Everybody’s got to make some sacrifices to the rock gods…

Dear Old Texan Who Rented Us His Family Vacation Home,

Thank you so much for allowing us to stay in your beautiful, palatial, and very well appointed home. It being the weekend of the Austin City Limits Music Festival and all, I’m sure you had a lot of interest from potential renters. Thanks for choosing us. We had a wonderful time.

I can’t tell you how nice it was to be able to come home after a long day of rocking out at the rock show and soak in the hot tub or take a refreshing dip in the pool, then drift off to sleep in one of your comfortable beds. Don’t think that the thread count on those sheets went unnoticed. It was much appreciated! Ditto with the spa towels. Thanks for going the extra mile there.

Oh, and the tech! I’m not very good with technology so I don’t have any idea what even one of those thirty-five remotes controlled, but it all looked very impressive. And I must say, the giant projection screen over the pool was a nice touch.

The grounds around your property are lovely as well. We particularly enjoyed the fire pit and the pond…though I must admit, I was a bit wary of the hobo living in the shed out back, but he turned out to be very friendly and made for an excellent neighbor.

You’ve been so kind and generous; I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the incident that occurred on Sunday afternoon.

You see the rock show was cancelled that day on account of rain. I guess some parts of Zilker Park were literally under water. Everyone was highly disappointed.

Fortunately, we are a resilient bunch, and decided to make the best of it. We cracked open a bottle of champagne, cranked up some Lionel Ritchie (the would-be headliner of the show) and spent a relaxing morning in the hot tub. Easy like Sunday morning, am I right?

Sometime after the second bottle of champagne and that ‘hour of power’ that seemed like a good idea at the time, someone came up with the brilliant notion of inviting all of the displaced musicians and fellow rockers over to the house. ‘If we can’t go to the rock show, then we’ll bring the rock show to us!’

Frankly, we didn’t think anyone would show up and I think we were all a little bit shocked by the turn out.

At first it was just our small group and the crew from Atoms for Peace. Even though it was beyond cool to meet Thom Yorke and Flea, I’ll admit it was a little awkward at first. They weren’t really equipped for an acoustic set, so there was a lot of feet shuffling with hands in pockets and not a lot of direct eye contact. Then someone suggested we set up a beer pong tournament. Things got a lot less awkward after that.

That shit got competitive real quick! Rock stars do not fuck around. They also don’t take well to losing at beer pong. Especially after taunting a drunk and belligerent Thom Yorke by screaming Radiohead lyrics at him every time he tried to make a shot.

Long story short, that’s how come your table got broken. Sorry about that.

Things settled down a bit when Shuggie Otis arrived with Neko Case. (They carpooled.) They seemed relatively unfazed by the destruction in the dining room, whipped out their guitars and played an impromptu show in the kitchen. It was pretty incredible.

Then Noah and the Whale and Phoenix turned up in a party bus and things got rowdy again. I don’t know whose idea it was to start skeet-shooting with your fine china, but it happened…and it was all kinds of fun. And honestly, if you didn’t want people breaking into your china cabinet (or your gun cabinet for that matter) then you should really invest in proper locks. I’m just sayin’.

As for the golf cart in your pool…that one is all on Franz Ferdinand. Those limy Scottish fruits know how to party!

It was while we were all distracted trying to fish the golf cart out of the pool that Flea decided to jump through your projection screen all Animal-from-The-Muppets style. You can’t take your eyes off that crazy bastard for a second!

When the kids from School of Rock showed up I knew there was going to be trouble. Those kids can drink! And that little girl who plays the bass is a mean drunk. I don’t think that poor hobo ever saw it coming. We found most of his teeth though, and I’m sure his scalp will go back to normal once his stitches are removed.

You’d think the kids would be the ones responsible for the puking in the hot tub, but no. That was Valerie June. She might be a badass blues player, but homegirl is tiny! And I have no idea where that jug of moonshine came from.

But nobody, not even the drunkest among us, ever thought in a million years that the man himself – LIONEL RITCHIE – would accept our humble party invitation. Even the other rock stars were stoked to see him.

Call it naiveté, but I was hoping for a handholding, ‘We Are the World’ type of sitch. Alas, that was not to be. When Lionel says he’s going to party ‘All Night Long,’ he fucking means it. He was tearing through the house jumping on the furniture like a little kid, except he had a bottle of Jack in one hand and a fifth of Jame-O in the other. I think he was legitimately trying to dance on the ceiling and I, for one, wasn’t about to tell him no.

My recollections get kind of patchy after that.

I remember walking in on some crazy shit in the garage. I’m pretty sure a certain folk singer was doing a line of what I can only assume was blow off of a certain blues singer’s…well, suffice it to say, you need a new pool table. And new pool cues. Maybe just don’t go in your garage anymore. Yeah, that’s probably best.

Then later someone foolishly asked Lionel Ritchie to stop jumping on your bed while singing ‘What Does the Fox Say?’ ad nauseam. He got super angry and punched that hole in your bedroom wall. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably regretting not charging us a security deposit, but don’t worry about it. We gave Lionel a sharpie and asked him to autograph the wall. He did his best. It sort of looks like his signature. Sure, it probably would’ve been better if he hadn’t drawn all those lewd sketches underneath it, but you can still sell it on eBay and make back the money for the repairs. Assuming you even want to get it fixed. It is pretty epic. I mean, how many people can honestly claim that Lionel Ritchie drew a dick on their wall? Not many, I’m guessing.

Other than that, the weekend was pretty quiet. Though several members of our party did get stung by scorpions in your backyard. There’s also a huge hornet’s nest down by the pond. We collectively decided not to sue, but you should really take care of that.

So…I guess that’s it. Thanks again. See you next year!

Fondly,

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