DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN: HANDLE YOUR SH*T, GREG
At my first paid gig as a music journalimalist, my editor wasn’t really hands-on with workshopping or edits or assignments. Let’s call him the Rick Rubin of print editors, as he was grotesquely overpaid, forever claiming unearned credit, and often seen shoveling bizarre food up his blabhole.
But I did get his attention once when I blew a weekend assignment: After a day spent on my front lawn all screwy on mushrooms and stuff, I’d turned up to an exciting concert I was to review. Smiling, I gave venue security my name, waited to be waved in, but was then told rudely that the show had already ended, dumbshit!
Ended!? Wha?! The show had gone off as scheduled, I was repeatedly assured, so what the fuck time was it? I had definitely left home on time — had it taken me three hours to get there? How long had I been staring at that graffiti mural? And what was I hearing that sounded like the band playing just across the entrance? What was Prince doing there holding hands with Madeline Albright? Where was that scent of garlic bread coming from? What the shit? Glirgh!
Well, it turns out Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato lost a similar battle with mind-bottling substances this weekend! Only he freaked out his gf and required the assistance of a small army of emergency staff! Puciato explained on his website:
I would like to thank the six police officers, the fully-staffed fire truck, and the several EMTs that showed up over the weekend to witness/enjoy what surely must have been a beyond hysterical/bizarre/confusing sight to them. Without going into too much detail, [I’ll] just say that it was entirely worthwhile to eat enough (way too much) of something — I won’t go into what but I’m sure your assumptions are accurate — to … induce full-blown, entirely realistic hallucinations (including fake people that I had conversations with), to have no ability to tell what time/age period of my life I was in (ages 12, 17, 22, 29 — all seemed simultaneous), and to run around almost naked both inside and outside singing, screaming, and asking the police if I was dead and whether or not [DEP guitarist] Ben Weinman, Liam [Wilson, DEP bassist], and various other people in my personal life were in fact real people or part of a dream that I had while part of a separate larger reality.
When I look back on being on a stretcher outside at 3 AM, frantically telling police that I was already dead and insisting that they tell me the truth, while accusing them of not being real either, and my girlfriend crying and being terrified that I had gone “too far” and would be permanently insane from that point forward … it all seems obvious what you should tell kids about drugs. “Just say … maybe.”
Lolz awesome job, Greg. The important thing is you had an awesome time. That’s good druggin’!
-ADF
Dillinger Escape Plan plays a free show tonight in Fullerton, California then heads to the UK with Mastodon and The Red Fang. Tickets and stuff here.
