Breaking The Curse of Fu Manchu
November 1, 2004
by Craig Curtice

Is it conceivable that seeing a concert could perpetuate a curse? Fu Manchu is easily one of my favorite music groups, but somehow like a freaky Jess Franco movie, strange things always happen to me when I attend their shows. My only explanation is that since Fu Manchu is a mysterious So Cal band named after an evil Chinese super villain, and I’m an East coast local, perhaps I unwittingly unleashed a Greg Brady-tiki concert curse.

This weird saga began four years ago after seeing Fu Manchu play an awesome set at the Wetlands Preserve in NYC during their King of the Road tour. It was a sold-out show and Rolling Stone was even there, but months later while visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, I found the Wetland’s famed environmental VW van on display near the ZZ Top car. “That’s weird,” I thought. “The Wetlands closed? I saw Fu Manchu there!”

Okay, so that may merely be a coincidence, but my bad luck started in August of 2000 when some friends and I road-tripped to Buffalo for a Fu show. The evening got off on the wrong foot when we called the venue and they suspiciously insisted that Fu was playing first, not last. Then on the way there we got a speeding ticket, lost another half-hour deciphering bad directions, and of course when we arrived at Runwayz (located conveniently next to the airport) they told us that Fu was headlining after all. “Well, no fooling.” We killed a couple hours hitting golf balls at a driving range next door to the venue amid random stares from golf snobs. “What are you lookin’ at Izod?”

The next show will have a full chapter in my upcoming book Concert Mysteries of the Unexplained. Inexplicably Fu Manchu was booked to play an outdoor show at Kissing Bridge Ski resort in February 2002. This of course seemed like a mistake, so I called the slope and spoke with a woman that confirmed it was true. Burned by bad information before, I asked her again carefully.

“Now wait, you’re sure that Fu Manchu – from California, Fu Manchu – is definitely playing there outdoors? For real, outside?

“Fu Manchu is definitely playing on a stage outside,” she said, “Its part of our Extreme Games – Trik Turner and Injected are playing too. First band at 1:00 PM, Fu Manchu goes on at 2:00.”

I still couldn’t believe it, but I went anyway.

I’ve been asking myself why ever since. When I left Rochester it was slightly overcast, but after two hours of tense winter driving the skies were ominously dark. Kissing Bridge might have a cute name, however on this day it looked more like Witch Mountain – heavy flurries battered the area and temperatures were well below freezing.

The closest Fu Manchu got to playing was looking at their equipment covered in snow on a makeshift stage. About twenty feet away from the stage, wires led to a droopy tent that barely protected the elements from destroying the mixing boards. Once the roadies complained of electric shocks, Fu Manchu had no intention of playing in a blizzard and instead sat shivering on their bus.

All afternoon though, the resort insisted that the show would still go on and finally around four o’clock, Injected and Trik Turner played two miserable sets complaining they were going to freeze to death. At one point drunken fans pelted Fu’s tour bus with snowballs. The whole fiasco sucked – and I didn’t get back home to Rochester until after ten o’clock. Though scorched by a now very real curse, it took me two days to warm up again.

I also had a major problem right after a Fu Manchu show at the Troubadour in LA a month earlier, when I was kidnapped by a chiropractor to the stars, forced to drive through Hollywood Hills and smoke hydroponic weed at his apartment – all this just a couple hours before my 6:00 AM flight to Chicago. But there was a bigger problem – my bags and plane tickets were locked in the trunk of a car parked off Santa Monica Blvd and the only keys to that car were in Manhattan Beach. I know – it’s totally ridiculous. The curse, remember?

Miraculously I made all my flights and eventually landed in Buffalo where I still had to drive back to Rochester. When I left four days earlier there wasn’t a snowflake in sight, but now every car in the parking lot had a foot and a half of snow covering it. Wearing only a sweater, I wandered around brushing off cars with my elbows for what seemed like forever just to find mine. In all honesty I feel lucky to have gotten home with my life on this Fu Manchu excursion.

The concert curse was in full force on the infamous Cleveland road trip with good friends Power Man and Iron Fist (the names have been changed to protect the innocent). I should’ve known this outing was doomed when at an I-90 Thruway rest stop, a stoned Iron Fist wandered over the wrong overpass to look for the car. We wasted about 40 minutes looking for him.

Then later in the Flats before the show, we witnessed a young boy, walking happily with his family, inadvertently turn around into a cement sidewalk garbage can, crushing his mouth on the top metal edge. It was silent for a moment until thick red drops of blood splashed down across his feet and the sidewalk. That poor kid’s petrified squeals of pain would’ve freaked out anyone, and I swear that sound rattled in my knees all night. Total Buzzkill.

But the ultimate joke on this trip was the chaotic fire alarms blaring in our hotel at 3:30 AM. Weary patrons stood in doorways as firemen strolled up down the hallways because some idiot from a bachelor party flooded a stairwell with a fire hose. I nearly lost my mind during the forty minutes it took to shut off the alarms, plus to see both Power Man and Iron Fist in complete shutdown mode after drinking all night was infuriating. Without precious sleep the next morning, I was the one who drove four hours East into a bright rising sun while my passengers slept like babies.

So fast forward to October 5th 2004, Fu Manchu is scheduled to play Buffalo again at some place called the Continental. Excellent. What could possibly go wrong this time? On this trip Power Man and I drove to Buffalo without incident, easily found the venue, and spotted a tour bus parked on the street.

We were relieved and excited. “Oh yeah, live Fu Manc…”

Except when we walk up to the entrance, the place is fucking closed. Yep, closed. A few people hanging around offered no answers, “Pull harder on the door maybe it’ll open,” said one moron. Show flyers taped inside the glass doors indicated that the bar should have opened three hours ago and sure enough “Fu Manchu” was in big letters on the marquee, but the place was locked-up tight and the lights were off. Now how’s that for a curse? Stunned, we looked around for cameras thinking we were just Punk’d.

On the embarrassing drive home, every few minutes a wave of mocking pain would crash over me, “Oh my God! It fucking happened again! Dude, were cursed! What the fuck!” Like when Clark W. Griswold found Wally World closed in Vacation, I had a much-deserved meltdown in the car. This curse was just mocking me now. Laughing in my face I tell you.

Which finally brings me to Fu Manchu’s New York City appearance four days later. After the latest disappointment, I was determined to face this stupid curse head-on. Amazingly the stars aligned when Power Man had a conference in NYC the same weekend, and with my powerful influence as a 2 Walls writer, I was graciously granted tickets from Sage Robinson at DRT Records. Without incident I flew to NYC and met up with Power Man at the 6th Ave Hilton. We spent the entire day drinking, shopping, and people watching. Power Man even got his first tattoo at a St. Mark’s Place studio called Addictions.

Finally on a rather balmy Saturday night in October we grabbed a cab to the Knitting Factory around ten. Surprisingly there quite a few women present, as Fu Manchu seems to be broadening its core fan base of Wooderson meets Spicoli-types. Hey what would you expect when you play songs about sweet rides, Evel Knievel, and cult flicks, then sprinkle in sunshiny-good cowbell breaks? In a sweltering show, Fu Manchu kicked-ass and later we had a great night out on the town. The next day my plane didn’t crash, I wasn’t abducted, didn’t lose any fingers, and I returned home safely to Rochester.

So in the same month the Boston Red Sox overcame the Curse of the Bambino, I finally ended mine.

Tickets: free
Airfare: $250
Cabs: $130
Drinks: $175
Food: $65
Shopping: $150
Ending a Fu Manchu concert curse: Priceless

(Craig Curtice is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine that’s hoping Saturday Night Live (after that ridiculous karaoke malfunction) will finally invite the mighty Fu Manchu on as a musical guest.)