When Prabir & The Substitutes (whom we’ve loved for a while now) told us they were heading out on a national tour with Silver beats (the Japanese Beatles cover band that they’ve opened for (and obviously impressed) at 930 club) and offered to do a tour diary (with semi-nude videos, photos and more) we said:
YES.

So, we kick off with:

Providence RI

Thursday, August 7, 2008. Noonish.

We arrived yesterday in Providence at 1:30pm, and we immediately set about making observations and first impressions. 1) An unlikely chill for august. 2) An overwhelming amount of donut shops in the vicinity. 3) An underwhelming amount of public bathrooms in the vicinity. We later theorized that observations 2 and 3 might explain the rather intense conversational delivery of the natives.

The Silver Beats arrived a little later. We greeted each other in awkward Japanenglish, but by using universal body gestures and hand signals the two groups managed to avoid any fatal misunderstandings.* The veteran soundman epilogued our soundchecks with techno-babble and teary-eyed yarns of mighty rock shows of yesterdecade.

Sets were played without a hitch and the crowd seemed pleased enough. It’s especially good that they were, because we had failed to secure lodging for the night beforehand, so we needed to impress a show-goer into putting us up. All of the girls with whom we flirted and danced proved to be unfortunately short of home-owning age, but salvation finally came in the form of a recently unemployed hip-hop manager (his client had been stabbed to death) who kindly offered us his floors and sofas.

On the way to his house in Johnston, the van’s serpentine belt started squealing in protest to our jabs at the throttle. The next morning, we dropped off Ludwig (our van’s name) with Cory Jr. at the Citgo up the street who fervently went to work on the water-pump bearings. The locals say he isn’t cheap, but that he should get us to Orlando…

* Example conversation between a Silver Beat and a Substitute (prefaced by the knowledge that I was wearing a t-shirt with Led Zeppelin’s drummer on it at the time):

Ringo-san: (pointing at my shirt) Shoon Bonim.

me: Huh?

Ringo-san: (pointing again) Shoon… Bonim?

me: Oh right! John Bonham! (laughing)

Ringo-san: Hai! (big smile) Shoonenry Bonim! Moby Dick!

me: Ha ha ha! (playing air-drum triplets) Bumbi-dah bumbi-dah bumbi-dah…

Ringo-san: Yes! (gives thumbs up)

me: Good! (I pinch the air for the OK sign)

Here a long, awkward silence ensues as we continue to grin violently and make positive hand gestures. Then, as our smile-muscles grow weary, we cautiously back away from one another and shuffle back to our respective dressing rooms.

-Charlie Substitute”

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