The following is by no means the worst thing that ever happened to the band, and in fact, if you want to tell me it barely qualifies as a thing at all, I won’t argue. Fourteen years ago today, we appeared at the Quart festival in Kristiansand, Norway. When Pan Am went out of business, they took the direct flight from New York to Kristiansand with them, so our route to Norway on Air France included not one but two connections. Unfortunately our bags took an even more circuitous route to us, and by the time we went on at the Quart festival, one of Georgia’s cymbals had still not arrived. Nor did it reach us during the ensuing week we spent in Europe. (We were given the opportunity of looking through an unclaimed/lost baggage room in . . . Copenhagen? . . . and not only was the search fruitless, but looking at the mountains of luggage, it was hard to believe that anyone in the history of commercial aviation had ever met their suitcase on the carousel.) We filed a lost item report (never responded to), and Georgia replaced the cymbal. Three months later, we came home to a message on our answering machine from Air France, saying–in a tone that suggested that they had been out of touch for three hours instead of three months–they had found our bag and would be delivering it. Not even a fake “sorry for your inconvenience.” Can’t remember which Bob Newhart Show it is where his mild-mannered to a fault patient Mr. Herd finally snaps, over nothing. “I was red with rage,” he says with glee. I know the feeling.
