#vexxtour

The Wild Hunt: Chaka Deluge.

Day 7

Norwich 07/06/2015

We started out the morning eating at a famous london breakfast spot, we were only going to Norwich for the day so we there wasn’t a rush to get anywhere too quickly. The guy running the joint congratulated us on our tour and sent us with his blessings, which was very nice after seeing how many famous people he had fed and rightly so, the food was delicious. Piling in the van we scooted down the defined and cultivated British highway towards Norwich, our last British date before mainland Europe.

Van talk had consisted of us figuring out how to mock each other’s accents, political missives, and goofball music nerd arguments that would escalate to silence. I sat up front most of the time as co-pilot to support Chris in driving and navigation when necessary. “This is one of England’s brand new rest stops, it's fully integrated with the landscape, it is built into the side of a knoll and has a cafeteria and grocery store in it.” We wandered in dazed and sweaty, it was another blistering day in England, I perused the selection in the grocery store, the cafeteria smelled rich with meats cooked in gravy and vegetables steamed in butter. It was quite the rest stop heaven, a far cry from a stucco box on the side of an American interstate with 3 different colors of gatorade and sweaty ground game rolled into a synthetic tube made of chicken necks.

After being in the grocery for 5 minutes I came to realize no one was watching me, the lanes were extremely busy and I couldn’t see a restocker in sight. I grabbed a beautiful latch top container of sparkling lemonade, a chicken salad sandwich, and a bag of crisps and walked out the front door.

Sometimes you have to treat yourself, especially when that would have run me 20 usd. Chris handed me a sausage roll, which was a roll, filled with sausage. A far cry from the skimpy postmodern snacks that bear the names of foods that composite marginal amounts of the ingredients they tout. We both chowed down and observed how beautiful it was outside. This calm, the passage of time in which I feel at peace is a personal binge. Moments where I am in my body and pleased with it are exceedingly rare and I cherish them.

Rolling into Norwich I could already tell it was going to be my favorite English city. The only thing I knew about it was that one of the more well known semi-current English comedy characters, Alan Partridge, was a radio dj there and monkeyed around the city confusing himself. It's cluster of winding roads confused itself, echoing the topography that it was built on. Loading into the venue we checked out the space, Biohazard had headlined the night before and I secretly wished we had opened for them, just so I could have spin kicked during the first breakdown in Punishment. “I question not me, it only happens to others, I can’t deny reality, as life gets SMOTHERRRRED” I yelled at the sound guy who gave me a confused look and asked how many mics we’d need on stage. “One” I said.

Norwich had a lot of Roman architecture and secured nook stores that made me feel very cozy, great coffee and wonderful fish and chips. I bought a copy of Alexander Dumas’s travels through Switzerland, since I had never been there and had a strong aversion to it as it holds the world’s largest deposit of stolen colonial gold. He talked about learning to fish with a metal hook and a glass bowl with a candle in it floating at the surface of the water, I hoped I might have a similar experience, little did I know what I would actually learn in Switzerland. MJ and Mike came back from their exploration of the city, Mike had met some trippers in the park that scuttled him some narco and MJ had been put off by their M hippy vibes. Corey and I had sat in the venue checking email and setting up merch, I didn’t feel like wandering too far, I was honestly a little tour weary and ready to sit behind the merch table and do nothing. Jack, our promoter and singer in the two bands opening for us, both with two singers, had made a delicious curry. “ I guess you don’t owe me another 50 for vegan chili” Chris said serving up a plate of curry. “I always agree with you that its going to be vegan chili I…” Chris walked away glibly, I got the joke but didn’t actually know if I’d be hit up for hundreds of pounds of chili money at the end of tour.

I took a selfie with a caricature of Walter White from Breaking Bad riding a skateboard eating a slice of pizza that said “Breaking Rad” on it. Tropes of cool culture remind me of my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza shooting amored personal vehicle toy and the smell it acquired when left in a sandbox for a month. Moldy cats shit. “Its like they’ve never seen the show, nor do they give a shit that it reduces the drama to kitsch, complete garbage.” Chris testified. Amen Chris, Amen.

Holding onto the ideas and imagery of western youth culture, pizza, skateboarding, offers an escape from the harshness of immediate adulthood. Walter White, a character representing the reality of non venture capitalist labor/ value exchange within America, reduced to a skateboard riding pizza eater is actually quite the artistic statement. A character who finds power and lucre in his expertise being valued outside of the law and system, and under valued within it, is then put through a further humiliation by becoming a trope of cowabunga pizza beer party baby burger art. Genius if you ask me.

The show was mellow, Jackals and the other band sounded like cursed, mid tempo crusted d beaty hardcore. While we played, a guy who Mike referred to as "the spirit of ’77" put his stuffed cat who Chris later told us was a character called “Bagpuss” on the stage next to Mike. Mike picked it up and threw it in the middle of the stage and proceeded to stab it with the headstock of his guitar. MJ then picked it up and smashed it on the stage a few times and threw it back at the spirit who looked pretty distressed that his kitty was being worked over by the band. “I don’t like it when they touch my cat” he said, picking it up and petting it. He might have been a bit drunk, bit of a casualty. He bought Mike and I the strongest most disgusting high gravity cider that he was drinking. I could barely stomach it, maybe if I drank that I’d have a pet plush kitty. We packed up, said our goodbyes and went back to London to sleep. 

live photos by Jack Pitt