8/24/95 ...And so we left on our Cyberboogie tour to promote our new CD called "SHEM". Unfortunately the CD's weren't back yet and we had to make a bunch of cassettes at the last minute. We also had $600 worth of T-shirts, computer disks, and mail order forms too, so we were all set with merchandise.

It was a 24 hour drive to LaCrosse Wisconsin, and for me it was the first time in two months that I could actually relax! No one believed that we would fit the equipment and ourselves in the little Dodge Van that I bought for $1000, and that we wouldn't die of heat exhaustion. At the last minute we picked up one of those plastic MacDonnalds hamburger-lookin' containers for the top of the van for our luggage, and our equipment just barely fit in the back leaving the bench seat and the two front seats for five people. Rob, Dan, Erin, Jimmy (our sound man and taxi driver) and me. I also had one of those exhaust vents installed in the roof since none of the back windows open and the air-conditioning doesn't work. So, the ride to Wisconsin was actually fairly comfortable. There was a cool breeze, and for the first time in a long time I didn't have to do anything for an entire day! I couldn't stand it so I started cutting up the cassette covers and sticking on the tape labels. Everyone joined in. Eventually I started sticking the mailing labels on our mailing (that should have already gone out at this point). Well, relaxing was a nice thought...

At 4pm we arrived at the Warehouse club and experienced our first and only vehicle problem. While Dan was parallel parking, we noticed steering fluid squirting out about two feet onto the sidewalk every time he would turn the wheel. I thought there was some buggar down there with a squirt gun or something. Well, guess what...We fixed it with duct tape!

We were kicking off what was going to be three days of industrial bands at the Warehouse playing for an all ages crowd. It was called the Armageddon '95 festival. We played with Zero Dark: 30 who live in Wisconsin and booked much of this tour with us. They will become our companions for most of this tour. There was much hospitality on the club's part. They fed us cookies and vegetables and veggie dip. Maybe they were trying to kill us. It was a dry bar, but without wasting any time, Rob figured out that he could use an apple juice container to smuggle beer out of the dressing room. It was a great show. We sold $100 worth of tapes and it was just good vibes all around. We got paid our guarantee, and we even got to sleep on Zero Dark's living room floor that night. Their two cats look exactly like Rob's two cats!!

8/25 We drove to Chicago to play a big fancy triple decker club called the Dome Room. There's a huge HUGE mural of what I think is supposed to be God with large evil red eyes in the gargantuan dome ceiling. It seemed like there were only about 10 people there watching us play, but maybe there were more. It's hard to tell in huge places like that. Jim Marcus (of DieWarzau) was there and we met our e-mail buddy for the first time when we got off stage. We took off and checked out his massive pad while some metal band played. He's got about five futon beds and had plenty of room for us to stay over during our three days off. Wow, one of his cats looks exactly like my cat Balogne!! Weird...

We were going to change out of our sweaty clothes and go back to the Dome Room because Bon from Nitzer Eb just got married today and is having his wedding party at ...guess...the Dome Room!! I was pissed off because I left my suitcase at the club and I wanted to wear my long silver dress. It turned out to be a blessing though because Bon's bride just happened to be wearing the exact same long silver dress!!! I actually caught Bon on tape dancing around in his silver suit. I can't find the damn tape now though.

8/26 We slept in pure comfort...in fact the futon was so soft my back hurt in the morning. We went to Chinatown and ate what ended up being lunch and we were totally late leaving town. On the way there, Jim Marcus knocked on Martin Atkins' (Pigface) door to see if he wanted to come along but he wasn't there. DOH!! Anyway, we didn't get to the club until 30 minutes before our set time. We loaded the equipment in record time and set up in total darkness and it was so hot we were drenched when we got on stage. In fact I was still wearing the same clothes because I didn't find my suitcase until we loaded out of the club after lunch yesterday, and we were already five hours late leaving.

It was a great show. A nice big industrial/goth crowd. They loved us! We sold lots of merchandise and hung out 'til all hours talking with the management. Again it was a dry club and Rob was disgruntled when the manager told him he had a full keg of beer in the back the whole time. So, Rob starts drinking and talking...and drinking and talking... In the meantime Dan and Erin had been accosted by Vegans outside.

8/27 Around 11am we made it back to Jim Marcus' house in Chicago. Three days off. On normal tours you don't get days off, but we wanted to see our lawyer in Chicago whom we've never met, and see Jim who is, by the way, one of the busiest people on Earth! He is the most fantastic computer artist, and showed us an array of rusty machinery Geiger-esque art that he's doing for an on-line radio station. Very cool.

While Jim is glued to his computer and has a massive deadline, we all take a rather long walk to loosen our stiff bodies and get some pizza. Genuine Chicago deep dish pizza I might add. That night Rob and I went with Jim to see Warzone Studios, and it kind of made us sad. We almost signed a record deal with Neurodisc Records a while back that included flying to Chicago to do the mixing at Warzone with Die Warzau. Unfortunately, it didn't work out.

8/28 Jim has left Die Warzau and is now writing what sounds suspiciously like porn music. Well, it's better than your average porn music though. It's really funky with horns and hand drums and stuff. We went to the studio that Jim's recording at now and after he laid down some sick scratch vocals (sick in a good sense), I did some backing disco vocals for one song, and William Tucker from Ministry wandered in and did some guitar tracks for the same song. Cool. We chatted with William and it turns out we know a lot of the same people...it's an incestuous scene!

8/29 We all had a meeting with our lawyer today, and talked about ASCAP and whatnot. After that we met up with Virus 23 and Gromit who are touring together and playing with us in Albany, NY. Leo, Chris Kelly, Rob and I went with Jim Marcus back to the studio. We all did some handclap tracks for Jim. It was pretty hilarious.

8/30 We drove to Pittsburgh for our next show and met up with Zero Dark: 30 again. In fact, as we were driving aimlessly downtown, we RANDOMLY met up with them. It was a total coincidence since we were no where near the club. The ride was so hot (so much for the cool breeze) that Jimmy had to jump out of the van as soon as we were going slow enough 'cause he was about to pass out.

We played at the Electric Banana club there which is like the Rat in Boston except Jim Harold is married and they're both cranky and nag at each other constantly. Mr. and Mrs. Banana. They're nice to the customers though. We played with a young hardcore band, and another horrifying goth/industrial band. The singer thought he was Trent and the keyboard player played with a white sheet over himself like a ghost!! No one knew if he was serious. His keyboard wouldn't work and I kept handing him new cables. Oh my.

In the club directory we had it said that when bands play at the Electric Banana, they should be sensitive to the management and not expect much pay. Well, guess what...

From now on Rob is riding with Zero Dark:30 to save us space since they had a nice big loft in their van. We all went to a diner and lined up about ten tables and chowed down our total earnings for the night. Then we drove to a rest stop to sleep.

8/31 Our next gig was in Detroit at a club called the Impound, and El Dopa from Boston just happened to book a gig there on the same night! Basically, the Fraternity/Sorority crowd loved El Dopa and hated Zia and Zero Dark:30. Actually, they might have liked Zero Dark:30, but we chased out the crowd before they went on anyway. The club was convinced that I bashed up the microphone, so they deducted money out of the door for that and it left us with very little. Needless to say, we're running a little dry by now. We slept at another rest stop tonight with Zero Dark: 30. The rest stops all look exactly alike. It's scary.

9/1 We woke up all ragged the next morning and drove to Syracuse. Zero Dark: 30 (with Rob) got lost in the middle of nowhere in an Omish community. Some Omish men were waving their fists at them in an angry manner. Then their van caught on fire and they started unloading equipment in a hurry. Some Omish man with a chainsaw chopping wood said, "Gee, you young men are in a predicament." Their van miraculously started up again and they made their way to Syracuse. Strange...

We all met at the Lost Horizon club in Syracuse, NY, and had a nice leisurely sound check. Some band dressed up like vampires was laughing at us. I'm not really sure why. I think they were laughing at our instruments. The 30 or so people that were there seemed to really dig our show and gathered around the stage and some were dancing. A welcome change from Detroit. We gained some more death metal fans. For some reason death metal dudes always like Zia.

The vampire band was really silly. The singer came out and started reading from the bible at a podium. His band came out slowly like zombies and then attacked him and bit his neck. They had samples of creaking doors, werewolves, etc. They dragged the singer off the stage and then there was a dead silence while they loaded something on their computer. Then they suddenly broke into this heavy metal Halloween music. All I could think of was that they were the vampire version of Spinal Tap.

We were told to collect our money in the morning, and we figured that meant we weren't getting paid. Zero Dark:30 rented a nice hotel room that night and Rob, Jimmy and I slept on their floor. 8 people (everyone except me) were smoking at the same time, so I woke up ill. Erin got sick from sleeping in the freezing van.

9/2 In the morning we went back to the club to get paid, and kinda got the run-around. Apparently the man paying us wasn't going to be in until the evening. We had some clues as to what his home address was, so we drove around looking for it, but gave up when we realized we were already going to be late for our next show.

Our next show was supposed to be at the Bat Cave in NYC, but that show got canceled, so we got a show at the Knitting Factory at the very last minute. In case you don't know already, the Knitting Factory is primarily a jazz club. They have lots of poetry readings there too. The room we played in was small, and they had taken out all the seats. The problem is that right outside the soundproof band room is a cool jazz bar with nice cozy couches and tables. So, why would these jazz people want to go into a little room with no seats and blast their brains out? Beats me.

There was a conservative looking foreign man there with a couple of other people and I told him he should stay to see our band. He said, "OH, I'm a BIG fan of Zia!! I saw you at club Babyhead in Rhode Island!! I would like you to come play with your band tomorrow on our roof, 35 stories high in NYC at our party!! Good exposure!!". Boy, we would have but we figured tomorrow night may be one of the only really good gigs on the tour.

Anyway, I was feeling ill and had a cough. We had no monitors and suddenly two triggers decided not to work properly. I ended up singing in the audience (lack of audience) so I could hear myself. We were trying to impress Jared and Dillan from Chem Lab who were there, but it was like our worst show of the tour.

We went with Jared and Dillan to go eat, and Jimmy was nice enough to stay and guard the van. Someone from Zero Dark: 30 gave him a crow bar in case something happened, and we went out and fed him some of our appetizers. We couldn't afford to eat the real food.

9/3 We drove to a rest area and crashed around five AM. It seems like we were at that rest area for a really long time. We finally made it to Albany to play QE2 with Virus 23, Veritios Boy, and Zero Dark:30. Some homeless freaky man drew the word ZIA on a Frisbee and on his forehead. He was very hyper and was bouncing up and down the sidewalk. He dragged a really gross couch all the way down the sidewalk for us to sit on.

I was really ill at this point and finally took some of Dan's cold medicine. I felt completely plastered when we went on stage and I could tell I was stumbling. I almost knocked over Rob's kick drum. That stuff really hit me. Afterwards I had some beer and it made me feel almost back to normal! Weird...

Rob was so hot during the show that he took off his pants. I threw them and they landed on some guy's head. We were making sick jokes about how long he had been wearing those pants on tour. That guy and I have exchanged some e-mail since then and he's now known and "the guy that Rob's pants landed on".

Some vegetarians approached Dan after the show and asked about our song "Agribusiness" and bought two tapes each. QE2 was a great show and there was a nice big crowd. Sold lots of stuff. We should have played there years ago! We're going to go there every month from now on if we can. It was a nice way to end the tour.

After we loaded out we bartered some pizza at "Zia's Pizza" across the street. We gave them tapes and t-shirts and they gave us pizza. We took pictures with them and promised to send some to them. The crazy homeless Zia guy joined in too.

-Elaine Walker, 1995