These apartment walls are cheap and I can always hear them complaining about something. Money, sex or their own pitiful relationships, all day long it’s yak, yak, yak. I’m telling you, all that gripin’ can get on your nerves. Sometimes it gets so bad I find myself wishing I still had my chainsaw. You know, so I could go over there and teach them a lesson about how to be good neighbors.

Instead, I spend my days sitting in my apartment looking at all the tour dates on Pollstar.com. Tour dates, like the ones for Pierre Bensusan and Billy Bragg, are my real friends. They’ll never wake me up in the middle of the night with their incessant yammering about who’s sleeping with whom, or who likes who, or who’s pregnant by whom. No, sir, you’ll never hear concert dates yapping away like those loudmouth creeps next door. Gee, sometimes I wish I still had my shotgun. A couple of rounds through the wall would teach them some manners.

In fact, sometimes I don’t even know who actually lives there anymore. There’s always people runnin’ in and out at all hours of the night. But I don’t care. Life is always better when you’re looking up at your computer monitor and you see Duran Duran touring Japan, or the new Rock Never Stops dates scrolling down your screen. Yeah, whenever I’m scanning tour itineraries, whether it’s for Bering Strait or Goatwhore, I can almost ignore all that gabbing from next door. That’s almost. Other times I find myself wishing I still had my brass knuckles, so that I could go over there and pound some sense into their vacuous little heads.

But someday I’m gonna go over there and show them what life is all about. I figure that if I shove the dates for Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey in that guy Chandler’s face, that he’ll finally show some backbone and take charge of his own life. And maybe if I pound that Joey over the head with the tours for Metallica and David Grisman Quintet, he’ll realize that he’s a lousy actor and go out and get a real job. And don’t even get me started on Phoebe. Whoa! What a space cadet.

However, I think I’ll start with that whiner named Ross. He’s the worst.

And then I’ll go to work on his friends.