Subj: Driving the Shoulder (part 2) Date: 94-08-13 00:27:59 EDT From: L7s
Driving the Shoulder #26 (part 2)
We (the Band) left an hour after the crew, enjoying our status as “the Talent”. Everyone took a cab except for me, I hitched a ride with our Reprise/Warner rep. Helena. Helena and I left about fifteen minutes before the rest did with two hours to do what should have been forty minutes. We were flying down the highway up until we hit the same log jam that the bus was entangled in. We sat and we sat then we would dribble forward a few inches than sat some more. We finally rolled up to the cause of the back up. It seems that the city decided to shut down the main highway to our destination (someone in the promotion dept. failed to communicate with the city). We pulled to the site of the blockade and I politely told the state trooper, who was directing traffic away, that I was one of the artists performing and if it was possible for us to go through and he just yelled “KEEP MOVING RIGHT” I asked again and showed him my laminate and you know what he told me?!, “FOLLOW DIRECTIONS AND KEEP MOVING!!” Ouch! “Follow directions”?! We went another forty five minutes south out of way to another highway, asked directions in a small town, went up then down a mountain, through a military base, down a dirt road then BOOM I pulled up backstage just in time to MISS our set. That’s Gotta Hurt! What was even more f@cked is that the cab driver who everyone else went with knew a short cut that landed them there on time.
We ended up playing one song (“Andres”) at the end of the Bad Seeds set on their equipment and they even kicked down with the backup vocals they do so well. After we got off stage, a few not so cool, political events occurred that caused Jim from the Bad Seeds and I to resort to beer bottle tossing and porta potty tipping to blow off some steam.
-finch