The Heavyweights Of Extreme Championship Rocking | World Tour 2004: Day 31

By N. Sylvester

12 September 2004, 3:31AM – Washington, DC

Enough with the fucking melodrama. I'm going to tell it to you straight as a baby's asscrack: The Heavyweights of Extreme Championship Rocking are indie rock's answer to Norah Jones. They're the fucking olive branch to the War on Drugs, the Thomas Paine to the Boston Fucking Tea Party. I'm the band's manager – but I manage many things. In this business, where kings are paupers and paupers are in Iraq FIGHTING ANOTHER MAN'S WAR, somebody has to be reliable. While the band's hanging out back stage reading Nietzsche, there I am at the merch table, "managing" to break a twenty because somebody only wants to buy a fucking button. And let me tell you something else: there are a lot of fucking buttons to sell. Who do you think "manages" to sell them all? Does the band "manage" to put them on their shirts in such a way that the buttons look like flat nipples? Not that I'm complaining– I think it's pretty goddamn grand these guys are such visionaries.

When their show at the Black Cat finished last night, we (heretofore Me and the Heavies) packed up our shit like Dick Tracy framing Roger fucking Rabbit on the set of The Wonder Years. Now we're driving around outside Philadelphia in our tour wagon, a 1989 Ford Aerostar with tinted windows, looking for a place to get some fucking shut eye. I'm outside making some calls from a glass phone booth. Zeke is in the back-- he's the Heavies drummer, our resident sex guru, and the only man I know who can read Maxim and FHM at the same fucking time-- reading the latest issues of Maxim and FHM. The other guys are passed out, or sleeping, or in the mini-mart buying cigarettes. I mean what am I, their fucking mother? This is indie rock for chrissakes. They do whatever they want, and any of the tour t-shirts we don't sell I'm gonna keep for myself.

I call a motel and order eight rooms: one for each guy in the band, one for me, and three for Rock Elijah. By the time we've tongued our way to the place, Chris, Joel and Yanson are still in the Aerostar, and I'm not the kinda guy who fucks with that. They want to sleep in a van, that's fine, that means more empty rooms for me and my dogs-- call me a pussy, right? but I swear to fucking Christ I'll put up any stray pets I can find in this fucking shanty town of Libertas. One day my message will be clear: I don't care who let the dogs out-- it's just time for someone to let these dogs in-- into their hearts.

12 September 2004, 3:01PM – Philadelphia, PA
3PM the next day we wake up with bloody noses and the motel alarm clocks covered in boogers. Man was I shot-- like the fucking sheriff-- but I kept it cool-- like the deputy of our country, Bill Fucking Gates. The Heavies were hungry as horses at the dog track, and really wanted some breakfast. We messied up the hotel room before we left, then started hunting down some diners. Places to eat. Things for Sustenance. BEING. TIME. GEIST.

We dug our way out of that shithole and climbed up onto this shit mountain of a diner on Sixth and Spring Garden. The place reminded me of “Heroin”, a poem I wrote about Eric Clapton’s song “Heroin.” We sit ourselves down and get ready for some nutritional facefucking. Now the thing you need to know about the Heavyweights: these guys are comedy geniuses. Wherever we go, there they are, talking to each other. Then they start RIFFING. Now settle the fuck down before your shit comes out your eyes. These aren't just any sorts of riffs the Heavies are doing– these are magical rock and roll comedy duels, reminiscent of Louis Armstrong skat-battling himself coked out in front of the bathroom mirror.

Joel is the king of riffs. This guy just can't stop riffing – he's always in the midst of a riff. I swear to god it's a good thing this is a DEMOCRACY (still, but it might not be because of the fucking ELEPHANTS), because Joel is the king of riffs, a tyrant of riffing. His minions? Riffs.

But that's just a footnote. And besides, we hadn't even ordered our fucking food yet. Our waitress came up and spit some water in our cups, then started eyeing us up like we're ready to order. None of us had even looked at the menu– like we fucking needed to anyway. We knew the kind of place this was. Yanson ordered his usual: bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee. Black – like the color of his dyed black hair. Then Chris ordered. French toast. So fucking typical. Here's a guy who can't break himself away from himself. We were at a French toast place yesterday and all he could order was French toast. Zeke was a vegetarian. So fucking typical, but still, so goddamn beautiful. His decision to stay away from meat gave him his slim physique, and it reminded me of swans – a fucking million of them – swimming in a lake, doing ballet with their wings – made of steel.

"I'll have the broccoli omelette, please. Oh, hold the omelette, I'm a vegetarian." Zeke always did that, but we always laughed anyway, like clowns do when other clowns die. Joel ordered something I forget, and this was shaping up to be the saddest breakfast I had ever had, then I ordered, like a fucking champ.

"What do you want to eat?"

I stared that waitress down until she had to ask me that question again. I was trying to prove a point: how is anybody going to want to eat here unless you try and establish at least thirty seconds of serious heart-to-heart eye-to-eye eye contact? It ain't rocket science, toots– it's called love.

"I'll have a number two."

"Sir we don't do numbers – there is no number two on the menu."

"Yeah" I said like a man. "So surprise me."

And she did. She started writing something down furiously on her notepad, and I knew she was about to shit herself from all the E she was probably rolling in the kitchen. "Here" she said, handing me a note. "If you don't want to tell me, smart ass, draw it."

"Sure. I know how to draw." I took out my fucking ballpoint and drew my breakfast. Listen – I can’t rock it out on stage, but I can draw like a motherfucker. I’m the next Kandinsky. Shit, I'm the Kandinsky to Kandinsky– the big blue blob of piss to his big red blob of shit– and this girl was fucking in for it if she thought I wasn’t going to draw my breakfast and DESTROY ART right there in front of her.

"So pancakes." Right then, I knew this waitress was the art history type. I could see her bra.

"Yes."

"We're out of pancakes." So fucking impressionist. It took all my strength to keep from blowing up her spot and going Good Will Hunting on her ivy league face.

"A bagel's fine then."

"Great, I'll be right back."

Ten minutes, thirty Canadian power trio riffs and two Tom Sawyers later, Good Will Waitress comes back with our food. Now listen: I've been in this music business for six months, and I know Riff Central when I see it coming. But BAM here I was in Riff Central, wearing nothing but my necktie around my forehead. This is what happened: Jacques Saunier– my new name for our fuck-it-all of a waitress– gives everyone his plate, then gives Joel a bag of eggs and bacon. "Sorry, we're out of plates," she said. And guess the fuck what? We're officially in Riff Central, and it's only 8PM Riff Central Time.

"Out of plates? Right, and I'm out of expensive designer drugs!" riffs Joel.

Shit starts streaming down everyone pants – this is the funniest thing we've heard in moose years. Funnier than Jethro Tull beating out Metallica for the Rock Grammy in 1989. Funnier than MC Hammer buying an entire baseball stadium so he could practice pitching– and rapping– at the same time. Funnier than Rodney Dangerfield surrounding his LA mansion with a "danger field" (land mines).

"I don't get it. Are you saying you'd rather not eat eggs and bacon from a plastic bag?" The waitress tried to riff her way out of this one like usual, but couldn't, like a dog chasing its own tail, or a mannequin trying to breathe.

"The only thing I eat from a plastic bag is crack cocaine, lady!"

Silence, then applause. Then more silence. Then, shit. Everywhere. I just couldn't stop shitting. This is what rock and roll’s all about. The waitress flipped her shit and left our table carrying a bag of bacon and eggs back to the kitchen – like a bank robber at the general store. And there we were back in Riff Central, celebrating the only way we know how: spitting into our palms and rubbing our palms into our eyes until we start to cry.

12 September 2004, 9:36PM – Philadelphia, PA

Forget all that. In my pocket I have a list of every band that has ever existed. Animal Collective, Audioslave, Beck, Sneaker Pimps-- there are only four bands that have ever existed. Tonight I'm about to add one more: the fucking Heavyweights of Extreme Championship Rocking.

We finally get to the Theater for the Living Arts, and man are we living. We're living in America, like James Brown, an American hero. Living have we been, true-to-form Eddie Murphys, just spinning around like boomerangs– riffing– for another 48 hours. It's fucking Beverly Hills, and we're the cops. Which is maybe why I’m so fucking steamed: on the way over from the diner we got pulled over by some cops for making an illegal left.

But fuck it. Fuck it ALL. We had no time for pitty pouting pammering. I drove up on the curb like a harlequin baby, and the The Heavies jumped out, clammed up on stage and started rocking out. After some sweet jamming, Zeke started meta-jamming while Joel kept swinging the microphone like it's the fucking Rock And Roll Rodeo and he's Lenny Kravitz. The band just kept slamming out the hits one-by-one– they even did covers of their own songs. Which is when I realized something: The Heavyweights of Extreme Championship Rocking had found their shtick: no shtick. Because just when you thought the Heavies were going to do something shticky, like a disco beat, or underground hip-hop, there was Zeke drumming in the back, wearing a shirt with no sleeves or collar. It's like the Frankfurt School: the band was "commodifying" the masses, and passing them off like opium smokers who believe in the Just War theory. And that's exactly what was happening: The Heavies were waging a just war – on music – and we, the audience, were spared the weapons of mass destruction that the Catholic Church threatens to use against the Sacred Feminine.

And the crowd was going fucking apeshit. The Heavyweights jumped off stage after their last song, then came out for six different encores. By the fourth encore the entire place is fucked, and all the sudden Joel climbs out Zeke's bass drum and starts singing "Louis Louis", which sounds exactly like "Louie Louie", except all the words are replaced with sweet riffs. Suddenly it's encore five time, and the band puts on masks of our the Greatest American Presidents – Quincy Adams, Adams, Michaels – and plays the national anthems of EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. It's 8 in the morning, and the Heavies are just getting to Morocco when we realize we're all lying by ourselves in the middle of South Street wearing nothing but jean shorts.