The Drug War

Pictures of the Brian Jonestown Massacre will be forthcoming, pending the discovery of my camera-to-computer cord, but don't get too wet in the pants because as I recall, I had shitty angles and bad aperture settings. Arghf. In any case, perhaps the description shows a thousand pictures. I rolled up hazily to the 9:30 Club to get the tickets at Will Call, and had to practically step over the prostrated bodies of two youths gunned in the face over a bad drug deal. (Oh, U St. Corridor. When will you be perfectly gentrified?) My madman friend Neil joined me, but his so looked forward to concert experience was marred when he was excused from the premises for blowing one lone toke over the crowd during an ebullient rise in the music. Meanwhile, an old friend of mine was intent on introducing me to Joel Gion and Newcomb's lovely Welsh wife, Kate. He texted me, "Enjoy the show, do your thing. Over some weed--jesus." Indeed. I'm sure it's laughable to anyone in NYC or SFC that in D.C. you can still get busted for tokin' a smoke at a perfectly psychedelic concert. But the crowd was older--the I-Graduated-From-High-School-In-'89 crowd still haunting the Velvet Lounge and Asylums of Northwest. It was a great vibe. Everyone was totally chilled out, the bar was empty and entirely approachable. (You win this time, AA.) On the way in, the chick asked to look in my bag. My paraphernalia was well-hidden, but she asked about my small black Sephora drawstring bag which contained my bottle of legit antidepressants label intact, and unfortunately still an unlabeled bottle of Blue Dragon, stripped of its label since I lost a similarly precious prescription bottle on the ground outside a 711, and so some lucky fuck knows my name, address and phone number. But when she asked to verify the name on the bottle with the name on my ID I freaked temporarily, preparing to part with the magical purple bud. Whew, I just squeaked through.

I thought about what Newcomb would have said about the fact that two poor assholes get their faces blown off for crack or yeyo and all the cops have to do is crouch down and clean it up, while I provide government record of the various coping methods I've found to ease the anxiety of walking down a street covered in rats and crackheads. And actually, it's not even so much the crackheads and dog-sized rodents that really makes the hair stand on end, but the people who walk by and pretend to help you when you fall and break your leg, only to steal your last bottle of Vicodin to get ripped with some Grey Goose later. Or the dude who buddies up to your boyfriend to try to lock you in a bathroom. But then I remember Newcomb's miles away from all this bullshit. He's had his time, but he's sober now and crystal-clear according to a January interview for London-based webzine SUPERSWEET, in which he concludes:

A lot of clever people are completely overwhelmed. This stuff keeps happening, such as the Pakistani earthquakes. I was thinking that you could have really light, bomb shaped objects, breakable plastic, load that up and fly low and drop it, you can mobilise an insane amount to them. But I don’t like getting into the politics, because it’s bad form while I’m here, sitting in a hotel living room. My concern is that, when the fatigue sets in, when we stop worrying about it.

As Nietzsche said, politics is the prostitution of the intellect. And that's why I'm getting out of D.C. Soon. Soon.

Take me, Vice Records, my palms are moist for you.