kobayashi's chinese ghosts: worst gig ever

another terrible dream...

dtp is getting geared up for a tour with our friends lo-pan and chris cornell and reverend horton heat. i am packing my personal stuff but i can't decide what to bring, i have movies but there are too many to choose. finally it's time to leave. we get to the venue but i find out we're not playing the first date (why are we there?), it's only chris cornell and jim heath from rev horton heat. before they play i'm talking to chris cornell, who's dressed in a black, elvis style, giant collared shirt, but he's ignoring me. jim heath is very friendly and let's me check out his guitar, which is not actually a guitar but a trombone(?). i pulled it from the case and played it without the mouthpiece (for sanitary reasons?). it sounded like a little kid fart.

fast forward to the next gig. it's just dtp & lo-pan now, and we're playing in what looks like a chinese restaurant owned by professional hot dog eater kobayashi (who is japanese). the floors and tables and chairs are all white. the columns holding the very high ceilings are white. the stage is at the far end, it's about 4 feet tall, and about 50 feet wide, all white. 

after we are set up, rob informs me that he has re-written all his parts and will start playing the new parts at this show. i try to tell him it's not the right time and we should go over the sections if he wants to try new stuff, but he's sure it's going to be fine. 

well, it wasn't fine. no one could properly hear and the songs, all three of them, explode into actual nightmare train wrecks. the kind with the awkward silence and furrowed brows after you stop playing. at some point i start jabber-jawing with the crowd to lighten the mood, but there's only about 10 chinese people eating in there and they are stone faced... and not moving. they are all wearing white. my wife responds to my not funny remarks and there is a back and forth dialogue that somehow manages to make us look even more pathetic.

it's so bad that i leave and am immediately zipped away to a weird suburban neighborhood. i'm driving. i see a guy mowing grass who looks like my uncle paul. i pull in this driveway and walk to the backyard. the guy is gone but the mower is still there, so i start mowing. i'm mowing and thinking and it's sunny and beautiful, but eventually a different guy comes out and asks me what the hell i'm doing there. i'm mowing my uncle's yard, obviously. he says it's his house and no one by that name lives there, and tells me to get lost. so he chases me off. i get in the car and apologize before he attacks me for mowing his lawn.

eventually, i'm back at the chinese restaurant gig. kobayashi is very upset and his band is supposed to play last, apparently he shreds heavy metal guitar solos as well as sucking down hebrew nationals.

i am trying to find out why lo-pan isn't playing. i start searching the place and find a window at the top of a small stairwell. it looks out over a grave that is built up with a japanese shrine. giant steps leading to a glass covered casket. i assume this is why our set turned to garbage, ghosts. they don't like the venue so close to their resting spot.

 i go backstage and everyone is there, smoking heroin out of giant glass pipes. i tell them kobayashi is serious and that the ghosts are possessing people, but no one listens. $2 a hit, they say.

eventually lo-pan is onstage ready to play. i'm feeling good now that the show is going to redeem itself. but it doesn't. the dudes look like they've eaten entire jars of pig tranquilizers. pupils dialated wide and staring into space. nobody is moving except the now visibly angry kobayashi, who tries to start moving their gear.

i decide to save the day. i jump onstage and magically i have a half stack plugged in and i start jamming. and it sounds really good, like slayer playing the grateful dead. except none of those dudes are jamming along, it's just me, my awesome guitar jam bouncing off the high ceiling of a chinese restaurant. kobayashi, jumps onstage and grabs the guitar neck. he's cursing me in japanese. i yell that he didn't tell us about the ghosts. that makes him do a double take. (they know!) but he doesn't believe in them, so it's no excuse for a horrible, horrible show.
 
the end?