It has been a scant week and a half since Crom concluded their first East Coast tour, but already the after-effects are rippling wide and ripply. Their guitarist Fill has some sort of weird rash on his leg, the drummer they brought on board shortly before embarking on this cavalcade of disasters has given up playing music, leaving Bastard Noise to scramble for a replacement on the eve of their upcoming Japanese tour, and the lost memories keep slowly rolling to the shore. In the meantime, other guitarist Scott Bag-Martin drew up this little tour report for all those who couldn't tag along. We broke it up into two parts because it is long, and also we're still waiting on some crap from the band's end. Clock's ticking, boys.Day one: Our guitarist Fill comes home to discover Bill H.(vocals) passed out on his lawn with his luggage, a plastic bag containing three tallboys, a Lil' Wayne CD, and two black metal albums. This is seriously, all that he's packed for a 10 day trip. (Oh and he forgot his phone too.) When I arrive I notice that Bill's eyes are doing that two-eggs-swimming-in-tomato-sauce thing, and he will not stop yelling.Andre (bass) enters the room doing a fist pump and says "I just got the Mexican hook-up. Fuckin’ van is picking us up, $40 to take us to the airport." Then he does a little cumbias dance. I nod but am not listening because our lagging-ass dummer RD hasn't shown up yet and may not at all. I'm also secretly shitting a brick because I'm kinda on a couple no-fly lists and I don't know what airline we're taking.Andre’s Mexican hook up turned out to be some shady car with a blue Earl Scheib paint job, not a van, and it has no meter and it won't fit half of us, even without our gear. We continue to frantically call RD as at this point we’re running dangerously late and he's our only hope.RD shows up at the last possible moment (completely calm mind you) and explains that we need to clean out his truck in order to fit. The truck is filled with garbage. Seriously, loose dog food, crayons, pennies, a broken banjo, french fries, wood screws. When we finally get to the airport I check myself and Bill in because I don't want him talking to anyone in his condition. Two words with an airport official and this tour would be over. We barely make it onto our red-eye before it leaves the gate, and I decide that that's it for me and responsibility. Time to blow off this goddamned steam.On the plane I get us cut off from the booze because of yelling. We arrive in NYC at around 9 AM or some shit. I don’t know, by this point I'm fucking trashed. I don’t know if we slept at all, probably not. I do know we started drinking really early, then the drugs came, and then we all basically fell apart. At one point in the day Bill stuffed his testicles into my pants pocket, then put them on the kitchen counter and started to season them with whatever spices were around, and then I decided to dust buster his nuts. I have it on video, it's a lot sadder than it sounds.Getting to the club for that night's show and whatever led up to it is completely lost on us. I don't know if we took cabs or what, nobody remembers anything. We arrive and are told that we're last to play so keep drinking at the club and making bump trips to the bathroom. Then things got real fucked up. We got on the stage and started yelling at each other. Must have looked awesome, five drunk idiots screaming orders at one another, real professional show of force for all our old friends there wanting to see a Crom show (suckers). We start into our first song and I notice Fill isn’t playing a single correct note. At first I thought it was just me being high or some shit, but sure enough, the more I listened the clearer it became that we weren’t going to get very far tonight. The next thing I notice is Andre putting his bass down and going to the bar for more beer. Keep in mind this is during the set, in the middle of a song. Then Bill leaves to do the same. The set turns to shit, people are yelling at us, Fill drops his guitar then starts taking his equipment apart and talking to himself. He throws all of his foot pedals at my head. I didn’t even notice this happening (thanks for the heads up, Thomas), but I was told if one of them had connected I definitely would have been hospitalized or worse. Then Fill tries to throw his wallet in the crowd, but thankfully someone is brave enough to stop him. I grab the mic and start talking shit about the whole band. We get back to the pad, I fall alseep on the floor, Bill paces around naked for the remainder of the evening. gross.Day Two: We played Brian Turner's show on WFMU. Good shit. I spilled a bunch of beer everywhere and we set the homepage on the office computers to white power websites to be funny. It went over well with the host. Bill admitted on air that he’s kicking heroin. Then we went to Baltimore to meet up with friends (we never once drove without at least two 18 packs in the car at all times, open containers constantly). I had already pre-arranged a drug order. We went to a show and got wasted. I was way too cracked out so my friend and I went back to his pad to crash for the night. While we were talking and smoking a joint in the yard I noticed the bullshit sun coming up, so I foolishly popped a morphine pill thinking it would help get me to sleep. Holy shit. It was as if the bed took flight into some kind of shitty green screen effect. I was also very drunk and stoned so I didn’t really pay attention to how fucking weird it was, but it was.Day Three: During a conversation with a friend over some cereal I dropped another morphine thinking that the previous night's little astral projection session was "neat." I had no idea I was going to be nailed to the floor and vomiting for hours. The fact that we were watching Inland Empire made it so much fucking worse.We played the show that night, actually finishing a set this time. There were, however, several complications regarding Bill. By this point he had completely turned into an Evil Dead witch and he introduced us by screaming that he was crippled and Jewish. When the audience’s reaction was mostly confused glares he got angry and yelled "FUCK YOU ALL!" Then he broke the mic and it came out of our payment. Awesome.SCOTT BAG-MARTINPart 2 in a couple hours…
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