Chris in Paris, Spring 1992
He called me from Paris yesterday and said he was coming home because he'd gotten very ill. Three weeks in an American hospital with some awful sickness that begins with a "g," like goiter, or gehring's, or something. Actually, it was something more like "garria." I was told people usually contract this when drinking from feces-contaminated streams.
You get awful diarrhea for a long time, which comes out many strange colors. It's also known as the "rainbow shits."
Pedigo said he'd had an IV hooked up to his jugular and lost a total of fifteen kilos. Since he only weighed 125 lbs to begin with, it didn't sound fun.
Also tonight, Knucklehead Clint Curtis is playing to a potentially packed house at the Cat's Cradle in what's being billed as Dada Veda's very last ever show. Apparently Clint's guitarist Scott is leaving the band, and drummer John Bell is embarking on another project working with a disco cover band. I kid you not. Clint isn't particularly upset, though...I still see him kind of frequently these days, since he's paying us $25/month to park in our driveway.
Five times over the last few months, Clint has personally invited me to his shows, even putting me on the guest list. Every time, I've had to dis. I feel really bad...so I can't let him down tonight. I'm going to drive Pedigo back to Chapel Hill with me and take him to see the show, then drive him home to Winston Salem tomorrow.
...
By the way, Caroline Philson is now going out with David Biggs. Remember him? He lives in a prototypical slacker apartment with roommates Paul Giragos and Pete Corson.
Speaking of slackers, it's now Friday, the 20th of November, and your letter isn't done yet. Everything went basically as planned on Tuesday. When I got to Greensboro to pick up Pedigo, I found him sitting feebly in a wheelchair. He looked terrible. After finding out that he wasn't about to die right then, I convinced him to come back to Chapel Hill for the night. I was planning to wheel him around the Cradle in his wheelchair.
The Dada Veda show was very sad and poignant. They were much better technically than I remembered them being, and the individual band members were set up on stage as far away from each other as possible. This gave them each their own sphere of creativity, all bathed in eerie banks of lights. Clint was wearing a William Burroughs-type 1940's suit, an X cap, and whiteface. Left and right, he treated the audience to theatrical antics.
Designed by Clint Curtis.
And the place was packed! Not only that, it was a very intimate crowd, full of all the band's friends, every other imaginable denizen of the alternative Chapel Hill crowd, and all these really cute women! Anyway, looking at Clint up on the stage, I couldn't help thinking back to our roadtrip, and how Clint had essentially fulfilled his dream to become a bona fide Chapel Hill musical superstar. And then I realized the song they were playing at the moment was Zen Free Love Lunacy, and it all fit together.
Oh, and one bizarre footnote. Do you know that Fox TV show called "Parker Lewis Can't Lose"...? Well, one of the main actors is this huge dumb white guy who they call "Meat". And guess what happens. I'm talking with Josh Bradt, and all of a sudden, N'Gai comes up to me and says "Hey, hey, guess who's here. Yeah, it's that guy from Parker Lewis, right over there." So we go to check him out, real clandestinely, and there really is a dude who looks just like him. But then...he turns out to actually be THE GUY! His name was Abe. We talk with him and he tells us that he's appearing in a movie that's being filmed at Duke, and while over there he had heard that Dada Veda were a really cool band, so he came to see them! Mindblower.
- Letter to Dana, 11/20/92
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