I first met him when his band was still a Nirvana cover band playing in the drummer's parents' garage behind my house. I heard rough versions of "Bleach" tracks coming from some house on the street behind mine and because music is the only thing that breaks my introversion sometimes, I went and found the source of the ruckus and waited until they opened the garage door. They weren't amazing as a band or anything but at the time I didn't really know anyone who was actually in a band of any kind so I introduced myself. I don't remember the names of anyone else who was in that band, but they ended up being called Wretched Philiproy.
Perhaps it was because my first introduction to Dusty was him playing Nirvana songs, or perhaps it was his sullen yet occasionally silly nature, but I took to calling him "Kurt" throughout high school even though I knew he didn't like it. He didn't really look like Kurt Cobain or anything but he had that weird quiet sarcasm about him that was at once genuine and ironic.
I remember one time in freshman year I forgot to bring my lunch and had no money for the cafeteria so I was walking around campus asking people for a dollar so I could get a burrito and he gave me $1.50 so I could get a burrito AND some cookies. That solidified our friendship right there. Although largely forgotten, his demo CD for Wretched Philiproy was the first release from what I consider the modern generation of Temecula underground music, in between the Kettle Cadaver/The Mudds era and The Coltranes/Dial generation.
Throughout the next few years I got sucked into a relationship that I value very deeply but kinda made me push my friends and social life away, but Dusty remained in the loose circle of friends I maintained and when my girlfriend broke up with me, I re-entered the social world I had neglected and one of the main people I latched to was Zack Heath, who was close enough with Dusty to where they introduced each other as brothers to new acquaintances. My old band Ground Up played a single live show back in January or February 2008 and we invited his band Wretched Philiproy to open up along The Hellraisers and Hellbent. Both Dusty and the singer for The Hellraisers at that time, Fern, are deceased now. It rained hard as fuck that night.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Dustin was an addict, specifically a heroin addict although he was privy to many illegal substances. That ended up being the major problem with my relationship with him and with Zack, and somewhat contradictory to my story of him giving me money for lunch in freshman year, he became a notorious gas station spanger. I remember one time I saw him during my lunch while he was sign-twirling and as I was in Del Taco he came up to my mom's car and asked her for money. I nearly smacked him in the mouth when I saw him at her window but I knew that would do nothing.
As time went on I became more and more frustrated with the drug abuse around me even though I was and still am a hardcore alcoholic so it was always hard to really say anything without feeling like a hypocrite. The real last strand for me was one time when I had passed out at the Heath Haus and in the morning I couldn't find my wallet. I fucking knew it was Dusty who had taken it, I knew it, but he wouldn't admit to shit until several days later when he claimed he had found it in a drawer in the garage, where I definitely never would have put my wallet. It was a sketchy excuse and everybody knew he had jacked me. I never really let that go.
The very last time I saw him, we were at the Heath Haus again and he was all fucked up at 6pm ad was slurringly asking me to play guitar for him, and I normally don't take requests like that, but he was being irritatingly insistent so I begrudgingly started playing what at the time was my newest song. He closed his eyes and kinda grooved along and eventually was like, "come on man, I know you have lyrics, I know you can sing..." and he was right, I did have some lyrics. And they were about him.
Dusty's go-to phrase for a lot of things was "Good Show." Zackary told me that he had seen him get his ass beat and told the attacker "good show" afterwards. So my song about him became called "Good Show" although it wasn't finished until after everything happened.
On Father's Day 2013 Dustin was hit by a car on Rancho California and died from the impact. We didn't know this until later but he had told his father some ominous shit about this being his last Father's Day and although no one will ever really know, its common belief amongst many of his close friends that he probably intentionally ran into the street or something. He probably basically killed himself.
I was at work at my call center when Zack called me to tell me the news and it didn't really hit me at first but somehow we worked together to set up a candlelight vigil where our crew of ragamuffins released balloons into the sky. His family set up a memorial service at a local church where Spencer played "I Wanna Live" by The Ramones on acoustic guitar because that was Dusty's favorite song. We passed around a microphone where Zack gave a very impassioned, painful speech and I said nothing more than "Rock n roll will never die." Mark, Spenny and Zack's dad, said the most powerful thing of the day, pretty much aimed at Dusty's family who like none of us had ever met: "Dustin loved his friends and his family more than most of you will ever know."
The Coltranes and The Gravitys did a memorial show in the Heath Haus garage not too far after where we both played Wretched Philiproy songs, and I put the originals on Bandcamp for future preservation. I recorded that song I had played the last time I saw Dustin for my acoustic project end of the summer and called it "Good Show." Zackary wasn't happy with it at first because he didn't like my lyrics claiming that "You were asking for it/You stole my wallet" but my response to that was I'm writing from the heart, do you want me to lie? Do you want me to sugarcoat things? We'll never reach closure that way.
I have a picture of Dusty on my refrigerator and on my cubicle. Even though he was a bastard sometimes, and he was full of temper tantrums, and I still blame him when things go missing around my house, all he wanted at the end was for me to play him some music. A lot of cool things wouldn't have happened without him. Good Show.
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