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Boston Gee Party

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:41:12 -0700

It’s been a long time between entries on this page, but Diamondville Tom has been very busy doing nothing, and doing it as well as he can.
So imagine our surprise when we were asked to help celebrate the 4th of July with a couple of hundred thousand people in Boston. Like many of you, we’ve seen this show for years, but it’s a bit different to be part of it.

NARAS My Gosh to Thee

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:28:40 -0800

The Diamondville touring year consisted of 82 shows, the same as the number of games played by an NBA team during their season. Our appearances during Grammy week would therefore correspond to the playoffs, and the band played itself off quite nicely.
Friday night, February 6, our vocalist was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year, and the charity event surrounding that award was amazingly successful in an economy still reeling from the Bush years.
The 1956 Thunderbird which the band had given to our leader so many years ago, was auctioned off for Musicares, with the opening bid set at $50,000. Some band members suggested that we buy it again and give it back to the Principal, making it officially an albatross. Cooler heads prevailed, particularly when it was noted that the auto’s value had appreciated over the years to far more than we had paid for it. In fact, Musicares head guy Neil Portnow won the bidding at $75,000, and we are happy to report that Portnow paid without a complaint.
The audience for the Musicares show was an impressing collection of notables. I saw Pat Boone arriving and reminded him that we had worked together once, exactly 50 years ago. He reminded me that HE was the artist who boosted our vocalist’s confidence when he recorded “Ten Lonely Guys.” In fact, he had been asked by an interviewer on the red carpet to name his favorite Neil Diamond song, and he naturally replied “Ten Lonely Guys,” causing the channel 11 reporter to say “Wha...?”
At the front table sat our host for the evening, Jimmy Kimmel, and his lady pal Sarah Silverman. Press reports had them described as on the outs, but we witnessed enough kanoodling during “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” to make us suspect that her video about having intimate relations with Matt Damon was more of an artistic statement than a literal one.
The lineup of contemporary artists performing our setlist was impressive, and they all did justice to the material, in some cases giving our Muzoids some ideas about little things we could do add some pizazz to our versions.
The house band did a bang-up job of accompanying everybody. It was made up of studio veterans who’ve played behind everybody over the years, and since our Muzoids have been in that same position over the years, they could identify with their tasks and appreciate their achievements.
Thus, there were those occasional moments when we would say, “Hey, that’s not RIGHT—well, maybe it’s okay after all. You know, that’s actually a good idea!”
Kid Rock’s version of “Thank the Lord for the Nighttime” was an eye-opener, with all the Muzoids expressing admiration for his treatment of the chorus, and mulling a similar approach in our future. Less likely would be our incorporating elements of Terence Blanchard and Cassandra Wilson’s version of “September Morn” into our set, but then, one never knows.
The Foo Fighters drew approval for arriving with their approach to “Delirious Love” fully thought-out and operational. Coldplay, on the other hand, seemed to be learning “I’m a Believer” during their rehearsal. Still, their frat-house jam version really worked for that song.
Jennifer Hudson seemed not to grasp the section of “Holly Holy” where it goes to the A chord, continuing to sing in the key of E until the notes began not working. At that point she would go into a vocalese section that was so brilliant that any flaws were forgotten. We’re still not sure whether she did that on purpose or it was just a lucky accident, but it’s safe to say that she KILLED.
A video clip of ND relating the story of his accidental inclusion of Los Volcanes in the show was priceless and perfectly-timed, and their performance did not disappoint. Larry the K had to contain himself from joining in on air accordion.
Faith Hill sang “Flowers” with our fella, and during rehearsal she pointed out “I’ve never danced with anyone but my husband and my brothers.” Thankfully, she did not tell our vocalist, “and YOU are NOT my BROTHAH!”
Two days later, we all reconvened at Staples, confined to a small food-deprived suite upstairs overlooking the back of the stage for 8 or 9 hours
We watched the first few hours of the show in our room, trying to reconcile the puny TV sound with the bass-trap thunder rolling up from below. Some highlights snuck through the rumble: Sugarland, whose performance grabbed the ear of even hard-core rappers; and, once again, Jennifer Hudson, whose pipes were enhanced by a big gospel choir. The choir had occupied the rooms adjacent to ours, and at one point a trip to the men’s room meant walking through their midst while they rehearsed, resulting in the best stereo effect I’ve heard in years.
A mid-afternoon meal was served, and we learned that our Muzoids are not the only ones who can lay waste to a spread. Back to waiting.
Finally we were summoned to play our three minutes of Sweet Caroline.
And yes, it was sweet to look out at the front rows of the audience and see Paul McCartney and Jay Z smiling and clapping and singing along at that irresistible song.
When we finished, there was still some show left to go, so we were able to fly under the radar out the door and onto the freeway and home to see the show again in the comfort of our own sofas.
And that’s it for a year at the top. See you whenever.

Party On, Party Off

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:58:54 -0800

We’ve wrapped up our touring work now and scattered to the winds, heading for home, wherever that may be.
The last night of the tour was a wonderful wrapup, up to a point. The presentation of our little guitar gift for the vocalist went perfectly. The show was wonderful, the audience was super—we loved all those “Thank You” signs—and Portland is one of my favorite cities to visit. We squeezed in a visit to the museum and a dinner at one of the city’s many fine restaurants (thank you, Bill and Lois). The restaurant was called Wildwood, but why they named it after a town in New Jersey remains a mystery to me.
And then there was our last-night party at the hotel. Actually, it’s a fine little boutique hotel, beautifully decorated, and the rooms are lovely and comfortable (if tiny), and the employees are smart and friendly and helpful. The same could not be said, however, of the management. Our last night there was a lot like an episode of Fawlty Towers, the wonderful British series starring John Cleese. This episode would have been titled “Basil Poops the Party.”
The management had been advised that we would have guests coming in after our last show and that they should keep the bar open late to accommodate a bit of a party atmosphere. So, the bar’s manager (read “Basil Fawlty”) closed off the bar for a “private party,” a party which was so exclusive that no one at all could enter. One by one, all of our band members were kept out, rather brusquely, by someone who was obviously waiting for some murky vision of our vocalist and a bevy of supermodels and world leaders to appear. (An analogy: I’m sorry, we can’t allow any trees here, we have to save room for the forest.)
All of our people, meanwhile, piled up in an adjoining lounge, where no food or drinks were being served, while the entire bar area stood empty the rest of the night, waiting for the partygoers who hadn’t been allowed to enter. At one point, King Errisson told a hotel official that “If I owned this place, every one of you would be fired tomorrow morning.” To make amends, someone brought King a tray of free drinks, which settled him down a bit. The rest of the room looked on admiringly, while the other Touroids began commuting back and forth to Hosty to bring down a smattering of beverages, trying to keep the evening from turning into the Donner Party.
There was a bright and entertaining waitress, alas off-duty, present—we’ll call her “Polly,” after the only person at Fawlty Towers blessed with intelligence—and she understood exactly what was going on, but couldn’t convince her superiors to do anything about it. It must have been frustrating for her, seeing what could have been a profitable evening turn into a big zero for the hotel. I hope that the evening didn’t leave such a sour taste that we never return to that hotel, because it’s a sweet little place and, in a best-case scenario, perhaps in a couple of years she will be running the place, and we can come back and finally have our little party. And our wish for the bar manager is that he finds new employment in the kitchen of Moe’s Tavern in Springfield.
We won’t mention the name of the hotel, but we renamed it the Fawlty Heathkit, because any party there party apparently requires do-it-yourself assembly. The bright side of the last night was that it served as a reminder of how wonderful it is to go home.

Canadian Addendum

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:23:17 -0800

Just as we were waving b’bye to Canada, its Parliament comes up with the best PBI material of our entire visit.
As you may have read, they’ve been having a little contretemps between their Tory Prime Minister and his opposition, and it was looking grim for the PM. And then a strange, and for our readers very amusing, thing happened.
The prospective leader of the Liberal/New Democrat coalition, Stéphane Dion, made a televised response to the PM Wednesday night and it went badly. Very badly, in fact, and it wasn’t even what he said that made it such a debacle—it was the technology used to present it.
We are not making this up: Dion had one of his aides record his speech with a digital camera on which the auto-focus button was broken. It was stuck in the locked position, and as the Toronto Star pointed out “the focus was on a bookcase behind Dion, rather than the Liberal leader himself, leaving his face slightly fuzzy.”
As an audition for running the country, it apparently fell quite short of the mark. If our video crew had been available Wednesday night, perhaps they could have stepped in and altered the course of Canadian history. But, alas, they were occupied with more important things: capturing Hadley’s guitar molestation, trying to keep up with the shaking of the Vox Squad, and following our vocalist as he rambled toward where the noise was.
And so now the Parliament has been prorogued, a word which we would have never known had it not been for this leg of our tour, proving once again that Diamondville is not only a gig, it is also a learning institution into which we have all been institutionalized.

St. Louis Greens

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:15:38 -0800

When we played in St. Louis in 2005, hometown boy Reinie Press took a group of Touroids to his favorite remembered pizza place, a hot, crowded basement joint called Rossino’s. While he enjoyed the occasion, the Eatie Gourmet had to admit that the meal just didn’t do it for him. As much as he likes local specialties, St. Louis-style pizza just wasn’t his thing. This was mainly because he had a problem with the Provel. Provel is a processed cheese which seems to be mandatory on all pizzas made in St. Louis. If you grew up eating it, you apparently regard it as a taste treat. For the E.G., who grew up a coule of hundred miles to the northeast, it was just plain weird. And the other Touroids present later confessed privately that they too were not Provelophiles.
Flash forward three years to a couple of weeks ago, when a short-memoried Touroid group set out once again for pizza. Reinie had explained to them that Rossino’s was no longer in operation. That basement was apparently a bit too hot and crowded for the fire marshal’s taste, or so he had heard. Mr. Press graciously suggested another establishment, while warning them that they probably wouldn’t like that one, either.
The E.G., to the surprise of almost everyone, stayed home. This was unexpected, Provel or no Provel. But the truth was, he was far too full from his day-off lunch to face a pizza. And here is why:
The Eatie Gourmet always does a little pre-arrival research for each tour stop, and he had turned up an interesting lead for St. Louis. It was a chili parlor called O.T. Hodge which had opened in 1904. Century-old chili sounded irresistible, so he set out at noontime to seek it out.
When the van pulled up in front of the O.T. Hodge location at Union Station, he was confronted by an empty storefront. After 104 years, Hodge chili had apparently run out of customers in St. Louis and closed its doors.
Never unprepared, the E.G. consulted his notes and asked the driver to deliver him to a nearby restaurant called Sweetie Pie’s. The driver was an African-American woman named Tina, and her face lit up as she told him, “You’re going to the right place.”
Sweetie Pie’s is the creation of a former backup singer for Ike and Tina Turner, Robbie Montgomery, and it has become a St. Louis legend for its smothered pork steak, baked chicken, ribs, Salisbury steak (main-course meats change from day to day) and sides such as mac 'n' cheese, okra, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice and gravy, or cabbage and greens. No problem there!
A few minutes later, The E.G. strolled in the door without all chili thoughts erased from his feeble mind. Sweetie Pie’s serves cafeteria style, and regular readers will know that one of the E.G.’s weaknesses is that he feels that if it looks good it should be eaten. As he moved through the line, he noted that the man and woman ahead of him were displaying a lot of enthusiasm, and they urged him to try the macaroni and cheese—they’d seen it on the Food Channel, where they heard it described as the best in the U.S.A.
So the E.G. added one more item to his already groaning tray, and he soon joined the couple who’d been in line ahead of him at their table. Their names were John and Chastity, they were from Troy, Missouri, and they’d come down to St. Louis on John’s Harley to visit this shrine of Road Food.
During lunch, the E.G. learned that his new pals had played in a bar band for 17 years, John on guitar and Chastity singing, and their kids were aspiring musicians too. They were big fans of the Road Food show on the Food Channel and the E.G. made a mental note to adjust his perception of the typical Food Channel viewer.
The E.G. ate everything on his plate, except for a final bite of mac ‘n’ cheese. He left it in favor of finishing his cabbage. It made him virtuous to say he’d had a plate of cabbage, although it might have more accurately been described as a plate of ham and bacon drippings and butter with some cabbage mixed in.
A word on the subject of accurate nomenclature: If the place had been called “Slim ‘n’ Trim” or “Light Bite” it would have been the worst case of false advertising since Fox News began calling, itself “fair and balanced.” But, billed as Sweetie Pie’s it was exactly what you expected and plenty of it. The E.G. ate and ate and and even found room for a little piece of peach cobbler, and finally he went back to his hotel, where he accomplished the unprecedented feat of amazing his fellow Touroids by actually declining a pizza outing.
And that is the story behind that story.