Love/Hate singer Jizzy Pearl reminisces about his van with no working gas gauge in the late ’80s
Love/Hate singer Jizzy Pearl reminisces about his van with no working gas gauge in the late ’80s
Love/Hate frontman Jizzy Pearl regaled many with his recent recollection of what it was like “back in the day” on the Sunset Strip and the singer has done it again with his story of his “$200 piece of shit van.”
The following message was posted by Pearl on Love/Hate‘s Facebook page earlier today:
“THE VAN
Most of us did odd jobs to make a living before we got signed. Some of us drove strippers, excuse me, ‘escorts’. Skid sold flowers on street corners, he had a street team of kids doing it for a while and it was very profitable before kids found out that selling crack was more profitable. I had a history of crummy jobs, factory jobs, a horrifying retail job selling women’s shoes, I parked cars in expensive Encino CA. I even shoveled horse shit once. And in 1987 for a short time I was a delivery boy, I delivered fine art to custom framers who turned them into major exhibitions for the very rich. Expensive lithographs custom framed, worth thousands of dollars. And all this delivered in my $200 piece of shit Dodge van that had no working gas gauge, no windshield wipers, bad tires and a huge dent on the side that someone had spray-painted OUCH across.
My van had another feature, funny now but not so much then, every morning when I started it the van would blow a huge black cloud of smoke out the back, like fucking Mount St. Helens, I’m serious, like a Cheech and Chong movie it was so bad. It was so bad that I would have to pull around the back of some retail store every morning to hide from the cops and wait it out. People thought the store was on fire. Then, amazingly, after the 5 minutes of smoking the van would run great. That was the routine, start the van, hide, then drive to the art store as if nothing happened. The company I worked for had no idea, I delivered the art and they didn’t question how it got there, mostly because the climate in L.A. is sunny most of the time and there’s hardly ever a need for windshield wipers. Until it rained, that is. That was a bit of a nightmare, picture me speeding north on the 405 freeway in the pouring rain hanging out the window with a plastic ice scraper wiping the glass trying not to crash…all this with $20,000.00 of fine art in the back. Your fine Warhol Lithograph delivered by King Jizzo and his Ultra King Cab.
As I said the van also had no working gas gauge so I had to compute what I thought were the miles per gallon of the van versus how much gas I could afford to put in and every once in a while I fucked up and ran out of gas. One time I ran out of gas in the middle of the 405 freeway right near the busy San Diego/Ventura freeway interchange, the van just died right at the choke point. AND it was raining! AND I had a fortune in art in the back! HONK HONK HONK from the back of me, “FUCK YOU!!” from the open windows to the side of me. People started flashing their headlights at me like that would somehow make everything better. My heart racing, I jumped out of the van with my gas can on the freeway, more headlights, more FUCK YOU’s and scrambled down the muddy hill to find some gas. It took about 10 minutes to find a gas station, fill up the can and dash back to what was now a major traffic pile-up, hundreds of cars honking their horns, lights flashing, road rage personified. I jumped back in the van, pulled the shroud off the center console because of course my van wouldn’t start unless I poured gas straight into the carburetor, poured the gas in, started the van, hopped off the freeway and tried to keep myself from losing my fucking mind.
Of course when I got to the art store I had to pretend like nothing happened, just another Drama-free day. That job was the beginning of many grey hairs, thank you Just for Men!
I eventually quit the job and sold the van to some up and coming rock band for $900. Made a profit off My Fellow Man. Of course I neglected to mention the smoke problem. I thought nothing of it until one day I was running in a park in North Hollywood and from a distance I saw this huge trail of billowing black smoke from a speeding car and realized that it was my old van, still going strong. It was someone else’s ‘OUCH’ now.
PS—Hey did I mention I have a new record coming out on Frontiers? Yes indeed the first single comes out tomm.—its the title track “ALL YOU NEED IS SOUL”—In the Ad Biz this is called PRODUCT PLACEMENT!
I hope you like the new track—J.”