8/25/2000 (Friday)

Deaner's Tour Diary

24 hours on a bus sucks, no matter what your final destination. When you're going to England, on a bus with no music, with a driver who hates you, to a festival packed to the gills with shitty bands, with diesel fumes blowing out of the vents into your bunk,it can have a devastating effect on the morale of a tour. We had just taken the ferry from Belgium back over to Dover, England and we had about 3 and a half hours to get to our hotel in Redhill where we would rest before the Reading Festival. I had eaten a bunch of some girl's menstrual cramp medicine with a lot of vodka and passed out in the upstairs lounge in front of the tv watching "Men in Black" when the bus suddenly stopped on the side of the road. Our driver had seen enough of Ween apparently, and called the police on his cell phone to meet him at a pre-determined location. He came into the back of the bus and the dialogue went something like this. "The police are here,get your shit and get the fuck off me bus..." The cocksucker had called the police and left us on the side of the road. In retrospect, this was probably a smart move on his part for 2 reasons. 1) where I come from, this is justifiable cause for a complete beatdown, and the police probably saved his life... and 2) we were seriously considering setting the bus on fire at the end of the "tour." Fortunately, the hotel was only a short distance away, and it was agreed between the police, driver, and Paulie (our tour manager) that the driver would drive our equipment to a rest area and wait for a new bus company to come get our shit. Dave Dreiwitz took pictures of this whole fiasco, I'll try and post them soon. Our new bus driver was named Uncle Mattie and he was about 7 feet tall. We got along great, altho this bus wasn't allowed to pull a trailer, which forced us to finish the tour with the equipment on the bus... in the aisles. Oh yeah, the Reading Festival sucked balls, and our new bus broke down 10 miles outside the festival on the first day. The poopship was now in full effect, with it's coordinates firmly locked on any unfortunate motherfucker who would cross our path.