Viva Tour rolls into San Francisco. Just.

Viva Tour rolls into San Francisco. Just.

26 October, 2008 | 9.16PM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: audiofly

Stepping onto the Viva tour bus today in a parking lot in downtown San Francisco, felt like walking into an after after party in the last stages of a wind down.

Anthony from Audiofly was hunched over in a corner smoking; peering into the distance at an imaginary mirage, that no doubt promised some sort of nourishment.

“I need food. Where’s the food man?” he muttered.

Steve Lawler and the other Audiofly Luca wandered into the front cabin wearing neon sunglasses, their gaunt faces displaying days of cyclical excess and strain.

The circle of life for these men recently has been like a video of an explosion, that you rewind to watch over and over again.

Their tour bus may have traveled across a continent, but these DJs look like they’ve been to heaven, hell and back.

Yet despite the pain of eight gigs in 10 days, the boys are in good spirits, and rightly so.

When you’re traveling across the United States of America on a tour bus playing house and techno music every night to excited young people looking for a moment to remember, how can you fail not to be on some sort of high?

This is a once in a lifetime experience for Steve Lawler, who has DJed professionally in clubs for 17 years.

“I did a tour around America before in an RV that had beds in it, but that wasn’t really rock n roll,” he said.

For Lawler, the road has been something of a recurring theme throughout his career.

First he played under it, literally, as a 16-year-old playing illegal parties beneath the M40 freeway near Birmingham city in England.

Now the road is carrying him from club to club across America.

For Audiofly, this is their second such US bus tour in six months as they were also a part of the Get Physical Tour in April, but “unlike that tour, the bus driver Shaggy is really cool and he lets us smoke on the bus,” said Anthony.

Apart from the music, and being greeted like gods by fashionable club kids and pheromone-covered girls in every city, there’s the pure entertainment of traveling across a country that’s as diverse in environment and landscape as it is in its people and its towns.

After their gig in Chicago last Sunday, the bus headed out east towards Las Vegas, a 1750-mile hike that included a stop in a small town with a population of 8000 called Rawlins in Wyoming.

The guys walked into a store to pick up some batteries, and were enthralled to be surrounded by pump action shotguns, hand guns and walls of rifles.

“The people who ran the shop were really friendly and even gave Luca a pink rifle to play with,” said Dave the tour manager.

Brits have always found American’s nonchalant attitude to firearms amusing and scary in equal measure.

In another red neck town, they walked into a small bar to be greeted by a wall of frowning faces, trucker caps and mouths chewing tobacco.

You can imagine how a flamboyant Italian, a lanky skinny jeaned Brit, and a tattooed, yellow tshirt-wearing Brummie went down.

But being the charmers that DJs are, they managed to earn the respect of a couple of local boys who offered to take them to a strip club.

So they went to the titty bar and received more than their fair share of attention from the dancers who were attracted to the accents and out-of-town wallets.

Unfortunately for them, they also caught the eye of four drunk younguns’ playing pool in the corner who didn’t take their British debonair quite so kindly.

“Those boys over there talking shit ‘bout you,” growled an oil man in the corner.

“But don’t worry, we got yo’ backs if they make a move,” he said.

That was their cue to leave, before they got a cue in the face.

Somehow Audiofly, Steve Lawler, manager/glue-holding-it-all-together Dave and their tour bus have made it all the way to San Francisco in one piece - Lawler had to neck three Imodiums earlier to stop himself from shitting himself apart but he’s doing fine for now - and with one week still left to go there’s no light at the end of this disco tunnel yet.

Except perhaps for Anthony, who found that mirage to be a flashing 1950s-themed American diner called Mel’s Drive In. He ordered two mains.

Now Anthony is asleep in the front of the bus with just a few minutes to go before he’s due to start playing with his fly brother at this underground joint called Harlot across the street.

Welcome to the rolling trainwreck.

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