HAPPY NEW TEARS

03/05/23

I keep waking between 4:30 and 5 and I don’t make coffee yet because the machine I have is so loud and I don’t want to wake Amy and Rainer. Building a coffee machine that is loud is so counterintuitive to the time of day in which coffee is mostly needed. Occasionally I look at new options for bean to cup machines but I don’t pull the trigger because:

1. Our tiny Hollywood bungalow doesn’t have much counter space.

2. I always fake quit coffee so committing to a new expensive machine feels like I’m abandoning a cause that I’m not really committed to. I know.

3. To be honest, it’s a small Nespresso machine and it’s new because I decided I hate Nespresso so I threw away the old machine and then bought it again a few days later when I realized the two points above this one… but then I went to the Nespresso store in Beverly Hills and felt at a loss with all of society and regretted buying the second one. Fuck.

My point is that now most days I’m getting an Iced Coffee delivered via an app which is going to cost more than the expensive machine I won’t commit to. So it’s really a crooked circle, the kind I invent and then walk around until my body tires of it and I forge a new stupid path. It’s the same delivery person everyday too, Massimo, who I’m embarrassed to be seen by.

While on tour with Soundgarden in 2014, Ben, the bass player, told me that when he orders room service to his hotel room, he yells at them to just leave the food on the floor outside the door because he doesn’t want to be seen. I feel that… so real.

Good Morning Massimo - Please leave on doorstep at the wooden doors. Have a good day.

I don’t even know why I’m writing any of this. I wake with a strange urgency to write and I have been keeping it mostly to myself. Now I’m going to keep it here. Thank you for reading and subscribing. In the future most of this will be for paid subscribers (so I can pay for my coffee, so I can keep writing) but for now..

While waiting for the coffee I was reading the news or news headlines. Pig Murdaugh family murders and celebrity actors complaining about filming sex scenes. It’s strange to live in Hollywood. At the corner of our street you will find tourists posing for a photo under the HOLLYWOOD sign. All day. I would say 80% of them pose at the angle as if they are holding it on a platter. I imagine the lifetime of insanity the locals of Pisa are put through watching millions of culture cucks arrange the photo of them pushing the tower down or holding it up. Driven to the brink of suicide by life’s tired comedy.

About two years ago I felt similar and was driven into such a black hole bottomless void that I called 1-800-SUICIDE. It doesn’t feel beautiful to write that on this calm morning. I see a hummingbird outside the window in the fountain. I love life and will never give in but I was nervous of my spinning mind and did not know where to turn. I sat in a bathtub without water and dialed the number and a stranger with a soft voice answered and asked what was going on. I expanded on all of the dread I felt and the ideas I was having and the fear of this recurring dream I’ve had since I was five, one of a beautiful green pasture minding it’s own business, when slowly in the distance approaches a black tidal wave of sludge creeping toward the peace with a clear intent to destroy. And how that sludge was overtaking me and how futile everything all of a sudden felt. I said all of this and I was needing a response from this person on the line, a person who didn't know me, who had no opinions of me, just a thoughtful soul out in the world, the type who would volunteer to talk another off of the cliff. Surely they knew exactly what to say. I heard silence. I was concerned I had been disconnected and said “Hello?” A few seconds passed and they stuttered and said, “That’s really messed up.”

Last night I drove Amy, Rainer and Ryan McMahon to go eat at a vegan sushi place we have wanted to try called Ma-Kin in Agoura Hills. Rainer is really into the Miyazaki films and Japan and wanted to try more Japanese food so we needed to go. It took almost an hour to drive there and when we arrived I realized it was the same parking lot where I had met a stranger to buy a Korg MS2000B synth off of Craigslist about six years ago. We now own six of them because we all play them live. I ordered a roll called “The Sexy Lady” because I couldn’t really distinguish differences between the options and I liked the name. Rainer had some inari and it reminded me of the second time I toured Japan, this time with Some Girls, and how it was difficult being unable to read Japanese and vegan and so I only ate inari from 7-11. We arrived to Tokyo early in the morning and I was certainly hungover from Australia the days before and the guitarist and I decided to go to 7-11. I bought inari and he shoplifted a beer to my horror and I felt so awkward and terrible because from where I was standing I could see both him thinking he was getting away with it and the employees watching him in disbelief. So much so that they let him leave without saying a word.

We decided to bail on the highway and take Ventura boulevard home. It’s one of my favorite drives because it’s from a bygone era. It feels very 80’s, 90’s, Florida, Virginia Beach and other places I’ve lived and missed. I recalled passing a few record stores on the boulevard in the past, the wonderful kind that don’t exist much any more, and I wanted to make this moment perfect, which to me is spent flipping through records in neon flickering white lights when it’s dark outside. Everyone in the car had their eyes peeled for my description of the store and we found it in Tarzana, CD Trader.

It’s a lovey store and there are gems littered throughout it. We spent about 45 minutes there. I almost bought a first pressing of Discharge’s “Never Again” and a 7” of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” but I didn’t because Amy and I realized I probably won’t actually play the Discharge album and I have the 12” version of the Suicide single. So I bought two Lilys LP’s and two Morrissey bootlegs. Amy considered buying an Ian McCulloch / Echo & the Bunnymen double picture disc interview 7” but didn’t because she remembered that it originally came in a tin box. For Valentine’s Day this year I ordered Amy his handwritten lyrics of “The Killing Moon” but they didn’t arrive yet, the Royal Mail decimating my gift idea.

In 2013, Cold Cave played with Echo in Porto, Portugal. Iceage and The Horrors played as well. It was outside and August and the weather was perfect and we stood on a hilltop watching as they started their set. I felt alive and care free and with a few glasses of wine I said to Amy, “If I ever have a son I want his name to be Rainer.” We kissed and she was in shock as it was the first I had expressed interest in this sort of growing love. Later that evening Ian McCulloch asked with his arm around her if she was sure she was into me. I asked him how it felt to be the man with the golden voice. We were in his hometown of Liverpool a few days earlier stuck in a shit hotel with drunk wedding hooligans and the only thing on the television was a black and white Manfred Mann performance on repeat. He must’ve liked this enough and wanted to party with us. When his tour manager got wind of this, he blamed it all on me. I happily took the blame for the man with the golden voice but agreed with Amy that we didn’t now need the double picture disc interview 7”.

Back at CD Trader, Rainer was determined to find the soundtrack to the 1996 movie “That Thing You Do” and Ryan helped him comb the store. To his surprise he did find a CD single by the fictitious band in the movie, The Wonders, and when he did he celebrated the same way the band does in the movie when they first heard their single on the radio. The person working at CD Trader with long hair and a “Workingman’s Dead” t-shirt was very kind and recognized us and since suicide keeps coming up naturally we talked about the Alan Vega book we released through Heartworm and he was complimentary of The Daily Planet, Amy’s store. He said he enjoyed the Mark Lanegan books and I said that I did too.

Speaking of Morrissey, it was brought to my attention that his forthcoming album has a song on it titled “Happy New Tears”… I made this title up in 2012 and have seen several other artists use it since then. But who else besides me who has waxed and complained and sung about the horrors of firework driven letdown holidays could have conjured up such a simple nothing? I’m happy to see to it live on. It will live on here and there and anywhere that will have it.

Leaving Tarzana, I turned the car on and Lanegan’s “Hit The City” starts playing as we aim for the Hollywood sign. It is a song like none other and I love my family and I miss my friend.

The dog descends through the promised land

Down kingdom come and the acid bath

I'm Babylon burned inside out

Nothing to kill it

I hit the city