Barronology

On a C-130: Mission accomplished. Back to Kuwait.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:59:08 -0400

On a C-130: Mission accomplished. Back to Kuwait.

Baghdad from a Blackhawk helicopter. No door. That’s my...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:58:09 -0400

Baghdad from a Blackhawk helicopter. No door. That’s my knee.

Blackhawk and Crew

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:55:37 -0400

Blackhawk and Crew

Diet Coke in Iraq. Note the ring tab.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:46:12 -0400

Diet Coke in Iraq. Note the ring tab.

Chris and the Time Bandits in a Blackhawk!

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:44:21 -0400

Chris and the Time Bandits in a Blackhawk!

Blackhawk Up

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:37:00 -0400

June 25, 2010

From my Blackberry

Blackhawk Up

I’m sitting in a Blackhawk helicopter with the Time Bandits in Baghdad. The flash of the rotor as it slashes the dusty sheet of sunlight that is the entire sky makes everything herky jerky like a home movie. I tug on the tabs of my shoulder straps as I realize the wide open door isn’t a door at all. There is no door. The whole side is open. The wind from the propeller is trying to rip the sleeve off my shirt. My toes curl, trying to grip, my stomach leaps and we’re lifting off. Our dragonfly shadow flees across the landing pad and we’re in the sky.

time bandits on a c130. iraq & roll indeed!

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:25:33 -0400

time bandits on a c130. iraq & roll indeed!

Under the Cammo Netting, Somewhere in Kuwait

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:38:04 -0400

From My Blackberry

Under the Cammo Netting, Somewhere in Kuwait

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 1:17am

Woke up 04:00 hours. (4am, my civilian friends) jet lagged and unable to get back to sleep. Around 6:45 Ben “Stretch” Burger knocked on my door and we braved the already high 90’s hot breeze and daylight bright like lightning that forgot to end and went to breakfast. I ate two omelets. I went back to my room and did some sun salutations and push ups and stuff till I broke a sweat and then took a shower in the male latrine, the tiny, circus tent blue and yellow beach towel I bought at old navy last minute because I forgot to pack one turning out to be ridiculously small and well, ridiculous.

At nine-thirty we drove to command headquarters and had a briefing with Lieutenant Colonel Mark Crumpton. He told us some interesting stuff about how the camp is a staging area for everything and everyone coming into and going out of Iraq then he just started joking around and talking sports. We had some laughs and then he gave us all some very nice plaques and commemorative coins. Commanders in the US Armed Forces have these coins that they can just give to a soldier on the spur of the moment rather than go through the bureaucracy of giving them a medal. If you pull out a Coin in a bar and another soldier doesn’t have one they have to buy a round. I have mine in my pocket right now.

We stopped by the PX (camp store) and picked up some batteries and I got a real towel.

About 13:00 we drove up the highway to camp Virginia where mostly soldiers on there way home stay and get used to not having a rifle and stuff. (harder than you’d think after being attached to one for a year or more)

We were greeted by Sergeant 1st Class Moreno who gave us cammo hats with the camp name and our names embroidered on them.

I went to an embroidery shop and had some patches made up that said “Morale Bandits” so that I’d have something to give the soldiers that help us out.

We sound checked in the heat and it sounded kind of weird because we don’t have amps and instead of hearing ourselves through speakers we have ear buds and we don’t have a bass player.

The USO threw a bbq and we all ate hot dogs and hamburgers and joked around with the troops. I was like, “What this place needs is some brown buildings” and a soldier added, “A little sand and this place would be perfect!”

After horsing around for a while I wrote a setlist and we played. It sounded even weirder during the gig but we knew it would and it’s just the first night of the tour and besides, the troops really enjoyed it.

We have a bunch of copies of our new little record, “Songs from the Summer of Sangria” over here to give out and so after the gig we signed CD’s and joked around some more. Then SFC Moreno, Captain Warner and Specialist Fortes presented us with really nice plaques and we presented them with Morale Bandit patches. (I knew they’d come in handy)

We got in the SUV’s to go back th the camp where we’re staying and you’d think our day was over, right?

We asked Brody, our driver what time we had to be ready tomorrow and he said, “one.” Sweet, right? Sleep in, blah, blah, blah.

No.

One in the morning pick up, head to the airport, palettize (put our gear on a palette) and “wheels up” at four thirty.

I went to my room and slept for an hour then came down and sat under the cammo netting and began to write this. The rest of this was written as it occurred.

Ben Burger came out to the netting and asked me how I felt and I sang:

I feel pretty
Oh, so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and bright
And I pity
Any girl that isn’t me tonight

West Side Story, don’t you know.

We drove to the airstrip and I pretty much thumbed about half of this post into my blackberry. We got there and grabbed some pop tarts and stuff in the VIP lounge. I came out to the area where the security guys were getting us all checked in for our flight on a C-130 transport plane and Brody was like “13:35.”

“What?”

“That’s when our flight is postponed until.”

“You mean tomorrow?”

“Well, technically today.”

Given the humanity staggering nature of that news I remember thinking it a little rugged of Brody to be bandying about technicalities.

I asked if we could get our rooms back at the base, Somewhere in Kuwait and there were a tense few minutes while Brody called and sure enough, in the hour or to in the middle of the night nobody had taken our rooms. So we drove through the black night, dust glaring in the glare of the lights on the highway and ghostly towns, me thumbs a’blazing and we pulled up to the barrack and I considered finishing this post on the bench under the cammo netting because that would be nice writing but it’s three thirty am now and I just got my key and flopped down on my bed.

So that’s my post. I haven’t been able to read it over and edit because it’s late and I’ve been up pretty much twenty four hours (apart from that hour nap) and it’s in my blackberry and I’ll go cross eyed so bear with me on any errors.

Over and out.

Somewhere in Kuwait

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:06:06 -0400

From my blackberry

Somewhere in Kuwait

June 22, 2010

I’m wide awake, jet lagged and it’s around 6am. Out of a robin’s egg, pale sky; through my dusty window, past the dark blue curtain, comes the tale end of the dawn’s early light and with it, faintly, bravely, the clear, staccato notes of a gallant bugle’s Reveille.

twelve minutes

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:18:01 -0400

twelve minutes june 21, 2010

it’s about twelve minutes before i have to be down in the lobby to catch the plane for amsterdam and on to kuwait.

jon and i had a great gig here in atlanta last night. 99X has a concert series and he and i had a few jack daniels and played until the people were dancing in the aisles. it felt good. we played about two hours and got a double encore. matt, from 99X mentioned that we’re leaving for iraq in his intro so after people were coming up as they were buying cd’s and wishing us luck. it was a good night.

today we went to a mall to get some nine volt batteries but i got some stuff at old navy and forgot the batteries. they cost eight dollars in the lobby of the hotel so i passed. that’s almost a dollar a volt!

well, that’s about how much i can write in twelve minutes. more soon.

a memory

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:16:07 -0400

a memory june 21, 2010 around the time that i wrote two princes, when i was nineteen and living in my home town, princeton, new jersey, i was walking home through the weird, kind of maze like parking lot off witherspoon street with a boom box quietly playing muddy waters’ chess collection. i was loping along the cinder block wall where my friend, ben lewis, had spray painted “the distu” (his band was called “the disturbed” but a cop came) when i happened to look up at the sky. the moon hung like a dog’s molar and made a great ring of light in the soft shroud of clouds that shifted over the sleeping rooftops of the quiet town. as muddy sang about things like mojo and new orleans and little walter, the harmonica player, backed him up, his harmonica moaning its way out of the fifties into the little parking lot by the cider block wall, the ring of the moon and the music met in the strange air around me and time stopped.

our new "little record," songs from the summer of sangria

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:55:00 -0400

starlog - june 16, 2010

songs from the summer of sangria: chris barron and the time bandits bring you five new songs (from the uhh.. you know, the summer of sangria). produced by the great eric ambel who also plays stunt guitar, it’s receiving raves from all kinds of people who aren’t even our moms and stuff. “songs from the summer of sangria” is available like sixty million ways now. you can download it, or buy it the old fashioned way in the form of a piece of plastic with the music right there on it. get it now or be a nerd.

somewhere in iraq - thursday, august 6, 2009

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:01:00 -0400

somewhere in iraq

thursday, august 6, 2009

i woke up to the air conditioning unit pounding cold air in a cone into the room i shared with phil “animal” cimino, drummer of my solo band the time bandits. the louvers on the air conditioner, one of those window jobs, were yellowed with a thick coating of fine, talcum powder textured dust. you could smell the dust and feel it on your teeth and tongue.=2 0not just then but pretty much all of the time. for example, travis “t-vice” sluss, our soundguy, had pulled out his passport to show to the guy on duty the night before when we had checked into freedom rest (the R and R location near baghdad where we were playing that day in our first of two gigs) and a sprinkling of dust had fallen out of it onto the reception desk. travis made the pithy observation that his passport was full of dust. to which the soldier behind the desk had replied with equal or greater pith.

“no kidding.”

now i lay on my side in my clean yet dusty sheets looking at my dusty room and ran my tongue across my dusty teeth and tried to wr ap my head around being in iraq. being pretty much unable to do that, i just got up.

we had a gig at ten a.m. that morning. phil had made the comment that the last time he’d done a concert at ten in the morning was in elementary school. i think it was the same for all of us. still, in the military, ten a.m. is like mid afternoon in other subcultures. i grabbed the television white, les paul junior that gibson guitars had lent me and headed down to the pool which is where they had the stage.

our setup was fairly minimal because, as i’ve said elsewhere, we did a lot of the setup the night before. so with very little ado we were doing our second gig of the tour, our first in iraq. (our first gig in the middle east had been at a base in kuwait)

there was irony though because two days before, freedom rest was packed with soldiers on R&R but they’d all gone and when we got there, there were few soldiers left so apart from six or seven soldiers in deck chairs and some that watched us from the pool we basically did the gig for the unit that conducted our convoy. they were essentially on duty so they all had on full combat fatigues there by this pool which had belonged, in former times to this officers club of the iraqi armed forces. between that and the time being ten in the morning, the sight was somewhat unreal.

one amusing thing occu rred during the show. between two songs, a soldier from the pool climbed to the top of a diving platform that had to be thirty feet high. from the stage, in the morning glare we could see him quite clearly. he stood a little tentatively on the edge and looked down at the cool blue water of the pool. on the mic i said, “jump!” and phil played a drum roll. the guy looked back at the stage and the band was watching him and the audience was watching him and the rest of the soldiers in the pool were watching him up on high on the platform. he hesitated for another second or two and then with an admirable economy of grace he stepped off the platform and plummeted into the pool accompanied by a cymbal crash from phil that fit nicely with the splash he made.

silly but good for a laugh.

during the show i said, as you always do when you’re doing a show and you’re on the microphone, “thanks for being here.” then i looked around, up at the sky of iraq and perhaps beyond the walls of this oasis where we found ourselves in a reprieve from the combat outside and said, “and thanks for being here.” pretty much meaning iraq. i ended up saying that every night.

then a couple things people said to me before i left, i think rhetorically, occurred to me and i said into the microphone, “oh, and my girlfriend’s step-dad, dan, says, ‘thank you’ and three ladies at newark airport from little rock, arkansas say, ‘thank you’ as well and my ten year old daughter says, ‘you’re awesome… and thank you.’”

i ended up saying that every night too.

i don’t know but it seemed like they liked that because it brought it home that individual people in the states are thinking about them and care about them. i’d thought a lot before i got to iraq about what i was going to say on he mic and i still didn’t know when i got there and started doing gigs. i’ve never done a lot of planning about what i’m going to say on the mic. i’ve always been terrible about remembering to plug albums and upcoming shows. i’ve also found that when i try to explain how i wrote songs it’s been hit or miss. it seems like when i just open my mouth and say something random, that’s what goes over the best. i joke that i don’t really think about what i say. i just say stuff and if it goes over well i say more stuff like that later. it’s mostly instinct, i guess.

people seem to like that though.

Photo

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:53:15 -0400

somewhere in iraq

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:20:00 -0400

august 5, 2009

the above is the date i’m writing about but i arrived home yesterday (august, 13, 2009) and from here on i’m writing from notes i took on the trip. it just became too difficult to try to actually write over there. as i mentioned earlier, i didn’t actually bring my computer on the trip and writing stuff down in my notebook, apart from notes, seemed futile as i would just have to type them out later. it also occurred to me that i’d be better off listing as many details as i could remember so that i could fill them out later rather that using my limited down time to write full accounts and have to leave out other stuff that i didn’t have the time to properly record.

we arrived a BIAP which stands for baghdad international airport, (which is kind of ironic because it’s a military air strip with some bunkers and very little else) on a C-130 aircraft. the “C” stands for cargo. [wikapedia says: The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft built by Lockheed. Capable of takeoffs and landings from unprepared runways, the C-130 was originally designed as a troop and cargo transport aircraft.] we exited out the back of the plane. it has a ramp that you walk down. we were waved on by air force guys in tan jump suits. we walked strait out from the back and the wind from the props blew dust around us. the early evening was gray with dust and it was hot. i could have wrung sweat out of my t-shirt. my mind was sort of stunned and even though i knew i was safe i felt exposed in the open of the airfield and lost in the screaming of the engines. i wasn’t sure if i could take my kevlar helmet and flack jacket off so i didn’t for the moment and just walked on, following the soldiers in front of me toward the concrete barriers a few hundred meters on. throughout my stay in iraq i had this image of doing something wrong and that sergeant from the movie “full metal jacket” coming out of nowhere and screaming at me. we got to the concrete, t-wall enclosure (t-wall is made up of 12 ft tall slabs of concrete that are sort of like upside down T’s. they’re everywhere in iraq as they’re used for barriers and fortifications) we were picked up by shelly and jj who would be our handlers for the next couple of days while we were in the baghdad area. shelly looked like she could be a middle school social studies teacher if she wasn’t in iraq. she was very well intentioned. she had a tendency to take even the most obviously silly and ironic statements literally which ended up being pretty amusing because one of the subplots, if you will, of the entire trip was the band coping with the strangeness of our surroundings with humor. with jj and shelly, this made for some amusing misunderstandings. well, amusing for us anyway. i’m not sure how much they ended up liking us.

shelly and jj told us that we’d be dropping our bags off at the base where we’d be based while we were in baghdad and then we’d be convoying to the place that we’d be playing the next day. well, one of the places. we would have two gigs the next day.

after some soldiers loaded our gear from the palette to a truck we drove to our quarters by the JVB (join victory something- i was told eleven times but i never managed to remember it) which is located around a huge lake that is the center of a complex of palaces that formerly were sadam husain’s. after we took our stuff to our CHU (containerized housing unit, pronounced: choo) we went looking for some food at the palace. we were told by the very kind captain on duty that the DFAC (dining facility) was closed but they had had a barbeque on the back porch and they had some steaks and=2 0some chicken and some homemade potato salad that we would be more that welcome to have.

like i said, we were in a palace but while it may have been nicer in it’s heyday, these palaces of sadam husain’s were mostly show. they’re pretty gaudy and constructed of poured concrete and rebar with veneers of marble on the inside.

we were shown out a sliding door to a huge columned patio on a lake where we passed a rack with some golf clubs and a few a few astro turf squares that constituted a mini driving range and up to some picnic tables with some food set out in those tin foil containers with sterno candles underneath and voila, steaks and homemade potato salad. the st eaks were rib eyes and pretty good. mine was even pretty rare. we sat there chewing, sipping our first near beers of our lives and cracking jokes and marveling that we were eating steaks with soldiers all around at the palace of a toppled despot. the lake, made from the tap water of baghdad (while baghdad’s people died of thirst) was streaked with the light of other palaces across and the moon made a silver target in the dust sifted night and the captain came over and told us that if there was anything we needed to just let him know and that they appreciated us coming all this way to entertain the troops and we said thanks, if it wouldn’t be asking to much, could we please have some golf balls to drive into the lake?

we finished up our steaks and there in the ruins of baghdad, on the shores of a mad tyrants lake of stolen water, i took up golf.

we only had an hour or two before we had to rendezvous with our convoy. we left our personal luggage in our CHU (and though we didn’t know at the time, the bag with all of our power cords) and with back packs packed for overnight, got in the van and went through the t-wall and barbed wired dark to the meeting point.

when we got there, the convoy was waiting.

now, i’m not supposed to write about how the convoy worked because bad guys could read this and figure out ways to be bad. so if some parts of this description seem kind of vague, that’s intentional.

we paused in the van and shelly and jj kind of gave us a short brief. basically, they told us that any instructions from the soldiers who were going to be convoying us were to be obeyed explicitly and that they were going to give us a briefing and that they were going to give us the worst possible scenario and not to be freaked out.

ok…

we got out of the van into the darkness. i can’t stress enough the unrealness of the surroundings. there’s no street lights. the roads are blasted and not fully paved. there’s an almost constant haze of dust in the sky that glows from underneath with the strange and distant lights of one base or another. there’s a lonely, alien quality to the night that’s not so much reprieved by the daylight as shown all the more in stark relief. we were in a sort of concrete corral where there were parked a number of vehicles some of which were MRAP’s. [wikapedia defines the MRAP: Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles are a family of armored fighting vehicles designed to survive IED attacks and ambushes] MRAP’s are pretty badass but even more badass were the soldiers who were in charge of the convoy. armed and armored with M-4 carbines, bullet proof vests and kevlar helmets; they exuded confidence and capability. they rounded us up for our briefing, fanned out around a sergeant who looked like an x-man with us up front and he told us what vehicles we’d be driving in and we should fasten our seatbelts because they’d hold us in place if we were bumping around or if we flipped (!) oh, and did we know first aid? no? well, if someone gets wounded and they’re bleeding severely take some bandages or your shirt or something and hold it against the wound (!!) and if we take a hit (!!!), don’t get out of the vehicle unless it’s on fire (!!!!) and then go where the soldiers in your vehicle tell you. we were going to take a slightly longer route than normal because there was some intelligence that suggested that there was some nonsense on the normal route. we must have looked kind of nervous because he told us no t to worry, they didn’t expect any trouble but they had to tell us that stuff just in case. so we put on our bullet proof vests and helmets and get into this ridiculously cool vehicle.

it’s a funny thing how some of the coolest things that ever happen to you are the hardest to describe. getting socked in the mouth, throwing up all over yourself or even stubbing your toe on a chair leg first thing in the morning; these things are easier to impart than sitting backwards in a multi-million dollar, bullet proof vehicle surrounded by futuristic warriors in fatigues and body armor, kevlar and headphones, grinning and telling you how to tuck your head into your chest and hold on to your shoulder straps if the MRAP flips and hey, if we do flip, you know, if you think of it, reach over and grab a handful of the material on the gunner’s pants leg like this and try to pull him in and aren’t you the guy who sang that “two princes” song? i thought so yeah, this is a lot cooler than transporting some bigwig where you can’t talk to them or anythi ng et cetera, et cetera talking like it’s no big thing that you’re in a multi-million dollar vehicle armed to the teeth and ready for anything…

the soldier sitting next to me holds the rank of specialist which is the highest grade of private. i remember his name but i don’t want to include it because even though i can’t think of why that information could be used by bad guys i wouldn’t want to give out some kind of detail that would jeopardize anybody. he had to be about 22 years old and he looked like he should be in college somewhere standing around a keg worrying about doing an all nighter to cram for a history final (except that he was super nonchalant about toting an assault rifle around). all the soldiers in the convoy were in their early 20’s i’d say. he told me that he was the unit’s medic and that if anything happened, he’d be attending to any wounds that anybody sustained. he was a sort of mild mannered guy and he seemed a little embarrassed by our open admiration. he kept calling me sir. i was like, hey, you c an call me chris, but he kept calling me sir.

and so we convoyed through the darkness to freedom rest.

freedom rest is an old iraqi officer’s club that’s now being used for R and R. (rest and relaxation) we got there and they briefed us, gave us our keys, told us that the DFAC (dining facility, remember?) was closed (what’s new?) but we could get some wings and pizza and stuff at a little lounge next to the DFAC. we were pretty tired at this point but we were filthy and hungry too. we went to our rooms, showered and headed out to the lounge for some food. the pizza and wings were frozen. the wings were ok but the pizza, coming from new york city, home of th e best pizza on god’s green earth, was pretty bad and i opted for some cocoa puffs from a big display of breakfast cereal as three or four soldiers from our convoy came in and sat down. one of them, a woman, noticed the cocoa puffs in my hand and said something along the lines that cocoa puffs rule, to which i agreed heartily (but upon further soul searching i, in point of fact, find that i enjoy cocoa krispies a little more but i didn’t think of it at the time) and she said that cocoa puffs were her two-in-the-morning snack and i said, well, i’d better make sure i didn’t take the last one and sure enough i had so i came back in and put the little tub in front of here and said, there you go, cocoa puffs. (instant nickname: i wonder if it stuck. over the next day it would be shortened to cocoa “p” and then just c.p.) she said i didn’t have to give her the cocoa puffs but i was like, hey, you all just defended our lives and stuff, the least i can do is give up the cocoa puffs.

it turns out, the soldiers in the convoy loaded our stuff onto the stage right then rather than get up in the morning and do it so we, or rather our crew, ben “stretch” berger and travis “shabu” sluss, decided to go set up right then, rather than get up early and do it. that’s when we discovered that we’d left the bag with our power chords in the CHU (container housing unit, remember?) back at the JVB (joint victory something or other). as we discussed whether this was an insurmountable problem ben mentioned that it’s no every day that you could do a gig where someone could risk their lives going for something you’d forgotten. it didn’t turn out to be a problem as the cords were just regular cords that they had there.

ben and travis finished setting up and we all hung out with them at the stage even though it was super hot. the moon swung through her stations behind a silver veil in the eastern night and we talked and tried to get tired. my mind was reeling with new information and though we’d been on the move since early that morning it was had to come down. finally, i took my little box of milk and my little tub of cocoa puffs and went to bed.

saturday, august 6th, 2009, 21:53this is a journal entry but since i have to ration my time on the...

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:11:31 -0400

saturday, august 6th, 2009, 21:53

this is a journal entry but since i have to ration my time on the computer, i thought i’d let it double as an update to my loved ones. being over here, it really hits home how lucky we are to have love, plenty to eat and air conditioning.

i’m at another base. this time were with the air force. i’m totally safe and sound and all’s well. no gig tonight. we ate a long dinner at the DFAC. (dining facility) and went to the PX which is a general store of sorts. i bought samantha a real army back pack for middle school next year. (it’s a little boyish but if she doesn’t want it, i’ll take it because it’s super cool) i have a helmet and bullet proof vest (not because people are going to shoot at us but because there are regulations that say you have to have one to go on aircraft and other vehicles whether you need one or not) and i’m kind of obsessed with customizing mine. they have these nylon strips all over them that you can use to attach stuff. i bought a camo, nylon magazine holder (magazine that holds bullets not fashion tips or pictures of celebs at starbucks) and took it to a sewing shop (there are lots here) and had some velcro sewn on. all the emblems in the army are velcro and i’ve been given a 1st cavelry patch and a double “d” for dixie division, plus an airborne pin, some sergeant stripes and one that says, u.s. army. tonight i bought another pouch, pocket kind of thing that has velcro all over it. they both have these nylon straps that attach to the flack jacket. (bullet proof vest) i can put these patches on these pocket things and keep my passport, orders (that’s the paper i need to get into secure places, my shades (impossible to be outside in daylight with out shades. i groggily walked outdoors without them this morning to use the latrine and the light hit my eyes like a blunt and shining bat.) i’m going to have to give the vest back in four days but i’m obsessed with customizing it.

time’s up.

a couple of entries that were in my notebook...

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:48:46 -0400

sunday august 3, 2009

minneapolis to amsterdam to kuwait

the chip of a moon is hanging between the rusty bed of clouds and the big blue of the sky out of the window of the plane that’s taking us to iraq via amsterdam and kuwait. i have a piece of paper folded, and jammed in to the crack above my tv because it won’t turn off and that always annoys me if i don’t feel like watching. i prefer my paperback edition of eric clapton’s biography and the view out the window of my clouds, moon and sky. i’m writing in a notebook which i haven’t done in a couple of years because at some point i started using a computer. my handwriting is horrendous and it’s compounded by my utter inability to spell. i can’t spell to save my life. never could. i can write but i can’t spell.

before we took off tonight i spoke to a lot of people who wanted to talk to me before we left for iraq. we’re not supposed to be in any danger when we’re there but when you go to a war zone people want to be sure they get to wish you well. it’s nice.

the setting sun lays a blanket of fire across the world below and i crack my paperback again and sip some diet coke.

later:

it’s nighttime as we land in kuwait and it’s 104F. 40C. this is going to be hot. ooops. because were descending the temperature keeps going up so now that we’re on the ground it’s actually 105F. i think the heat on this trip is going to test my descriptive powers. (feel free to insert the word “considerable” before the word “descriptive” in the previous sentence) time to get off the plane.

august 4, 2009, 09:30

i was sitting in my room, a bit groggy from tylenol p.m. when ben “stretch” berger, our tour manager, knocked on my door. i’d been awake a few minutes playing the television white, les paul junior that gibson guitars was nice enough to lend me for the iraq ‘n’ roll tour. (“television white” is a color. it’s called television white because full on white things look weird on tv so it’s a sort of light beige.) breakfast is over but ben was kind enough to bring me a styrofoam to-go container of with a couple of freezing cold bananas and a bagel of sorts with a little round container of philadelphia strawberry cream cheese.

last night we arrived in kuwait. as we got off the plane and entered the terminal there was a white sign with blue writing that said, in arabic and english, “welcome to kuwait. have a safe trip.” we passed some guards dressed in tan fatigues and we saw right before us a .

it was packed too.

the terminal was pretty crowded. men in long white robes with those flowing things on their heads. (i must find out what those are called) and women mostly with their heads covered but many with veils that only showed their eyes. ben told us that if we took pictures of a woman, their husband could legally take your camera. the logic being that his wife’s soul was now in the camera in question. quite sensible, really. i left my camera in the case.

when we got outside, the temperature was 104F and that was about 9pm. it was sort of funny how hot it was. john , (johnny p from up uh-b) who’s playing bass on the iraq ‘n’ roll tour later said that under normal circumstances if you felt a blast of heat like that you would move away because it would mean you were near something dangerous like a car fire or a furnace but the heat was all around you. there’s nowhere to go except back into some air conditioning. the heat is an aggressive force that seems to have a will. it’s on the offensive. it’s supposed to be 113F today.

better drink water, huh?

august 5, 2009, 16:55

my first sight of iraq is out the back hatch of a C-130 aircraft at an airstrip in basra as we let a unit of soldiers off. i can’t tell if it’s cloudy or dusty. the tan earth melts into the ivory sky with out a horizon and in the mid ground are the dark and menacing forms of two blackhawk helicopters.

new word: palletizing: to get your stuff onto a pallet so that it can be loaded onto an aircraft.

last night we could only give out a certain amount of cd’s so some people didn’t get one. today as we waited in a holding area waiting for our flight to bagdad a guy from camp beuhering, where we played last night who didn’t get a cd was there. we dug out a cd and signed it for him and took a picture. we talked and he gave me some chewing gum for the flight because he said, they ascend and descend really quickly and it’s good for your ears to be chewing some gum. (i’m still chewing it and it’s pretty disgusting because it has half of the dessert in it now.) (so do my eyes, nose and throat) like i said, we talked and he asked me maybe if we played in bagdad (i’m not even sure if we’re playing bagdad) if we could ask if there’s anyone from the 472nd and if there was could i tell them that specialist lochrie said hi.

later:

the c_130 pounds along and everybody is pretty much asleep. we all have bullet proof vests and kevlar helmets on. underneath all that my t-shirt is soaked with sweat. i could wring sweat out of it. although, it’s not a hot as the first leg. on the first leg the plane was full and we were all pretty cramped. i curled my fingers around the top of my flack vest, set my chin on my knuckles and actually fell asleep like that not for very long though but, hey. unusual sleeping position.
it’s pretty cool seeing these guys i know, the guys in my band, all in flack jackets and helmets.

Photo

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:14:56 -0400

quick installment of "somewhere in iraq"

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:14:44 -0400

august 7th, 2009, 1:40am

i’m exhausted but kind of too tired to feel it and surrounded by too many super bad-assed people who are working way harder than me to admit it or god forbid, whine about it. i’m covered in dust and old sunblock, my pants are destroyed as is the white cotton, v-neck t-shirt i took out of the package this morning.

we were taken by convoy to a rest an recreation center yesterday/a thousand years ago. ironically, the day before yesterday there were a lot of people there but they all left so when we did our gig at ten a.m. this morning we essentially played for the soldiers who brought us there which was cool because they are amazing. then we went to another base and did another gig.

i have to get to sleep because i have a meet and greet with a general tomorrow morning and i still have to take a shower but briefly: you never saw so many incredibly competent people in your life. they are all highly trained, super efficient, and walking around with weapons. at the same time they’re so friendly and glad that you’re here.

i can’t really write anymore. not well, at least so i’ll try to write some more when i can get to a computer. i’m writing stuff in notebooks that i’ll transcribe when i can.

over and out from somewhere in iraq.

iraq n roll

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:30:52 -0400

tuesday, august 4, 2009, 10:24pm

i’m in a gmc yukon under a full moon in the desert somewhere in kuwait with don the driver, who’s computer i’m using, phil “animal” cimino, and jon “gentleman” loyd. it’s a little hard to type as we cross through a kuwaiti check point, kuwaiti army guys drink tea on a berm (pile of dirt), we go over a speed bump, merge onto highway 80 and we’re on our way. the line of streetlights over the road snake off into the semi-darkness and mingle their pale yellow with the silver of the moon and the haze of the windblown dust and out of the horizon comes fuel truck after fuel truck in a convoy of ghostly tractor trailers.

we played base a here in kuwait tonight. i’m not sure if i’m supposed to tell the name of it because we were told not to blog where we’ve been for a few days after so let’s call it camp “somewhere in kuwait”

it’s kind of funny. we got to camp “somewhere in kuwait” and they took us into a conference room and showed us a video about the camp. it started out with a bunch of footage of tanks and guns and stuff being fired with a bunch of very patriotic voice over by former president george w. bush. when that ended, we were shown some slides of facts about the camp (they have training in every weapon from a side arm to a 500 pound bomb) and about kuwait. (they got their independence in 1961) and then they showed us a map that explained where the stage was and where the DFAC’s (mess halls) were and there was some thing called MWR is. when the presentation was over they asked if we had any questions. i asked, “what’s MWR?”

the officer said, ” morale, welfare and recreation.”

i said, “oh. you mean us.”

duh.

then they presented us with these certifecates of excelence and thanked us profusely for coming and it was all very ernest and i said that we owed them far more that they owed us and that we were truly and deeply honored and that maybe they shouldn’t give us the certificates till after we played because hey, you never know, we might stink. we all had a laugh and sgt. price took us to the stage where we set up and sound checked in the raging heat. see, the deal is that the u.s.o. and armed forces entertainment were bringing bands over and the army’d have to rent a sound system from these companies in kuwait that were expencive and not that good and big so they could only play at the big bases where they get entertainment anyway. this band, catchpenny, was over here and figured out a way to use a minimal system that could fit in a helicppter and get these bands out to the more remote bases where they really need some MWR.

well, after we sound checked we went over to the DEFAC and had some chow. i sat with sgt. price who’s from tuskaloosa, alabama and he told me all about the army. in an awesome drawl he explained all the ranks and that a team is inside a squad and a squad is in a unit and a unit is in a company and a company is in a batallion and a batallion is in a corps or a theatre. (i’m leaving something out. sorry sgt price)

before we went on a colonel came in and gave me a metal triangle insignia. these are these small awards they make up. i was pretty knocked out. they really pull out all the stops to let you know they appreciate that you coming over.

well, we’re entering the check points to go back to the camp we’re staying at tonight. soon i’ll have to give driver don his computer back. the speed bumps are making it hard to type and to avoid throwing up. sorry if there are errors and stuff in this entry. it’s a little rugged here and i’ve been fighting speed bumps and car sickness the whole way. there’s dust in my mouth and nose and my neck is all gritty. i’m glad i’m here. i’ll write again when i can.

cb.