I, Shithead by Joey Keithley

Author:Joey Keithley [Keithley, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography/Memoir, Music, MUS030000
ISBN: 9781551523095
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2003-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

On New Year’s Eve 1982, D.O.A. was booked for another end-of-year show, but this time the venue wasn’t the Smilin’ Buddha – it was Irving Plaza in New York City. We were pretty excited about it. I had a big Christmas dinner with Laura and all my relatives, then the band and I set off in the Blue Bullet on Boxing Day, deadheading it 3,000 miles (4,860 kilometers) east.

As we drove through the American heartland, we got bored really fast with the music we were hearing on the radio. As they say in them thar parts, “Only two types of music around here, boy: country and western.” The music was intercut with farm reports and a show called “The Prophecies of the Bible,” hosted by Hubert W. Armstrong. To make matters worse, we had very little dough, and the Blue Bullet was sucking back gas faster than Alice Cooper could drink beer.

About halfway across the U.S., in South Dakota, we started hearing radio reports about a huge storm approaching. It was dark by the time snow really started falling. The road was flat, so we weren’t having much trouble driving, but we did notice snowdrifts building up along the roadside. Some of them were already four feet high.

A lot of cars had slipped off the highway and into the ditch. The radio jocks were now saying that the state police would close the i-90. Fuck that! On we went. But it was pure whiteout, and Dave had to slow down to about twenty miles an hour, and had to stick his head out the driver’s window to see where we were going. I stuck mine out on the passenger’s side, warning Dave, “Back to the left! Quick!” whenever he came too close to the edge of the road.

We were the only vehicle on the highway at this point. It was fucking nuts! We pulled off a good deed, though. There was a car by the side of the road with a guy slumped over the steering wheel. Dave stopped the van and I ran out and banged on the guy’s window, waking him up. We offered to give him a ride to the next town. It turned out he was in the U.S. Navy, and he was one grateful sailor that night.

We travelled for about another hour. The radio station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota said that absolutely nobody had gotten through the stretch of the i-90 that we were on and the cops had the road blocked at the Minnesota state line. We had another problem: we were almost out of gas! Finally we saw that the exit for Sioux Falls was just a mile ahead. We all cheered as if we were at a hockey game!

But when we got to the exit our cheers quickly turned to cursing. There were two semi’s with their trailers stuck on the off-ramp. Fuck! There was no way around into town, short of driving through an eight-foot snowdrift. So we stopped the van right on the interstate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.