If you can't afford WTF's stratospheric ticket prices, here's a way to live the memories of their greatest performances. You're welcome.

February 4th, 1994. Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Tensions are high out here on the road. Everybody is just getting on each other’s nerves. Normal J.Z. has retreated into his warm-and-probably-sunny lair and Sassy J.Z. has emerged sardonically in his place. Scorn seems to radiate off of him in waves. It’s gotten to the point where he won’t even let anyone get a couple words of a sentence in before cutting them off with a “fuck you.” Plus, you never know when he’s just gonna kick someone’s ass, so we’re trying to leave him alone. Wes is just beyond pissy. He’s constantly mocking, berating, or insulting everyone around him. Of course, this puts my Wes-Anger radar off, which in turn causes me to involuntarily ask him if he needs more tampons (I have a condition in which I am unable to stop pushing Wes’s buttons… no, not those buttons, you yucky sucky fucky!). Reilly won’t even talk to anyone, he just drives the van and pounds warm Coors Light. Wes will often sit shotgun and turn his body so he’s completely facing Reilly, then just go on for fifteen minutes or so, calling Reilly a “stupid fuckstick” or a “limp-wristed bitchtard”. Then I’ll say something like, “Wes, you really sound like you need to change your tampon. You must have a really heavy flow right now” and Wes will just scream in anger, tears squirting from the corners of his eyes (remember, people, this is a kid who cried when he lost a soccer game once, and then told me about it as if were something normal people would do). J.Z. then just shouts for us to shut up from the back, where he is undoubtedly looking at porn. As you can tell, I’m obviously in the right here and everybody else is being an asshole. I mean, I try hard to be a professional, and my life motto is “You Don’t Have to be Friends, But You Have to Be Friendly.” I’m the one who encourages unity, group prayer, sobriety, compassion, and respect. But unfortunately that doesn’t even work for the crazy fuckers that I have the bad luck of being stuck in a band with (obviously this is upsetting me greatly, I mean I’m fucking ending sentences with fucking prepositions). Anyway, we’re probably gonna break up in the next couple days.

June 16th, 1998. New York City, New York.

Inspired by Motley Crüe and Def Leppard, we finally had a “sex pit” under the stage tonight. As you all undoubtedly know, Leppard and the Crüe used to have a “sex pit” at every show. The “sex pit” is a room constructed underneath the stadium stage that is filled with alcohol, drugs, and most importantly, scores of naked chicks. After a considerably heavy or climactic jam, the drummer gets hoisted on his flying stage out across the audience by wires while doing a drum solo, and the rest of the band has sex. As you can imagine, Reilly had no desire to enter the pit (the man is married to Rosario Dawson, after all), and so he did the flying drum solo. When Jigga, Ace and I entered the Pit, we were shocked. The girls were all of our ex-girlfriends! There was a moment of awkward silence as I slowly backed out of the room. J.Z. seemed content to stay, and Wes could have gone either way had I not yanked him over to me. “Don’t you see, Wes?!?” I screamed. “This is NOT A COINCIDENCE!” The sheer volume of my voice and wild panic in my eyes convinced both of the guys to exit with me. We ran back out to the stage, just as Reilly was being lifted off. We all jumped on, and began flying across the ballroom. As we neared the rear exit, I removed the bowie knife J.Z. always keeps taped to his bass drum and slashed the wires. The moving stage and drumset fell twenty or so feet to the ground and collapsed. Luckily it only crashed onto a guy selling water for $5. We scrambled frantically from the wreckage and sprinted for the door, running out onto the street. “What are we doing???!!!?” Reilly yelled hysterically as we pushed him along with us. “There’s something wrong!” I screamed, and behind us the building shook. We stopped and turned around and watched as the entire venue sank into the pavement and melted in a red and orange glowing mass of lava. The figure of a gigantic demon appeared over the smoldering remains, shaking its fist in rage and roaring. This was the first of many attempts on our life made by Satan, the Prince of Darkness.

November 5th, 1997. Columbia, MD.

Today was my birthday. As usual, Reilly was the only one who remembered (funny, no one EVER remembers his birthday, or as I like to call it for Reilly, “Time of Being,” because we all know Reilly just popped into existence at the exact point the world needed him). So, as is Reilly’s tradition as of late, he no longer spends upwards of fifty dollars on presents but rather “blesses” the birthday boy with a special lesson / “gift of life.” So tonight, he hired a homeless guy to come to our show. Then he gave the homeless guy a gun, and gave him explicit instructions to jump onstage and shoot the gun at my heart during the last song of the second set. The security guards were all in on it, as was the rest of the band (except of course Wes… there’s really no point in telling him anything, it just kinda goes in one ear, floats around in the empty cavern of his skull, then dejectedly exits out the other ear). So, we’re in the middle of a particularly victorious “Gar Weber,” when I see a limping and filthy old man scramble onto the stage, coughing up phlegm. I figure Tiny (our head of stage security) will take care of it, so I continue singing about my pubescent angst. The guy fumbles a gigantic gat out of his tattered trenchcoat and lifts it shakily to point it at my chest. The band stops, alarmed, and I suddenly realize that I’m going to die. I thought of the time when I was driving with my brother downtown once and a huge Mack truck almost crushed us while it was turning at an intersection. We had to throw the car in reverse to escape with our lives. After, my brother turned to me and said, “I can’t believe I almost just died listening to Mase” (unfortunately, Jammin’ 94.5 was on the radio at the time). Now, with a very crazy-looking hobo pointing a hand cannon at me, I realize I’m going to die listening to Wes (he hadn’t noticed anything and continued playing). I felt an overwhelming sense of regret and sadness. Suddenly, I hear a familiar husky voice yell “NOOOOOO!” and Sir Christopher Ignatius Reilly throws himself in front of me. The hobo fired, and I sighed in resignation. But I felt no bullet hit me. I blinked, and looked down at Reilly, who was clutching his side as blood spurted through his fingers. Without a second thought I jumped over Reilly’s body and swung my guitar with both hands at the hobo’s head. It connected and the force of the blow lifted the hobo off his feet and into Jigg’s drumset. The crowd roared its approval. Even though the hobo was most definitely dead, I took the gun and shot him with all the rest of the bullets in the clip. Then I turned to help Reilly, but he was already up on his feet and laughing. “Happy Birthday, babe!” he said. Turns out the gun was filled with blanks. The blood was fake. It was all planned. He was just trying to give me perspective on life, and to show me that he would take a bullet for me (although, he knew they were blanks, so it’s not really “taking a bullet” for me). The hobo was indeed dead, I split his head open and shattered his neck in five places (basically everything above his shoulders exploded with the force of my blow). Luckily he was just a hobo and no one cared. Best Birthday Ever!!!

August 17th, 1999. Madison, WI.

Don’t ask me how something like this happens in fucking Wisconsin, of all places, but Wes and Jiggaman got arrested before the show for soliciting a prostitute (truth is, they were asking her for directions, but apparently “How do you get to the Dane County Coliseum” is hooker slang for “How much is a BJ?”… to make a long story short, she was an undercover cop and they got cuffed right there). We didn’t have time to bail them out (this was three minutes before we were supposed to start), so Reilly and I did the show alone, acoustic. The crowd friggin’ loved the shit out of it, too. It gave Reilly and me a chance to showcase some of the material from our upcoming acoustic emo album, Tears Like Leaves, Fall. We started out with the first cut of the album, a yearning ballad (they all are) about getting out of Jersey entitled “October Ashes.” We gauged the audience’s reaction and it seemed to be positive (luckily there were a lot of people there who were too young to know what good music was), so we continued with some other new tracks like “Shadowed, Cold and Undeserving,” “Another Love Like My Whispers,” “Unrequited,” and “A Plea for a True Golden Autumn Romance” (the very intense closing track of the album). Reilly and I have been listening to nothing but acoustic emo and power-pop for a number of months, and our nasal whines and unimaginative instrumentation are at a polished high. Plus, neither of us can believe she broke up with us and we can’t wait to move out when we graduate. Plus, my brain is getting smaller. Unfortunately, at one point in the show my girl’s jeans ripped due to the massive size of my genitalia and the whole crowd saw my lovesnake flop down between my legs during a very serious and heartfelt song (“Can’t Quit You, Baby, Baby, Cry, Baby, Love, Cry”). While singing that song I felt naked anyway emotionally, so the breeze against my enormous member didn’t register as strange to me. I heard some wolf-whistles and cries of “Jesus, that is HUGE!” but I thought they were referring to the size of my heart, or the size of my talent. It wasn’t until the song was over that Reilly pointed out what was wrong. I grinned sheepishly, rolled it back up and tucked it in the remains of my extremely tight pant leg. The rest of the show we did mellow island songs with faux-carribean accents and the same guitar strum pattern for every song. It fucking sucked, but all the stupid girls/frat boys in the audience loved it. I hope Satan doesn’t try to kill us again after we try to steal our souls back.

March 12th, 1993. Vail, Colorado.

First of all, Colorado is fucking stupid. Seriously, we have enough mountains in New England, which was around a long time before these so-called “rocky” mountains (aren’t all mountains rocky?), and it’s a lot cooler back home anyway. So, besides the fact that we had to play in a gay, gay, state… tonight was a milestone for us. This will go down in the annals of WtF history and delicious folklore. Sometimes at a show, there is a special kind of magic in the air that needs to be grasped. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a setlist for that night or a back catalogue of 150 songs, sometimes you gotta deviate from the course and just let things flow. So tonight we did the Jazz Odyssey. Now, before we get any naysaying, the Jazz O was getting ready to squirt out for a long time. Let’s just say that the rest of our career has been the coitus, and tonight’s exploration was the money shot. I actually sat everyone down after the show and expressed a desire to end the band, because there is no way we can go any farther. Unfortunately the rest of the bands’ desires for material possessions and kinky sex put an end to my pleas. Instead, we all agreed to never, ever, do anything like what we did tonight. The Jazz Odyssey was a three-hour non-stop exploration of various modal concepts and harmonic ideas, going anywhere from fresh swing grooves and walking bass to straight-up ambient noise. WtF is by no means a jazz band, so many of the fans left twenty or so minutes into the show. The diehards stayed, though, and were witness to the greatest thing their favorite band will ever do. Never in my life have I participated in ANYTHING that extraordinary. At one point a meandering piano-led twitchfest melted brilliantly into Black Orpheus. Reilly broke out his trumpet and we sexily busted out a fresh and funky Freddie Freeloader, too. This is all during the course of the one giant song that made up the entire show. If we wanted to go into a real song, we’d find a complex yet innovative way to modulate, and Jigga would draw from his wealth of rhythmic knowledge to segue one beat into a different one (sometimes even different time-signatures) seamlessly. So, to everyone who was at this show: you did it. You saw it. You might as well forget about us. Unless you can get a recording of the show, then just listen to that for the rest of your life. You’ll never hear anything better. I hate this fucking band.

August 7th, 1997. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Jesus. A lot of this is pretty hard to write, because I honestly don’t remember that much of what was happening. We got into the country and immediately Wes’s “weedar” went off. We spent the next four hours visiting various “coffeeshops”. When it came time for soundcheck, I was so high I couldn’t feel my feet. It was as if my feet didn’t exist. “Shit,” I thought, “I’m gonna be slamming on the effects pedals tonight because I cant gauge the pressure right… I’m gonna break my fucking foot!” Wes looked at me and laughed. His eyes were all but swollen shut. We played “All Right Now” by Free for about an hour straight until Spanky our soundguy gave us the thumbs up. Three hours til the show, we decide to go back to the coffeeshops. Needless to say, after we staggered into the club three hours late (almost midnight), what transpired onstage was of quasi-epic proportions. First of all, we played each other’s instruments. Reilly jumped on guitar, Jigga on bass, Wes on keys and me on drums. We thought it’d be really funny if we pretended to be each other. Reilly sang all of Wes’s songs, Wes sang all of mine, JZ slapped out the bass, and I hit the skins with total MacMartin-esque precision. The whole show, we pretended to be each other. Jigga’s impression of Reilly was just a cockney British accent for some reason, and Wes made me sound Canadian (which I liked, seeing as Canadian is my favorite accent). We played a very blistering first set, not much of which I remember. I know at one point I was doing a beat with the cowbell, and JZ was hitting fat quarter notes on the bass. Reilly was just hitting one dominant seventh chord every four beats or so, and Wes was just hitting these really syncopated high octaves. At the time it seemed to be the funkiest music ever created. I remember stopping the drums, and everyone except Wes stopped exactly with me, even though we all had our eyes closed. Wes kept going with the high octave stuff, and we walked offstage for our setbreak. Wes continued playing and followed us twenty or so minutes later. Our setbreak went up in smoke, and the second set consisted mostly of Reilly and JZ doing really tight drums and bass grooves and Wes and I both setting up delay loops. Wes even tried freestyling at one point, I think. I seem to remember the line “I don’t like you / I want to fight you” being used. I also remember some extremely un-tight reggae. Was it Marley’s “Jammin’”? Damn, we were fucked up. I personally apologize to anyone who attended this show. My offer of free sex and cash to all unsatisfied fans still stands.

November 11th, 1995. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Drove around Pittsburg for an hour and a half trying to find the venue. Since we had already been there for soundcheck, we were quite embarrassed to show up late. Once eight o ‘clock hit and we were still in the car swearing at each other for being lost and stupid, JZ thought it would be a good idea to pretend we were starting the show anyway. So right there, in the car, we began the show. We did “Catalyst” and “Cardboard Love Song”, “playing” all our instruments with our voices. Thankfully, we found the venue only halfway into “Sex Salad”. We ran into the venue, still singing, and our manager was yelling at us, but we wouldn’t respond because we were too busy “performing”. So, that was why the show started that night with the “SEX SALAD!” line of “Sex Salad”. That just happened to be when we all got our instruments on. This was also why the first set was about fifteen minutes shorter than usual. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We did make up for it, however, with our multi-encore/Eagles tribute. First encore: “Hotel California”. Second encore: “Take it Easy” and Henley’s “All She Wants to Do is Dance”. Third encore: “Desperado”. There’s really small line between clever and stupid, and tonight we really just took a shit on the line, blurring it with a pile of brown and stinky sludge. (Note: I’m not sure why all my analogies these days involve poop.)

July 15th, 1998. Providence, Rhode Island.

Wes has this new thing where he watches porn before every show. He says being physically aroused makes his guitar playing better. We always ask him, “Wes, you have a veritable army of hot groupies to choose from. Why not have them strip or give you a lapdance or even get it on with each other and watch that?” Wes replied by explaining to us how much “real life ladies” intimidate him. “Half the time I can’t even… errr…. ‘perform’ with them,” he said. I swear, every day the band learns something about Wes that just shits all over any preconceived notions we may have had (like the time he revealed to us that he was, in fact, a ghost). Anyway, we were feeling nostalgic during the first set tonight and played a bunch of our oldest tunes (i.e. “Dinero”, “Dependable Me”, “9 to 5 Scam”). By the time the second half-full beer bottle nearly smashed my head open, we abandoned that idea and stuck to playing our new crop of Zeppelin covers. These covers take us a step forward, because as everyone knows, Zeppelin covers can make or break a band. Reilly sings lead on every one except “When the Levee Breaks”, which Wes sings (for reasons unknown). Some of them we hit right on and some were slightly sketchier. For example, we positively nailed “The Lemon Song” and “Trampled Underfoot”, but we were shaky on “The Ocean” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”. I think the audience was slightly taken aback by this bunch of new covers, being as for the second half of the first set through the end of the second set was nothin’ but Led. We tried to explain to them what we were trying to do, but as we all know crowds are unruly and for the most part retarded. Nevertheless the crowd seemed to at least marginally enjoy the show, but of course they enjoy any show where JZ takes his shirt off and exposes his perfectly sculpted manchest.

August 1st, 1999. Ann Arbor, Michigan.

All right, think about this for a second. Have you ever been to Michigan? Do you know anyone who’s ever been to Michigan? What the fuck? And why the fuck isn’t the other part of the state (separated by whatever great lake that is) its own state? The whole show tonight I was just thinking about all of that, and it started to really weird me out. Before the show JZ was explaining to me that Michigan is like the Australia of the United States. I was like, “What??? They have wombats here???” JZ shook his head and laughed, then gently touched my shoulder. “No, Duncan,” he explained, “ Australia was originally a colony of English criminals. England just sent all their convicts over there.” Confused, I asked, “What about the Aborigines?” JZ laughed again and said, “Well, the land didn’t belong to them just because they were there first.” “Oh, like the Indians?” I asked. “Yes,” JZ replied, “those so-called ‘native’ Americans. I mean, I was born here, doesn’t that make me a Native American?” JZ laughed and took another sip from his glass of Wild Horse merlot, then took a drag from his pipe filled with fine Turkish tobacco. As he blew prefect smoke rings, he explained that after the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson sent all the most horrible murderers, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, witches, goblins, orcs, ogres, Satanists, and violent schizophrenics to live in what he dubbed “Helltown”. This became what we now know as Michigan. I nodded gravely, and JZ excused himself to “introduce his pink bishop to the porcelain queen”. He left, dusting animal cracker crumbs off his purple velour smoking jacket and fluffy white ascot as he farted incessantly. Two perfect-assed blondes followed him, licking the ground wherever his feet touched. I stared at their perfect asses for a minute and then started rolling my eighth blunt of the evening (this is all part of what we call “pre-gaming”… Wes, as usual, was in another room watching “Wet Dreams May Cum” starring Throbbin’ Feelyums… Reilly was playing himself in chess). Once JZ got back and Wes came out sporting a massive (for Wes) erection, we did our group pre-show ritual, which involves kissing each other on the mouth. Reilly, who has been listening to the Doors non-stop for the past nine weeks, never even picked up his bass during the show. He just played this new shitty organ that he got, and it sounded fucking lame except on “Touch Me” and “Riders on the Storm”. Tonight Wes also broke all six strings on his guitar at the same time, and somehow it happened between songs. As is the deal, after the show we each punched him in the balls six times, since we each get one punch for every string he breaks.

August 8th, 1998. Santa Barbara, CA.

Tonight we may have pulled the single greatest prank ever pulled in the history of pranking. I mean, this is so good, had he been there, Ashton Kutcher’s brain would have transmarginally inhibited, and we could have made him our personal laundry slave. And this was YEARS before “Punk’d”, people! YEARS! Anyway, after the show tonight Jiggaman and I decided that we finally had to get Wes back for what he did in Tuscon weeks earlier (let’s just say he “replaced” our “instruments” with “cottage cheese”… that’s a metaphor though - what he really did was much, much messier). So, we’re backstage after the show. Wes is nowhere to be found. Reilly mentions that he saw our favorite boy-man escape minutes before with a large-breasted blonde. Perfect. This gives us time to put our plan into effect. While Wes was getting his knob slobbed elsewhere, Jig and I ventured onto the hard streets of Santa Barbara and purchased some crack for ten dollars American from a frighteningly toothless hoodlum. We brought it back into the backstage Green Room area and proceeded to place the crack in a glass “smoking pipe”. That being done, we made ourselves comfortable with a couple Cosmopolitans and waited, telling whimsical jokes with our crafty bass player Christos Reilly. Ten minutes or so later, Wesley emerges from the hallway, besmirked and snickering, the permanent twinkle in his eye now magnified by a post-orgasmic glow. JZ and I wink to each other knowingly, and proceed to offer Wes the pipe (the one with the crack in it, obviously). “Here, Wes,” I said, “Toke some high-grade cannabinoids that we purchased from a local college student. We are already high off of it. It is good weed.” “I think it’s hydro,” JZ added brilliantly. Wes took the pipe and put the shaft gently to his lips. “TAKE A BIG HIT!” JZ yelled excitedly. Wes, who will smoke anything you shove in his mouth, put a flame to the crack and sucked like the bimbo he defouled earlier that night. Inhale, hold, and out comes a formidable cloud of metallic-smelling white smoke. Unable to restrain, Jigga and I began laughing hysterically. Wes took two more hits and put the pipe down. “Why are you guys laughing?” He asked innocently, before falling to the ground and clutching his temples. “YAAAAAAAAARGH!” he screamed. “IT’S LIKE NAILS ON A CHALKBOARD! IN MY BRAIN!!!!!!!!!!” Then, we threw a bucket of cottage cheese on poor Wesley’s aching and cracked-out head. He vomited and continued bleating like a sea cow. JZ and I laughed and laughed and laughed. This time, the day was ours!

September 14th. 1999. Boise, ID.

Idaho. So many fucking potatoes. Those things are everywhere! I mean, covering every street like cobblestones, hanging plump and juicy from every tree, piled in every open field, bobbing like Halloween apples in virtually every puddle, stream, river, lake or other body of water. From the moment you step into that god-forsaken state, you want to kill yourself. Plus, since so many potato eyes are on you at all times, you’re constantly being watched. This was especially distracting when I was trying to take a dump before the show (potatoes usually fill every toilet, too, which makes it hard to flush). Thoroughly weirded out, we hit the stage at roughly 8:05 and began playing. As the show progressed, the smell of potatoes began to hold actual weight in the air, like a carcinogenic smoke. The audience yelled and danced, munching on their French fries or Lay’s or latkes or whatever form of potato-based snack they had. Wes began to gag, and Reilly had a coughing fit in the middle of his falsetto solo in the Eagle’s “One of These Nights”. We finished the song anyway, to raucous applause. The audience fucking loved us! JZ puked behind us all over his floor tom. “You alright, dude?” I yelled to him. “Fuck, man!” he moaned, “What’s with the potatoes?” By then, the smell of JZ’s vomit had reached the rest of us onstage, and, mixed with the stink of potato, set off a violent puke reaction of “Stand By Me”-esque standards. We continued the show, though, covered in our own warm chunder. Wes’s shirt was so soaked in the stuff that he ripped it off (to the crowd’s roaring approval). Unfortunately, he promptly threw up again all over his sweaty naked chest, which set me and Reilly off again. By the time we played “Gar Weber Rules at Everything”, the stage was covered in vomit and three effects pedals had already shorted out. We staggered offstage to thunderous applause. Backstage, Reilly was adamant that we do an encore, even getting so worked up that he yelled at us (between puking fits). Since no one else wanted to go out there (JZ had shoved a Glade plugin up his nose), I walked out and glided across the bile-covered stage to my piano. Then I did a really, really good version of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” that had the whole crowd singing, lighters in the air. I attacked the sticky keys, and sang my swollen throat out. I finished the last “sun going down on me” line with an impressive ten-foot projectile of green liquid that hit our road manager in the face on the side of the stage. It was truly a night to remember.

July 24th, 1996. Morrison, CO.

Longtime WtF fans will remember this night as the first time we played at Red Rocks Amphitheater. However, for yours truly, this balmy Friday night held a different significance: it was the first and only time I ever performed whilst under the influence of PCP (Lovingly referred to as “dust” by our good friend and rapper Necro). I had scored the shit before the show from one of the hardcore gangsta rappers who had opened for us. As we took the stage to a beautiful red sunset, it was kicking in. We opened up with an especially funktastic version of “Speak For Yourself”, and as the jam picked up, blood began pouring from the setting sun like from a festering wound. I screamed in horror, which only kicked the jam up a notch. Those two blistering chords just kept coming and coming and coming and coming until finally, the jam blasted to a halt and the crowd cheered. “The blood!” I yelled into the microphone frantically, “Watch out for the blood! From the sun!!!!!” Wes looked at me as if to say “D$, are you ok?” as his face contorted in an unsettlingly liquid way. I called him a demon. The rest of the band, figuring that I was merely joking, shrugged and launched into our new cover of “March of the Pigs” by Nine Inch Nails. At this point, I was strongly regretting ever making the band learn this song. The music beat me savagely to the ground, as I smashed my head onto the stage again and again. “Stop!” I screamed. “Please, stop!!!” I looked at my guitar, Excalibur. The strings had become venomous snakes that were now biting my fingers, and my guitar pick had somehow turned into a thick and bloody human tooth. The sky rained electric pain as my misery raped me right there onstage in front of tens of thousands of people. I ripped my clothes off and bit the air uncontrollably as the song ended. “Now doesn’t it make you feel better? The pigs have won tonight…” The irony of the song hit me as the rest of the band turned into fanged swine in front of my tear-filled eyes. JZ’s drumsticks were now severed human limbs, and Reilly played a bass that looked to be made out of a deer skeleton. I jumped to my naked feet, my penis waving in the warm summer night air like some crazy fleshy divining rod, and ran to the mic. Magically, the band knew what I was going to do, playing that simple descending riff. “JUST TAKE THOSE OLD RECORDS OFF THE SHELF!” We kicked out a really good version of Bob Seger’s hit that I think I haven’t sang better since. The rest of the show went alright, although Wes’s guitar solo on “The Candlestick Maker” could have been better.

November 27th, 2000. Nagoya, Japan.

Ahhh, Japan. It really is like “Lost in Translation”, except for the whole Scarlett Johansson’s ass thing, and there’s a considerable lack of Bill Murray. Also, unlike the movie, Japan is really not a boring pretentious piece of shit. We came over here because: a.) we’re sick of playing arenas and wanted to play smaller, more intimate shows at clubs, and b.) Japanese people love love love love American musical artists. Ben Folds is like Christ over here. So we’re doing a small tour, playing places with funny names like Shibuya-ku and Sakae and Fokuoka (pronounced “fuck-oo-aw-kah”). JZ has a penchant for Asian women that has gotten us into trouble over the years, especially in any place that is run by a monarchy, but Japan seems safe for us all, and fun. We all got scooters and scooted around Tokyo for a while before the show, pulling off some very complicated synchronized driving stunts, all while practicing our four-part harmony (by singing CSNY’s “Our House”). Already we drew a crowd of interested civilians, so we parked our little vehicles and did an a capella (or should I say, “rockapella”) concert right there in the middle of the street, surrounded by (seemingly) billions of small, small people. After a rousing rendition of “Blinded by the Light”, we bowed and jetted off, just in time to get some sushi before the show in Nagoya (which made Reilly violently sick, being that he is allergic to seafood). The show went alright, although no one clapped or made any sound in the packed club. Apparently it’s a custom, but it just made us think that we were sucking. Of course, this made each song exponentially better than the last since we “stepped it up” after each applause-less tune. By our last few songs we were playing better than any band has ever played in the history of rock, urging each other not to suck; in fact, urging each other to be all that we could be. The silent and intimate setting of the club gave us a perfect chance to play more of our softer material too, with the kind of intricacy that we couldn’t get before. When Reilly stepped to the microphone and we did Bette Midler’s “The Rose”, I was nearly in tears. Reilly’s silky baritone sounded like angels on high. Wes called me a pussy in front of everyone, and berated us for playing “that pussy shit”. Then he tried to do “Formality” by himself, while Reilly, JZ and I played some kick-ass Tracy Chapman songs acoustic. Eventually the crowd gave their first response of the night, which entailed throwing Wes in a nearby jail. With Wes’s macho cock-rock out of the picture, we were free to be beautiful, although when we tried to play “Broken Boy”, the crowd booed and hissed angrily. Taken aback, we did some Aaron Neville and got the fuck out of there.