Tattoos, Alcohol, and the Pop Disaster Tour of 2002
Waking Up
The Pop Disaster tour of 2002, was like you'd imagine it to be. A great, fantastic mess of disasters, consisting of memories faded by alcohol and laughs. Everything from being branded with a pool cue, to drinking bird shit laced orange juice, or male twerkers on the last set of Jimmy Eat World. This tour had it all.
I was fortunate enough to witness it all, unfortunately, not from the high end comfort of things... I obviously didn't know Blink, or Green Day, or any of the cast and crew, for that matter. I knew Kut U Up, and that was enough to earn me a spot on their tour bus for the summer.
I was 22 when I had decided I wanted to work as a guitar tech, and general, all-around roadie. Living in a small Canada town, the only band I knew personally, were the four fabulous boys from the wanna-be punk rock band, Kut U Up. Chris, Brandon, Brendon, and Micha. The four unorthadox bunch that would make up my summer, and the best summer of my existence.
I could start with how I stumbled into this, but like the fast pace punk music I'd been listening to for six months, I don't have time for that. Two and a half minute songs in three chord pop-punk melody.
Chris and I knew each other from school, and we'd always been close friends. He'd called me at three in the morning to excitedly tell me his band had landed a spot on the Pop Disaster tour. I almost laughed in disbelief. No one knew them, not the bands, not the crew, certainly not the fans. How'd they ever end up on this monster tour, you might be asking yourself?
Well, it turns out Chris was also close friends with Blink-182's Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus, and they'd invited them out. However they managed to make that work, I had no idea, but I felt nothing other than overjoyed disbelief for them. The next words to leave his mouth, was pleas and begs for me to join them, to be, in his own words, "Their personal unpaid intern friend who is a wizard with guitars and tech stuff."
With no other way to spend the next six months, the remaining weeks of spring, and my entire summer, I agreed. I was to meet them in two days at Brandon's house, and we were going to drive across the country, to California, where we meet up with the other bands. We wouldn't be driving in comfort, though. But in this rather nice (at the time) van Blink had gotten them to drive around during tour, with the addition of an Atticus sticker on the side.
With my bags packed, standing in front of Brandon's apartment with excitement un-explainable in words, we loaded up, and began to make our journey to California, where they'd do their first concert, and have their first chance on a tour, something far bigger than the club shows they'd been doing lately. We'd be going to California, to join three worldwide known bands on the punk-rock experience of a lifetime: The Pop Disaster Tour of 2002.
I was fortunate enough to witness it all, unfortunately, not from the high end comfort of things... I obviously didn't know Blink, or Green Day, or any of the cast and crew, for that matter. I knew Kut U Up, and that was enough to earn me a spot on their tour bus for the summer.
I was 22 when I had decided I wanted to work as a guitar tech, and general, all-around roadie. Living in a small Canada town, the only band I knew personally, were the four fabulous boys from the wanna-be punk rock band, Kut U Up. Chris, Brandon, Brendon, and Micha. The four unorthadox bunch that would make up my summer, and the best summer of my existence.
I could start with how I stumbled into this, but like the fast pace punk music I'd been listening to for six months, I don't have time for that. Two and a half minute songs in three chord pop-punk melody.
Chris and I knew each other from school, and we'd always been close friends. He'd called me at three in the morning to excitedly tell me his band had landed a spot on the Pop Disaster tour. I almost laughed in disbelief. No one knew them, not the bands, not the crew, certainly not the fans. How'd they ever end up on this monster tour, you might be asking yourself?
Well, it turns out Chris was also close friends with Blink-182's Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus, and they'd invited them out. However they managed to make that work, I had no idea, but I felt nothing other than overjoyed disbelief for them. The next words to leave his mouth, was pleas and begs for me to join them, to be, in his own words, "Their personal unpaid intern friend who is a wizard with guitars and tech stuff."
With no other way to spend the next six months, the remaining weeks of spring, and my entire summer, I agreed. I was to meet them in two days at Brandon's house, and we were going to drive across the country, to California, where we meet up with the other bands. We wouldn't be driving in comfort, though. But in this rather nice (at the time) van Blink had gotten them to drive around during tour, with the addition of an Atticus sticker on the side.
With my bags packed, standing in front of Brandon's apartment with excitement un-explainable in words, we loaded up, and began to make our journey to California, where they'd do their first concert, and have their first chance on a tour, something far bigger than the club shows they'd been doing lately. We'd be going to California, to join three worldwide known bands on the punk-rock experience of a lifetime: The Pop Disaster Tour of 2002.
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Ahhhh it's been a long time, hasn't it, dearly beloveds? :) Comment anything you'd like to see, it's great to be back to writing Green Day related stuff.