Henry Rollins has another eighteen dates scheduled on his Shock and Awe My Ass Tour, but he plans to extend it through the end of April. There's a new DVD, Live at Luna Park, and he's updating his classic book Get in the Van. He also hopes to write and record a new set of songs this summer. "I have something coming out every two or three months," he says. "It's like standing behind a rabbit: I'm always leaving a little trail for you."

As for Shock and Awe, the ongoing American occupation in Iraq is just one small component of Rollins' laundry list of topics on the spoken word outing. "You have to name it something," Rollins fesses, "so the guy can put a title in his ad. I'd rather not call it anything, 'Henry Rollins 2004,' but I was just thinking the other night, if Bush loses this year, what am I gonna do? He's provided me with so many one-liners. I really worry for Bill Maher too. But I'm really tired of having contempt for the office. I'm sick of it. I wanna be on the team. I really do hate hating this stuff."

More than politics -- "It's not like I'm a Beltway dude," he says, "I'm just a bedside quarterback, watching TV and reading online" -- Rollins hopes just to drum up some interest in the political system. "Young people have to vote," he says. "That 35 million minimum wage population has to vote. They've tuned out years of watching the President talk on TV asking, 'Who's he talking to?' I'm hoping a lot of young people get out to vote, and it's not my business who they vote for -- I just want them to realize it's important that they're a part of this. No one ever told me that. When I was in my twenties, no one ever said, 'This is important, get up off your ass and get out there.' Rock the Vote didn't communicate to me. I was so seriously pissed off at everything, I couldn't pull my head out of my ass, but that's youth."

A series of pre-war spoken word programs from 1999 provided the material for the recently released Luna Park DVD, culled from a stand at the Los Angeles club, where Rollins came up with a different performance one night a week for nine weeks. "I took the money I made from those nights and just paid for my friends to come over and film it," Rollins says, "then I shelved it because I'm on tour most of the time. We found two hours that were not awful. It's the first time we've done something completely in-house -- shot it and edited it -- and it looks fine."

The new edition of Get in the Van, Rollins' classic account of his days touring with hardcore cult legends Black Flag, will include an updated package with some new photographs, a new foreword and afterword, copies of some of the band's original flyers as created by artist Raymond Pettibon, and the correction of some typos and missed dates. "It won't look lame-o," Rollins says. "It's a pretty cool package, though I wrote it, so it's not for me to say. But I sometimes I do think, 'Wow, that was a hell of a time.' It almost reads like it's from a wartime correspondent. You never get those kind of times back. I just don't live like that anymore. I'm not nineteen and living in squalor. It's such an instinctual kind of writing. If I tried that now, I'd be writing in character. It'd be a lie. I'm forty-three; when chicks leave, I don't want to kill myself anymore."

Shock and Awe My Ass Tour dates:

3/23: Calgary, MacEwan Hall
3/24: Edmonton, ALB, Francis Winspear Center
3/26: Winnipeg, MAN, Burton Cummings Theater
3/28: Detroit, Majestic Theater
3/29: Buffalo, NY, Tralfamadore
3/30: London, ONT, Centennial Hall
3/31: Waterloo, ONT, University of Waterloo
4/1: Hamilton, ONT, Hamilton Place
4/2: Toronto, Convocation Hall
4/3: Providence, RI, Lupo's at the Strand
4/4: Northampton, MA, Iron Horse
4/6: Farmingdale, NY, The Downtown
4/7: Allentown, PA, Crocodile Rock
4/11: Grand Rapids, MI, The Intersection
4/15: Reno, NV, Reno Hilton Theater
4/17: San Diego, 4th and B
4/18: Las Vegas, House of Blues

ANDREW DANSBY
(March 22, 2004)