"COMING UP ON BACKSTAGE PASSPORT" "I can't believe it." "All we wanted to do was play one more song..." "It was a fucking joke." "Six acres of dirt, gravel lot." "So fucking awesome." "How could this possibly get any worse?" "We have no exit strategy." "We're NOFX Screwing up since 1 983" "But these days we've got mortgages and families" "So we're going on a sketchy tour No country is too obscure" "We're gonna drink and golf and fight and snort" "We're NOFX This is Backstage Passport" "NOFX, we're a punk rock band that's been around forever." "Touring the US, it gets a little boring." "We came on this tour to play crazy, chaotic shows and we found it when we got to Chile." "But next is Ecuador and Argentina and things are kinda falling apart." "Ecuador...the show was on tennis courts, which were rented out by rich kids, who just pretty much hired NOFX to play their country club." "Totally uncovered exposed wires." "What happens if it rains?" "That's how people die." "The Argentina show was super good and we wanted to play an encore, and the club owner comes down and says 'no, you can't do an encore." "You waited too long.'" "They're still here!" "Listen!" "They're here." "I know what I'm doing here." "He's not going to let it happen." "I can't believe it." "All we wanted to do was play one more song, and he's like 'no, my club." "My gray hair.'" "Is it because we're Jewish?" "What?" "Come on, buddy." "Give me a hug buddy." "Give me a hug." "I cannot allow this!" "And now we're going to Peru where no one has any faith that anything good is gonna happen." "Is Yolanda there?" "Can I speak to Yolanda?" "Fuck." "Stupid fucking idiots." "The Peruvian promoter, we don't even have a deposit from." "They said they've sent deposits." "She's a Peruvian flake." "Total Peruvian flake." "She just told me, 'I have seen NOFX videos and the place is as good as the videos.'" "She's seen that video when we played that lake in 1 98 7." "Yeah." "Whatever that video, is her idea of what's acceptable." "I think we're gonna get screwed in Peru." "I'm always up for an adventure." "Whether we get screwed or not, we're going, because hey 2000 kids bought tickets so we don't wanna disappoint them." "So we arrive in Peru, and the airport is full of fans, they're going crazy." "Tons of kids there, and they all want autographs and they all want to put us in headlocks?" "Peru is one of the countries, it's not a normal stop for bands and this is really the only chance for these kids to get to see us because Peru, you know, it's far." "That was pretty cool to have all those kids waiting for us in the airport." "They were stoked we were there." "This show has to be great." "I know it's gonna be great." "A lot of these places, we get to the airport and me, or El Hefe or Melvin, we get recognized and it really never happens to Smelly." "No one recognizes me." "I am a member of the band...kids." "We arrive to Peru and finally I get some freaking recognition." "Here they finally recognize him." "I win." "Eventually I win." "It gives me a sense of excitement that this show's gonna go off." "Think if I start running, they'll start chasing me?" "The promoter shows up, Yolanda..." "a woman we've never met before." "Bum, bum, Yolanda!" "Ehh... this doesn't feel right." "Something's gonna go down." "Are we sure she's the actual Yolanda?" "One of our friends in Argentina described her as a beast of a woman." "So I got a feeling that's her." "There's nothing more important than having a good promoter, so if you don't get someone there that you can count on and that does a good job, you could be totally screwed." "So we land in Peru." "Yolanda didn't get the right vehicles." "I've spent three months on emails with this woman and now Carlos with two weeks asking for four basic things." "Like to go to the hotel when we arrive." "Simple, simple things." "All I want is a van for the crew, a van for the band, so that the band can go to the hotel and the crew can go to the venue and make it work." "Carlos." "I'm going to call for a car." "So we get to Peru, and what do we get?" "One bus." "'Oh, but I got a big bus.'" "I told you twenty times I want two vans." "Why are you calling for a car?" "That one is ready to go!" "No, No." "That one needs to go." "It needs to go, they're just waiting!" "Jesus fucking Christ!" "Things aren't working out exactly how they should be but it's gonna work out, and just, you know, be nice." "Some of our crew members, sometimes, they're mean and make people cry and we're pretty nice and sometimes they get real mean." "But they're totally faulty here, so you'll be here for like an hour in here just cooking." "So they're faulty." "We're being nice right now, but nothing's happening." "Making someone cry isn't gonna make it happen any faster." "Hey Carl." "But it's just that kind of shit that makes you crazy." "This so-called promoter that's supposed to have shit organized and nothing's organized for you." "It's just very frustrating." "You calling a cab?" "Yeah, we're gonna get the fuck outta here cuz this ain't gonna happen." "So we just took things into our own hands and just made it happen." "We need our crew to help pull things together." "If we just left it up to the promoters, it would never happen." "Vamanos!" "The crew and everybody has to go to the venue and the band has to go to the hotel and do what they gotta do." "I bet it will be a really good show and we'll be happy we came here." "We're driving up to the venue..." "it was a fucking joke." "...it was a fucking joke." "It was an empty field." "Six acres of dirt, gravel lot." "Wow, we're gonna actually have to make this somehow happen." "So fucking awesome." "It was definitely a nightmare." "God knows what's in our future." "It can only get better I'm sure, and by better I mean worse." "So this whole site's basically locked down." "The show is 60% not happening." "We have no exit strategy." "We pull up to this empty dirt lot." "In 1 7 years or so with this band," "I've never seen a venue in such bad shape." "Prime directive here in the dirt field: be nice." "Let's go up on the stage where we're not in the dirt." "I was feeling pretty um like, yeah, we're in Beirut, you know." "There was part of a stage erected and no backstage and there was no food, no water, no help, no loaders." "Wow, we're gonna actually have to make this somehow happen." "Dodgiest fucking place on earth, but the best fan of the whole tour." "There's hope." "Yeah, ok now we're back in business." "Look at the plug." "That fucking rules." "We got the memo." "We're supposed to be nice." "Everyone here's been super cool." "There's nothing there." "There's no bathrooms." "There's no nothing." "No power." "No power." "No power." "Well, you can't run a PAor make sound without some kind of electricity, so it was pretty retarded." "Kent's gotta get a hold of Yolanda and send somebody down here." "After our initial meeting, Yolanda pretty much never came back and didn't answer her phone from that point on." "She sent me a note." "We will be back at 3 sharp." "Or 2:50." "She was extremely evasive." "Where she was I do not know." "Every step of the turn it was just like 'oh, this is bad." "This is the worst it's ever been." "How could this possibly get any worse?" "' Ding ding." "Cops showed up with some suits, said there's no permits for the show and that there can't be a show here." "Cops are there." "There's no permits." "There's no show." "Oh." "Well that's good." "No permits." "Cops are there." "No show." "But dinner is going to be awesome I understand!" "Yolanda has not paid for any permits to do this on this site." "So this whole site's basically locked down." "Police at both entrance and exit doors, and we can't leave until the permits are paid for." "We're just sitting around waiting to go to jail or something I guess." "But hey, we're being nice!" "Wow!" "I guess our crew is out on the site, trying to set up everything for the show." "And we were trying to decide what kind of wine to have with our dinner." "You guys need to try that." "Try the sauce." "Did you get your dinner?" "Cool, man." "Here's your dinner." "Too bad mike wasn't here, and he could have some nice dinner with us." "It's totally nice." "While we're sitting through the dinner, things are going steadily downhill at the venue and I'm getting texts from Carlos that I'm reading to the table." "The show is 60% not happening according to Carlos right now." "It's almost the only reason why we came here, right?" "It is the only reason." "I'm going to put, 'we're in the restaurant, stop bugging me.'" "Looking back, I think we probably could have gone to the venue, but you know, there was a good meal on the table." "Oh, that's sea bass!" "The district attorney is there." "The place is surrounded by riot cops." "They won't let our crew out." "Are kids even there?" "Now there's 200 riot police here." "They've sealed the venue." "I think they want to arrest us." "If there's 2000 kids out there that all paid 20 bucks to get in, there is gonna be a riot." "They told us that the show was canceled." "How much did you pay for the tickets?" "20 dollars." "I bought my ticket like 2 months ago." "I'm fucking pissed off man." "You know what I'm saying?" "Peru loves NOFX!" "What's the eventual scenario here?" "No show and everyone gets on their way and it's not a big hassle, or bad shit starts happening, people start crashing through the gates, um, riot police start beating them up..." "We need to get out of here as soon as possible." "I should have bought a bottle of booze at duty free." "That's my only big regret right now." "I wish I was there, don't you?" "No." "I love this stuff." "I should be on that camera saying I got a bad feeling about going to Peru." "I think we're gonna get screwed in Peru." "So the crew's trapped at this venue." "I had to get there, and get them out of there." "It's fucking horrible there." "They're telling everyone to leave and there's cops, like, busloads of cops in riot gear." "Kids are gonna riot." "I really had no plan, except to hire a van and hopefully find the venue." "No sign of that shitty bus, huh?" "What do we do, take two cars?" "Get out of my way." "Don't fuck with me." "No, no!" "We are in a minivan with a man that doesn't speak English, but he knows where we're going." "The police are looking for someone to hold responsible." "Maybe someone will go to jail..." "Hopefully not." "Shit, we might be getting close." "There's kids in the street and kids everywhere." "We can't get backstage." "We sort of circled the place for a little while trying to figure out what to do." "Kent was gonna pick us up on the other side." "We had the van lined up, but then we started thinking we can't just run outta here with the gear, so we tried to figure out another solution." "It just gets more and more chaotic as it gets down to it." "So we finally just parked across the street." "We're hiding in the back of some minivan, waiting for the boys to escape." "What's gonna happen is, we're gonna be here and they're gonna storm the gates." "We have no exit strategy." "I gotta get out, and not only do I gotta get out." "I gotta get all this stuff out." "So we figured:" "local guy, local truck." "They're not gonna think nothing of it." "So we're like 'how about we give you like 200 bucks cash and you basically smuggle us out of here?" "'" "And he was all for it." "Okay, so we've cleared the stage off." "This is where we unloaded our shit if you can see it." "This is where we unloaded." "And that's the truck we're loading into." "Jay Walker, he usually finds a way to get out of any situation." "This is all of us in the back of the truck that we have to smuggle our way out of the venue because it's so fucking faulty." "Piled everything in low and then locked it all up and laid us all low across the top of it." "We're like 'GO!" "'" "The cop jumps up on the side of the van. 'Ah ha!" "'" "If you would have showed up earlier I probably would have strangled you." "There's a hundred kids in front of the door of the hotel" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "This is all of us in the back of the truck that we have to smuggle our way out of the venue because it's so fucking faulty." "Piled everything in low and then laid us all low across the top of it." "In all my years managing this band I've certainly never had to arrange an escape vehicle." "I can see the backstage and I was sure it was gonna erupt into a riot at any second." "And then all of a sudden he hatched this plan and the PA truck just made a break for it." "Okay, our guys are going." "One cop, like, as they were pulling out, climbed up on to the truck to look inside." "The cop jumps up on the side of the van." "'Ah ha!" "' Then the truck goes, and the guy flies off the truck and raaaah!" "Stay down. stay down." "I thought for sure theywere gonna get chased down by the po!" "ice at that point, but they got away." "C'mon man!" "I get out of there, everybody gets out." "We're like, 'whew, finally this shit is done with.'" "You guys got passports?" "They won't give us rooms without passports." "Luckily no one's arrested but it's a total debacle." "Yolanda's a liar." "She put us in the wrong venue." "She didn't get the permits." "She didn't bribe the right people." "I dare her to come here." "I wonder if you're allowed to make her cry yet." "Allowed?" "Dude, Mike's gonna get tortured for so long on this." "You have no idea." "Not okay." "Not okay." "We have a couple of drinks and then who walks in the door?" "Yolanda." "That was a shock." "I didn't expect to see her again for sure at that point." "You know, she essentially put all of our lives in danger and didn't even give a shit." "I can't believe she's here." "I'm ready to strangle her." "I want to strangle her." "This was the blunder of the century in show promotion." "Twelve hours today, stuck, riding in the back of a truck with police after me." "If you would've showed up earlier I probably would have strangled you." "Translate!" "Sorry, I don't mean to be maniacal but the fact that Jay is still talking to her is pretty beautiful." "The only reason why we came to do this is because of the kids." "We got burnt hard." "The kids got burnt harder." "It just seems so pointless to come this far for nothing." "We're getting up to go to the airport and I hear there's a couple of hundred kids down in the lobby of the hotel." "More and more kids are showing up." "There's a hundred kids in front of the door at the hotel." "And you can hear these kids chanting and screaming." "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "NOFX!" "We've been waiting like 10 years for NOFX or more." "There's a couple hundred bummed out kids in the lobby, so I asked Kent, I go 'find me a guitar dude.'" "I'm just gonna play some guitar." "I'll try to play a couple of songs, okay?" "I never thought about the universe, it made me feel small" "Never thought about the problems of this planet at all" "Global warming, and radioactive sites" "Imperialistic wrongs and animal rightsI NoI" "Would you sign his guitar for him?" "That was pretty cool." "I'm so excited." "Best day ever." "Best day ever in my life." "I can't believe it." "I'm so excited." "He played with my guitar, man." "That was pretty awesome." "And I'm just glad a hundred kids got to see something." "It was actually super fun." "This whole Lima experience has been totally weird and awkward, but that kinda made it worthwhile." "That was something I've never done before, so, it was cool." "Playing in a hotel lobby door in the middle of a street." "It's pretty cool." "It was our only choice, and we made it work." "So I feel like we won anyway." "Even though we lost, we won." "Anyone know what airline we're on?" "Jesus no!"