Thanks to Ramon you guys get to hear my drivel this week. I had hoped to write about KABLE but I missed the show.
I guess that is part of getting older and trying to tell myself that recordings are just as good as the live show. We know that is not the truth at all.I am JUST LAZY. I could give a hundred legitimate excuses but “the reality is much bigger”.(i just quoted my own lyric, call me a rockstar)
I also have a bevy of excuses for being in a rock band.Some have changed over the years some have stayed the same but most have just been labeled differently.
My favorite reason was to travel and meet new people . To be automatically flung into poo of peers that shared the amount of excuses as yourself to persue some creative endeavor that would somehow have meaning and forge that mark in some subculture that mainstream society would not see untill the great timecapsule was opened and he world could see how important we realy were.
HUH?
I did not get to travel much but I did share some awesomeness with others.
One of these great trips started with an invitation to a Music Festival in NYC.
We were blessed to have traveling companions, another band from Houston. Out of respect I will only refer to these gents by a first name only. I would hate to call out a band on the world wide web, so , for the sake of this storye we’ll call our friends uh… well how about Tyler, Ricky, Dave and Vince.
It was the 90’s and it was stiil cool to like Nirvana cause the song “Teen Spirit” had not yet damaged their street cred by hitting the mainstream. (somethings never change)
Luckily for us and our friends “grunge” fashion was still hip.
Needless to say these chaps looked like some kind of warriors from the dark ages.If you do not remimber just think about Dickie shorts, black T-shirts, Doc Martins, Flannel shirts, Long stringy hair, goatees, and chains that not only attached their oversized black leather wallets to thier shorts but they also looked exceptionally “BUTCH”.
For this trip I rented a pair of matching minivans.We decided to share equipment as best we could.Unfortunatley for them they played thru Marshall Halfstacks.You can only imagine how well three cabs and three heads fit in their minivan along with thier other belongings and themselves.They were of typical musicicain size for the times, stout and rowdy with the always needed tall lanky drummer.
We had a schedule to keep cause we had a date to play in NYC. Very exciting! We were twenty somethings with no other responsibilities.
Of course, like all touring “alternative” we had to stop in New Orleans to hit Igors on St. Charles. They had Turbodog and Jaegermeister on tap plus pool, slots, and most importantly washers and dryers for our clothes. We did not need them but we were on tour so we had to be ready.
We killed a few hours there as a rock band should then headed out. We spent time on the road passing each other trying to see who could go the longest without a pit stop. Somewhere on the trip there or back Dave managed to urinate on his bandmates while they were sleeping. It was unintentinal, his cup ranith over.
Vince was also affectionately known as ” super paranoid man” by his band mates. His turns to drive put them in the slow lane.
We tried not to separate so when we would blow past them he was forced to keep up. You could see the fear in his face, he had to overtake even slower moving cars on the highway. Fueling Vince’s hyper- paranoind demeaner was a cocktail of “trucker speed” (ephedrine) and 20 oz cups of coffee that I am sure he bought three at a time, after all, we had a schedule to keep. Eventually as with all musicians and drugs, the good life caught up with our friend. We pulled over and commenced an intervention that would have made Nacy Reagan proud. “Just say no!” Unfortunatley it was too late. Our friend Vince was not feeling so well and wrapped in a plaid flannel sleeping bag with gold lining. He complained of strange tingling in his extremities and shivered while he sweat profously. Our friend had over amped. He looked like a character from “Braveheart” swadled in his families tarton, waiting to to die from wounds of war. The gold lining framed his majestic long hair , earrings, and goatee perfectly. “AY, HE’S GOT THE FEAVER HE HAS”
We got him tucked in and headed out again, we had a strict schedlue to keep and this rock and roll war has it’s collateral damage.
By the time we got to Tenesse, Vince had turned completly yellow. Everyone was eating the snide remarks amd comments we had made to him. We detoured to Nashvillie hospital,where we admitted Vince for testing. Had his kidneys failed, liver shutdown?
We parked our minivans side by side in the parking lot of the local hospital waiting for test results. Time was ticking, Our friends told us to go on without them, one of those “the show must go on speeches” I’m sure but cannot really remember.
Several hours past and our friend had a clean bill of health . Yellow or not he was healthy. Creepy yellow, but healthy.The doctors told him to they had no idea why he was yellow but all his bodily organs were fine per their blood tests and such. Our gigs were back to back at the Under Acme bar in SoHo. We were really pressed for time , did not know if we were going to make or not. We had hours to drive and the only redeaming factor was that Vince , the slow one , was no longer driving. Instead he sat in back contemplating his new color.
We had been driving for hours and finally got to New Jersey and thought it might be a good idea to grab a bite, get some gas and revieve ourselves prior to entering the tunnel to the city.
We took turns and I am sure look rather funny with two matching vans, odd clothing, wierd hair, strange music, and sharing simple niceites like a gas station bathroom key.
Tyler had emerged from the depths of the highway facilites with the wit of a rock star and a wet papertowl in hand. He then pulled a grandma manuver that amazed us all. He pretended to lick the papertowel just like grandma would, reached out and proceeded to wipe the face of wounded soldier. Vince did what all good grandchildren would do, he squirmed and shook his head back and fourth to avoid the soured smell of rock and roll saliva , but much to our amazment, the yellow came off!!!
It all washed off!!!! Our man of war was saved! He was able to wash off the worry and hyper -paranoid wonderings of what was wrong with his epidermis. The yellow(caused by a mixture of sweat and the golden yellow liner from his sleeping bag) was replaced with embarressment. Hell , we were stumped , a whole freakin team of doctors were stumped. There was no reason to be embarresed, there was only good reason to celebrate. We were less than an hour away from or destinataion with two carloads of Texan Rockers ready to converge on a city of people who would soon be blown away by our rock and rollness.
It is good to know that Rock and roll can cure what ails you.