That tour was shit...

March 9th – It was always thought to be de rigueur in the 70’s, when on tour, to do some ‘stuff’. You know, tip a telly or two out the window or drive a Bentley into the swimming pool, or fill the drummer’s bed with the contents from 250 cans of baked beans…that last one…? Probably wasted effort; he’d not realise anything was wrong…you wanna freak out a drummer? Tidy his room. 

We all know the apocryphal tales of excess by rock musicians that have made the press and entered into rock history; snorting your dad; clandestine sexual relations between supposedly womanising rock gods; foolishness with heroin; snorting ants. And with fans willingness to do stupid things in order to get close to their heroes, of being willing to do anything to become ‘famous’ for a few fleeting seconds (there’s an empty life right there) or become memorable in the lives of people who have the memory capacity of flea and who are happily disposed to use these fools up just for the thrill let's face it, there's plenty of material.

The notorious ‘mud shark’ incident so ably described by Frank Zappa on the ‘Live at the Filmore East’ album (Jan 10th) is one of the more vividly recorded abstract rock-events, one I never thought could be topped by anyone, let alone a rock tour bus driver…

On this day in 2005, a group of tourists enjoying the scenic and architectural beauties of Chicago from a river cruiser were brought into close contact with the rock sensation that was The Dave Matthews Band and got to know them intimately.

Parked on a bridge over the river, the band's bus driver decided that this was an excellent place to empty out the bus’s very full, two-day-old dunny can; ‘splash’ was replaced by ‘screams’ and rock-band credibility took another nose-dive. He denied it, of course…wouldn't you? But after careful reflection had to admit that, yes, that was indeed him being shown emptying the pot in glorious b/w on several of the fifteen-plus video surveillance cameras scattered along the bridge. What the cruiser-riders opinion of the band was has not been recorded for posterity; probably not to their taste.

We have to be fair and say that the band members were not on the bus at the time of the incident. Going on past events it’s probably just as well; if they had been my guess is a competition would have swiftly ensued and satisfaction not achieved until the tour bus had followed the bucket of shit into the river…just after the drummer.