusiastic crimes"   ('Going Equipped')

Down what detours will your impure mind lead us? What have I agreed to?

Forget it, pack a bag: seven white t-shirts; shades; toothbrush; White Stripes; Psychic TV; Tom Waits; Sinatra; then hit the doc for tranqs for the flight.  Lorazepam. 1mg.

"If you begin to feel restless, aggressive, you have delusions, rages, nightmares or hallucinations, or you start to behave strangely or feel you are losing your grip on reality, tell your doctor as soon as possible."

I will not be denied.  Neither snow nor rain.  America I want your roads.   I want to drive through Idaho.  I'm English.  I have no weapons.   All my immediate dental work is complete.  Denver welcomes careful drivers.

‘I wanna get right in there, you know what I mean?’ Jagger in ‘Performance’

So I set this up and now it has it’s own momentum. Now it rules me with it’s bloody demands. I hate doing stuff. Stuff sucks. All my avenues of credit thoroughly caned, I feel the Deep Cash Fear. No safety nets, no record company to absorb the fall. Better not fall then. I feel the superstitious urges that accompany any activity so thoroughly hostaged to fate. If there were a shrine to the God of large, CD-hungry audiences, gentle customs officials and generous promoters I would gladly torch a lamb or two on it.

The Quixotic nature of this enterprise does not escape me but it is a recklessness born of no alternative. After a year or so lurching around London getting messy I concluded that Oblivion Is Not An Option and that I’d better do what I do wherever I could do it. The dreadful precariousness of being that impractically specialised creature -the Artist- a being who paints itself into a corner in which the alternatives are create or die (albeit lingeringly). You think I dramatise? It seems to me that humans need meaningful things to do as much as they need food and shelter. Certainly I can quote -have known- a fair few people who withered up and died when deprived of meaning in their lives. Isn’t that weird? That a particular matrix of activities feeding an internal dreamscape are so vital to us that we biologically give up when they’re taken away. That was something I wanted to consider (as well as find a personal solution for) on this tour: how thoughts become things; how things influence thought. Maybe a big journey like this helps you see this stuff.  The psychogeography, if you like, of the World. I had a go at this subject in Sacred City -especially in the voice-over on ‘search for the Naked City’. And I am, I may as well say, ongoingly engaged in some kind of blind, rooting investigation into Reality -the Ol’ Consensual.

I dunno- I think it’s holding out on us. Guy Debord and the Situationists got somewhere with it -the idea of the Drift (derive) and ‘nodes’ of  action where history, a certain energy, a felicitous configuration of objects conspire to offer the Drifter an urban epiphanic moment.

Then there was the Boyle Family and their Journey to the Surface of the Earth -life-size casts of small bits of landscape - a bit of the Nile Estuary, a front drive from Bolton- hung on the gallery wall. Joyce, always Joyce. Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair. It’s not just me,honest. Though I may be the only muso.

So that should keep me busy apart from the map-reading.

Anyway, that’s the subtext to this mission. The Text itself is gigs, piano-bashing, sampley noises, shouting singing being clapped at we hope, talking in bars, eating food at truck-stops -a US tour -another one. Could go any way. Last night in London. Finn’s got a tour of his own so who will water the plants?  Stay tuned…

‘now what is more wonderful? The ancient theory that the meteors are Gods or the modern one that they have hurtled through space locked in the ice-tails of comets, the remant of some distant cataclysm and have survived their journey to earth through the smelting friction of the atmosphere?’   Paul Shepheard ‘The Cultivated Landscape’

A Note about Holmes
Jon is used to the schoolboy hilarity routinely generated by the fact that he shares a name with a preposterously endowed porn-star (even more hilariously in Swindon where there is a -I kid you not- ‘John Holmes Organ Centre’). I reflect that he may soon have respite from this drollery because perhaps his priapic namesake  has not achieved the penetration (of the left-handed film market) which he has in the UK. Then I remember the 1^st scene in Reservoir Dogs: the deconstruction of ‘Like a Virgin’, quote: ‘then she meets this John Holmes motherfucker and she’s like ‘whoa baby..’ and I sadly conclude that there will be no hiding place for Jon in America where people will be discovering this glorious synchronicity for the first time.

But then again perhaps we both may benefit from the cachet of unapologetic manhood conferred by the totemic Holmes. Stic Basin has it’s ideal road-person. The signs are auspicious.

New York is steaming. The heat rises from the pavements. Feet stick to tarmac. We pick up our hire car to head straight off to Delaware to meet Joe DelTufo, who has CD's for us. I'm expecting a finned white Cadillac, a battered Chevrolet, the gravitas of a Lincoln Continental. We get a Dodge Caravan. A maroon featureless vehicle. In the spirit of adventure I want to name it, but its blandness does not inspire me even to irony.

We are too tired for this, and circle JFK looking for the I-95 New Jersey Turnpike. Even when we hit the interstate, Barry becomes convinced we are heading North instead of South, so we double back, and double back again when we start to recognise the scenery of NYC ahead of us.

Only the novelty of driving through America at night gets us to Joe's house in Wilmington, just outside Philidelphia.

My sleep is disturbed by a pack of howling dogs, and the ringtone on my borrowed US-compatible phone which trumpets out The Flight of the Bumble Bee. My dreams are all of picking wild strawberries and lying in the sun among the clover, tracing the shadows across the face of a girl whose hand will not be in mine for the next four weeks.

New York,kmnn finally, after a pastoral idyll with the mighty Joe del Tufo in Delaware -the epitomy of American 'can-do' -picking up CDs and generally trying to find my tour-legs. The enormity of this thing keeps coming to me and I break out in fear-sweats. No Mother-Ship, no margin for error, nowhere booked to stay after Laurie and Bills tonight and tomorrow. I feel like the hobbits do when they leave the Elf-Sanctuary and fuck off to where the monsters live. Canadian immigration and work permits still not sorted -fucking hell someone always used to sort this out for me. I hate being grown-up and responsible- that was why I became a musician for God's sake. The fact that we cant shorten this tour even if we wanted to is particularly scary. Once again the only way out is through. Jeez Barry try and have fun you stress-monkey. I'm trying but even beer -gasp! -cannot quell the feeling of precariousness and vulnerability.>
Anyway tonight the Knitting Factory -even it's name generating cosiness. There will be at least a few mates to create the core of an audience and New York is reliably a London away from London -weird and harsh and interesting in an understandable way. What lies out there in the Mordor of America has me quailing. Fear is fucking boring. I hope to be finished with it soon. 

Staying with Laurie and Bill, just off Flatbush Ave. Brooklyn. They have a crazy flat in a converted fur factory. This is so New York. She is an independent film maker, he is a lecturer in german literature. They are generous, welcoming hosts. Barry is among his people. I am adopted by their cat, Huzzy, who, with the intuition peculiar to their species, picks up on my cultural strangeness, and gives me the reassurance I need.

Now drinking coffee on 5th & Bergan, the Latino scaffolders across the road insult eachother in universal fuck-you, the passing street guys wish us good morning and I start to glimpse the pull of this city. Either everyone is a stranger here, or everyone is at home.

Barry's opening show at The Knitting Factory tonight, which is a relief, as for the last two days our sole purpose has been driving. Only two near misses through sudden lane changes, and a momentary lapse of concentration, which saw us driving down the wrong side of the road into the path of truck. Only one run-in with New Yorks Finest, for double parking during rush hour in the shadow of Manhattan Bridge.

Patterns are emerging in my sleep deprived mind. I am the Minister for the Interior. Keep the car clean, check the bags in and out. Drive until my head hurts. Follow Barrys directions. I have developed "Interstate Tourettes" which requires me to read aloud every road sign we pass, whether it is relevant to our journey or not. I have also lost the immediate ability to discern left from right.

On the plus side I am learning American fast. There is a whole vocabulary particular to the road signs here that are not obvious to the English speaker. "All Turns"; "Bridge Ices Before Highway"; and a confusing tendency to sign all exits boldly just as you are about to pass them.

This has been about driving. I am the driver.

So that was the first gig and it all seems do-able. Horrendously messy: shitloads of sound cock-ups forgetting the words, bum notes and yet I feel kind of triumphant. It sounded like I meant it. I did. I felt I could subject these people to anything I wanted and that felt good ...yes good I tell you.

Chris Butler (of the Waitresses) turned up and we compared injuries from the stage (my shoulder, his nose). Laurie and Bill -who we were staying with -were smilingly benificent. People bought albums. Jon was explaining the nuances of my work to a potential punter in the manner of a sympathetic, no-pressure waiter: 'well, you might like the quiet piano music or you might prefer the louder Stic Basin material, they're both nice.' She opts for the 'Basin. So do I actually- I like being loud and and electric again.

Jon and I drift the Urban Fabric of New York and it doesnt disappoint. Detail- everything bursting into structure, rat-runs, gunwales, tunnels, bridges everything clustered, profane, gorgeous. Patti Smith drifts by in the village, ridiculously on cue. I exect to see a youthful Dylan with a battered guitar-case. I should live here for a bit I reckon....maybe....at some point. New York is London's wilder brassier sister, more straightforward, less haunted, more physically assured, not so deep or tragic, not so subtle. More fun.

I really wish I had more thoroughly worked out a way to write Basin stuff as we travel- add to the set suck stuff in and sploot it out in the next place. I'm feeling like I want to ingest America now: that this tour could be a way to do so many things. Hope I have the bottle to do them.

A steady diet of bagels and iced margueritas (this is New York); taking the Q train uptown to GET THINGS DONE; we got things done. Lords of Flatbush Ave.

Barry's opening gig at The Knitting Factory sets a positive precedent. The omens are good: the customs guy at JFK was a Shriekback fan; we saw Patti Smith shopping in the Village. The excitement builds. We have everything to play for.

Brooklyn is full of fireworks tonight, to send us off (or are they celebrating something else)?



Going out for beer tonight we pass the local police station. Squad cars fill the street. Officers of the NYPD hanging out, smoking, drinking coffee. Another gang on their home turf.

Canada tomorrow, so the distances begin. Barry is strapping himself to the roof of the van to record the air as we drive upstate. I am Minister for the Interior. The van will be kept free of filth at all times. There is no need to let our standards drop, Mr Andrews. 

Get out of  New York. You cant -you just can't. The Holland Tunnel's healed up -it happens every 4th July.

Well, anyway we cant find the bastard. I admit to Jon that I'm probably subconsciously resisting leaving New York. We have a little detour of the Meat area -there's a big black tranny cruising the deserted street and I feel like I dont want to go anywhere -i'm home. Well, fuck that we have to go and get grilled by border guards, meet a promoter in Buffalo at his garden party (where we dump CDs so as not to take them through the border -one of many scams this lo-budget touring makes necessary-all of which induce backache) And do a gig in Hamilton Canada by 8 . This is the first of the demanding drives Erik the agent has set for us. (Jon says that Scranton is a place where they strangle chickens -it's an onamatopoeic country) We get hopelessly lost trying to use the Mapquest way out of Jersey. The trouble with it is it 'disempowers' you. Do exactly as you're told and all is well but go even slightly wrong and you have absolutely no idea what to do. It reduces the journey to a succesion of moments. All overview gone. You've given over responsiblity for orientation to Mapquest. It's like when they used to give tractors to the Third World: the alternator goes and that's it -it gets left to go rusty or they break it up to make shovels and buckets. Or like when you let the record company tell you how to produce a tune- when it starts to sound wrong they cant tell you how to put it right and you've given up your own internal map by taking their suggestions onboard. We need our maps Goddammit. I rush into a gas-station; buy a big map book and coffee and reclaim responsibilty for our position in the world.(we pass an Exit to 'the Land of Makebelieve' )Tthe other thing about Mapquest is that it replaces a visual paradigm with a verbal one -what does that do? It turns the world of things into the idea of things. I'm sure someone's got a thesis going on this subject.

'you stupid, ugly vulgar American death-sucker' suggests Bill Burroughs from Jon's CD. How refreshing is his bile. Like Orwell said of Julia swearing in 1984 -it's like the snort of a horse that smells rotten hay.

We stop somewhere near Scranton in a rural town for some food. Implausibly the joint's run by an Egyptian family. From Alexandria. I have a moment of yearning for the depth and beauty of the Ancient World. I try a bit of crap Arabic. They smile. What are their lives like I wonder among the downhome folks of this whitebread burgh?  

Barefoot, barechested, rolling cigarettes at the wheel at 90mph, we smell bad and look worse, but Hamilton must be reached, and there is still a border to cross.

We started early, but somehow failed to take the Holland Tunnel, and ended up in the eerie quiet of downtown Manhatten at the site of the World Trade Centre. This was not a place I had expected to visit. The events of Sept 11th had been shown over and over on British TV, and being in New York over the last few days had further impressed upon me the scale and randomness of the destruction.

Everybody lives in New York: Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist; African, Chinese, Asian, European, West Indian, Latino. 

Independence Day, 2003.

Pushing upstate New York on the I-81 the country becomes vast, and it looks like national Ride-a-Harley Day. Now I know why they make them so big, so they can carry a twenty stone American. And his wife.

While they enjoy the freedom of the road we have inevitably become slaves to its tyranny. Holiday traffic tailbacks at road tolls; missed junctions; state troopers with speeding tickets; events seem to be conspiring against us. We pass close to Syracuse, 'Birthplace of the Iroquois Nation', a heritage site.

The Canadian border is a further delay. Groups of cops stand around, moving from car to car in a random fashion, pulling stuff out of bags, sniffing it, rifling through glove compartments. We are told to wait. We are being dealt with. We are being ignored. Perhaps its a ploy to see if we will break, and tell them where the drugs are, or surrender our concealed weapons. No, we are being ignored. Finally one of the cops comes into the waiting room triumphantly brandishing a copy of Haunted Box... Points to cover "Hey, is this you ?" Mr Andrews confirms that, yes, he is the musician in question. The passport, work permit, club engagement contracts notwithstanding, its Barry's photo on the cover of the CD that seems to finally swing it, and we are through.  

Hamilton. Waterloo. Toronto. Short drives. Long days.

The gig at the Hamilton Underground passes in blur. I drift in and out of sleep. Our man in Hamilton, and the Underground's manager, Brodie, shelters us for the night.

At the Jane Bond club in Waterloo, the fantastically hospitable Bernard informs us that, next door, a rich benefactor is sponsoring an international group of the most eminent scientists to solve the mystery of the universe. Quite what they do, or what they will find out, I do not know, or want to know. The mysteries of the behaviour of sub-atomic particles are plain to see in our own behaviour.

We disappear, resurface in chosen or random locations, accelerate into nothingness. Everything else is strictly on a need-to-know basis.

The heat breaks into rain, and the night descends like a hot, damp, tarpaulin. I shop at the mall for Odour-Eaters for our shoes. This event becomes pleasing and significant, and we consciously walk about, discussing the merits of the charcoal and bi-carbonate of soda insole.home on arrival. Is a sense of time inextricably linked with a sense of place? A displacement coping mechanism whereby a sense of the past stretches beyond ones actual history in a particular location. For example, we arrived in Toronto three hours ago, yet it seems we have been here for days. When we are driving "home" is a Dodge Caravan; when we are not driving it is the dusty bag that contains, for all intents and purposes, everything I "own".

It appears the Rivoli gig has not been promoted beyond the Shriekback faithfull.

After a storming set by Barry, we join the Jane Bond staff, Bernard, Josh, and Jon, and drink the sun up. The alcohol, the heat, the fatigue crowd in on me, and the mysterious goings-on next door set my mind on a not wholly unfamiliar existential bent. Even the conversationally erudite Mr Andrews asks, when he can get a word in, if I feel OK. OK? What's OK? The barman knows my name and what I'm drinking, what else is there? We live, we die, and in our reluctance to let go we stretch our last second of consciouness into an infinity of our own design. Vikings go to Vallhallah, Christians go to Heaven. As you believe so shall it be. 

It is nearly a week since we flew into JFK, only three days since we left New York City, yet each city becomes s nervous. His whole body language shouts 'please leave me alone'. We are looking for somewhere to stay, and ask if its OK to crash at his. We don't see him again. We do meet Rob, however. He and Barry are old aquaintances, and he does not hesitate to offer us sofas and breakfast. So the wheat will be seperated from the chaff. Rob is a whole evenings' entertainment alone. When he's not recording or performing music as Brilliant Fish, he does voice overs for TV, and at any given moment switches accents between east London, French, camp devil, Mid-Western......I still have no idea what his natural voice sounds like. Rob and Barry insist on taking me to the infamous Bovine Sex Bar, a cyber-punk junk yard where you may buy t-shirts that bear the legend "Drink my milk, eat my young" and "I've been to the Bovine Sex Bar, now I want to go home".

Buffalo: a 'rock' bar. Just come from Niagara Falls- an unashamedly touristic diversion. Ring up Len Saccone -old mucker from London now living back in his hometown. He shows us the horrors of this strange commercial circus which bustles around this enormous primordial event. The 'Falls' were here in the days of dinosaurs and will be here when we're all gone -right now they're being used to generate cash. The ephemeral quality of all human endeavour hits me -better go to the 'Hard Rock' bar where we are serenaded by a young Canadian singing Springsteen tunes. I'm asked by the Maitre D -another callow Canadian youth -if I want to Karaoke. He has no idea what he's asking for -I decline. He will never know how close he came to losing his job.

Large photos of the Beatles and the Pistols adorn the walls. And a grenadier-guard from Buckingham Palace. Englishness as rock n'roll commodity is the ticket. To drink a Stella here is to partake of edgy London in the grainy days of Punk, ironic Englishness swinging like a pendulumn do. Len's mate works at the 'Alien Experience' -this time it's Riddley Scott monsters instead of Lydon and his cronies. Mythologies -take your pick. The Falls is the excuse for indulging your fantasies. Like a Beach- they are a landscape feature which means Leisure- a selection of alternative realities -all paper thin; as convincing as a ghost-train. Meanwhile the Falls, a massive pouring of elemental energy, continue their endless, meaningless, monstrous action. Beautiful and terrifying. I find the kitsch money-grabbing of the town very touching actually. We poor little humans doing our limited best.

Canada was a hoot. Punters thin on the ground but well up for it and they're happy to spring for the CDs. The Jane Bond delightful I throw in a Stic Basin set out of pure expansiveness-we sleep over the gig in a sort of 70's jumble-sale room after staying up all night boozing with Bernard and Josh the charming promoters and their mates. It's hard to stay worried when the world is so full of kindness and pleasure. Still, I manage the next day: hungover and surly -very bad at map-reading and feeling the Desolation again. Toronto gig pretty damn empty but I soldier on and end up having a really good time and getting encores and chunky applause. I feel like playing is therapy- it's deeply healthy in a way I dont quite understand. I ring up Finn who's getting ready for his own tour of the UK. He sounds in great form and has been doing grown-up shit like putting out the recycling and going out on purely social grounds (with Jem Finers daughter already). I think maybe he's starting to fly the plane himself as well now. This tour was one of those unavoidable Running on the Rocks, do-your-hearts-desire-because-there-is-no-alternative things. Correct. The sort of thing Martyn Barker would approve of when he's in his wise mode. I dont know what happens after this is over but things will have moved on somewhat. Travelling suits me, travelling playing music really suits me. I feel like I'm doing absolutely what I should be doing. Sitting in a bar -while rats scamper in the alley outside- to play weird tunes to a few people is God's Work. Why? Maybe just because I think it is. 

The Mohawk Bar, Buffalo.

Re-crossed the border into the USA, for which we performed a pantomime for the tourists at Niagara Falls, giving Barry's old friend Len all the incriminating evidence that we are working our way around to LA. He is to meet us here later tonight. The border guard was initially tough, but soon lost interest in the dirty Englishmen.

American men seem to need to look intimidating. The jocks at the bar at the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara, all pringle jumpers and highlighted 80's flicks, topped it off with the thousand yard stare. A subtle combination of naivity and aggression. One had a t-shirt depicting the stern American Eagle with "I am smiling" printed underneath. I'm not quite sure I fully understand the message, but I get the gist.

The alternative scene is downtown, blacks and Latinos in bandanas prowling their stoop; one-legged guys shouting at their piss-stained boyfriends; checking out whitey in his rented Dodge. Barry and I seem drawn to these streets by our inability to follow the Mapquest directions. I remain calm, although Mr. Andrews insists I exude 'Bourgeois Crisis'. You want crisis? I can do crisis.

The Mohawk is an unreconstructed bar from the days of Rock and Roll. They have a couple of interesting rooms to house their broken furniture collection, an alley full of rats and smashed glass, and most bizarre of all, next door neighbours that, judging by the smell of barbecued hair and petrol, are cooking 'road rabbit' in the same alley. I am on-stage, guarding the equipment. Bill the barman is the perfect host, but looks like he would rather be riding his Harley across the Mid-West, than serving beer is a darkened room with no air-con other than the door on to the alley.

Barry's set is getting road cred. Songs conceived at home are born on the road. The audience is enthusiastic.

We stay at Marty's, our man in Buffalo. His vast, rambling house is a shrine to the history of rock and roll, and kitsch Americana. Common to all we have met, he is a genial and generous host. For the first time since arriving I sleep in a bed, and dream of nothing. jjh

It's a monday in Buffalo and the gig is almost empty. I play with an assurance I havent felt before doing the 'Haunted Box' set. For an hour I don't care how few punters there are. It's a brilliant thing to do. After, I feel crap: Marty the promoter doing the decent thing and paying even though we didnt meet the guarantee. I feel guilty and old and useless and wander off on my own to drink tequila in an Irish bar. The landlord is a rotund bearded Grateful Dead-Head who sucks on a huge cigar and keeps up a constant, stand-up comedian rant to his pissed acolytes around the bar (he himself does not drink). I think we discuss the War which fits my dark mood. Mr Cigar is Against It and assures me that many Americans are. At least I didnt stumble into a peacenik-lynching bar: that would have, as they say, put the tin hat on it. 

We get to Pittsburgh which I feel I've been in many times. In fact as the promoter Manny tells me with the assurance of a true trainspotter I have actually been here only twice before: once in 1980 with Fripp and again in 86 with Shrieks. Manny remembers the Shriek gig at the 'Islamic Grotto' a bizarre Shrinery kitsch place which we..er..rocked. What he didnt know was that Dave had just decided to leave so we were playing with a sense of doom and futility. Manny remembers it as a great gig -which of course it may have been. History...performance is a thing written on the wind, memory's a moveable feast. I dont think an Islamic Grotto is something anyone would do here now.

We have the night off and go to the noveau hippy 'Quiet Storm' restaurant/coffee joint. Jon and I sit for ages writing, talking, looking at women. I get onstage and perform a quck tune on the local band's piano and announce the gig tomorrow. Brave of me, I thought. This getting up and playing thing is something I can do now. It didnt use to be. We go with Manny to the gig we'll be at tomorrow and as we talk, marvel at his grasp of musical taxonomies. The hyphens come thick and fast: 'post-rock', dark-techno', 'new-minimalist-industrial'. I mention 'neu-bleep' and 'dark-core' which I saw advertised in London and disappointingly he doesnt know what they are either. I think I should get myself a genre or two: 'mood-dirge', 'post rat-morse', I dunno. I'm feeling a bit seedy and cynical then find myself unexpectedly interested in '1929' a -I think- post-rock outfit (must check with Manny). I got them. They have all the locutions of big-arse Rock but have taken all the fripperies away (melodies, words,hooks) and just present you with the energy shifts that usually serve as a foundation. I have the vision of a vulgar, brassy seaside town like Blackpool after some catastrophe- just the rocks and sea and some slabs of concrete. Melancholy but unsentimental. I feel quite proud that I had a 'new' musical experience. It's been a long time. When was the last? Drum and Bass? hmm must get out more. Oh yeah -I'm as out as I can be now.

Pittsburg is kicking up a storm. The heat has been building for a week. Clouds stack over the city. Lightning fingers the grid, pulling fuses.

Earlier, we came off the I-90 for brunch and found ourselves in Angola, by the shores of Lake Erie.

A cop car lazily sharked us, checked our plates, and moved on when we parked outside Dan's Diner. Small town America. Dan is 68, and was born and raised in Angola, though his father came over from Italy.

"They built this country for us. There was nuthin' here"

We are treated to his views on society, government, and the situation in Iraq.

"They ain't got no God. What God tells you to kill people?"

Barry concentrates on his lunch. I nod, smile, and take the bullet.

A lazy day in Angola. The train whistles through town. The dogs scratch in the shade. The library is closed. Everything is normal. Time to move on. 

Heading south on the I-79 we are out of New York State. Time to test the Pennsylvania State Troopers, (I'm limiting myself to one speeding ticket per state). Dan, not comprehending why anyone would want to go to Pittsburg, when they are already in Angola, told us it's a 6 hour drive. We do it in 2, with Barry's laundry tied to the roof rack. He encourages me to drive faster, as its his stage gear drying up there.

We've a day in hand, so we head up to the Quiet Storm on Penn Ave. to meet our man in Pittsburg, Manny.

Manny is intense, with hassaidic hair. He immediately starts hustling Barry with details of previous tours he has organised for foreign bands. It is as if, during his adolescence, someone whipped the Torah away from his nodding head and replaced it with the NME. He is an injection of energy into our road-collapsed veins.

So far Pittsburg is bucking the American trend in morbid obesity. Stick-thin young men in torn t-shirts, belts heavy with keys, cuffs, and carabinas, drift about in a post punk daze, trailing equally vertical girlfriends; there is, however, a worrying trend among the men to sport oversized sideburns and flip-flops.

Barry and I wander off for a late coffee to Ted's Diner. We are intrigued by the Gyro Meat on the menu. The waitress explains it's lamb that......she rotates her finger in the air, lost for words. Doner Kebabs! It is a moment of sublime cultural confusion. "So you guys want Gyro?" Please stop saying Gyro. I cannot answer through my laughter, though I am not sure what's so funny.

Back at the Quiet Storm, the lightning punches out the city again. The cafe is hung with anti-Bush / anti-war posters. Is it safe to be in here? Is Dan's God weeding out the infidel from His Own Country?

We take refuge uptown, with Mark, an accordian player from local band Aydin. Another night, another sofa, but we are guarded from divine retribution by Mark's dog Cassidy. All is well. 

pittsburgh

We return to the nice friendly Quiet Storm cafe where Jon tweaks his prose on the laptop. I go into town to get CDs -we're going to post the journal to Angelina at the website today. I use the excuse to have a short psycho-drift of Pittsburgh. STEEL-TOWN USA. Well, not anymore actually. A bit of a Leeds vibe: post-industrial (hey no wonder Manny lives here) turned yuppy flats, trendy shops and 'heritage'. It does have some authentic decay however -a huge red-brick factory/warehouse hulk rots by the river near the 'Strip District'. Plants, rust and vandals have brought this great beast to the first stages of re-assimilation. Excitingly, things hang dangerously from rusty gantries. In England this would be fenced off to stop people like me doing stupid things but here -it's your life, buddy. I poke around in the wreckage in a quiet, moochy way. This is one of my favourite things to do: the unforeseen felicities of the Drift vvare just the best fun. I wander under the underpass by the bridge- no-one walks down here, there's no reason to. I'm this little blob of perception peering into the chasms and folds of a huge entity. Downtown towers imposingly. Business people are on their lunch-breaks. This oily bald scruff doesn't merit more than a brief glance of mild misgiving. There are churches jammed cheek by jowl into the business district. delightful barmy contrasts of styles, and that grand American confidence that makes buildings into cliffs, small mountains. It's exhilarating. I see a grim and baffling wayside pulpit slogan outside a church: 'speaking in generalities is the death of prayer'. It resists my attempts to decode it, but I sure wont be talking any generalities from now on. It's not worth the risk.

We overhear a waitress saying to a departing friend: 'good luck with the puppets'. We find this, of course, hilarious for SO many reasons. 

We breakfast at the Quiet Storm, and make the cafe our base for the day. Never has the $2 bottomless coffee cup been exploited to such effect.

The staff accept us as a temporary installation, as we come and go from the Dodge, slowly accumulating more and more stuff inside the cafe. People keep their distance. I initially assume this is out of respect for our temporary homeless status, and our need for personal space, but soon realise that it's because I have exhausted my supply of clean clothes, and have been re-cycling them for some time. If I don't find a laundrette soon I'll have to start buying fresh.

Mark says our Dodge is a typical vehicle from the suburbs, usually driven by the 'football mom' as she ferries her kids around.

So, I am Rock and Roll Mom, Minister for the Interior. My own private surrogate family run city state, with full air con and cruise control. Just DON'T TOUCH THE BAGS. No-one touches the bags. I claim diplomatic immunity. I claim asylum. My name is legion. We come in peace.

We stay the night with the audience from the gig. The Rex is a disused cinema that seats 300ish. It was not well attended, which is a shame as the P.A, and Barry's performance, are spot on. Bleys, Mari, Chris, Geoff (Dog), and Rob offer us beer and floor space. Naturally, being the penniless peripatetic Englishmen we have become, we gratefully accept. Our hosts are goth / punk /rock afficianados and you just know they sleep in their clothes. Not only that, but their house backs on to Pittsburg cemetery. Standing, pissing, looking out of the bathroom window, the grave of Heckler laughs back.

Again, it's 3 am by the time we get to sleep, but the evening has been spent delightfully, discussing everything, and watching Rob bounce off the walls. The stairs are like an avalanche. The carpets small of cigarettes, The caged rodents scratch in the kitchen. Good night America.

The Rex in Pittsburgh. Well what can you say? It was well advertised, a nice, well-known gig, it was a wednesday night, only raining a bit. No excuses at all. I'm simply not famous enough. An audience of -ooh 5 or 6 in the dark of an old cinema seating maybe 200. I cant lie and say it doesnt make a difference; that it doesnt piss me off. The feeling that this whole thing is an elaborate vanity project gone horribly wrong is hard to avoid, though all the positive thoughts I can muster have been deployed. Poor old Manny coughed up like a mensch and I feel bad for him but more for myself and the implications for my future ability to do this thing I love doing. Bollocks. Market Forces implacably bottom-lining me. I am, naturally looking for ways to work with the fact that there is a hard-core of people who are deeply supportive of my work but there arent really enough of them to make a tour like this viable. What after this? Just big cities? Just one-offs? Maybe keep it as a hobby and let Finn carry on the Family Firm on his own. Fuck knows. Perhaps the West Coast will be better -maybe a huge audience will leap out from behind a screen tonite in Chicago shouting 'suprise' and I'll realise it was all a complex ruse on the part of the American public.

I'm sitting rather uncomfortably with the probability that I'm in for another two weeks of public humiliation with audiences I can be on first name terms with; promoters gritting their teeth and taking it like men: inwardly vowing never again to touch this project with a ten foot pole. I'm finding a kind of grim, slightly hysterical pleasure in the whole business. The sensation reminds me of when I walked into the Sinai desert purposely without water or when I got arrested so as to spend a night in a police-cell: experiments undertaken to achieve knowledge, experience. Viewed in this way this tour seems almost noble: a pilgrimage, a quest. An expensive one, probably, and I've no idea how I'm going to repay all the debts if we don't sell more CDs. Still, we took risks we knew we took them yadda yadda... I can truly say I'm living life right now. It's vibrant and real and interesting as fuck. Oh, and I'm getting really good at doing music again. The concept of 'bourgeois crisis' springs to mind- what can go wrong that's so important? I've faced The Fear. It was no biggie, actually.

The idea of this whole thing as a psychogeographical drift is increased by the budget-driven initiative of staying at people's houses -strangers often. Jon and I are becoming international vagrants -watch out for them: they smell funny, never change their pants, drink all the beer in your fridge then doss on your carpet and disappear as mysteriously as they arrived. They live like tramps yet they have a nice car and loads of expensive sound equipment and a laptop. Some William Gibson-esque future Urban Parasites. One of them has this ritual he does every night, sometimes in front of people, sometimes almost alone. He hawks and burbles and shouts and makes noises with his hands on machines. No-one really knows why but he gets weird if he cant get to do it. Pair of freaks.

Last night we went home with about 90% of the audience. It wasnt hard -there were only 5 of them: young persons of the Goth persuasion one would probably say, though they might baulk at that. Fantastically, they live at the back of a cemetery with a volatile ex army chap called Rob who had been drinking all night, and who told us on arrival: 'they're geeks but they're my friends -dont make fun of them.' Jon and I agree readily that we will certainly not do so. They're all blokes apart from Mari who is den-mother, providing a womanly foil to the rampant geekery all around her and fretting about the state of the place.

They're all (apart from Rob) big time into Dungeons and Dragons style role-play games which is a whole new world to me. They give us beer, Jon and Bleys do tattoo-bonding- 'what kinda ink ya got?'- and we have deep reasonings around the Gaming Table surrounded by plastic hordes of beasts, demons and warriors. One of their mates, a guy called Geoff, actually writes role-play game-books and has used a couple of lines from Shriekback lyrics as chapter headings: 'Making preparation for the whipcrack time' 'God is not mocked, he knows our business' and the tenor of the book is very much in the Nemesis canon: the 'evil as a moral choice', naughty/delicious speculation.This is a book giving background info to people who want to play 'Devil Tigers' (reborn humans
who for various reasons spend their time doing terrible things but in a sexy, classy way -though this is a massive reduction of Geoff's book which contains head-spinning amounts of bogus erudition and quasi-spiritual proper-noun-rich 'source' material (' a Kue-jin may hold as many 'swarms' of Savage Joss to his person as his P'o or charisma score, whichever is higher') There is something great about the sheer obsessive energy and spiralling imagination of this endeavour, though my own small role in it makes me feel slightly misunderstood- Carl Marsh and I were talking before I came away about how funny and ridiculous the lyrics to Nemesis were: I get this often with Americans: you're never quite sure if they got the joke. My Goth-ery is not as others are you know.

We leave the Goth Family to drive in the pissing rain to Chicago. Jon is gratified to note that eveyone drives like a fucking maniac in the rush-hour so he...blends. 

The nine hour drive to Chicago is made easier by the change from Eastern to Central Time. We gain an hour. Rush Hour in Pittsburg slowed us down, but driving at that time of the morning is easier, as everyone drives like a lunatic, and we just join in. They can't book us all.

Stopping at Bob Evan's Diner, just off the Ohio Turnpike I-80, for breakfast, I am tempted by the

"Open-Faced Meatloaf Stack. It's big, it's back, it's better. Layer on layer of hearty goodness".

Every time one is ordered the Stars and Stripes plays, people fall to an expectant hush, hand on heart, and the medical community lets out a collective groan. I order catfish.

For once we have nowhere to crash after the gig, so Barry and I head out of town in the general direction of Detroit to look for a cheap motel. A combination of road fatigue and drunk directions leads us into the heart of the 'hood, South Side.

Wrecked cars line the roads; some of them are still moving. One of them lazily pulls out and starts cruising us. The roads are almost too pot-holed to drive; traffic lights are smashed. I am experiencing my usual bourgeois crisis, and mention this to Barry." No, this is fuckin' bad. Don't stop the car". Mr. Andrews, sarf-London geezer, balls of a grizzly (metaphorically speaking, though I wouldn't be suprised if he had undergone some surgical implant) is worried. Never get out of the boat.

I slow the car between intersections, partly to encourage the car behind to over-take, but also to time the run between traffic lights so I catch green.

We see the lights of a cop car ahead and I indicate over to it; the car behind stops, reverses, and melts away.

Our troubles are not over. The cops are busy with a car full. Voices are raised. We move on until we see a sign for 'Best Motel' and I turn into the compound. Barry goes into the office, and only then do I notice guys lurking around the shadows. One of them, in his car, reverses across the lot to park next to me. Barry returns. They generally rent rooms by the hour. I'm too tired for this. Pimps, crackwhores, possibly firearms. I'm English, we bleed easily. It's 3 am again. We move on, and find ourselves under the railway. The street is effectively caged by the steel bridgework. Even the architecture is against us.

Finally we ask directions from a gas station, and within minutes are back on the interstate.

Later, out of town, in the seedy but safe Super 8 motel, we laugh at the whiteys in their rented Dodge getting spooked in the 'hood, but we laugh to break the tension. What I need is a drink. 

The hooligan beauty of the outskirts of Chicago. A vast installation by Joseph Beuys. Then stuck in traffic eroding our cheeky extra time-zone hour. The hugeness of America giveth and its urban density taketh away.

I'm starting to feel that affection for England that I used to get on the long tours in the 80's. You really do have to live somewhere else to get it. England: small, subtle, understated, moderate. These virtues in absentia seem to outweigh our parochialism, incompetence and conservatism. It's the Shire alright.

'The Back to Genesis Perspective' booms confidently out of Jon's discovery- 'Family' Radio- the voice of the religious right we've heard so much about. It is a strange and disconcerting experience to hear palpably barmy nonsense being given massive, high-quality, daytime airplay. As though the guy in Swindon who used to stick a biscuit tin up his jumper to stop the 'red rays' reaching his heart had been given his own national radio station.

Chicago gig was ok- the support act -who brought most of the crowd- were a very proficient two piece doing Simon and Garfunkel-esque Laura Ashley tunes. They sing about their love for the 'girl on the village green' as far as I can tell without irony and in sweet two-part harmony. I'm not getting a good feeling. Sure enough half the crowd clear out before I even set up and I mop up the rest of their fans with the first two tunes. Jon says he observed walk-outs when I sing 'fucking mission' in Waterbaby. Blimey, what has the home of the Blues Brothers come to? Anyway we get down to the Shriek hardcore within ten minutes and it's a respectable gig.

For the first time we strike out on somewhere to doss down so we decide to pay for a motel. Jon's knackered and I'm a bit pissed so we aim to get a motel somewhere cheap a bit out of town. We drive on the freeway a few miles and I suggest a drifty left into what looks like it might be an ok suburb.The combination of Mr Knackered and Mr Pissed is a bad one: within minutes we are lost in an infernal realm. the streets are deserted except for groups of very serious black guys standing inexplicably around not talking to each other. It's interesting at first then, and, in the spirit of adventure, I enquire in a motel about a room. A very nice lady remeniscent of an older Whoopee Goldburg (in her wise empathic mode) tells me that they have only single beds and they usually rent by the hour/four hour. I nod sagely, returning to the van. We drive around even deeper into this Heart of Urban Darkness. As we reach a particularly deserted plain of cracked concrete and a municpal building which seems to have some DHSS function, it dawns on me how entirely exposed and vulnerable we have become: two bleachy art-tarts in a soccer mom Dodge with 15 grands worth of hi-tech and abundant cash money. This is not a bourgeois crisis: this is a crisis. We both become aware of a car following us. We dont speak of it till later (we're too scared) but it disappears when we pull over to get directions from some cops who are dealing with a fracas.

We decide against disturbing the cops at work in the end and finally, with the help of some friendly homeboys at the gas station, we make it out of the woods. Relief washes over us and we steam along the 94 listing the tunes which came unbidden into our heads back in the hood.

Tracklist for an Impending Disaster:
BA: Sinatra:'Bad Bad Leroy Brown' ('in the Southside of Chicago its the meanest part of town')
Tom Waits '29 Dollars' ('when the streets are hungry...Vulture in a Fleetwood with a chartreuse hood..)
JH: Dylan: 'you could die down here..be another accident statistic' 

It says much for our terminal artiness that even in extremis our brains produce cultural references rather than -I dunno -useful survival strategies. We have turned into these hothouse plants. We need a very specific bunch of conditions to thrive and are badly unsuited to anything more basic. Long may those conditions prevail. 

A short 4 hour drive up the I-94 to Detroit, made interesting by severe lack of sleep, and torrential rain. The Buddha Bar on 8 Mile Rd is cool, and Dean our host is cooler, but I am too tired to take it in. After the soundcheck I sleep in the car outside, dozing to the comforting sounds of Family Radio, an extreme Christian channel that denounces the usual: evolution; abortion; satanism. Most suprisingly it also denounces all other churches or bible study groups, on the basis that Towards The End, God would withdraw the power of the Holy Spirit from the churches, and put it in individuals. That Time, apparently, is Near. Lets hope we make Los Angeles in time.

To cut the journey time to Columbia tomorrow, we head out of town until we find a motel.

The woman on reception asks if we would like a wake-up call. We ask for that to be at 7 am.

"But it's 4 am now" she replies. We have no choice. It's at least an 11 hr journey. I am the driver. I will drive. I will not be denied. 

DETROIT

we leave the motel after a good long kip. I've washed out my filthy trousers (uncleaned since before Heathrow) in the sink and stuck them on the roof of the van to dry as we go look for breakfast. The trousers are called to our attention by the young cleaning guy who thinks we must have forgotten them. It's ok, we know, thanks, we say. He's gobsmacked, shakes his head, laughing: 'Damn!...' It's a sign of how feral we are becoming. Or how out of sync we are with normal America. The hi-tech crusties continue their disgraceful odyssey.

Quick spin up to The Buddha Lounge in Detroit: unprepossessing from the outside, on a long nondescript street called 8 Mile west (surely not as in Eminem? -but oh yes it is, very much so: another of those psy-geo boulevards like Penny Lane, Baker Street, Abbey Road and my own dear Rossmore Road. I love it- let's mythologise more streets...more tunes, more stories, movies. Let's perfume the air with dense association. Let nothing be just what it is anymore). Inside the Buddha Lounge is a delight: flowers on the tables, multiples of His Enlightenedness in china, wood and plastic, and the feeling of a space cared for: made special by work and attention. Apart from all the grosser hindrances constantly indulged in there, I think the Buddha would have approved. Big Dean is le patron and the source of all this. He is a Hawaian-shirted, pony-tailed 40-something from LA and looks like he could probably tell you a few wild tales. I take to him straight away as we labour to make my gear and his PA dwell together in perfect harmonee. I'm sorry to like him because I know he's going to end up pissed off at the end of the night. Hiding my fatalism I soundcheck and we banter in an English (sorry but there it is) way.

And bloody blimey strike a light guv but it's a proper corker of a gig. Not a huge turnout but ok and just a great audience: lots of applause some really nice comments and we sell a load of CDs. Stic Basin received especially well which was gratifying since I was starting to think it was a bit of a non-starter. It hasn't really had a chance to spread it's leathery wings on this tour yet -gigs either too empty or geared for the piano stuff. Here in Detroit a gang of youngish, up-for-it punters and a club system and it all makes sense. Maybe I wont become a haberdasher quite yet. 'Patches' the singer in the support band lurches onstage and demands a collaborative improv. I say right-ho then. There's a free-verse drone bit, a Diamanda Galas bit (shed loads of f/x on his voice) and an ecclesiastical knock-it-on-the-head section as I recall. I know how much I like to listen to extended improv so I give it about 4 minutes and then drop a plagal cadence ('ah-men'). It's like a roadblock -nothing gets past it.

Dean probably hasnt made a fortune tonight but seems well pleased at the vibe, donates his drumstool, route advice and offers a place to stay but no, our work here is done we're going to hammer onto Columbia, Missouri. Profligately we do another motel which we cant really afford but neither of us feels like roughing it tonight. We sleep for 4 hours and have to go. Jon says it would be cheaper to just go to a hookers hotel and ask for the rooms without the hookers. 

The Big Push to Columbia... it's a bit of a swine (657 miles with an early gig at the end of it). 

Jon's taking this very seriously. He refused to shower this morning on the grounds of wasting time. I think maybe on some level he's attempting to cast off that whole soccer mom stigma: he's driving like a crazy 16 year old from the projects in a stolen Firebird. His road-rage is set to a constant seething whirr of indignation with occasional eruptions of fury over some 'stupid fucking yankee twat' who happens to impede his Genghis Khan-like procession across the plains.

We take on the -ahem- 'Steak and Shake' outside Indianapolis (motto: 'in sight it must be right'....highly dubious reasoning if you ask me) and Jon renders food-comfort unto himself with pancakes the size of a goblins duvet. 

Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri. Four states today.

So the Mid-West run begins. We haul ourselves out of bed at 7.00, and are on the road in 10 minutes. The nature of this trip is becoming clear. There will be no respite. The only wildlife we see is roadkill. Racoon, groundhog, and now prairie dog and deer, their blood smeared across three lanes. I maintain a crusing speed of 80 mph for about 7 hours, and have to rest. I lie on the back seat, too tired to sleep, the road running through my head; the miles ahead playing over in my mind.

We stop in St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi for coffee. It's Saturday, and the Downtown district is deserted. The city has a genteel charm, but the mall we find for lunch is an 80's warehouse, designed without taste or care.

Columbia is a clean university town. The Shattered Club is large, and suprisingly hip according to my preconceptions of middle America. Chris, the owner, is another genuine, welcoming host, and after the gig, which finishes early, invites us back to his house.

We sit on his porch, drink beer, and watch the fireflies. I think of home, my son and the girl I am missing, and feel very far away. The middle of America, the farthest I have ever been from the sea.

It's only 11 pm and we have to clear the State of Kansas tomorrow to make Denver for an early show at the Larimer Club.

I take the chance of an early night, but my dreams are haunted by the endless roads of this vast country. 

We hit the road at 8.30 am for the 12 hour drive to Denver. The I-70 takes us all the way; a distance of about 750 miles.

Passing Lawrence, just outside Kansas City, we mock -salute the final resting place of Bill Burroughs, but hold it long enough to mean it. I'm sorry that we don't have time to stop, but even if we find the house, I know it will be another wooden lot, in a quiet mid-Western town. Bill's Thanksgiving Prayer plays us past.

You lose the road through Kansas as it glasses into infinity, then find it again under your wheels. This is the prairie, land of the Sioux. Endless billboards use images of feathered braves to advertise their products, or heritage centres. It was only just over 100 years ago that they were hunted and butchered like animals so the millions of European immigrants could turn their traditional hunting lands into endless, featureless corn fields.

Massive grain towers are stationed next to the Union Pacific railroad; I keep mistaking them for city skylines, but they only signify another tiny community of wooden shacks.

We were forewarned that this leg of our tour could be the most arduous: the straight unchanging road; the flat landscape,; the apparent endlessness of the prairie. But no, surely this is our chance to set cruise control to 100 mph, and let the great god Rotor take over. We will conquer.

Billboards flash past, mostly with pro-life slogans on them, but one advertises "The Largest Prairie Dog In The World at 8,000 lbs". Is it alive? Stuffed? (C,mon Hank you can git another bag o'sawdust into that damn thing) and how big are Prairie dogs normally ? We don't have time to stop, but if I'm ever passing Rexford again...

Another advertises a new 10,000 sq ft, indoor, all-year recreation centre. You get the feeling that despite the vastness of the landscape, unless you want to watch corn grow, there's not a lot to do outdoors.

The hours pass, we are on the High Plain, and suddenly before us the Rockies appear in the late afternoon sun, even though we are still several hours from Denver.

Stopping for coffee I feel uncomfortable for the first time in America. The waitresses are sullen and suspicious. A table of young red-necks stare at us. The petrol pumps at the station bear the label 'No Out Of Town Cheques'. As the place seems to consist of about 30 houses, that certainly narrows it down a bit.

We settle up and go, under the watchful eye of the six young men.

So to Denver.

We have been warned that the altitude may cause problems, as we are at least a mile from sea-level. I do feel shattered, but put this down to the drive. We also find out that we are a day early.

Da nada. Mike, our man in Denver, offers us sofa, and (oh joy) use of his washing machine. I shower, shave, and dine on weak beer. (Nothing over 3.5 % on a Sunday. What's that about?).

I fall asleep with my phone in my hand, half way through a text to a girl in England, who is eating breakfast in a sunny familiar kitchen. 

De-greased, clean clothes, brunch on red beans and rice. This roadies heaven.

After the post-industrial sprawl of the east, with the rockies as a backdrop, and the Union Pacific trains whistling in the distance, Denver seems a calm and organised city. Again, it seems remarkable that only just over 100 years ago, this was a hastily constructed gold mining town, built in Indian territory, and breaking the written assurances from the then government that this was to be Native -American land forever. I see European, Latin, Asian, African faces in the streets, but the Arapahoe, and the Cheyenne were driven north across the River Platte, and exterminated. A friendly bunch, us Europeans, when we got here. The gold is still in the vaults of Fort Knox; the Bank of England...

Barry's gig at the Larimer Lounge is a wind up. He is also booked to play the Panoptican at midnight, hosted by our man Mike. Scott at the Larimer knows this, and drags the gig out, for an audience of four or five, until we are too late for the second show. I smell a rat, a bit of promoter on promoter one upmanship.

Remarkably, Sam, a customer at the Panoptican, has a clothes shop around the corner, which he offers as a venue. The P.A is duly dragged around, the equipment set up, and the performance begins. Only in America. Sam has a Psychic TV badge, and knows Genesis and the band since they moved to L.A after being exiled from the U.K on spurious criminal charges that were later dropped. I had a passing aquaintance with Gen back in the late '80's, baby sat his kids once or twice, and knew a lot of the Psychic Youth crew. Aah, the good old days, and another late night.  

There's been a fly in the van since Kansas we're now in Wyoming. Not quite our tour-pet. If we release it in Utah how will it's new life be among Mormon flies? This is the sort of idle speculation after the Night of the Stupid Cock-up. Actually after the Morning of Pragmatic Loss-Cutting which follows the Night of the Stupid Cock-up. Let me explain: we're booked to play two shows at different clubs. The first a bog-standard rock bar called the Larimer Lounge where I do Haunted Box, promoted by Scott; the other a trendy night-club downtown where I do Stic Basin, promoted by Mike. The approach of the two promoters could not be more different. Scott has done an ad or two (we think) and printed a one-colour flier with Shriekback spelled wrong. Mike has been playing stuff on his radio show, has printed a glossy full colour poster and fliers which he and his partner have been been distributing round town. We ask Scott if we can stay in a room over the bar and he says no he has valuable stuff up there. Mike says come stay at mine. So there it is. Mike and Scott know each other and have collaborated in the past. We think this means that they are at least mildly in cahoots over this little cross-town double-bill. We are to discover otherwise. We are meant to get to Club Basin by 11.30-12.00, which means that to play a full set at the Larimer requires getting on at 10.30 at the latest. The support acts are running late and doing encores and I dont say anything because (a) I'm asleep in the van, and (b) I think it's all cool because it's the music-biz and all timings are approximate and Scott and Mike are pals so they'll be liasing. By the time I get to play (to the half-dozen or so people I'm coming to expect) it's 11.30. We get out in record time and drive the 5 minutes down to the other club by 12.30 where an almost tearful Mike tells us that we're too late to play. The club's chucking out. B-b-but this is America everything closes when it wants to close surely? mm-mm -not in Denver, slack Brit-boy -strict licensing laws regarding clubs/gigs and God knows what apply. We've blown it. The club was busy now it's empty, I can't accept a fee, sure as shit cant sell any CDs. All because we were late because nobody was policing it and we had not been told how crucial the times were. Great big piss-flaps of Satan. I'm feeling a last straw moment. I'm invited by an energetic young man with an explosive hairstyle to play in his clothes-shop round the corner. there are some enthusiasts who've come in from Boulder to see da 'Basin and some late stragglers from the club.. I feel honour bound to go through with this though the idea of going to a bar with special immunity from the booze laws and making a fierce and unsparing inventory of my problems is more appealing. We dont have a mikestand so Jon fashions one -using his Damien Hirst aquired gaffa-tape skills- out of a taylors dummy and a some cardboard. For a moment we're back in the 60s: Illegal gig. Defy the Man. Let's do the show right here. The hash pipe is passed around. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive... Then I feel rather tired and miserable seeing people standing awkwardly around or talking pissed bollocks out on the street. A guy about 60 comes in -hooligan drunk, he's dancing, sort of. He looks jolly and solid. Avuncular. But he's a lost soul. Clinging, lonely, embarassing drunk the young people find pathetically amusing for five minutes then just please go away now. He stays. You're a great musician he tells me, a lot. And I feel I might be one day if I can keep on keeping on. You cant let the bullshit get to you, I tell myself. It hasnt so far.

I wake early full of that energy which changes things. This will not stand, dude. 12 hour drive to Seattle for a percentage of the door. Whats that on the present reckoning? $15? In a chimps cock. I decide to blow out the North Western quadrangle (Seattle, Washington, Portland, Eureka though it pains me to miss the Portland crew and Dave) I drink coffee count money smoke fags do sums. Oh dear oh Lor'. Not good, not good at all. I really can't afford to lose anymore money.From a truck-stop in Cheyenne I call Erik the agent. Call Dave. The deed is done. I should feel much worse than I do even though as we're driving to Salt Lake I'm totting up how much I'll get if I sell my gear when I get back. The journey's not over. Ask me again when I'm sitting in the flat in London wheedling for credit and jiggling balance transfers. If I knew back in May what I know now would I still have done this? Probably not, but this was how I found out what I know now. The alternative is to go the route of the Dancing Pisshead and that will never do. The tough beautiful desert of Wyoming stretches before us making all these petty preoccupations seem microscopic.

We mildly flirt with waitresses in Bob's Buddha Bar, Rock Springs Wyoming. They copy our accents. I wander onto the piles of earthworks around the place and look at the dirt. I want to see the little bits and pieces which make up this enormous place. There was nothing built here before Bobs Buddha Bar. 30 yards out and it's the desert again, as it was maybe a million years ago. There's hardly anywhere in Britain you can say that of. It's a strange feeling. Good because nature has been hardly touched, scary because it's humans scuttling about, inventing fast food, inventing Buddhism: such brave doomed little creatures.

I persuade the driving vector that Holmes has become to stop in the middle of nowhere so I can walk around a bit. I go for a swim in the Platte river; smell the sage; look at rocks; touch the earth of this incredible place. 'Shit hapines' (sic) reads some graffitti. Joyce couldn't have conflated it better. Happens/happiness. Licking honey from the razors edge..

The mountains as we descend to Salt Lake are amazing. I always missed this in the past: tour-bus, planes. Cocooned from the landscape. I'm not cocooned from anything now and it's raw and real and anyone can do anything whenever they want. 

An incredible drive to Salt Lake City over the foothills of the Rockies yesterday, on the I-80.

Started out in bright sunshine, that turned in Wyoming to thunder, rain and lightning, that had passed into intense heat again by the time we reached Fort Laramie.

Another 12 hour journey, though this time with breaks. Barry swam in the North River Platte, but with only 4 hrs of sleep, and the journey ahead with a late gig to finish, I was keen to arrive. I am the driver. Distances will be driven.

The Urban Lounge was a booze-fuelled bar that took no prisoners. For the most part I tried to get a bit of sleep in the Dodge, but the heat of the night forced me back into the air conditioning of the bar.

Our man in Salt Lake, Mike, offered us sofa, and we sat on his porch with a beer talking the usual late night bollocks. Mike, himself a musician had strict theories on the validity of various art forms.

Poetry was definately inferior to painting, which in turn was a lower art form than music, but even music was topped by...gymnastics. A subjective view that seemed strangely valid last night.

With the Seattle / Portland / Eureaka leg of the tour cancelled , we have few days to get to Sacramento, so today was spent in downtown Salt Lake City.

The city was founded, and is dominated still by the Mormons.

The musuem was full of the history of the brave pioneers that were guided by God to this land in the mid 1800's, to build Zion, a heaven on earth where men and women could live in the spirit of co-operation under the guidance of the Lord. Funny, no mention of wholesale massacre of the Native Americans who already lived here. The Mormons originally believed that the Native Americans were cursed by God for wiping out an original race of white people, who were the true Americans. In fact, up until 1978, according to the precepts of the Mormon Bible, a non-white person could not administer the gospel in the Mormon Church. But apparently God changed his mind. So that's OK then.

You can spot the Mormons in town. Caucasian, middle class, white shirt, or plain dress. Clean, wholesome, and with a look in the eye. When they talk to you, they look slightly over your shoulder, as if it's forbidden to make eye contact with one of the infidel. Or perhaps they are keeping a look-out for the spirit of their founder Brigham Young, returning to give them further directions of future material expansion. You can also spot their sons and daughters, second generation slackers, caning it on pills and alcohol at the Urban Lounge. 

The evening warm and purple. The mountains stand majestic over this place which is America with a twist. At the 'Urban Lounge' the local herberts like to 'party' -which is to say get hammered. Being 'in a band' confers status. There are intense arguments over sex and bad behaviour. Everyone knows everyone, often carnally. Wow, I'm back in Swindon (apart from the mountains). It's a small town, Salt Lake, with all that small town stuff but there's a huge weird psycho-economic matrix which underpins everything and which is very un-Swindonian: yeah that Mormon thing. Jon is getting radical: he's been reading 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee' and is greatly exercised about the atrocities against the Native Americans. I concur, how can you not? but I'm more interested in the energy which was generated by this bizarre phenomenon. Joseph Smith, in 1820, has a vision of an angel called 'Moroni' (bad name eh?) who tells him to dig up some metal plates upon which is written a new gospel. The power of this idea is such that thousands of people crossed with wagons and horses this savage landscape we have driven across at 90 miles an hour marvelling at it's vastness. It was enough to create this city. I find this extraordinary and inexplicable.

We do the gig and it's fun in a dont-expect-too-much kind of way. I do the Haunted Box set like a bar pianist: discreet, in my own little world, as people rant and play pool. By Stic Basin time everyone's mashed and immersed in their own concerns. It's ok. I wasnt labouring under any illusions about a glorious reception. I know the score. I've played in Swindon.

Mike, standing in for the promoter, mysteriously AWOL, puts us up. He is known locally by his surname, which recalls a De Sadean libertine: 'Sartain'. I like saying it and do so whenever possible. Sartain is certainly a man who lives for pleasure and is a Mormon, so are most of his mates. They have the weary air of Northern Irish youth asked about the Troubles when you inquire into their religious background. They want to be groovy and modern: they hate all that old shit. But it's what outsiders always want to know about.

With days now to kill before the next gig in Sacramento, we have an afternoon of investigation in the Mormon beehive: the hub from which all those nametagged, besuited Botherers proceed. Jon wants to get more dirt on these genocidal, dead-eyed bastards, I just want to know what the fuck is with all this. We tour the Museum with clean, slightly scary Mormon families. Their kids muck about with the volume control on the 'Life of Joseph Smith' exhibit and reach over to touch Brigham Young's travelling case because it looks like a treasure chest. Soon these young Mormons will be getting wankered at the Urban Lounge I suspect.

At the end of a trawl round both museums I'm not really any the wiser. Making up your own religion is an impressive thing. Maybe Smith was just a convincing nutter, maybe he really did speak for the Lord, but, self-evidently, his Dream was inspiring. I really dont understand why. It seems not so different from regular Christianity. The polygamy clause was the thing that got them into trouble (later revoked by a supplementary vision- as was the racist stuff). Why would people want to suffer so much for a weird variation of what they already had? Surely not just to get more chicks? I'm intrigued and I want to know more. Sartain doesnt give a shit about it -there's a 60's Retro night at the Lounge and the Warlocks are playing round the corner. The Museum offers only the Party Line. Jon's not interested either- his heart is at Wounded Knee with the Sioux and the Comanche -the Warrior Nations who called down upon themselves the wrath of the Gatling Guns of the One True God. 

SAC