Dave's Car Tales

The D.C. Saab Story

In 1977 I drove the green 1970 Saab 99 down to Washington, DC for a college pal's wedding and the fuel pump gave out on I-95 outside of Baltimore. It was a beautiful Saturday in May - Preakness weekend.

I left the car by side of the highway and started hitchhiking into the city to find a repair place. (No cell phones then...) I was soon picked up by two dudes in a van from North Carolina. They both went to some community college there (one was from Baltimore) and they were on their way to a Preakness party, and were already very late. They insisted I have a beer with them (in the van...) and promised that they would get me to a phone and the Western Union office. My plan was to call Dad and have him wire me some money for the inevitable new fuel pump. But, no, we didn’t go there right away. They were so late they felt they had to check in with their friend first.  The race was over – we heard it on the radio.

So, we drove to a beautiful house in a very expensive neighborhood, which was their buddy's grandmother's home! They passed me off as their friend from college. This was tough since: a.) I didn't have a Southern accent, b.) they obviously didn’t know anything about me c.) I was obviously way smarter than they were, and d.) I didn't have a suitcase or any other clothes. Still, Grandma bought it and we all took showers and got cleaned up for the party we were very late for. I kept bugging them to at least let me make a phone call, and at every opportunity I weaseled some in at Grandma’s house - to Dad, to the police (to find out where my car was at this point), to my friend in DC to tell him I might not make it, etc.

Soon we were off to the party, in another, even nicer neighborhood, farther from downtown where I needed to be. I met their friend's Dad, an ex-Marine drill sergeant, and the daughter and her friends, all of whom were pretty suspicious of me right away. Too bad we missed the race, what horse had I rooted for? What was I studying? How did I get to be pals with the son/brother? I was getting sort of panicked because I didn’t know where the car was, or where I was going to stay that night (Grandma's house?) It was getting on toward 9PM. What would happen if they figured it out? Call the cops?

Finally I revealed my secret identity to the sister, who had realized that her brother's friends didn’t really know who I was, and she sort of took pity on me. She took me into the den, and let me make a few phone calls. I think she just didn’t want her jar head dad to find out and blow his top. Then she and her boyfriend hustled me out, avoiding the skeptical sergeant father, and I was dumped at a bus stop a few blocks away to make my way downtown. 

I have never figured out why those dudes hadn’t just dropped me off someplace instead of developing this elaborate ruse and dragging me all over town with them. And why had they picked me up in the first place if they were in such a hurry?

Once I got into Baltimore, I found the YMCA, got a room, and immediately got on the phone to the police and determined where the car had been towed. Thankfully they also took pity on me as I explained my abduction and why it took me so long to deal with the car. I finally got to sleep about midnight. Early the next morning I made it to a Western Union office where Dad had sent me some money. (Sorry Dad, another Saturday crisis!)  I took a hot, smelly cab to where the car had been towed - a funky garage in an industrial area just off the highway. There were, yes, junk-yard dogs guarding the yard. I arranged for the guy to get a fuel pump and negotiated a price for the repair. He promised to have it done by Monday. 

Incredibly, nobody had broken into the car (that did happen a number of times later – those rear windows on the 99 were easy to pop open....other stories...) and my clothes were still in it. I called my friend in DC to again apologize that I probably wouldn't make it. "Oh yes you will!" he said, "We're coming up to get you!"  And sure enough, he and the best man and another pal of his drove up to Baltimore in their Pontiac Bonneville convertible, picked me up, and we blasted back to DC at 90 miles an hour. He really wanted me at that wedding! We got to the church just in time, and I had a great time hanging out with him and his bride and pals late into the night. We hung out Sunday and I stayed over another night.

Late Monday morning I called the funky garage and miraculously they had obtained the part and installed it already! I can’t remember how I got up to Baltimore (train maybe?), but I got out to the garage and paid what I could. I was now almost out of money, and I recall pulling up the carpets in the car at the Joyce Kilmer service area on the NJ Turnpike to find enough change for gas to get home...

WKGB Trip To Boston

When I was living in Hoboken and playing with WKGB my trusty green Volvo 145 that I found in the Want Ad Press was the band car. I used to park it on the street for weeks at a time when we weren't gigging. In the winter it would be buried in snow down on River Road (now Sinatra Drive) near the Maxwell House Coffee Factory. They usually didn't plow down there, so I could just leave it until we needed to dig it out for a gig. The factory emitted a strong coffee odor when they were roasting beans, and the huge smokestack (which I later watched them gradually disassemble when the factory was being demolished) would shower the surrounding area with coffee soot. After a week of this the car would have 1/32nd inch brown coating on it. This greatly accelerated the oxidation of the Volvo's paint. There was a theory that the coffee dust in the air was contributing to the frenzied creativity of the local artist population...

I drove that car up and down the East Coast and in and out of NYC hauling gear and other muso pals. In 1978 (I think) after the WKGB Non-Stop single came out our star was ascending. We had introduced our local pals and future MTV favorites The Bongos to the same Fetish Records contact we had made through our Devo connection, and they had their first single out at the same time. It only made sense that we do a joint "Fetish Records Tour." So, we booked a few New England dates: Trinity College in Hartford, someplace else I can't recall and The Rat in Boston, the famous punk joint that was analgous to CBGB in NYC.

There were six of us in all - me, Dennis, the three Bongos and Bruce Grant, our sound guy and semi-road manager. Dennis drove his blue Pontiac while I had the Volvo. We picked up our Bongos pals at their legendary 1118 Hudson Street apartment in the early afternoon on Saturday.

Our friend "Frederic V." had arranged the Trinity College gig. He was an odd fellow. French but American, he DJed at the college radio station. He had money, and was interested in art and music. Somehow he had weasled his way into the Andy Warhol "Factory" orbit, and worked as a sort of go-fer on Interview magazine. This and the radio gig allowed him to get into clubs and get lots of records for free. Who knows what else he did... Frederic was a a big fan of  Eno. Tangerine Dream, Popul Vu, and other "Kraut Rock" bands. He got to know us through the Devo connection. Dennis and I had played up there once before, and were interviewed on his radio show. I can't say I recall much about the gigs there though. I guess he found someplace to put us up in the Trinity dorms. The next day we pressed on to Boston.

The Rat was, like CBGB, a dirty piss-stinking dive.  It was Sunday night, but there was a fair crowd to see these two "Hoboken Sound" bands. WKGB only played there the one time, because we were really too "New Wave" and arty and not punk enough to make it with the regular crowd there.The Bongos went over pretty well though and this gig helped launch them outside of the Maxwell's/New York orbit they'd been in.

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be about the Volvo!

After the Bongos did their set, it was past 1AM. In theory Dennis and I were both supposed to be at work on Monday morning at our "day jobs". I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who had jobs at that point, though Bongos drummer Frank Giannini may have been working as a cook at the "Beat 'n Path" (get it?) bar in Hoboken. In any case, he wouldn't have to be at work until late in the afternoon. 

We'd all had a few beers and other sustenance, and we loaded up the gear and set off in caravan: Bruce and Dennis and Bongos singer Richard Barone in the Pontiac, Frank, bass player Rob Norris and me in in the Volvo. We were making pretty good time getting out of Boston until we got on 95 and hit the first toll booth. I pulled up in the Volvo, handed in the cash and as the RPMs dropped the car just died. Luckily Dennis was right behind me - he pushed me through the booth and Frank and Rob jumped out to shepherd the car over to the side of the toll plaza apron. Since it was now about 3:30 AM there was little traffic anyway. If Dennis had been ahead of me, he probably would have just taken off after paying his toll and, since there were no cell phones back then, wouldn't have learned of our fate till much later.

The car wouldn't start, but everything lit up. I had jumper cables, so we tried that - it worked! After agreeing that Dennis would be my wingman, we set out again. Experimenting, I discovered that as long as I was running at speed I was OK - slowing down dimmed the headlights and risked stalling. Obviously a new alternator was in order and there were more toll booths ahead. I developed a technique after the second or third one: Frank kept the money in the back seat and as we approached I'd take it out of gear (it was an automatic) and coast into the booth with my foot down on the gas, so the engine was screaming. Frank would pass the cash to the startled toll attendant and as soon as it was in hand I'd jam the car back into gear and we'd be off again with a lurch. Certainly not great for the tranny, but hey, we were still moving! 

Needless to say this was a hot, perilous, nerve-wracking journey and I don't remember much more of it - how did we make it through the Queens Midtown Tunnel, across Manhattan (at 5AM...) and then the Lincoln Tunnel without stalling out again? Dunno...

We were all pretty burned out and starving by the time we made it back to Hoboken at about 6AM on Monday morning. Dennis dropped off Richard and headed back to Kearny and his approaching workday. 

Now I needed to park, which was never an easy task in Hoboken in the best of circumstances.  The streets were starting to get busy and I still had to do the revving thing whenever I slowed down, which was pretty much all the time, for stop lights, turning down one-way streets and cruising for a spot. We also still had all the instruments in the car: Franks drums, mine and Rob's amps and guitars, etc. The Bongos stored their gear in the back room at Maxwell's, so we headed there. Their shared apartment was only a couple blocks away, and mine was just down the street at 10th and Washington. We were all of course exhausted and those guys were prepared to sort of abandon me to my fate once they had unloaded their stuff. 

Miraculously, as we drove up to Maxwell's a car pulled out of a spot DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE DOOR! Somebody leaving for work. Best of all it was a "Friday spot" - Hoboken had no meters in most places back then, and weekly street cleaning with every street on a different day. So if you didn't use your car a lot during the week like me, you could just leave it until the designated day. It was still a very loud task to parallel park without stalling out, and I'm sure I woke up the neighborhood with the high revs I needed to maintain while doing it. (Steve Fallon, the owner of Maxwell's and our semi-benefactor lived directly above) But, I guess I'd gotten pretty good at it during the drive. I drifted in the last couple feet and shut down the car. We unloaded the stuff into Maxwell's. My rig at the time was one tiny amp, my guitar and a couple of pedals. I could carry that and a gym bag with clothes in both hands. So, I shouldered it all and walked the one block home to 10th and Washington with the giant morning sun rising over the Hudson.

I can't recall if I made it into work that day. Most likely I did since I was working in Manhattan through a temp agency and didn't get paid if I didn't show up. I probably showered and stumbled to the bus and sleepwalked through the day. I also don't remember what I did to move the car and get the new alternator installed. Probably took it to the old Gulf station on Willow Ave that later destroyed the engine in the blue 164 that I bought from Alison. But that's another story. That Volvo wagon had many other WKGB and Bongos adventures in the music world of the late 70s/early 80s. I ended up selling it to Tucker!