NOTHING
[Photo: Ben Raymer]

Nothing once hid in a porta-potty so they could watch Rick Ross perform

Alternative Press brings you the best (and other) content from all over the world. We told you how Tom DeLonge became fascinated with aliens. APTV shared how Milo from Descendents ended up hearing his band’s debut album for the first time at a stranger’s house. We even traced how you can go from One Direction to Black Flag in eight songs. But today, we may have outdone ourselves. Because now we’re going to tell you 10 things about…Nothing.

We had frontman Domenic “Nicky” Palermo tell us the most sordid, intimate details about Nothing ahead of the Oct 30 release of The Great Dismal. We  had him tell us all the minutiae and secrets that fueled his band’s legend. But don’t take our word for it. It was really Nothing at all…

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NOTHING MEANS NOTHING ANYMORE

Roughly 74% of the universe is nothing or what physicists call dark energy. But there is more and more nothing every second. In 1998, astronomers measuring the expansion of the universe determined that dark energy is pushing apart the universe at an ever-accelerating speed. The discovery of nothing and its ability to influence the fate of the cosmos is considered the most important astronomical finding of the past decade.

MEET THE BEATLESS

Nothing drummer Kyle Kimball’s favorite show is about nothing. (Seinfeld. –pop culture ed.)

DO THE MATH

Any number divided by zero is nothing, not even zero. The equation is mathematically impossible.

OVER 50 MILLION SERVED 

Nothing once played a show in Myanmar, and we ate at the most northern McDonald’s in the world. It even has a plaque. And I’m kind of embarrassed to say that I eat at McDonald’s.

ERYKAH, JULIAN AND… NOTHING

Nothing once played a show in Texas during South By Southwest for The Fader. And in the green room, [Strokes singer] Julian Casablancas offered me a blunt. I did it because I was peer-pressured. So I smoked with them, and Erykah Badu walked in the room and sucked all the air out of it.  And then we opened up for Migos. That was in 2014.

YOUR OWN PLOT OF… 

There’s a small town in Arizona called Nothing. Every time we pass by there, we usually stop and take a picture at this big billboard. But what you might not know is I once tried to buy a piece of land there and put up a real billboard with our band logo on it. But I reached in my pocket, and there was nothing in there. 

ERYKAH, JULIAN AND… NOTHING (SLIGHT RETURN)

Julian Casablancas and [his band] the Voidz were playing [that SXSW show], and he was just chilling in the green room. We were getting ready to play. He was playing like right after Migos. I think Rick Ross played that show, too, which was cool. They basically cleared the whole venue. They kicked everyone out of the green room, even Migos and Erykah—they moved everybody. Me and Kyle, the drummer, we’re like, “Nawww, we can’t leave. We’ve got to see Rick Ross pull up in the Maybach and stuff.” So we go back down to the green room, squeeze through this tent, [go] down this thing and hid in a porta-potty until he pulled up, and we were able to sneak back out and watch Rick Ross play from side stage. We got kicked out after two songs. But it was pretty cool. I met Bun B that night, and I met Nipsey Hussle, too.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, “nothing” is slang for vagina in Elizabethan. I never read much Shakespeare, and I got stuck in this hole. But I’ve never heard that. Everything else that you could possibly imagine that you could [associate] with Nothing I’ve heard before. 

NOTHING NICE TO SAY

After watching an Oasis documentary, I noticed that Anton Newcombe from the Brian Jonestown Massacre tweeted about how he gave Oasis meth instead of cocaine at their first L.A. show. It almost derailed their career. I tweeted at [band leader] Anton Newcombe, “Go figure, the faux [Rolling] Stones out drug the faux Beatles.” He blocked me, and I’m still blocked to this day. I like that. 

BETWEEN NOTHING AND ETERNITY

The first time we played Mexico, we played a festival in Monterrey. That day, we drank a bottle of Mezcal at this restaurant because it was only 10 bucks. That day, we happened to see an alien [ship] flying over the mountains. Everyone else who was there did, too. Everybody in the restaurant was just like, “Oh, yeah, we see that all the time.” Anyway, that’s not even it. So that night after the show, we met this group of kids, and they took us into town in Monterrey to this rave that was going on at a gay bar. We hung out there until six in the morning. When the sun was coming up, we ate ecstasy, and we were out of our minds.

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We were driving back on this scary-ass highway. It was a two-lane highway with a big medium, like an island. But the island was a foot-and-a-half, maybe two feet tall. The person driving was insanely drunk. I don’t know why we got in the car with them. She drove onto the island, and the car got stuck. We were scared and we couldn’t even get out of the car on either side because there were cars were just going through. A giant yellow school bus pulls up. They stopped traffic, and about 60 people got out of this [bus]. They just left a football game, and came out in their Monterrey jerseys. These people got around the car, picked it up and put it back onto the road. We were able to get in and drive, and we made it home safe. That was one of the craziest things that ever happened. It was the longest day ever. We played in front of 15 people.