THE KNICK PAPERS: part III October 10, 1999
Oberlin, Ohio

Dean:

After the second show at the Knick stuck under the windshield wiper of my car, along with about 37 flyers for upcoming shows by so-called jambands (it's your fault, Budnick), was a manila envelope. Inside was a tattered manuscript written on a hodge-podge of legal-pad paper, the backs of multiple receipts from gas stations across the greater northeast, and several XL-II labels. Here it is. It's confusing the fuck out of me, but perhaps you can make something of it.

Jesse.

Part I of this story appeared in the October issue.
Part II of this story appeared in the November issue.

"Lang, weh, dock, dude. Languedoc."

"Far out."

"What do you think that means?"

? I shrugged. "Iowo."

"Well, do you wanna call back?" Jeff asked me.

"And do what?"

"You could try 'dock'ing, whatever that means."

"Sure, why not."

We ran the line out on the hotel phone through my D8, and into the speakers. I dialed the number for the Lang Corporation and, upon pick-up by the machine at the other end, entered the number on the bottom of the DAT box. The high-pitched noise began. "DOCK," I spoke quickly and clearly.

The high-pitched whirring sound stopped abruptly. There was a clicking sound, like an object was being fit into place on a larger apparatus. A pause. Then, there was music. Some open chords being strummed half-heartedly. They could've used more force. However, it was clear what song it was: Runaway Jim. I tugged the phone out of the wall. "That's enough. That wasn't meant for us."

"And who was it meant for?" Jeff asked.

"Well," I said, as it slowly dawned on me. "It was meant for Paul".

The streets outside of the Knick were absolutely packed with heads. Everybody was looking for something -- a friend, an extra ticket, drugs, hugs, money, warmth... The weather wasn't too bad, but it wasn't all that pleasant either. Jeff and I went in a little bit after doors opened to get out of the cold.

Walking the direction of our seats, I saw Paul Languedoc strolling through the concourse area. I didn't think anything of it and instead turned my attention to the Waterwheel table. I signed some petitions. I felt somebody standing next to me, looked over, and saw Paul examining some literature. He gestured towards the petitions, which I was now standing uselessly in front of. I stepped aside and bought a ticket for the raffle. Paul took off. "Have a good show," I called after him.

"You too," he replied, disappearing into the slowly building throng.

I turned back to the table to take my ticket. Sitting on the petition clipboard, next to the standard ballpoint pen tied to the thing with a piece of a string, was an extremely nice pen. It was made of what appeared to be a heavy green faux-marble. I made a mark on my hand. It wrote incredibly smoothly. The tip and clip were polished and gleaming. I picked it up, thinking I'd find Paul immediately before or after one of the sets and give it to him.

I put then in my breast pocket and headed off towards my seat in the upper level, where Jeff was waiting for me. The pen felt nice, clipped to the inside of my shirt. I decided to indulge myself and enjoy one set with the pen and give it back to Paul at setbreak. It was certainly a superior beast to the splotchy handful of Bics living in my pants' pockets, perpetually waiting for just exactly the wrong moment to explode.

The hour before showtime was spent doodling in my notebook. The pen was gorgeous. The ink flowed out consistently. No matter how hard or lightly I pressed, the ink distribution was perfect. I got caught up in writing so much that I'd almost forgotten what the night's set was going to be. When the houselights dropped and the band walked out onstage, I remembered. I wrote down the set and tried to enjoy it. The music itself was fine -- quite good, quite good. Nonetheless, it was hard to get into. The big reason was that the chance factor had been eliminated. I knew exactly what would come next at all times. The smaller reason was that I had heard the tape in pristine soundboard quality already. Hearing it translated into a cavernous arena wasn't very satisfying.

At setbreak, I planned to head down towards the floor, and drop the pen off in the soundboard area. Jeff took off before me, heading to the bathroom during the Possum closer. Before I could get out of my section, though, Erin turned up. I was quite confused, as I hadn't told her where I was sitting. I didn't think I'd told anyone besides Jeff. I was more confused, though, because I didn't know where she'd gone the night before after she'd danced the Meatstick.

I hugged her. "Where've you been, man?"

"Long story," she said as she hugged back.á"C'mon." She tugged on my shirt and led me down the stairs into the fray of setbreak. I saw a thousand familiar faces as we moved through the onslaught of heads, packed even more densely inside the arena than out. Erin was always a few steps ahead of me, looking back occasionally to make sure I was following.

My eyes kept getting pulled towards various sets of eyes that seemed vaguely familiar. They would always revert back to Erin though, both as a matter of pure survival and curious interest. Looking at her in the midst of a sea of heads, there seemed to be a strange unearthly glow about her being. I didn't think much of it and pressed on.

About a quarter of the way around the arena, I saw Derek. Derek is one of the only people I'd ever characterize as an enemy of mine on tour. I toured with him briefly the summer before, in a beaten up old Ford sedan that he bought off his stepfather for $75. The car broke down somewhere in the Arizona desert. I paid $150 to have it fixed -- mostly to get us the hell out Arizona. At the end of tour, when it came time to settle everything up from the previous month on the road, Derek refused to pay me even half of the repair bill, telling me that it was my "share in the car".

He escaped for Indiana before the end of Lemonwheel, at the close of tour. I heard the car broke down somewhere before he made it all the way out there. As the story goes, reported second and third hand through old tour buddies, Derek had accidentally backed over my lawn chair in his haste to get out of the campground in Maine. The lawn chair, in turn, had punctured the gas tank, as well as rupturing several other vital motor parts. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, the car died. Supposedly, Derek just took up a residence in the town, working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant.

Derek was absent from the next two tours. In a sense, he was an enemy vanquished. Yet, there he was, standing over by a bank of payphones. It was definitely him. He was dressed in a trademark Acapulco shirt, his bleach-blonde hair poofed, looking like it had been frosted back - perhaps - several weeks ago. He talked quietly with someone I didn't recognize. We did not make eye contact. I turned my attention back to Erin. Within fifty feet, I saw another face that I didn't expect to see on tour again -- my friend Vic.

Vic had been busted in an ugly speed trap somewhere in the midwest the previous fall. Unfortunately, the cops had dogs. They'd found an eighth of nugs and the remains of some shrooms in some plastic bags in the trunk. She's gotten a good lawyer and beat the rap, ending up with a goodly amount of community service, which she didn't mind so much, but she was also presented with a hefty amount of legal fees and a curfew, enforced by law when a probation officer would call her house every night at 9:30 to make sure she was home.

In short, she was way the fuck off tour for a year. Or so I thought. Yet, there she was, back from the dead at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York. Go figure. I didn't get a chance to talk to her either. She was disappearing into the bathroom and Erin was forging on ahead. By this point, we'd made it about halfway around the arena. Erin looked back. "C'mon," she said, as she walked down the stairs into the lower seating area. I followed. We came out in the section closest to the stage on Trey-side.

"Where are we going?" I called, as she began to descend.

"Don't worry," she said. I was about ten steps behind her. As she reached the bottom, she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a backstage pass, showing it to the security guard. "I'll be right back. Wait here." She smiled at me and disappeared into the underworld of the arena.