The Story of TEA - Part II
2 years agoTHE STORY OF TEA
THE TOAST TO WARM THEIR MUSICAL JIMJAMS
AS TOLD BY BILL~*~
PART II: BEYOND THE DESERT
(Read Part I here!)Stuck in the desert, all we could do was to try and hitch our way out. But there were no cars for about two days, so we took to the shade under my car parts and ate cacti. At last we got picked up by a guy in a cowboy hat, who took us all the way to New York. He said he was going to the city to become a hustler. We gave him our email addresses. He said he’d be in touch, but I haven’t seen him since.
New York was our home for about a year. We started off living somewhere called Bushwyck. But there were too many crazy topless women and angry people around, so we moved on pretty quick. After several moves, we ended up in Astoria, sharing a quiet apartment with a Mexican guy called Pablo. He was extra friendly to us when we told him we’d come from New Mexico. “I’ve never been to New Mexico but I bet it’s just like Mexico. You guys are my brothers.” After that he would always give us free food, and we helped him with a delivery service he was running. He didn’t mind us jamming; we did it up on the roof where Snorko could plug in to the neighbours’ electricity.
We started picking up some gigs in Brooklyn, where people would crowd into the bars and take a lot of photos of our gear. Snorko’s machine took a battering one night when someone crashed their bike into the stage. Apparently it didn’t have any brakes. I was wondering how they got the bike into the bar at all, but the bouncer told me that if they let bikers in, the bar gets some sort of tax break from the city.
By that stage we were getting pretty famous; there were videos of our gigs floating around, and we were playing nearly every night with more and more people squeezing in to see us. They’d bring 9V batteries with little glowing filaments attached, and sway them in the air above their heads. By summer 2007 we’d recorded an album and were booked for a sold-out show in Madison Square Garden.
It was about that time the Dumpmaster showed up again. We were sitting at the Tea-shirt stand after a gig and he came up to us with a big hairy guy whom he introduced as “the man from the Pitchfork.” They wanted $10,000 protection money, “or we guarantee you won’t sell a single copy of that dumb album.” We didn’t even have $1,000, so we were pretty worried.
Luckily Pablo came to our rescue. He said he delivered to the Pitchfork guys all the time, and he thought they were pretty reasonable. Then he went out of town for three days. I’m not sure what he did, but the Pitchfork didn’t bother us after that. Pablo’s a great guy.
The Madison Square gig was amazing. We got rich! With the money we made, we could probably have paid for eight successful albums. But we already had other plans.
Neither Snorko nor I had written any new music since we’d arrived in New York. We were feeling that the city was eroding our creativity. A friend of Snorko’s, a young pianist, had tried to convince us otherwise. “This city can inspire you; just remember: concrete jungle, wet dream tomato.”
Wise words. But as I repeated this mantra to myself, I began to realise that this was precisely the problem. New York was too big and crazy a place for us to ever find a real sense of purpose. It was time to leave.
***Where to next for our intrepid teabag baggers? Find out next week in Part III!***
