Punk legends The Dwarves are currently on tour, and their frontman, Blag Dahlia, took the time out of his busy schedule to share his feelings about life on the road. Check out the first installment of the Dwarves’ tour diary.
December 1- Austin, TX at Elysium
There’s nothing like a 6 am flight to infuriate a confirmed insomniac. Just as I began to drift off to sleep, I was at Oakland airport, the only airport where a well-placed $20 can get your oversized luggage onboard without a problem. The Dwarves Concept Album features a song called “Terrorist of Love” that contains the lines—“got something to get off my chest, strapping on my suicide vest, I finally found a reason to fly Southwest,” so I kept waiting for the airline to cancel my tickets and throw me off the plane, but I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a Dwarves record so no one but the folks who read New Noise are ever going to hear it, and most of them will hate it without actually listening to it first. Welcome to my world.
After sleeping the afternoon away, I arrive at the club in time to miss the Oxys, but I do catch the Riverboat Gamblers for the first time in years. A great band and even a new drummer couldn’t slow them down in their hometown of Austin. In case you’ve never heard of us, the Dwarves are still the best band ever, as one of our best songs clearly states right there in the title. This version of the band, one of a dozen since we started way back in 1983, is my favorite because they kill it every night, they know all the new songs and the old ones, and they work cheap.
On drums, Snupac, thrash master and 90’s hip/hop head, he’s half as old as the rest of us and twice as cute which leads to a lot of abuse from those of us who wish he was a little less attractive and a little more angry at life for all of its many disappointments. Just being around him makes me happy, which in turn makes me furious. I’ve been spiking his Red Bulls with plutonium to speed up the aging process.
On bass, Rex Everything, aka Nick ‘Frasier’ Oliveri. Hands down the best bass player in rock, he also sings like the Tasmanian devil being electrocuted by a giant mutant hamster with three eyes and bright green fur. Simultaneously, the kindest and the most violent person I know (I’ve seen him pound on fans for looking at him, not looking at him wrong, just looking at him), he is the living embodiment of rock ‘n’ roll, which is to say, a beating heart of gold encased in a three-pound bag of horseshit. In fact, his next solo Mondo Generator record should be called Three Pound Bag of Horseshit, because it sounds vaguely ‘stoner’ and suggests the conspiracy theories that he doesn’t actually believe in but insists are true just to piss me off. I once refused to let him out of the van until he admitted that the Earth was round, and not just because pictures from the moon landing (which he also doesn’t believe in) confirmed it, but because every five-year-old knows that the Earth is, in fact, round. And don’t get him started on the pyramids.
Speaking of the pyramids, the Fresh Prince of Darkness on guitar refuses to tour Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, and I don’t blame him, those are dangerous places. Then again, he also refuses to tour Pasadena, Hollywood or Hawaii; Toledo or Tampa; New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire or New Mexico; Greenland, Antarctica, Mozambique and the Cayman Islands; or anywhere else for that matter. Yet somehow, he’s always there with us, solid as Mike Tyson on guitar and writing a lot of the best songs that you thought I wrote. Why must he protest the very act of playing in the band while simultaneously playing in the band? Maybe it’s because this band vacillates between playing prestige festivals for big money and then washing out in tiny bar rooms with no dressing room or toilet and walking with less than the Domino’s delivery guy gets for an eight-hour shift. But hey, that’s show biz. And speaking of show biz, we were fucking great tonight, and everybody knew it. If they didn’t know it, I kept reminding them over and over that we are living legends in the punk rock scene and the best-looking band since Imagine Dragons side project Masticating Centipedes.
You know how most old bands have one or two records you really like and then a handful of bullshit you don’t want to hear? Well, that’s not us. All of our records rule and our new record is a masterpiece so we’re determined to play everywhere until everyone who ever doubted us dies in a horrible plane crash or gets cancer. Which brings me to the guy who stole the Fresh Prince’s distortion pedal from right offstage after the show. There must be a special spot in hell for people who steal gear from musicians. I’d like to beat the living fuck out of him/her/them/it, but they remain uncaught…for now.
People from groovy bands that showed up to the gig include Rise Against, Scott Biram, the Bulemics (sp.) and the Applicators all of which made me happy that I’m an old whore that knows every band but can’t remember anyone’s name anymore. I was offered coke several times which also made me happy, though now that you die immediately after snorting it, I had to beg off. Speaking of begging, we forgot to get paid, a true rookie move, but the next day we made a big fuss and the promoter came to the Iron Works and paid us, which covered the barbecue, which was great without sauce, the true test of any real barbecue. Special shout out to Graham who always gets the Dwarves a show in Austin. Let’s start a write in campaign to bring back Fun Fun Fun Fest!
December 2- Dallas, TX at Three Links
The Oxys supported this gig and were fabulous as the Riverboat Gamblers couldn’t make it. Last night I made sure to bust the Gamblers’ balls for making a tour poster that failed to mention us. I used a combination of guilt and sarcasm so effective they have now learned their lesson and assured me that they will hang their heads in shame for the remainder of the tour and donate the now useless posters to a children’s leukemia ward.
So far on this tour I have been staying in my hotel room and showing up at the last minute in an attempt to save my voice which now turns to hamburger after about three gigs no matter how many annoying vocal exercises I do beforehand. I recently started vocal lessons which punk rockers should never do, as it reminds us that we aren’t actually ‘singers’ so much as folks who write songs that no one else wants to sing. But, of course, we were fucking great, again, and it turned out all kinds of people in Dallas did want to sing along with our disturbing anthems of sex, death, dope and violence, again.
Groovy members of bands that showed up included the Hangmen and all three original members of the Reverend Horton Heat. We did our first European tour with the Supersuckers and the Rev and never has a band more perfectly mutated rockabilly with heavy metal before or since. It was truly thrilling to see them all together along with our first roadie Baggins who still says things like, “I’ll roll you out like wholesale carpet” with a straight face. Kudos to Scott Beggs for always getting us a show in Dallas though he now has better things to do. That didn’t stop me from encouraging the audience to beat each other to a pulp and then blame him for it, but he should know better than to trust as at this point.
The streets of Deep Ellum were inundated with Saturday night club booty which was fun to look at, but the accompanying soundtrack of new hip/hop was so infuriating that it ruined my lecherous ogling. Some of you who are as ancient as me remember when the good new records were all punk records. That ended with the dawn of the grunge era, but hip/hop took over and for a solid decade all the good records were rap records. Alas, that era is now long over and both punk and hip/hop records suck so bad that the only thing worse are those hipster records made by couples who live in Brooklyn and make home recordings when they get back from their day jobs. If I ever start a band with my girlfriend, please kill me and feed my liver to the last of the Amazonian cannibal tribes, I’ll deserve it.
Did I mention we have a new record out?
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