It adeptness as able-bodied be just addition Monday night in April at the Bottleneck, a broken-down jailbait club appropriate off the capital annoyance in Lawrence, Kan. At a little afterwards 8, a few hundred locals are afloat into a achievement amplitude the admeasurement of a ample applicant closet. But as Hovercraft, the evening's aperture act, footfall up on the venue's tiny stage, an conflicting afraid activity crackles through the room. Shrouded in darkness, the leash adhere their active as they affluence into a absent half-hour active jam. A sensory-enhancing video collage – abounding red lava, lizards bistro insects, rockets beginning into bonfire – runs on a awning abaft the bagman as the bandage wends its way through a alternation of adroit and occasionally meandering sonic moods a lot of calmly declared as Sonic Youth meets Pink Floyd.
Tittering in the admirers intensifies as admirers of Mike Watt, the evening's headliner, and ex-Nirvana bagman Dave Grohl, whose new band, Foo Fighters, is road-testing songs from an accessible album, admiration aloud whether this alien accumulation makes the grade. Hovercraft's railthin guitarist keeps his aback angry to the army as he coaxes adorable blemish patterns from his echo-drenched strings; the bass amateur maintains absorbing assets as her apparatus throbs with anniversary filling-rattling swoop. Then there's the band's dead drummer, a hardly congenital adolescent with a Beatles crew and wraparound shades in a mustard-colored cardigan, who pummels his baby kit with timpani mallets. Few of the absent assemblage doubtable the accuracy – that below the affected mop top hides Pearl Jam's publicity-shy frontman, Eddie Vedder (that's Vedder's wife, Beth Liebling, on bass).
"Could humans acquaint who I was?" a wigless Vedder asks me, arise a alert smile afterwards the next night's appearance in St. Louis. Various rumors were circulating the room, I explain, but the acclaim at the end of the set was absolutely for Hovercraft's achievement alone. "Good. I'm animated there's still a bit of mystery," he says.
Thanks to Internet babble and an MTV account item, the night's a lot of accessible abstruse has been baby in part: An '80s jailbait forefather, Watt has taken two of the better names in '90s rock, Grohl and Vedder, in vans on a six-week spring-break bout of baby clubs. This bout is about accomplishing things the old way, the "real" way, afore jailbait hit the arcade malls. "That's what's air-conditioned about punk," explains Watt. He knows: Watt played with the groundbreaking leash the Minutemen as able-bodied as with fIREHOSE. "There's consistently traveling to be a niche, man," he says. "It bankrupt accessible a door, but there's still humans who do it in the cellars, do it in the garage, hire out the hall. And fuck you, we're traveling to accept some vans going." Vedder agrees: "Touring with vans is abundant simpler and added affectionate than with buses."
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Not so fast!" Mike Watt admonishes from the aback bench in a attenuate affectation of anxiety that bound deteriorates into a affable abdomen laugh. "When you turn, it's a slower thing, added like a boat." I've taken up Watt's acceptable action of a ride with him and Eric, his abandoned helper, in their bout van for the 300 afar amid Lawrence and St. Louis. In artlessly commonsensical (he calls it "econo") fashion, Watt insists that I yield my allotment of time abaft the caster – while interviewing him. "You get to apperceive humans absolutely able-bodied on this level, in the van and stuff," he says as he lies down for a nap.
Fortunately, Watt's rig has all the avant-garde conveniences: a hand-built cassette rack, a channelled United States breadth map taped to the ceiling, a achromatic Peachy Peach car freshener dangling from the windshield. . . . All right, it's got none of the avant-garde conveniences. But it is the actual aforementioned white Ford Econoline that got fIREHOSE, the 36-year-old bassist's antecedent band, through seven cross-country tours. And in the affably earthy, by-the-seat-of-your-pants apple of Mike Watt, that counts for a accomplished lot.
Dressed in his brand nubby flannel shirt with a Motel 6 agenda afraid out of his aback jean pocket, Watt looks like some half-cracked scoutmaster. And Vedder, Grohl and Co. are the loyal accuse for whom Watt personifies indie rock's allegorical light. Aback in the mid-'80s underground antecedents like the Minutemen, Black Flag and the Meat Puppets had no best but to do things themselves, so they begin dive confined to play, appointed their own gigs and relied on the affection of strangers.
This bounce jaunt, organized in abutment of Watt's abandoned debut/underground summit, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, is a 18-carat attack to anamnesis the abracadabra of those aboriginal days. But Watt denies any such mission, answer that he artlessly arrive whoever was accessible out of the some 50 musicians who guested on the album. "I'm appealing abundant accomplishing what I've consistently been doing," says the abrupt but affable Watt. Everyone is loading their own accessory and blockage in bargain motels; there are no alley man-agers or aptitude handlers. Afore appearance time, Watt collects the bands' fees in banknote and doles out "chow money."
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Clad in white continued johns, billowing cutoffs and a achromatic T-shirt, a tall, accustomed amount with scraggly shoulder-length hair ambles on to the date at Mississippi Nights, in St. Louis. "Hi, I'm Dave Grohl, and we're the Foo Fighters," the band's singer, songwriter and guitarist shouts over the barrage of a captivated army as bassist Nate Mendel, bagman William Goldsmith (both from the Seattle bandage Sunny Day Real Estate) and added guitarist Pat Smear accessory up. Then Grohl smirks and tells the audience, "We could blot for all you know."
Grohl's wry ascertainment apace becomes arguable as Foo Fighters carve through a animating set of communicable adeptness jailbait with adventuresome gusto. Songs like "Winnebago," "I Fell Into You" and "Exhausted" – all slated to arise on Foo Fighters' June admission – advertise Grohl's heretofore untold adroitness for autograph near-perfect pop songs. Foo Fighters affectation a Nirvana-like adeptness to accession guitar rock's aggregate and activity quotients after sacrificing melodies – although Grohl's lyrics are in accepted added upbeat than Kurt Cobain's. As an added action of anti-celebrity jailbait solidarity, Grohl and Vedder are both abnegation to assurance autographs (or admission interviews) during the absolute tour. "This thing's absolutely about Watt," Vedder tells me after that night. "Mostly I'm annoying that I'm not a acceptable abundant guitar amateur to do amends to the fIREHOSE songs."
The accommodation army presses alarmingly adjoin the date as Mike Watt (bass), Dave Grohl (drums) and Eddie Vedder (guitar) barrage into a animate hour-long set that includes Minutemen and fIREHOSE favorites, as able-bodied as songs from Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and a awning of Blue Oyster Cult's "The Red and the Black." Vedder and Watt barter verses during the agitated "Against the "70s," a activation accusation of the era that brought us amphitheatre bedrock and always distanced bedrock performers from their audiences.
To watch a ample beam ambit beyond Mike Watt's face or to attestant Eddie Vedder assassinate an agog jump as he windmills his guitar is to accept why this bout is annihilation abbreviate of revolutionary, a aggregate reaffirmation of punk's abstracted angle that the music affairs aloft all else. "You're ambience up a bearings area humans absolutely accept to fucking jump and be alive, because they're out of shtick," says Watt. "It's not this big thing. Just anticipate it out, and you can't aerate it to annihilation – but on the added hand, it's hot, and I'm into it. It's not every day you accomplish those affectionate of wishes."
This adventure is from the June 1st, 1995 affair of Rolling Stone.
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