Band Van Stories / Woes

[Bassman Sam]

My old band used to play at Robin's 2 in the Midlands regularly and being Essex based and having no van, we would hire a trailer and I would tow the gear to the gig. We would always make for the bar on arrival for a swift one before unloading but this time we unloaded first and I parked up in the car park at the rear of the venue. 10 minutes later I went back to get my ciggies from the car and the trailer was gone. Some twunt had nick it. Thank f@ck we unloaded first.

To get back to Essex, a punter drove the gear from Dudley to Chelmsford in his transit and wouldn't take any fuel money. What a star.

[peteb]

Despite spending much of the 80s travelling up and down the country in the back of a transit, I haven’t got too many good stories apart from the time that the singer mistakenly topped up the petrol tank with water, which made for an interesting journey home! The best van stories I have are secondhand and happened to various mates.

A guy that I used to share a house with, along with a few other mates played at various times in a pro showband, travelling up and down the country playing workingmans clubs and army bases, etc back in the days when you could make a living doing so. To amuse themselves on the long trips they used to always take a shotgun along, so that they could take potshots at passing motorway signs at 3 o’clock in the morning, etc. They used to have a roadie who always drove, chainsmoking and continually dropping ash in to an overflowing ashtray, which he kept by his side next to the handbrake. The guitar player thought that it would be a rather jolly idea to remove the ash from his ashtray, empty a shotgun cartridge into it and then refill with ash! Once they got on the motorway he lit a cigarette, whilst everyone in the back seats of the van waiting with bated breath to see what happened. Apparently it didn’t go off immediately, but halfway home he managed to stub out a cig on the gunpowder, which of course exploded, filling the cab with smoke causing him to veer onto the hard shoulder at 70mph, nearly crashing the van with all the other occupants in hysterics……

[thisnameistaken]

I think you win the thread.

[peteb]

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1334689411' post='1619881']
I think you win the thread.
[/quote]
I fear I don't do the story justice! You ought to hear them tell it - hilarious!

Your trip across America was pretty cool......

[WalMan]

Let's see (and in writing this I realise just how many death traps we seemed to have owned over the years!!)

Being stood in the middle of nowhere on the Eastbourne road with one of the roadies/mates (who was a bike mechanc) taking the carb on the Transit apart with a screwdriver, by the light of a dimming torch. He got it back together and the misfire problem we had had for some time never returned IIRC.

Re enacting Basil Fawlty's whipping of his recalcitrant Austin on the same van earlier in the evening when the fecker wouldn't start.

Too many gigs in the same van, full of gear 4 or 5 across the front & another 2 or 3 lying on top of the gear in the back.

Pulled by the boys in blue in the Commer van with the drummer sat in the back on the gear sharing out the scoff we had rescued from the buffet. Side door slides back "Blimey there's more of them" says plod "Sausage roll officer?" says the drummer.

Going to a photoshoot in London in the daytime prior to a gig in the evening back on the coast. Stuck in traffic & something (driveshaft possibly) dropped out, thankfully only a few yards from a garage who fixed the van & sent us on our way.

Same van on the way back from a weekend gig in Germany & the alternator packed up somewhere on the autobahn so that by the time we got off the ferry and back to home town we were navigating by torches out of the window (thankfully @ around 3 in the morning)

Driving the bands bedford bus (caged off halfway back and described as a "mobile home") back through Hastings on the night the brakes decided they didn't really want to work much and coming down the hill stood on the foot and exhaust brakes with one of the others hauling back on the hand brake.

Years back when the others were running a big theatrical show like The Tubes / Alice Cooper our soundguy was driving the 3 ton truck with all the gear in back from a gig when a woman who had decided life wasn't worth it decided that the band lorry would be the thing to drive at at speed to end it all.

Slightly more recently he was stopped in a smaller van with the PA in it by an excitable young constable and his puppy walker. "Have you been drinking?" "Only water all night" "Well in that case I require you to take a roadside narcotics test" Puppy walker stood on the passenger side raises his eyebrows. "Why?" Response from the puppy was to the effect "You look dozy" which was greated by cries of "HE ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE THAT!" from the rest of the van & puppy walker telling us to sod off before putting the leash on his charge

[peteb]

[quote name='WalMan' timestamp='1334697335' post='1620038']
Slightly more recently he was stopped in a smaller van with the PA in it by an excitable young constable and his puppy walker. "Have you been drinking?" "Only water all night" "Well in that case I require you to take a roadside narcotics test" Puppy walker stood on the passenger side raises his eyebrows. "Why?" Response from the puppy was to the effect "You look dozy" which was greated by cries of "HE ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE THAT!" from the rest of the van & puppy walker telling us to sod off before putting the leash on his charge
[/quote]
[color=#222222]Last year we were coming back from a blues festival in a very smart part of Cheshire in an old van borrowed from one of the band leader’s mates in Halifax when we were stopped at 2o’clock in the morning by what must be the politest policeman I’ve ever met![/color]
[color=#222222][font="Times New Roman"][size="3"] [/size][/font][/color]
[color=#222222]Once he had satisfied himself that we were not on the way to rob Wayne Rooney’s house he sent us on our way having apologised for keeping us from our beds, not commenting that we had the keyboard player sat on my bass cab in the back (thereby no seat, yet alone seatbelt), a knackered van that must have had something wrong with it if you looked hard enough, or that we had a couple of open bottles of beer. Come to think of it, not even a suggestion of a breathalyser (Paddy was driving and had drunk two bottles of this local strawberry beer that the landlord had been giving us all day – completely sober but most coppers would have still have had a go at getting a result on a breathalyser)[/color]
[color=#222222][font="Times New Roman"][size="3"] [/size][/font][/color]
[color=#222222]Nope, just apologies and wishing us a speedy journey home. If only all policemen were like that….!![/color]

[peteb]

[color=#222222]Yet another van story while I think of it, concerning a mate of mine who is a singer with a kind of sleazy charm that seems to be irresistible to a certain type of female![/color]

[color=#222222]He was doing a gig in a WM club with his band in South Yorkshire somewhere, having taken the woman he was living with at the time and who happens to be the mother of (two of) his children. At the gig he meets a young lady who seems very friendly and is intimating that she would like to be even friendlier! In order to oblige, he sneaks her out to the hire van that they are using for the gig where they enjoy a brief, but undoubtedly very romantic assignation.[/color]

[color=#222222]He then starts to worry that he has been missing for a while and that his missus may be wondering where he is. So he sends the girl back to the bar and gets in the hire van and intentionally crashes it into an archway, causing it very minor damage. He then goes back into the club saying “lads, I was just moving the van and I’ve crashed it into the archway”. They go outside to inspect the damage, moaning about his driving and how accident prone he is – thus alerting his partner’s suspicions that he has been up to no good (again)…..[/color]

Edited April 18, 2012 by peteb

[Toddy]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but amazed to realise it was nearly twelve months ago the thread was started because our old sprinter was poorly, just realised since then, she has been round the UK coast anti-clockwise twice , as well as many trips to Scotland, south coast, north east, and its still earning its living., sat here trying to remember the last 12 months worth of calamities' but highlights include,, pa pushing the side window out in Yarmouth, window went flying but didn't smash!, good old gaffa tape fix to get us home, ignition switch failure, still not fixed !, soldering iron to the ready!, hit a caravan, got hit up the backside at the toll station on the Humber bridge (no damage to us,, totalled the little van with the idiot driver who was on the phone!), err ripped the back door handle off in a freak unicycle accident, new radiator, glow plugs, starter motor, broke the only ignition key, snapped wiper arm in Glasgow, but, did get round to mending the radio! looking a very tatty old van at min,, but bless her for getting us this far,, and loads to do yet. Sprinters are cool

[MiltyG565]

[quote name='Toddy' timestamp='1362616908' post='2002391']
Sorry to revive an old thread, but amazed to realise it was nearly twelve months ago the thread was started because our old sprinter was poorly, just realised since then, she has been round the UK coast anti-clockwise twice , as well as many trips to Scotland, south coast, north east, and its still earning its living., sat here trying to remember the last 12 months worth of calamities' but highlights include,, pa pushing the side window out in Yarmouth, window went flying but didn't smash!, good old gaffa tape fix to get us home, ignition switch failure, still not fixed !, soldering iron to the ready!, hit a caravan, got hit up the backside at the toll station on the Humber bridge (no damage to us,, totalled the little van with the idiot driver who was on the phone!), err ripped the back door handle off in a freak unicycle accident, new radiator, glow plugs, starter motor, broke the only ignition key, snapped wiper arm in Glasgow, but, did get round to mending the radio! looking a very tatty old van at min,, but bless her for getting us this far,, and loads to do yet. Sprinters are cool
[/quote]

My dad has an ancient sprinter, which he revived from the grave after a long long time off the road. Filled with rust, busted windows (an ex-bus). The brakes just stop it and no more (i realised this when driving it around the pit-lanes with a racing car in the back). Everyday, i hear it cough and chug it's way back into life (it can take a few minutes) but it always does start, it always goes, it always does what it is supposed to, but it gets on like an arthritic old bastard with pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Stick with a transit. Rough as all get out, will rust before your eyes, but you can guarantee the engine will still be running long after the body is beyond repair