A recently retired coworker of mine is married to Steve Booker (the drummer and producer) and I’ve met him a number of times as a result. She had fun stories. Steve is very good friends with George Clinton (yes, that George Clinton of P-Funk), who used to live around here, and did see him a few times around town.
I’ve known and been friends with horror writer Scott Sigler since well before he was internet famous. I do wish he’d come visit his family more often (they’re here in MI).
Let’s see…smoked weed with Jeff Tweedy (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco) at a house party when I was in college - my roommate invited them to the party, and they came; there’s not much to do in Ames, Iowa. Also in college, briefly met Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra at my apartment because they were visiting my housemate (this was before they were really famous). When I moved to Michigan, I took a job at Kinko’s because I needed to pay rent before I could get a real job, end ended up making Jeff Daniel’s family calendar for that year. His son, Ben (the musician) was about 8 at the time. Oh, and there was the time I saw Vince Neil on the Black River in Port Huron - which was super odd because it wasn’t race weekend, he was just bumming around on a local restaurant’s cigar boat.
I’m sure there are others that are escaping me at the moment. A non-trivial number of famous and semi-famous people float through Ann Arbor, particularly in the summer.
He’s one I wish to have had opportunity to get to know. Smart, funny and kinda adorable.
Just remembered a less glorious one: Mazzy Star somehow ended up with a gig in the one bar in Ames tainted with the “frat bar” reputation. Went with a bunch of friends anyway, only to have the show end early because my ex-boyfriend was being a gross creep to Hope Sandoval.
This ^ is likely what happened with that ex of mine. Enamoured to the point of creepsville.
Ah, a college friend was the night manager at the crappy little Ramada in Ames while the movie Twister was filming in nearby Boone (no hotels there at all). Some of the cast were lodging at the Ramada. Of Bill Paxton, she said he was really nice to the point of being sweet, but unintelligent. Jake Busey was as big of a dick as his father (this was before the motorcycle crash, mind), and she had the displeasure of Dad swinging in for a visit to compare against. I was working at the Pizza Slut at the time, met no one, but one of the drivers had delivered to Helen Hunt (rented a house in that part of town), and found her to be less than pleasant. Yay, small town life!
Never met U2, but did pack up a lot of their computer equipment after their show on their first stadium tour (also at Iowa State). That same silly job had me sit outside Whitesnake’s dressing room as their “security” (all 5’4” and about 115 lbs of me) when they came to town with KISS. Stadium “Tech Crew” is what they called this job. Security and cleanup were the main components.
I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that if everything I think I know about her is correct, we would really hit it off. It probably isn’t, though, so I’d just mumble awkwardly at her and run off.
This reminds me, I once ran into a few members of Frank Zappa’s band coming out of a movie theater in Lafayette IN, of all places. I said, “didn’t you guys used to play with Zappa?”
Despite the avantity, the garde is not so present? I was a kid when boomers who still thought of themselves as kids were enamoured of Zappa. It’s so avant-garde that after one listen of any track you’re like… no need to listen to that ever agan, just play the next one.
Not me, I love the avant garde. Which is why I drove 100 miles to hear Ken Vandermark play solo (no band) at some random art gallery in Chicago, earlier in this thread.
Just for you, here’s Frank Zappa playing the bicycle:
Oh, I love it, it’s just that sometimes it’s like penultimate season finales of Bojack Horseman.
“It’s just too much! May’un!”
“Fire that Jew!”
Crap, was that Bojack’s dad, Butterscotch Horseman, drunk, in the audience, yelling shit out, and the star of the show cringing, as you do in the early Nineties when your bitter old father shows up for a taping?
As middle-aged white guy shit goes, that’s a star.
oh gosh
well, you’re jealous of my life over a decade ago. I don’t do shit anymore.
however, Bran from Mastodon lives near me, in Kirkwood I think. I saw him in Kroger last year and, mindful of this thread, I spotted him at Five Guys yesterday. The dude he was sitting with looked like a rocker, too, but I don’t know the local metal scene at all.
If you aren’t familiar, he’s an insanely good drummer. bananas.
ah, yes, haha
Mastodon the band, not the FOSS Twitter competitor.
oh, yes, and it’s Welsh (probably?) so you say “Bron” like brown with no W, not like raisin bran.
I’m proud we had him as a guest at our home and that my mother’s best friend worked with his organization as a long-time volunteer. The information really starts about 3 minutes in.
Oh! Reminds me… back in my undergrad days, I was taking a 60s history class, and one of the other students worked for John Lewis’ office. And one day, Rep. Lewis just showed up, gave a talk and took questions! I’ve seen him at least 2 other times in his ATL office, too.
I just recalled . . . Back in my college days, I was on the staff of the campus humor magazine. One of stories that predated my days there was a satire of Star Trek – that also made fun of our institute. Gene Roddenberry had come by to give a talk, and I heard that representatives of the school newspaper, literary magazine, and one or two others were going to meet with him before the talk, as a kind of ersatz press conference. I volunteered to “represent” the humor magazine, and handed him a copy of the magazine with the satire. I can’t recall his reaction.
My only recollection of the satire itself was a cartoon of Scotty shoveling coal and anti-coal into the warp engines.
