We're Playing A Show Tomm, Europa in Brooklyn
It seems like just the other day I was whistling down the highway with two of my greatest friends and we were all remarking how great the van was running and how sad we would be when it finally died on some distant day too faraway to conceive. We talked about our future, grown-up selves setting it on fire and jumping it over the Giraffes van, driving it into the East River or even entering it into a demolition derby. Mitchell, selfless coward that he is, volunteered to man the camera from behind a flame-retardant concrete barrier. I think Shilpa was asleep, but I'm sure that for any of the above stunts, Shilpa would have been buckled into the passenger seat, if not strapped to the roof wearing one of those dorky aerodynamic helmets like Bill Cosby had in Leonard Part VI.
Well, it was just the other day that we were having this conversation, a week ago today to be exact, and the van barely made it through the night. It died about half an hour outside of our first road show, which we made only by the heroics of Jim Paradise from Fresh Kills, who had traveled out to Ohio to play with us (and kicked much ass). We ended up being in Athens for 4 days, played three shows there (one as Creedence Clearwater Revival, yahoo!) and would still be there if it wasn't for some big sacrifices from a friend we made in Ohio and our old pal, Danny Barria from the Big Sleep, who gets a big fucking gold star for picking up Mitchell's car and driving through the night to retrieve us and our gear for the show this weekend. Big thanks also to Zack from We March who wandered around looking for some poor sucker to eat the worm from a bottle of tequila on Friday night and to Mitchell for pointing him to where I was taking a much-needed nap in a booth. Apparently, I am sucker for all occasions...
The van was a 1992 Toyota Previa. I bought it in 2003 for $1100; it had 179,000 miles on it. I put 65,000 miles on it that year, playing shows in something like 37 states. I played with Metric, Broken Social Scene, the Dirtbombs, the Bronx, the Decemberists, Quintron and Miss Pussycat and a million other bands that nobody's ever heard of that meant way more to me than the names I just dropped. I drove it from Portland down through the Redwood Forest with my great friend Kris Gravesite to LA, was driven down the Pacific Coast Highway from Oakland down to LA by another great friend so hungover I felt like I was tripping, drove it through the Palm Desert into Phoenix... It went up to Montreal with The Big Sleep and I brought it as far North and West as Stanwood, WA (where they really know how to do biscuits and gravy, you'd be amazed) and I went down to Mile Zero on Highway 1 in Key West with The High Strung, the only band that will be left standing when everyone else has been voted off the island. When I joined Beat the Devil, I got great pleasure again and again from introducing Mitchell and Shilpa to my friends around the country and have them infallibly remark "Holy shit, man, you've still got the same van? I can't believe that thing is still running!" And yeah, I guess a lot of folks have stories about driving me home in it when I was too drunk to drive myself.
When I sold it to the garage for scrap for $150, the van had over 288,000 miles on it. I felt like I was shooting my horse. So here's to you, baby-- a drunkard's dream if I ever did see one.
We will be celebrating the life and death of our fallen comrade this Saturday, February 9th. Here's the details:
Beat the Devil w/ Stray Volts, Renminbi
Europa
98-104 Meserole Ave (at Manhattan)
Brooklyn, NY 11222
show starts at 9, we'll hit at 11
$10
best,
Mishka
