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Contents: 1- Welcome - Special J
Welcome to the Five Nights of Fury Postmortem edition of the 2 Skinnee J's Newsletter, official organ of the 2 Skinnee J's newswire. It's hard to believe that it's been over a month since we finished our first tour in 2 years. It seemed like it lasted both a lifetime and the blink of an eye. Over the course of 6 days we saw a stream of friends and faces from 12 years of touring (and even a few newborns, supposedly a result of our drunken excess - though Eyeball denies them all) with fans and family traveling from all over our country to join us for the good times. We rocked the shores from New York to North Cackalacka and all spots in between. To those who jumped, screamed and partied with us on those nights of fury, read on and relive the glory. For those that didn't, the words below may be of some solace. Until next time, Special J -- THE STUMPY REPORT -- I.S.L.S. It rolls off the tongue like sulfuric acid, destroying everything and wrecking the taste. Ladies and gentlemen, the taste is back. Its name is The 2 Skinnee J's and, from most accounts, it tastes kind of like sardines. Sardines have never been more delicious. Thanks to all of you, a half dozen men who prefer not to wear underwear when performing live onstage will live to perform semi-nude again. Their desperate plea for your life-giving antibodies to counteract ISLS answered in a triumphant tour before throngs of well-wishers from all over the globe is a triumph in which we all should share. According to the contract, my cut is 80%. We had a blast seeing all of you again and meeting those of you who came to a show for the first-and possibly last-time. Being reminded that so many of you cared enough to travel any distance to save these guys' lives and then pay my exorbitant ticket prices is simply amazing. I know I speak for all of the J's when I say that we were awestruck by the show of support and love we all received on that short tour and it is something we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. I keep mine folded up in a greasy napkin in my wallet. That said, there is still the sobering fact that these guys are in I.S.L.S. remission and the disease and its symptoms can rear its ugly head at any time. If it does, we will need to call on your precious antibodies yet again -- probably in a dark, damp, beer-stained hole with a stage and some amps. I know we can count on you?? Postscript: Since this writing, I have again encountered the Coney Island Whitefish cruising the shores of Brooklyn. I regret to say that my failure to capture it has cost several Coney Island lives and will undoubtedly take many more. My battle of Man vs. Whitefish continues. I must triumph. -- Temporary Relief From I.S.L.S.!!!!!!** --
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. On July 18, 2003, 1600 fans from across the nation poured into NYC's B.B. Kings Blues Club to send up a riotous farewell to one of the best live bands of all time, the legendary 2 Skinnee J's. That night, the J's jumped through 36 songs during an epic show that spanned three sets and 2 1/2 hours. Now you can re-experience the sweaty rock lava flow that was 2 Skinnee J's through these two must have offerings from one of your favorite bands. The 3 disc cd set, recorded that evening and mixed by the J's live audio engineer Ray Amico, documents every blistering minute of that epic goodbye. The set features a rainbow of songs from live standards like Irresistible Force and Riot Nrrrrd to rare gems like Skylab and Coming Home, and also includes 4 unreleased bonus tracks - 2 outtakes from Volumizer and a medley of Old Skool Skinnee classics like Periscope, Evel Knievel and 2 Dimensional. The DVD, Next Big Thing: The 718 Farewell Extravaganza does more than just chronicle the final show. It also gives a touching history of 2SJ's place in the rock and roll landscape of the 90's and 00's interspersing the electric performance with ancient footage of a decade of rock and interviews by the band and fans. Look hard enough and you might even see yourself! Also included is the award-winning 20 minute documentary, What Went Wrong?: The 2 Skinnee J's Story, which follows our star-crossed celebrity boyfriend wanna-be's as they trip their way across the country and into your hearts. Trust us, after you laugh your ass off, your backside will be floating in a pool of your own tears. The DVD and CD are only $20 apiece and are now available online so get to 2SJ.COM and make your skinnee fantasies real again. And remember. We miss you. **Please remember, while there is no cure for I.S.L.E.S., it can be controlled. Regular viewing and listening to these two products can help get you back on your feet and on your way to living an almost normal life. -- J GUEVARA TELLS ALL -- Here we go on the road
Except that there's so much more to know. Like this is the first time in almost 2 years - 2 years, in my case, spent yelling at teenagers to put away that cell phone and write three sentences in the second conditional. ("I swear to god, Gemma, if you roll your eyes at me like that again, you will spend the rest of the fucking year in the front of the class." Did I really just swear at a 14 year-old girl?) 2 years of post-rock star life in another country have flown by, leaving scars. It starts to get hot in Barcelona by late April. By the end of June, it's scorching. Today, the sun is hiding behind a thick layer of clouds that trap its heat in the city. The air feels like soup. I'm sitting outside the Canadian consulate, dripping like a leaky faucet. Goddam! Actually, I'm impressed by the consulate. It's a very elegant house in the diplomatic neighborhood that rises on a mountain above the city, all white walls and flowering trees. I figured Canada, maybe we'd get a broom closet in an office building downtown. I'm here. My plane to North America (via Frankfurt, Germany) is in North America, or Frankfurt, or wherever planes go once they leave the gate and you're not on them. 2 weeks before the big reunion and I'm stuck in Spain. Fuck. It's a long, tragic tale of expired passports, dual citizenship and slow moving bureaucracy. I've made panicked calls to various government agencies and Skinnee J's, and now I'm waiting to be issued an emergency passport so I can go relive some rock and roll glory. The Catalan, the natives of Barcelona and the surrounding province, aren't particularly friendly. Tank-like old women elbow you out of the way in supermarkets while their hot grand-daughters coldly stare you down through rectangular glasses. It is a region that is fiercely proud of its differences from the Spanish oppressors that rule with an iron fist from Madrid. Never mind that people party in the streets all summer long, smoking hash on benches and dancing naked on the beaches till dawn. We're in occupied territory, and don't you dare forget it. The symbol of Spain is a bull, testicles and everything, all macho exuberance. Catalunya's is a donkey. Which makes the demeanor of the woman in the consulate all the more surprising. The young Catalan running the Canadian bureaucracy for this corner of the Mediterranean is calm, pleasant and eagerly helpful. I'm not sure if she's as cute as I'm imagining, or my desperate situation has stirred some sort of Stockholm syndrome. In any case, within half an hour I leave with the piece of paper that will get me to America! Well, Canada, but that's the first step. Meanwhile, actual work is being done in New York to prepare for this monumental occasion. Five nights of Fury! Promoters are being contacted, T-shirts are being designed, DVD's are being edited. Yeah, yeah. All I know is I can squeeze in a couple more hours at the beach now. Woo hoo! Flights are flown (three of them) and I land in Ottawa, Canada after twenty hours, grinning from ear to ear at my mother who I haven't seen since she visited me in Spain a year ago. I'm there for a couple of days to sleep off the jet-lag, then I hop on a bus to New York City. I travel the day four bombs explode in London, killing over 50 people. I won't find out about this until I arrive in Brooklyn. Fortunately, the news doesn't seem to have reached the US border where I'm entering on a British passport. The border guard, despite the official dickhead haircut - the flat top that's a little longer at the back and slopes down towards the neanderthal forehead - and fascist moustache, is friendly, chatty, and I'm through in minutes, free to violate American labor laws at will. First lesson of the summer: Barcelona doesn't hold a candle to New York when it comes to summer heat. I'm staying in Brooklyn and the city is like a damp oven. The whole country is in the grip of insane heat and humidity that allows you to drink the air, while back in Spain, they are suffering from the most severe drought on record. Yay, global warming. Soon, my mother's house in Canada will be tropical beach front property. The first couple of days are spent reconnecting with people and the city. I'm staying at my old place where my room mate now lives alone in palatial conditions unheard of in the city to all but the wealthiest. The dumb luck of having taken over a lease in Williamsburg when wild dogs still roamed the streets has paid off, now that enough white people have moved into the area to make it cool. I go to Joel's work in Mid-town Manhattan for lunch. Though he hardly cuts a corporate figure in with his long hair and jeans, he is now a manager at a car rental company, with his own office and underlings. We bond over Mexican food, day jobs and ageing. I meet Eddie in Brooklyn where he regales me with stories about tropical fashion shoots and uptight hipster rock bands. Our first rehearsal is in a studio on Long Island. Lance, Eddie, Joel and I drive out to meet Mikey. Steve can't make it in from California, where, depending on who you believe, he is working as a mortgage loan officer, a film soundtrack composer, a dog catcher or Tibetan monk. Filling in for him will be Spencer, a man whose career we've followed and admired through a myriad of incarnations, from Rustic Overtones to the current As Fast As. They've just gotten signed and hopefully for them, they will follow in the path of the many bands that have opened for us on their way to pop cultural dominance. Today, however, he's still in Portland, so it's up to the five of us to rock this first rehearsal. Correction: my first rehearsal. They have gotten together previously, while my contribution to the effort has been to listen to tracks on my ipod, stating to myself "Oh yeah, I know this." Except, in some cases, I don't. 718! How the hell could I forget the words to 718? Yet, when it comes to my verse, I stammer :"It's the hot chocolate kid..." then grin idiotically at the rest of the guys. This happens again in 3 minutes, where I somehow know all of Joel's lines, yet none of my own. Despite these flaws, the rehearsal goes pretty well and is a lot of fun. Joel unveils the outfits for the tour designed by his (allegedly soon to be wife) Joy. My first thought is "gay mariachi band", though I will later change this to "Bollywood pop stars." Either way, they look incredible and continue the tradition from fake arm muscles and wrestling gear to red bodysuits and gold helmets. I'm taking advantage of my time in New York to get fat. I am pigging out on the greasy Chinese food, pastrami and jumbo sized hamburgers that are denied me in Spain. Seriously, a Spanish hamburger is a sad little pork patty served on a plate with a fork! Now, despite my bar mitzva, I'm all for pork. You may have seen me in harder times on the side of the road holding up the cardboard sign: "Will work for Bacon." That was me, and I'm proud of it, but if a burger isn't a bleeding slab of cow, then it's just a hamburguesa, and that is no substitute. Question: Has the convertible Mini-Cooper supplanted the Mazda Miata as the gayest of cars? Joel, now managing a car rental company, has a fleet of automotive power at his disposal and picks and chooses makes and marks at will, depending on the occasion. This occasion is our second rehearsal, and clearly, a small roofless sports car is needed. Thus, Joel, Eddie, myself and Spencer, who has arrived from Maine for the week, all pack into the tiny little toy, top down, and head back to Long Island. There is a change of venue. Mikey B's mom is moving, and has kindly let us use the living room of the B's childhood home to rehearse. We spend the rest of the week sweating away in the suburban bungalow, as a set coalesces. Steak, Indian food and lots of beer are consumed as we hammer out the tunes. Only when teaching someone the arrangement to Sgt. Stiletto do we wonder whether maybe we overwrote it in the first place. Regardless, Spencer is a shockingly fast learner, assimilating the music with ease. By the end of the week, we have reached a state of rock-and-roll-like readiness, with a couple of extra touches like a prolonged piano solo in Who Wants This and an extended intro to BBQ, recreated the original ACDC piece in all its glory. Best of all, Stumpy learns We Are the Champions and will perform it every night. It never stops being funny. We are as close to ready as possible before we take the stage on Sunday at Chi-chi's on Coney Island. Coney Island is the beach in Brooklyn. It is famed for hot dogs, sailors, circus freaks and an old amusement park with a creaking roller coaster called the Cyclone. The seedy appeal of the place is undeniable. The heavy clouds, rain and dense fog bank that dominate Sunday are unfortunate, more so because they do nothing to relieve the oppressive heat and humidity. The club is right on the boardwalk that is home to vendors hawking tacky New York and beach souvenirs, a variety of deep fried food, and some shady games, like shooting a guy with a paintball gun. (Worst summer job ever?) The fog, however, is so thick that you can barely see the sand on the beach, and the water is just a rumor. The intermittent rain, along with errant piles of dog shit, keep us off the roof of the building, where our party was going to be. Some people have already shown up, from South Carolina, Florida, milling about the bar and terrace, drinking beer and chatting. It's like the high school reunion I never went to as familiar smiling faces come up to talk and offer drinks. We get on stage to run through sound check. The club is virtually empty, there are no stage lights turned on yet, and I'm barely moving. Despite all this, drops of sweat are already dripping from my chin. This does not bode well. As we play some music, adjusting monitor levels and all the fun that goes along with sound check, a seventy-five-year-old man with a handlebar moustache and about two thirds of his teeth enthusiastically runs thorough a dance routine of Elvis-does-karate punches and kicks. Amazing. The place fills up and we take to the stage for our first show. The heat is incredible. Fortunately, the energy from the crowd is stronger, and fortifies us as we lose eighty percent of our bodily fluids over the course of the next hour and a half. Gasping for what little warm oxygen there is in the place, we bang through the set as the audience sings and jumps along with us. Everyone is grinning and sweaty. Monday - the cruise. We've done these before and they are always a blast. In the past, we've crammed 300 people onto the jalopy of the sea and jumped around as the crowd pitches back and forth under the influence of the waves and the drinks. This time, we've upgraded to a bigger and nicer boat. People have gotten married on this one, I'm sure. It's docked on the west side of mid-town Manhattan next to an aircraft carrier that dwarfs it. As always, no stage, just a designated band area where we erect instruments. Tucked under the mezzanine level, it is the hottest place on the boat. Joel rightly calls attention to this and fans are purchased. More sound checking, and we're off. More crowds, more familiar faces (in fact, many of the same ones), more lurching and jumping, as the New York city skyline drifts past. After the cruise, we head downtown to a bar for an after-party. I'm not sure who picked the King's Head Tavern, though I'm blaming Johnny Big Wheel (aka Dr. Vivian Herkelsberg), but we get there and it is closed. This being New York, there is an open bar across the street, Beauty Bar, where we pile in and will later stagger out of. Tuesday is tour preparedness day. When we were a well-oiled touring machine, we would invariably leave the city no earlier than three hours behind schedule. Today, three hours behind schedule, the away party is still driving towards the RV rental agency. The plan was a simple one: Pick up two RVs in New Jersey, just outside the city, come back to Brooklyn, grab everyone and go. Everyone, but they way, is a lot of people, hence the two RVs: beyond the seven of us on stage, we are bringing girlfriends, Travis, our soundman, Kevin, Lee and Brad, our techs, Erica and Sam, our merch girls, Anthony and Rich, our film crew, (that's right, our film crew) and B.A. our friend of I Can't Hear You and One Summer video fame, whose traveling gear seems limited to roller skates and a monkey suit. Things go awry when the city that the RV place in New Jersey is just outside of turns out to be Philadelphia. Fortunately, we have an extra day to get to Raleigh, and by 10 pm, I'm hailing a cab to take me, my suitcase and our stage outfits over to Eyeball's where I get into the waiting RV. We drive down the highway, Mikey and I trying to sleep in the back. The suspension is such that every time we hit a bump, and there are many, we become airborne for seconds at a time. My spine is still thanking me. At least the air conditioning works. In the other vehicle, it doesn't, and the passengers emerge from it at every gas stop slightly shriveled. In Raleigh, we play with Squeezetoy, a local band we've known for years. Eddie and Steve produced a recording of theirs a couple of years ago. In the interim, they've done a USO tour in Iraq, playing for soldiers in between running from bombs. I discover that B.A. has also brought water pistols. Now there's a girl who knows how to pack. Much of the trip will be spent ducking her terrorist attacks. (She hates our freedom.) The show is sold out, with hopeful fans waiting outside for a chance to get in once all the tickets are gone. The outpouring of enthusiasm is overwhelming. I have terrible luck with sunglasses. I once bought a pair and broke them before I made it home. Knowing this, I went on the road with 3 pairs. I leave one back stage at the Lincoln Theatre. (A pair of black aviators in case anyone's found them.) The Norva, in Norfolk, Virginia (hence the clever name) has the best back stage area of any club we have ever played. It is nicer than any place I have lived, including my parents' home. We never had a hot tub, sauna, leather sofas, satellite tv or arcade games in my parent's home, so there really is no competition. Did I mention the hot tub? Granted, with the number of bands that go through the place, it's got to be as sanitary as a Cape Town bordello, but still - a hot tub! B.A. is on the warpath, escalating to water balloons. After choosing my cool pre-show outfit, I get one stuffed down my back and burst. I must run across the street to change to a slightly less cool pre-show outfit. The show is my favorite of the tour. Musically, we really gel and the performance is transcendent. While the backstage has in the past been the scene of drug-and-nudity-fuelled parties (Billy, i'm looking at you, or rather averting my eyes as you run around naked), tomorrow we must get up early and drive to Baltimore to play two shows, so the evening's festivities are relatively sedate. B.A. manages to bruise her toe without remembering how, but for me, it's back to an overly hot hotel room for a few hours of restless sleep before piling back into the RV and heading north. Our first show is an outdoor performance in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the organizers never learned the difference between left and right, and we spend the better part of an hour circling the city, following erroneous directions. Eventually, we make it to the stage and unloading can begin. We are playing a stage at the end of a street fair, where people can spend the day buying crafts from local artists. There are families with old people and kids perusing the wares, enjoying an afternoon outside. I go off to find a laundromat to wash the outfits. Baltimore exemplifies the gaping chasm of race and class in the United States perhaps more than any city on the east coast: away from the revitalized port area with its Hard Rock Cafe and Cheesecake Factory, the city seems to be mostly depressed, run down and black. I find a place in a concrete wasteland where the urban poor congregate to clean their clothes. The attendant is impressed by the design of the outfits, and asks if I made them myself. I explain, put them in a machine, then sit outside to bake in the hot July sun. We get onstage in front of a thinly scattered crowd. There are some people here to see us, some just wandering the street. It is bright, sunny and hot. This is our least preferred atmosphere for rock and roll, playing to the infinite blue that absorbs energy like a sponge. It should be dark and crowded. We've done these kinds of shows before, but we're rusty. Whereas this week has been full of gigs to the faithful, this one confronts us with something to prove. I am put off, and it takes me half the set to get into the groove. It ends up going over well, with the festival staff who hadn't heard of us before clamoring for merch and autographs. I leave a second pair of sunglasses on stage. (White plastic ones, in case anyone's found them.) We're hungry, and set off to the food tent to eat. Sadly, there isn't enough time, and we must pack up and leave to Sonar, the club gig we're playing at night. More sound check fun, less food. As time drags on, we turn into a group of cranky preschoolers (or is it just me?) whining for dinner. Finally, Chinese food is ordered, delivered and devoured. Once again, we are happy adults, ready to rock, though the shrimp and garlic sauce weighs me down a little. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is very funny. Somehow, it takes us the entire length of the movie to drive from Baltimore to Washington DC, about 30 miles away. Fine by me, though. I'm too busy laughing to care. Our last stop is at the 9:30 club, my favorite place to play. Our past shows there have been among my favorite ever. There is something about the room that is conducive to rocking your fucking ass off. From the staff to the stage itself, everything is rocktacular. Tonight, however, there is a sadness as it is the end of our little trek. The show is good, the audience incredible, but I'm oddly detached. Afterwards, we head to the hotel. I have to catch a train in the morning down to North Carolina to visit family. It's the first time I've been in the country in almost two years, so my personal tour will take me back up and down the coast, catching up with friends and family in the myriad of places I have called home over the past 15 years, before heading back to the latest one, an ocean away. Sometimes, it seems so far away, I can't face it. J Guevara
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