I’ll Quote On The Road Like A Twat — I Always Tell the Girls

12.17.15 Fox Theater Oakland, CA 🦋

12.19.15 Roseland Theater Portland, OR

12.20.15 Showbox SoDo Seattle, WA

“If you wanna find love and you know where the city is” The 1975

“I’ll quote On the Road like a twat and wind my way out of the city” The 1975

A little over a year later, the boys promoted a small venue tour as a “thank you” to fans. It became the beginning of fighting fellow fan girls and evil scalping femme bots for tickets. With a little help from my friends and a flexible lunch break I managed to snag tickets for Oakland, Portland and Seattle. I danced around my cubicle in celebration and shared my excitement with the amused radio DJs in the surrounding offices. I was working part-time for a broadcast company that owned the alternative and rock stations I grew up listening to. It felt very much like the stars were aligning for my my first ever groupie tour.

In high school, I dreamt of taking a gap year but reluctantly started college as a pre-major instead and continued to be as indecisive as always. I did do a brief study abroad program that awoke the restless little rebel in me but I spent most of college like I did my last year of high school, depressed, consumed by Emo music and cocooned in my anti-social tendencies. I was a commuter student through most of my time in college (three months of dorm like was just fine with me). My joys in college mostly came from outside the classroom, taking night time solo walks through the city to my bus back to suburbia, going to shows, going to movies alone in between classes to kill time, taking advantage of the free therapy on campus (my first therapy experience, though is it really free considering tuition nowadays?) and interning A LOT.

This groupie tour would begin the gap year I longed for, though it would be in small chunks over four years. The groupie gap years would connect me back to my Emo roots, my sense of community in music and help me retrace my true self through the fog of anxiety, CPTSD and the conveyor belt feeling of college life.

I spent my last year of high school through post college interning in various areas of the music industry. One of those incredible experiences lead to a part time gig working in radio. When I scored my The 1975 tickets, we had just completed all the Christmas arena concerts which basically meant three 20–22 hour shifts being paid out on one paycheck. This tour would be intimate and the first taste of the new songs of the pink era. The film noir sets would turn into pink neon love letters inspired by artwork made by fans on Tumblr (fans that I will now call Les Poesies because “ La poesies dans la rue” and I think Matty would be amused by the Rimbaud reference combined with his own).

The trip started in California. My best friend’s hometown is Oakland, so I was able to stay with her family for a few days. It gave me a chance to explore Oakland and San Francisco for the first time. The land of Green Day, The Beats, hippies and my grandparents’ honeymoon. For a trip that I expected to be mostly solo, the beginning became more of a family trip. It was the first family vacation with both a mom and dad that I would remember. I would casually mention ideas I had for the trip and Taylor’s parents would have breakfast, an itinerary and their own suggestions ready to go. We explored Oakland’s Chinatown, a local dive bar called Dirty Bird, The Haight, The Wharf and North Beach in a couple of days.

I stayed in Taylor’s teenage bedroom that looked strangely similar to my mine in the mid 2000s. It was like being placed at the beginning of my own musical journey to reminisce and remember my origins. A bizarre Twilight Zone episode. She had the same Bratz dolls, Warped Tour posters, and the same Alt Press magazines I had ripped and put all over my walls. It was an immediate home away from home complete with a cuddly dog (I have slept with a dog in my bed since the crib so this was a great comfort to start my solo travels). It was also a lovely reminder of when I last loved music so madly. A full circle coming of age welcoming me into my next life that was still full of teen angst that I’m beginning to assume will never die and strangely I hope it never does. I dont wish to be free from passion. It’s not a phase! 🖤

I was learning how many different love stories can coexist while traveling and part of my education was reading Pamela Des Barres’ I’m with the Band. My mother had mockingly called me a “groupie” (keep in mind this is coming from a woman who worships Mick Jagger, ditched her boyfriend to go backstage at Heart for a smooch, hung out with Motley Crue, went to an Alice In Chains party and was my first concert buddy) so I decided in response I would take the groupie bible with me on my trip. Groupiedom related well to something I was quite familiar with growing up, fan girling. Meeting bands before and after shows. Loving British bands just a bit more. Feeling the music in your heart, soul, bones and crotch. Longing for a life on the road. Miss P had captured my thoughts, feelings and coming of age within music so wonderfully despite the difference in era, young sexual encounters and drugs. She perfectly described the groupie love between fan girls, that deep musical bond between soulmates and the lonely feeling in wanting to be muse, artist and paramour. The book became an inspiration to be unapologetic in pursuits. Especially when on the prowl. It was a reminder of both my love for live music and writing. I felt so lost in college and now I felt like I was discovering my true self all at once. I will always appreciate my opportunity to have an overpriced liberal arts education. It helped me find therapy, internship opportunities for college credit, some of my favorite friendships, renewed my writing interest in new forms like film and began my love for solo travel but travel will always be my favorite form of education.

I was feeling like the music version of Anthony Bourdain. Time traveling through Miss P’s Sunset Boulevard strutting, my own wandering and family fun through out the Bay Area. Our first day we bummed around in the Beat haunts of North Beach. The 1975 named themselves after a copy of On the Road turned into a diary dated June 1st of The 1975. I shared Matty’s love of the Beats long before I loved him (my forever love of Jess Mariano is often the source of my first loves like The Beats, salt and pepper dip on fries, Pavement and the 70s punk movement via reading Please Kill Me). Our first stop was Vesuvio Cafe, the bar that Kerouac and friends frequented and were frequently kicked out of. The back alley where his ass was often thrown is now sidewalk art reminiscent of Hollywood stars but for celebrated writers. We went upstairs and I sat in the women’s psychiatric booth thinking of all my wonderfully mad idols. At least the The women were often thrown in asylums while then men were admired. Zelda. Marilyn. Susana. I felt a strange pride in venturing on my own like the boys and how some of the girls managed. Anais. Josephine. Patti. Some girls will always wander no matter the time or place or expectations.

One of my favorite stops on the trip was City Light Bookstore. Bookstores, record stores, museums, graveyards and the occasional video store are my first google searches when trip planning. I wandered around for an hour or two. I bought four books, all women authors. I was determined to buy all women authors considering the very male oriented literary history of the area and store. My favorite purchase of the four was Joan Didion’s The White Album. It felt like it covered the dark tar pit Manson mayhem infested holes that surrounded Pamela’s starry eyed groupie galaxy. Though both books do cover the dark days of the end of the sixties.

After the bookstore, we walked pass the vintage strip clubs and old school Italian restaurants to The Beat Museum. My favorite exhibit was The Beats influence on Hollywood. The introduction of Marlon Brando, James Dean and their pale imitations. The boring 50s perfectionism being raided and rampaged by the new adolescence and rebellion.

Matty has that sleepy eyed James Dean look I thought as I walked past movie posters and old paperback covers. The Turner Classic Movies and tuna melts I grew up on came to mind among all the nostalgia. Diner food is part blame for my obsession with an on the road lifestyle. That is the other appeal of travel, the road food and different cultural cuisines.

After the museum, we went out for some of the best gnocchi I’ve ever had in my life. We listened to the staff bicker in the background and discussed our day being amused by both events.

San Francisco lived up to the images of vintage postcards, Art Deco dreaminess, hippie hopes and romantic old movies. It was the old California my mom grew up in and lusts after on our California road trips but this time it was my own vision full of wonder. The travel bug keeping me well placed in it’s clutches. Just like Burroughs I was becoming a junkie and feeling pretty fine about it.

The next day we spent our time in the land of love ins, street art, street kids, artists, busking musicians, and ghosts of the 27 club. Every thrift store on the block had babydoll velvet minidresses that were as unattainable as the groupie golden years. We browsed new age shops, thrift shopped and browsed Amoeba where I bought the entire Decline of Western Civilization collection box set. We grabbed pizza at a New York punk inspired shop covered in Matt Groenig’s artwork, Escape From NY Pizza. Then we had our tarot cards read and took a morbid side trip to the house where Sid Vicious once OD’d. An absolutely dreamy day.

To appropriately end the family vacation we went to The Wharf and had giant Ghirardelli sundaes and looked out at the evening view of Alcatraz. After devouring Rocky Road and maraschino cherries, we made our way to the Musee Mecanique (See Princess Diaries). I played every single kind of fortune teller game including one that involved a typewriter writing out my future. I saw what the belly dancer did on weekends through an old fashioned peep hole. Avoided all things clown related and feasted on the California delicacy, In-N-Out on the way home. It was a wonderful unexpected family trip but the next day was the first show of the tour for me and the butterflies began to build in anticipation.

The first thing I did before the show was get stoned. The second thing I did was take the BART which was as shitty as rumored (and I’ve been on the New York subway) and went to the Green Day owned diner, Rudy Can’t Fail. I passed the camping teenage girls in line in front of the Fox Theater, feeling both relief to be done with those days and nostalgia for endless teenage days lining up for a show at 9am instead of going to school. Billie Joe Armstrong was my first rockstar crush so again the trip felt full circle. Billie once brought a teenage Matty on stage at a concert which made Matty want to be a rockstar. Having seen this moment happen live a couple of times, I swooned over what he must’ve felt. My first love helped create my current.

The Fox Theater is a beautiful 1920s theater with Asian inspired decor like giant Buddhas with glowing eyes. It was Taylor’s teenage venue and reminded me of going to The Paramount growing up. 21+ entered the venue early through a bar so I began the soon to be tour tradition of ordering French 75s pre-show there. Champagne made the solo show going feel more glamorous. Liquid courage indeed, as I spent the whole show dancing by myself within the crowd and spending slower songs watching the girls around me interact with each other in groupie giddiness. It was my first time hearing songs like “ Somebody Else”, “ The Sound”, “Love Me”, “She’s American” and “ A Change of Heart”. All of which were anticipated songs from the new album that wouldn’t be released until February of the following year. During “ A Change of Heart”, Matty glided over to my side of the stage with a lit cigarette in hand while crooning, “finding a girl who is equally pretty, wont be hard” while pointing his cigarette in what appeared to be my direction though I’m sure all girls in the general vicinity would proclaim it was directed at them. Damn butterflies. The set list from “ You” to “ Robbers “ became the no bathroom or bar zone for me for the rest of the tour.

Solo travel naturally makes one more aware of surroundings and I’ve always enjoyed people watching. I began to notice more and more through out the show something I had missed. The girls in the crowd perfectly capturing The Virgin Suicides quote “the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them”. I grew up one of those girls upfront. My church pew being better known as the barrier singing loudly with my friends and whoever else was around me. That was my family, my religion and my hometown growing up. Still is. Now I just join the traveling circus version from time to time.

After the show, I fell into my teenage traditions even harder, I waited outside by the back gates with my eyes firmly on the back door and tour bus. Hours passed and the band never came out but it didn’t really matter, those of us still standing watched the premier of the “ Ugh!” music video together and sang it out to the tour bus as it left as a lovely goodbye. I chatted with older fans on how the show compared to their teenage show going days, I advised teenage fans on always carrying a ponytail on their wrist for protection when crashing through the crowd, and I made a friend to wait with while I waited for my ride. The friendship would be brief due to her single white female tendencies but she would go on to introducing me to two of my best friends who would join me on my future groupie tours. I would meet another one of the girls from the Oakland show again at the back gate of the upcoming Portland show. For a trip where I expected to spend a lot of time alone fighting with my anxiety, I instead made fun memories with people I may have never interacted with if I wasn’t alone. My alone time mainly happened during the in between time in a seat by the window giggling like a love sick teenager as I spent the time daydreaming or diary writing in an attempt to taste those fast firsts again. I was falling in love with a band, strangers, cities, solo travel and a new but familiar version of myself. 💋

Originally published at https://www.ialwaystellthegirls.com on November 12, 2020.