![]() Then, as you stood there staring hopelessly at the bottom of the pot with hunger, weakness, and utter despair coursing through your veins, one of the roommates would inevitably walk up to you and say, “ Hey man, wanna buy a dialer?” You’d reluctantly go back to the pot of gruel to make yourself another mixture of cold, wet crimson slop, and it would be gone because all of his roommates who were “helping with the show” ate it. ![]() You would eat this stuff and immediately be hungry again in five minutes. While it’s always a kind gesture for someone to make food for you, the bar was set at the bare minimum. It was like eating an entire pot full of that nasty water that comes out of a ketchup bottle if you don’t shake it up first. If you were really blessed, he would put stuff some sort of fake meat in there along with a few carrots. You would open the lid of the pot to see a lukewarm pool of reddish-colored water that, if you were lucky, would sometimes have part of a tomato floating in it. In those grim times, this guy would give you something he referred to as “food,” which would show up in a giant pot and there was usually a Tupperware container of cold rice to go with it. Looking back, these days I wouldn’t trust this guy to wash my windshield. Imagine this person being responsible for paying you money, feeding you, and giving you a place to sleep while on the road. This guy lived in every town in America and Canada in the 90s and somehow continued to thrive in Europe for an additional five or so years. His backpack was covered in patches, and not good patches-just whatever came in the shitty 7-inches from his distro. He often had a shirtsleeve on his head holding back dreadlocks. His shirt usually had a graphic that mimicked the logo of a metal band, but instead of the band’s name it said VEGAN. There was one in every town: a somewhat slovenly guy who accessorized way too much, namely tight chokers and Krishna beads (though he was rarely a devotee), and his clothes were ill-fitting and usually consisted of a pair of cutoff “shorts” that were easily eight sizes to big and barely cleared his Jack Purcells. When I started spending a lot of time on the road in the mid-90s, there were quite a few vegan straight edge “promoters” in the hardcore scene. At its essence, punk stew is a sad amalgam of soup and chili, or at least that what it’s supposed to be. So for those of you never travelled without your beloved iPhone, I offer you a small glimpse into the Stone Age: the history of tour food.īorn in the grand tradition of the intrepid Texas rangers who spent their days on horseback bringing banditos to justice in the old West is, punk stew stalwart of tour food. Most kids who are now just entering into the world of touring are unaware of just how grim things used to be. With Yelp, Urbanspoon, and food blogs, all you need to do is touch the screen of your iPhone and up pops a list of all the best places to eat, wherever you are. But what they don’t talk about is how it changed being on the road, and more specifically how it changed eating on tour. You always hear music industry types talk about how the internet changed everything, how it took the power away from the major labels and put it in the hands of the fans and the artists. As such, he’s fallen into a second career as a public speaker trying to caution children not to take the crooked path he chose after football.Throughout those many years on the road I also experienced the opposite end of the spectrum, and bad meals occurred far more often than the life-changing ones. The justice system wasn’t about to be fooled twice and Newton was sentenced to serve hard time.įor many familiar with Newton, getting caught twice trying to traffic drugs is their most recent memory of him. Then in November 2001, he made the ill-advised decision to transport 213 pounds of marijuana and was busted driving a minivan with Mexico license plates in Louisiana.įinally, to prove that two wrongs don’t make a right, he was caught trafficking 175 pounds of marijuana in Texas just one month later while out on bail. In fact, he worked as a commentator for ESPN radio and did some work on BET football coverage upon retirement. Through his good-natured, humorous interviews while a Cowboy, Newton appeared to be a sure thing for a second career as a broadcaster once his playing days were over. ![]() "When they finally caught me I found out I wasn’t smart at all. "I tell the kids I was a smart dummy, because I knew what I was doing was wrong and I knew that one day it was going to come to an end," Newton said. He instead talks about how quick the fall from the top was for him. But that’s not the story the gregarious former offensive lineman is telling school children. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |