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Ozric Tentacles kindly thanked me in the liner notes for their new CD Waterfall Cities and played here on July 13th, 1999, first time in the US in five years! Great show and they treated us like royalty! Hooray! |
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For info on my 3-day sojourn with Ozrics during their 2000 US Tour, click here.
![[Scan of Flyer for Show]](ot-flyer.jpg)
My love for Ozrics and their delightful blend of styles continued. Over the years I gradually collected all the CDs I could find, sometimes ordering them, sometimes finding them by random chance at Tower Records in various cities. Seldom -- well, really almost never -- did I hear an Ozrics song I didn't like. Eventually, around the middle of 1998, I'd gathered together every official-release CD they'd produced to that point, plus two live videos (one official, one not :)).
Sometime around the end of 1998 I tried to email the band via their website regarding the possibility of them playing a gig at our big annual summertime convention, Dragon*Con, which at 20,000+ attendance is the largest SF/fantasy/comics/gaming/music/art gathering on Earth. We have bands play every year, ranging from national acts with "names" (GWAR, The Misfits, Bloodhound Gang, Godhead, Eric Bloom from Blue Oyster Cult, etc.) to local bands who really deserve (or deserved) to have a "name" (The Changelings, Bonedance, Urban Grind, etc.) and regional acts....I figured hey, why not offer a great band a chance at some exposure? I sent off the email...and heard nothing back for several months.
Time passed. Earth moved slowly through her diurnal course. We began confirming bands for Dragon*Con 1999.
Then I received an email from Danny Sperling, a friend of Ozrics who'd used to work for their then-label, Snapper Music, expressing keen interest in a possible gig at Dragon*Con. We corresponded several times. Word filtered out that -- at long last -- Ozrics would be touring the US in c. May for the first time since 1994. They'd played two shows in California in 1998, but they were one-off shows and not part of a tour (the first was at the Fillmore in San Fran., the second was a live Webcast from Cyclops Studios which became the limited-edition Spice Doubt Streaming CD). Now a part of the Erpnotes online Ozrics fan community, I watched as tour dates were booked in many places. A show at Dragon*Con, which was the first weekend in July, looked somewhat remote since the dates were in May. No Atlanta date was announced, either, the closest being Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Dirk and I began making tentative plans to roadtrip to whichever shows we could manage to make. Meanwhile I was also exchanging email with Scotty, Ozrics' longtime friend and road manager, who'd been part of Danny Sperling's cc'd email from the beginning.
Then word came that the tour had been postponed, just days before the first dates were to take place. Work-visa problems. Crestfallen (but kinda happy we hadn't booked nonrefundable airfare), we waited for a few weeks before word again filtered out that a new tour was being booked.....for July! Unfortunately I was put in touch with the booking agency, Entourage Talent Management, just a hair too late for a show at Dragon*Con to be arranged -- assuming the bean-counters could have been persuaded it was financially a Good Idea -- but I was overjoyed to receive an email one fine day from Steve Harris, general manager of the Variety Playhouse, advising that he'd booked Ozrics for a show HERE and that he'd been told to contact me by Entourage. Word also came of a new CD, Waterfall Cities, to be released for the tour on a new US label for them, Phoenix Media. From black disaster to happiness in the space of a few days!
I provided Steve with a B&W promo shot of the band and a couple of extra CDs -- he had never heard them before booking them (!) That same day I also played some Ozrics on my Internet radio show so he could tune in and listen -- he thought the concept of "radio on demand" was pretty neet. I got some of the flyers and posters he sent me and distributed them to a few music-type places near where I live. Steve also took out an ad in the Dragon*Con souvenir program book.
We parked and walked around to the back of
the venue where, to our surprise, two tour-buses awaited (we'd been
thinking Ozrics were more of a "VW bus-and-big-trailer" band :)).
There was no-one else around at that time, no other fans, no tour
people, although we could hear enticing sounds emanating from
inside the venue :). We walked up to the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club
(a decent nearby restaurant, no yachts though) to see if any other folks
from the Erpnotes list were there yet, as it was our appointed
pre-show meeting place. There were no obvious Erpers there, and
the barmaid told me my friend Richard/Laddie wasn't working there that night,
so we walked back to the Variety. On the way back I happened to pick up a
discarded copy of Creative Loafing, Atlanta's free weekly newspaper,
to see if the Ozrics show was mentioned. It was; here's their
review:
Ozric Tentacles, Star People -- No more hanging in the shadows of progenitors Hawkwind and Gong, these freakers have, in England at least, passed into the realm of psychedelic legend. The band makes no bones about its greatest influence, though: Hallucinogens. They record on it, they play on it, they were on it when they started the band some 17 years ago, sitting around a fire at Stonehenge. Hell, their parents were probably on it when they were conceived. These guys ooze hallucinogens out of their pores. But rather than being concerned with creating some hippie love vibe a la the Dead, O.T. concentrate on ethereal mental journeys and the creation of sci-fi fantasies. This is their first US tour in over four years, promoting their first Stateside release, Waterfall Cities. Opening up, tuxedo-clad sextet Star People, a sci-fi acid-space rock group with loungecore tendencies. Variety Playhouse (Mitchell Foy, reviewer).I suppose it's decent.... More on this later.
Dirk spotted Rad, Ozrics' drummer, going into the smaller and cheaper bus, a Star Coaches rental, which surprised me a bit (how often does the headliner get stuck with a cheaper bus?), but the next time a tour-person came out to the bus I asked him if he could tell Scotty that I was outside. He told me "sure" and a few minutes later, out came Scotty, a delightful chap with long tied-back yellow hair, looking for me. He asked me to hang tight a few minutes, and shortly thereafter invited Dirk and me into the club to partake in the soundcheck. We felt honored, as most bands dislike having observers present during soundcheck. I slipped out the back door after a bit and went back up to the Yacht Club to check for fellow Erpers again. No Erpers, but Laddie was hanging out there, and -- as I'd suspected! -- he'd forgotten about the show, so he happily followed me back to the soundcheck, making it in time to be treated to "Oddentity" in all its glory. 'Twas a joyous reunion for Dirk and Laddie also, as we'd all become good friends years ago while Laddie was living in Dirk's hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee.
At around this time I suddenly, sickeningly realized it was well after 5pm and past time for me to (cough cough) call in to work. I had to call in from the payphone in the lobby, partly muffling the mouthpiece and hoping the noise of the soundcheck didn't penetrate too much.....:)
Then Ozrics' soundcheck was over, and Scotty came up to us.
"Would you like to come down and meet the guys?"
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Is a bear Catholic?
"Sure!"
Dirk then brought out the item he'd been keeping under wraps all afternoon: a wand (he called it an "Erp-wand" :)) made of a wooden branch, with Indian beads and feathers attached to it. "I wanted to give you back something -I- made, since you've given me so much music that -you- made," he told them simply. The guys were a bit nonplussed, but clearly moved.
The conversations were pretty wide-ranging. At one point I mentioned the Internet and the Erpnotes list, and the Fillmore show we'd been CD-treeing. "You have a recording of the Fillmore show?" "Yea, it sounds pretty good, too. I'll go get it." The two CDs (my backup copies) were in my car changer, so I went outside and grabbed 'em, garnering a few curious stares from the 15 fans who'd gathered by the buses. Back inside I just gave them to John and the band, since I could always make another backup set from the masters Mark Mayhall had sent me. "CD-tree, huh? Guess that's the modern, 90s version of a tape-tree," John remarked.
Turned out that the band had been delayed in transit from Virginia by a generator failure on their tour bus, and had only arrived earlier that same day. A real pity, since they'd have enjoyed the unseasonably cool weather, perfect for walking around, and the odd shops and street-scene for which Little Five Points is famous.
They hadn't seen the Creative Loafing write-up of the show, and they were a bit put-out by the references to drugs ("Weed's a hallucinogen?") until I pointed out that drugs were A Kewl Thing to the CL staff and the vast majority of their readers -- hence it's actually a pretty positive review. :)
At another time I mentioned Live Underslunky to John. "The Ozrics CD that, for me, started it all." He smiled and said, without a trace of ego or misplaced pride, "Yea, that -is- a really good CD, innit?" --As if it had just occurred to him, too! They're all refreshingly down-to-earth and completely lacking in arrogance, for a band that consistently delivers an amazingly tight live show...but we're jumping ahead a bit, here. :)
Back at the Variety, Scotty invites us on to their tour bus to hear some stuff off the much-anticipated remix CD. Say what? He's inviting us aboard their sacred bus?!?!?! We ascended the steps up into the sanctum sanctorum in such a mood that our feet probably never touched the steps. :)
Yep! 'Cause we were listening to the remix tracks. The Steve Hillage track sounded good, and the one remixed by their former bandmates in Eat Static, and also the remix of "Sploosh!" ("Sploosh!" might have been by one of the two aforementioned, I can't remember now). There was one track remixed by a French artist that we all kinda thought was so-so. Yea, a crowd had gathered; by this time the guys in the band were filtering back from their forays (with no kind words about the quality of the local cuisine they'd sampled; Scotty smiled and said he'd had great pizza). Seaweed commented that -he- hadn't even heard some of the remix tracks yet!
Once again we really felt like we were part of a family. Additional chemicalization took place (but as usual, I declined). Topics ranged from the sublime to the mundane: "..MUCH better this time 'round. The answerphone used touchtones, and it worked great. Last time we were here you had to say 'operator' or whatever and it couldn't bloody figure out an English accent!"
By now the Star People were onstage and the venue was rockin'. We'd been on the bus for a while and I was getting worried that I was in a place where various people I'd intended to find couldn't find -me-, so when Scotty got up to head inside, I did too, as did most everyone else. Dirk stayed on the bus with John for a bit, getting more suitably chemicalized.
So many delightful memories of their performance: Jumpin' John living up to his namesake, leaping around the stage, playing his flutes and other wind instruments from his "magic bag" right in front of us, a man possessed; Seaweed, looking positively maniacal, playing his keyboards and grinning like a mad scientist (NO-ONE has as much fun playing keys and synth live as Seaweed!); Rad, whose drumming was positively superb; Zia, whose bass always acts as the rhythmic glue (and Ozrics are a very rhythmic experience), with his Mona Lisa-like smile as he bobbed his head side to side to the beat during "Throbbe," and of course Ed, the supremely competent founder of this band who ultimately makes it all come together.
They played for about two hours and twenty minutes, as I recall; the setlist was the same as at most other shows on the tour. High points -- well, higher than even the usual plateau! -- included "Sploosh!," "Chinatype," "Sultana Detrii" (although I'd been hoping to hear "Waterfall Cities" from the new CD, this was a fine tune also), both of the encore tracks ("White Rhino Tea" and "Throbbe"), "Erpland".....
The audience, which numbered about 400 paid (plus us cheap bastards who were let in via the side door :)), was extremely into the show. I was extremely pleased at the crowd response, since Ozrics get virtually no radio airplay here at all (except for an occasional snippet on WREK's Stonehenge show -- call them Friday evenings at 404-894-2468 and request Ozrics :)). I think the band were pleased, too. They get larger crowds in some cities, I'm sure, but we were as vocal as any audience out there, and they seemed to blossom with the recognition. :)
I called Steve Harris a few days after the show just to "check in." He thanked me once again for the show (making me wonder exactly what role I had with it...) As it turned out, he'd lost a bit of money on the door receipts, but probably did okay by the bar and concessions sales. I asked him -- dreading the answer -- if he'd consider getting Ozrics again when they next toured the States, and he said "Sure!" For one thing, he was certain that after their excellent performance, they could only increase their attendance the next time. This was great news, too, since the Variety was damn near a perfect place to see them, not too big, not too small, large stage and comfortable seats plus the floor area.
Ozrics -did- return during 2000, although the crowd wasn't as large as we were hoping, for a few reasons: another nearby show in Athens had been booked, plus they were competing against Moby's sold-out show the same night, there was short advance notice of the show and promotion by the Variety Playhouse had been a bit lackluster. For the write-up on their return, including three shows' worth of pics and commentary, click here.