Blag Dahlia is the singer for the Dwarves and host of RadioLikeYouWant.com, a weekly podcast. He is the author of two novels: NINA and Armed to the Teeth With Lipstick.
Leave Your Phone At Home
I inherited Michael Jackson’s hyperbaric sleep chamber, so I myself am not getting older. But I’ve heard that the road can be tough on old folks (and young ones, too) so SPB has asked me to say a few words about touring through your twilight years.
There are many things I could suggest about agents, promoters, travel bureaus and the like, but I’ll get straight to the point. Never have anything resembling a stable relationship if you play music. Since we rarely get paid for our work the only thing musicians actually get for their labors is sex. Without it life on the road is a continuous stream of bad music and retarded people you have to pretend to like. It’s unlistenable opening bands, pushy stage managers, Cro-Magnon doormen and coat check girls who feel that stardom on the catwalk is just a nose piercing away. It’s drunks slobbering in your face and telling you how much better you were 12 years ago, though they didn’t bother to buy your records then either. It’s demo cds with handmade covers and frozen pizza in microwave ovens and hotel rooms in Cleveland that charge rates like Paris and smell like Lysol and old diapers.
So yes, the road sucks, but the sex is good if only because you won’t have to see the person you fucked ever again in person. This being the modern age though, you will see them on Facefuck, Shitter and the other social intrusion sites. They will post every photo you let them take so I advise destroying the iPhone before tying them to the bed or everyone in the world will know what a pervert you really are. (That is something you should have been able to convey through your music, but can’t because you have no talent.)
If you’ve ever witnessed a pussy-whipped goofball talking to their significant other on the phone from the road it really is a study in stupid. If these couples talked every few days they might chat about current events or recent developments in the stock market, or they might exchange pleasantries and kind words of love and encouragement to one another.
But, since they talk, text, or Skype five times an hour the conversations tend to devolve into intercontinental shouting matches at worst or smoldering frown fests at best. One party or the other is always aggrieved about something they heard, saw, or imagined happened out on the road. These conversations turn quickly to interrogations.
“No, there were no girls at the show, I swear… Everyone was a guy and the girls who were there were ugly… I mean, the girls I saw across the street were ugly… No, I didn’t talk to them, they were all really dumb…I sensed that they were dumb from their clothes so I didn’t talk to them…no, I didn’t actually look at their clothes, but someone described their clothes to me…”
These conversations can and do take place anytime of the day or night, hotel roommates be damned. Now that it’s 7am they need to know who you were looking at last night and that’s all there is to it. She also needs to speak to you right before you go onstage and right after you get offstage. Those times are key because you might be having fun and that is a serious violation of the rules of your relationship.
Other good times to argue on the phone are when you pass through an airport metal detector, every time you make a connection or land anywhere, while you’re eating breakfast, or when the rest of the band is in the van afraid to tell you that your spouse is batshit crazy, and even if you glued yourselves together at the genitals it still couldn’t calm her racing, reptilian brain.
Ain’t love grand?
BLAG DAHLIA
4-12
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Photos by teejayfaust, Codaphoto and Isasto. Thanks!
