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Filming for Metalhead in October 2008, a fake show in a warehouse. Arriving at 5 a.m. after loading out from a show the night before, sleep until 8, get up and try to wash and brush and makeup the exhaustion out of our faces. Eat something boring from the cabinet, the fridge. Drink the black motor oil coffee --- I brew Cafe Bustelo like it was Maxwell House. By noon we're loading into the warehouse. Out spare tarps, ghetto bikes, construction cones, snow shovel. Tools of the trade never guessed at. Gas can, spare tires, oh yes and great big amplifiers. Our trailer loaded weights 5,500 lbs, empty weighs 1,200. Do the math, we load that in and out for every show.
 
By 3 or 4 the wall of amps is set up and checked. Drums go to a living room nearby to shoot a different scene. Edgar in hot setting sideways sun, windows spotlighting as the director has him improvise a 10-minute drum solo. And again. And again. No really let yourself go, freak out. Hurt yourself man. That's what you do. He wants me to watch him so I can tell him if he did well, the director wants to break our connection to put Edgar off balance for the scene. I hide in a hall where I can see. He's amazing, he's in agony, he's my man and this eloquent fury is his calling card.
 
I want to protect him from this repetition of giving it all. Don't they understand a person can only give so much blood at one time?
 
They ask him to vomit for the next scene. He vomits often during or after our shows, but despite filming us seven or eight times they've never caught it on film. Want to fill in the stuff we've missed. So you guys will play a song, he vomits, then he's freaking out cause he can't hear (the Edgar-goes-deaf plot of the film) and he leaves the stage. Amber you'll try to keep the show going for a minute or two, then react.
 
We play Hiroshima. This is like 8 p.m. or later. No one watching will know the hours to set up, hours to hang a 150-lb camera above Edgar's head which would of course kill him if it fell. Gotta get the shot. We play, I am amped by the song and fragile emotionally because I don't want him to get hurt. Seems like forcing vomit is a bad call. But the grease makes you give, more than you have, the grease killed John Bonham and Keith Moon and Kurt Cobain and we just pray it doesn't take us. Yet.
 
He pukes, knocks over cymbals, runs from the stage, it's perfect. I keep a riff going, Pinned In Glass, like I'm trying to play it off. It's no problem acting because I am upset and scared for him. Minute passes, I put down the guitar still ringing run behind the amps. Director calls cut.
 
The exposure was wrong or the camera placement or some frustrating shit. We do it again. Cymbals getting cracked, they cost a fortune, anybody know how much cymbals cost? It's okay the producer will reimburse us. Hey two minutes of film costs as much as a ride cymbal, okay. We do it again. Four times? I can't remember. Post-traumatic stress. This is rock stardom, this is a movie being made about your band. Living the dream.
 
For a week Edgar's throat is burned from bile, he has trouble holding food, we wonder if he'll recover or if this is permanent damage to his esophagus. And some people say we are fake.
 
I saw The Decline Of Western Civilization and then Decline Part II. Endless segue from dirty stickered wall to black-bowled sink to clogged toilet. Unexpected flash of breasts, the smell of grain alcohol and marijuana mixed with sweat. Edgar's grandma Nanny keeps a map on her wall with pins and colored string, connects our dots across the state, the country, the continent, the world. She's run out of different colors to use.

 
Black Flag in Canada. Remember it every time I'm in Montreal, I haven't seen the movie for years, have no idea what city they were actually in, but for me it's Montreal. I used to read Henry Rollins' road writing as a magic language, alternate reality. Now I'm in it. What does that mean?
 
I met Mike Watt about eight years ago. Thrilling.
 
When I lived in east bumblefuck northwest Georgia and met a chick who didn't, who handed me mix tapes of music, there was Minutemen. There was DRI. There was Suicidal Tendencies and Wurm and Exploited and SOD. Minor Threat. Thank god for Kristi, wherever you are. Your tapes and my mom's college lit books were the only hope I had for a reality I could stand.
 
Mike Watt has a mind like a trap. He's a living archive of punk history. He was there, and he is here. When we opened for him in Lawrence, Kansas he insisted on us leaving our backline up after our set. We promised him we could take it down fast, no problem, we'll just throw it all to the side so you guys can have more room. Fuck that, sez he, I want to play in front of it. What you're doing is amazing. Flash forward to Los Angeles in the spring, sitting outside a club in Silver Lake, on the pavement, Watt is regaling me with anecdotes from the eighties. I'll never remember as much about my own life as he remembers about everyone elses's. To share respect with someone this kind, this talented, this wise, this engaged is a rare gift. Never mind the legend and the icon with the bass and the flannel.
 
When I was a bus girl at a shithole diner in Athens, Georgia I went to see the Cramps one night. I'd bought advance tickets weeks ago, I didn't really know their music but they were old school. I knew that much. Day of the show I was sick, pissed off, didn't want to go out. But ten bucks for
an advance ticket! So I went.
 
I was sick, pissed off, I got drunk, I don't remember the show too clearly. Yes, the Cramps gave a good show. Maybe I was put off when Lux simulated (?) having a girl in front blow him. Yeah I was put off. And some chick kept bumping into me, like pretending by accident but with a purpose, and I was getting increasingly surly. A good pit would've let off some steam but it didn't happen. Then suddenly they announce a surprise guest... Joey Ramone.
 
I wasn't the biggest Ramones fan but even so, seeing Joey in a 500 capacity room in Georgia seemed equivalent to seeing Jesus in some dirt road Mississippi chapel. I moved closer to the front, he sang a couple songs, then it was over and I went home. Next morning I had to be at work by seven. Half an hour into my shift who should come in but Joey Ramone and the tour manager!
 
Again the time warp, the past shining incredulity of that moment, the present yes of course, even the rock stars gotta eat breakfast somewhere... I stood in my busser hole conveniently located across from their table, smoking Lucky Strikes. There wasn't really anything else to do, no customers yet. Trying not to stare, trying to keep track of their eating so I could bus their plates at the right time, the not too soon, not too eager time, but in time to not get shit from my manager. I used to drink coffee with milk and about 1/2 cup of sugar in a pint glass. I stood smoking, drinking that and wishing I wasn't in my decidedly unflattering busser apron, a paean, nothingperson, infinitely unimportant to the world. These were dumb things to feel but combining adolescence with a hangover and a rock star encounter and a stinky menial job first thing in the morning
couldn't have helped.
 
When I started taking their empty plates (neatly stacked with used forks and napkins because you know damn well these guys had worked shit jobs themselves) they struck up a conversation, Joey "Hey weren't you at the show last night?" and we had a nice talk. I will never forget how normal and sweet was this icon of dirty punk New Yawk, never be able to tell him my gratitude that he didn't hit on me or demean me or act above me, and even the tour manager was funny and cool.
 
The ones who really have it, they never need to prove it.

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