Gushing gas tickles my foot sole, red needle soaring seventy-five miles per whore. Driving through the soul flying depths of a 4-hour daydreamed highway mind, we tumble into Cleveland, pavement ticking time bomb winding down sound. Cleveland steams reeking concrete, coagulating Jacob’s Field’s bowl like the pain of a drain, some swollen bad dream melting sunny runny pavement down a concrete grate. A red light stops us outside Gate D where, stretched like a pirate wretch across the home of the Cleveland Indians, a banner spells car insurance hell: Progressive Field, sludged sewage against the bowl, Cleveland’s very soul sold tooth and nail for a couple of cheap insurance quotes, pieces of shitty junk mail.
Yet sailing somewhere in some back room air, conditioned to chill, Widespread Panic tickles butterflies for breakfast, nervous nerves readying to soar into verbs. Southern blueberry jam headlines a drunk turtle passed out on the Cuyahoga bank tank. For like the formerly known Jacob’s Field, Nautica is too sloshed to know its own name: The Plain Dealer Pavilion sold out like a paper cut, bleeding green gold money of journalist deceit. Slurping dreamless burps, a turtle lurched in Cleveland-drenched tequila hurt, while on the other side of the void, we writhe with the skyscrapers, wondering where in the hell we are.
Driving into industrial skyscraping rapiers, we grow greatly gestated with nuclear confusion, ionically ironic like a comic’s tonic dreaming dry martinis, eyes squinting winking olives in the sizzling sun. Street name serial letters sleep surreally, like David Lynch drooling midnight snot down the oblivion of the obvious. Slipping into knowwhere, we come out the other-side and make port, stepping out onto the flat ground of the Flats like we were walking on the moon.
Wondering where in the hell we are anymore. A parking lot full of tour kids, and not one drippy armpits-sweating-hippie veggie burrito for sale. Lot rats keep what’s theirs hidden under hats as golf-carted Narcs patrol-troll for unlicensed capitalists doling cheap insurance to the masses, what-the-fuck-only-a-buck grilled cheeses sizzling in the running sun.
Inside the drunk turtle, a burger with a belly button for a pickle costs $8. Corona, no lime for the spine, costs another $7. Water to bathe is $5 a bottle. One drinking fountain is broken, the other personally escorted by the Secret Service, America’s Dixie Cups staked down and shackled in the name of Homeland Security.
Arteries numb from all the nickels and dimes rolled up our sleeves for this shot down the mainline, “Good evening ladies and gents” bounces off a bass line, electricity ionizing blood veins like a cicada-sick dance orgy, an extra-terrestrial insectival carnival, souls sprouting bug wings flying into the sun. Dancing on toes off the edge of our nose, we look around, wondering where in the hell we are anymore.
A crowd receding like John Bell’s hairline, brushed against the wind, that border between hair and bare, bald forehead, alone in a breeze of long slacker locks flying in the evening. There’s hardly anybody here. Half the size of Widespread’s usual venue, the place isn’t even packed. I’ve seen bigger crowds at Christian Bible boot camps, those jam-packed gymnasiums of nameless trolls doling out the Gospel to Noah’s gnolls, truth’s science cascading down an Oreo Cookie Grand Canyon of the Damned.
Damn close enough to count their nose hair, John Bell becomes our Southern Jesus, our cesspool of Gospel spelled out in a crawling, drawling Southern-fried tide. Dave Schools pools of fish, bending bassy rubbery rivers of imagination, percussion mentioning dreams of prophetic phonetics, blood dream streaming runny entropy all over the sun.
But man, I hope they eat okay. Playing crowds thin as hairlines, it seems like Widespread could use a tip jar to siphon a few gallons of gas, a free pack of smokes for that long ride home. Junior high school drama shows sell out the nose, while this concert looks like we’re all waiting for a bus, straggling like third graders kicking stones with our toes. No wonder- gas, tickets, water richer than cigarettes cost a priceless price for any American to express. My wallet is $100 in the hole. What a rot. A good concert anymore costs a discount whore in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Because like a salt lick on a tequila flesh wound, the All Mighty Dollar burns in hell. Money makes us billboard asses as Progressive Fields the Plain Dealer in a back ally deal, and Verizon’s Wireless Quickens Loans with briefcases full of money and mountains of cocaine. That’s how bebop got bought, modified, new and improved, synthesized in a lab for that brand-new spanking taste of Reebok Mountain Dew.
Maybe broke as a bar of soap, a Bearded Self will still nod a nod on nothing but a beard for a chin and a nod for a god, metro-gnoming his sins away. But like the propulsion of dynamic thermals sweating in this heat, if that stoned-out leer skips a beat for a flip of a sec, the entire band will vaporize just like Jesus, flying smoke into the sun, nothing but a bootleg sunburn to look back on.
