As you may have surmised, all of this diary to date has been written by me (Steve), but, much to the relief of everyone, especially me, we have a guest diarist today, Mr. Jeffrey Oliphant, drummer of the band. When it came time to recount our opening gig for the Sundays in Minneapolis, I was completely oblivious to their subterfuge so there was no one better to tell the story than Jeff. A little backgrounder before I hand it over: In order to do this gig, we had to drive 5 hours from Milwaukee to Mpls, then 6 hours back the next day to Chicago. 742 miles. For $500. All for this…
Anyway, take it away, Chuckie Fume! “It was 1990… The Dipper was on a long tour when we arrived in Minneapolis. We were opening up for the English band “The Sundays” at 7th Street Entry. Well!! When we arrived, not only were we banned from the dressing room, but they gave us zero room on stage, so Bill had to stand off the stage in the crowd when performing. That this point Gary and I decided that no band, especially an English band that was pulling the old “we look down on opening bands bullshit” was going to get away with this behavior! So… During our set, the Sunday’s bass drum was right behind me, and every time I finished a beer, I placed it in his kick drum. Gary turned every knob on the front line equipment: bass amps, guitar, amps, and assorted foot pedals. After our set, we had to break down our equipment on the street. Gary and I went back into the club to see the expressions of the band when they broke into song. Well, the looks on their faces were looks of horror and confusion! We chuckled, left the club and it was on to the next city. Lesson from this! Be humble, and never fuck with the hard-working Dipper!!!!!”
After yesterday’s misadventure, we are exhausted and back on the road heading east to Chicago, very excited to be playing at Lounge Ax tonight. Chicago is another haven for us, a place to get well, and the Saturday night slot with the Sneetches promises a good crowd and the smiling face of Sue Miller greeting us at the bar. We’ve played Chicago more than anyplace else in the Midwest, usually at clubs that she booked, and Sue is the rare owner who makes you feel like she’s inviting you into her home, rather than just a club. In addition to Sue, we’ve got family here as it seems like half of our Lawrence people have graduated KU and moved to Chicagoland. At least some of us are staying with John Henderson, and Chris Hayes and Tony Marlotti are here, making it feel like a reunion. We arrive on North Lincoln late afternoon and, miraculously, find a parking spot big enough for the RV right in front of the Biograph, shades of Lost in America. We meet the local CBS rep, Andy, and we hit some record shops and do an interview at WNUR before soundcheck. At this point, we’re all keenly aware that the record is most definitely not ‘taking off’ so we are no longer stressed about pressing the flesh and doing every promo opportunity. Instead, we’re playing out the string and just looking forward to getting home and regrouping. The last few time in Chicago, we played at the Cubby Bear, which was nice but a little too ‘Wrigleyville’ (if you know what I mean) to be a serious music club, but Sue’s new place in Lincoln Park is heaven for bands, with a great sound system and plenty of places to relax. All the stress of the previous week melts away as we play some pool and flirt with Ms. Miller. Ever since our first trip to the city, we’ve recognized it as a great place for authentic Mexican food, and we check out a nearby taqueria for dinner. The gig is great and we do the Lounge Ax photo booth thing that all the bands are invited to do. On my turn in the booth, I managed to time spilling a cup of ice water over my head just as the camera flashes. The water is refreshing on a humid night, reviving my mood like the gig has restored my faith in the band, at least for one night. Tomorrow: A fantastic, baseball-themed day off in the Windless City.
The day after the Lounge Ax show, we all congregated at John Henderson’s house, like we had when he was a student in Lawrence, to take part in a softball game and then a barbecue but Jim and I had a different plan. The White Sox were playing the Orioles in the last season at Comiskey and so we ditched the softball game and got on the subway down to the South Side. We tried to get Jeff and Gary to join us (Bill was not the least interested in sports) but they wanted to play in the softball game. I warned them, you haven’t played all season, you’re gonna be sore, but they wouldn’t budge.
Jim and I managed to score great seats, about 15 rows up, between home and first, and settled in for the game. In the second inning, lots of security suddenly appeared nearby and a golf cart whisked Baseball Commissioner, Fay Vincent to a front-row seat in our section, and Jim and I couldn’t have been happier. Commissioner Vincent became a bit of a folk hero to us Red Sox fans when he banned George Steinbrenner from baseball for life (later reinstated after Vincent left the office). He was definitely the last ‘cool’ commissioner and we loved him for loving baseball. For years, I had a treasured framed photo, taken by Jim and presented to me after the tour, of Fay being helped out of his golf cart, looking right into the camera at us. It was a sunny afternoon after a night of partying and so I actually fell asleep during the game, and when I awoke, the Commish was gone.
The game went extra innings with the visitors winning and, on the way out, we ran into Walt Hriniak, famous (to us) hitting coach for the Sox and Jim insisted on an autograph from the very shy coach, who reluctantly agreed. By the time we made it back to John’s house, the barbecue was in full swing. I was enjoying myself at the party but was drawn to a mysterious box in the living room, the first home computer that I had ever seen. I asked JH what it could do and he showed me how I could follow, pitch-by-pitch, the Red Sox game in Texas that night on the screen. Every time a pitch was thrown in Arlington, someone entered the result into a computer somewhere, and I could read about it a moment later in Chicago. I was amazed. In retrospect, it was really just an expensive telegraph machine but, at that point, I definitely felt like I was living in the future.
Eventually, the party broke up and Jim and I drifted off to a local dive bar that served Leinenkugels very cold and very cheap. We talked about the music business and his time in Salem 66 while we both admired a beautiful blonde gal across the bar. Years later, I bought _Exile in Guyville_ and swore I recognized Ms. Phair from her promo photos as that woman in the bar.
It was a magical day, the best of the tour (well, maybe second best), filled with friends, baseball, celebrity encounters, and topped off by some delicious beer. It’s pretty rare and wonderful to feel that at home in a city that you don’t even live in, and I put Chicago at the top of my mental list of cities that I would move to if I ever left Boston. Tomorrow: Angling for an endorsement in Battle Creek.
Sad news, dear readers: We have entered the final week of the tour! I agree! It’s just flown by! Today is Monday, and we’re heading to Kalamazoo, MI, a filler gig if there ever was one. Jeff is excited as we pass through Gary, Indiana, as he loves the look of all the industrial plants and refineries. The ugliness of all the twisted, hissing metal really speaks to him and Gary (the city, not the guitarist) is the midwest epicenter of this kind of thing. Soon, though, we pass into the more bucolic State of Michigan and we hug the shoreline of their Great Lake for a while. It’s a short drive to K’zoo and we notice in the atlas that the gig is close to Battle Creek, the home of GHS, our personal brand of guitar strings. We have Rod call the factory and tell them that we are a band full of GHS customers, out touring in support of our popular major-label album and that we’ll be in the neighborhood and would love a tour if they have the time. They happily invite us to visit and we figure, while we are there, we might as well angle for an endorsement. We get the nickel tour and then ask the guide who do we speak to about GHS endorsing the band? He introduces us to an artist relations guy and we give him our spiel. He asks for a CD and tells us that he’ll be in touch. We never did hear back from them but he did give us each a cool GHS Boomers T-shirt that we all wanted to wear that night at the gig. Jeff had skipped the tour, opting for a nap in the RV since they didn’t have anything that he could use. We promise him we’ll tour the Pro-Mark factory if we stumble across it. We’ve never been to Kalamazoo before, although we all enjoyed the Glenn Miller song, but our friends in Christmas had told us about a very cool guy they’d met at their gig there last winter, a Mr. Joseph Puleo. Michael had encouraged him to go to our show and we put him on the guest list. Joe was indeed a prince of a fellow, and it wasn’t long before he had moved to Providence and started working with bands on tour. He eventually caught on with Yo La Tengo as their tour manager and, chances are, if you’ve ever bought merch from them at a show, Joe was the one who shortchanged you. I can’t remember the name of the club there or anything about the show, but please feel free to share if you were there. Tomorrow: Ann Arbor, cuz you definitely don’t want to play in Detroit where all the people are.
I couldn’t resist: Check out Cesar Romero and Jackie Gleason in this clip. Oh, and the Nicholas Brothers!
Another short drive over to Ann Arbor for a gig at Ricks’s American Cafe tonight and another show in a college town that’s emptied out for the summer. The tour was booked by Frank Riley at High Road Touring (or more likely, by an intern assigned to handle the smaller bands) and they had their work cut out for them. It was still somewhat difficult to put together a nationwide tour for an alternative band back in the late ’80s/early ’90s, (before Tad broke triple-platinum-huge and paved the way for so many smaller bands to tour. I think it was Tad, it was one of those grunge bands, probably Tad), and when you tried to do that in the dog days of summer with little or no college radio support, you were courting disaster. It raised the question of why we weren’t playing in Detroit, though, just 45 minutes east, where St. Andrews Hall would have been a beautiful place to play. Honestly, though, the fight was out of us and we were all just hoping the tour would be over soon and we could go home. Stefan, the CBS rep for the region showed up, but there was precious little for him to do. My older sister, Elaine, and her family made the trip down from East Lansing and she brought my school-age nephews and niece to soundcheck, the first time they had seen their Uncle Steve on stage. I remember watching the kids standing at the back of the club, hands covering their ears, lasting less than one song before retreating to the quiet of the parking lot. They bought me a lovely dinner at their favorite place in Ann Arbor, and it was nice to get away from the pressure of the band for a few hours and reconnect with family. Back at the club, I hope we thought to encore with TV Eye, featuring Jeff on vocals, as a tribute to Iggy, since Ann Arbor was where he got his start in the Iguanas, but I’m at least sure we played ‘Monsters of Jazz’, the Dippah song that always felt to me like we were channeling the Stooges. Tomorrow: I launch my solo career in Columbus, Ohio.
I had no idea when we pulled into Columbus, Ohio that the gig would mark my solo debut on stage but it had been a long, strange tour and tonight was no different. Columbus always held a special place in our hearts ever since we had to cancel our first show there in 1987 when our van dropped its transmission on the Jersey Turnpike. I still remember the phone call that I had to make to the promoter at Staches and promising to make it up at some point. I think we made good finally, in February of ’89 on a bill with 11th Dream Day when both bands combined to rip the roof off the place.
This Wednesday night, however, we just wanted to put on a good show for the nice people of Ohio and get on the road for our Friday night showcase in NYC. I don’t recall anything unusual about the set but, when we finished our set and left the stage to raucous applause, I grabbed a beer from backstage and headed back out on stage for our encore. Now, I’ll freely admit that the Big Dipper was generally ‘encore whores’, and it didn’t take much more than someone coughing loudly to get us to do a curtain-call, but for some reason, I found myself alone on stage with the rest of the band nowhere to be seen. I stalled for a minute before realizing that they had no intention of joining me. I decided that, rather than disappoint the Columbians once again, I’d have some fun and so I grabbed Gary’s guitar and launched into a solo version of Neil’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’. a song that we’d been encoring with all tour. I managed to remember all the words and when it came time for the big solo, I stomped on all of the effects pedals and made a caterwauling racket instead, bringing it down for the last verse before finishing big and leaving the stage to even more applause.
I’m still not sure why the band decided not to play the encore that night but it felt to me like a turning point. The next day was a driving day, 500 miles to our hotel in New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan. It would give me a lot of time to think.
Tomorrow: Pearls of wisdom from Brad Delp and Tom Scholz.
We are somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania, on our last day off of the tour, pulled over at a rest stop so we can do some phone interviews in preparation for the final weekend of shows in NY, DC, and Baltimore. I beg off the interviews, still upset that the band wouldn’t join me on the encore last night in Columbus, and I wait in the RV, flipping through stations on the radio. I stop when I hear the opening chords to ‘Peace of Mind’ by Boston. I haven’t heard it in a decade (since I sold my copy of their debut to buy some much ‘cooler’ records) so I turn it up. “If you’re feeling kinda low ’bout the dues you’ve been payin’, future’s comin’ way too slow. And you wanna run but somehow you just keep on stayin’, can’t decide which way to go. Somewhere in that dime-store philosophy and fractured syntax, there was a message for me that resonated. Mr. Delp even understood my indecision! I was torn between trying to stay in the band and wanting to get out of the tense situation that it had become. “I don’t care if I get behind. People livin’ in competition, all I want is to have my Peace of Mind.” I had spent the last 4+ years so heavily invested in this band as my identity that it had taken me the whole tour to figure out that leaving was even an option. I believe this is what AA calls ‘a moment of clarity’ and, by the time my good friend, Brad was exhorting me to ‘Take a Look Ahead!”, I was already moving to San Francisco in my mind. (Sorry, Chicago; done with winters)
When the guys returned from the interviews, I had a big, dumb grin on my face and I felt better than I had at any moment since we left town 6 weeks earlier. A dumb rock song had helped me see what I needed to do. This was more than a feeling; I knew I had to leave it all behind, never change my mind, and, most importantly, Don’t Look Back! Tomorrow: Back in the New York Groove.
The whole tour had been leading up to the New York show but, somewhere in the West Texas plains, or San Francisco fog, or scorching Midwest valleys, we lost the thread and now we had to put on a good face for the label at our Marquee show, a New Music Seminar showcase featuring Yo La Tengo, Das Damen, The Blake Babies and us, put together by Bob Lawton, who booked (or managed) all those bands.
We had arrived at our New Jersey hotel room late on Thursday night and headed into the city early to meet with our managers, Bob and Brenda. They let us know that the ‘Impossible Things’ single, like ‘Love Barge’ before it, had done little or nothing to help us penetrate alternative or commercial radio. There was talk of releasing ‘All The Way From Memphis’ as a single but none of us were thrilled at the idea. We made vague plans for the fall but I didn’t say anything about my plan to anyone.
The meeting broke up and Gary suggested that we go to lunch, just the two of us, which I thought was a nice gesture on his part to clear the air after all the tension of the last month. We went to a place in Tribeca called ‘Nosmo King’, a clever name that took us a few minutes to figure out. Gary, suspecting something, was feeling me out and I eventually admitted that I planned to leave the band after the tour. It was a very cathartic moment for me, saying it out loud, and to Gary who had been my friend and musical companion for the last 9 years. In late 1985, he had invited me to join the practice sessions when he had finally convinced his friend, Bill to pick up the guitar again after years of painting. We’d been through a lot as pals and bandmates, and now the latter was coming to an end and we both got a little verklempt. We agreed to meet with the rest of the band when we got back to Boston and discuss how it would go down from a business standpoint, but for now, I was the lame-duck bassist and the weight was off my shoulders.
I went back to the office and filled Bob and Brenda in on the plan and they didn’t sound too surprised. Bob was looking for someone to help him book bands and he offered me a spot in his office, where I could learn the trade, and I was definitely curious. I told him I’d think about it but I was still leaning towards San Francisco. We went to the Marquee for soundcheck and that’s when I realized to my horror, that I had left my green suit in the RV, which was parked in the NJ hotel parking lot. We had left it there because of the hassles of bringing an RV through the tunnel but now I was weighing the pros and cons of trying to retrieve it. However, the NYC rush hour traffic on a Friday soon crushed my plan to wear that smelly, ugly, ill-fitting suit at every show of the tour. It had become a bit of a talisman for me, and I was bummed that I wouldn’t have its’ superpowers on the biggest night of the tour.
The show was a pre-homecoming for us, with much of our rock family there to wish us well. All the folks from the label, including Dave Gottlieb, Josh Rosenthal, and our A&R guy, Michael Caplan were there, as well as friends Kelly, Mieke, Mary, Dave, and Phil and a dozen others. Lori Blumenthal was there with Michael Cudahy, who was in town recording a new LP for IRS, and Bob Lawton had decided that Lori and Michael would be the Co-Emcees for the night and they were working out material there in the dressing room. The Blake Babies played first, with Michael and Lori ‘warming up the crowd’ of mostly industry people from across the country. Yo La Tengo was next, and I think it was one of James McNew’s first shows with them. Or maybe it was their last with the prior guy? Frankly, I’ve lost track of their bass player history and even Jesse Jarnow’s book can’t help me here.
We were up next and Michael and Lori introduced us to the packed club and we played pretty much the same songlist we’d been doing for the last two weeks. We might have thrown in another ‘Slam’ song to keep the label happy, maybe not. I felt like it was an okay set, not our best, and I blame the missing green suit for that. Das Damen ended the show, hair everywhere, and we did the traditional late-night sidewalk hangout that seemed to really define all the New York shows we played. It’s really nice to be able to say that a lot of those people are still in my life today, many through FB, sure, but some are still ‘real-life’ friends and that feels good.
Standing on that sidewalk in the pre-dawn, I thought, maybe it *would* be fun to join this scene, work with Bob, and hang out on sidewalks after gigs year-round but it was too late to do any serious thinking after what had been a long, emotional day. We went back to our hotel in Jersey and I stopped in the RV to apologize to my suit.
Tomorrow: Hey! Mr. Lincoln why the long face?
Here’s a clip from Rich Hall’s ‘Onion World’ show on HBO that was taped in NYC in April of ’90 and aired during the Seminar.
It was very painful for us to head south again when we were so close to home but, here we were, on Route 95 heading to DC for the final two shows of the tour. We had already done this drive during the first week, and learned an important lesson about traveling in an RV: They don’t let vehicles with propane tanks in the Fort McHenry Tunnel. (Did you know that? We did not) This had come as a complete surprise the first time and caused a panicked, last-minute re-routing when we figured out that the warning signs were talking about us. But now we were pros and made the turnoff onto the 895 Bypass without a second thought.
We had been in touch with our CBS/Epic/Sony label rep, Jeanine (I actually can’t remember her name but she looked like a gal I knew with that name so…) and arranged to meet at the hotel. She was new to the company but totally on top of her game. She had personally concocted a contest called ‘Impossible Things Before Breakfast’, where fans at records stores in the DC/Baltimore area could write down an impossible thing that one could do before breakfast and enter to win a prize package that included records, swag, and a gift certificate for breakfast somewhere local. It was corny but, hey, at least she was trying! It gave us the impression that there was still hope. J. kept us busy that day driving us around to records stores and radio stations before the gig and we didn’t complain at all because she had let us know early on that she was taking us to an Orioles game the next day at Memorial Stadium. She had obviously done her research on the (3/4s, anyway) band.
The show at the 930 Club with the Aquanettas opening went alright, I’m sure. We could play the set in our sleep at this point, after 6 weeks of cranking it out. I was having the most fun with the cover songs at that point, since I had vocal parts in ‘RitFW,’ ‘Handle with Care,’ and ‘Jet.’ I knew my time was running out and so I really bit into ‘Easter Eve’, realizing that the words that I thought I was writing for someone else were really for me: “Don’t forget your name, remember why you came, don’t be afraid to leave….” Tomorrow: Oh, Baltimore! The last show of the tour!
One of the goals that I set for this tour was to see as many MLB games as possible and so far I only had one notch on my souvenir mini-bat. The plans had been curtailed by a rigorous promotional schedule and the faulty fuel injection system in our RV, both conspiring to keep my free time to a minimum. But now, not only were we getting to go to an Orioles game, but the label was picking up the tab! Jeanine, our DC-area rep, was buying us all tickets to the game (well, except Bill, who probably went to a museum or something, and Rod, who didn’t care for baseball), and throwing in some cash for refreshments.
It was a Sunday afternoon game at Memorial Stadium, one of the last years before they moved to Camden Yards, and we had to walk through a residential neighborhood to get to the park. Her plan was to buy scalped tickets and then leave us at the gate to enjoy the game on our own. Of course, we ran into dozens of ticket sellers on the street and all of them promised premium seats for next to nothing. She negotiated a deal for 4 tickets ‘right behind 1st base’ and we were excited. Not surprisingly, when we finally hiked to our seats, they were in the 3rd deck, halfway back in Section 322, a little further from first base than our salesman had let on. The slope of that deck was extremely steep and every time I walked down the stairs for a beer, I felt like I was going to tumble down and land on Randy Milligan. The game was a blowout for the Twins, with the great Kirby Puckett hitting two HRs and driving in 5 runs while former Red Sox legend, Sam Horn, pinch-hitting in the 9th, homered for the hometown nine.
Our last show of the tour was at Max’s on Broadway, a club that we had played many times. Ron, the owner, loved the band and seemed to revel in losing money when we played his club. For some reason, he just adored the band and had even come to see us backstage when we opened for the Mighty Lemon Drops a few months early at a rival Baltimore club and invited us back to his club for drinks afterward. He was the rare club owner who lifted your spirits, even if you were playing the last show of a long, difficult tour.
I remember that Gary and I were working on a version of a Shayne Carter/Peter Jeffries song, and we played ‘Randolph’s Going Home’ at soundcheck with me on vocals, the only time we tried it. Years later, I was the roadie for Straitjacket Fits and, when we played at Max’s, I told Shayne about our cover version and he was very excited that we had done it, but disappointed when I told him that no one had taped it.
If you were there, please share any memories you might have. Baltimore never felt like a Dipper town to us but Ron always made us feel welcome. We may have shared a tour-ending drink together or we might have skipped it. I can’t recall. We were done, and everyone just wanted to get home.
We may have stayed that night at our favorite Chesapeake Bay Motel, the Marylander, halfway between DC and Baltimore. They had really cheap rooms with 4 or 5 beds and a 24-hour porn station on the TV and we usually crashed there when we had shows in both cities. Everyone went to bed right away tonight, though, while visions of returning home danced in our heads. 400 miles to drive tomorrow and we’d sleep in our own beds for the first time since Memorial Day.
I have nothing deeply philosophical to say about the tour today, I’ll try to put some thoughts together for tomorrow’s debriefing. For now, I’ll leave the ontology to our hero, Ian Hunter: “Yeah it’s a mighty long way down rock ‘n’ roll- From the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl- And you climb up the mountains and you fall down the holes…..” The last song on ‘Slam’ and one of my favorite BD performances…. Tomorrow: Post-tour Wrap-up.
Calculating Route... 