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.

Scrabble - Another Crazy Band Story

One time down in Springfield back in the early eighties, we were staying at this big old run down hotel.

Outside the hotel was a big sign which faced the highway.
Thousands of people read this sign every day.

It had removable letters, BIG REMOVABLE LETTERS.

The sign said

ALL YOU CAN EAT BREAKFAST HERE!

(in big removable letters)

After a gig one night, my drummer said, "Ooh! I got an idea!

Let me stand on your shoulders!"

So I did.

He got up on my shoulders and took all the letters off the sign.

Then he spread the letters out on the hood of a car and played scrabble with them.

He got back on my shoulders and put the letters back up.

Here;s what we read the next morning and for three more days before they finally changed it:

HEY BALLFACE!

Hubbub At The Top Of The Hub

The scene:

Top Of the Hub lounge, 52nd floor of the Prudential Building, in Boston.
Elegant surroundings, posh ambiance. Well dressed, well-to-do, well-bred clientele. The lights of Boston twinkle. The keys of the grand piano tinkle. The elevator door opens. Four shabby dolts stumble in.

Two of the stooges, a Marx brother and John Candy in dungarees.
Frank, The Emperor Bolo who resembles Chico Marx, is walking like a lobster man who's still on the boat. Reeking of Bacardi 151, he spits his way through asking the waitress for something no one can understand.
It's his bachelor party. They've been at it for a while.

They look for a table, find one, but it only has 3 seats, so they rip one away from a nearby table of romantic yuppies, and flop down near the nicely dressed Jazz trio. One of them farts. Ninja style. Horrified patrons mutter behind champagne glasses. It smells like old crayfish.

A terse unattractive displeased waitress arrives, and does them a great favor by asking them if they will be having cocktails this evening.

The Emperor orders the Green Manalishi Gasolini Martini with olives and extra roasted peppers, and the waitress exhales like a bull.

The others order aged turpentine and mimeograph solution in special glasses. Each drink costs as much as a pair of pants.

They watch the band tinkle, and the lights twinkle. Their conversation is peppered with loud swears and grunts like you'd hear in a locker room.

Morons by candle light.
Balls are scratched.
Staring is going on.

The band sounds good. The four dolts drool at the band like drugged walruses watching a card trick.

Suddenly Bolo decides to make a statement! With slurred enthusiasm he spews forth;

"Ya see that drummer? I know that fuggin' guy! That's Bob G!!! I studied with that guy for years! Heesh a great drummer! BARP! What a great fargin' guy!

He had an ashtray... and everything! That fuggen guy! I wonder if he still remembers me?"

The set ends. The band goes on break. The bitter waitress, a soul-less grimacing yeast infection in an undertaker's suit, suffers through another order. Bolo gargles at attempted joke at her though a mouthful of olives, and he hands her the empty glass.

No one knows what the hell he said. The waitress looks at him like he's a hellgrammite on her pillow. They don't use jokes on the Planet Of The Undertakers.

She scribbles "I hate you,"in her leather bound notebook and stomps away terribly constipated.

The jazz drummer, on break now, slides past the table of dolts. A nerve ending crackles in Bolo's brain, and he lurches up suddenly, belting both knees against the table, sending the martini glasses scuttling and wobbling, and for a second it's like the four dolts are spinning pie plates on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Mimeograph solution and turpentine sloshes onto the table, coming dangerously close to staining their filthy dungarees.

Bolo leaps sideways, shooting his rolling chair against a romantic couple. He stumbles forward like Frankenstein toward his former drum teacher.

"Bob!"

The drummer turns, looks, confused.

"Hey! BOB!" The Emperor lunges at him with an open hand.

"Mumembah me? Ya know who I am?" swaying, as the lobster boat takes a big wave.

The jazz drummer nervously extends his hand, politely, unsure.

"You mumembah me. Doncha? I ushed ta shtudy with you for fifteen fuggen' years!

You had the ashtray ... and everything."

Uncomfortable smile, polite confused head shaking. A shrug.

"YA, YA , YA! COURSE YOU KNOW ME! YOUR BOB G ! BARP! Yer a friggin' great fargin' drummer man, no shit. Member me? Bolo? Mumember? Your Bobby G. Right?"

"No. Actually I'm not. Heh-heh... I know Bob G. He's a great drummer, and I'm flattered that you, ah, would think I WAS him, but I'm not him. I'm Bob Cervix."

"Get the f**k outta here! You gotta be shitting me! You're not Bob G? I shtuddied with you for fifteen yearsh?"

"No I'm Bob Cervix. I do know Bob G though. He's a great guy. Great drummer too."

"Oh shit! I thought you were Bob G. Barp! ya look jush like him! I ushed to take lessons from him, with the ashtray, and the ...but you're Bob Cervix instead, huh?"

"Yeah. Bob cervix."

"Oh no, that sucks!... wanna sit down with us anyways?"

CAVEMAN!

This is the story about the caveman.

As many of you know, I am ancient, I've been in seventeen thousand bands for over a million years, and I never exaggerate.

Experience has taught me that most musicians are idiots, but certainly no band I was ever in was more idiotic as the binge drinking Blue Fox Band.

In 1976 (yes, 1976) we were on the road playing at a place called Joe's Convention Lounge, on the American side of Niagara Falls. This was the Bi-Centennial year, so the aforementioned "Joe" painted everything in his Convention Lounge Red White and Blue to attract the American tourists who never showed up anyways.

Above the club was a slummy five room band house, complete with a roach infested kitchen, holes in the walls, and beds that made you feel like a hot dog in a moldy bun. We made communal meals usually involving Ragu and some sort of pasta. This way we had more money for beer and other idiot inducing substances.
After each night of playing, all nine of us went on a mission to entice females up the stairs to our swinging slum for some passionate road boinking. We were extremely particular about this selection.
In order to party with The Blue Fox Band, these girls MUST have arms and legs.

Since hardly anyone ever showed up to Joe's pathetic patriotic looking lounge, we began to consider girls with missing limbs and maybe sheep, but still we had no luck at all. The gig ended, and up the stairs we went to re-heat some Ragu ravioli and get blotto, 500 miles from home.
One night, Sitting around the kitchen table, the air filled with blue smoke, we began a fresh edition of "Burp-Olympics."
"Burp-Olympics" was an on-going beer drinking and belching competition involving nine guys, a thousand beers, and a small cassette recorder.
The idea was to suck down an entire beer as fast as possible, hit play and record on the cassette recorder, and then spork it back up as loudly as possible.

The burps would then be rated by "the judges" by their loudness, length, and originality. (I still have the tapes)
Somewhere around sunrise, I decided that because I was the leader of the band, I would set a good example and be the first one to go to bed.

I needed to go to the bathroom. Bolo had been in there for a long time, making ape-like noises and disgusting fart sounds. This was normal.
I knocked on the door. More gorilla sounds came from inside the bathroom.
When the door opened, I realized why Bolo had been in there so long.

He had been transforming into a cave man.

Wearing nothing but a shredded towel as a loin cloth, he had painted his face with some sort of war-paint, and frizzed his enormous afro straight out in all directions.

He also carried a baseball bat. (his club)
"ME CAVEMAN!" he yelled, and he proceeded to sit back down at the kitchen table to resume drinking.
I told him I was going to bed, and the soundman "Flathead," began interviewing the caveman, using the cassette recorder.

I staggered out of the bathroom towards my hotdog-bun bed. This did not meet with the caveman's approval.

"CAVEMAN SAY NO BED! CAVEMAN SAY STAY UP. DRINK! he slammed the bat against the table and everyone laughed.
I told him to cut the shit, and went to bed.
The door flew open, and the caveman entered my bedroom armed with a big pot of ravioli and a spatula, which had been on the stove. "CAVEMAN SAY NO BED!" he grunted.
Then he began using the spatula to catapult the ravioli at me as I tried to sleep.
I pulled the covers over my head and swore, as the caveman pelted me with more pasta. It's pretty hard to sleep while you're being pelted with ravioli.

The next thing I knew, there were other bandmates in the room, laughing, kicking the bed, telling me to get up and drink, all of this being tape recorded of course.

Someone took a plunger from the bathroom and fooped it onto the ceiling above my head.
My temper boiled over, and I jumped out of bed in my underwear, grabbed the plunger, and began killing people with it. They retreated back into the kitchen as I chased them swinging the plunger.

The caveman found this to be tremendously funny, so I focused my wrath on him.
He ran down the stairs, out the front door and onto the streets and sidewalks of Niagara Falls Boulevard, and I followed him, me in my underwear, wildly swinging the plunger, and the caveman in his shredded towel loincloth and warpaint, the rest of the band, hanging out the windows screaming with laughter.
The sun was coming up now, and people on their way to work couldn't believe what they were seeing ...me... (in my underwear) chasing the caveman around a car, when suddenly I heard the whoop of a siren.
"SHIT! THE COPS!" the caveman yelled, and I forgot about being mad and we both ran back into the slum.

The cops began pounding on the door. The band began hiding illegal things, and Bolo and I struggled to get into our clothes and clean up.

The cops kept pounding and we had to let them in.
They came in, looked around. Sniffed the air.
They were not happy with us.
One of them said something to the effect of this: "I don't know what the f*ck you guys think you were doing out there, but If I have to come back here again, you're all going to jail."

Then they asked whose van was parked on the sidewalk. It was mine. They gave me a ticket for parking on the sidewalk and left.
I still have the ticket in my scrap-book
(note the time)
I never did pay it.

The Stupidest Bastard On Earth- (a gig story) [2005]

I am the stupidest bastard on earth.

Tonight I got ready for my gig, with the usual rituals, except I could not find my watch.
When I play I depend on my old Velcro watch.It's cheap. I've had it for about ten years. It keeps perfect time.
It's comfortable. I wear it backwards on the inside of my wrist, and when I get to the last chorus of a song, I always look to see where I am time-wise,in the set, already trying to think of what song to play next. Thirty years of conditioning has done this to me.

Only tonight after my ritual shower etc... I could not find my trusty cheap Velcro piece of shit watch. So I went and grabbed a nice old expensive watch out of my drawer and slapped it on my wrist. I never wear it, cause it does an epilady hair tearing thing to my arm every time I wear it.

It looks nice, but the metal Twist-O-Flex watchband feels like an expensive hamster is chewing your wrist.

Solo gig. First set, I went an hour and ten minutes, and took a break. Had a drink, played another set. took a break, looked at my watch, man, this night was FLYING!

Did another set, things went well, lots of requests, somebody sent a drink up, sang happy birthday to a big ugly broad who looked like Julia Child, looked at my watch, played two more songs, said good night.
Some guy asked for one more. I played one more. Started right into tearing the shit down. Packing the guitars etc... while the programmed music played. Shut down the PA, my sore arm was killing me and I started putting stuff on my rolling cart.

The waitress comes up. "Are you done?" Yes I was. "It's only 11:30!" I look at my expensive watch, the one I never wear. It says 12:40. Then it finally hits me. I am the stupidest bastard on earth.

Stupidest bastard on earth!
The watch is an hour ahead.

What are ya gonna do? Set all back up again and play another set? I go up to the manager.
Me...The stupidest bastard on earth. I show him my watch. I apologize.
He calls me a stupid bastard and laughs. (luckily)
I ask him, "Am I the stupidest bastard on earth?" He nods, with a big smile on his face. "Relax Kenny. If I was mad, I'd tell ya. See ya next week, you stupid bastard!"

I went home, an hour early, my wife was surprised.

I made a good stiff drink, took off my expensive watch, and wrote this. I looked at my arm.

There's no hair where the expensive hamster chewed it off.

Practical Jokes In bands

In 1980 I played in a rock band called The Night People.

We bought another bus and went out to Connecticut a lot for some reason.

These guys were heavily into practical jokes.

One night while I was passed out, they took my shoes and socks off and painted my feet black with liquid shoe polish.

I woke up with a "Please Kill Me," hangover, jumped into the shower, looked down at my black feet and let a screech outta me.

I thought I had a disease.

It took me hours of scrubbing to get the black off my feet, and I began planning my revenge.I hopped in the bus and went to the store.

I bought 6 tubes of super glue and 3 packages of hot dogs.

I waited for my bandmates to borrow the bus to go out for more beer. Then while they were gone, I went to work.

I cut the hot dogs into inch long pieces, and carefully placed a piece of a hot dog into every pocket of every piece of clothing they owned.

Then I began super gluing everything they owned to whatever surface it was resting on.

I superglued their shoes to the floor, their matches to their cigarettes,the lid to their coolers shut.

I glued their deodorant to the table. Etc Etc...

After the big "Get Even," I thought it was over.

It wasn't.

They got water balloons and greeted me with a total bombardment when I came into my room.

I borrowed a key to their room from the front desk. The wall switch turned on the wall plug, where the lamp plugged in. I knew that.

So I set up a flash bomb with a massive dose of flash powder, and waited. the band often used flash bombs in our act.

When they came home they flicked the switch and got knocked on their asses by the explosion, which set all the alarms off in the hotel.

The management was not happy with us.

Then they saw the damage that the water balloons had done, and they threw us out.

We got a new hotel.

The next day, While they were all asleep I changed all their watches and clocks 4 hours ahead.

Then I woke them up and told them they were late for the gig.

They all started taking showers and ironing as fast as they could to get ready for the gig.

When It was just about time to leave, I pretended to be pissed at them for being late, and took off in the bus without them.

I went to the pet store and bought two gerbils and a habit trail.

I brought the gerbils into the hotel room and told them that I'd decided not to go to the gig. That I would stay in my room with my gerbils.

They thought I'd lost my F*cking mind.

I let it all go on till gig time, and they looked very worried and confused, and then I told them what I had done with the clocks.

We all laughed our asses off for a while, and they promised never to screw around with me again.

The next day they filled my shoes with cool whip.