In this post-ironic age, is the rock-and-roll dream still alive? Do traveling bands still raise hell in the traditional over-the-top fashion? Does anybody here remember laughter? Nerve’s new Tour Diaries aim to answer those questions by following these modern-day nomads on their debauched adventures. Bands interested in participating should contact tourdiaries@nerve.com.

THE BAND: Former Ghosts is Freddy Ruppert, Jamie Stewart (our diarist), and Nika Roza (not on tour cause she’s still in college). Their debut album, Fleurs, comes out October 20th. Hear more at myspace.com/formerghostssleep.

10/1/09 • SAN DIEGO, CA

Two recent and totally unrelated events have radically fused. 1) Freddy is newly single and heartbroken and on tour and wants to fuck. 2) I got a tiny, cheap video camera.

Last night we played an unannounced show in San Diego. However, we arrived early at the venue and no one there knew anything about it. So Freddy began to drink and I began to watch. Aside from an ancient drunk, we were the only people there until much later that night. Therefore the bartender and Freddy were instantly bound. She gave him free drinks to show that she liked him. Everyone on earth has been begging young Fred to one-night-stand his way out of heartache, and to my stunned amazement he seemed to be trying to make it happen. From about ten feet away I heard him stage whisper, “No one has come in for the past forty-five minutes.” The bartender looked up at me and I reflexively nodded. She jumped over the bar and pulled Freddy by the collar behind a rotten door in the back of the room.

I wondered if she nodded at me to watch the bar or to come along. I decided, video mini in hand, to crack open the door. The viewfinder revealed, framed by the door, one pair of capris on the floor, one giant plastic bottle of tequila being poured down the stomach onto the white panties of the bartender, and one Freddy, eyes closed, kneeling and pressing his cheek, cuddling almost like a kitten in love, onto the alcohol-burning puss puss of his new madame. I looked back to the front door to see if anyone was coming in. No, they were not. When the bottle was empty, she pulled his ear, kissed his forehead, and began to dress. I ran back to my seat, they both came back wet and reeking of poison. But the bar reeked of poison so it was like nothing happened.

Later that night, during the last song, a man with a knife slash splitting his face in half ran into the bar screaming, “Someone is trying to kill me, someone’s going to shoot me!” We were playing too loud to notice. When the show was over we loaded out with our little van boxed in by two police cars and an ambulance.

10/2/09 • PHOENIX, AZ

Freddy is broke. He had $24 in the bank the day before we left on this tour. He had also immediately become addicted to not being at his office job. He mentioned that he wanted to start doing internet porn to avoid going back to work. He has a really, really nice body and classic sweetie-boy face. He is also twenty-six, so the time is now. Have you ever heard of the porn series “Broke Straight Boys”? Well, there you have it.

However, he doesn’t know how to start, so last night we looked up several adult listings on Craigslist and several webcam sites to see what people want and like. It became clear that he is hotter than 99% of the men on webcams, so that seems like a likely future. There were two Craigslist posts that seemed to make sense for him: “thin lumberjack jack off” and “armpit fetish”. He doesn’t want to actually fuck any men, just be naked or in a costume and jerk off. He thinks he can make about $200 a day. Not great, but a living if you are frugal. That’s more than I ever made as a school teacher. After the show I caught Freddy looking in the mirror with his shirt off to assure himself that he could do it. He can do it. He was talking to himself in the mirror, I think practicing come-on lines to a pretend web cam. I keep wondering what he thinks men want to hear.

We played at a good place called Trunk Space. It was next to a bar called Bikini Lounge that sold pitchers of beer for $3. Next to that is a place called Kooky Krafts where they sell anything made out of every color of pipe cleaner you could think of and Day of the Dead skulls made of sugar. This is a good block.

10/4/09 • TUCSON, AZ

Heartbreak is a drrrrrrrrrrrrrr ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah G! It leads to young men drinking three shots of bourbon, six beers and smoking four hits of weed. Then it leads to them taking out a switch blade and singing Happy Birthday while flicking it in and out. Then it leads to them taking out their semi erect wing-wang and seeing if the knife or the cock is longer. In this case, impressively, wait for it… the cock was longer. Well done, cock police! This part was funny. Then it led to a not-funny part of screaming about “inverse gang rape,” the idea being that instead of a bunch of people raping one person in a room, one person rapes everyone in the room. The not-funny part is when the person screaming this has his pants off and is holding a knife.

Earlier in the night, the young man in question, our Freddy, got a surprise kiss on the lips from a very, very pretty woman at the show. However, she left before we played. No follow-up available. Bad kiss, or so good it was impossible to endure more? Then by accident Freddy saw a Facebook photo of his molten ex on a bed with her new, incredibly lame, long-haired dumb-shit childish boy toy. This led to Freddy singing his ass off at the show and then forgetting the mystery kiss but remembering that the solution to pain is drugs.

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