Ted Leo

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the saga of TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS OPEN FOR IGGY POP AT TOAD’S PLACE, NEW HAVEN, CT., NOV. 8, 2001:
I honestly don’t remember how or why we were offered this show. I think it was because we had played Toad’s a couple of times recently and become friendly with the staff and booking people there, and they were kind enough to throw us a bone when they booked Iggy Pop. I also don’t remember if we were on tour or if it was a one-off. I think we’d spent October out with either Quasi or The Dismemberment Plan, or both, at different times in the tour, and my suspicion is that this was, like, a reward tacked on to the end of a very long trip (or, that’s how we were looking at it, anyway). Regardless, we obviously jumped at the chance to play the show. We were paid $150, which, given the fact that this was ten years ago and gas was still less than $2.00 a gallon in most places, didn’t seem that bad at all. In fact, at that point, anything over $100 was like “BONUS!” It was only two or three years earlier that I’d booked a tour for my brother’s band, The Van Pelt, and thought I was being a real hard-ass by asking for $100 a night for them. This was the era when the promise of $300 brought us BACK up to New Haven to play an 11 AM show that I knew nothing about because the guy asking us to play wouldn’t tell me anything about it (it turned out to be the “Wild Turkey Breakfast” – an annual party for Harvard kids before the annual Harvard v. Yale football game, which apparently still goes on but has become some sort of Republican thing?, was in New haven that year and featured, among other choice moments, a guy in chinos, blue blazer, white shirt, and red tie, passed out in his own vomit on the hood of a car in front of the bar when we pulled up AT 10 AM, their clique’s resident “wacky dude” with Johnny Knoxville hair and sunglasses, pogoing around every time the DJ played the Minutemen’s “Corona,” which was often and which I wasn’t too happy about, a guy bashing his head on Chris’ cymbals during almost all of our songs, and a slurring young fellow coming up to me in the middle of “Stove by a Whale” – that’s while we were in the middle of playing it – and asking me to give him my guitar – which, again, I WAS PLAYING AT THE TIME – so he could “jam” on it, which then turned into to him yelling at me to give him my guitar so he could jam on it, which then turned into to me pushing him away from the band with my head while I was still jamming on it, which then turned into to his friends pulling him away from my head before he started jamming on THAT while I was still jamming on my guitar… and 300 bucks). But that wasn’t really the point. We were just about breaking even on most of our trips in those days, and opportunities like this were more about just being able to do things we never would’ve thought we’d do. So we pull up in my very dented and now long dead green ’96 Dodge Ram to find a bus parked out front and cones blocking off the rest of the street. I recognized some of the Toad’s people we’d come to know, and they moved some cones and told us we could park right in front of the bus. I remember it being weirdly warm for that time of year. In fact, if I didn’t know the date of the show, I’d be remembering it as summer, but maybe it was just a warm November. Anyway, we watched Mr. Pop’s band soundcheck for a while (without him), then loaded in and checked, ourselves, went down to our dressing room (there are at least two at Toad’s), where there was water, snacks, some beer, said hi and had a couple of laughs with a few of Iggy’s band mates, and basically just settled in for what seemed like was going to be an awesome night. And for a while, it was!
The crowd filtered in. It was surprisingly heavy on the large biker dude contingent and light on the college, which was cool because, it meant we had a lot of fresh ears to play for – ears who came to see Iggy Pop, and would thus be considering what we were putting forward in light of expecting to see something from that continuum, which was in there, and I was starting to bristle at the fact that it never seemed to get recognized. My point is, this is part of what made the show appealing to us. So, there’s a good vibe in the room, everything’s rolling along swimmingly. Our stuff is all onstage, miked, checked, ready to go, and about five minutes before our scheduled set time, I get up there and start tuning my guitar, and this is when the night takes its first weird turn. Some guy who I hadn’t seen before this comes up to me from the side of the stage. He’s big. Like, extremely big. Imagine Gerard Depardieu’s head on Hulk Hogan’s body with an almost clichéd Cockney accent – that’s this guy. And he immediately starts in aggressively -
“Oi! OI!!”
(I look up from my tuner for a sec, but go back to tuning)
“Wheh the fahck is yoh bahnd, maite!?”
(still tuning) “What? They’re on their way. Why? Who are you?”
“Theah fahcking LAITE!”
(still tuning) “What? What are you talking about? We have five minutes. Who are you, again?”
“Ah’m yoh fahcking wuust noightmaire if they down’t get the fahck up heah ohn staige roight now, THAT’S who Oi ahm!”
Literally – he said that, while jabbing a muscle sausage finger at my face.
(I finally stop tuning and look up at him) “I’m sorry, who are you? And what the fuck are you talking about? Nobody’s late – we have five minutes, and they’ll be here – we’re ready to go!”
“Down’t you fohcking tohlk to me loik that, you li’uhl piss ahnt! Just get yoh focking bahnd up heah roight now!”
“Excuse me? I’m not going anywhere – I’m here, tuning up, and they’ll be here in a second. And WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU and why are YOU talking to ME like that?”
“Oi’m Iggy’s fohcking staige manajah, and if you down’t fohcking staht ohn toime, yoh gohnna get THIS!” (he makes a fist and flexes)
I kind of can’t believe this isn’t a joke or something, because nobody really talks and acts like that, so I actually scoff a little and start looking around, at which point, he jabs me in the shoulder with the same finger he was only pointing at me with before, lowers his voice to a menacing grumble and says
“Listen, yoo – Oi ahm noht fohcking wiff yoo – you get yoh bahnd maites up heah NOW and yoo get this show stah’id ohn toime!”
(and now I’m pissed) “Listen YOU – get the fuck out of my face, and let me finish tuning, the band will be here, and we WILL start on time!”
He flexes again, “Johst see that yoo doo!” And he walks off like the fucking Juggernaut.
I was half furious and half thinking that it was the most hilarious encounter I’d had since the guy at the Wild Turkey Breakfast who wanted to play my guitar while I was already playing it, but thirty seconds later, the band DID, in fact, show up, so I put as much of the encounter as I could aside and we did, in fact, start on time. And we proceeded to have a great show. We had a half-hour set, and were playing mostly a mix of stuff from the Treble in Trouble EP and Tyranny, and we played well, and it went over pretty well – biker dudes seemed stoked! So we ended as we usually do, and I’m drenched in sweat and winded, as I usually am, and I go back to my stuff and immediately start breaking it down and packing it up, as I always have. When some OTHER dude I hadn’t seen yet comes running up the same side of the stage as Hulk Cockneydieu, and starts screaming at me to move our van. Now this is another one of those conversations where I go, “What? Who are you? What do you want?” fifty-five times because I’m incredulous AND I don’t really understand what’s happening like the one above, so I’m not gonna recount the whole thing here, but suffice it to say, it ends like this
“MOVE YOUR FUCKING VAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!”
(still wrapping cords up) “I don’t get it – they told us we could park there!”
“THE BUS IS COMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG!!
“What are you talking about? The bus is already THERE!”
“THAT’S THE BAAAAAAAAAAAND’S BUUUUUUSSSSSSS!! IGGY’S BUS NEEDS THAT SPOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTT!!!!!!”
“Whu…??? Oh, I see – O.k.! O.k.! Just give us ten minutes – we’re almost packed up and we’ll get loaded right out and move it!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! YOU HAVE TO MOVE IT NOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!!”
“Hhhhhhhh… Oh, Jesus Christ… O.k. – GUYS – I have to move the van NOW. Can one of you just get my stuff off the stage for me? It’s all packed up.”
“The guys” obviously do everything they can to help out and get the stage cleared while I jump in the van and go try to find some place to park. I find a spot about a half-mile away and jog back to the club, still drenched in sweat from the stage, getting weird looks from Yale cops and students out for a stroll on this warm November night.
The gear has been put in a side room until we can bring the van back at the end of the night and load out, which is fine and cool of the Toad’s people to do for us, so we all go down to the dressing room to just catch a breather, and gripe a little, and laugh a lot, and once we kick out the two tweakers who we find going through our bags and trying to steal some of our beer out after first making sure they haven’t taken anything, we close the door and do all of that.
After as little as two minutes of said breathing and griping and laughing, some other stress case who I hadn’t seen before barges in, claps his hands, starts shaking both his thumbs over his shoulders at the door behind him, and says, “Alright, let’s go – out!”
All of us just stare at him, like, “???”
“I said let’s go – out – Iggy’s coming down!”
(me) “Oh – ha – no, I’m sorry – this is our dressing room.”
“No it’s not – get out!”
“Uh… yes it is – we just played.”
“WELL YOU’RE DONE NOW – GET OUT!!
Nobody moved. We all just sat where we were, dumbstruck – again, half furious, but half shocked at the utter hilarity of how ridiculous this had become – and luckily he just gave us one more “I want you out!” then turned and left, himself.
I got up and just closed and locked the door with us inside.
Eventually, once Iggy’s set was under way, we figured we were safe from ejection, so we began to venture out individually and in small groups to watch a little of the show, get a drink at the bar, go to the bathroom, etc., and it was on one of these sallies to the bathroom that the whole night ultimately got wrapped up in a perfect little bow that allows us all to look back on it and realize that it WAS an awesome night. James and I were standing side by side at urinals, peeing, obviously, when a biker dude who I can now say was the spitting image of the American Choppers dad, but who I know wasn’t him because, though he had the same type of gruff voice, his accent was deep southern (which was weird, this being New Haven, but whatever), sidles up to the urinal next to James, and he looks down (he was tall) at James, and he looks over and down at me, and he looks us both up and down (still peeing, or trying to, anyway), and James and I both kind of look at him and then each other, and he says, “Hey – y’all dudes wurr the dudes who opened up the shew, roight?” (the other kind of “roight”) And James says, “Yeah.” And he looks us both up and down again, pauses, and says, “I liked you dudes… PSYCHEDELIC!!”
Awesome!

Next up… probably THE WEATHER!