It's hard to leave for tour at 5:30 in the morning, but flopped shows need to be rocked, personal hygiene needs to be ignored, bar tabs need to be bailed on, hardwood floors need drunk guests to sleep on them face first, mega-buses need to disappoint punctual patrons with their overly relaxed time schedule, and so on. So needless to say I was on my way for my 'Mega-Busk tour' at 5:30 am. This is my story from a short run of out of state shows all done by bus, train, lengthy walks, and bumming rides.
In my experience saying you're playing NYC has always been cooler than actually playing NYC. When you tell someone you're going to The Big Apple for a show they imagine you playing to a packed crowd filled with up and coming actors, record label scouts, and attractive models hurling themselves at you after the show, however that's not the case. The fact is NYC might be the most over saturated place to play. The chance of my show being anything more than dime a dozen to any NYC native is slim to none. Either way I was pumped to play a show with my friends Jack Wilson, Mike G from People with Teeth, Cornelius the Third, and Done 4.
Considering I caught a bus to Manhattan super early in the morning I knew I was going to have time to get lost on some public transit and lurk around the surrounding area of the venue with Cornelius and Done4 once they got in from New Jersey. From where the mega-bus dropped me off, I took the train to where I thought the venue was in a pretty nice part of Brooklyn, only I accidentally took it a bunch of stops to far. I first started to notice I might be headed in the wrong direction when the amount of super hip people you hear about in Brooklyn/Bushwick started to dwindle down to fewer and fewer until there was none. Another indication of I might be going into the ghetto was from the sleeping homeless man who spends his days passed out riding the rail with a baby sized bottle of Vladmir tucked safely away in his lap. Just seeing this man in his natural habitat was only one way I was able to assume that the ground above me was becoming more and more dilapidated, but another way I was able to tell was by how close other commuters got to him. At first this guy had an entire bench to himself, no Brooklyn "hipster" would go on either side of him! As time went on and we neared the end of the route people became less and less "hobophobic" if you will, he slept shoulder to shoulder with riders, squished between them like a homeless man sandwich sprinkled with the best filth the city had to offer in the last two or so months.
A few stops from the end two police entered the other end of the train car I was on. I debated asking them for directions. As I was about to approach them with all my gear in my back pack they got a report on their dispatch,"…suspect last seen on 52nd street, white male, blue pants, black backpack, and red hair," I stopped dead in my tracks as they turned towards me, the only red head on the train. I was afraid being the only red head on that side of town might automatically make me guilty so I got off the train at the next stop before the long arm of the law accused this model citizen of committing whatever crime.
After I backtracked two miles on foot to the venue I met up with Cornelius and Done4. We decided to go check out the area. Instead of going up and down the main strip Done4 wanted to go behind the venue. A few paces behind the saloon and he was deucing his blunt and Cornelius handed me a beer with a brown paper bag while we scouted for a good stoop to pose as our own for a while. "Doing the good ol' New York city trash thing," I thought to myself, "I'm in!" And so we went to stoop after stoop, front steps after front steps, leaning on trash cans like we owned them while practicing comedy bits and drunkenly kick flipping in front of old women, until a resident of each building asked us to move on.
Before long we returned to the venue with a healthy buzz and tried to fight the urge of buying over priced PBR, but eventually caved in. Jack Wilson and Mike G from People with Teeth (better known as 'Person with Tooth' that night since he rocked a solo set) came and we played the show for a small/fun crowd. I crashed with Jack that night and he gave me a small tutorial of how the public transit works to try and prevent me from getting lost again.
The next day I took a bus to Hartford, CT where my aunt picked me up at the convention center to take me to my show in New London later that night with Skobie Won, NME the Illest, Chum, Dreadpool Parker, Erik Lamb, and The Lopez. After I got off the bus and walked around aimlessly for a while I decided to ask where the convention center was instead of assuming my intuition 'man compass' would get me there. The first person I saw was some business looking male, I asked for directions but he didn't respond. I asked again and he acknowledge me in the form of speeding up his walk and refusing the look back. It seemed he must have heard about my shenanigans the day before, and now that I had been christened in the way of big city trash hip hoppers, square business looking people like himself no longer felt safe talking to me.
At my aunts house I stored as much food in my belly and cheeks as I could like the little chipmunk I am. When my aunt asked me what time I had to be at the venue I reluctantly told her they wanted me their an hour early to get set up. Before I could tell her that being an hour early for load in at a hip hop show was completely unnecessary she was already getting her coat so we could be on our way.
When we arrived at El'N'Gee Club at 6:45 (we were definitely on Aunt Leslie time and not rapper time) no lights were even on. I had a brown storm brewing in my belly from all the food I tried to inhale at my aunts house and remembered the bathrooms being pretty rough and not somewhere you would want to poop in while other people were there. So I rolled the dice and tried to door to the venue anyway. Luckily it was open, and I saw the silhouette of the bartender standing behind the counter looking like he was in some noir film listening to Trap Them.
As I'm in the bathroom I hear my aunt walk in the bar looking for me. She asks the bartender if he knows "Cody Jones" because she, like most adults I'm related to, is embarrassed to say Stillborn Identity out loud. I come out of the bathroom and find her inspecting overly graphic metal flyers on the poster board and tags on the wall. As we walk outside she asks me if I would be offended if she didn't stay for my set. Somewhat relieved (rapping about being a drunk fuck up in front of your relatives can be weird) I say that I wouldn't be. She goes on the say that maybe it wasn't so "divey" she would stay and that if I'm playing somewhere a bit nicer and cleaner in her area to let her know. Fat chance, I think to myself.
Princeton, NJ, along with having the best record store I've ever been to, also is home of the fanciest restaurant I've ever played in. I've never been under dressed for a show before, but at The Pind with Raymond Strife, Wade Wilson, Cornelius the Third, Urban Shocker, and Stephen Brown we all looked like such scrubs to the staff that getting served at the bar was going to be near impossible. If only my aunt was with us she could have ordered the drinks then passed them off.
I didn't want to be the guy who goes to the bartender and asks what the cheapest beer is right off the bat, typically doing that sort of thing doesn't bother me, but I feel like this place was just looking for a reason to cut me off before I even started. I started asking local patrons what their draft was to avoid this problem. After asking five or so people who all answered Bud Light, my chances of getting a buzz were gonna be gone, but at least I could look cool holding a beer for a reasonable price.
As it turns out, Bud Light was the only beer on tap at this bar. If that isn't weird enough, the tap wasn't even in the room with the bar. The bartender had to keep getting the busboys to run to the other room and get it for her. The busboys then would pass the beer to the bartender, the bartender to me, then I would go to pay, but by the time I got money out of me pocket she was gone.
I decided the reason I was getting hooked up on drinks was because the bartender either wanted to help bury my bone, or she was the worst bar maid on earth, either way I was going to take total advantage of the situation. I found out it was the latter when word started to circulate in the show room that she was looking for me to pay my tab. By that point I was already 6 or so beers in with no buzz to show for it, only feeling bloated. "Forget that," I thought to myself, "those beers aren't worth paying for nor was the service," plus I had tried to pay directly after the first few rounds and she wasn't having it. So when I left the venue at the end of the night I waited till a herd of my friends left and ducked behind them.
Trenton, NJ might be the funnest place on earth for all the wrong reasons. Raymond Strife put me up, and luckily he had the day off. After lounging in his living room for far to long watching soap operas, we decided to take the day in and actually got outside before 4pm and see what was happening at Championship bar.
After a few rounds on the bar, Ray and I made tracks to his girlfriends dads birthday party. I was pretty weirded out by the situation, but before I even made it beyond the living room at the house I already had a fistful of pretzels and a Black and Tan Yuengling to wash them down with. After an hour or so of eating every type of finger food the party had to offer; pretzels, chips, hummus, shrimp, cookies, brownies and drinking every beer I could never afford on my own while mingling with all of Ray's girlfriends distant relatives we decided we had to go to the show where another mountain of beer was waiting for me and the other bands/rappers.
The show was great thanks to Greg Klein, but the night really started to become more memorable as Ray and I got closer to being black out drunk. After the show we decided to go back to Championship bar for last call with our friends Griffen and Rusmir. Ray walked in a few minutes before us, and when we finally made our entrance, I saw Ray standing at the bar counter with two pleasantly plump women while his pants were at his ankles, boxers and all, flopping his dick around like a fish out of water.
Worried that he might get in trouble from the bar for indecent exposure, or from the women for sexual harassment, I rushed over to help him pull up his pants like he was some sort of paraplegic that fell over mid-crap in a bathroom stall. Until I realized that the bartender was purposely looking in the opposite direction, and the women were giggling and standing up for him saying that his pants were only off because they asked to see his flaccid cock as I was about to scold him. For a second in my drunken stupor I started to believe them, then I had a moment of clarity and realized no girls are going to bars just to try and see some random dudes limp dick.
The bartender broke us off with a six pack against his better judgment as we started to walk back to Rays and crash for the night. Griffen, Rusmir, and I were all downstairs finishing our last beers of the night, trying to figure out how Rusmir and I were going to catch the train out of Trenton in the morning, as Ray walks past the balcony on the top of the steps just barely in our peripheral vision. Griffen takes notice of him and looks up the steps as he passes by and whips his dick out one last time for the night. Griffen, nearly blinded by seeing Rays wang again decides to head out then and leave Rusmir and I to fend for ourself trying to get a ride off the sleeping/streaking giant to the train station in the morning.
Written by Cody Jones/Stillborn Identity
stillbornidentity.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/stillborn-identity
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stillborn-Identity/154438521280723
@CodyJonesSTLBRN
