Road Tripping: PHOENIX THUNDERBIRD

“Our drummer Blair and I have been best buds since we were 14. We started this band a couple years ago as a two-piece thrash project, acting like we were a full band. It wasn’t until recently that we realized we really did need that extra sumthin’ sumthin’, and recruited our bassist, Grant. He had only just joined the band this past April when we went on a short tour from Vancouver to Edmonton. It wasn’t the longest trip, but it’s the kind of three day haul that can give you a mental dehydration that absorbs the most inane trivia like a sponge, and explodes it into hour-long laughing attacks like it’s the fucking Jimmy Kimmel Show.

By the time we were passing Calgary on the way home, Blair and I must have logged at least 20 hours together in his Honda Civic. Grant, who was still sort of breaking-in (and let’s be honest, probably tired of our categorical knowledge of Simpsons jokes), was driving in a separate car, at least an hour ahead of us. We were desperately running out of things to do. So, after an unusually long bout of silence, Blair casually tossed on a mix CD that he had been saving for this exact moment. The black Sharpie writing on the label was sloppy, and simply read: “Techno Mix – MP3s.” Shit was about to get real.

The sounds that came from the speakers were like a neon laser nightmare of the most out of control synthesizer rocket launches, deadpan German men dictating what was what on the dance floor, and ridiculous “ump-AH, ump-AH, ump-AH” beats at 200bpm. It was the best and worst thing I have ever heard in my life. But nevertheless, it was an oasis of giddy joy amid the brown-stained Alberta prairie surrounding us, and the laughing that ensued was not born of sane minds. I’m talking full on painful, sucking air, crying to the point that you weren’t sure if you could stop, laughing: We. Lost. Our. Shit.

So much so, that I actually managed to dislodge an artifact from the cold I had been nursing over the weekend. A gob of phlegm came up and somehow blocked my airway, (gross I know), and suddenly I couldn’t breathe… like, at all. And after what felt like an hour, but was likely just 20 seconds, of sobering panic, I realized that I might die. I might die from choking on my own spit, while nineties Euro-dance was pumping in the background. This was bullshit!

Blair, however, surely having a “holy shit, I have to Heimlich my best friend” moment, went from pissing his pants laughing to pissing his pants terrified within seconds, and yanked the car over to the shoulder of the highway. Amazingly, as soon as I got out of the car my throat cleared and I could breathe again. My first words were, “fuck” like five or six times. Right at that moment a car blew by us with a “meep-meep,” and a second later a full screen photo of Grant puckering his lips appeared on my phone that had fallen, face up onto the seat of the car. “Dude, are you guys alright!? I just passed you.” We all have no idea how we had got ahead of him! It all worked out, but it might not have, and amazingly, both my band mates were spot on for the save, right when I needed them.”

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