Vol. 32 already? not bad for a fifty-something psychonaut who has always prescribed to take Hunter Thompson's advice and have life "... not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely and pretty in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, Wow! what a ride..." the funny or maybe frightening part of this whole Mushroom Diary experiment is that i don't even write them all down, meaning yes kids since it's inception there have been more than 32 voyages into inner/outer space with vol. 32 being a double bill... cuz as the saying so famously goes, all work and no play make Kono a dull boy... and so El Kono has to get up off the couch and venture out into the world to explore... granted i spent most of my youth and beyond running the streets, i have a fucking PHD in the world of dealing,drugging and drinking, spent more hours in dark and smoky bars than i'd care to admit and have spent many a night wandering the back alleys of various cities or listening to the ocean, staring out windows of apartments at small town streets or partying like a rock star in some city tenement, yes i can't say it hasn't been interesting and i understand i probably am in the tippy top percentile when it comes to geezers my age taking psychedelics but hey, we all gotta have hobbies right?
Which brings me to what amounted to a banner week here in my fair city, back to back Saturdays where i could hop on the train and ride down to the North Side and checkout bands under the stars... not a bad way to spend a Saturday night and better yet the train allows me to gobble down some glorious bits of fungus (actually as stated these days i grind them up and make my own capsules for easy transport and ingesting, stoner ingenuity at it's finest)... some of this was previously mentioned in previous posts but now it's time to delve in wholeheartedly... even better was my two shows just happened to coincide with the longest dry spell we've had all summer, which while not great for trees and suburban lawns are excellent for tripping fools looking to have a swell night out...
We'll begin with the Rock Reggae Relief festival which was headlined by two of Bob's boys, Damian "Jr. Gong" and Stephen Marley... the rest of the bill was rounded out by a band called the Eloveators, J Boog, Roots of Creation (who do a set called Grateful Dub where they play the Dead dub style and who i've actually seen before) and a local dipshit who once had one alternative radio hit, a song now found in a few commercials... my good friend Jorge, an old hippy like me (though about a year or so younger than me) joined me for this show and being the nice guy i am provided him with the same party favors i was imbibing.. Jorge's brother was at one time the manager for the local dipshit, a man who could be pictured under the definition of Self-Absorption... in fact Jorge had stated he'd met the guy over a dozen times and the guy never remembered his name (and his brother was the guy's fucking manager for fuck sake)... back in the day this clown used to see me around my old hood, back when i had fat dreads and then became one of those longhairs and every time i'd see the guy he'd gaze at me as if he was in love... or at least that's how i like to put it, he'd stare at me as if i should know who he was, as if i should walk up and say "hey are you the baba da bey baba da bung" guy... one fine morning as i was eating an omelet in a greasy 24hr diner he sat staring at me and i almost walked up to him and asked, did you used to buy weed off me? i'm the fucking King of North Oakland and you keep staring at me as if you want to fellate me so i was wondering if you were one of my many customers i've forgotten.. but instead i ignored him as usual... though more power to the guy if he has parlayed one half ass neo-hippie anthem into an actual career making a living playing music.. who am i to judge?
Now i'll flat out state that one of the main reasons i wished to attend this day long festival was women... shocking i know but i knew there would be many dancing and laughing and it makes for a fun day out... case and point the gray-haired, nose ringed beauty who started dancing the minute she got there, she was just one of many... in fact the funniest moment of the day happened on my way to take a piss (i was drinking shit tons of water since there was no reason to booze due to the boomers), there was a woman in the VIP section near the stage who was having it, dancing and drinking like it was her job, she was probably mid-40s? and her as i walked towards the pissoirs she was walking out, she stopped and looked at the three or four of us walking in and proclaimed, "so many sexy men for me to choose from!", of course i started laughing and the guy behind me was like WTF? i mentioned i think one of us my have found a date for the night, to which we had a good laugh...
As for the music? it was pretty damn good... the second act, J Boog was what i call commercial reggae/island music, a hefty Hawaiian guy with a slick and tight band, Jorge had actually seen him a couple years before and i mentioned this is the type of stuff you'd hear on commercial Jamaican radio, decent enough but at this point i was lounging against the wall in the sun enjoying the onset of the shrooms... next came the Eloveators, a Boston "jam" band with what appeared to be a big following as during many songs the crowd was singing along and yelling out the lyrics, one of those good time bands mixing reggae and funk and rock, the shit you'd hear or see at a beach bar and quite good for a warm summer evening... which set the stage for the final act of the night Stephen and Damian Marley...
Seeing as i was too young to ever see Bob this was about the closest i'd get... the Marley brothers played a mix of tunes, both their own solo work and their father's and honestly it was fucking brilliant... Stephen sounds so much like his dad that if you close your eyes you'd think it was Bob up there... Trenchtown Rock, Sun is Shining So Much Trouble in the World were killer while the solo stuff, Welcome to Jamrock, Medication, Pimper's Paradise were brilliant as well... the crowd was well into it, the ganja smoke drifted aromatically through the air and a fine time was had by all around...
At one point i had told Jorge i was going to get some more water and look for a smoke, having given up cigarettes ages ago i indulge myself the occasional one when having a night out on the shrooms... i offered to buy one off this guy and his lady but he let me bum one, i offered him my weed pen which he hit and we stood there talking, i explained i loved a smoke while tripping and we began discussing the beauty of psychedelics and mushrooms in particular... the woman said she had never tried them to which i gave an enthusiastic sermon on why she must.. her partner laughed and said keep convincing her as he had tried them a bunch... we stood there having a lovely conversation and since i still had some boomers on me i asked again, you've never taken them, really? and she said no... i then pulled out my little bottle of mushroom pills and told them that it would be an honor if i could provide the shrooms for her first trip... they looked at me like i was insane and said really? i said, absolutely, i then gave them the rest of my shrooms, roughly four grams, said that could split them which would be a good dose to start with for her and a good night for him, told them the strain, dropped the the web site where they could order these very ones and laughed at how i'm like a PSA for psychedelics... the guy was fairly beaming and kept saying, are you sure? to which i laughed, look at me? i don't need any more tonight and then explained that i probably had roughly two ounces back home and five different strains... i smiled and said i better check on my boy who i told them was tripping as well but didn't with the regularity of Capt. Trips here...
The next Saturday brought another stellar show to my outside venue, this time i was on the Jack Jones but that's actually par for the course with me when it comes to attending shows... Modest Mouse and the Flaming Lips on the same bill... once again i made my way down to the train station and pockets fully loaded with sweeties and smoke... my trusty weed pen, a small joint infused with keef which also held another half dozen or so capsules of boomers... i stood on the platform waiting for the train in the heat, my plan was to take the boomers once on the train cuz one never knows what sorta hijinks the transit authority can get up to but then i saw my train coming down the track and i smiled, tapped my transit card, took a seat by the window, opened my little box of mushroom pills and swallowed them down... i watched the familiar neighborhoods roll by, i dig these city neighborhoods... and then it was up and down the hill, across the Mon River and into downtown proper, then across the Allegheny River and my familiar stop on the North Side, one of the few stops that is underground on this route...
I made my way in as the boomers began to do their thing and found a spot on the right side of the venue looking towards the stage, this week the place was packed and the guy next to me mentioned that it was actually sold out... i figured i had a decent enough spot but then came the problem of what to do when i had to get more water and such but then again why worry? and so i posted up and got high (again), drinking my water and watching the last few songs of the opening band Friko... and while i had checked out some of their stuff online i was sorta nonplussed but then live i was sorta kicking myself as the songs i caught were excellent and the band was well into it... by this time i had a couple to the left of me and another to the right... i checked behind me cuz i'm a tall bastard but nothing if not polite but for the most part people were smart enough not to get behind me, granted there wasn't much room cuz the security guys kept making sure the walkway was clear, which ended up being pretty great for those of us who had grabbed a spot along the railing... at this point i was wondering if the boomers were going to hit the way i wanted so i clandestinely took one more capsule to just make sure...
The double headliner meant that MM and the Lips would do slightly shorter sets and roughly about the time a normal opener would come on Modest Mouse took the stage... kicking it off with Dark Center of the Universe... oddly enough i had never seen MM before which is strange considering i'd dug them for a long time, yeah i wasn't maybe the biggest fan of the more recent stuff but i as a huge fan of the early shit and kicking things off with an early gem was ace... in fact on perusing the setlist site a few days later i was grinning as i lucked into a show that played some of my absolute favorites,, Trucker's Atlas and Dramamine among them, while also noticing they changed the setlist every night and those songs had only popped up at the odd show... needless to say Modest Mouse were fucking on point and i was well impressed with how good they were...
And then came the Flaming Lips... they are always a good time and this time was no different though this being the seventh? time seeing them i knew what to expect... being an abbreviated set so to speak it was a bit of playing the hits with a few deep gems thrown in, Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung being a definite one which i've caught a once or twice before but which is always a highlight particularly in my enhanced state of mind... toss in Turn It On, Race for the Prize and a cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs and it was a damn good set...
There was one song though that i was waiting to hear... i had seen they were playing it and when Wayne stopped before the song and explained that it was sort of a sad song but that it was okay cuz we need these songs to help us i smiled, it was the very song i had talked to them about years before when my good friend bought me a ticket to meet them before the show in 2018 shortly after Pops had passed, and then they started playing, and the crowd was a bit transfixed because it is a somber song but somehow there is an underlying happiness to it, if that makes any sense, or maybe it's just cuz it deals with something universal, something we all have to deal with sooner or later, namely losing someone we love dearly... Waiting for Superman, written by Wayne about his dying father, yeah... talk about fucking hitting home, it didn't take long before my eyes were welling with tears and by the end of it they were more than welling as i wiped the tears off my face, luckily it was dark and i'm not sure anyone was aware that the tall wastoid with his bucket hat pulled low was desperately trying to hold it together, at one point looking back at the gorgeous Sturgeon Moon hanging above the city skyline and whispering to the stars "i love you dad"... and when it finished i wandered towards the wall that was the de facto smoking section cuz maybe this time i needed that smoke for more than just enjoying one while tripping...
These days it seems all the kids want to vape their nicotine instead of getting it the good old fashioned way with a real smoke but i managed to find two young ladies standing by the wall smoking and so i asked if i could buy one... Mary, the taller of the two who was the one smoking smiled and said she'd just give me one to which i replied can i offer you my weed pen? they both lit up, the other being Lex the shorter one, who i think she was about 5 feet tall, proclaiming yes! and so i pulled out my pen and handed it to them and proceeded to have an excellent conversation about the state of the universe, something i'm known to do when i'm tripping, i relayed the story about the song and my dad and why i needed that smoke... we stood chatting away and listening to the end of the show and then i checked my watch and told them it was a pleasure meeting them and made my way into the busy North Shore streets to wander towards the T station.... another fine night of music and adventure winding down...The T station was the most crowded i'd ever seen it but i managed to find a bench and wait, people kept coming down the steps and i was beginning to think i might be elbowing my way into a car in order to get home... i didn't have to but what i didn't realize, what a lot of us didn't, was that for some reason the driver tended not to open the back car doors at stops, one couple missing theirs by three stops before being able to get off... there was a guy who started explaining it though he didn't understand why the driver didn't announce to move up to the front two cars and how they could only open the back cars at certain stops... i asked about mine and he stated he thought i was okay but when we came to my stop the doors didn't open... a couple of us began furiously pushing the call button i'm sure to the annoyance of the driver and finally the doors opened... Information Guy told all the people still on the train if they wanted to get off before the last stop they should move to the front cars and suddenly there was a mad dash before the doors shut again... the never ending joys of public transit...
There is something about the end of the night, coming down of the boomers, strolling under the fluorescent glow of the station lights and wandering into the halogen of the almost deserted parking lot... four lonely cars, soon to be two... the hum of the traffic coming off W. Liberty Ave as the heart of Saturday night had turned to Sunday morning, less than two hours to last call, the last real rush at the bar before the crowd thins out... sitting in the Shitmobile i reminded myself, drive carefully... and i did... glasses perched on my nose so i could see, i drove slowly through the sleepy streets of suburbia, window down, music playing softly, listening to the wind, listening to the click and beeps of traffic lights and crosswalks, audible in the quiet night... a couple of quality Saturday nights had come and gone... flopping into my bed, Paco and Archie raising their heads to give me a sleepy glance before curling back up, i took a drink of water and gazed up at the ceiling, smiling, thinking ain't life a trip..
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