Bus-ted: Poor Dears

It’s going to be all over the web by the end of the afternoon but I can’t help noting that Montreal band The Dears (who play Toronto tonight) awoke this morning to find that their entire tour bus had been stolen. Don’t shed too many Dears tears: their gear wasn’t on it, and it was rented, and presumably insured, so their month-long tour will go on. But I wondered if there’d ever been any cases of Grand Theft Tour Bus before. A quick check reveals - yes! Most lurid was the theft of country singer Crystal Gayle’s bus in 2007 by escaped prisoner Christopher Daniel Gay, who busted out of a South Carolina prison and also stole a pickup truck and a Wal-Mart 18-wheeler, all in an effort to visit his mama, who was dying of cancer. (He also reportedly picked up prostitutes and entertained them in the bus along the way.) Bluegrass singer Tim O’Brien even wrote a ballad to commemorate the tale. But Dears take note: Gay escaped again in March. Perp watch?

Other tour-bus robbery victims: The Kills last year (apparently by its driver) and Euro-Vision winning metal band Lordi during an Ozzfest tour; and San Francisco band Film School. Expand the definition to include “tour van,” and you have Sonic Youth, who famously lost all their modified guitars and other gear in a tour-van theft in 1999 (the van turned up sans gear a few days later). But stealing a bus does feel like a slightly more glorious and absurd level of theft than with a van. Are there any other notable cases of bus theft, perhaps going back to the classic rock era? Did the Boston Pops ever get its bus ripped off?