Flintstones on TV...Pretty Boy Messiah or Shotgun Floyd? As the only blond in Pretty Boy Floyd, bassist Vinnie Chas was mistaken for the only blond in that band of sweetly swanky Swedes, Shotgun Messiah's bassist Tim Tim. When the two bands were touring together in Dallas, two girls came up to the PBF tour bus and said to Vinnie, "Oh, Tim Tim, you're God, and we gotta take you out to dinner!" Well, Vinnie hadn't eaten all day, and this was exactly the offer he was waiting for. Besides, he didn't want to disappoint the fans! The girls treated Vinnie to a Mexican dinner, had a great time and went back to the tour bus, where Vinnie gave the girls passes to the show. The girls said, "Wait! These are Pretty Boy Floyd passes," but Vinnie-as-Tim Tim assured them the passes were good for the show. They seemed satisfied with that, and Vinnie autographed Tim's photo on the album cover for them...the girls were still none the wiser! They did get suspicious for one brief moment when they asked Vinnie why his hair wasn't done in Tim's famous crimped-look, braids-as-dreadlocks hairdo. "It's hard on my hair, so I don't have it like that all the time," was Vinnie's explanation, "but come back and I'll be a totally different person!"

When Tim heard about the escapade, he said, "Vinnie's cool," and pointed out that his coiffure - which he describes as "a Caucasian Terence Trent D'Arby mutant hairdo" - is "a lot dirtier than Vinnie's!" Tim added that, "There are enough women to go around," but advised the two involved in the incident to, "Try again until you find the right blond. He's out there somewhere!" Tim also got a kick out of their choice of cuisine. "I don't eat Mexican - no way!" he said.

Tim does relish Italian fare, although he, his guitarist Harry K. Cody and singer Zinny J. San could hardly read the menu while recently visiting Via Fettuccini restaurant on the Melrose strip: After all, it was 2 p.m., and they were still half asleep! "It's a lot easier when you first wake up to say, 'Big Mac', than, 'Vermicelli alla putanesca!" commented Harry.

Tim said that in their native Sweden, they would gross out other diners by bringing a jar of peanut butter to the local McDonald's and smearing the it all over the burgers before consuming them. Zinny, Tim and Harry also talked about living in "Hell House" in Hollywood, where Guns N' Roses and their roadies used to live. Zinny commented that Slash claimed to have lost one of his snakes in there. "It did smell funny!" said Zinny. "The house was a big mess when we moved in - writing on the walls, beer cans and bottles all over the place! When we left, there were more beer cans, more writing on the walls, more bottles and hair-spray cans too! It weas impossible to sleep, because every day from five a.m. to noon, a fruit-and-vegetable truck parked on our lawn to sell produce to a crowd of people, babbling a language that sounded even weirder than Swedish!"

At least Hell House was an improvement over their Stockholm bomb-shelter-turned-rehersal-garage of Swedish rockers 220 Volt, where Shotgun Messiah crashed. The place was freezing cold and had no toilet or shower. Once a week the band took a train to the outskirts of the city to a friend's house to clean up. Back in those days, a typical breakfast was M&Ms - hold the peanut butter. A far cry from Vermicelli alla putanesca!...

Bon appetit until next time!