There are some events that happen in a lifetime that are so awful, bizarre, or meaningful that they are seared permanently into the old noodle. Remember where you were when you heard about Skylab falling? Or Gary Gygax getting ousted from TSR? Or when Quizu Yupanqui crushed the advancing forces of Pizarro’s men under rockslides? Just such an event is seared, like a juicy steak, into my grey matter, back from the TSEP tour days. Yes, it’s the low-speed OJ Simpson chase.

The Squids had pulled up at a soon-to-become favorite watering hole and venue, Backstreet BBQ in Vicksburg, MS. It was almost literally a hole in the wall with a not quite foreboding, but also not warmly inviting, entrance in an alley, where lots of local hoodlums lined up to trade stolen goods and bounty pucks. There were tons of IG-series droids there, presumably part of the Guild, but it was taboo to ask. There was one guy there I remember, he wore a suit of armor made out of some kind of precious metal, and he had his son with him (I think it was bring your mutant little green child to work day). Anyway, we pushed past all of that galactic bricabrac and into the labyrinthine innards of the ‘Q, as no one ever called it.

A long wooden bar that was sticky with the alchemical admixture of 40 coats of lacquer and 350 coats of liquor ran the length of one side of the shotgun room. At one end of the room was a small, raised dais, on which the priests of high alt rock were to perform that evevning. There were several hours to kill, however, and given that we were starved, poor-ass kids, the proprietor of the establishment sated our palates with some of the best BBQ I’ve ever had. As we washed down plate after plate of exquisite slaw, beans, potato salad, and pulled pork with fistfuls of watery American beer, the low-speed chase came on the TV.

We watched in amazement, unable to figure out what was going on. The combination of that chase on TV, the Ozric Tentacles music playing in the background, the beer, and the tiny poison darts fired from a bounty hunter’s gauntlet, made for a truly psychogogic experience. That evening, when we did take the stage, we played to a small, but mighty motivated, group of local young folk. We played our entire set list once, and were ready to pack it in, but the barkeep asked us to keep going… so we started playing some of our wobblier songs. Another hour went by, and we were asked to keep playing. The beer kept flowing and the tunes kept rolling… I played the last half of the last set on my back, on the cold concrete floor, looking up at the ceiling, watching all the people dance. To this day, whenever someone mentions OJ, I am magically transported back to that night. It’s a strange association, for sure.

I did get violently ill from snarfing down a bowl of chili on that trip, too! Here’s a comic about it.