When I got home and opened my bag, a steamy cloud of bugs and dust spewed out, and I chucked most everything inside. All I could think about on the flight back to Massachusetts, as I did the post mortem for the tour, was how we could have made so many wrong moves. I felt only dejection and failure. I could imagine producing more tours, but I could not see going on the road with one again, beyond a couple of nights. Though I’d enjoyed being on the road earlier in my career, being on Tattoo the Earth had sucked. I was kicking myself for having let Booth play me and was generally pissed off at everyone.

Trying to find the right spot for the tattoo artist’s tents at each show was like NASA trying to figure out where to safely land a space probe on Mars. Ronnie and Naomi walked the venues looking for the perfect spot that would keep the artists in the shade the longest (sunset could be unbearable). Unfortunately, it was over 100 degrees at our first Texas stop at the Far West Rodeo in San Antonio, and no amount of planning could make that okay. We added additional standing air conditioners and fans to the artist tents, but it was unbearably hot with the sun beating down, and dry and dusty; the ground was so baked it had giant cracks in it.

Of all the venues on the tour, the World Golf Dome in Bridgeview took the dubious prize as the most alternative. We put a summer festival in an indoor golf driving range, and everything about it just sucked. The venue was a pressurized dome, so load-in took forever because we needed to pause in a narrow hallway with each load of equipment, repressurize, and then head through the next door. We made triple sure that the pyro guys didn’t set up because I could see them blowing the dome right off the place. The venue was surreal once people were inside, and the bands started playing on both stages; it was a steaming hot, cacophonous mess. I had a thought to go up to the second level and hit golf balls into the crowd, but it seemed like too much effort.