Dude, Where’s Your Car?
So it’s 2 am, you’ve just been politely but firmly escorted out of the club by the bouncer with the one gold tooth, and, due to an unfortunate miscommunication, someone else is driving away in your car, leaving you with the panhandlers and crackheads circumnavigating the parking lot at the all-night Korean supermarket in your flashy cowboy shirt. What do you do?
Well, if I were doing it all over again, I’d probably catch a cab and go straight home to bed, but Oakland is not exactly Manhattan when it comes to taxis, and I was still buzzing from the show.
(Did I mention that my band had just played a show? It went GREAT. There were songs about drinking and press gangs, and there was a David Bowie cover. There was a visitation from Lizardo (ask me later). There was a kazoo.)
Anyway, given all of the above, what I decided to do was this:
- I turned around and blew right past the bouncer
- Persuaded the bartender to slow-walk last call long enough for me to get a double shot of Patron
- And then just started truckin’ up Telegraph Avenue towards home
Which is not close by. So I had ample time to think. About life. About music. About the best way not to get rolled when you’re wearing a shirt that Vegas-era fat Elvis might have thought was a little over the top.
Mostly, though, I thought about the song that the club had been cranking when I stepped in for my last tequila, “Refugee”, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I got to singing it over and over in my head (and out of my head, too), timing the rhythm of my steps to it, and by the time I got home, I thought I had an idea for a fun, slightly different approach to the song involving helicopter pilot headphones, a looping pedal, and some big-budget special effects, by which I mean “eleven dollar flashing police light”.
Of course, by that point it was three’o’clock in the morning, and even the cats were asleep, but inspiration and rock’n’roll wait for no man, so I walked right into the studio, fired up the machines and hit record.
The result? Your very own, Authentic Late Night Post-Tequila Cowboy Tom Petty Refugee Cover Video! Hope you dig it, and I’ll see you at the next show!
P.S. If you like the video, could you do me a huge favor and click one of those share buttons up there? Or better yet, leave a comment – thanks!!