Steve Taylor -- a press conference, an autograph signing, an interview

Date: July 21, 1994
Place: Sonfest 94, Abbotsford, BC

The Press Conference -- c. 3:40-4:00pm

Sonfest Manager: We have to make this really quick. He's got to be on stage soundchecking at ten past four, so if you've got your questions ready --

Steve Taylor: They caught me trying to smuggle in my tropical birds at the border. I was like, detained for like, hours, so I'm really sorry.

Peter T. Chattaway: Do you remember your last time you were in Vancouver?

ST: I think it was -- was it on the Transatlantic Tour or something like that?

PTC: Yeah.

ST: That was like a long time ago.

PTC: May 30th '85. It was at the Orpheum, we were all forced to sit on our seats because we rushed the stage, and you said at the time, from the stage, that next time you came to Vancouver, you would get "a real rock hall".

ST: Oh, right [laughter]. That's right, that's right. Like a big ceiling? Yeah, that's no problem.

PTC: The sky's a pretty big ceiling?

ST: Yeah, and they don't get mad when you rush the stage here, right?

PTC: You were in Chagall Guevara.

ST: Right, uh-huh.

PTC: In an interview three years ago, you said that "this was it". You and the other members were going to stay with that band and find a secular career or whatever. Has that folded or are you juggling a solo and a band career?

ST: No, the band's pretty much -- if it's still alive, it's like, in a cryogenics lab somewhere. It's just barely ticking. Everybody's still friends, and in fact, the band with me is Wade and Mike, our bass player and drummer from Chagall Guevara, but I think it's pretty well over. It sort of dissolved over the space of a year, I would say.

PTC: Was it secular demands, or was it -- ?

ST: No, I think it was -- well, actually, very quietly we did a record with MCA, and when it came time to do the second record, we sorta started working on it, and we just realized -- it's not like everything that went wrong was the record label's fault, but, it sort of felt like, if it was going to work next time, it would definitely have to have a different record label, and just the process of trying to extricate ourselves from our MCA deal was long and involved, and just sort of wore everybody out. Particularly guys that had families with children were starting to get worn out anyway.

PTC: Was Chagall legally tied to that label?

ST: Yeah, we were signed to MCA Records.

PTC: Warner Alliance -- is that a Christian or a secular label?

ST: It's a Christian label as a part of Warner Brothers, which is of course a pop label. It's their be-kind-to-God label. It's like a gospel label under the umbrella of a pop label. It just happened that it was tied with Warner Brothers. It wasn't my intent to do a -- I didn't want to do a solo record on a pop label. I wanted to be on a gospel label. It just so happened that it was part of a big conglomerate.

PTC: What sort of constraints do they have? Do they have constraints?

ST: You mean, does Warner Alliance have constraints compared to -- ?

PTC: Warner Alliance, yeah.

ST: No, it would be very similar to any of the other gospel labels. I think it was set up -- I mean, the people that run it are Christians, it's just that they have a different set of people to report to. But of course, most gospel labels now are run by big multi-national corporations.

SM: [ Just one more question; then give it to others. ]

PTC: Do you take that as a sign that Christian music has become more acceptable?

ST: I don't know. I suppose when people smell profit in it, then the big companies come and want to buy into it. I don't know if "acceptable" is the right word, but I suppose it's getting more profitable, and that's why it's appealing to these big corporations, and I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing or not, but I guess time will tell.

Sonfest Cameraman: Welcome to Canada ... [ couldn't make out the next bit ]

ST: Thanks. Well, yeah, we got through the border very easily.

SC: Do you feel that Christian music is becoming more accepted in the mainstream market?

ST: You know, I'm not sure about that. I know my experience, with being in an alternative band on a pop label, MCA, gave me a unique perspective, since all the guys in the band were Christians, but that was not part of our press releases or specifically part of our agenda, I suppose. I sort of got a different angle on things, and I get the feeling that if gospel music is more accepted in the mainstream, it's just tolerated because it has to be tolerated. Like we were saying before, these big record labels are just looking at if they can make money off of it, they will literally sell anything. And they do sell anything [slight laughter].

SC: A quick thing about Sonfest. Sonfest is a music festival ... but there's probably something a bit deeper, maybe another dimension to Sonfest that goes beyond ...

ST: Right. I mean, well, that's the whole reason for doing gospel music, for me, and one of the reasons why I was keen on doing another solo record was the ability to do music that is infused with your Christian worldview and your faith. I look at it as a privilege. As far as acceptability goes or whatever, I don't think that that freedom would necessarily have been accorded the band that I was in, so I was anxious to do music that just let me speak freely about my faith. So that's the element of Sonfest that makes the whole thing different from just a regular festival, is people coming together -- I would suppose most people are Christians -- and a chance to hear music, but it's got a deeper meaning to it.

SC: You're touring?

ST: We've just been doing festivals this summer, then we start a tour this fall.

SC: You're starting a tour this fall?

ST: That's correct. A two- or three-month tour in the U.S., and I think we go to Europe for a couple weeks too.

SC: Are those Christian venues in the fall?

ST: Well, they're all, like, neutral venues. We wouldn't play churches, but there would be -- I don't know if you would say they would be billed as "gospel concerts", but I would suppose most people who would come to see us would know us as gospel musicians.

SC: Will you be coming back to Vancouver on that tour?

ST: Man, I hope so. It all just depends sort of on promoters and all that other stuff. I don't end up having a lot to do with how things get worked, outside of saying, "I sure would like to play in Vancouver." But that just depends on that sort of thing.

PTC: You used to have some connection to the Soviet bloc, back when it was the Soviet bloc. Do you still keep in contact with people over there?

ST: It was more specifically with probably Poland, and we had a guy that we worked with in Poland back when it was still part of the Soviet bloc. That was like a long story, but he actually got in trouble for bringing us into the country and actually ended up getting thrown in jail and we worked, as far as getting money together and stuff, to get him bailed out, and finally he ended up being released, and then of course the whole Soviet bloc sort of crumbled, and now he's actually doing concert promoting on a much broader scale now.

PTC: Would you be returning there?

ST: Man, I hope so. It's not scheduled right now, but hopefully we'd be going back there sometime.

Guy from Alberta: Steve, your last appearance during Gospel Music Week down in Nashville --

ST: Oh, right, uh-huh.

GfA: -- that was great, because you wound up going to one of these secular bar-type things and ... [can't make out the next bit] ... Compare Gospel Music Week in Nashville to Sonfest.

ST: Wow, you know, this is my first time here, and I literally just got here, so I would probably have to hold off being able to compare 'em until --

GfA: -- 'til afterwards.

ST: Yeah, probably 'til after.

GfA: Okay, and the second question: There's a lot of first-time artists out here on the festival stages, a lot of people who are not on stage, songwriters: Give me one inspiring word for a budding new Canadian artist wishing to break in more into Christian music.

ST: I think that, with any artist, the point of view, and sort of getting your voice across in a unique way is a real important element to what you do. And we all are certainly influenced by other artists and by peers and everything else. I think part of the struggle of an artist is to sort of become more than the sum of your influences. If there is something that gospel music lacks, not across the board but probably a criticism that could be levelled at it in general, is that there may not be enough originality in, not just in musicality, but in the way we write our lyrics. So I think I would just encourage Canadian artists to really work at the way they craft what they say, and man, use the Bible as inspiration, because you not only see such a rich tapestry of communication, but you see a real thread of subversive communication: the prophets of the Old Testament and, of course, Jesus, and finding ways of getting across the message in real untraditional ways. Asking questions to answer questions, telling stories, and acting things out. And somehow, a lot of Christian music gets stuck on the very one-dimensional, oftentimes sort of preachy level, and that has its place, but that's not really as biblical of a mode, I think, of really finding subversive ways of communicating.

GfA: One other thing that came out of Nashville was a lot of people were saying that it's almost like the country music group right now is a bunch of people getting on the bandwagon --

ST: Right.

GfA: -- and the general consensus was, "Let's not get more people on, let's qualify it and the people who already have, and make them better." Is that the general consensus, or are they moving a little too fast in ... Christian.

ST: Well, that could be. I mean, I don't know that much about the gospel music industry because I've been out for five years when I was doing the band. I know that it's the same thing: When something becomes institutionalized, it can lose its soul, and gospel music has become an institution. Y'know, all these record labels are now self-perpetuating. They have to make very hard choices lots of times, and one of the things that can happen in all that is that gospel music becomes very much sort of part of a consumerism. We have to be very careful, why I think we have to demand very high standards from gospel artists, we have to expect high standards from the record labels, and I think in this sort of rush that sometimes happens -- it's almost like cashing in -- that the soul of gospel music can be lost. So there's certainly minefields out there to be aware of.

SM: We just have two minutes.

SC: Just one question. Now, what I'm doing here is specifically for Sonfest.

ST: Right.

SC: Now, if you were watching a video regarding the festival, if there was one thing or a couple things that you want to say in that video, that's going to bring somebody to Sonfest, what would that be? -- and specifically to Sonfest, and I was wondering if you could start it off by saying, "Hi, I'm Steve Taylor."

[laughter around the room]

ST: Yeeeah, sure. Hi, I'm Steve Taylor, and I understand that each visitor to Sonfest gets, like, what is it, a couple hundred bucks, I think, when they go through the gate, so ...

[laughter around the room]

ST: That's what got me here, so I would encourage all of you to do the same.

GfA: And don't you get badminton lessons here too?

ST: Yeah, and that too, and that too, and I'll be giving those later in the day.

SC: What would you really like to -- like, what is your purpose in doing a concert, in general, say, and kinda lean more towards Sonfest as well?

ST: Boy, I'm not very good at this, I'm afraid. Can you give me something a little more specific or something like that, or -- ?

SC: How about, okay, for example, we interviewed Steve Taylor -- I mean Steve Camp -- last year. Basically he said, "Sonfest was the best thing in Canada -- "

ST: [laughs]

SC: " -- and the reason it is, is because Sonfest brings a spiritual aspect, and also ... " [can't make out the next bit]

ST: Right, right. See, the problem is, you're asking me to comment on something I just literally walked through the gate --

SC: YeahIknow --

ST: -- so I can't do it very honestly --

SC: YeahIknow, but say something like, "Any other concert in town, is sort of the same idea, but just, the difference between this one, is various artists," y'know?

ST: Right, right.

SC: So I guess what I'm asking for is your --

PTC: Think Greenbelt or Cornerstone.

ST: Oh right, right.

SC: -- why you're really here, and you can take it from there.

Unidentified Female: For the hundred bucks.

[laughter around the room]

ST: Boy-oh-boy. Could we do this outside? Or could we, just you and me, work on this or something? This is, like, very hard to do for --

SM: Let's try it this way: What's the best thing that you like about doing the festival circuit?

ST: Oh, okay, there we go. Sure, I can do that. Hi, this is Steve Taylor, I'm here at Sonfest, and I like to come to these things because, uhhhh, it's a chance to, ummm -- do you use the word "punters" here? -- a chance to talk to punters and hang out, and a chance to see good music, and sort of get a, uh, your faith reinforced -- Are we doing okay here? Anybody else got anything they want to throw in here?

SM: We have to end.

ST: Oh, okay.

PTC: Just one quick question?

SM: No, we can't --

ST: Oh, no we can't do it -- ? [stands up, turns to PTC] Oh quick, lay it on me and I'll --

PTC: Bible as a source of material: it's got love songs: could you see yourself doing just love songs someday?

ST: Just love songs? Oh yeah, I can see myself doing that sometime. Yeah. I'll start working on 'em.

PTC: Okay.

ST: On the way back, in the van. I'm sorry this was so short.


The Autograph Session -- c. 11:15pm

ST: Hey, I remember you. How's it going?

PTC: Hi. I almost brought Pump Up the Volume, but I figured, nah, that's going too far.

ST: [laughs] Yeah, that's right. I forgot your name. Did you say it today?

PTC: Probably not: Peter.

ST: Peter, how's it going? [looks at CDs] On the front? Is this cool?

PTC: Yeah, sure, wherever you like. [pause] Curious: --

ST: Yes.

PTC: -- bizarre question of the week: --

ST: Okay.

PTC: -- what vegetable summarizes your philosophy of life, and why?

ST: Uh, rutabaga.

PTC: Which?

ST: Rutabaga.

PTC: Oh-kay -- why?

ST: I don't know. I can neither pronounce it nor spell it. Does that work?

PTC: Sure. [laughs]

ST: We'll have to work on that one. That's not a good answer.

PTC: That's good, that's good. I won't tell Freud. [sees that ST is signing I Predict 1990] Or Jung, for that matter.

ST: [laughs] Okay, here we go. Black on black. [points at cover of The Best We Could Find] The sound man thought this was a picture of me.

PTC: Isn't it?

ST: No, yeah, right, right.

PTC: I don't know, maybe for a while you had an ear-ring --

ST: I don't do ear-rings!


The Private Interview -- c. 11:50pm-12:05am

Trent Ernst: Okay, I'm kinda nervous here --

ST: Oh, no problem.

TE: It's been ten years and I've really wanted to, like, catch you live. Every time it came close, it fell through, and it's really hard separating the mythos that's surrounded in my mind of when I hear you on tape with the real you, and you seem so personable. Keeping in mind songs like 'Hero', do you find this is a common problem, and what's your take on it?

ST: Well, it's probably a common problem in just we -- For better or worse, but usually for worse, I suppose artists get looked up to, and, I mean, the song 'Hero' is a good example of that, because it was like when I was a kid, I'd read biographies of famous people and sort of as I get older and read more, you find out that these people probably weren't all that they were cracked up to be and that ultimately, Jesus is the only hero that won't disappoint us. But I think that one of the reasons it's important --

PTC: The Bible is constantly shooting its own heroes down too.

ST: Well, that's true too, which is one of the great things about the Bible, is it just gives it to you straight, y'know? You get both sides of the story with Gideon and Noah and whoever. But one of the reasons it's important to just hang out afterwards is because it's very easy to spend time building up your own persona and try and create mystery and aura and stuff like that, which is bogus, and it's especially bogus for Christian artists, because it seems to me that what we do as performers and being in the centre of a circus of self-promotion and everything like that is hard enough to square with what Jesus taught, and then when you add on that trying to be larger than life or set apart or something like that, you know, that's just sort of a way to help lessen that, I guess.

TE: On sort of that level, it's kinda nice to see your eyes, cuz, y'know, with the glasses --

ST: Oh [laughs], the only reason I brought those on is because we came right from the airport into the car straight here, and I had glasses on, and I didn't want to ask too many questions about why I was wearing glasses, so I just kept the shades on on top of it.

PTC: My question earlier about would ever you do a love song was partly tied into the biblical basis --

ST: Yeah, right.

PTC: -- and also, I was curious because some artists seem to make records to express themselves -- not that you don't do that, but I see you more as sort of instead of simply expressing what you're feeling, it's more like what you're thinking, or you're communicating a point, as opposed to simply conjuring words around whatever it is you're going through in your life.

ST: Right, right.

PTC: With Chagall, you were getting more into that, and I don't know how much of that was you and how much was the other two writers. I'm just wondering if you still see yourself going in that direction, or -- ?

ST: Y'know, I don't know, I probably messed around more with it on the Squint record than I had on previous solo records.

PTC: Well, 'Sock Heaven' seemed like a --

ST: There you go, yeah, right, right. And so, I've always been a little bit afraid of it because I didn't want to either come off whiney or too self-absorbed or anything like that. Another thing that we as artists have is we sort of think, like, everybody cares whatever about anything we do. And when the thought comes up in my mind, "Oh wow, this is a great song, the masses will really dig this," and it's like, again, I think the Bible says, "No one should think more highly of themselves than they ought to think." So it's probably just been a little bit of hesitance to put too much -- I mean, for one, my background is not a particularly dramatic story or background or anything like that. I've been unbelievably blessed with a wonderful wife, so I've not been through a lot of pain of love or separation or anything like that too, so probably a lot of the things that fuel personal angst I haven't experienced.

PTC: You don't have to be angst-ridden to write a song.

ST: No, you don't [laughs]. So on a song like 'The Finish Line' or something like that, isn't necessarily a personal song, but that probably moves me more on an emotional level than most songs that I write.

TE: You mentioned one of the things you're trying to stay away from is being "self-absorbed". Yet watching [Squint:] Movies from the Soundtrack, your approach to that was very different from your concept albums before. Was this, like, a bold new statement, or was this just a cheap excuse for a holiday?

ST: Well, that's probably it, probably the second more than anything. It was just like, "Wow, we could take this budget and go around the world, and someone else would pay for it," and it was partly a cheap excuse for a holiday. I mean, although, it wasn't a holiday, it's like I must say now, having done it, I can't think of a better way to sight-see than actually filming stuff, cuz your whole point is you're looking to try and figure out what to film, so I was very happy with the way that turned out, but I was definitely sort of, y'know, I mean it was just me doing stuff in exotic locations, so it wasn't particularly conceptual, I guess.

TE: Yeah, and that's where, I mean, the first time I saw it, it almost struck me as being, "Okay, what are you doing here, Steve? Where's the band? It's just you."

ST: Right.

PTC: "And a lot of grass."

TE: So from a critical standpoint, it's almost that, kind of a, y'know, stepping away from Chagall, where you're in the band and you have that very self-effacing we're-working-as-a-group-here, and going through this, where you've got your own name on the album, and then the video is just you, and occasionally, this guy running around with John 3:16.

ST: That was as much a function of budget as it was there wasn't enough money to fly the band away. In fact, I thought of doing that with Chagall Guevara but there was just no way to do it because it would have been too expensive to fly the band around, so y'know, excuse, you know.

PTC: Over the years, a variety of things have come up that have been nagging me. I've always wondered how you've reacted to them. A: Rolling Stone compared Chagall Guevara to the Clash, and you've always said in the past that they were your biggest influence.

ST: Yeah, that was like one of my life's highlights, is reading that. That was like a compliment that I don't know if we necessarily deserved, but we sure all ate it up.

PTC: There was a small cynical corner of my mind going, "Maybe a friend of theirs wrote that." Was this someone you knew?

ST: No. Peter [lastname?] is the Rolling Stone guy, but --

PTC: So it just came up in his mind --

ST: I guess so, yeah. I guess he put it together. He knew the band, we'd met him once.

PTC: A couple years ago, Jonathan David Brown, who produced your Meltdown album, was arrested for being involved with the Ku Klux Klan or something --

ST: Yeah, right.

PTC: And he produced 'We Don't Need No Color Code', so A: I'm wondering --

ST: And sang on it.

PTC: And sang on it? So A: I'm wondering, how did you react to that? B: Was there any indication beforehand of that?

ST: There was no indication beforehand of that, when I worked with him. But there were strong indications that he was, like, a nutcase when I was working with him on Meltdown, and not in a dangerous sense, and I don't know if I want to talk about a whole lot of this on tape, because I don't want to gossip about it, but I will say that during the making of Meltdown, he became very, for whatever reason, he just became just like very weird, and almost to the place where -- it actually got to the place where I just didn't want to work with him any more, and actually took him off the project about three-quarters of the way through Meltdown. I was gonna finish it with someone else, and he came back and apologized and said he would, y'know, get his act together and finish it off. The wild thing is, we just put together this boxed set that Sparrow was gonna do whether I wanted them to or not, so I figured, "Well, I'd better get in on this," and so we're mastering all this stuff from these different records, and the stuff that Jonathan produced and engineered, sonically and everything like that, he was a genius. And you won't hear me use that very often, but he was really a genius. It's like, we put that stuff up, and we didn't have to EQ it because whether you like the sound of it or not, sonically, it was really brilliant. And it's just a drag, y'know. I don't know what happened to him, but I know it really ticked me off when I heard about this racist stuff, and I think he's probably a little nuts, a little far-gone at that, and I don't want to make excuses for him because I think that stuff is so insidious. I think jail is a good thing for him. Hopefully God's got a hold of him in jail and made him realize the error and the ugliness of that stuff.

PTC: Just curious: Any chance any of your student films would be coming out on video? Baby Talk is the only one I know about.

ST: It's funny you ask that, because I just finished the boxed set, there's a simultaneous video release, and it has my student films in it. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, and I'm sort of 50-50 is what it is, but we put 'em on there because, y'know, it's just --

PTC: Cuz the only place I've heard of these is some six-year-old Campus Life story and I've never seen anything --

ST: I can't tell actually, now. I think they're sort of intermittently funny, but I'll have to see.

PTC: I took film school for a short while too, so --

ST: Oh, no kiddin'? Yeah, one of 'em is like, production-wise, is like really hideous, the sound is terrible, but it's sort-of funny. It's a satire of avant-garde film-makers. And the other one is, y'know, about that guy who traded in his baby on the Corvette.

TE: Earlier -- sorry, jumping onto another tangent -- you said that an artist is more than the sum of his influences. Having named the Clash as an influence before Chagall, and having come to a really -- what seems like a musically turbulent time with Chagall -- What, say, would you find on your CD player right now, if you were at home?

ST: I always get into trouble when I do this because, it's sort of like, I don't want to be endorsing acts or anything like that -- Actually, the last thing before I left, I had on In Utero, and that's a whole other story, but I thought Cobain as a lyricist was brilliant. He was like the first guy that really grabbed me lyrically ever since the Clash broke up, and I think as far as the suicide and everything like that, I think people see things very clearly, but they see them without God, and when you peer into the black hole, and you see nothing but a void, and if you're really honest, what else could you see there? So, apart from God, nothing makes sense, and I was talking with some people and they were wondering how could some people commit suicide. I said, "Man, I wonder why more people don't." Because, apart from God, this world does not make sense.

PTC: Not to harp on the racism thing, but now that South Africa is not quite that way any more, how long will you keep singing it ['Color Code']?

ST: It's a weird thing. I suppose until Bob Jones changes their policies, it may be a long time. But yeah, it's nice that half of the song isn't applicable any more. Let's do just a couple more. I mean, I'm enjoying this, but I know I've gotta go.

PTC: 'Hero': comic books: being a comic collector, I have to ask, do you read any still, and if so, what?

ST: I don't read comic books. In fact, I didn't read much, ever, unfortunately. It wasn't that I didn't like 'em, but my parents didn't actually really want me to have 'em around, although there's a guy who just gave me a [sample]. He wants to do a comic book for our fall tour, we might actually have one, but for true comic book collectors, this is like a hideous disgrace, so it's hard to say.

TE: Going off earlier comments, the first interview again, you were talking about the machinery of the Christian market. How does it feel when a lot of people who are interviewing you are a part of that machinery? How does it feel having people come up and say, "Hi, could you read this cue card?"

ST: Well, I'm in the machinery, so I certainly wouldn't want to act like I'm above it or anything at all, because I'm part of it. It amuses me when artists act like, "Don't listen to my old stuff because I was sorta forced into doing that," or you hear something like that, it's like, Hey, you can always say "no" any time, so nobody forced you to do anything. There is, like, a -- I think we all sort of find our balance, and there's a line that we won't cross, that hopefully most of us have, but the tough thing for me is I can't -- it's like it's more important to me -- it's like the whole thing with autographs. I mean, some people look at that as self-serving or idolatry or anything like that. The fact of the matter is, there's no way I could tell someone, "No, I can't sign your autograph," cuz to them, they're not thinking, "Oh yeah, Steve Taylor, that's cool, he's not into idolatry," or something like that. They're just thinking, "Oh, what a nasty guy." That is more important than those other questions, to me, and it's just really important that, as artists, not only that we're approachable, but that hopefully we're nice people. And of course, as Christians, we really don't have an excuse if we're not.

PTC: Which Blackadder episode does "The Beaufort Twins" [the pseudonym for I Predict 1990 producers Steve Taylor and Dave Perkins] come from?

ST: Oh, that's like, first series, number four I think. Do you guys get The Black Adder around here?

PTC & TE: Oh yeah.

ST: Well, I saw whatshisname --

TE: Rowan Atkinson?

ST: Yeah, Rowan Atkinson on the West End in London doing --

PTC: Mr Bean?

ST: No, it wasn't Mr Bean, it was like, Chekhov plays, like four or five actors doing Chekhov plays, and man, there was one thing that he did, it was like a speech he made to some fellow teachers or something like that, it was probably about the funniest five minutes I've ever seen.

TE: Okay, last irrelevant question: As a musician myself, if I wanted to send you a demo, would I send it to your promotional copy, or do I send it --

ST: Send it to the address in the CD. I'll actually get it. It takes me a long time to listen to stuff because of the volume of stuff I get. In fact, 'Cash Cow' the video came about because a guy sent us a video, and it sat in a pile for like, a year, and I finally saw what he was doing, and I thought, "Wow this is good." I called him up and said, "Send me the next thing you do." The next thing he did was even better, and so I said, "I finished this album. What do you think about doing a video?" And he said he was into it, so the 'Cash Cow' was totally his dreaming it up.

PTC: If you ever need a fan club newsletter editor, just keep me in mind.

ST: I gotta get goin' on that. I've got a huge pile of mail that I haven't even opened, but I've been wanting to start up again. I just don't have the time.

PTC: Okay.

[multiple thanks all around]

PTC: It was a good concert, yeah. See you at Greenbelt.

ST: You're gonna be at Greenbelt?

PTC: Yeah.

ST: You know, Midnight Oil's on the same night we're on.

PTC: Really?

ST: Yeah, we're on right before Midnight Oil. I mean, it's gonna be cool, cuz they're one of my favorite bands.

TE: Like I say, come back and do a real concert!

ST: Yeah, I know. Hopefully, we'll be back.

PTC: See ya.

TE: Thanks.

© 1994-2001 Peter T. Chattaway
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