“My homie L-Doug has rocks and he’s in Pasadena. “Look bro, I gotta know I can trust you, that the crew can trust you!” Shifty said. Usually roadie bitch work is a run to Guitar Center to replace a bad mic cable or to grab some food when the band is up late in the studio. He said the first order of business for me was to acquire him some crack cocaine… and he actually said it just like that. Judging by the erratic behavior I had witnessed, I thought it fitting. He said the only people that can call him ‘Seth’ now were his mom, Jesus, and his probation officer. He wanted everyone to call him by his new moniker, Shifty Shellshock. As I introduced myself, he informed me to never call him Seth. “Sorry bro, kinda tradition when we get a new roadie, bro!” The big dude that punched me stepped forward. I was standing there like an idiot, still holding part of the now empty case of beer. There were six big dudes standing in front of me while Janet, somewhere out of frame, was laughing her ass off. There I was, in a shitty studio apartment with blood coming out of my nose. I was still trying to gather myself, assesses my surroundings, and figure out if anyone else was going to hit me. That was when I heard “Welcome to the team bitch!” as a hand presented itself to help me up. I fell to the ground and while still slightly disoriented, tried to get up. I was still carrying the beer and as soon as the punch made contact, the 30-pack ripped open spilling cans everywhere. A fist came crashing into my nose so suddenly that I had no time to duck. She opened the door and let me go in first, which I thought was strange. In fact, it was absolutely silent inside. At that point, I wanted to chuck the case of beer and hightail it back to my car, but I soldiered on.Īs we arrived at the apartment, the music stopped thumping. The owner of the spent butt mumbled something in Vietnamese and went back into his apartment. As we were walking, I suddenly got hit in the head with a red hot cigarette butt. My place will never be on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens, but it was a damn sight better than this. I felt like I just walked into a prison in a foreign country. The features included an empty pool with a broken BBQ grill at the bottom, clotheslines strewn from one end of the upper floor to the next, and a good number of residents leaning off their balconies smoking and ashing their cigarettes as they stared at me. She chain smoked menthols and talked like a convict. She stood 5’2″ and was covered in tattoos. Or as she put it, it could lick her asshole. She said parking was terrible in her neighborhood. She forced a 30-pack of Natural Ice into my arms like a bundle of fire wood. First lesson being – don’t EVER tell a band that they can crash at your place “for a little bit”. I would come to learn a lot about the ‘rock star’ life from her. She rented the apartment where the band was crashing. I could hear the loud thump of a bass track bouncing around the walls of the courtyard, so I knew I was in the right place.įrom behind me a woman’s voice said, “Hey! Hey are you the new road bitch? Here! Carry some of this shit!” I rang the buzzer in the lobby of the apartment building. It was then I remembered that rent was overdue. Immediately, my mind shouted at me to run back to Costco and apologize to my old manager for calling him a prick in front of everyone in the hope he’d give me my job back. A bad feeling started to creep up it felt like my lower intestines were trying to force out whatever fecal matter might still be in my empty guts. I was confused so I doubled checked the address that I had written down. But when I arrived at my destination, it wasn’t a recording studio at all. Something similar to a nondescript building with a buzzer at the door and lots of musicians hanging around in the parking lot, guzzling beers and smoking weed. In my head I was picturing your typical recording studio. So I drove like a maniac to the ass end of Van Nuys I didn’t want to keep my new boss waiting! He said he was “super busy cutting mad demos” and to “hurry the fuck up”. Seth wasn’t very forthcoming on the phone, so all I had to work with was his sketchy directions to the studio. I had no idea where this adventure was going to take me. Today was the day I’d meet my new employers and I was anxious to say the least. Due to the length and amount of hours logged into my tour diaries, I’ll be breaking this up into several chapters and separately releasing each. Godspeed. Little did I know when I answered that Craigslist ad for a roadie what I’d be getting into. Prior to the band signing to a major label, they were a struggling act that toured relentlessly and partied relentlessly, as well. The following are excerpts from a diary I kept during my days on the road with the band Crazy Town.
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