120 Minutes of Matt Pinfield…

Back in the mid 1990s, MTV was beginning its ascent to the top of the Nielsen ratings with ridiculous shows like The Real World, Singled Out, and Total Request Live. Music videos were aired less and less until eventually they were almost eliminated altogether. It was around this time that I was really getting into the independent underground music scene. I was especially drawn to the forbidden, outcast world of underground punk rock, but I was (and still am) a huge fan of independent, non-mainstream music of all types. Most of my discoveries of new indie bands came from going to shows (and actually watching the opening bands) or reading through the liner notes of “thank yous” on any given record. There was, however, one show on MTV that effectively brought the world of underground rock music right into my living room. It was called 120 Minutes and it was hosted by an iconic musical savant named Matt Pinfield.

My friends and I would jokingly refer to him as “Pinhead,” but the truth is that he is a musical genius. His wealth of knowledge regarding anything music related is unparalleled. Without blinking an eye, he can easily give you a concise, accurate history of almost any band, even naming individual band members and going through brief histories of THEIR musical backgrounds. His stories and anecdotes on the music scene were fascinating, and his raspy voice and striking resemblance to the cartoonish Mr. Clean only added to his iconic allure. 120 Minutes aired on Sundays from 11pm to 1am and I would always stay up to watch, not only for the videos but also for the vast knowledge of music that Matt would invariably endow to the viewers. It was on this show, courtesy of Matt, that I was first introduced to bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Bad Religion, Dinosaur Jr., and The Offspring. MTV eventually sacked the show but not before Matt had left an indelible impression on me.

Fast forward to around 2004. Allister had just headlined a Warped Tour sponsored show at The Key Club in Hollywood, CA. Following the show, a few of us had walked next door to the infamous Rainbow Room to enjoy a few drinks and to soak in the universally weird Hollywood vibe.  We headed back to the van around 2:30am and I remember thinking that we had a good forty minute drive to get back to our friend’s house.  As I got closer I noticed that the van’s sliding side door was open and the dome light was on.  I could see two people sitting on the inside step chatting away like long lost friends.  One was our guitar tech, Magoo, and the other, instantly recognizable by his short, stocky frame and cigarette-choked raspy voice, was none other than Matt Pinfield.

I was certainly taken aback seeing him sitting in our van.  I walked up and shook his hand, introducing myself and mumbling something about how I loved 120 Minutes and how I was disappointed when it went off the air.  True to form, he began rattling off facts about our band like he was recapping the night’s dinner menu.  He knew where we were from, what record label we were on, what other bands were on our label, and THEIR history as well.  It was very surreal.    There was something not quite right about him, though.  Once he started talking, he didn’t stop.  He rambled on and on and on and started talking faster and faster.  His one-sided conversation was like a runaway freight train.  He kept talking and talking and glancing nervously around while wiping away the tiny beads of sweat that were collecting on his bald head.  It quickly became clear that he had, at some point very recently, inhaled a suitcase full of cocaine.  It was an interesting sight, to be sure, so we talked for a while, sharing cigarettes and reminiscing about old tour stories.

Eventually it was time for us leave.  Matt, however, was perfectly content to sit and chat with us all night.  We repeatedly told him that we had to go but he just wouldn’t leave.  As we were all piling into the van, I heard Matt asking if we could drive him to his hotel.  “Hey guys if it’s not too much trouble could you just drive me to my hotel it’s right down the street and it’s kinda far but I just need to get back to my hotel and if you could drop me off that’d be great it’s only down the road a few miles or so….” he rambled.  We agreed so he hopped into the back as well.

I pulled out of The Key Club parking lot, turned onto Sunset Blvd., and literally drove no more than fifty yards before I heard Matt yelling from the back seat, “Whoa! Stop! This is it right here this is my hotel it’s right here could you stop this is where I’m staying thanks for the ride you guys are great.”  I thought to myself, you could’ve walked here in less than 3 minutes!  I glanced in the mirror expecting to see him making his way towards the door but he simply sat there, talking and talking as if we were all paying attention.

We sat in front of his hotel for at least another 20 minutes while he yammered away in back.  What had started out as a fun, somewhat whimsical conversation, had now become quite an annoyance.  We dropped every hint we could to get him to leave but he just wasn’t biting.  Finally, mercifully, Magoo looked at him and said, “Matt! Nobody gives a shit now get the fuck out of our van!”  So he climbed out and we pulled away, watching him trundle up the sidewalk to the front steps of his hotel.  None of us could believe how strange the entire conversation had been.

I still have the utmost respect for Matt and his plethora of musical knowledge.  We actually ran into him again about a year later while idling in the parking lot at Reading Festival in England.  A mammoth tour bus drove up and parked next to our van and the first person to step off of it was Matt.  He instantly recognized us as Allister and engaged us in conversation.  Nothing was mentioned of that night in Hollywood, but he remembered us and was once again able to rattle off various facts about our dumb little band from Chicago.  It still amazes me.

The Wreck…

I have a fear of riding in cars while other people are driving.  Its not a debilitating sort of anxiety, but rather a minor nervousness that always makes me a bit uncomfortable as a passenger.  It’s mostly a control issue I think, but it also stems from the two or three fairly serious car accidents I’ve been lucky enough to have walked away from.  At no time was I the one driving the car.  In fact, I’ve never been in an accident while I was behind the wheel.  Because of this fear, I spent about 95% of our touring days driving the van.  The only times I didn’t drive were when I was just too drunk, too tired, or we were on a bus (which actually always made me more nervous than touring in a van).  During one overnight drive from Minneapolis to Chicago, we wrecked our van so completely that I’m still amazed we were able to walk away from it.

It was December, about a week or two before Christmas, and we were on the last shows of a five week tour with our friends Day At The Fair and Houston Calls.  After the Minneapolis show, we drove directly to Matt’s Bar for a Juicy Lucy prior to making the overnight trek to Chicago.   We were hoping to stop home for some quick R & R before our next gig at the Metro.

It was bitterly cold.  The temperature was around 0 degrees with a wind chill of near minus 25.  It was the type of cold where you can feel the icicles crystallizing on your eyelashes and in your nose.  The type of cold that hurts.  We cranked the heat up in the van and got on the road around midnight.

I was dog tired from a few nights of heavy partying so I asked our guitar player to take the first driving shift so I could grab a couple hours of sleep.  The plan was for him to drive 3 hours and then wake me up to take the next shift.  I took off my jacket, buckled myself in, and laid down on the bench directly behind the front seats, covering myself with a sleeping bag.

We were about an hour or so into the drive and, even though I was exhausted, I was having a difficult time falling completely asleep.  I could hear our guitar player and roadie talking in the front seats but I couldn’t distinguish any of the words.  There were other sounds – the radio, the steady hum of tire treads vibrating on the highway underneath me – but it was all just white noise.  I was in dreamlike, half-conscious hypnotic state.

As I lay there, Green Day’s “Holiday” cut through on the radio with a sudden clarity.  At the same time, the noise and vibrations of the road abruptly disappeared from underneath me and it felt like I was floating on the bench seat.  Just as the entire van began to fishtail, our guitar player screamed from the driver’s seat.  ”OH SHIT! BLACK ICE!! HANG ON WE’RE GOING OVER!! OH MY GOD! AHHHH!!”

A monstrous cacophony of screaming and profanity erupted inside the van as we slid sideways on the highway.  Everything unraveled in slow motion.  The entire van flipped and we landed upside down on the highway with a deafening BANG! The roof crunched inward and the windows exploded, blowing a dust storm of glass throughout the van.  Our personal belongings went flying around like we were in the middle of a tornado.  I was hanging upside down by my seat belt as we skidded down the road, the sound of the van’s metal roof grating on the asphalt just inches from my head.  We hit another bump and rocketed off the highway, plowing our way through snow drifts and finally coming to a stop up against a long thatch of bushes, about 30 feet from the shoulder of the road.  There was no sound.  And no movement.

It was eerily silent as we all tried to gather ourselves together.  Slowly I began to hear the sound of steam hissing from somewhere in the engine.  The monotonous drone of the tires,  still spinning as if nothing had happened, echoed around my head.  Someone called out, “Is anybody hurt?”  One by one we all answered that we were ok.  I remember naively thinking that it would behoove us to get out as quickly as possible before the van exploded.

I was still hanging upside down, held only by the seat belt secured around my waist.  I glanced around, trying to orient myself in the cold darkness.  I placed one hand above me, bracing myself on the ceiling as I punched the button on the safety belt, releasing me from it’s life saving grip.  One side of the van was crushed slightly more than the other, leaving me with only one escape window with which to crawl through.  I wormed my way over pillows, sleeping bags, jackets, and broken glass, finally squeezing myself through the opening and out into four inches of recently fallen snow.  It was freezing.

I stood there in the moonlight with the rest of the band, shivering as we surveyed the damage.  The van was resting upside down in a shallow ditch at about a 45 degree angle from the road.  The force of the accident had twisted the tow package like a pretzel, severing the van from the trailer.  The trailer was on its side about 40 feet away, its back doors blown wide open.  Almost all our gear and merchandise had been thrown from the trailer and it lay strewn all over the side of the highway like artifacts washed ashore after a shipwreck.  Everything that we had worked so hard for over the last 6 years was now lying on the side of a Wisconsin highway like some child’s discarded broken toys.

Once we realized that the van was indeed NOT going to explode, we each took turns carefully crawling back inside to gather up our jackets and what personal belongings we could salvage.  As we waited for the State Police to arrive, we collected all of our gear and merchandise, stacking it into a pile next to the trailer.   Surprisingly, not much of it was outwardly damaged.  Though we didn’t know if the amps would turn on, almost all of our cabinets and cases were still intact.  We tossed armfuls of snow covered T-shirts back into their bins and managed to save all the boxes of CDs except one.   One of the only things that didn’t make it through the wreck was an acoustic guitar we had been borrowing from Day At The Fair.  It’s neck had snapped in half like a twig.  I still feel bad about that to this day.

The State Police finally arrived and escorted us a few miles back to the nearest town where we rented a hotel room for the night.  A tow truck came to haul the van and trailer back to a junkyard where went through it the next morning to ensure we didn’t leave anything behind.  We were extremely lucky in that both Day At The Fair and Houston Calls were not very far away when we crashed.  We called them after we called the police and they graciously squeezed us and our gear into their vans and RVs.   We didn’t get much sleep that night but I’m proud to say that we still made it to the Chicago show the next night, and to the final show in Detroit after that (we took our cars).  It seemed that nothing could stop us from bringing the rock….

 

 

 

Radio Exposed….

I recently did a podcast interview with Tinky and Louie of Radio Exposed.  Check it out at www.radioexposed.net.   We discussed quantum mechanics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the notion of using anti-matter to solve the world’s energy crisis.  Well, no…but we did talk Allister history and the possibilities of a brand new record in 2012.  Enjoy!

oooohh oooohh OOOOHH OOOHH I’m gonna kill myself….

Can anyone please tell me what the fuck is up with this Maroon 5 song, “Moves Like Jagger?” I mean, really?  Have we collectively sunk so low as a society that we actually think this is a good song?  Who are the dipshits that are demanding to hear this song, keeping it endlessly spinning on every radio station when, in fact, the entire idea of the song should have been bagged the minute Adam Levine said to his band, “Hey I got this idea to write a song referencing Mick Jagger.” If someone in my band had brought that idea to practice I would have punched him in the face and run screaming to the nearest bar.

Doesn’t anybody see why this song is so atrocious?  What kind of band thinks that writing a song about Mick Jagger’s moves is a good idea?  Especially a band that has had huge success writing a few halfway decent pop tunes?  How do you consciously walk into a recording studio and lay down these lyrics with a straight face?  Sorry Adam, its fucking lame.  Not even Kara’s Flowers would have done something like this.  First of all, Mick Jagger may be the frontman for one of the biggest rock bands in history, but copying his moves in order to impress a girl is simply the antithesis of cool.  Watching him dance is like watching a heroin addict in withdrawal doing a full body dry heave.  It just doesn’t work.  There is nothing remotely cool or attractive about it.  He looks like a fucking idiot, plain and simple.

The other issue I have with the song is why use Christina Aguilera?  For fucks sake man, she’s washed up.  She’s a has-been.  If Maroon 5 was trying to “resurrect” their careers by pairing themselves with another pop icon, the least they should’ve done is found someone current and relevant.  Look, I’ll be honest, I like Christina Aguilera.  But I like her circa 2000 when she wasn’t a drunken, disgusting mess.  Now she’s forgetting the words to the national anthem and getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly (not that I’ve never done that before but we’re not talking about me today).  So why Xtina?  Why not Lady Gaga or Katy Perry or (dare I say) Pink?  I can’t say I regularly keep up with pop music/culture, but I’m pretty sure Christina Aguilera hasn’t done anything of interest in quite some time.  In fact, it’s scary to think that she could even be HURTING the popularity of this song.  Yikes…

I’m sure there’s some sort of underlying reason between the pairing though, like label politics or money.  Or,  its merely something simple and explainable like Christina and Adam are secretly dating or fucking each other.  Either way, the song stinks something awful and we are all worse off for having been subjected to it.  All I can hope for is that it dies quickly and quietly and is never heard again.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write a song and call it “Takes Propofol Like Jackson.”

Tossing the proverbial television out the hotel window…..

We did a U.S. tour back in 2006 with fellow Chicago band Mest that was, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of the end for Allister.  During that tour I drank more, did more drugs, and initiated more physical violence than probably during all the rest of our touring years combined.  I’m not really sure why it happened.  Contrary to what you might think, it certainly wasn’t because of Mest’s influence.  In fact, we didn’t even like them going into that tour.  We became good friends by the end but we had established our own identity as a band long before we had met them.  Looking back, it was probably the result of many things.  Our label no longer seemed interested in us, our headlining shows weren’t very well attended, we had seriously wrecked our van a few months before, and sales of our newest record were dismal.  Touring had started to become a burden rather than an enjoyed privilege and we all began to unravel in our own ways.  The culmination of things came on an off night in the unlikely town of Missoula, MT.

Rarely did we ever even drive through Montana, much less spent the night there.  I don’t really remember the circumstances behind the travel day but it seems safe to assume that we were most likely headed from Seattle to some northern Midwest city, probably Minneapolis.  There was another band on the tour called Scary Kids Scaring Kids.  They were a lousy screamo band but, as people, they were fun to hang out with.  We had all decided to meet up in Missoula, MT, a quiet city in western Montana that was about the midpoint of our cross country drive.

After a long 9 hours in the van, we managed to find a Hampton Inn and a Super 8 that shared a parking lot.  Mest parked their bus in the back of the lot and, along with SKSK, rented some rooms at the Hampton Inn.  We parked our van close by and opted for the cheaper and less fancy Super 8.  After checking in, we decided simply to pick up a few cases of beer and relax at the hotel.  The Hampton Inn had an indoor pool and we all agreed to meet there for a few drinks.

There was plenty of beer to go around, as we had all picked up a few cases.  We had also picked up a bottle or two of Jagermeister, the preferred choice of liquor on that tour.  Both hotels were not very crowded so we had the pool all to ourselves.  It was also around 11pm and I’m not sure if the pool was technically still open.  At any rate, the booze flowed freely and we were thoroughly enjoying a relaxing evening of swimming and drinking.  At some point however, the night inexplicably turned violent and got completely out of control.

I believe it all started when someone tossed a lounge chair into the pool. That playfully innocent act somehow created a chain reaction of events that would end up costing thousands of dollars in damages.  Once the first chair went in, it was a free-for-all.  More chairs went in, along with tables, towels, laundry baskets, and whatever else was laying around the pool deck.  Empty beer cans were hurled into the deep end , creating a sudsy disgusting pool of chlorinated backwash.  Someone smashed an empty bottle of Jagermeister, spraying shards of glass all over the pool deck and into the pool.  The destruction only intensified.

Like a pack of wild rabid dogs we made our way up to the room that SKSK had rented.  We burst through their door screaming and laughing like children, drunk and soaking wet.  Paintings were torn off the walls, tables were smashed, and the microwave was obliterated into a million pieces.  We wrecked the place fantastic.  I wasn’t done, however.  By this time I was completely, blindly drunk and a kind of weird, inexplicable thirst for more destruction had come over me.

I stumbled my way back across the parking lot to the Super 8 where we were staying.  I managed to make it up to our room on the third floor.  I burst in, yelling and hollering like a madman, waking up the three other guys who had gone to sleep hours before.  I staggered over to the window and threw open the pane.  Like a barbarian, I ripped the tv from where it rested in the entertainment center and carried it over to the window, its chord dragging behind like a snake.  I heaved it up onto the window sill and shoved it out, watching it narrowly miss the hood of a car as it crashed down onto the sidewalk below.  And suddenly, like the flip of a switch, the drunken rage was gone and a quiet serenity washed over me.  I stood there staring at what I had done, my head hanging out the window.

The cops showed up, of course, but to my surprise no one was arrested or even handcuffed.  They simply questioned us, verbally reprimanded us for allowing our drinking to get out of hand, and made us pay for the damages.  I forked over somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 to replace the TV and to fix the window.  I don’t know the exact figure but I believe The Hampton Inn billed Mest something like $3000 for the destruction of property and cleanup of the pool.

We were kicked out of the hotel for the night (obviously) and forced to drive down the highway to find another.  I ended up sleeping in the van that night and also for a good majority of the next day.  I could not believe that of all the times I truly deserved to be arrested, I wasn’t.  Sometimes I wish I could go back and apologize to those nice people of Missoula but, alas, what’s done is done.  Like I said earlier, that was more or less the beginning of the end for the band.  Within a year of the Missoula meltdown we had done our last tour, played our last show, gone on permanent hiatus, had numerous fights and arguments, and yet somehow through it all, managed to release a gold record in Japan.  I’m still proud of that, at least.

New Song!! New Song!!

So I’ve finally posted a new song up on the Facebook page.  Go check it out at http://www.facebook.com/timrogner

I’ve got enough solo material to release a 5 – 6 song EP and the ultimate goal is to have it up for sale/download within the next few weeks.  I’m putting together the finishing touches on some simple artwork this week and I should have the final mixes of everything soon.  It’s been so long since I’ve released some original songs that I’ve almost forgotten how exciting it is.  Also, I’ll be sure to get up a few good stories from the road in the next week.  I know I’ve been slacking….

Roadies…

Roadies are some of the craziest motherfuckers in the world.  They almost have to be.  Day in and day out they put up with so much band bullshit that its amazing you don’t hear more stories of them snapping and shooting up the tour bus.  They are the hustlers and the hooligans, but almost always the hardest workers.  They don’t often get the respect they deserve and they rarely get paid a fair wage.  Yet, they are always the most fun, the most energetic, and certainly the most insane people on any given tour.  Magoo, our guitar tech/roadie for a good majority of the band’s touring days, was no exception.  Although I don’t see him as much these days, some of the best stories from the road involved Magoo.  He had an uncanny natural ability to shock us and make us laugh just by being himself.  I owe some very fond memories to him and his propensity for doing the unthinkable.

We played a show at the Roxy in Hollywood and were invited back to stay with two girls that we had met at the show.  Our van was leaking gasoline (a long story which will be revisited in a later post) and the girls lived all the way down in Orange County, a good 45 – 60 minute drive from Hollywood.  We had all been drinking heavily and I was certainly in no shape to drive.  Amidst the confusion after the show, it was somehow decided that our drummer would drive our van and Magoo would ride in the car with the girls.   We hopped into the van and followed Magoo and the girls to the highway.

I was drunkenly sitting in the back, staring out the front windshield and trying to keep my head from spinning.  I was watching the girls’ car in front of us and it looked to be swerving all over the highway.  I remember thinking that Magoo probably shouldn’t be riding with them.  As we continued down the highway, I saw what looked like a t-shirt being held out the window, flapping chaotically in the air as we hit 75mph.  What the hell? I could see Magoo inside the car with his shirt off, mischievously smiling at us through the back window.

He pulled his shirt back inside and I next saw his pants dangling out the window, flapping wildly in the air.  What the hell is he doing?  The car now seemed to be swerving even more.  It was 2am and I stared in drunken disbelief as Magoo climbed out the window, completely naked except for his shoes, and made his way onto the roof of the car.  It should be noted here that Magoo has been blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with an extraordinarily large package which, on his 5’4″ frame, looks quite like a baby’s arm holding an apple.  It’s very impressive.

Anyways, here he was, humping the roof of the car completely naked while these two drunk girls are speeding and swerving all over the highway.  He was whooping and hollering and laughing and giving us the finger.  He’d stick his ass up in the air and shake it at us, his huge cock dangling down between his legs.  I thought for sure he was going to fall off and we would run him over.  Our drummer thought the same thing so he slowed and backed off until we were a good 100 feet behind.  Magoo clung to the top of the car, flailing and flopping for a few more minutes before finally making his way back through the open window and into the car.

We eventually all made it to our destination in one piece, but it was, without a doubt, one of the most hilariously exhilarating drives on that tour.  It’s certainly an image that will be forever burned into my mind.

Here we go ’round in circles….

One of the things I liked about playing and touring in England is that you could drink almost anywhere.  I’m not sure its technically legal, but no one ever stopped me from walking around with a beer in my hand or told me to put my bottle of liquor away.  Drinking, as a whole, seemed to actually be celebrated and encouraged in British culture.  Pubs were packed on any given day of the week and it wasn’t uncommon to see large groups of people staggering en masse through the city center streets.  For someone who loves to drink, its not a bad place to spend a few weeks.  Also  for this reason, it didn’t seem to be too big of a deal the night I passed out on the front steps of a convenient store in the middle of downtown Nottingham.

Sometime around 2003 or 2004, we did a brief, 6 show tour of England with quasi-labelmates, Something Corporate.  They are a great bunch of guys and the shows were all completely sold out.  One of the stops on that tour was Nottingham, home to the legendary Robin Hood.  We had managed to secure a hotel room right next door to the venue, perfectly suited to a long, easy night of partying.

We played to a sold out crowd, getting drunk on the ample cases of warm, shitty Carling the promoters had provided.  I was walking around outside the venue, drinking a beer and chatting with some of the fans, when I somehow ended up talking to these two girls who had been at the show.  We talked for a while, drinking beer and having a good conversation.  They mentioned that they lived down the street and invited me back to their house for more drinks.  I had an idea where things were going and there was no way I was going to pass it up.  I was out of beer though, so I made the girls wait a few minutes while I ran across the street and bought a bottle of Goldschlager for the walk.

We headed back to their place, all three of us taking hearty pulls from the bottle as we passed it back and forth.  I was pretty well intoxicated by this point, but the expectation of getting laid had been dangled in front of me like a carrot to a donkey and I was doing my best to stay focused.  I was also trying to maintain some sort of directional coherence.  English city streets are notorious for twisting and turning and ending abruptly.  There is no rhyme or reason to the city layout like there is in the US with the grid system.  We turned left, then right, then right again, then left…  I was starting to get a little lost.

We came around a corner and, just as I was beginning to pull myself together, a tall, skinny figure emerged from literally out of the darkness.  As the face moved underneath the streetlight, the girls shrieked in delightful recognition.  It turned out to be a guy that they knew  from school.  No one had seen him in months due to some sort of overseas study program and he had just arrived back in town.  He was wasted, carrying a case of beer, and the girls immediately invited him back to their house. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? I just got unintentionally cock-blocked by some bumbling bloke I didn’t even know.  Now I have to compete with this guy just for some (probably) shitty British lay?  Maybe I had not accurately assessed the situation in the first place.

We finally made it back to the girls’ place (I kept my bottle of Goldschlager to myself for the remainder of the walk) and, as we walked through the front door, I heard one of them whisper, “Be quiet. My parents are sleeping.” Parents?! Fuck.  Now this was weird.  She led the three of us upstairs to her room.  I begrudgingly took a seat on the floor where I was promptly ignored.  For almost an hour I sat there guzzling the bottle of Goldschlager and interjecting remedial, unfunny witticisms into their mindless conversation.  Once it became clear that the night was indeed going to be completely wasted, I excused myself from the room to take a piss.  I took my bottle with me and walked straight out the front door and back into the dark, unfamiliar Nottingham night.

I had only a vague idea of where I was.  It was somewhere around 2am and all I could do was follow the half illuminated sidewalk in what I thought was the direction of the hotel.  All I had with me was a pack of cigarettes and my bottle of liquor.  I chain smoked and drank my way in circles through the impossibly confusing city streets.  I was completely and utterly lost.   I ended up walking around the same block at least three times trying to find my way back.  I had no cell phone and was too drunk to even remember the name of the hotel.  There wasn’t a single person roaming the streets.  It was strangely quiet.

Finally, after wandering for almost three hours, I gave up.  My feet hurt, I was homeless, and I was drunk.  I sat down on the steps of a convenient store with my back up against the brick wall, closed my eyes, and fell asleep clutching the bottle of Goldschlager.

I awoke to an intense sunlight and thousands of footsteps pattering by me on the sidewalk.  Men and women hurried by dressed in business suits, carrying briefcases and checking their watches; a regular pedestrian morning rush hour.  I laid there on the concrete in my filthy clothes, reeking of cigarettes and booze, the nearly empty bottle of Goldschlager sitting next to me.  In a sudden burst of early morning clarity, I remembered the name of our hotel.  I slowly stood up, using the wall of the store for leverage.  I half expected the morning business types to cast disgusted glances at me but no one did.  To them I was just another poor, homeless, British sap who had drank himself to blackout on the city streets.  A common occurrence in a country of drunks.  I stopped the next guy who passed and asked him if he knew directions to the hotel.  He turned around and pointed up the road, telling me it was two blocks straight up ahead.  Had I kept walking for 5 more minutes, I would have run right into it.  Go figure.

Strange happenings in even stranger places…

There is a venue in Milwaukee called The Rave.  We’ve played there countless times over the years and, with the exception of only two or three nights, we always stayed at The Ambassador, a historical, vintage Americana hotel located directly across the street.  It’s a tall, square, brick building, its rooms smothered in ugly, 1920s style wallpaper.  The hallway walls are painted a drab yellow-green and the floors are lined with tattered carpeting reflecting the permanently embedded footsteps of over one hundred years.  A huge neon sign sits atop the hotel, a blinding, self-advertising beacon for weary travelers.  The Ambassador is notorious for being one of the sites where Jeffery Dahmer murdered and mutilated one of his victims, the door to the infamous room now bricked up and sealed like a tomb.   The entire hotel has a stale, eerie vibe to it, like you are walking through a time warp, silent eyes constantly watching you.  We had some great parties in the hotel though, hosting roomfuls of naked women and leading drunken rampages to find the “Dahmer” room.  Nothing was quite as bizarre, however, as the night Magoo (our long-time guitar tech) played his last show with us.  That was the night I was raped.

We had drunkenly decided days before that we would “haze” Magoo in the hotel room after the Milwaukee show.  For some reason, our idea of hazing was to tie him to a chair and drown him in assorted condiments.  It seemed so wildly funny at the time.  We thought Milwaukee would be ideal because of all the friends and fans driving up from Chicago that we could invite back to our rooms to participate.  It would be a grand, ritualistic hazing of epic proportions.

We bought a trunk full of beer, a few bottles of liquor, and our party kicked off with a bang.  Dozens of people were in the rooms watching as we duck taped Magoo to a chair and covered him in mustard, ketchup, maple syrup, and beer.  In the process, I managed to cover myself as well.  Despite our best efforts to rinse off the muck, we both smelled like human hot dogs for days afterwards.  The room was completely trashed and everyone was drinking and having a good time.

After the Magoo hazing, I was sitting by the window having a smoke (you could smoke in designated rooms back then and we always reserved smoking rooms) when I was approached by a girl I had met at a suburban Chicago party a few months before.  She had made the trip up to Milwaukee for the show and happened to be in a crowd of people we had invited to our party.  She was petite, with short brown hair and a firm body.  She was cute in a little girl sort of way, but not overly attractive.  We had talked for a little while after meeting and had exchanged phone numbers, but had corresponded through text messages only a handful of times over the last few months.  She was a nice enough girl, but after meeting her for the first time, I remember leaving the party thinking she was a little off her rocker.  I had made a mental note to stay away.

We stood by the window in the room, she talked while I smoked, I smoked while she talked some more.  It was fairly obvious what she wanted but I was disinclined to accept her drunken advances.  She was getting rather annoying so I politely excused myself and made my way over to some friends.  I continued drinking through the night, mingling with fans and talking with friends.  It was getting late and, even though the party was still going strong, I had had enough.

Between all the bands on the tour, we had reserved 4 or 5 rooms all next to each other on the same floor.  I stumbled into one of the rooms, beer in hand, and promptly passed out on one of the empty beds, fully clothed.  I hadn’t even taken off my shoes.

I awoke suddenly to the faint sound of someone moaning.  I was laying on my back but couldn’t yet pry open my eyes.  Something was pushing against my legs and, as I tried to sit up and open my eyes, I realized that something, somebody, was on top of me, pinning me down.  What the fuck is going on? I finally cracked my eyelids enough to find the girl from the party riding me like a dirty, south Texas cowgirl.  Holy shit. Was this really happening? Am I dreaming this?  No, this was definitely happening.  She was on top of me, grinding up and down, her moans a loud whisper.  Her face, a dark shadow and half covered by her short hair, contorted into various disturbing levels of pleasure.  She had her eyes closed and her back arched, one hand on my chest and the other feeling herself through her shirt.  My shoes were still on.

How the fuck did she get my pants off?! Jesus, how the fuck did I even get it up??! I’m fucking wasted…  She obviously thought I was asleep.  I had no idea what to do.   Should I pretend to stay asleep (or at least awake but feigning incoherent drunkeness) or should I “wake up” and fuck her back?   Clearly, this girl was off her rocker.   I chose to “stay asleep.” Finally, mercifully, I finished, and she knew it.

I laid there motionless, half asleep, mostly drunk, watching her silently put her pants back on and walk out the door.   She didn’t look up or make a sound.  I have not seen or heard from her since.

I woke up the next morning thinking the entire thing was a dream.   As I rolled out of bed, parched and hungover, I saw a used rubber haphazardly tossed onto the floor next to the hotel night stand.  And I still reeked of booze, ketchup, mustard, and maple syrup.

Honey…I shit the drive-thru.

At some point on any given tour there is always an inexplicable shortage of bathrooms.  Sometimes you have to piss or shit at the most inopportune times and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it except, well…to go.  I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as the time one of our roadies dropped his drawers in very awkward, yet hilarious fashion.

We were driving Interstate 80 somewhere between San Francisco, CA and Reno, NV.  It’s an extraordinarily mountainous drive, taking you up and down hills, through winding valleys, and coasting precariously beside thousand foot high cliffs.  The scenery is beautiful during the summer, treacherous in the winter.  It is supposedly one of the more dangerous highways in America, namely because of the steep hills and cliff edges.  The few towns on the drive are usually comprised only of fast food chains and hotels.

We were about halfway through our five hour drive when I heard one of our roadies pipe up from the far back seat.  He was still dressed in his Guns ‘N Roses pajamas because we had left so early in the morning.  “Yo, can we stop?  I have to take a shit.”  “Yeah, but we just passed a town and I think the next one might be a ways up,” I said as I guided the van up and down the mountains.  “Ok.  Just stop whenever you can,” he told me.

I drove for what seemed like forever without seeing any exits.  Not even a rest area.  “Hey, how much longer man? I’ve practically got a turtle head poking out back here,” our roadie said.  “Man, I’m working on it but there’s just no place to stop.  Not even a rest area,” I yelled back to him.  I could see in the mirror he was getting a bit agitated.  I felt bad but what could I do?  As I kept driving I finally spotted a sign stating the next small town was 10 miles up the road.  “Yo! Hang on man.  We’ll be stopping in 10 minutes,” I called back to him.  “Fucking hurry it up! I seriously can’t hold this much longer!” he screamed back.

We finally reached the exit for the town, which was a winding, uphill climb to the main road.  I turned around to see him sweating and gripping the bench seats, cursing and mumbling under his breath.  “C’mon! C’mon! I’VE GOT TO  SHIT!!” he screamed.  As I pulled up to the light at the main road, the first place I saw was a Holiday Inn.  “Ok look, there’s a Holiday Inn.  I’m pulling in.”

I had just started to pull into the Holiday Inn parking lot when all the overhead lights in the van went on.  What the hell?  I turned around to see our roadie climbing over the back bench seat, out the back door, and onto the hitch of our trailer.  “What the fuck are you doing?!” I screamed at him.  “Just keep driving! Go through the parking lot!  I can’t wait any longer!” he yelled.  The parking lot was full so I was forced to slowly pull the van through the turnaround of the hotel.  There were a few people milling around outside the lobby.  I watched through the rearview as he held on to the open back doors and squatted in between the van and trailer.  “Oh! Fuuuccckk! Oh my God! Yes!” I could hear him yelling while I drove.  He arched his back and shit right there in the turnaround driveway of the hotel, huddled in between the moving van and trailer, wiping his ass with his Guns ‘N Roses pajama pants and leaving them in the middle of the driveway.  I could see them in the sideview mirror as we pulled back onto the road, our trailer wheel bumping over them as we fled.  I could also see the massive brown pile of steaming shit he had left on the asphalt.  The whole thing lasted about seven seconds.

“Go! Go!” he yelled, climbing back into the van.  I floored it.  We hauled ass back out onto the main road and got right back on the highway.  We were in hysterics.  I still laugh out loud to myself every time I think of him crapping outside in the middle of the day, driving through a hotel parking lot while the hotel patrons looked on.