LUNA Tour Diary - 3/21/01

March 21, 2001

Next week Luna are going in to the recording studio to begin work on our next studio LP. We will be doing the basic tracks at Jolly Roger Studios in Hoboken, with Gene Holder (formerly of the DB’s). The record will be mixed by Dave Fridmann of Mercury Rev.

Lately we’ve been doing alot of weekend shows. I wrote a little piece for Time Out New York giving my impressions of the first three weekends. The first weekend in February we played the Knitting Factory NY. We did a show there with Joyzipper, who are from Long Island, and are very compelling. They are going to be supporting us at the Bowery Ballroom next weekend.

Then we played the Trocadero in Philadelphia and the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. (where some of our live album was recorded). I had a beautiful hotel room in Philadelphia. In fact it was a suite, and they gave me a free box of chocolates when they came to “turn down the bed”. The bad news is that Sean lost his Millenium Overdrive pedal. We were in DC the same weekend as the NBA allstar game. It was nutty. I think that the pro basketball world just as sick as the world of rock music. Our webmaster lives near Washington D.C. and he came to the show with his fiance. I hope he knows what he’s doing.

The following weekend we did two shows in Chicago. A bitterly cold weekend, even by Chicago standards. We flew American Airlines. We stayed at the Allegro hotel, sort of the new rock hotel, with the very worst music playing in the lobby, but free heart-shaped chocolate candies at the front desk. Friday night Lee performed with a fever of 102. What a trooper. He refused to play Freakin and Peakin though, and who can blame him. He almost fainted in the middle of Friendly Advice. It was a rowdy audience and we did several encores. Saturday morning I was feeling a little ill myself. I wanted to go to the movies, but instead we had scheduled an instore at Tower Records. They
had made a big poster of yours truly which we all performed in front of, except Lee who stayed in his hotel room watching a stupid movie.

Los Angeles. Just managed to get out of NY before the snowstorm hit. On the plane I saw a couple of people fumbling around under a blanket, who then disappeared to the bathroom together. They seemed to be having too much fun. The new Knitting Factory in L.A. is very swanky, and we stayed across the street at the Hollywood Roosevelt. They have a pool that was painted by David Hockney, but then destroyed by a film crew who decided to “clean” it. I was in a crummy mood for this show, but you’re allowed to be moody when you’re a singer.

On the flight to San Francisco I listened to a new Elvis Presley CD I had recently bought: “Burning Love”, which is one of those special RCA things “never before heard in this order”, but a good compilation of mostly live tracks from the 70’s, when Elvis had a fantastic band led by guitarist James Burton.

At the Fillmore in San Francisco we played an extra long show, because the tickets were expensive. My good friends Angel Corpus Christi and Rich Stim were at the show. They are lovely people. I recently did a 7” single with Angel, but good luck finding it, as it’s in an edition of 200. That’s something to get annoyed about. People have been sending angry emails to fuzzywuzzy.com complaining about how we put 4 bonus tracks on the vinyl version of our live album. Like I’m putting a gun to their heads telling them to buy it. Some people demand that we put the bonus tracks on our website for free download. Maybe they should buy a record player instead. Vinyl sounds way better than MP3’s do. We got up at 7am Sunday morning to catch an early flight, listening to Elvis on the drive to the airport. Unfortunately I left my damn CD in the rental van’s CD player.

Athens, GA. It’s always nice to visit Athens. I bought a nice old Gibson GA5T amplifier at Athens Music, from the early 60’s it is, and it sounds lovely. Sean bought an old Silvertone guitar, and played it the next night in Atlanta, but it fell off the strap during “4th of July.” Lots and lots of people in Atlanta - we played the Variety. The last time we were there was in about 1993, opening for the Sundays. I remember taking ecstasy after the show and going to a stupid dance club. Tonight was much more fun. We went to a nice party. I saw my old friend John Beers of the Happy Flowers. They were a special band who did songs from the point of view of little children. There were two members: Mr. Anus, and Horribly Charred Infant. The next morning we took an early flight back to NY to avoid what was being called the storm of the century. In fact New York City received less than an inch of snow, and the meteorologists were humiliated.