Episode 34: Nancy Chang & Robb Gilbear
Nancy Chang: When we get home, she, you know, threw her tantrum that she always does, screaming and yelling and throwing stuff around and then she like crumples up my piano book, screams at the top of her lungs.
Josh Caldwell: Atypical daydreamers, welcome to the show. My first story comes from Nancy Chang. She's a DJ based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her story isn't exactly about life on the road, but it's definitely part of her origin story. Something wild that shaped her into the performer and musician she is today.
Nancy Chang: This is probably the first story that I tell anybody that I'm starting to become friends with. Because especially back then when you're like friends with all these Burning Man kids, you know, it's like everything in California is kind of shock value in stories or something. You want to, guess what this story is? Boom, you know, that's how everyone sort of is. It sounds like it's gonna be depressing, but it's not really because of how much I've grown from it.
I guess the reason why I got so into music was because I would always be taking piano lessons from my mom when I was young. Since I was three I did, and then I stopped for a while. And then I remember going back when I was probably eleven. My mom wanted me to be a concert pianist, like any Chinese mom does. So she's putting twelve dollars a week into making sure I get high quality piano lessons. And I'm moving up. I am a fast learner and stuff, and I was really inspired at first until she just made it such a militant job. To the point where I would be practicing and falling asleep at the piano. It's funny because it was a Beethoven song, Ode to Joy, which is like his ugliest song ever. I fucking hated that song. I had to play it. And like every time my teacher reassigned it to me, my mom saw it as a failure because I was redoing it. She saw it as like, you're doing it again. And this is like the fifth time, I've perfected this song, can't you just let me go. It's exact on the metronome. Except for one half rest.
Nancy Chang: She made me redo it again. I'm sitting there looking into the future of my mom beating me up or something. I didn't know. Well, she actually never beat me up so much as this time. But she was so pissed. She was looking at my book before we left the house of my piano teacher, just flipping out, screaming. I think I blacked out or something on the ride home because she was just freaking out about how I'm wasting her money and stuff like that. And we get home, she threw her tantrum that she always does, screaming and yelling and throwing stuff around. And then she like crumples up my piano book, screaming at the top of her lungs, throws it on the floor, and then she just hikes up her dress and pisses on it. Like a whole bunch of piss. It was just splashing everywhere. And then she made me clean it up. So I had to clean it up and then go practice for I don't even know how many hours, like three hours or something.
And before that, actually, she hit me with a broomstick a million times so I was bruised on my back. But I don't really remember that as much, except that my dad came home and he was like, how are you? My dad was always the sweetest. He's patting me on the back and I'm like, ow, my back, I don't know, what does it look like? And he looked at my back and flipped out, I guess, because it was really, really bad. I didn't even tell him about the piss part, which is what I've always been telling people to put in a movie or something. Like please put that part in something.
But it's just such a crazy story that I don't know, it kind of stunted my wanting to play piano and stuff. But I'm really good at synths and I'm really into music still as a release of things. And when I was fourteen I wrote this whole long letter in green pen to Pearl Jam. I was just like, Eddie, I love you. I want you to know my story. And I'm so happy that you guys do charities for battered children or some shit. They didn't respond. I really wanted him to just write back to me, but they put me in their fan club and I got so many vinyls all the time. They're all at my mom's house but they're probably worth tons of money. So I was collecting lots of vinyls before I was even a DJ and it kind of got me into loving vinyl when I was like fourteen.
Nancy Chang: Every time I tell this story, people are always just like, oh my god, the room's all quiet. But I'm like, actually, because the more you talk about something like that, the more you get over it. So it's not painful at all and it embarrasses the fuck out of my mom. So it's funny to me, because she likes to deny it. But that's that's like a cultural thing, like, what's wrong with corporal punishment? That's not weird. But to me, I thought it was so special that she pissed everywhere and I could have that special part of the story.
Josh Caldwell: Hey, it's Josh. Hope you're enjoying the podcast. And if so, are you wanting more road stories? Well, good news. I've got you covered. Consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories that there just wasn't time for. And you'll be supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the link in the show notes and thanks. Now back to the show.
My next guest is Robb Gilbear. I spent a lot of time exploring the rave dance scene of Southern California, so I could really hear and feel this story. Robb takes us through a typical night as a raver, but ends with a disastrous twist.
Robb Gilbear: My first career was as a DJ, a music producer, and record label owner. And I made a life of it. I toured from coast to coast, played in 60 different cities, got to play in Europe, played at Burning Man a few times, played at Ultra Music Festival in Miami. I made a thing of it. And it was incredible. And it was rooted in my love of music and rooted in my love of raving. I was a raver in the nineties, and raving got me out of small town life where I felt that the only options really were to get a job in the neighboring town's car factory, join the army like my parents, or get in trouble with the law. And it didn't feel like the right path for me.
Being introduced to raves and going to these big raves in Toronto, I felt that I'd found a utopia where it was people from all walks of life. Age, gender, ethnicity. And having all these different people dance under one roof really opened my mind to, there is a whole other universe out there outside of these little small walls that I had encountered in my small town.
Because I lived a couple hours away from Toronto, there were some entrepreneurial teens who'd figured out that they could make money off shuttling people to the big parties in the city. They made arrangements with the promoters of these big events and said, hey, I'm gonna guarantee you 50 to 70 people are gonna come, I'm gonna fill a whole busload. And to be able to bring you this busload, all I'm asking for in return is a couple of free tickets and that the people who come on our bus get to cut the line. And for me as a party goer, it was the best deal because I paid an extra five or ten dollars, got a direct drive, didn't worry about who was driving, and then we got to skip the queue. There'd be a thousand, two thousand, four thousand kids in line waiting to get into this warehouse rave, and we would cut the entire queue.
Robb Gilbear: On one particular night, and I know the exact date because I still have the newspaper clipping, it is September 9th, 1995. I made my own way to the party with the intention that I would just pay the five dollars and get on the bus with everyone on the way home. So I went, I met up with friends, danced all night, had a really great time. And then in the morning, I met up with the people who were part of the shuttle. I gave the person five dollars and walked out with them. We walked to the back of the building and there wasn't a bus. There was a U-Haul truck. I had never seen that before. Instead of renting a bus, they had a U-Haul truck. And I paused and I thought, this doesn't seem right. And they opened it up. They'd laid out mattresses on the back of the U-Haul truck floor.
As I was hesitating to get in, a friend of mine looked at me and said, don't worry, it's more comfortable than it appears. So I was stuck. I'd been up all night. I needed to get home. I just got in. And we were about halfway home when I felt that familiar feeling in my stomach, the roller coaster feeling, like you're dropping off of something.
Robb Gilbear: The truck had gone off the road, soared in the air, and landed in a ditch a fifteen foot drop.
Robb Gilbear: There were screams and all sorts of loud sounds, and it was absolute chaos.
Robb Gilbear: Once we landed, I was an entanglement of people. There's people on the side of me, there was someone bleeding, there was screeches, it was pure pandemonium. There were 33 of us in the back of that van and we slowly poured out. The injuries were broken ankles, someone had a broken jaw, someone had a broken back. There were so many injuries that they sent an ambulance bus. I'd never seen such a thing.
And as we were filing out and assessing the situation, I overheard the grey-haired senior police officer on the scene, and he said, if the ground wasn't wet, the truck would have bounced and rolled, and it would have been a 50 percent fatality rate. Half of you would have died. So a few days of rain had saved our asses. A few days of rain made it so that when we flew off the road, the truck just sunk into the ground instead of half of us dying.
It turned out that the person driving had a seizure at the wheel and lost control. And then the police were trying to prove that he was under the influence of drugs. They couldn't prove that. And then so it was just, medical condition, he had a seizure. And then there was a whole thing with insurance with U-Haul because they had rented out the truck under the pretense that someone was moving. They definitely didn't expect that 33 teens were gonna be piling into the back of this and using it as a shuttle to an all-night rave.
Other than it being in the papers, other than it scaring everyone's parents and affecting everyone with the injuries and the fear, there were no repercussions. He didn't get fined, he didn't get charged, and nothing legally came out of it.
Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Nancy and Robb for sharing their experiences. Be sure to check out Robb's book, Die Before They Do, and his newsletter, Growth Habit. Links in the show notes. This podcast is created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. And if you know someone who you think might enjoy this show, send them this episode. The support really helps. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next time.
