Unearthed

The other week, a friend sent me a link to a 1989 tour diary written by Tobi Vail. A member of the '90s rock band Bikini Kill, Vail has always been a historian and documentarian of sorts -- the kind who retains information in the same way an antique store does, with a fascinating mixture of excess, ordered chaos and rare finds. The tour diary documents the adventures of one of her first bands, The Go Team -- different, I might add, from today's Go Team! from the U.K.

Whether or not you're familiar with an artist, or even like it, looking back on firsthand accounts of the touring life illuminates the in-between and the interstitial. Diaries both glorify and bash the quotidian; they breathe life into a fan's often made-up perception of a band, a scene or a city. Diaries connect dots and raise hopes, but they also shatter illusions. Touring is mundane and filthy as much as it is glamorous and otherworldly.

In my last post, I discussed the death of the rock star. Tour diaries, depending on their candor, can either cement or diminish a musician's status in a fan's mind. But I think the potency of tour diaries and documents exist separate from the music. I find them interesting as their own form of expression.

A quote from Tobi Vail's 1989 Go Team diary:

I wanted to go to Macdougal Street and Washington Sqare park and see where Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo lived. I wanted to climb the fire escapes of Greenwich Village and live life like the pictures of Jack Keroauc and all the cool girls in the beat history book whose names I don't know but who must've written cool poems too. We walked around for the whole day until I had blisters on my feet and we had to take the subway to an art museum that was showing the Andy Warhol retrospective. Wow. The party at Linda's was nuts. We got in a fight with Mike McGonigal from Chemical Imbalance. We wanted to dance to the new Madonna record. He kept putting on Jad Fair and the Shaggs. Hey, we love that music, but the new Madonna record just came out yesterday and we wanted to dance. All these east coast people showed up with dyed hair, big shoes or boots and black clothing. Tammy Rae was there and some people from Pussy Galore. We played with Galaxie 500, who are so boring but really nice.

You can read the rest of the diary at Punk Rock Tour Bog.

These days, a lot of artists keep online tour diaries and blogs. Blitzen Trapper has been documenting its adventures, while Vancouver's Ladyhawk teamed up with Fader in order to write about a recent tour of Europe. Neko Case often keeps an online travelogue.

Finally, while pondering the topic of tour diaries, I went back and found something I wrote for Magnet magazine in 2003:

We fly into Oslo, exhausted but eager for a few days without moving. Tour is all about moving, about momentum, despite the fact that your body wants to stay still. Stillness is the enemy of tour; it allows time for wanting, and there is no wanting on tour because there is very little that you can have. Or rather, what you are allowed to want is what is right in front of you: sounds and sights and tastes and smells; a good meal, a great show, a firm bed. But you can't want something back at home, or back in the last city you were in, because it's not there or it's already gone. A camera that was left in a mess of sheets, a book that you forgot in a cafe you don't know the name of. What you have is right in front of you. It's what makes tour alluring and it's what makes it devastating. We play the Oya Festival. The stage looks out over the river and the city. Bright and clean. We are plagued by technical problems again. This time, I lose my composure and a water bottle goes flying. I don't feel punk rock. I feel like a big baby. I think about all the water and beer that's been thrown over the years, the guitars that have been smashed, the blood that has been drawn and spilled. All the temper tantrums. All the babies playing rock 'n' roll.

Carrie Brownstein

4:51 PM ET | 10-13-2008 | permalink

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