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June
11, 1998
stranded
Tonight we performed in Music City, an all ages club in Fountain Valley, California. Our band played very well tonight, and the sound man who usually does sound there did a great job. Hollywood (that's Shannon, our trombone player) and I carpooled up to this Orange County venue, leaving quite early at 6:30pm. It's about an hour and a half drive from San Diego to Fountain Valley, depending on how fast you wanna go. We were anxious to get there with plenty of time to spare so that we could properly warm up and have a successful soundcheck. Also, someone in our band (and I won't mention any names) has been habitually late recently, and so it has been proposed that we set some guidelines about arriving at the gig at least an hour before downbeat. It's unfortunate that it has to boil down to this, but I guess this issue about coming to the gig on time is quite important to the success of the band, and coming to the gig 10 minutes before downbeat just ain't cuttin' it. I remember in High School, the dance band I was playing in would dock its band members for being late. We had band members comin' in 15 minutes late and we would be already playing music on stage. They'd be smilin' and casually strollin' up to the stage as if nothing was wrong.
After the gig, we had loaded all our things into the mini-van and when I cranked the ignition I found out that the battery in my mini-van was dead. Wild Thing (Jamie, trumpet) gave us a jump, and it was fortunate that he was still there, for everyone else had taken off for San Diego, with the exception of Warren, our lead vocalist, who was still mingling with the crowd. Well, we were on the freeway going home when only 10 minutes on 405 south, the headlights started to dim. When we decided to pull over and exit on the next offramp, I noticed that the engine had quit and we were pretty much coastin'. We were able to turn the corner and stop at the left turn lane and saw a Chevron station. From here on we had to push the mini-van to try and get it up the driveway of the Chevron station.... no such luck. We backed up and tried the next driveway.... it was futile. Wild Thing said we could page him if there were any troubles. And so Hollywood used his cell phone and made the call. He wasn't so sure his calls were coming through, so he left a message with directions on how to find us. Meanwhile, I called the Auto Club and had a tow truck come over. Then, we waited.... Wild Thing arrived before the tow truck did, and we tried to jump the mini-van again. We actually left it charging for awhile hoping to build up enought of a charge. While waiting, the tow truck finally arrived and the guy said we had two options. We could either have him tow the vehicle to San Diego for $300.00, or we could stay overnight until the Chevron station opened and get a new alternator put in, which by the way, was obviously the problem in this situation, as determined by the tow truck driver. Well, what I ended up deciding, was to transfer as much as we could into Wild Thing's car, and then just ride back to San Diego with him, and then in the morning go back up to Orange County and somehow bring the mini-van back to San Diego.
After dropping Hollywood off at his house, Wild Thing took me back to my house. It was about 4:30am. We were both exhausted from this little ordeal, especially after having performed our @$$e$ off at Music City. Wild Thing was to arrive at his place at about 5:00am. Well, I thanked Wild Thing for coming back to get us, because he was originally ahead of us when he got our message, and had to back track to get to where we had stalled. Thanks a bunch Wild Thing! If it wasn't for you, we would've had to camp out in the middle of Orange County.
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