More good stuff from Juliana Hatfield, who I’ve blogged about before in this space.
I’ve been reading her blogs via her Myspace page, but she actually does have a proper blog right here, which is where this entry comes from.
You’ll find lots of good rock and roll war stories like this one:
LITTLE PIECES
Or “little pizzas,” as I used to call it.
The first line: “You left the state without me” was taken straight from the mouth of George Hurley (drummer for Firehose and before that the Minutemen). The story goes something like this: The Blake Babies were touring with Firehose. Ed Crawford (Firehose singer/guitarist) had accidentally dropped and broken John Strohm’s guitar the night before, and he insisted on buying John a new one. So the next day, Ed and Strohm, along with Mike Watt (Firehose, and Minutemen, bass player) went guitar shopping. This was in New York, I think. Ed and Watt were supposed to meet George and the Firehose crew guy at a certain time at a certain corner and then drive down to the next gig in Richmond, Virginia, in the Firehose van, but one of the two parties got their plan screwed up and so when Ed and Watt went to the corner they thought was the meeting place, George and the crew guy weren’t there. And this was before cell phones, so neither party could call to find out where the other was. So Strohm suggested that Ed and Watt ride along with us, the Blake Babies, in our van, to Richmond. Watt was uneasy about leaving without half of his posse but he had no choice, really. He didn’t know where they were. So Watt and Ed rode with us. When we arrived at the club in Richmond, and Hurley saw Watt emerge from the Blake Babies van, he ran up to Watt and jumped on him, punching, shouting, “You fucking left the state without me.” A band is tight, a unit, like a gang, or a marriage, or a family, and shouldn’t be split up. George was pretty pissed off. Hurt.