Max

Max was our band mascot (Guinea Pig) who traveled extensively with the band.
He spent most of his sweet short life in guitar cases.

He died in the tragic "Radiator Incident," in Schenectady, New York.

He crawled up inside the heater in our hotel room, and refused to come out.
I suppose that living in a guitar case and being with musicians on the road all the time might make you want to hide too.

After his death (inside the radiator) he smelled up the room so badly that we had to move to a new room.
The next band to come through was "The Lords."

I later joined The Lords, who told me what they heard about my previous band,

"We heard you was all crazy. The maids told us. We heard about you cookin' a pig in your room."

They actually believed that we roasted a pig in our room.
That's what the maids told them. (explaining the smell)
I had to convince them that we didn't.
They hired me!

S(p)itting In With The Band

S(p)itting In With The Band

A while back I let a guy sit in.
I never met him before, but I could tell by the way he talked that he's been around, and he was respectful when he asked if he could get up on one of our breaks and play my acoustic.
So I told him he could do two songs, and he did, and he was good too.
I got to enjoy the guy's playing and see what my guitar and PA sounded like out in the crowd. So after being convinced that he didn't suck, I let him play out the rest of my break. Why not?

He was a big fat hairy guy and he began sweating like a pig as he played.

When break was over I thanked him, he thanked me, and then he handed me my guitar.

It felt like he'd sprayed Pam on the friggin thing!
It was all buttery and greasy on the fret-board and sticky on the pick guard like he'd just pleasured a mule or something.
So I took a huck-towel and wiped it off.

Luckily, I keep several huck-towels around on stage.

What's a huck towel? I'll explain...

I go to the auto parts store and buy a big pack of those towels you wash your car with. They're perfect for when you're singing and you have to huck one up.
I've seen BB King do this for years. He's always hawking and hucking between and even during songs into these towels.
He may be the King of the blues, but he's also the Headmaster Of Hucking.
He's great at pretending he's just wiping up sweat with them, but one time at Lowell Auditorium I saw him cough up a lizard or something. Then he looked at it, and it moved and it called him Papa.

Anyways... I wiped the sticky excretions off my $2000 Gibson and went back to work.
THEN in the middle of the first song my lips brushed up against the foam windscreen on my microphone... And I felt something gooey!

I pulled my head back and looked.
The bastard had spewed up a clam! Right there on my microphone! EEeewww!
It looked like a cross between some sort of chowder or lab specimen from a sick ostrich or something you'd expect to see sliding down the inside of an aquarium.

I knew that I must have got some of that slime on my lip, and it made my stomach curdle and my skin shrink.
I forgot where I was in the song, flubbed up the chords, I forgot the lyrics, and spazzed out.
I retched, and then I ripped the foam wind screen off of the mike and threw it on the floor.
I had to resist the urge to stamp on it like a cockroach.

Grabbing my trusty huck-towel, I gave my mouth a good scrubbing and sucked down an entire scotch and soda with one gulp to kill any bugs. I had to finish the set worrying about where that fat bastard's mouth had been.
It was horrifying!
It was almost like I had been making out with the guy!!!
God knows what kind of hoof and mouth disease he might have given me!
Maybe he was married to Sasquatch.

During the next break I took the wind screen into the men's room and washed it in hot water and some of that squeezy soap for about five minutes.

When I got back that hairy sweaty spooge-mouthed hippo asked if he could sit in again.

I told him there was a booking agent in the room checking us out, "Sorry."
I didn't need any more of his Jurassic lung-butter.

So, if you're a musician, remember to be careful who you let sit in, and bring a spare microphone and some Lysol to every gig.