According to a bulletin reposted yesterday on MySpace, the LA drummer Don Bolles, who most famously played for the Germs and is presumably somewhat rough and tumble in appearance, was arrested on Wednesday, April 4 by members of the Newport Police Department. He was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, which in this case was apparently the hemp oil contained in a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap (flavor unknown) that was squirreled away in the drummer's army green van. Friends are trying to raise bail money, and to nurse the shock their psyches underwent when confronted with the idiocy of the charge and their inability to make it go away with a Bewitched blink of the eye.
Dr. Bronner’s is the magic elixir of soaps, old-school snake oil that
actually works like a charm. Bolles reportedly used it for everything
from washing his clothes to brushing his teeth. Following the death of the kindly and eccentric Dr. Bronner in 1997, the company opted to replace the jojoba oil they had been using in their soaps with hemp oil, which apparently makes the soaps milder but also adds a vaguely “Humboldt in October” scent. The bottle labels, which as fans know are larded with lines like “Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One!” and “A man and not a monkey, a man! Amen,” are also printed with hemp seed oil.
