Pitchfork

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 6: Contactmusic.com reports (via a link from a Stooges MySpace bulletin) that the van carrying the Stooges' equipment has been found in Montreal. Unfortunately, none of the missing gear was in it.

Well son of a gun. It seems some thieves in Montreal decided to run off with a rented truck on the morning of August 4, and that truck happened to be packed with a whole bunch of gear belonging to the Stooges. I mean, shit, I don't want the Stooges to make another Weirdness either, but c'mon dudes!

The truck was parked outside the Embassy Suites Hotel in Montreal, has Michigan plates with license number AC46493, and was nabbed between the hours of 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. The list of stolen goods is exhaustive. It includes, perhaps most tragically, Mike Watt's beloved "little bass", seen here:



"Man, you don't how I feel," Watt wrote in an email to Pitchfork. "I lost my little bass, how I loved her!"

He elaborated on the treaured instrument: "I had to modify it (especially the electronics) to let the 'Watt Sound' out...and I really got to dig it. It's got so much emotional value to me, I've done tons of gigs and recordings with it, and it just feels so right to work [with], like a part of me. I can work it without even thinking about it, like I can put my emotions right from my heart to its strings, you know?"

Mike and little bass can be seen together here and in the live video below, while this page has photos of the rest of the missing gear. Anyone with any information should contact Eric Fischer via the email address or phone number found here.

The Stooges played Montreal's Osheaga Festival the night before the theft. They have quite a few more dates planned through the rest of the summer and into fall, and those dates appear to be still on for now. Watt also has a trio of Warped Tour shows with the Missingmen.

Stooges:

08-06 Toronto, Ontario - Massey Hall
08-08 New York, NY - Terminal 5
08-10 Baltimore, MD - Virgin Mobile Festival
08-24 London, England - Get Loaded in the Park Festival
08-28 Berlin, Germany - Citadel Music Festival
08-30 Konstanz, Germany - Rock am See Festival
09-02 Rotterdam, Netherlands - Watt
09-05 Belgrade, Serbia - Pivo Jelen Live Festival
09-13 Saint-Nolff, France - Festival de Saint-Nolff
09-16 Gelsenkirchen, Germany - Amphitheater
09-18 Hamburg, Germany - Stadtpark Freilichtbuhne
09-20 Prague, Czech Republic - HC Sparta Arena
09-22 Saint Petersburg, Russia - Lodovy Dvoryetz
09-24 Moscow, Russia - B1
09-27 Cannes, France - Palais Des Festival
09-29 Ljubljana, Slovenia - Hala Tivoli
10-01 Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Hall Zetra

Mike Watt & the Missingmen:

08-14 Chula Vista, CA - Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre (Warped Tour)
08-15 Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheater (Warped Tour)
08-17 Carson, CA - Home Depot Center (Warped Tour)