Diesel Disaster.

Before the show in Pittsburgh we had a van disaster. And i’m ashamed to say that it was perhaps my fault. I know, sometimes even the great ones show signs of being human. I say it was perhaps my fault, i’ll let you decide my level of guilt - let’s stage our own version of Judge Judy where everyone is the Judge and I am both the witness and the accused. Let me paint the scene: It was directly after the previous show in Kentucky and we’d stopped beside our hotel to fuel up (nothing completes a good gig more than a bit o’ fueling), which also happened to be the only station that had the Ultra Low Sulfur Highway Diesel Fuel (or just Diesel as non Americans call it) that we required. Our fuel card didn’t work at the pump so Andy went inside to pay the non-futuristic way using the attendant, who lit up the green pump and I went for it - fueled my heart out. It was a textbook fuel up, one of my best. There wasn’t even any drips when I put the pump back in it’s holster (easy now), and it had filled up quicker than I thought so we got to claim back a whole 7 DOLLARS. It was a memorable moment. Once we pulled out of the garage though the van started to start acting a little strange? It was kind of acting like it was a kangaroo, and not a piece of engineering. As we got close to the hotel it gave up on us completely... and then it hit us. “Craig, did you fill it with Diesel?”, “Of course” was my retort. “Are you sure?”, “As sure as I know i’m devilishly handsome” was my hilarious reply. It turns out I may not be as devilishly handsome as I thought, as I had filled up the van with some grade A unleaded petroleum.

.... So my defense is as follows - when a pump is green it usually means diesel and when someone lights that same pump up it’s impossible not to follow the shiny light. I am merely a vessel that follows the instructions lain out in front of me. I’ll entrust you, the world, to come to a fair and right decision. My only question is this: If you saw something light up in front of you, would you too not also pick it up and pour loads of it into your van without checking what it says? I think we all know what the answer would be, and it rhymes with BES.

Luckily we had a day off after this ‘mistake’ so we spent it at the hotel whilst the van got it’s own version of a colonic irrigation. I think it worked out much more expensive than a human version of this procedure though, and it came back smelling like mechanics. But true disaster had been averted, and we set off for Pittsburgh the following morning. Fast forward 5 hours, and we there in the heart of Pittsburgh - the magic of travelling. That was like time travel for anyone reading this, you got to miss out the boring part in the middle. We’d played Pittsburgh before but it must have been on the outskirts as we drove through a vast metropolis just before we reached the venue. The venue itself was part of the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium (I think they may be some sort of thief outfit, and they keep all their swag in this massive stadium?) and was called Stage AE. Guess what the AE stood for? American Eagle Outfitters. Preppy to the maximum. Everyone inside had cardigans over their shoulders and were wearing boat shoes. Not really. The place looked brand new though, which also made it seem slightly soulless. The stage was one of those corner of the room vibes, and was roughly the size of a small child if it were to lay flat on the ground.

The show was good fun though, Sam had two beers before the show so was wrecked and this made him inhabit the body of Axl Rose when Guns N’ Roses were playing stadiums in the glory days. He was screaming something about rock and roll that the American crowd seemed to understand much more than his Scottish band mates who were audibly closer to him. He ended the gig by getting naked and diving into the crowd. Not really. Afterwards we went to a ‘Scottish’ themed bar called The Tilted Kilt which it seems may have been opened by someone who has never been to Scotland and perhaps and has confused Scotland with ‘America’ or ‘England’. Cue a very American looking menu and pictures of Sid & Nancy on the wall, aswell as a Union Jack? The most Scottish thing about the place was maybe the fact that the waitresses were wearing tartan mini-skirts or that there were something called Irish Nachos on the menu (which were just normal nachos, and Ireland is also not in Scotland). To top it off, their attempt at a Scottish flag outside appeared to be a Jamaican flag with a horse on it. It felt like I was back home but actually further away than ever before.

I got back to catch the end of AWOLNATION’s set, where a stage invasion took place. There was a girl on the stage who was dancing, but her dance moves consisted of what appeared to be her shagging the air, for the rest of the set. Barry confirmed to me that she’d been doing this the whole gig. Crazy times. I also met a woman backstage just as we were leaving who’d been at the venue the whole day and asked me what I was doing in the venue. When I told her and asked her the same question she said she did whatever she wanted. When I asked if she worked at the venue she said no. Stage AE, there may be a crazy lady that lives in your venue. She had a MacBook Pro and iPhone so she is clearly powerful - APPROACH WITH CAUTION.

click photos to enlarge...