It’s Tajai from Souls of Mischief checking in again. I actually got a couple quick PG stories for y’all. Here goes…

We were in Northampton, Massachusetts for one of the first shows we had on the De La Soul/Tribe Called Quest Bulhoone Mind State/Midnight Marauders tour (which we used to call “Award Tour”).

It was our first big tour and the vibe was all love. We were just excited to be out with such heavy hitters all the way on the other side of the country. Tribe and De La had their own soundmen with them, and all of their homies, plus, they also had buses.

I just remember feeling like their get-down was really official.

We showed up early for sound check (of course we get the shitty sound check time because we’re rookies). Most of these venues could care less about hip-hop, and have sound engineers who are more rock-oriented and think all we want is loud bass and mics so loud they almost feedback.

But this soundman was different and A-Plus, being the politician that he is, quickly befriended him like, “Peace. I’m A-Plus, what’s your name”

“Hey, I’m Mock,” he said in his thick northeastern accent.

"Wow," A-Plus said into his microphone (mind you all of this is going on over the PA system to the entire club). “That’s an interesting fu$%ing name. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody named Mock.”

“Wow, it seems like a pretty common name,” the guy responds.

They go back and forth for a while with A-Plus commenting on how unique Mock’s name is and how he’s meeting new people and learning new stuff all the time.

Finally, A-Plus asks the guy, “Hey, Mock, how do you spell that?”

The dude says, “M-A-R-K.”

His accent was so thick we thought the guy’s name was Mock.

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Here’s another funny story:

We have a crazy snowboarding fan base, so every winter we hit up the mountains and rock a gang of shows at all the resorts from Tahoe to Vermont. When I go on these snow trips I like to rock the shows Carharrt down—extreme jacket, extreme bib, extra warm hat and some hunting gloves. I’m a Cali ninja and that subzero s#it is not the business.

So, one night Souls were supposed to fly out to Miami and meet back up with the rest of Hiero on the mountain tour the next day. We ended up missing our plane (sorry Fresh El Camino!!!), so we had to come back and stay on the tour. This is the mountains. All of the hotels are booked with skiers and tourists, so we don’t have enough rooms. I decided to sleep in the van, I figure I’m Arctic suited down, so I’ll be warm for the night.

I lay down in the backseat of the van, kick off my shoes, and knock out. Around 3 in the morning, I wake up to urinate. I get up, slide the van door open, and stand on the running board of the van to try to go in the snow.

BUT MY FEET ARE COMPLETELY NUMB.

I had slept with my shoes off in the freezing van, so I had no feeling in my feet. I fell face forward into a stream of pee and landed in the bank of snow with my jimmy out, in the middle of the mountains with frozen feet.

Next time somebody else is sleeping in the van!

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One final story:

We had the pleasure of touring with the X-Ecutioners in 2000. Hands down Roc Raida was one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met. He used to have this character called “The Horse,” complete with horse mask, that he used to break out every now and then.

Sometimes, when he would check in to hotels, he would come into the lobby with the mask on.

Souls and X-Executioners shared the tour bus for a month-and-a-half, and he was non-stop comedy. Rest in peace to Grandmaster Roc Raida!

In the last 17 years we’ve rocked a few thousand shows, you can catch some of them on the Hiero Full Circle Tour DVD.

Big shout out to De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Tha Liks, Pharcyde, X-Ecutioners, OC, Blue Scholars, Little Brother, Non Phixion and the whole 12 Monkeys (Planet Asia what up!). —Tajai

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