GUS THE BUS I spent a good deal of time in my twenties traveling around the US. & Canada in various buses, with various bands. The original Gus The Bus had a bathroom in it which never worked well, and always smelled awful. That's because of one of our favorite activities went like this: If you were driving, and the rest of the band was drinking, the most fun you could have, was to wait for someone to use the bathroom. As soon as the poor guy was in there draining his weasel, your job was to alternate between slamming on the breaks, tromping on the gas pedal, and swerving from side to side. The poor bastard who was in the closet-like bathroom would be getting slammed against each wall, like he was on Star Trek during a Klingon attack, swearing, and trying desperately not to piss all over himself. Eventually the bathroom became unusable and we duct taped it shut. The beer drinking in the band never stopped though, so soon we began using a large wax bucket with a handle on it as our toilet. This didn't stop the driver from playing Star Trek. In fact, it made it more fun, because you could actually look in the rear-view mirror as you swerved and stomped, and you got to watch the attempted wee-wee marksmanship, while trying to knock the whizzing musician on his ass, mid stream. It was great fun. On long trips, sometimes the bucket would be about half full of rented beer, dangerously sloshing around. I remember one day when the bus got cut off by another vehicle and the bucket splattered everyone in used Miller Lite. After that, we stopped using the bucket and people began pissing right out the front door of the bus while we were rolling down the highway. The driver would pull into the right lane, and slow down a little. This lead to many hilarious moments as we would pass the on-ramps to the highways giving the other vehicles a shocking display of lewdness. Usually we would use "Spotters." In other words, as you whizzed out the door at 50 MPH, one of the other guys would hold onto the back of your coat to keep you from falling out, pleading with the driver not to play Star Trek and make you die with your hydrant open... The inevitable did happen, luckily on a side street and not on a highway. Our sax player Tommy fell out of the bus on the way to a gig at K's Too, in Lowell, with the door in one hand and his Johnson in the other. It was his own fault. He didn't use a "Spotter." He took the door with him as he fell. ZING! Right off the hinges! It was a regular house door which had replaced the original bus door. Tommy was lucky enough to use it as a sled when he spilled out. He was scraped up pretty bad, but the door took the hit, and after a trip to the emergency room, he played sax for us that night. We drove the bus home from the gig with no door on it that night. We were much more careful after that though. Everyone made sure to use a "spotter," when we whizzed out the door, and we stopped playing Star Trek from that point on. |
