Car-Perpetuation

I saw De La Soul live at the old Baitshack, a former seafood restaurant at Waterside, Norfolk (now a Hooters, last I saw) on February 18th 1996, two days before my 27th birthday. And the day sure could have started out a whole heck of a lot better.

It had snowed. A hell of a lot for a town that doesn't see much of it. And on the morning of the gig Joe, who had booked and promoted the show, got into a massive car accident on the way in early as a result of the other guy flipping his radio dial, the irony being that the ice and snow had basically melted away by that point. Bad enough to nearly total his long-ass 1984 Chevy Caprice Classic, which the They Might Be Giant dweebs we both have befriended over the years often affectionately nicknamed Joe's "Boat of Car". Joe managed to crawl out of the wreckage unscathed, enough so to hail a taxi to take him to the Baitshack and prepare for the show. I didn't find out about it until after the fact, and was mostly relieved that Joe was largely unhurt, so I showed up later in my car with our then-roommate Steve in tow, with his brand spankin' new camera on hand. Steve, once a struggling painter, had recently switched to photography, and had a rather uncanny knack for getting each one of his insanely expensive pro-grade cameras stolen every few months, typically out of someone's car (to the admittedly rather callous amusement of most of our mutual friends, who keep warning him not to keep advertising his cameras in pretentiously showy $500 professional camera bags -- I still laugh thinking about the time Steve and our friend Just Dave had their car broken into while up in NYC, where Steve's swanky camera and camera bag ensemble was taken, but Dave's camera, left hidden under a ratty old baseball cap, was left behind -- but I digress).

After the gig the three of us braved the elements in my car and headed to IHOP, where the guys were taking me to an early birthday 2am breakfast. It had snowed heavily again, so I suppose we were all a little too snowblind to see the NO PARKING VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED sign in the parking lot across from the busy IHOP lot, because after breakfast we came out to an empty spot where my car (and several others that had parked with us) had been. We had initially believed it to be stolen (Steve was pitching a world-class fit over having another expensive camera stolen in two months) until the irascible old man who owned the lot (and apparently holed himself up in the office after all hours of the night towing people who park in his lot, doubtlessly receiving some kind of kickback from the towing company) ran out screaming at us to the point where we instantly began to glean where my car had been taken. The towing company, conveniently just down the road, was just getting ready to pull my car into the gated lot when Steve and I threw our bodies onto the hood and held ourselves there while Joe unleashed his formidable fury onto the tow truck man. Long story short, they weren't going to tow a kicking, screaming guy and gal into their lot at 3 o'clock in the morning, but they weren't going to unhook the car without a little something-something, so I think we handed him a $20 bill and he let us all go home. Oh, and Steve's camera was still safe in the trunk. I guess that's the karma I get for laughing so long and often at his constant personal-item ganking misfortunes.

Where was I heading with all this? Oh, De La Soul. Good show. Not bad for your typical track-act. And as you can see they signed my copy of the "Buddy/Ghetto Thang" 12" single from their first (and personally, still best) album 3 Feet High And Rising. Yeah, the guys have been a tad inconsistent over the years since, but I do highly recommend their most recent disk, The Grind Date, for some good funk-soul brother hip-hopery.

Here's the 12" single version of "Buddy", lifted straight off my record. And only available for the next 7 days.

"Buddy "(12"Native Tongue Decision Mix featuring The Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love) by De La Soul

M4a file -- available for 7 days.