The First of the Gang To Die

It was nearly midnight when we arrived in Pittsburgh. The Quiet Storm cafe was packed with our fans, making it all the easier to cart our equipment through the deserted club. I deposited my corpse on a sofa at immediate stage-left, and commenced a form of nausea-suppression therapy I like to call not listening to my drummer's opinions on Israel. Our friends, The Bullet Parade, played a stomach-turning rendition of "Shoplifters of the World, Unite and Take Over"--which is to say really first-rate. Carrie attended to my Gore-Tex hood with massage therapy, while Joanne procured peppermint tea to settle my stomach. I felt like a regular Mao Tse-tung; I worried constantly about the shameful spectacle unfolding before our Pittsburgh audience.