Matador Records | News October 1999

My previous evening was spent watching the Mets lose to Atlanta on TV while reading the Scott Weiland interview in the new issue of Icon. Fascinating stuff --- Weiland could be the most shallow human being of all time (and Icon usually specializes in this sort of thing). Good Alan Abel piece, plus helpful advice from Weiland, "caffeine is a diuretic". I repeat this on the telephone to Sally who thinks I said "Kathleen is a diabetic", which is confusing in that neither of us know someone named Kathleen.

So yeah, I'm not prepared for the meet & greet mania of night no.1, and from the looks of things, neither is Dylan Nathan. But it takes more than a handful of technical difficulties to stop Jega, a wizard of the gadgets and knobs who suitably rocks the house, or at least the portion that bothered to show up early enough. There is considerable drama and hurt feelings backstage ---- Non Phixion are demanding to go on as soon as possible because they have tickets to a midnight screening of "Runaway Bride". The Arsonists are engaged in a bitter debate over which member of the group is Kris Gillespie's personal favorite. I try to quell the uproar by telling them "this night isn't about who is Kris Gillespie's favorite, this night is about making sure Leonardo DiCaprio's fund manager gets in for free." Well, that was the wrong thing to say and it could take several hours to smooth things over. The performances are blistering, in spite of these distractions, and yes, don't worry, Leo's fund manager did manage to get in.

Red Snapper were very exciting, and boy did I feel stupid for never having seen them before. We get lucky sometimes that way. I'm not sure what I can tell you about Mogwai and Cornelius that you don't already know, but suffice to say, if I had to go deaf to the former and blind to the latter....never mind, I'd rather not. But those were amazing sensory experiences (even after leaving the men's room).

Post-show post-mortem at Max Fish is illuminating in all sorts of ways. I've not been to Max Fish in eons and many one-time fixtures (eg. Ann Marlowe) are nowhere to be seen. Mayor Giuliani is doing an excellent job cleaning up the city.

At 3:30am I get a phone call from Nicole, telling me that Cornelius and band have been screwed out of their hotel rooms by the knuckleheads at the Hotel Pennsylvania (note to all travelers not named Bush: don't stay there. The rooms are filthy, the bugs are huge and Scott Kannberg's room was poorly decorated). Using my powers of persuasion, I convince the manager of the Chinatown Holiday Inn that the Cornelius entourage are traveling biochemists who must secure rooms or they will be unable to solve the West Nile mosquito virus sweeping the city. The manager doesn't know what the West Nile virus is, so I have to go into this whole Yul Brynner impersonation about the frogs and the locusts and the death of the first born, etc. One $500.00 deposit later and the rooms are reserved. Only problem is, Nicole never calls back and no one from Cornelius' band shows up. On the bright side, I now have 5 additional hotel rooms, so if I feel like storing many different things (like kittens) in each, no one can stop me.

I ran into DJ Eclipse earlier that day. It seems that local theatres are cancelling their scheduled showings of "Runaway Bride" due to violent incidents at cinemas nationwide. I suggest that Julia Roberts was also in "The Warriors" and no one seems to know what I'm talking about (fucking kids).

The backstage passes supplied by a local stationery shop keep falling off, and you don't want to know what I had to do to gain entry to this event. While Khan is singing it, I'm living it. Next time, we buy laminates.

Not a lot of surprises tonight. Khan's got the moves and some of the audience look like they wanna move to Alaska. The Lynnfield Pioneers + Marc Moore on bass exemplify the word "panache". Guitar Wolf deliver a frenzied variation on the same high-octane set they can play in their sleep. Chavez are always awesome, and tonight they put the "vest" into "devastating." But what is up with these assholes in the VIP area? Who are they? Where did they come from? I didn't put any of them on the guest list (Leo's fund manager can't make it tonight). Really great that all of my friends are sitting around the VFW with nothing to do, meanwhile Matador is footing the bill to entertain some creeps who got lost on the way to Steve Blush's house.

Brett Vapnek is videotaping a series of "funny" interviews with bands asking each other various questions like "who did you have to blow to get signed" and "is that your real hair?" Asking for trouble, I think, but I never thought Bob Nastanovich would be party to this sort of thing. With the cameras rolling, Bob wants to know "how do you feel when people ask Chris Lombardi what you're doing in London and he says 'I have no idea'?" Hoo ha. When people ask me what Chris Lombardi is doing in New York, I tell 'em the cameras I installed in his office are recording 24-7.

Chan Marshall aka "CHAN MARSHALL", came up with another stunner, this time solo-style. A local musical expert had recomended to Chan that she employ the services of a backing troupe, otherwise the rowdy, insensitive fans of Pavement, Chavez and special guests Jackyl, wouldn't be capable of sitting still, shutting up and appreciating Chan's genius. If only our entire roster had the benefit of this sage advice... I'd have more time for television. Speaking of which, Armando Benetiz just walked everyone in the State of Pennslyvania and most of Southern, NJ as well.

Bright lights-a-flashing, Pavement churned and burned through a career retrospective set that should lay to rest those break up rumors, unless you wanna read something into cryptic comments like "thank you, goodnight." People always seem to pogo harder when they hear the oldest songs and for that reason alone I prefer the new stuff.

End of evening revelry at the extremely crowded Shades of Green gets a bit messy; Chris Lombardi is asked to stop climbing on tables, Billy Joel is asked to stop singing over the din (it took a while for me to understand that this was in fact, a jukebox, and the young woman I was berating was not actually, Billy Joel) and Joe Gaer is just asked to stop. I could tell you all kinds of stories about evil behavior on the part of your favorite underground music icons (and if you send me $10 (or sterling equiv.) c/o PO Box 20125, London W10 5WA, I still will), but shall not in this forum as there are persons under the age of 25 reading it.

David Cross is a very funny man. I loved his work on "Saturday Night Live", laughed 'til I puked at "Just Shoot Me".... oh, that's David Spade. He sucks, I hate that guy. Now David Cross, he's a fucking riot. That whole stand-on-stage-mumble-and-introduce-the-bands thing, he's a goddamned pioneer. At least I thought so until Christina made him read some lame "thanks to Apple and CDNow for all their money" speech, which practically got the poor guy booed back to Los Angeles. And what's up with all the booing? Sure, it was a lame spiel, but was anyone's enjoyment of this event really hampered by the CDNow/Apple sponsorship? I mean, other than the kid on the tricycle who was crushed to death by the remote truck.

My personal highlight of the weekend was meeting the one and only Randy Costanza, a one man treasure trove of information and inspiration. Randy claims that Bruno Sammartino was his uncle, which is insanely cool, until you realize that makes David Sammartino his cousin. That isn't so cool.

The musical embarrassment of riches continues: Bardo Pond simulate the end/birth of the planet in unmeasured doses. Come remind us once again that their body of work and virtuosity cannot be taken for granted, not if you want to pretend you know anything about music. The Solex trio specialize in making something very hard sound and look very easy --- mental stimulation shouldn't be this much fun, and usually isn't. Mary Timony gave us a preview of what to expect from her solo debut --- and if this set was anything to go by, her finest recorded moments are in the offing. I'm not sure where the offing is located, but probably in the "T" miscellanious bin, or maybe filed under "Helium." Yo La Tengo, with special guests Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen and Roy Campbell, were a revelation, an inventive twist or 2 on songs we thought we knew pretty well, plus some terrific new material from the upcoming album.

You've probably heard or read a thing or 2 about Yo La Tengo's encore of "Slack Motherfucker" which featured Chris and myself being roasted in brutal fashion by Jon Spencer and "Brett fucking Guerwitz" aka Rob Kennedy of the Workdogs. Yo La Tengo have gone to great lengths to assure me that this stunt had nothing to do with them and was all Jon Spencer's idea. Maybe so, but I didn't see them throwing their instruments down and stomping offstage in protest. Accessories to a crime end up being punished, that's all I have to say about this "we didn't know what he was gonna do" claptrap. And as for Jon.... yeah, really hilarious. First of all, my Pottery Barn gift certificate wasn't even real. And a lap dancer for Chris Lombardi, what an enlightened idea in this day and age. What better way to celebrate the legacy and ideals of a label with so many talented female artists and staff members than by hiring a female stripper? But that's OK, I'm sure everyone realizes this little prank was meant to be in jest and I would like to implore all the artists who tore up their contracts and staff members who resigned at the end of the evening to reconsider (it was all Jon Spencer's idea, we swear to god).

In the aftermath of this incredibly humiliating episode, I forgot that I had 6 hotel rooms at the Chinatown Holiday Inn, and we all ended up back at Shades of Green. I was too busy apologizing for the lap dance incident to notice anything particularly scandalous. Sorry.

All said, this was a chaotic, though spiritually rewarding weekend. Thanks very much to all of you who performed or attended or helped out or just hung around outside trying to scam your way in. We could've done it without you, but not very well.

Special thanks should go to the following who went above and beyond ala Bob Beamon: Kris Gillespie for his supervision of all production/gig disasters, Christina Zafiris, for finagling all the sponsorship loot and making sure this event was publicized up the kazoo, Jesper Eklow for coming up with the whole "everything is nice" concept and making sure the products in question actually existed, Mark Ohe for making it all look pretty, Jackie Farry, for running the stage the way U.S. Grant ran the Union Army, Nicole Harper for finding all the invisible hotel rooms, CDNow and College.Com for paying for the webcast, Apple for manufacturing a graphite iMac (about fucking time), Bill Ryan for moving the units, David Cross for letting us soak up the glamour, Irving Plaza for letting us soak up their very expensive drinks, and Jim Romeo for being so goddamned helpful.