MOIST 3 - Spring 1994



When you cram eight people, one thousand pounds of equipment, dinner for twelve, three broken cell phones, six thousand complimentary cough drops and eight conflicting opinions on the difference between a Jacuzzi and a hot tub, into a van, you have to be sure that everything you bring with you, from a new roadie with a bad haircut to a grumpy drummer with a sense of humour like curdled milk mixed with strychnine, be absolutely essential to the success of the tour and so to prove an item's merit it is dragged fifteen thousand kilometers over frozen asphalt, through Keith's digestive system, insulted relentlessly and stripped of every last shred of dignity while being beaten pretty much constantly with a large stick wrapped in barb wire and dipped in tabasco sauce. This is called road testing, and anything that survives this test is deemed useful, holy and offered live sacrifices every third day at midnight - anything that doesn't survive is immediately set on fire and tossed off the nearest cliff in disgust after the inevitable argument with the band packrat.
Band: "let go of it, its broken!"
Keyboard Player (twitching sporadically): "No, its mine!"
Band: "let go of it, its no use to anybody!"
Keyboard Player: "but what if we get stuck in an elevator and need to build a teleporter, or the road floods and we're attacked by large amphibious weasels, with an insatiable lust for human flesh or..."
(sound of fists pummeling flesh, muffled cries - end of argument).

Having no home but the van, and no other marketable skills, MOIST is now on the road permanently, rapidly fulfilling our manager's dream of using every telephone and washroom in North America before he's thirty, and have in the last two months crossed Canada 3 times, traveled to Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest tequila binge and music conference where we discovered that the role of management and it's responsibility for the well being of the band is best defined by wandering into a downtown alley at 3am speaking in tongues and sucking an unmarked black bottle of tequila while all his bodily fluids run screaming for the nearest fire exit.

Luckily, Keith was befriended by a local dumpster who shared his interests and was soon engaged in friendly conversation about the origins of the universe, the true nature of evil and the biological consequences of eating fruit on a full stomach. Not to be left out, our singer, victim of the same bottle, set out to prove his invisibility by running madly through heavy traffic, dodging imaginary bullets and screaming for God's undivided attention.

From there it was on the New York City, and a narrow miss with he Hudson river and back into the van to Canada for another Canadian tour beginning on Friday April 1st in Kingston.