80s band A Flock of Seagulls was in Southern California over the weekend to play a series of gigs. The musicians were initially expecting to play the two shows and fly back to England today, but unfortunately, the weekend didn’t wind up going as planned. Someone stole the band’s van and made off with thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
According to The Los Angeles Times, band members played the Bellflower in Downey, California on Saturday without incident. Afterwards, they stopped in at a local Comfort Inn to get some rest before heading for Woodland Hills for another show in the morning. Around 2 AM, however, an unidentified group of individuals pulled into the parking lot. One exited the vehicle, approached the tour van, shimmied around a bit, got inside and simply drove the vehicle off. You can take a look at the security footage of the incident below…
In addition to the van itself, the unidentified thieves made off with all of the performers’ clothes from the current tour, their instruments and perhaps most importantly, hard drives containing music both the band and the lead singer have been working on. At this point, it’s unclear whether any of those songs were backed up on another device that wasn’t in the car, but for the sake of both the musicians and the fans, I certainly hope they were. All in all, a rough estimate of the missing items has been put at $70,000, but obviously, much of the stolen property is irreplaceable.
For a short time during the 1980s, A Flock of Seagulls was one of the most famous bands in the world. The group’s hit “I Ran” was everywhere, but they never were able to capitalize on that success too much. As some band members have left over the years, they’ve been replaced and the project has thundered forward with different people, which certainly isn’t a strange story for most bands.
Hopefully, the guys will be able to recover their lost equipment within a short time and get back to entertaining the masses with the instruments and amps they’re most accustomed to using. Regardless, spend the next five minutes of your day listening to this...
