sign in sign up
<<
Home , Alice Donut, Antiseen, Brandon Cruz, Cameo Theater, Cathay de Grande, Chris Barrows

THE ROAD TALES FROM TOURING MUSICIANS

TONY PATINO COVER ART BY JOSHUA ROTHROCK Copyright © 2012 Tony Patino

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1475132649

ISBN-10: 1475132646

second edition paperback June 2012

Editor: Tony Patino

Cover art: Joshua Rothrock

Cover and interior layout: Tony Patino

www.tonypatinosworld.com

www.40amp.com

[email protected]

CONTENTS

FORWARD

MOJO NIXON solo artist 1 JOHN STANIER helmet, battles 4 TERRI texas terri bomb 6 CHRIS GATES the big boys, junkyard 7 BRANDON CRUZ , dr. know 10 WILLIAM WEBER , the candy snatchers 12 GERRY ATTRIC the bulemics 15 WES TEXAS the bulemics 16 ANIMAL the anti-nowhere league 18 TIM BARRY avail 19 NICKI SICKI verbal abuse 22 RICHIE LAWLER clairmel 24 DAVE DECKER clairmel 26 JOHN KASTNER asexuals, the doughboys 29 SCOTT MCCULLOUGH the doughboys 32 BLAG DAHLIA the dwarves 34 KARL MORRIS , billyclub 38 JIM COLEMAN cop shoot cop 41 STONEY TOMBS the hookers 42 the minutemen 43 44 46 NATE WATERS infected 49 TIM LEITCH fear 52 IAN MACKAYE , 53 DONNY PAYCHECK zeke 55 GINGER COYOTE white trash debutantes 57 BEN DEILY the lemonheads 58 SAM WILLIAMS down by law 61 FARRELL HOLTZ decry 63 TONY OFFENDER the offenders 65 SAMMYTOWN fang 66 JAMES BROGAN 68 DEREK O'BRIEN 73 DAVID GIFFEN alice donut 76 JOSEPH GENARO 79 LIZ MCGRATH tongue, miss derringer 80 SAL CANZONIERI 81 JON WURSTER 83 , 84 circle jerks, joe strummer 85 black flag, circle jerks 87 BOBBY SLONE rock n roll terrorists, the loaded nuns 89 DON BOLLES the germs 90 MATTHEW MCCOY uk subs, billyclub 91 BRENT BELKE snfu 92 JOHN STABB government issue 94 COLIN ABRAHALL gbh 96 NICK RAZOR gfi 98 ED IVY rhythm pigs 99 KEITH BRAMMER die kreuzen 103 BRANT BJORK fu manchu, solo artist 106 BRUCE WINGATE adrenalin od 109 111 MIKE MAGRANN ch3 114 BRIAN BRANNON jfa 117 CHRISTOPHER LONG dead lazlo's place 119 GIZZ LAZLO dead lazlo's place, uk subs 122 JEFF DAHL power trip, solo artist 124 ERIC DAVIDSON new bomb turks 126 WILLY JOHNS the candy snatchers 128 JOHNETTE NAPOLITANO 129 FELIX GRIFFIN dri 130 MAURO CODELUPPI raw power 132 BLAINE COOK the accused 134 JJ PEARSON toxic reasons 135 ROB LUCJAK toxic reasons 137 SICKIE WIFEBEATER the mentors 138 SEAN ROMIN schleprock, decry 140 JEFF CLAYTON 142 SCOTT REYNOLDS all 143 MIKE MCCARTER infected 146 RYAN YOUNG off with their heads 147 PETER BLACK the hard-ons 151 GREG NORTON hüsker dü 153 DAVE WOODARD billyclub 155 SCOTT LUALLIN nine pound hammer 158 BRIAN PULITO nine pound hammer 159 PENELOPE the avengers 161 DAVE BROCKIE 163 MARK BURKE phantom rockers 165 VICTOR KRUMMENACHER 166 RIKK AGNEW christian death, solo artist 168 FORWARD

Anyone who listens to , or most any music for that matter, has heard some of the myths and legends about life on the road. Pink Floyd’s giant pig floating away, receiving a turd from a rabid fan, killing chickens onstage, the Rod Stewart stomach pump story, Ozzy biting the head off of a live bat…..there are tons of those tall tales about the music business that have been floating around for years, growing more and more outlandish as the years go by. Some of them are true, and some of them are absolute fiction. I have had the good fortune to hit the road with some of my favorite underground acts, not as a band member, but as a manager, roadie, driver, merchandise handler, and whatever you want to call what I did. Those moments have been some of the highest points in my life. One thing I quickly learned on those trips was that just about anything can happen, and I mean anything. You have to look at it for what it is, a bunch of guys traveling together for about a month, racing from one big city to the next. It’s not that simple though. You have to reach your destination on time every day no matter what. You rely on your vehicle to get you there. You rely on the people to put their normal responsibilities aside for a few hours and come to the show. You rely on the promoters to be honest enough to pay you enough to make it to the next city, and you rely on the people you’re traveling with to not get on your nerves as you sit side by side in the van, bus, or whatever you might be traveling in. It isn’t a far cry from the family vacations you took as a child when you went to visit your Grandma in Zephyrhills, Florida. There’s usually a band member in charge of the trip, just like your Father was on those long trips. There’s usually a band member that always complains about everything, just like your little sister did, and there’s always car trouble, wrong turns, and cops. I got the idea to put this little book together after reading a book called “I Killed” by a stand-up comic named Mark Schiff. It’s a book full of crazy road stories from nearly every comic in the business. That book is a riot, and it was one of the few books I’ve ever read cover to cover nonstop. It made me think back to all the crazy stories I’d heard about touring musicians, and some of the things I went through in my own experiences, and I got to work on what you have in your hands right now. Not every artist in this book is a household name, and I’m almost positive that not many people on the planet have actually heard of all of them, but these stories are all fantastic in their own different way, and these people worked harder than most of the so called “musicians” rock radio is cramming down your throat these days. These people did it, and still do, for the love, not the money or the fame. Just read on and check out what they put themselves through, just to play music.

Enjoy Tony Patino The Road solo artist

People always ask me how we got successful. Well, we played all those shitty gigs in the middle of nowhere for no money that's how. Eventually that all paid off but it took a while. We starved forever. In our early days of touring we spent a lot of time sleeping on people's floors, going home with fans or the sound man, or we’d drive to a relative’s house or something. We got used to that because we were playing those gigs and getting paid fifty or a hundred bucks. There were only three of us. Me, Skid Roper and our road manager Bullethead. Skid Roper was super cheap. He's the type of guy that would order soup and ask for extra crackers. He ate cereal every morning and was too cheap to buy a bowl, so he took a half gallon milk jug and cut the top off and used that for his cereal. We used to play in Santa Cruz a lot because that's where the guys in Camper Van Beethoven lived. One night we played a big show with them up there and they said we could stay at their place. Their house didn't have a lot in it, just a couple of couches, so Bullethead slept in the van with his girlfriend. In the middle of the night Bullethead's girlfriend had to go to the bathroom and ended up pissing in Skid’s cereal bowl and then just hid it in the van. The next morning the rest of us went to get something to eat and Skid was looking for his bowl. When we got back he was sitting there eating Captain Crunch out of a peed in cereal bowl. She'd peed one of those big super strong, all night ammonia pees in there too! One of those big smelly tiger pees! He just rinsed it out a little and then ate out of it. He didn't get in there with a scrub brush or a brillo pad or anything. Even then, what the fuck? Go buy a real fucking bowl! He didn't know it and I never told him. We were playing in Jackson, Mississippi around 1986. I think the place was called W.C. Don's. It was a tiny little place, literally just a plywood shack off a dirt road next to the railroad tracks. It kinda' looked like a party hut or something, the type of place where teenagers might go to drink beer. We were headlining on a Tuesday night and we were

1 Tony Patino getting paid fifty bucks! We met up with some locals and got some psychedelic mushrooms and ate ‘em before the show. That place was so small and I sing so loud that every time I sang really loud the lights would dim. I was super high on mushrooms and I would just yell real loud and the lights would go down. I did that over and over and over until I eventually got tired of it. It was Mississippi in the summertime so it got really hot. They didn't have any air conditioning, so a guy pulled out a claw hammer and bent some nails back and literally took a sheet of plywood off the wall. That was their air conditioning. That particular wall was right against the train tracks and during a break I was standing there when all the sudden a freight train came by. I was so high on those mushrooms that I felt like I was in the freight train! Like I was the freight train! Eventually I just had to get away, so I crawled up underneath the drum riser and wouldn't come out. I remember they were grabbing me by my legs and trying to pull me out of there. At the end of the night it was just like The Blues Brothers. They were paying us fifty bucks and I drank sixty-seven dollars’ worth of booze so we owed them money. We ran and got in the car and just took off! I had a song back in 1990 called " Must Die." Some of the lyrics were “He's a tortured artist, Used to be in the Eagles, Now he whines like a wounded beagle,” and “Turn on the TV and what did I see? This bloated hairy thing winning a Grammy.” The main chorus went “Don Henley must die! Don Henley must die! Don't let him get back together with Glenn Frey!” It actually got some radio play and Don Henley was acting like an asshole about it. There was a big pissing match over it in the newspaper in San Diego. We went on tour for that record and my band played at a place in Austin, Texas called The Hole in the Wall. That place was pretty tiny. It might have held about fifty people. I guess one of Don Henley’s buddies hung out at the bar there during the day and everybody was saying Don Henley was going to be there for our show. I said, "Don Henley's a fuckin' pussy! He won't show up!” I was like, “I'm Mojo Nixon ! He ain't got the balls to show up at one of my shows!" Sure as shit, about halfway through the first set everybody started whispering, "Look it’s him. It's Don Henley." I said, "That don't look like him," and my manager pulled me over and said, "It’s fuckin’ him dude!" Don always had long hair and apparently he’d just cut it short, but it was him alright! For the first time in my life I was speechless! I remember picking up my guitar, then putting it down, and then picking it back up again. He was standing right next to the stage and I just didn't know what to do. I said,

2 The Road "Wow! It turns out Don Henley's here! Hey Don, what do you wanna’ do? Do you wanna’ fight? Do you wanna’ fuck? Do you wanna’ argue?" He was a little drunk and he said, "No I just wanna’ sing that song you wrote about me! Especially the part about not gettin' back together with Glen Frey!" I picked up my guitar and we blasted into it. I sang the verses and he was belting out the Don Henley Must Die part on the chorus. He fucked with me a little up there, but when it was over he hugged everybody and started to leave. As he was walking out the door my drummer screamed out, "That boys got balls the size of church bells!" Don drove a blue Mercedes and there were two of them in the parking lot. We could see him and his buddy through the window and they must have spent ten minutes trying to get into the wrong car. The only Eagle's song I knew was "Already Gone," so we played it next in honor of Don Henley getting up there and singing with us. There's no picture or video to prove it and nobody believes me, but it's true!

3 Tony Patino JOHN STANIER helmet, battles

It was the winter of 1994 in and Helmet was on tour with The Beastie Boys. We’d already done two shows in and several in Australia, and we were in much need of an adventurous night out other than the usual after parties which were becoming tedious and predictable. After the show someone suggested that we go looking for Bon Scott's grave. I think all of us and our entire crew at one point or another in their lives was heavily into AC/DC, so this was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. The exact number of our grave viewing team is a bit blurry but I think we had maybe nine or ten people piled into a van with various locals all arguing on which cemetery he was buried in and how best to get there. After driving around town for what seemed to be an eternity, largely due to beer pit stops and post beer pit stops, we finally arrived at a cemetery. It was on top of a hill in the dead quiet suburbs of Sydney. I had heard many a story of his grave site so I was looking for clues towards the "Jim Morrisonesque" final resting of “The Big Balled One.” In complete Gothic blackness we ran like drunken rabbits falling into and over tombstones all over the place. When we all finally met up in a somewhat open space someone noticed a car parked there that was rocking back and forth with human noises of ecstasy coming from it. Without hesitation we ran to the car and started banging on the windows and screaming, doing what most drunk musicians would do in a foreign country. They started the car in complete panic and drove a couple feet then stopped! After realizing how many of us there were they peeled off again into the night. Hours later after giving up hope of ever finding the grave we all regrouped and were heading back to the van on the other side of the graveyard. When we finally got to the road we noticed a figure lying on the sidewalk far away in the distance. As we got closer we noticed that it was a middle aged woman in her bathrobe. She was lying face down on the pavement with several empty bottles of booze lying next to her.

4 The Road We were pretty much certain she was dead, so we immediately had our guide call 911. I remember how quiet it was while we were waiting for the police to show up and none of us exactly knowing what to do. We already tried waking her up but she remained frozen stiff on the concrete. Oddly enough the police finally showed up and she almost instantly came to. My guess is that this had happened before because even the police seemed strangely relaxed. After putting her into an ambulance the cop's attention quickly turned to us. "How long have you all been here?" "Where are you from?" "Have you been drinking?" Then finally after several other interrogating questions came the inevitable....."Are you looking for something we should know about?" We replied "yes, we’re looking for Bon Scott's grave!" The policemen found this to be the funniest thing they’d heard all night. They instantly loosened up and actually turned out to be really cool guys! More debate followed between the police and our guide as to the whereabouts of the actual grave site. At that point I think we all lost interest and just wanted to call it a night. Ironically, years later on another Australian tour I finally did get to see his grave. It wasn’t even in Sydney, it was in Perth on a nondescript 8 x 6 stone. Rumor has it that his family had him moved because he had been dug up one too many times.

5 Tony Patino

TEXAS TERRI solo artist

I was playing a show at the Thunderbird Lounge in North and a friend of mine who had not gone out for several years because she had had two children was coming to the show. She was so excited about going out that she arrived at the club really early and started drinking. By the time I arrived around 10:30 she was pretty much plastered. She came with me to the girl's room and said she wanted to show me something, then raised her shirt and started pumping her breasts everywhere. I almost died laughing because she was still breast feeding and was squirting breast milk all over the mirror. I had never seen that. I loved it, so I asked her to come up on stage during the first song and "milk" the audience. I've always loved shock value and I'll never forget the faces of the fans when she started her milk pumping! It was so cool to see all of the different reactions. I feel kinda' bad for taking advantage of my friend's drunken state but it seemed like a fun thing at the time...and it was! The first time I toured Europe was in 2000. At that time I was pals with Angelina Jolie and she was kind enough to sponsor my band. That's how I was able to do my first Euro Tour, so everyone has her to thank for me coming to Europe. I'm so grateful for all the help she gave me. Anyway, she was in training for the Laura Croft movie at the same time I would be there on tour. It was a great coincidence that it worked out this way and we were really excited that we could hang out in London together. Our first show ever in London was at a place called The Underworld. When I handed in the guest list with Angelina Jolie's name on it, John the promoter thought I was either deranged, full of myself, or just plain insane. He thought I was a total joke for thinking Angelina Jolie was going to be coming to my show. Well, when she arrived at the door he just about shit his pants! I would have loved to have seen his

6 The Road face! Hahahha! He told me that I was welcome to play The Underworld any time I want because he got to meet Angelina Jolie because of me.

CHRIS GATES the big boys, junkyard

Around 1983 we played in with Hüsker Dü and a bunch of other great bands, and our next show was in Winnipeg. We didn't have the right paperwork to get into , so we had to leave all of our equipment at this church that the guys from Hüsker Dü were living in and act like we were going into Canada just as tourists. For us, a bunch of relatively young and naive people, getting quizzed by the Canadian border guards was daunting. We made it through the border and as we were getting into Winnipeg the van started to backfire really badly! I was the only one who knew anything about cars, and I knew it was definitely something going on with one of the valves. All I could think to do was pull one of the spark plug wires off of one of the cylinders and we drove the rest of the way on seven cylinders. We made it up to Winnipeg, played the show, and had a great time, but coming back into the states was a different story entirely. There's one main highway from Winnipeg to Minneapolis and it's about a five hour drive. Our singer got so flustered driving that somehow he got onto another highway. The next thing we knew we were on some two-lane highway driving through the Dakota's in the biggest rainstorm I've ever seen. Lightning would crack out of the sky and shoot all the way across the horizon, then crash into the ground. It was insane! About six and a half hours into the drive our head lights started getting dim and I realized that our alternator was going out. I knew if I kept running the lights it would kill our battery and we’d be stranded in the middle of nowhere, so I drove for about four hours with the headlights off holding a flashlight out the window. Any time a car would come from either direction I would turn the headlights on so they would see us and then turn them right back off again after they passed.

7 Tony Patino Finally we limped our way into this town at about 6am. At that point we'd been driving for about ten hours on what should have been a five hour drive. We parked at an auto parts place because we knew when we turned the van off we were done! We needed to buy a battery or an alternator or something. We really didn't know what we needed, but we knew we'd be buying it at an auto parts store. We sat there arguing and stuff and then our drummer just disappeared. We didn't know where the hell he went and he was gone for about forty-five minutes, then when he came back he had some alternator brushes with him. Apparently as we'd crept into this town he spotted a wrecking yard full of vans. He walked back to it, jumped the fence, popped the hood on one of those vans and removed the alternator brushes. We put the newer ones in, got a jump from a trucker, and the problem seemed to be fixed. We drove on to Minneapolis with no problems. I ended up moving out to in 1984 and started a rock band called Junkyard with some old Austin friends who had moved out there shortly after I did. One thing led to another and we got a record deal. It was me, from Minor Threat, David Rose who was in a band called The Pagans in Austin, and the bass player and drummer were from Decry. We had all done van tours endlessly, but now we were in a tour bus and we were on MTV. We were wearing pointy boots and everything was awesome! We were playing big places, and half of the time I didn't even know where my equipment was unless I was standing in front of it. We actually did a tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd and stayed at a hotel in Falls Church, Virginia. One of the guys from Skynyrd had a bunch of cousins in Virginia and they showed up at the gig, and then back at the hotel afterward. They had about two or three gallons of moonshine and a bunch of some kind of speed that they'd made themselves. Somehow I ended up in his room with him and these girls and some other people doing speed, drinking moonshine, and just having a blast. At about three in the morning his road manager came by and said, "We’re leaving! We’ve gotta’ get to the next town!" Most of the people cleared out, but he said I could stay in his room with the girls. I knew if I passed out in that room my band wouldn't know where to look for me, so I took a couple of the girls and some booze and headed back to my room. We made it downstairs where my room was and I was really drunk and couldn't make my key card work. I ended up kicking on the door really hard to try and wake up my guitar tech who I was sharing the room with that night, and hotel security came out of nowhere. I was

8 The Road making a terrible ruckus in the hall so they just went ahead and let me on into the room with their master key. I took the girls on in and did the things you do with girls that follow you back to your hotel room, and the whole time my guitar tech never even got up out of bed. He just laid there with the blanket over his head. I partied with those girls for about an hour and then we all just passed out. What we didn't realize until the next morning is that it wasn't even my room. They'd let me into a completely different room that was occupied by some woman. I thought she was my guitar tech, passed out under the covers, so I completely ignored her. Apparently she was awake under their the entire time and was just terrified, hiding from the crazy tattooed guy and the naked girls! After we passed out she went and got hotel security, but they couldn't wake us up so they gave her another room and just let us sleep. They couldn't really have me arrested either because they were the ones that let me in there. I had alcohol poisoning the next day and could barely function.

9 Tony Patino BRANDON CRUZ dead kennedys, dr. know

In 2001 Dead Kennedys decided to reform and asked me to replace their original vocalist . I agreed, and we started touring all over the world. We did three nights in a row in Tokyo, Japan. I usually jump into the crowd every night, but they didn't want me to do it in Japan. The promoter for those shows kept telling me to stay on the stage and not to go into the crowd, and when I asked why they simply said, "They'll go after you!" The first two nights I made a conscious effort to stay on the stage, but on the third night I thought, "Well, this is our last night.....I'm going into the crowd". Before we played I was talking to the band that opened for us. I asked them if there was any reason I shouldn't do it and they just shook their heads. They didn't speak English very well so I figured they just couldn't understand me. There were a thousand or more kids there and during our last song I did a forward flip into the crowd. My boots didn't even hit the ground before they were taken off my feet and the crowd completely stripped me. They literally ripped every shred of clothes off my body and I ended up in the middle of the pit completely naked. They took out my earrings and everything, then gently laid me onto the ground. Thankfully somebody handed me a towel and I was able to climb back over the barricade. In early 2009 Dr. Know did a West coast tour. It was me, Ismeal Hernandez on bass, and Steve Contreras on guitar. Our regular drummer couldn't go on the tour so we took a kid named Nik. He was a little young and wet behind the ears, but he'd played with us before so we took him. The plan was to head up the coast, then go into Canada for a whole bunch of gigs. Canadian border guards don't really like American punk bands, so when the fans see that you’re coming to town they kinda' just hope you make it. That way if you don't show up they're not too disappointed. I happen to be in a skateboard team called The Jacks, so we had some Jack bands come across the border from Canada and pick up our merch and our clothes and take it back for us.

10 The Road Our plan was for Ismeal and I to drive across with my mother and her friend who lived near the border in the States and act like we were just tourists. Steve and Nik were going to board a Greyhound bus and tell the border patrol that they were to going to a , and we put them on the bus with a five hour head start from us. On our way up there I texted them and said, "How was it?", but got no response. Then I wrote, "Where are you?" Still no response! When it was our turn, the border patrol swiped our drivers licenses and said, "Oh Mr. Cruz, Mr. Hernandez, we've been waiting for you, please pull over," and took us into this big building with this big, sort of glass cage in the middle of it. It was just four walls made out of glass, and our drummer Nik was inside there pounding on the glass looking at us. The guy who was walking us in said, "Oh I see you recognize Nik." I said, "Yeah, I know that kid," and told him we skateboarded together sometimes. He said, "What else do you do together?" I could tell we were busted so I went ahead and told him we played music together. We sat there forever and nobody said shit to us, and the whole time we were both wondering where Steve was. They ended up doing separate interviews with us and that's how I got the story Apparently Nik ended up sitting next to some junkie on the Greyhound, and Steve ended up in a seat a few rows back. The junkie was telling Nik how he was going to to score some dope and Nik got a little freaked out. Steve couldn't even hear them and had no idea what was going on. When the bus pulled up to the border the junkie was so loaded that they just dragged him out of line, cuffed him, and took him away. That freaked Nik completely out, and when they got to him he just caved. He told them he was in a band, that the guitarist was right behind him in line, and that Ishmeal and I were coming later. He told them about all the tour dates, gave them our MySpace page, our Facebook page, and basically gave them every bit of information on Dr. Know that you could possibly want to know. By the time Ishmeal and I got there they'd gone on the internet and looked at everything. To this day Nik won't admit to any of it either. He claims that they just figured it out all on their own. They made us sit there for five hours and told us that a magistrate had to come for our trial. In the meantime they searched my mom's friend's car and asked us for our cell phones. Mine was stashed under the car seat so they didn't find it, but they were quizzing me about the texts that I'd sent earlier. When the magistrate finally arrived they put us all in the same room together. We were all sitting there pissed off,

11 Tony Patino staring at Nik, and I wanted to kill him because they'd seized the car. Eventually the border guards starting questioning us, trying to get us to admit to doing more than just playing music. Apparently they'd found the nine-hundred dollars I had rolled up in a sock, and thought we were planning to buy drugs or something. Eventually the magistrate came in, lined us all up, and read us our charges. Crimes against the queen, lying about our destination, lying about our intentions, and basically lying about every single thing they could possibly think of. They made us admit to each one of the charges individually, then we were finger printed, photographed, and deported from Canada. They told us we weren't allowed to come back for a year. Since Ismeal and I had come in the car they let us drive back across the border, but Nik and Steve were walked across to the US customs office a little later, which was closed because it was so late at night. There was somebody in there but they wouldn't let the guys in, so they had to wait outside in the freezing cold for the next bus which wasn't coming until the next morning.

WILLIAM WEBER gg allin, the candy snatchers

There are always stories within stories about GG Allin and what happened both on and off the stage. Some of these stories I can attest to, but others I call bullshit. Be that as it may, this here story is one of my better ones of hangin' with GG. In 1993, after three weeks on the road playing guitar with GG Allin & the , we pulled into to play a gig at an old theater called Medusa's. We arrived in Chicago after doing a straight drive from Joplin, Missouri where we were chased out of town when we decided not to play the show.....after we got paid. Medusa's had a green room that had that "Hollywood" style mirror on a wall. You know, surrounded by big round white bulbs to show just how ugly everyone is. Well, GG saw the mirror and the bulbs and got a little light bulb over his own head.....an idea!

12 The Road You see, all through the tour he grabbed as much female underwear as he could muster. Some women gave it to him, some he ripped off of them, and the rest he stole out of laundry baskets when we stayed at someone's house. His big idea was to hang a pair of underwear off of each bulb that surrounded the mirror so afterward he could sit back in the chair and look at his marvelous self and the trophies he'd accumulated over the past twenty-two days. After supplying each bulb with a pair, he had another idea, to sniff each one down the line. He started from the left and moved his way to the right. I was standing next to his brother Merle, snickering along with everyone else as he took deep inhales through these garments. I looked down the line to see how many more he had to go and I got a bad feeling. There up on one of the bulbs was a pair of black Haines men's underwear that belonged to me. I ribbed Merle and whispered to him what GG was about to breathe into. I wanted to stop him but Merle held me back. He got to my pair, picked them off, and took a big old sniff right where my boys were at one time. Merle and I busted out laughing and GG thought we were laughing along with him. I was afraid he would find out and pummel the shit out of me but no one ever said anything to him about it. Three weeks later he was dead and I bought new underwear. In 1998 and '99 I did three tours with The Candy Snatchers. I basically didn't have a gig at the time and kind of invited myself in, but they never argued. They never said I was officially in the band either…..hmmm. On the second tour we hit our favorite city (next to )…..Chicago. We had a show to play at a shitty little bar called the Big Horse. It was a bar/Mexican restaurant that didn't give us a guest list or a break on alcohol. A couple of hours before we played, we went to our favorite Chicago bar, Delilah's. Delilah's was a whiskey joint and all of us in the Snatchers were whiskey fanatics. As it turned out, the owner of the bar was a huge fan of the band so the whiskey started flowing. He was bringing out all kinds of different types and slamming 'em down our throats. Long about the 7th shot we were done for, but we kept on

13 Tony Patino going. Guitarist Matt Oditus had to take a piss and went to the upstairs bathroom. The door confused him since it wouldn't swing open in either direction, so he broke it down. He didn't realize it slid open from the right to the left. Later on I had to puke so I ran to the bathroom at the back of the bar. I ran in, grabbing my mouth trying to hold it back, only to stop and see how clean the facilities were. I couldn't puke in a clean bathroom! Fuck! I’ve gotta’ make it out the bathroom door, down through the bar full of patrons, out the front door, and get to the curb. Meanwhile my stomach was saying, "Let's go!" So out the bathroom door and down through the bar. Halfway through the crowd I saw our singer Larry and I said, "Man, don't puke in there! It's really clean!" He nodded, looking at me as if what was saying was really important. "I'm with you," he shouted, and we both got to the street. I was emptying out onto the bumper of a very nice white SUV, and I had Larry to the right of me puking in harmony. Out of the bar stepped our bassist Willy, who can't watch anyone throw up without doing it himself, and next thing you know we were all shoulder to shoulder, each man holding up the other and all three of us vomiting. The SUV I was hitting had the driver in the seat, but he stayed there and just watched…..wise. Well shit, it was time to play the Big Horse. We got there and a few of the friendly folk bought me some Jack and we all exchanged very bad jokes. Well, mine were bad. When it was time to play, Larry, Matt and Willy sobered up enough to realize that the drummer Sergio and I were in no shape to play. We insisted otherwise. Matt tried to play Jumpin' Jack Flash and Sergio collapsed into the drum set. He got it back together after a while and we tried again. I was getting no sound out of my amp because Willy kept unplugging me. They say I started crying, begging them to let me play. Sergio fucked his drums up again and Matt threw his Ovation Deacon guitar at him, knocking him off his drum stool and breaking the neck of the guitar. Crying? I don't remember crying!!! There's no crying in Rock and Roll!!!

14 The Road GERRY ATTRIC the bulemics

We played the 2000 South by Southwest festival in Austin. Our show was at a club called the Red Eyed Fly, which was an outdoor stage with a big tent above it. About ten minutes into our set I threw a pint glass way up in the air and it shattered and fell down and split some guy’s face wide open. He just happened to be an employee at the club, and before I knew it there was security all over the place pulling me off stage and shutting us down. I didn't really know why they stopped our set, but I kind of had an idea since I'd thrown about ten pint glasses by that time. As security was hauling me out of there, Jeff Clayton from the band Antiseen ran up with his fist cocked back like he was going to punch the guy. He yelled, "What are you doin' with my boy!" I was like, "No Jeff! No!" They took me to a room in the club and called the cops to and take me to jail. A friend of ours had been filming the show, and somehow she made her way in there to show the police the video, and in the end they had to let me go because the video showed that I hadn't actually thrown any glasses directly at the crowd. I was just throwing them at the ceiling and one just happened to come down and hit somebody. That was one of the few incidents where I actually felt bad though. That same year we got to do the Texas dates on The Vans . At the show I broke a bottle on the stage barricade and started cutting myself up with it. I was bleeding pretty badly, and in the middle of our set some paramedics drove up and were trying to hand me towels and stuff. I could tell some of the kids in the crowd had never seen anything like that before. The promoters weren't going to let us play the next day in San Antonio. They basically kicked us off the tour without even telling us. We drove all that way with no reason to think they wouldn't let us play. Eventually they agreed to let us play as long as there wasn't and broken glass or blood involved. When we hit the stage, for some reason there was a big thing of Morton salt sitting there, so I

15 Tony Patino started covering the crowd with that salt. It was about 110 degrees out there too, and they were charging five dollars for a bottle of water. As I was looking out across the crowd I noticed a girl out there snacking on a big "sausage on a stick." I jumped off the stage, walked out there to her, and yelled into the mic, "Who wants to see this girl deep-throat this sausage?" Everybody yelled "Yeeeaaahhhh!", so she went ahead and did it.

WES TEXAS the bulemics

We were playing a show at 's in Austin, Texas once and our singer Gerry had a Jägermeister drinking contest with someone and ended up blacking out. There was a really young punk rocker girl up in front of the stage the whole time we were playing, and all throughout the show her and Gerry were grabbing on each other and stuff. Eventually he pulled her up on stage and they started making out. They were stumbling around up there and bumping into the rest of us and we were all getting kind of pissed off. I was like, "Quit it and fucking sing Gerry!" I remember kicking them both off the stage. At one point she was back in the crowd again, standing right in front of Gerry who was on the stage. I thought I was seeing things, but he actually pulled out his dick and put it in her mouth and she started blowing him right there on the front of the stage. They got away with it for about ten seconds before the club pulled the plug on us. Apparently her boyfriend was there too, and he flipped out and ended up getting his ass beat and got thrown out by the bouncers. We were on tour one year and played a club in Oregon called The Satyricon. One of the other bands on the bill was called The Triggers. We were watching them play, and for some reason they had a big bag of raw potatoes on stage with them. They started throwing those potatoes at the crowd and hit me with one of them. I picked it up and threw it back so hard that it broke the neck of their guy’s guitar. It was a really

16 The Road nice vintage Rickenbacker too. After they finished playing we saw their guitarist almost in tears laying that guitar into its case. That tour ended up in San Antonio, and oddly enough The Triggers were on the bill there too. Apparently a bunch of people in the crowd thought we were a "white power" band or something that night. We got on stage and there were a lot of Mexican skinheads up in the front yelling, "Fuck you white power motherfuckers!" We thought they were joking at first but we soon found out that they weren't. We'd been on the road for a while and Gerry's girlfriend had driven out to spend some time with him. She ended up in a fight with some girl right up in front of the stage. Gerry jumped into the crowd to break up the fight, and it turned out she was fighting with the girlfriend of one of those Mexican skinheads. He started getting into it and fucking with Gerry, so I walked to edge of the stage and gave him a big steel toed boot to the head. The second I did that the entire place just went crazy and beer bottles and ashtrays started coming at us left and right! I saw an ashtray coming at me, I ducked, and it shattered a huge mirror on the wall behind the stage. Those guys weren't just trying to kick our asses! They were trying to kill us! Gerry got the girl fight broken up and tossed his girlfriend up on stage behind an amp, and there were fifteen or twenty of those guys after us at that point. I had a six pack of bottled beers next to my amp and I was just picking them up one by one and nailing people with them as they tried to get on the stage. Someone threw a bottle back at me and it actually broke across my arm. The whole thing only lasted maybe two minutes but it was like slow motion to us. Those guys even ripped the sound monitors off the stage. In the end our drummer ran out to the front of the stage and maced everyone. That gave us the advantage we needed, so we started blindly throwing kicks and punches and they all ran for the door. After the club cleared out the skinheads went into the parking lot and slashed the tires of any vehicles they thought might have been ours. Lucky for us we weren't driving a van, we were in a blazer. All of the other bands that played that night had their tires slashed, including The Triggers. It was just odd how we sent a bad vibe to those guys with the potato incident, and then a couple of months later they got their tires cut while playing with us.

17 Tony Patino ANIMAL the anti-nowhere league

It was 1982\83 and we were touring the USA for the first time, riding high on the second wave of punk. We'd been working with the band The Police in the UK, filming a few videos for TV. I had always liked Sting's songs and thought he was an amazing writer. He, as a person though, was a complete arshole. “Arrogant bighead” sums him up. I've met many people in this business over the years and 99% of them I hope I never meet again. So we were touring the States and were working for the Copeland brothers FBI Agency. Stewart Copeland was a cool guy, along with his brothers Ian and Miles, and obviously The Police were with them. We were invited to Ian's birthday party in New York, but we couldn't make it due to touring commitments, so we thought we'd send him a present. Money was scarce, so we all shit in a wide top bottle and sent it to him with a label that read "Message in a Bottle," hoping maybe Sting would get to see it! Not as if he needed to hate us anymore than he already did. It backfired on us a bit as Ian treasured it and took no offense. I think he realized it was really meant for Sting. Sadly, Ian is no longer with us. I don’t know about the bottle though!

18 The Road TIM BARRY avail

We were in Munich, in 1999, touring with a really big pop punk band from California. We were touring in two buses. One was a double- decker English bus and one was a German tour bus that we were housed in with another band. We played this huge show there and everybody decided to go out together afterward. I think we were looking to do some Karaoke, which is a great past time after you've been playing , to sing Meat Loaf or Lynyrd Skynyrd or something like that. We got to drinking more and more and we ended up at some German disco club. There’s only one way I can describe the place we ended up at. Basically whatever city or town you live in, if you think of the main commercial district that at night turns into a place where people go to bar hop. There's Shock O' Bottom in Richmond, Ybor City in Tampa, parts of the lower east side in , and Mass Ave in Cambridge. So many cities have these places that host restaurants and stuff in the afternoon and evening, but by one in the morning it becomes complete and utter chaos. A three to five block radius filled with bars and night clubs. Imagine if that district in your city was not only managed by a small group of police officers, but the city also hired a group of thugs equipped with handcuffs, billy clubs, and radios, to wander around and make sure that order is secure. Now.....imagine if that group of thugs were skinheads given the authority to restrain and detain people. That section of Munich is shut down now as far as I know, but that’s what it was like at that time. There were a total of a couple dozen of us on this tour including bus drivers, roadies, tour managers, and musicians, and we all went walking back to the buses together pretty late. We were outside of the two buses in this club district and everyone was drunk, laughing, wrestling, and being macho, when chaos ensued. I believe what happened was a passing car felt threatened by us, but really, in the end, I don't know what the fuck happened!

19 Tony Patino All I know is about three of those security skinhead thugs rolled up on us, start talking shit in German, and the tour manager got his camcorder out and aimed it at them. They didn't particularly like that! One thing led to another and it was a full-on brawl. I tried to diffuse the situation and one of them attacked me. By the time he was on me there were at least three or four other guys that had me up against a fence just beating me to a pulp. It was like a movie or something! I closed my eyes and thought, "OK, I'm gonna’ break one of their noses before I go down!” I swung, felt someone’s nose crush, and then I was getting the living shit kicked out of me. While that was happening there were about seven other fist fights going on and the entire street was just a massive force of brutality. The measure of intensity in that street fight was something that I can't even put into words. At some point, for some reason they got off of me and I got away. When I looked around I spotted the tour manager up against the white vinyl sided exterior of the double-decker bus, and there was blood splattered all over it. He had a whole gang of dudes just pummeling him and was doing everything he could just to stay on his feet. I ran over there and grabbed a hold of one of the many guys around him thinking that if I can just get one fucking guy off of him it might help to a degree, and all that did was help me get my fucking ass whooped. Before I knew it I was lying face down in the street getting my kidneys kicked in, getting my face kicked in, and just scrambling, lying on my stomach covering my head. Meanwhile more of these skinheads were showing up and going inside the buses and pulling people out of their bunks as they were sleeping. They were dragging them onto the street and beating them to a pulp. One of the guys in Avail looked out the rear window of the bus and thought, “Wow! That dude's getting his ass whooped!.....wait a minute, that looks like Tim's shoes!” He tried to get off the bus with a weapon but it didn't work out that way. It was just the most chaos ever! If you can imagine yourself in Germany, face down, being pummeled by three or four enormous skinheads, and then suddenly you feel your arms being restrained behind you, and then you feel handcuffs go on your wrists.....what are the thoughts that would go through your fucking head? Your face is swollen, your whole body is just screaming in the deepest, gnarliest aches and pains that you can imagine, and then as you turn your head you see all of your homies just getting crushed by enormous fucking skinheads that have the authority to police the area. There were no police anywhere and no ambulances. It was just us and

20 The Road them and a couple bystanders screaming at them in German, begging them to stop. Next thing we knew we were lifted up and escorted into a warehouse. We got into the warehouse and I was thrown on the ground as some dude spat in my face and called me a Yankee faggot! He said, "I'm not calling the police. The police don't even know your here." I looked over to my right and the tour manager was lying there completely unconscious with blood all over his face. He was of a darker complexion, which many of us believe had something to do with why those guys were focusing on him and beating on him so brutally. The merch guy from the other band was thrown down in handcuffs right next to me, and my oldest and best friend Beau, my band mate that I've known since kindergarten, was dragged in next covered in blood too. They took him and threw him into a room, locked the door, and all I heard was screaming and thumping. The most guttural, disgusting screams I've ever heard in my life. I stood up, “fuck fight-or-flight," it was all about fight now! Even though I was restrained I stood up and tried to kick someone, then bam! I was back onto the ground. Eventually some EMTs showed up in the warehouse. Our bus driver could speak German and he'd apparently found an ambulance, told them that we needed medical attention, and coaxed them into going into the building. After that the police actually showed up. The tour manager and my band mate Beau were taken to a hospital and the rest of us were thrown in jail. For what…..we don't know because we never ended up being charged with anything. The tour manager and Beau got some sort of assault charge. The reason they singled out Beau was because at some point, the tour manager, in desperation while being beaten against the bus, took out a little Mag light and hit someone in the head. The Germans responded with sheer aggression because they claimed they were hit in the head with a knife because the Mag light split somebody's forehead. When they handcuffed Beau and dragged him into the building and emptied his pockets they found a knife and just assumed that he'd stabbed one of their homies, so they brutalized him in that room in response to that. One amazing thing is that Beau also had a little film camera in his pocket. While they were emptying his pockets it fell out and hit the ground and snapped off a photo of Beau’s head with a big boot heading right at it! when we were finally all let out and back on the tour bus together. Bruised and beaten half to death, Beau looked around and said, “Well, it’s no worse than what you guys put me through every day!”

21 Tony Patino NICKI SICKI sick pleasure, verbal abuse

Our first tour after moving to California happened in 1984. Originally we were just supposed to go from to Vancouver and back because the guys in DOA hooked us up and got us across the border. Once we got into Canada though, we decided to just keep on going. I started setting shows up while we were on the road and we stayed out for about four months straight. We toured through Canada with , and that resulted in them recording a bunch of our songs on their Undisputed Attitude record in 1996. After we got through Canada we came back into the and hooked up with The Dead Kennedys. We were gonna’ tour with them but we just didn’t get along. I was on stage doing Jello Biafra impersonations and stuff and I guess he didn’t like that, so that only lasted for a few gigs. We did most of our shows on weekends because it was just too hard to find places to play during the week. We’d basically stay a few days in one town then we’d get enough money together and go to the next town and stay a few days. When we got to New York we sort of made that our home for about three or four weeks. We’d all found girls that we liked hanging out with there and they let us stay with them. We based ourselves out of there and drove out to other places to play then came back. We’d drive to Baltimore or Boston, because you could reach so much more from New York. We played with The on that tour and that alone is a story in itself! The Ramones came through San Francisco before we left on tour and I ended up interviewing them. There was a magazine there called “BAM,” Bay Area Music. Somebody from BAM called us up and wanted us to interview The Ramones, I guess because they didn’t know how to go about it themselves.....I don’t know! We were never really nailed down and living anywhere, so I don’t know how they even got a number for us. Like I said, I don’t know why they got us to do it or how

22 The Road they got a hold of me, but they did. They let me make up my own questions too, and I thought the Ramones were going in a pretty lame direction with their music at that time. The first question I asked them was, “So what made you decide to “sell out” at this point in your career,” and that was basically the nicest thing I asked them through the entire interview. When that issue of BAM came out the title of the article was The Ramones Get Abused! They had pictures of us on one side and The Ramones on the other. Of course The Ramones hated us after that. We were on that tour in ‘84 and got booked opening for The Ramones at The Ritz in New York City. We were at the venue and they came walking in and said, “So who’s playing with us tonight?” Somebody said, “Oh! It’s Verbal Abuse,” and all of the sudden they had these looks on their faces like uh, and they all huddled up. We went into the backstage area and there were guys in tuxedos bringing us drinks and a full-on catering service with all different kinds of foods. I’ve never been in a backstage area that plush in my entire life! There were four folding chairs in the corner of the room with a little velvet rope around them. That was supposed to be our backstage area and the whole rest of it was for The Ramones. They didn’t want us anywhere near them! At the time, Matt Dillon was talking about making that movie Singles which came out much later. At that point the movie was just a discussion. I think it ended up having Soundgarden in it, but The Ramones were trying to be that band. They had Matt Dillon there with them and they were all wining and dining him. We played and we were sitting there in our little fucking cubicle in the backstage area when Matt came back and told us he liked our band. He was like, “What the fuck's going on? Why are you guys over here in this little corner?”, and we told him the whole story. He seemed a little drunk and said, “The Ramones didn’t say anything to me,” and he drug the food tables over so we could just sit there and eat inside our little cubicle. We ordered like forty drinks too and they all went on The Ramones’ bill. He didn’t even go out and watch them play, he just sat there and drank with us. When The Ramones came back in they saw him sitting there with us and they all huddled up again. They were whispering and everything, and eventually their roadie came over and said, “This isn’t supposed to be here” and drug the food tables away. That was the end of it and nothing else was said.

23 Tony Patino RICHIE LAWLER clairmel

At the time Clairmel were touring there were tons of these self-righteous, self-help type bands promoting any cause they came across, whether it be straight-edge, animal rights, or whatever that band Shelter was pushing at the time, and we always ended up playing with bands like them with sticks up their asses. It was miserable being a band that liked to get tore up having to play these shows for people that were no better than bible thumpers. We bought a van with no windows in the back so that we could party inside before heading into those liquorless venues to make asses of ourselves. Red eyes under bright record store lights in Nashville, booted out of house shows for smoking pot in West Virginia, or fucking with Chevy Chase in Vegas, every night it was something new. We were never able to find locals that wanted to hang with us. I'm sure there were some out there, but we were reduced to getting hammered together night after night. One day we got kicked out of where we were staying in DC after the girl realized all the film in her camera had been used up. We'd taken pictures of all the food in the fridge with various body parts. Not that she knew that. This of course was back before digital cameras when pranks like these were possible. But she actually kicked us out for using up all the film. The funny part would've been seeing her develop it. Anyway, we had a night off and ended up at a campground in Maryland called Smallwood. For entertainment we had a case of Mickey's big mouths, two twelve packs of Heineken, at least two cases of Natural Light, a bottle of Southern Comfort and a bag of mushrooms. After setting up the tents and having some hobo stew we decided to take the mushrooms. The night started out nicely, you know, beautiful night, clear skies overlooking the Potomac, hallucinogenics. After the initial uncontrolled laughter the alcohol began to overtake the effects of the trip. It all started with some harmless arm wrestling, foot races, and the basic feats of strength, then once we decided to have friendly fights it all

24 The Road went downhill. Me and Paul went at it first, then me and Dave, then Dave and Paul. All the while Don was doing whatever he could to stay out of the way. The next day was miserable. We all felt like we'd been hit by a truck when we left for Richmond, and were asleep on the floor in the lobby of the club trying to shake off the events of the previous night when people started coming in. We played with a band called Algebra One that I really liked, but after talking some shit on stage about another band we'd recently played with who were complete douche bags, the singer totally scolded us when he got up there. He said, "We like that band and would never talk bad about another band on stage." The fuckin’ hypocrite just did it! I won't say the name of band we were talking shit about. Let's just say it rhymes with Earth Crisis. Guess who we talked about the next night? Let's just say it rhymes with Algebra One. I still really like that band today and I'm sure he's a nice dude, but damn, they really ruined Richmond for us for a few years. A few nights later we were in Baltimore to play a show with some guys called Liquor Bike. We were there super early and started playing pool and drinking pitchers of beer. It was probably six or seven hours later when we got on stage, where we had no business being, even if that was our only business. We ordered some shots on stage and then made a song dedication. "This one's for Cal Ripken, that fat motherfucker, it's called Drop 50." No laughter, just "Those are fighting words!" We always had a way of shooting ourselves in the foot. Liquor Bike had told us we could stay at their place but they were starting to have second thoughts when we bought a case of beer from the lady behind the bar and put it in their van. They just gave us directions and took off. We had to wait for Paul, who was blacked out drunk on the payphone accusing his girlfriend of cheating on him. He really laid into that payphone! While that was going on we realized we left our records and shirts in the club, which was now locked up. We tried to break out the front window on the door, but Memory Lane had some tough-ass plastic or something. They still owe us some merch. Then we realized Dave was walking down the street looking for... uhh... we'll just say trouble. I had to chase him around the corner, which started an argument, which brought on the fisticuffs again. Don jumped in the van and pulled around and we all finally got in but the cops showed up before we could leave. "You boys been drinkin’?" Don just looked at them and said, "Officer, I can't lie to you.....Nope!" This really pissed the cop off, but for some reason he didn't arrest anyone. He did

25 Tony Patino make us follow him to an expensive hotel and then forced us to check in. We spent the night harassing Liquor Bike on the phone to bring us our beer. They still owe us a case of PBR. The next morning we left pretty early blasting The Crucifucks "Cops for Fertilizer," and I swear that asshole was still parked out front. Not sure where we went from there but I'm sure it was more of the same. It's always been more of the same. I just got into a friendly fight with Dave about two weeks ago as of this writing. It never ends really, now does it?

DAVE DECKER clairmel On our 1993 tour, my band Clairmel was in Omaha, Nebraska and did a show at a place called The Capitol Bar. I ended up drinking at the bar after our set and this chick sitting next to me struck up a conversation. She was a little bit older, sort of a metal chick with long blonde hair, and she bought me a beer and we started bullshitting. The rest of my band mates were all out doing their own thing and I started thinking I might be able to hook up with her. One thing led to another, a couple of hours went by, and she wanted me to take off with her. My band had a 1-800 number where if we lost touch with each other we'd call and leave messages telling the other people where you were or what you were doing. I explained to her that I needed to call the number to let the guys know where I was going but she said she didn't have time for that. She said, "If you can't leave with me now you ain't gettin’ shit!" I said, "Well.....let's go sweetheart," and just left my band in Omaha, Nebraska. I didn't know where I'd see them again and I didn't even give a shit. I just wanted to go with this chick and get rad. I said fuck it and took off, knowing damn well that my band mate Richie was gonna’ want to beat my ass. When we got to her place she told me to get on the bed. OK.....fine, I got on the bed. She said, "Ok.....this is how I do it. I'm gonna’ tie you down, hands and legs to every corner of the bed. Are you OK with

26 The Road that?" I said "Sure.....do it!" So boom, I was tied to the bed naked, and she came out with all these whips and sticks and shit. I was just a kid basically, and she had me tied, all four limbs to this bed of hers. I turned my head to the left and guess what I saw? I saw a picture of her with a 250 pound bearded fuckin' biker, and the frame said My Love. I said, "Yo.....this is kinda' ! Who's this guy over here that's in like eight of your pictures?" She said, "Oh, that's my husband." I said, "Well where is your husband tonight?" She said, "Don't worry! You don't have to worry about him tonight." She ended up getting up on me and riding me down hard for about an hour and a half, then she said, "OK this is what you’re gonna’ do, you’re gonna’ do me in the ass!" I said, "Nah, I don't want to do that shit! Please!" She said, "Nope! This is how it's gonna’ work!"..... then bam! it was on! I had no choice! I was tied down. I was so fucked up on Tequila that I was just praying she wasn't gonna’ put a broom stick up my ass or something. I was lying there and everything was going down, and it was actually pretty cool. About 6:30 in the morning, I was exhausted and I felt like I'd been poisoned from the booze. All I wanted to do was sleep but she started getting ready to go to work. She went from being a crazy rocker chick to being a total business person. She was some kind of administrative management type, and got all dressed up in a business suit. She looked at me and said, "You've gotta’ go!" I had no idea where my band was, no idea where I was at, and I only had about five bucks on me. It was cold outside, I was wearing a fuckin' pair of shorts, my shirt had a smell on it from the events of the previous evening that made me want to puke, and she was tossing me out at 7am. I asked her if I could stay there and she said, "Nope! If I let you stay here you might steal all my shit! Fuck that! You need to get the fuck outta’ here!" I begged her but she wouldn't change her mind. I said, "Well can you drive me somewhere?" She said, "Yeah sure.....I'll drive you to my fuckin' job and you can get out of the car!" She took me to her job and just booted me out. I was tired, hung over, and I had no clue where I was, so I ended up crashing on a fuckin' park bench. When I woke up this elderly couple was standing there staring at me. I said, "Oh, hi, how are you doing?" The old man looked at me in disgust, then looked at the woman and said, "Fuckin' homeless guy!" At that point I decided I'd better figure out where the fuck I was. I didn't even know what the hell was going on. I'd even forgotten that I'd gotten laid the night before. My first thought was to check the 1-800 number. I dialed it up and there were three unheard messages on there. The first

27 Tony Patino message was my band-mate Richie saying, "Dude, when I see you, I'm gonna’ beat your fuckin’ ass!" The second one was our drummer Paul saying, "Hey Decker man! You're a real fuckin' dick! Where the fuck are you?" On the third one, our singer Don said, "Hey Dave man, that's really cool how you just fuckin' left us all! Where the fuck are you bitch!" I took my five bucks and hopped on a bus and started talking to people. I figured I'd better wake the fuck up and start networking. All I knew was the name of the bar we played at so I told everyone on the bus that I needed to get to the Capitol Bar. Eventually this guy took pity on me and said, "I'll tell you what, let me take you for some breakfast, then I'll get you to the Capitol Bar." I was like, "Oh, thank you sir, thank you!" We ended up going to this diner and we started talking. He was really nice and we were talking about Orlando, and Disney World, and how I was from Florida, and then he put his hand on my hand and said, "I really love your energy." I said, "Well, I'm not really on that level with you. I don't swing that way, but it's cool." He said, "Oh it’s cool, it’s cool! I understand." I ended up just walking out on him and hitch hiked my way to The Capitol Bar. It was around noon by the time I got there and the place was locked up. I knocked on the door and the owner answered. I explained to him who I was and what I'd been through and he let me in. He sat me down and started serving me food and beer. I was really jazzed to be back at the bar but I still had no idea where the rest of my band was. With nothing else to do, I started shooting pool and drinking beers with the locals as they came in and ended up getting wasted all over again. I remember having a conversation with this guy. I asked him what he did for a living and he told me he manufactured the laminate that glues phone books together. He said, "You ever seen the spine on a phone book?" I was like, "Yeah totally dude! So you make the glue that holds it together? Rad!!!" "Yep, that's right!" he said. I was like, "Well, why are you here right now? It's the middle of the week, shouldn't you be at work?" The more fucked up I got the more friends I made. By four or five in the afternoon the whole bar was just raging and I was having a blast! I was shooting pool with some hot local girls when the door to the bar opened, and Richie, Paul, and Don all walked in. I knew they all wanted to beat my ass, but I was so happy that they found me that I didn’t care.

28 The Road JOHN KASTNER asexuals

The first Asexuals tour was in 1985. I was only seventeen years old and I set up the whole tour myself. We were all really young and we just took a month off from high school and hit the road. Carlos Soria from The Nils was playing bass with us because our regular bass player TJ was too scared to go. One of the first shows was with Reagan Youth at CBGB's in New York, and we also had a big interview there with a label called Important Records that were actually talking about signing the band. We were so happy that we got in the van and drove all the way to our next gig in North Carolina. After that we headed down South for a bunch of shows in Florida. Florida had this crazy skinhead problem back then. We played in Orlando and all these skinheads came to the show and were beating everybody up. I kind of befriended one the really bad-ass skinheads. They were all hopped up on "ice," and he passed me this stuff and I smoked it. Since I shared his peace pipe with him all the skinheads liked us, but they still wanted to beat everybody up that came to the show. My band was freaking out about it and I just said, "Hey at least they won't beat us up!" The next night was in Tampa and all those same Orlando skinheads busted in and beat up everybody in the club. The hundred or so people that were there all got chased right out of the club, and in the end it was just us playing to about eight big skinheads. We also played a house party later that night. It was at this place they called the Hell House or something, and just as we were getting set up everyone decided they were gonna’ trash the place! They went through and started kicking

29 Tony Patino holes in the walls and smashing everything they could. They kicked in the bathroom and toilet water was everywhere. I don't even think we played. We got so freaked out that I think we just threw our gear in the van and drove off. One of our last shows of the tour was in , Michigan at a place called The Hungry Brain. The Hungry Brain ended up becoming kind of a legendary Detroit punk club, but this was the first show they ever did. It was basically down in the basement of a building in a really dodgy part of Detroit. I mean a fucking bad-ass warehouse district on the south side right along the river. On the other side of the river was a place where they killed animals to make soap, so it stunk really bad! It was fucking disgusting! We showed up at like 5pm the day before the show and met the promoter guy and his girlfriend, who fed us a bowl of cabbage or something and let us stay in one of the rooms downstairs. It was January and it was the only room in the building that was heated. It had old carpets and beds all over the floor. I ended up sleeping in the van because we were always scared that it might get broken into. What we didn't know was that there was a biker gang next door called the Iron Coffins. At about six in the morning all these bikers busted into the club. They quietly came inside, saw that everybody was sleeping, and grabbed the first dude that they could, who just happened to be this manager guy that we had, a little guy named Steve. This huge biker picked Steve up by his ankles and put a gun to his head, so basically the lights turned on, and everybody woke up and saw three biker guys standing there holding Steve upside down with a gun to his head! They said, "Who are you guys? What the fuck is this?" Everybody just started panicking! We were just a bunch of seventeen year old kids from Canada thinking, “What the fucks going on?” They wanted to know who had rented the place and what they planned on using it for because they saw all these punk kids going in and out and didn't know what the fuckin' deal was. They made everybody get up and said, "Come with us!" They lead everyone outside and asked if anyone was in the van. All I remember is opening my eyes and there was a fuckin' 400 pound biker in my face with the worst whisky breath ever! He got so close to me that his beard was almost touching my face and he said, "Get up motherfucker!" I could see the rest of the guys in the background kinda’ laughing a little bit, but they also looked pretty freaked out at the same

30 The Road time. I got out and locked the van up and they pulled us all into their clubhouse and locked the door and started serving us a bunch of shots. There was this big boss guy and he was asking us all why we were there. They kept saying, "Well what are we gonna’ do with you guys?" We were just like, “What the fuck does that mean?” It was like 6:30 in the morning and we're taking all these shots of liquor because we were so fucking scared, then the promoter guy and his girlfriend spotted this big bra on the wall that read, IF YOU CAN FILL THIS YOU GET A FREE BOTTLE OF JACK DANIELS. The girl had really big boobs so she said, "Hey I can fill that!" That took the focus off the rest of us and all the bikers turned to look at her. They handed her the bra and she took her shirt off and put it on. Sure enough, she filled it and they gave her a bottle of Jack Daniels. They forced us all to do a bunch more shots and finally decided we were OK and let us leave. We all piled out onto the street after being in there for about an hour, drunk and completely freaked out! We thought for sure that we were gonna’ die. It got to be show time and it was us and Die Kreuzen playing. We were up there doing our thing, and there were about two hundred old school punk kids doing the circle pit and all that. Toward the end of our set we started to notice the crowd acting a little weird. The circle pit slowed down and all the kids gradually stopped moving completely, and I looked out and noticed about forty bikers standing in the back of the room. I could barely see them at first, but they kept moving closer and closer and everybody started getting freaked out. There were all these punk kids on either side of the room and about forty bad-ass bikers standing right in the middle of them with bottles of Jack Daniels in their hands. The show went on, we just ended up playing our last five or six songs to the Iron Coffins as they stood there chugging whiskey!

31 Tony Patino SCOTT MCCULLOUGH the doughboys

The first tour I ever did was with The Doughboys in the summer of 1987. That was a really long tour! At one point we hooked up with , , and MIA, who were all touring together, and they decided to let us tag along for some dates with them. We were basically an add-on to their tour so we weren't making much money. If we got sixty buck a night we were OK because we never stayed in hotels or anything, so as long as we had enough money for gas everything was fine. The first gig we played with them was in Miami at The . When I went up to the dressing room Henry Rollins was the only one in there. I introduced myself and we ended up sitting there and talking for about twenty minutes or so and he was really cool. The next night we were in Daytona Beach, and there was only one dressing room and all four bands were in there together. Henry did calisthenics before each of his shows, and he was in there in the middle of all those people doing his calisthenics. I was just kinda' standing there watching him, and when he caught me staring at him he shouted, "What the fuck are you lookin' at!" I was like, "Nothin’ man, nothin!" I guess he was just in a bad mood that night, I don't know. The club that night was just like that country bar in The Blues Brothers movie. The stage was framed in with 2 x 4s and chicken wire. The promoter said it was an insurance thing. So we played behind the chicken wire, MIA played behind the chicken wire, Descendents played behind the chicken wire, and then it was Henry's turn. He came out and grabbed the mic and said, "My mother always told me if I did this long enough I'd end up in a cage," then jumped up on the chicken wire, held onto it with his hands and his bare feet, and shot that crazy Rollins stare into the audience. When the music started the whole crowd started surging forward and ripping the chicken wire down. Wood was splintering, shit was flying through the air, and I ran to the back of the club to watch as the mayhem ensued. They tore the entire structure

32 The Road down in a very dangerous fashion and tossed it all around the room. I'd seen plenty of shows by that time in my life, but that was a special level of mayhem and destruction I hadn't seen until that night. At one point there were cops in the parking lot and everyone was running out of the club. It was complete chaos! The next day in Tampa, Henry wasn't on the bill for some reason. I don't know why, but I remember hearing a story at the time about the last time he'd gone there with his band. I don’t know how true it is, but I guess there were a bunch of racist skinheads at the show and Henry told them all to fuck off from the stage. I heard they just waited for him by his van and beat the shit out of him and everyone in his band. There were a few different shows on that tour that he ended up not playing for some reason. We were in Columbus, Ohio on that tour and I ended up at this frat bar with the guys from MIA. At one point in the evening I looked over and thought I saw someone by the bar punching someone else. I went over to check it out and there was this short, stocky guy starting shit with Mike from MIA. I guess Mike told the guy to fuck off or something, and by the time I got over there the guy was just laying it to him! Mike was just crumpled by the bar and this guy was punching him in the head over and over and over again! I figured I'd better help him out so I reached around that little guy’s neck and tried to pull him off of Mike, but he was so strong that he just reached around and got me by the shoulders and flipped me right over his head. He slammed me onto my back right onto a table by the bar and started punching the shit out of me. We all jumped up and ran straight out to the van, and just as we were pulling out about ten frat guys came running out of the bar after us. We had to jump a curb and screech out of there as it was raining fists all over the windows of the van. When we got back to where we were staying all the other guys decided we needed to go back there and kick some ass but I totally did not want to do that. We barely got out of there with our lives the first time and I didn't want to press the issue. We all ended up getting in the van with baseball bats and driving around looking for those guys. I didn't even want to be there but I had to go along for the ride. Luckily in the end nothing else happened! Eventually we made it to Portland, Oregon. We played at a club called The Satyrican, and when we played everybody was in the front room and nobody watched us. Apparently what was happening was everybody was shooting coke. They were all a little edgy and weird, and nobody watched the bands. There was this guy who cleaned up the club,

33 Tony Patino and he kind of helped us load in. After the show when we went to leave, I guess he had shot some coke and somehow overdosed and was actually convulsing underneath our van. Someone called an ambulance and they came and took him away. As we were watching them drive away, they stopped at a traffic light and were sitting there waiting for the light to change, when the back doors flew open and the guy jumped out and ran away. I guess he'd regained consciousness and didn't want to pay for the ambulance ride.

BLAG DAHLIA the dwarves

I have had to accept the fact that as much as I might find our music innovative, brilliantly executed, and just plain fun, we will probably always be best known not for any sounds we have made, but rather for the naked women that adorn our covers. Rock criticism, it would seem, holds an inverse relation between the showcasing of female nudity and the making of inspiring sounds. It’s as though one has to make an unwritten compact to be visually boring, asexual, and miserable if one is to be hailed by the pasty folks that decide these things as anything other than a musical lightweight, unless a publicist manages to convince them otherwise. Despite the disapproval of prudes and chicken shits the world over, I’m proud to have naked girls on the covers of my records. For a start, it beats the standard ‘photo of rock band standing there’ cover or the ever-popular hip-hop variation ‘young Negro looking angry’ cover. Our nude photos aren’t of the Playboy or cheesecake or pin-up variety. They tend to be minimal and dare I say Arty, with the women in positions of defiant superiority over the hapless dwarf that’s always lurking in the background. And of course there are tits too! I try to be professional at the photo sessions and engage in as little panting, giggling, and salivating as I can. I have never asked the models out for a drink or tried to worm my way into their affections, much as I might have wanted to. The truth is, I was

34 The Road usually more attracted to the photo assistants, especially the coeds with glasses who seemed to hover somewhere between revulsion and fascination when it came to my favorite subject- me. Either way, if I am to be known for only one thing in this life then abetting the adolescent fantasies of my miniscule fan base is just fine by me. Years after a particular cover shot had been taken in New York we were playing an all-ages show across the country in . A voluptuous blond got on stage and danced around completely naked, culminating in a stage dive that left her writhing across the freshly shaven heads of our easily impressed fan base. She appeared to be having the time of her life. It was a fun show, but I was exhausted from abusing substances the night before in Portland (it’s basically Seattle, with better looking women and food) and all I wanted was to get back to the hotel and crash. Alas, this was not to be. After the show the blond came backstage and asked me if she looked familiar. I assumed I must have seen that firm booty in the buff at some point and raked my drug-addled brain for the specific context when it hit me that she had been one of the gorgeous nudes featured on a cover of ours years before. She told me that she had had a great time tonight and suggested that we go out and have a drink. As much as I wanted to, I said, ‘No, I have to get some sleep. She laughed and said we’d have a great time and I said, ‘Really, any other time, but not tonight,’ feeling a twinge of regret as the words escaped my lips. The next thing I knew I was flat on my chin with an arm chicken winged behind my back, unable to move and too dazed to say anything. As she grabbed my hair and ground my face into the threadbare carpet, she clamped her teeth over my ear and bit into it until I wanted to cry. She smiled widely and through laughter somewhere between mocking and maniacal she said, “We’re going out, right?” I said, “Sure.” In over I had a chance to look her over some more. Statuesque, curvaceous with a standard issue ‘girl sunbathing next door just to drive you crazy’ look. I started to remember details from the original photo shoot as well. She had shown up at 10am and by 10:15 was joking about needing a drink. By 10:20 the entreaties became more serious. One of the makeup assistants suggested that drinking this early in the shoot might cause puffy eyes. This would necessitate an application of Preparation H to her eyelids, but she didn’t seem to care. Eventually I snuck out and got her a pint of something nasty and she looked at me like a St. Bernard reunited with her master after a daring Yukon rescue.

35 Tony Patino Back in the present, we arrived at the bar and she ordered a pitcher of beer and like the cream puff I clearly was in this relationship, I ordered a Coke. It might as well have been a Shirley Temple, extra Grenadine. She insisted I drink a beer with her. I hadn’t had a drink in years. The last time had been a puke-inducing bout of alcohol poisoning in the Big Easy that ended with me wishing that I was dead along with everyone else. But, I didn’t relish tasting the floor twice in one evening. I had my orders so I drank. We talked about the photo shoot and the fun we had had and she talked about what had been happening in her life. It turned out that she was an army reservist, had been trained in combat by the US military, and was contemplating whether to go into the service full time now that September 11 had once again made America safe for imperialism. She couldn’t decide between the Army, nude modeling, or some other pursuit, it might have been crochet or air traffic control, I no longer cared. You see one drink renders me completely retarded. A few drinks make my head a toilet and my tongue a toilet brush. Sex, usually the first, second and third thing on my mind gets demoted in favor of puking and mindless negativity. I no longer cared about fucking this girl or being beaten into submission by her, I just wanted to go back to my hotel room and seep into a nice warm suicide. After a couple of rounds I was deep into an alcoholic fog. I told her what fun it had been hanging out with her and how we must do it again sometime. As I rose to leave she grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back marching me to the bar where she presented me to the bartender and asked what I wanted. I said really, I was done for the night and all I wanted was a cab so she forced me to my knees until I ordered another pitcher. The bartender just laughed. By now I knew that my only hope lay in escape. If I went home with this girl she would fuck me until my spine snapped like a twig. If she wanted to she could have hoisted me over her shoulders and used me as a battering ram. I dimly remembered a session where a red headed jujitsu instructor from Brazil pushed me around a Tokyo love hotel like a ping-pong ball. And that girl seemed to have liked me. This time, I didn’t stand a chance. The booze was starting to make me angry and confused. I couldn’t see straight. I had to piss, shit, puke, moan, and cry. The old Italian man that lurks inside of me wanted to scream, but no words would come out. The inside of my eyelids longed to be shut against the approaching darkness. I wanted my mommy. Finally, she went to the bathroom just as a cab pulled up in front of the place.

36 The Road I stumbled outside and gave the driver the address of my hotel urging him to start driving before I had even gotten in. Seattle isn’t a beautiful town, it’s not a smart town, and it’s not a busy town. The skies are ugly and the girls are grey. It’s more like a suburb wrapped in an unincorporated county and stuffed uncomfortably into an urban environment like a fat girl at Victoria’s Secret. As we rolled through the placid streets I reflected on the weirdness of my existence. Why did my quixotic search for warm vagina so often net me the cold fish slap of reality? And why, when I wasn’t even looking for it did I still get slammed hard face first into the uncomprehending floor of inebriation and frustration? What hath Blag wrought? “You look like that guy from the Dwarves,” the taxi driver said. I said yeah. He told me that he had seen us play with Nirvana in Seattle years before and he had really enjoyed it. Nirvana, the name pierced the murky soup that marinated my injured brain stem. Good songs, and they were kind of cute, but wasn’t one of them dead now? Hadn’t I seen him shoot up with his worked over girlfriend in a northwest hotel room years before, passed out and turning blue, prompting a panicked call not to the paramedics, but to the record company asking for advice? Why had this band been vaulted to such celebrity status, wasn’t it just the Pixies with Led Zeppelin drums? Were they really that much better than everybody else or had they simply become instant winners in the random lottery of the music industry? And ten years later couldn’t they stay dead if only to keep my brain from oozing out the hole in my skull, reminding me of days gone by? Meditating on the fate of Nirvana was depressing, something I did at times when my mind refused to turn to happier subjects. After complaining his way to success Cobain had complained his way into the grave, his chin the last thing to cross his clouded mind before retirement. Rock, by its very nature, had to end badly. That was the nature of the Beast. Meanwhile, the cab driver kept talking. He had wanted to go to the show tonight, but had had to work instead. He never got to see any good shows anymore. Anyway, the was dead. I said, "I have to tell you about what just happened to me, it was hilarious. The details began to pour out of me as I relived the evening and even though I knew that by any reasonable measure I was the victim here, I still couldn’t help laughing. And not just with me, but at me. My life really was the empty farce that my critics imagined it to be, that might be true, but unlike the most successful band of the era, at least I was still alive. “You say she was on one of your covers?” the

37 Tony Patino cabbie asked, as he dialed the radio to get his dispatcher on the line. When a disembodied voice answered the radio call, the driver, a huge smile breaking out across his bearded face, said-“Hey Dude, you’re never going to believe what your ex-wife was up to tonight!”

KARL MORRIS the exploited, billyclub

In 1984 Exploited were all set to do a tour that was to start out with three shows at a club called The Rock Ola in , , then we were to fly directly to the States for our second American tour. At the time, it was me on guitar, Wayne on bass, Wully on drums, and of course Wattie on vocals. We also had our road manager and our roadie, Pigpen. There was a big party after the third Rock Ola gig, and Wattie and I ended up wandering off and staying the night with a few girls. The next day I woke up and wandered back to our hotel all by myself, where I noticed a bunch of busted up furniture stacked along the wall in the lobby. I walked on through there and people kept staring at me and laughing, and when I made it up to our room about six floors up there was no furniture in there at all. The room was completely empty! As I found out later, the rest of the band decided to have a party and I guess Wayne had gotten a bit stoned and decided to see how far he could throw some of the shit in the room out the window. The rest of the guys joined in and ended up throwing the whole lot, beds and everything into the swimming pool. Wattie eventually made it back and as we were trying to leave the hotel staff was trying to make us pay for all the damaged furniture. We hadn’t done anything wrong, which was a rare occasion for us, so we just left for the airport to catch our flight to New York. Unfortunately when we arrived at the airport the police were waiting on us. Somehow Wayne, Pigpen, and our road manager managed to get away, but the rest of us ended up with machine guns pointed at us, then we were all arrested and thrown in jail. Pigpen came back to try and get us out, and

38 The Road as soon as he opened his mouth and they realized he was English they threw him in the cell with us. Wayne, that bastard, got onto the plane and flew off to New York with our road manager. The cop in the jail they threw us in was actually trying to sell us beers and sandwiches, and after about twenty hours we ended up getting a bit peckish and bought some off him. We were in there for two or three days, then off to court we went. For the ride down they put us in this van where we all stood up nose to nose, all of us stinking of piss, then when we got into the court jail we all just laid out on these slabs with all these other fucking scabby looking bastards. They were all common crooks, thieves, and thugs and we couldn't understand anything they were saying so we just slept. When we went into the court we got a big fine that we couldn't pay so they took our guitars as payment. They didn't even give us our passports back! As we were leaving the judge actually walked up and shook all of our hands. We thanked him for letting us out and Pigpen said, "Yeah fuck you very much! We had a really good stay in your fucking jail but we never want to come back! So see ya’ later," and walked off. The rest of us were just standing there pissing ourselves! Once we got away from there these Spanish kids hooked us up and we ended up getting smashed out of our faces and staying in Spain with them for three more days, missing some of the American dates. We even had death threats from New York because we hadn't turned up. We didn't have our guitars or anything and it was just shit! We finally ended up getting plane tickets from of the Embassy, which we all still owe to this day. We flew from Madrid to Gatwick, then got on a bus and traveled to Heathrow Airport where we went straight in and got on another plane. It was a spillover from Pan Am, and there was tons of space so we all just sat around eating first class meals, watching movies, and getting shitfaced. It was brilliant! The staff even got us into the cockpit which is something you can't do anymore. When we finally landed in the States we got the whole heave-ho through customs. Back in Spain we hadn't done laundry or anything for about six days, so when Wully walked up first and threw his bag up there the customs woman opened it up and got

39 Tony Patino a whiff, and said, "You can go!" It smelled so bad that she didn't even look in it! She didn't even check the rest of us either, she just let us go right through. When we got outside our road manager was there waiting for us and we jumped in a van and went straight over to some place in New Jersey and played a gig with Iron Cross. That gig was full of American Marines, and when we were hanging out talking with them one of them said, "You're not gonna’ play Fuck The USA are you?" I said, "Well maybe." He grabbed me and almost picked me up off the ground and said, "Don't play that fucking song or you’ll have a lot of pissed off Marines in here!” We played our normal set, but we didn't play Fuck The USA. That would have been just plain stupid! As soon as we finished, we got paid and said our goodbyes. We hit the road and had to drive part of the night, like until three or four in the morning, then we got a hotel and drove all the way to Phoenix, the next day. So we basically drove from New Jersey to Phoenix in three and a half days. The day after that we played at the Olympic Auditorium in headlining the biggest show we’d ever played. The supporting bands were DOA, Kraut, Bad Religion and Love Canal, and I ended up having to borrow Joey Keithley from DOA's guitar. What a way to start a tour, huh?

40 The Road JIM COLEMAN cop shoot cop

We were touring around a lot in 1992 so we bought this old school bus type van from a military base. It was painted all camouflage and had these camouflaged curtains and stuff. At that point in time we were being courted by some larger record labels and were out in Los Angeles getting put up in fancy suites and all that. It was right at the time of the Rodney King riots and tensions were high out there. We were supposed to play a show, but because of what had been going on there and the name of our band the promoters thought it was a bad idea. We were paid but the show was canceled. It was right after the curfew got lifted so we went downtown to get some Japanese food. There were Military Police and National Guard all over the place as we headed into the restaurant and we heard them all talking about us and the van, but we just sort of shrugged it off. We didn't know that we'd parked the van in front of some kind of Government building. After we finished eating I came out and noticed a helicopter just above. As I was walking toward the van some cops started yelling, "Get out of here! This is a contained area!" I told them I was just trying to get to the van. One of them asked me where it was, and when I pointed it out I was immediately put in handcuffs. I said, "If you're gonna’ take me somewhere at least let me tell me friends in the restaurant!" I told them where the guys where and the cops busted into there, guns drawn, and dragged everybody out. They held us for about an hour while they broke into the van and searched it. Apparently while we were eating someone had gotten it in their head that our van was full of explosives. There was absolutely nothing to warrant that idea, but they went ahead and barricaded off the area to investigate us. They were kinda' pissed off when they didn’t find anything and it had cost them all that time and money. One of ranking guys found the Cop Shoot Cop tee shirts during their search and said, "Hey guys, if you ever write a song about this let me know!"

41 Tony Patino On a lot of the tours we did we'd end up buying massive amounts of fireworks. Sometimes if we were we touring with another band we would break up the monotony by having fireworks battles. We would all be driving down the road at night and all of the sudden we'd just start blasting things at each other's vans. One night we played a show at the old 9:30 Club in Washington DC, and after the show we were in the back alley, which is where you'd load your gear in and out. Eventually we starting lighting off a bunch of stuff and about eight cops came running around the corner with their guns drawn. Most everybody ran back into the club, but me, our singer Todd, and our lighting guy were still outside standing by a coffee can full of freshly lit bottle rockets that hadn't gone off yet. One cop quickly put the three of us up against the van and told us to "spread 'em!” He ended up standing right above the coffee can, and right then a bottle rocket went zipping straight up his pant leg and exploded. He jumped up in the air and yelled holy shit! We were lucky he wasn't trigger happy! They ended up collecting all the fireworks and giving them to the lighting guy, who was the least responsible person of all of us.

STONEY TOMBS the hookers

People were always dying to give us free tattoos and we were always willing to take them. There was this one particular time around 2000 or 2001, where everyone got tattoos. We had about eight jars of Vaseline up on the dashboard of the van because everyone had to keep Vaseline on their tattoos. Right about that time we went to Los Angeles where a good friend of mine was working for Hustler Magazine. We went to the Hustler offices and he gave us these stacks of pornography, and he just happened to give us an oversized dildo. So we loaded the van up with all of that pornography and the giant dildo, and we already had all that Vaseline. It was all up on the dashboard as we drove away. Sure enough,

42 The Road we were going to the next show, which was in San Francisco, and we got pulled over. Our singer Adam was driving and it was so hot in there that it must have been about 120 degrees, so he had his pants off. He just had his boxers on and that’s it. He stepped out of the van just like something out of “Cops,” in his boxers and nothing else. The officer walked up and said, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Adam was just like, “Oh….I don’t know officer.” Right about then the officer sort of looked out of the corner of his eye at our dash. He turned his head and noticed a bunch of vats of Vaseline, a giant dildo, a bunch of pornography, and six sweaty, ugly, fat dudes in the van. He said, “Where are you guys going?” Adam said, “Where going to San Francisco.” You’d think that this cop had seen it all, but his jaw just kinda’ dropped. He said, nervously, “Look, you guys just need to slow down. Just go, alright,” and he went back to his car and left.

MIKE WATT the minutemen

Us Minutemen were on our Campaign Trail '84 tour, and it was during the summer, a very sweaty time to be touring! Our boat (our word for the van) had no air conditioning either except for the port and starboard front windows being rolled down. The rest of the country ain't like our Pedro town for weather, that's for sure. That's why me and our guitarist D. Boon cut all our hair for that tour. We knew it was gonna be kinda' sweaty, but didn't realize how fucking sweaty it would be. Anyway, that was small potatoes when looking back at all the happening gigs we got to play, so I hope I don't sound like I'm whining, just remembering. We konked at people's pads so we could jam econo, and I remember after one gig this cat has us over to his pad to konk. He rolls out a blanket and the three of us are laying on it drinking beers and listening to music. I go up and start looking at these trippy Polaroids on the bulkhead. “Whoa, what's this?” About that time the cat says, "Well,

43 Tony Patino anytime you want," and we're like, "Anytime what?" He answers, "You know, anytime you wanna’ get it going." We're puzzled. I get back on the blanket next to D. Boon and wonder to him out loud, "Get it going?" and this cat says, "You know," and confused, I go, "What?" He says, "You know, start fucking. Anytime you want, you can start fucking." I said even more confused, "What?", then he says, "I got a shotgun in that other room if you need some help." Our drummer Georgie says, "I bet I get to that shotgun before you do," and we end up chasing this guy out of his own pad. We didn't even look for the shotgun. We were tired. Hell, we didn't wanna’ go look for another konk pad that late so we just stayed where we were. I don't know what we were thinking; we didn't really discuss it much. It seemed so trippy, you know? Georgie however wouldn't stay in the house. He went and konked out on the porch. Me and D. Boon just finished our beers then rolled over and konked on the blanket, like fuck it! We were beat and needed rest bad. Nobody did any fucking either. Our band was tight, but not that tight. I don't know why we weren't afraid but we weren't. We just needed konk pretty bad. In the morning we got up and left. Never saw the cat or anyone but we made sure we didn't leave any mess. The whole ride to the next town Georgie was laughing at us for staying on that blanket, but we never did get bothered so I guess it worked out OK. Maybe we were just lucky.

CHRIS BARROWS pink lincolns

In the early 90’s the Lincolns played a camp in Apopka, Florida called Camp Thunderbird. Our friend’s mom ran it and he sometimes worked there. They would book different groups of campers for a couple of weeks at a time. Seniors, nudists, vegetarians, mentally challenged, etc, etc. He invited us to play there during the last weekend, which happened to be the last weekend for the mentally challenged group. The camp actually sent a van to take us out

44 The Road there and everything. When we got there we went into the lodge or whatever it was called, and the first thing we saw was a young Downs girl slamming her tray down repeatedly on the kitchen counter window. She had food all over her face and she was screaming, “I want more beans!!” over and over. I knew right then this was going to be interesting. After they finished eating they cleared the plates off the tables and moved the tables against the walls so they could have a dance, which was their usual after dinner thing. The one song I remember them dancing to was Rock Lobster by the B52s. They even got down on the ground and squirmed during the part of the song that goes “down, down, down, down.” At the end of the songs they would clap. Some of them were happy. Some of them were angry. There were 140 of them. 7 to 77 years old. Definitely an all-ages show. No one told them that a band was going to play after their dance, so when we loaded in our equipment they went nuts and screamed like chimps being killed. We set our stuff up and our guitarist John made a barricade of chairs between the campers and his guitar pedals. He said it was to protect his pedals, but I think he was scared of them. Earlier our bassist Dorsey snuck up outside a bathroom door while John was in there and said, “I am going to keow you” a few times, trying to make John think one of the campers was going to kill him. When we were ready to play I said, “This first song is called Torture Yourself,” and most of them put a fist in the air and yelled, “Yeeaaahhh!!” I remember bits and pieces while we played. The kid that went crazy in between songs then screamed and ran out like he was on fire, the kid rocking out with the giant piss stain in his pants, the old lady who was doing the waltz by herself, even during our fast songs, the girl that sat there looking straight ahead and had a strand of slobber going from her mouth to a giant slobber pancake on the floor between her feet, the old man that would walk in circles with his fists up and looking real pissed off and intense, then he would smile and hop up and down and clap after each song, then instantly go back to fists up and extreme anger when the next song would start. During one song I noticed the bass was a little off so I turned around to see two kids climbing on Dorsey. He kept yelling stop it and get off of me but they hung on. In between songs I would let them yell stuff into the mic but I’d get the mic back covered in drool. Some of them danced in ways I never knew a human body could move. A couple counselors told us afterward that the ones that were right

45 Tony Patino up front yelling and having the most fun were the more withdrawn and untouchable types, but that they really came out of themselves and had fun. I thought that was really cool. After spending an evening at Camp Thunderbird I noticed for the next few days that most people I looked at looked retarded, especially the people at work. I guess it’s all relative.

TESCO VEE the meatmen

The first tour we ever did was in 1981. It was called The “Process of Elimination” tour and it was three bands. , The , and The Meatmen. We actually only did three shows, Boston, New York City, and DC. Corey from The Necros drove everyone in an RV because his daddy had a little money. Everyone was in the RV and I was following in my little Mazda 626. There just wasn't much room left in the RV and we thought it'd be nice to have another vehicle anyway. We'd be flying down the Turnpike and I'd be directly behind them, and they would try to pee on me and stuff. Sometimes I'd see a butt come sticking out the side of the RV, then toilet paper would come flying out at me. Often times the paper would get stuck under my windshield wipers too. It was a wacky, fun trip! It was obviously a really small tour, but it was a great introduction to touring because we were coming all the way from the mid-west to the east coast. I'd never been out there before either so it was awesome! The Boston show was at a place called Gallery East and we were the headliners. Not that we were the biggest of the three bands, but on that particular night we were. The Meatmen sort of had a great thing going on with that town early on because our first single did really well there. It was a great way

46 The Road to start the tour too because the show was absolutely packed! It was in an art gallery that had a stage in the corner of it and the kids went absolutely bonkers. That was really a memorable night for us. When we got to New York we played at The Mud Club. I remember that the Beastie Boys were sitting on the curb outside and they all came up to me and were like, "Tesco! Can you get us in free?" I was like, "Get away from me you little pecker heads!" That was a nice career move huh, telling the Beastie Boys you won't get 'em in. At that point they were just little kids though, probably sixteen or seventeen years old. I don't know why I did that. Normally I'm a nice guy but I guess I was still riding high from the Boston gig and playing rock star, which totally isn't my modus operandi. If the Beastie Boys read this, please forgive me for that injustice! The worst violence I've ever seen on tour was around 1995 at a club called The Local 186 in Cambridge, . What happened that particular night, was the clubs security crew had all gotten fired the night before we showed up, and apparently they were all part of a gang called FSU. FSU is a huge east coast anti-racist gang. It stands for Friends Stand United. They all came back the night we played, and the new security guys didn't know who they were and let 'em into the show. One of them chucked a bottle at my bass player and he picked up a big water bottle and winged it back. After that it was on! This giant guy got up on stage and punched me right in the face, knocking me off the stage, which was like six feet high. I went to climb back onstage and some of the bouncers grabbed me as the whole club erupted into violence. It looked like a scene out of one of those old western movies that you see where the whole bar is fighting, and I'm not exaggerating! People were getting up onto the bar, running down the length of it, and then diving onto this huge pile of fighting humanity. Despite my rough and tough image, I'm kind of a pencil necked geek when it comes to getting into fisticuffs and stuff like that. I wasn't about to go out there and mix it up with those behemoths. They were twice my size! My bass player got a bottle smashed over his head and we had to take him to the emergency room to get stitched up. Luckily we managed to keep him from being dragged into the alley though. They probably would have killed him out there. We had to threaten to sue the club to get the six

47 Tony Patino hundred dollars that I had to pay to get hiss head stitched up. Needless to say that was the last show that club ever had. We were on stage rockin' one night at Club Babyhead in Providence Rhode Island, and all of the sudden there was an absolutely awful smell. In between songs I said, "Which one of you farted?" Some kid pointed down where some guy had jumped up on stage, and unbeknownst to me, taken a shit right on the stage. I didn't even see him do it! Somebody from the club came and cleaned it up, but the whole rest of the night it just smelled fowl up there. After the show when the place was emptying out somebody said look! and there was another huge pile of shit in another part the club. We played at Greystone Hall in Detroit one night and the guy offered us a pretty big guarantee. His name was actually “Scary.” Well Scary shorted us on the money and my band, the geniuses that they were, decided to steal all the clubs microphones. We were loading up the van and the guy ran up to me and put a gun right in my forehead and yelled, "Gimme' my fuckin' microphones back or I'm gonna' kill you!” I was standing there with a gun in my face, but I was shocked at how calm I was. I just said, "Dude.....chill out and we'll get your microphones back." We had to pull out all of our gear in the rain in the alley behind the club and open up all the drum cases to get him his microphones back. I reamed my guy’s asses too. I was like, "You fucking idiots! You're gonna’ get me killed over some fucking microphones?"

48 The Road NATE WATERS infected

We were on tour out in California in 1999 on our third tour of the US and still nobody knew who the hell we were, and we weren’t getting paid shit. We were driving around San Francisco and we hadn’t even eaten in days. There was some squatter chic in the van that we'd picked up somewhere too who was supposed to get out in Phoenix, but it was late at night when we went through there and whoever was driving at the time didn’t know we were supposed to let her out. When everybody woke up we were in California, and we damn sure weren’t turning around to take her home. She ended up in the van with us for about two extra weeks when she was only supposed to be riding one city over. We were driving on all those crazy hills out there in San Francisco and somehow the van’s radiator cap popped off and got lost. We didn't have any money to replace it, so we decided we’d better go ahead and get some cash wired to us that day. Our next show was in an area in Oakland that was was really shady. We were sitting outside in our van getting eyeballed by every hood rat crack dealer that you could imagine. People were walking all the way up to the van and looking in the windows while we were sitting in it. They were like, "Hmmmmm.....let’s see what's in this van here?" We were sitting there with our big bowie knife, grinding it into the dashboard making sure everyone saw it when they decided to come up and look in at us. It got to the point where we decided we didn't even want to go inside the club and play because we thought for sure the van would get stolen or broken in to. We knew the club wouldn't care if we played or not because there were only like twenty people in there and none of them had ever even heard of us before. They were all probably just there to see the local bands that were also playing, so they didn’t give a fuck! Our next show was all the way down in Tucson so figured we’d just get that long-ass drive started. We were heading down Interstate 5 between Bakersfield and Los

49 Tony Patino Angeles in a really mountainous region full of deep valleys and huge hills, and still hadn't replace the radiator cap, so we'd been spilling radiator fluid all that time. At that point the van had been going for so long and was so hot that the engine caught fire. We always had driving shifts where somebody would stay up and drive through the night and somebody else would stay up with them and ride shotgun. It was about 4:30am when the fire started, so the rest of us had already gone to bed and were crashed out in the loft and in the floor. Our good friend and roadie Taylor was at the wheel and our bass player Andy was riding shotgun, and instead of pulling over, they just kept on driving to the point where there was fire inside the van. It had already come through the dash board when they woke us up. We were basically woken up to somebody yelling, "You need to get out of the van right now if you want to live!" I had nothing on but a tee shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. I grabbed a towel on my way out thinking it was my shorts, so I was pretty much wearing a towel with no shoes or anything, standing on the side of a major interstate. When we were all finally out, the front cab of the van was beginning to burn onto a mattress on the floor that people were just sleeping on a few minutes before. There was so much smoke all over the road that you couldn't see who made it out and who didn't so it was a pretty traumatic thing! We were screaming for each other through the smoke trying to take a head count. We didn't know who was in there and who wasn't because there was so much black smoke everywhere. A few of us were together in one spot, and some of the others were somewhere else yelling out to us that they were OK. Nobody could account for our guitar player Mark though. We were beginning to think he was in there dead, but as it turned out, he was up in the smoke just in total shock. He wasn't being all loud and obnoxious like he usually is. In the rush to get out we left the wallet in there that had all our money in it, and somebody actually went back in there while it was on fire and got that wallet out with a burning hot wallet chain attached to it. At that point the sun was coming up and the fire was just out of control. We could see that it was moving toward the gas tank and someone started yelling, “everybody get back!” Traffic was stopped way back down the interstate and the fire department still hadn't gotten there yet, when the gas tank caught fire and exploded! Hollywood style! The back of the van actually bounced off the ground and all the windows blew out of it, lighting the entire mountain side was on fire! There we were, two

50 The Road thousand miles away from home, and everything we owned had just exploded right in front of our eyes. I was basically standing there barefoot in a towel, crying. Our poor charred up van ended up being towed back to a salvage yard in Bakersfield and we had to hitch a ride there from some strange dude. He was some kinda' survivalist type that looked just like John Lock from that show “Lost.” He said he’d take us to Bakersfield, but we stunk so bad that he made us give him a hundred bucks, which was just about all we had. We were climbing through the inside of the van to get what we could but there was just nothing left. All we were able to salvage was a guitar and some cymbals, and they were completely black. So we were in Bakersfield, California with no money, no clothes, and we all smelled like a house fire! We had no idea what the fuck we were going to do next. I called our booking agent and he didn’t know what to tell me. He damn sure couldn't put out the money to fly us all home! In the end we called our families and were all able to get money wired to us for Greyhound bus tickets. When the got to a truck stop I had to buy some cheap jogging pants and flip flops, because they didn’t want me on there with no pants or shoes on. Each one of us was covered head to toe in black soot, and the fire smell was so strong

51 Tony Patino that they made us go outside every time the bus stopped, even if it was only stopping for just a few seconds. We all took whore baths in different bathrooms and were able to wash all the soot off, but the fire smell just wouldn’t go away. In the end it took us three days to get home. All the way meeting really strange characters and smoking pot in weird places.

TIM "spit stix" LEITCH fear

In 1981, John Belushi was in Los Angeles and gave us a call inviting us out to have a drink with him. We'd never met him before, but he was acquainted with a friend of ours that was a producer out in New York. Our singer Lee and I went out and met him at a bar called On The Rocks, which was sort of the VIP club above The Roxy. Belushi was really cool and he knew everything about our band, and about twenty minutes into our conversation he said, "You guys have got to play Saturday Night Live!" I thought he was just kidding and totally forgot about it by the time I made it home. About two weeks later the phone rang and it was the set designer from Saturday Night Live. He said, "Hey I need to know what type of set you guys want to play in front of." I was taken aback a little and said, "I don't know, maybe an alley, street-type thing I guess." We ended up being scheduled to play the Saturday Night Live Halloween show and were flown out from Los Angeles and put up in a nice hotel and everything. I just couldn't believe it! We didn't even have a record deal and we were going to be on national television! Belushi had even gotten some real punk rockers from DC to come up and go crazy on the set while we played. The green room was kind of a mess before the show, with punks everywhere cutting their hair and spitting and just disrupting things, and the union people didn't want any part of that. They all ended up in the owner’s office before we played and told him they were protesting our appearance on the show, and eventually the police came and properly escorted everyone out of there.

52 The Road When we finally played it was mayhem! The punks were all up there going crazy and people were tripping over cables and unplugging stuff. At one point somebody ran up with this giant pumpkin andn smashed it onto the stage. The producers were giving us the cut sign almost immediately, but we just pretended we didn't notice them. The day after the show the union folks were really upset about the whole thing too! Apparently there were some cameras knocked over and some of the stage monitors got pumpkin in them. The New York Post said that we'd caused over 200,000 dollars-worth of damage.

IAN MACKAYE minor threat, fugazi

At eight in the morning, some point in October 1981 I got a call. I was driving a newspaper truck for The Washington Post at the time, so eight in the morning was brutal. It was Lorne Michaels' office, Lorne Michaels being the producer of Saturday Night Live, and I get this woman, "Lorne Michaels' office, please hold." I was completely delirious. Lorne Michaels gets on the phone - "Hi, Ian, it's Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live, I'm calling you because I got your number from John Belushi. He says that you might be able to get some dancers up here 'cause we want to have Fear on the show." I was completely

53 Tony Patino baffled by this. "Pardon me?" "Hold on a second." John Belushi gets on the phone and he says, "This is John Belushi. I'm a big fan of Fear's. I made a deal with Saturday Night Live that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they'd let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did Decline of Western Civilization and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show." It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where Saturday Night Live was being filmed and the password to get in was "Ian MacKaye." We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the people and a bunch of DC people - 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they weren't going to let us do it, then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So during the actual set itself, they let us come out again. If you watch it, during the show, before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song you'll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he's just getting ready to smash it, and that's when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. I didn't think it was that big of deal.

54 The Road DONNY PAYCHECK zeke

We signed a deal with in 1997. They also had a band called The Voodoo Glow Skulls who happened to be fans of our band, and the Glow Skulls asked us to go on tour with them. Believe me, we thought they were a good band, but we didn't really think we should do a tour with them because the music really didn't fit. The label wanted us to do it though, so we basically went ahead and did it to make them happy. The tour started in California, than went through the top of the states to the East coast and ended in Texas. Some places the kids actually got into us and we had a great time, but most of the places they just stood there with their arms crossed waiting for the Glow Skulls. We'd been partying pretty hard for a couple weeks, but by the time we reached the partying was getting serious. I don't remember the Tennessee show, but I remember we got so fucked up that we were jumping on the bed in our hotel room and burning pentagrams into the ceiling. The next morning we rushed out of there hoping no one would see how bad we had trashed the room. By the time we got to Houston I was really out of control. After that show we went to Emo's in Austin, who kept the bar open after hours for us and we started drinking heavily. We were outside when some girl was trying to hit on our guitar player Sonny and he told her to fuck off! I called her a bitch and she came running towards me. When she did I just stuck out my arm and stiffed-armed her and she fell to the ground like a rock. The guys she was with came running over where we were on the ground and one of them tried to smash my head into the pavement. Luckily I have a thick skull and I crushed his face with ten or fifteen punches. I ran into the bar with a completely bloody face and all the rest of the band members and crew ran back out in a group of about twenty or so and beat the shit out of those guys. I remember the final thing was Joey, the Glow Skulls sax player, broke a bottle like in the movies and wielded it at 'em. It was mayhem! I actually broke the knuckles in my

55 Tony Patino right hand. The next night we played Austin, and on the very last song somehow my drumstick popped up and poked me in the eye. I didn't think much of it and went out partying at our buddy Justin's house. I also met up with Wes from the Bulemics and did a shit-ton of coke and ended up staying awake all night. I had to meet the band and get on the road to make it to San Antonio that day and wouldn't you know it the fucking U joints went out in the van, so I had to stay awake even longer to get them fixed to be able to make it to the show. Once they were finally fixed I climbed in the back of the van and slept all the way to San Antonio. When I woke up I loaded in, played the show, loaded out, and went to the hotel. I was rinsing my freshly poked eye with saline and from what the other guys told me I went into a seizure. Apparently I continued to have more and more seizures and didn't even know it because I was blacking out. Our singer Mark was screaming, "I think we need to get you to a hospital!" Of course I said, "No I'll be OK!", but they took me anyway. I don't know if it was from the drugs, poking my eye with the drumstick, being exhausted and dehydrated, or all of the above, but I thought I was going to die and was afraid to play the next show, which was a headlining gig in Los Angeles a couple days later. I remember playing anyway and thinking, “This will be my last show! I'm going to die right here on stage!” I figured if I was going to die, then what a great way to do it!

56 The Road GINGER COYOTE white trash debutantes

In the mid 90's I invited Tonya Harding to join White Trash Debutantes. This was after the big Nancy Kerrigan incident and Tonya felt like she could use the work. The story hit AP and we were all over the news. We were going to play the New Music West Festival in Vancouver so we got a show in Portland prior. News crews were all over the place and it was a circus. There were protesters with banners boycotting the show and Tonya never showed up. Next, we played in Seattle where we had complete coverage by King TV News, and still no Tonya Harding. We went into Canada and the border guards questioned why we had the late Punk Rock Patty in the band who was eight-eight years old at the time. They also wanted to know where Tonya Harding was. I asked them that since she was considered a felon, would they have even allowed her into Canada. They all answered yes, but were giving Patty a rough time. We were doing interviews all over the world. , Africa, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Burma, it was astounding! Newsweek even did an article, and we were invited to be on The Conan O' Brien Show. We played a College Festival in Portland with The Cherry Poppin' Daddies, and there was a huge fake sumo wrestler there. I yelled, "Hey look! There's Tonya Harding," and everyone went wild. After the show, to my surprise Tonya appeared on the side of the stage with her lawyer and introduced herself. She wanted to know how I knew she was there. I told her I really didn't, and that it was the sumo wrestler that I was speaking about. She laughed and thanked me for the invite to join the band but decided we were too wild for her, then we shook hands and she left. Later she was pelted as she sang Amazing Grace on stage in Portland.

57 Tony Patino BEN DEILY the lemonheads

The summer of 1987 was the first time we did an actual tour of any kind. Jessie's mom owned a Peugeot station wagon, and somehow he talked her into letting us use it. I remember standing with Evan outside of the apartment we shared waiting for Jesse to come pick us up, and as Jesse pulled in he crashed the right front fender right into a concrete barrier than ran alongside the driveway. So before we’d even left town, we’d already dinged up the car. Our first record had just come out but hadn't quite made its way to all the towns we were stopping in….sort of like Spinal Tap waiting for Smell The Glove to turn up everywhere they went. Anyway, sometimes we’d get to a city where the record had arrived at the local college station, and we’d do an interview and such, and play tunes off it. Other places, we'd get there and the LP hadn't quite made it yet, so we'd pull out a cassette or something and try to get them to play it. To tour is not only to see the country at eye-level, but it’s also got built-in dues-paying. I mean, some towns, we'd have an absolutely phenomenal show and a huge turnout, but then there would be the other places—usually next to a vacant lot and a grain elevator, or the like— where there’d just be a couple of drunken cowboys standing at the bar with the bartender and the sound guy, watching us play. “You suck!” “Fags!” “Play some Skynyrd!’” “Get off the stage!” One of the early shows we played was in Morgantown, West Virginia, which oddly enough had a thriving punk scene. We didn't know what the hell was going on in places like West Virginia. Anyway, all kinds of enthusiastic people showed up that night, and I remember it was a really great show for us. But the whole sub-narrative to the Morgantown show was what happened afterward: Chiz the Wicca and the Harmonic Convergence. Here’s the tale. The way I remember it, after the show it was explained

58 The Road to us, that we were supposed to shack up with this vaguely deranged looking woman named Chiz. We gamely went back to her house and immediately noticed she had all these pentagrams everywhere. Just weird random Wicca and occult objects everywhere. Fine, no big deal. Now, by way of background, our drummer John had been talking for several days about an approaching event called the “Harmonic Convergence”—or, as he dubbed it, “the Cosmic Turnbuckle”—in which for the first time in thousands of years, a whole bunch of planets were allegedly aligning in a singular (and supposedly profound) way…I don’t remember the details, I’m sure it’s on the interwebs. Anyway, it had been in the news, and various new-agers and were claiming it was the dawning of a new age, or maybe the world was going to end. John had pointed out that this very night was when it was all supposed to go down. "I just don't know man,” John said, looking around at the satanic looking paraphernalia. “Look at all this weird shit. I just don’t know, man. I don't think we can sleep here. For all we know this woman is planning to cut all our throats and sacrifice our blood to the goat gods." Seen through the perspective of our slightly alcohol and cannabis-addled consciousnesses, it sure sounded like John had a point. The Harmonic Convergence is happening any minute now, and we're staying with this terrifying woman? We gotta' get the hell outta’ here! So we just bolted out of there and ran into the street. I have a long and jumbled impression of us running down the street in Morgantown, West Virginia, stoned and drunk and nevertheless somewhat hysterically gleeful. John and I found a hillside and just sat there staring at the lightening dawn sky, vaguely wondering and waiting to see if the world was going to end or not. Apparently, it didn't. And far as I remember nobody got sacrificed to the goat gods either. For our second tour, rather than using the station wagon Jesse managed to get a hold of a truck borrowed from a friend of the family. This friend was the wife of Ben Zander, a mad-genius-type conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, and his wife happened to be a painter. She'd installed a picture window in the side of this truck and had transformed it into a mobile painting studio. It was basically your standard delivery truck with a bunch of empty space in the back, and one of those little

59 Tony Patino storage areas that extends over the cab. Anyway, after all those years of painting, there were all different still-wet smears of oil paint all over the floor in the back, and everywhere we stepped we'd get paint on our shoes or the seats of our pants. We called it the "art truck.” We were trying to figure out how to make it safe to travel in with our heavy gear, and my mom and I ended up going to a marine supply store and buying a bunch of netting to devise a tie-down system. We screwed a bunch of hooks into the floor and the walls, and then piled up all of our amps, guitars and drums into the back corner. The nets held everything in place and keep it all from flying around and killing us while we were driving down the highway. There were no seats except in the cab, but we found an old sofa on the side of the road and threw it in the back. We'd just sit there on the couch and stare out the picture window at the scenery and the traffic going by. I guess the best show of that tour would have been in Chicago. It was at Cabaret Metro, and we opened for Naked Raygun. I’m fairly certain that was the first time we ever played a room even close to that big. Back then we always had a couple of Kiss covers we'd pull out, and that night we hit ‘em with "Plaster Caster." At Metro, I remember there was part of the stage where you could walk out a little bit further into the audience, and I just remember Evan and I standing out there playing those ridiculous Kiss licks, posing like rock stars. Looking out and seeing something like 1,100 enthusiastic faces was a genuine, bona-fide rock & roll moment for me. Completely different than what we were used to. It wasn't an all-ages show in some VFW hall with kids knocking and thrashing, and jumping up on stage. Of course the next night we were surely playing in East Bumfuck, Nowhere to three drunken college kids. When you’re on the road, the minute you start to feel like your getting into a little bit of a rock star groove, you get deflated pretty quickly simply by going to the next town where nobody shows up. Perfect for keeping the ego in check.

60 The Road SAM WILLIAMS down by law

Down By Law did a bunch of Warped Tour dates one year. I think we were in Georgia, and there was a guy there that offered to sell tee shirts and stuff for us. I don't really know how he actually came into the picture, he just kinda’ showed up one day. He didn't even want to get paid or anything. He said he was a fan of the band and just wanted to hang out I guess, but he sent off a strange vibe. He was a little bit older than us and a little weird, but we went ahead and let him help out. He was really super, super nice, and really helpful too. Our friend had a band called Joykiller, and this guy mentioned that he'd worked with them in the past. On that first day he was the best roadie any band could ever want. He did everything we needed and then some. He said he was from south Florida and asked if it was OK if he roadied for us until the tour made it down there. That would only have been three or four shows down the road so we agreed to take him along. He was doing the shows with us and he was one of the best people that we'd ever had on the road. There was still something a little weird about him though. I just couldn't put my finger on what it was. We ended up finding out that he was a bail bondsman where he lived at, and we all thought that was interesting. When we finally made it to the show in his home town he offered to let us stay at his place. We got to his place and I was just walking around checking it out. The first thing I noticed was this weird picture of him. In the picture he had a mustache. It was sort of a porn mustache too, which was kind of weird to see. Also in the picture, he was sitting in a mud puddle, either in a bathing suit or his underwear, but he was laughing and there were about a hundred guys standing all around him in bikini briefs. They were all just smiling and obviously having a good time. He promised to show us around town, and at one point we ended up in a Burger King drive thru. Somehow the guy at the drive thru window knew him. They had some small talk at the window, and as we were

61 Tony Patino driving away he said, "Yeah, that guys a child molester." Apparently he was the guys bail bondsman. He told us the guy made a porno video with an under aged boy and girl. He said the guy claimed that the kids were nearly of legal age and he only got caught because the kids ratted him out for never paying them. We went to a few other places and everywhere we went he knew somebody through his job. The whole day he was feeding us all these creepy stories about all these people we were running into. He was either the bail bondsman for every single person in the town or he was purposely taking us by all these places he had clients at. It was getting really weird. After Warped Tour was over, we ended up back out in Los Angeles. Eventually we played a show with Joykiller and told them we’d run into their old friend, and how we'd taken him on the road with us and all that. Jack Grisham said, "Oh my god! I can't believe you guys took that guy on the road with you! You're not going to believe this," and he went into this long drawn out story about the guy. According to Jack, they'd also taken him out on the road once, and this young, blonde, surfer kid hooked up with him at one of the shows. The kid looked like he was about fifteen years old, and the guy let him tag along for a few days. At one of the shows, he and his little pal needed a place to sleep. Jack had a hotel room all to himself so he offered to let the two of them crash there. Apparently Jack woke up in the middle of the night to some strange noises, and when he turned on the light our good friend had the little surfer boy bent over and was totally givin' it to him in the ass. He was all glazed with sweat and pumping away! He looked over at Jack and said, "You want a piece of this punk?" Naturally Jack kicked the shit out of him, threw the both of them out, and never saw or heard from them again. The next time we were out on the road guess who showed up at one of the shows? Yep! We didn't mention anything about what Jack told us about him, but we gave him the really hard-core cold shoulder and just kept walking away every time he'd come up to us. Eventually, I think it was our bass player, ended up telling him to stay the fuck away from us and how we didn't want anything to do with him. When we got back to LA we ran into Jack again and told him all about it. Jack said, "Oh, I was just fuckin' with you about all that! He’s actually a really great guy!"

62 The Road FARRELL HOLTZ decry

We were on tour once in 1984 and played a funny gig in Champlain, Illinois. This guy Dave booked three bands to play at his house. It was Decry, Stretch Marks, and Verbal Abuse. Dave took all the furniture out of the house and the bands played right there in the living room. It was a free show, just a house party really, but he paid each band a hundred bucks. We felt bad about taking his money but he insisted. He said it wasn't about the money because it was something he'd remember for the rest of his life, and nobody else could ever say they had those three bands play in their living room. The place got packed and everybody got hammered. When we were playing I started wrestling around with Joey, the guitar player from Verbal Abuse. He would slam me down, I would slam him down, and he ended up throwing me through this big plate glass window in the front of the living room, then he dove out the window and we started wrestling in the guy’s front yard. There was a bunch of cases of Black Label beer there, and after all the bands played we stayed up all night drinking that stuff until about two or three in the morning. At some point this girl ended up passing out cold in a big armchair, and Joey started stacking beer cans on top of her head. All the guys in his band just thought it was hilarious, but us guys in Decry weren't as impressed so I figured I'd one-up him. First I got a pair of scissors and cut the laces off of her high tops and tied her hands and feet to the chair with them. She was wearing a skirt and stockings so I snipped off her stockings too. One thing led to another and I lifted up her skirt and snipped off her panties. There were like twenty people just sitting there on the couch watching all this, and the guy that was throwing the party was like, "Dude! That's the chic that's doing the radio interview with you guys at the college station tomorrow. She's a totally cool chic," and he started freaking out on us. I went out to the van and came back in with some Decry stickers and stuck one right across her crotch. All these other chicks kept saying, "Oh she's faking it, she faking it, she's awake," but she never moved a muscle. We were all

63 Tony Patino partying all around her when all the sudden all the beer cans fell down on top of her and we all stopped what we were doing and acted like we were asleep. She ended up breaking free from the chair and walked into the bathroom where she cleaned herself up and then she just left. The next day I was sitting in the van and she came in and started talking to me. She was acting all horny and flirting with me and stuff, and eventually she got my pants down and said, "Ok, I want to know who put the Decry sticker on my crotch!" I told her it was Taz, our guitar player, and she said, "No, he said it was you." I told her it was one of the guys from Verbal Abuse, and she said, "No, they all said it was you." I finally confessed and told her it was me and she was cool about it. She said all she wanted was for me to admit it. What was running through my mind was how many guys she blew to get all the information that led her to me. When we got home at the end of the tour I got a letter from her. She asked me to send her some stickers and wrote, "I'll make sure more people will see them this time." I went ahead and sent her about ten stickers and wrote, "I don't think they'll get seen any more than that one did where I stuck it."

We were in Texas around 1984 and we played a gig at this condominium complex with Ugly Americans and some other bands. Some guy showed up with some magic mushrooms and we all ate a bunch of them and ended up the keg from this party. They had it in the bedroom and we just took it out the back door and rolled it on down to the van and loaded it up. After the show that night, and one of our band members (I'm not gonna’ say who) had a pink Fender bass. It was a pretty fuckin' expensive bass, and I was like, "Where the hell did you get that?" He said, "Oh, don't worry about it! We'll all split the money!" Now in my mind, musicians don't steal from musicians, it's just sort of an and I just don't do that shit. He kept saying it was no big deal, but it was a big deal to me at the time. Shortly after that we were driving down the highway and I heard something falling out of the back of the van. You could just hear these loud crashing noises and as it turned out the guitar thief's cymbal bag had opened up and his cymbals were sliding out of the back of the van one by one. Every single cymbal ended up out on the highway with cars running them over and everything. I just said, "Hey, karma's a motherfucker!" When we got back to Los Angeles there was a write up in Maximum Rock N Roll magazine about us being a bunch of thieves and stuff, and in the end the people the bass belonged to actually drove from

64 The Road Texas all the way out to California and took it back. I've been confronted by people about that situation ever since then too. Even recently when we were going through Texas, a woman about my age was asking me about it. I just said, "You know what, I had nothing to do with that." She just wanted to know if I remembered it or not.

TONY OFFENDER the offenders

We were the hardcore band that played the first crossover show with metal bands in San Antonio. It was billed as “Armageddon,” with Slayer, the one from San Antonio, us, and Hellstar from Houston, so we were sandwiched in between these two metal bands. The show was on February 24, 1983 at the Villa Fontana, which was a club located under the Hemisphere Tower. That venue was torn down some years back. You have to understand, at that time metal was huge in San Antonio, and just about every Mexican kid in town was into it. We were booked on this show mainly because we had a metal influence to our sound, albeit, still . The hall was packed that night. Hellstar was a known metal band that played the Texas metal circuit and they opened the show and got the crowd really fired up. Not too hard a job with half drunken Mexican kids. We went on next, and I guess San Antonio wasn’t quite ready for hardcore punk just yet. There was a giant wtf! and then the air was full of beer cans and shouts of, “Hell yeah!” and “Booooo!” The crowd seemed to have split right down the middle with one side getting into it and the other side not wanting anything to do with it at all. Beer cans inbound! Empty cans, half full cans, even full cans, which we picked up off the stage, guzzled and threw back. Everything was soaked in beer and I caught the sight of Slayer standing in the wings watching with mouths agape. At that point the shows promoter came out and grabbed the microphone from our singer JJ and started telling everyone that if they didn't stop throwing beer cans he was going to shut down the show.

65 Tony Patino We started another song and the beer cans came inbound again. We weren’t gonna’ be driven offstage though, so we played a few more songs with more shouts of, “Hell yeah!” and “Boooooo!” continuing, then we cut our set short and left the stage. The next day I read a review of the show in the San Antonio paper and the reviewer said it was one of the greatest shows he'd ever seen and that we should have been treated better by the San Antonio fans. That's how hardcore punk was introduced to Slam Antonio.

SAMMYTOWN fang

Fang once played at an old church in St. Paul, Minneapolis. It was in 1983 or ’84, and the line-up at the time was Tom Flynn, Chris Wilson, Tim Stiletto and myself. I don’t know whose church it was, but they did shows in the basement. I think somebody told me back at that time that one of the local bands lived there or something. I think it might have been Husker Du. Well we started playing, and we’d only played maybe two or three songs when somebody came up to me out of the crowd and said, “Hey, this kid (he had the kid with him) just got jumped by some rednecks right down the street on his way up to the show!” The kid had a black eye, and apparently they’d also stolen his leather jacket from him. This kid was young too! Hell, I was only about eighteen or nineteen at the time, but he was like thirteen or something. A small kid. got on the mic and said, “Hey! A bunch of rednecks just jumped this kid. I say let’s go get his jacket back!” I took off out of the church with them and when I looked behind me there were like thirty punk rockers following us. We all went running down the street in this residential neighborhood to where it happened, but there was nobody around. All of the sudden that kid spotted somebody about a block away standing there all by himself and yelled, “That’s one of them right there!” In no time the guy was surrounded by

66 The Road thirty angry punk rockers. I went up and grabbed him and he was scared to death because everybody was yelling, “Kick his ass!” Not a bad idea, but I wanted to get the jacket back first!” I mean we had the guy.....he wasn’t going anywhere. I said, “Where’s this kid’s jacket?” He walked us over to some bushes and started digging around and pulled the jacket out and handed it back to the kid. As soon as he did that everyone started yelling, “OK! Let’s kick his ass now!” We were just about to start beating on the dude when the kid put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and said, “Shit, my wallets’ gone!” I still had a hold of him, so I shook him around and yelled, “Where’s the wallet!” He said, “Look, I think I dropped it right by my car!” We walked him over to his car about a block away and he started searching all around it, then all of the sudden in the blink of an eye he ran inside the house. Everybody wanted to rush the house, but we didn’t know if there were guns in there or something!” I said, “Hey, wait he said this is his car, right?” It was a big American car, like an Impala or something, and next thing I knew sticks and knives started coming out and we just started destroying that car. We ended up reaching under the hood and ripping all the wires out, then me and about four or five other dudes got up on the roof of it and started jumping up and down until the entire roof was crushed all the way down inside the seats. We completely totaled that guy’s car! I mean, the only thing he was gonna’ do with it after that was have it towed to the junkyard! I was like, “You know what? We better get the fuck out of here before the cop’s come!” We all walked back up to the church, and just as everybody was going back inside four or five cop cars and a paddy wagon pulled into the parking lot. A Sargent walked up to us and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “Look, what happened was this kid right here was walking up to the church and he got jumped by a bunch of local guys. They socked him up really bad and they took his jacket, so we went down and we got his jacket back.” The cop just said, “Oh, OK!” They all got back into their cars and left, and we went back into the church and finished our set!

67 Tony Patino JAMES BROGAN samiam

Samiam’s first real tour of Europe was in 1990. We were in at Marc and Uta, our booking agents' house. They were totally good people and let us stay with them. This was before the wall came down, and the night we were going to leave we were standing at the wall. I said, “I wonder what it looks like over on the other side.” Just then, Marc, being like 6’5” and 280 pounds, grabbed me by the seat of my pants and picked me up like I was a sack of potatoes to grab hold of the top of the wall. While screaming like a girl scout for him to set me down, I saw east German soldiers and Russian soldiers riding around in tanks. We later climbed up on the wall and a few soldiers saw us and we were flipping each other off. Marc started throwing big rocks at them and the soldiers threw them back at us. Very strange to see! As we were leaving the next morning we were all crammed into this shitty white van. White Wan, as the good German’s that rented it to us called it. We were with a band we took on tour with us called Ultraman who were in another vehicle. “Good bye! Thanks a lot for everything,” we said upon departure. As we were saying our goodbyes Marc put his partner Uta in the “wan” with us. She didn’t speak any English at the time and we were thoroughly confused as to why she was in there with us. Marc was such a giant of a guy and seemed to have everything under control, so we just sort of said, “Uh, OK. Not sure what just transpired, but here we go on this huge tour with Uta.” We were never told she was coming with us. Uta’s a very nice person and she really didn’t say much the whole time. We just used caveman English with her and it seemed to work. She stayed with us until we played some shows in the former Yugoslav Republic. We first went through the then famous “Check Point Charlie” roadblock that the Russian/east German army set up for people that had to get through before proceeding through east Berlin. We were scheduled to play a huge outdoor festival and local TV crews were all set up in this farmer’s big field. Uta decided to take most

68 The Road of our money as their percentage for the tour. We said our goodbyes and finished doing local and national press, then the rain started coming down something fierce, so everyone decided to go to this small club that was right near the farmers land. Our singer Jason and I decided to go get a beer at a bar that was also in this village near the farm. We walked into the bar and it was totally smoke-filled, with dirty walls, floors, and everything else. We looked around and the place had about twenty grizzled looking farmers all with twenty day growths of beards just staring at us while they played some sort of card games. Jason and I ordered a beer and the nice young blond waitress brought us these huge beers. Wow! We told each other “just one beer,” so we were keeping to our word. Halfway through the beer the waitress approached us and said, “I’m sorry, here are a few shots.” We thought it was strange that she was apologizing but we accepted them. But who was giving them to us? We looked around and really couldn’t tell. That stuff was like no other alcohol I’ve had before. Sort of like moonshine, white lightning, or jet fuel. Oh shit was it was harsh! We chased it down with our giant beers. Just then the nice waitress showed up with two more shots. “I’m sorry,” she said again, apologizing, giving us two more shots. We looked around and noticed that some of the grizzled farmers were sort of smirking and chuckling, but really were avoiding eye contact with us. We slammed the shots and it was sincerely like nail polish remover. More beer chasers. Our friendly waitress approached us yet again with four shots this time. “I’m sorry,” she said, as she set down the shots and we started slamming them. By that time everyone was looking and laughing as Jason and I continued to get totally plowed. Now we figured out that it was all the farmers buying us the drinks. We raised our shot glasses to yet more on the way. Everyone was cheering at that point. About a gallon of rot gut later I looked at Jason while there were four more shots waiting to be slammed. He was white as a ghost and looked like Uncle Ralph was about to call him on the big white telephone. I said, “Jason, these hard working farmers are spending their hard earned cash on us and it would be a total disrespect to not drink up. He just sat there staring at the booze. I went for them all and could barely hold them down. The whole room was spinning. All I could hear was a bunch of people cheering us on. The waitress saw everything getting out of control and turned off the lights, which was followed by loud booing. I barely remember Jason sneaking up and turning them

69 Tony Patino back on and everyone laughing and cheering. The waitress was getting upset and turned the lights off to the booing while Jason would wait for her to disappear and turn the lights back on while everyone was loudly cheering. This went back and forth until a giant guy came out and threw us all out. I tripped over the stairs going out and fell down with the world spinning very vertigo-like. I had never been that drunk in my entire life. Well, since then maybe. Jason helped me up and we staggered to the club down the short road. Ultraman, the rest of Samiam, and all our new friends saw us all sloppy drunk and cheered us on as the disco music played. Jason jumped up on my back and we went out in the middle of the dance floor with everyone laughing. I jumped on Jason’s back and wham! He fell over and basically pile-drived me into the cement floor with all his weight on me. The music went deafening and muddled, and I saw a big flash of white light. I fell from like six feet up and landed right on my neck and shoulder, popping my shoulder out of the socket. I knew I was going to feel a delayed reaction and knew something serious had just happened. I pretended for a moment to be OK, then it hit me like a ton of bricks! I was in total shock, and pain just raged through my entire body. Did I break my neck? Did I break my shoulder? Both? Everyone helped me to our bed and breakfast place. By then it was like 3am and I was screaming at the top of my lungs walking down through the village. I remember stopping to bite this car’s rubber bumper really hard, just completely wasted and flowing with severe pain. I was crying one minute and laughing the next. Drunken psycho! Everyone helped me into the house trying to be all quiet, and that didn’t work. I was yelling at the top of my lungs! I remember asking Sergie, our other guitarist, to hold me up while I pissed all over the bathroom. The old woman that ran the place came in and said, “You must be quiet! My husband is sleeping!” I remember saying something to the effect of, “I don’t give a damn about your husband and I will break his back if he says one word to me!” The promoter for the concert arranged to have me driven three hours away to an army hospital through the craziest bumpy roads with everyone in the van riding with me smoking some harsh cigarettes. Jason came with me. With every bump my shoulder would rock around and send pain up and down my entire body. It seemed like the longest ride of my life. I was fully nauseous from the cigarette smoke, the pain, and not being able to see the ever winding road. We finally pulled up to an army hospital and they basically denied me because I was an

70 The Road American. They told us to go to another hospital another two hours away! The worst day of my life! We finally arrived at the other hospital and it didn’t look like a traditional western type hospital at all. Everything was dirty and everything smelled foul. Loads of shady looking characters. We got pointed to the waiting room and sat there for about an hour with nothing at all going on. I had no idea what was going to happen, or where I was for that matter. As we sat there a beautiful young woman came staggering in with blood coming out of her arm and I got up and had her sit in my seat. Where are the doctors? I started yelling for help and nobody paid any attention to me at all. I saw one door that looked like it was the surgical procedure room. I swung it open and found two doctors laying on their backs on the gurneys, watching a small, crappy TV and smoking cigarettes! I yelled at them to get up and come out to see that woman’s badly bleeding arm. They finally got the drift that their three hour break was over and ushered the woman in. I went back to trying to fend off the pain and just sit. After another hour or so I peeked in to see what was going on, and all I could see was her laying on a gurney with her arm sticking through a white screen, and a doctor stitching her up while smoking a cigarette! It was a crazy scene, man! I was the last one in the waiting room, just soaking up the pain and waiting forever, when suddenly the door swung open and they wheeled in this ninety year old man on a gurney. He had lesions all over his body. He was gasping for air and pretty much just freaking out. He motioned for me to come closer.....closer yet, still closer, then basically expelled his last living breath into my ear and died! I yelled for the nurse, who surprisingly spoke English. She asked me what his last words were and I said, “He said gaaaaasssssppppp!” They put a sheet over him and wheeled him on out. More time passed and I was pretty much freaked out by everything going on. The nurse called me about four times but I just didn’t understand that she was saying Brogan, my last name. I finally got it and she pulled me into a side room. She said, “So, Mr. Brogan, how much money do you have to pay for your visit?” I could tell she was totally agitated at me, and I think Jason told her I didn’t have any money. She pulled out about a two foot long needle and waited for my answer. I said, “Well, you see, our booking agent took all of our money to pay their percentage....." and wham! She stuck me in the ass so hard that for a few minutes it hurt worse than my shoulder! I looked up in the window and saw Jason, who was still buzzed like me from the night

71 Tony Patino before, looking in at us with his head half-cocked and his face up against the glass. The nurse shut the curtains and started in on me. She was saying, “Oh yeah, you come to this country with no money and expect blah blah blah....” I took off out the door and kicked over a huge planter on my way out. As it turned out, there was nothing they could do for my shoulder anyway. They ended up giving me a sling to wear, which I later found out was bad to use for the long term healing process! We ended up driving several hours back to the gig where the outdoor festival was canceled due to rain. We drove that night all the way down to Rome, shaking my shoulder for fourteen more hours of pain. That night someone had to strap my guitar onto me. We ended up sleeping on the stage after playing at 3am and had nowhere to go. Sad, huh? The good ‘ole days!

We did a tour in 1997 with Bad Religion and played the Riviera Theater in Chicago. The show was sold-out and the crowd was very receptive towards our performance. I felt something hit my foot while we were playing. I noticed one more time something hit my foot during our last song. It was hard to see with the colored stage lights but it looked like a pine cone. I walked up close to see exactly what it was, and with a glimpse of light that was shining on it, I was horrified to see that it was a severed squirrel's head! I went to look at the first pine cone and sure enough it was another squirrel's head. It was standing up-right, and the eyes were staring right at me with his little buck teeth sticking out of his open mouth. I was completely freaked out! I noticed some Samiam fans in the very front row motioning to me. They were telling me some crazy looking dude in the middle of the audience was throwing them. After our last song I immediately jumped off the stage to confront this bizarre person. They pointed to this guy that had his back to me, and I went up as the crowd parted and tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned around, to my amazement he looked like a young Charles Manson all whacked out on drugs. I said, “Man! What the hell were you thinking throwing squirrel heads on the stage while we're playing? Are you insane?” With a look of pure insanity in his eyes he yelled, “Do I look sane to you?” Hell no he didn’t! He told me he took four hits of acid that day and was shooting squirrels all day long in his yard. He'd put them all in a paper boy’s newspaper sack and took the squirrel bodies to the show. How he got them in I’ll never know. He said he was

72 The Road gutting the bodies and cutting off the heads in the sink in the bathroom. He opened the bag and there were like thirty severed heads in there! I asked him, “Why would you throw squirrel heads at me?” He said he liked the band a lot, but was preparing to unload all of them on Bad Religion (he said he liked them, too) and he was just warming up on us! I motioned for the two biggest security guys to throw him and his sack o’ heads out into the alley.

DEREK O'BRIEN social distortion

Social Distortion did a tour that ended up as the focus of a cult film called Another State of Mind. For those that haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary film of our 1983 US tour with our friends in the band Youth Brigade. We went all the way out to the east coast in an old renovated school bus and took a small film crew along with us. It was basically just these two guys trying to document the punk rock movement for a school project they were doing. The average age of everyone on the bus was about seventeen to twenty years old, and the film guys were scared to death of what was going on around them. When all the real action was going on it seemed like they were nowhere to be found! When we finally made it to New York and found somewhere to park the bus we all went to a place called the A7 Club. The local punks there were really rough looking too! They were much more gangster looking than we were used to seeing. Every once in a while on that tour it seemed to end up being “tough guy” night, and this was one of those nights for sure. It looked like a prison in there. We also noticed a trend there where kids were wearing chains as belts. Literally, instead of a belt, they'd have a chain holding up their pants. This was long before metal detectors and all the things we have to put up with these days. At one point there was a squabble going on where this guy was having a fight with his girlfriend, and our singer Mike decided he was gonna’ be the hero of the night and took a half full forty ounce bottle of beer and threw it at the guy really hard. Well, he missed that guy and hit

73 Tony Patino the guy next to him, shattering his knee and causing all the local punks to turned on us. The next thing we knew we were being chased out of the club. They even took the chains off their pants and were beating Mike across his head and back as he ran down the street. The film crew didn't catch any of that, but they were with us that night so we all jumped into their van and it was like a scene out of Mad Max. People were literally hanging off the van and smacking it with their chains as we were high tailing it out of there swerving back and forth to get them to fall off! We just drove on out of New York and left the school bus right where we parked it! We were friends with the guys in The Misfits at the time, so we headed toward their house out in New Jersey. Once we got into town, we stopped at a late night Italian restaurant to get something to eat. We were getting all loud and rowdy in there, and Mike was still covered in blood, and all the sudden these Police officers showed up and hauled us all off to jail and held us over night. They were fuckin' with us and threatening to call some of our parents because we were so young, but really, we hadn't done anything wrong. We were just being loud and obnoxious. Technically I guess we were disturbing the peace or being a public nuisance or something. Luckily, they let us go in the morning and we went and stayed with the "Only” brothers from the Misfits. Their parents had a nice big upper middle class house so we were all able to crash there for a few hours. Glen Danzig even came over and made us hamburgers by the pool when we woke up, and we sent somebody back to New York to get the bus. In the end the tour made it as far as Washington DC, where the bus completely broke down and we dragged it to The Dischord House where the guys in Minor Threat lived. We were all staying there, but we were a pretty obnoxious bunch so a lot of us had to sleep out in the bus. All the people in the house were clean and sober and all of us out in the bus were dirty and drunk. I finally decided to catch a plane home with some of the other guys and that was it! When everyone else finally made it back home we got together and did some shows for a while, and the bass player and I ended up leaving the band in the beginning of 1984. When the film was complete there was a screening at a local VFW Hall. Everyone was sitting at desks and chairs and they had a film

74 The Road projector with a big screen on the wall. That was actually the original screening of the movie. Tony from The Adolescents was there, and I guess he was jealous that we'd done the tour, or maybe he thought Mike Ness was talking too much about himself on there or something, because every time Mike would say something on the film Tony would say, "Oh shut the fuck up!" I tried to get him to relax, but toward the end of the film he just got up and knocked the projector over and broke it and none of us got to see the end. There were no VHS tapes or DVD's or any of that stuff back then, so for a lot of years that was all some of us got to see! For the longest time a lot of people never knew how the story really ended! I never knew that the bus was left in DC, and I never knew that the Dischord guys were the ones helping to get the guys back on the road. It was several years later that I found all that out by buying the DVD when it came out!

75 Tony Patino DAVID GIFFEN alice donut

We had a friend that used to travel with us sometimes that got his scrotum pierced. It was one of those rings on the fleshy area between his dick and his balls. One night at a gig he'd gotten really drunk and had to go to the bathroom, and when he went to zip up afterward, not knowing his scrotum ring was sticking out, he zipped that ring right off. He just zipped on up and it went flying! He was freaking out and there was blood everywhere, but he didn't want to go to the doctor so all he could think to do was sit in a hot bath all night. We were driving along in France one day and ended up getting pulled over by the Police. Our drummer Steve had a little bag a weed and he quickly hid it in a sleeping bag or something, and our guitarist Michael had some unusually shaped mushrooms from . They actually looked more like a bunch of those clovers that Horton carried around with all the Whos on it. We were all taken out of the van and searched, and they found his little shroom baggie in the lining of his MC jacket. Fortunately he had an eye infection at the time and vehemently insisted that they were herbs pour les yeux. The cops amazingly bought the story because none of them had ever seen any mushrooms like that before. We'd been on the road for a while at that point, and when they went to search the van it was completely full of trash and just smelled awful! They didn't want to dig around in all that filth, so they brought in a drug dog to do it for them. Well I guess the dog wasn't really happy about the smell either because it flat out refused to go in there. They had him up in the side doors trying to push him in and the whole time he was trying to back out. Eventually they gave up, and as soon as they let him go he ran away and they had to run after him. We were on tour around 1990 and played a show in Tallahassee, Florida, and got invited to a party by some kids who were at the show. We got to their place and everything seemed pretty cool at first. There were a few dozen people hanging out outside drinking and laughing. At

76 The Road one point some guy came up and asked us if we’d go in the house with him for a interview, and when we got in there we noticed that there were Nazi flags and swastikas everywhere. We immediately decided that wasn't a place we wanted to be and got up to leave. On the way out of the house we brilliantly started trying to explain to the skinheads that it’s just not cool to be a Nazi. They were sort of taken aback at first, because I guess they thought that since we were in a punk band that we were into that shit, then the talking sort of escalated into arguing and a little shoving until we all got outside. Sometime during the exchange, our bassist Ted ran back into the house and came back out with a Nazi flag and lit it on fire in the front yard. There were a bunch of college kids there and they all started cheering and clapping, but the people who lived there weren't happy at all. It got sort of ugly as the Nazi skinheads were trying to put out the fire and the college kids were trying to keep it going, and of course the cops showed up. One of the cops yelled, “Who’s in charge here?” so Chet, our friend and road manager on the tour (and the guy that’s been on a bunch of our album covers) stepped up. Chet's pretty much the last person you want talking to the cops for you too. His apartment had recently burned up, and the only form of identification he had at the time was a partially burned library card. He pulled that out of his back pocket and handed it to them all soaked in ass sweat and they just went off. They basically told us to and get the hell out of town right away and not come back. We all piled into the van among all the bottles and debris and drove off and crashed somewhere for a few hours then went bowling in town the next day. We did a show in Schornbach, Germany once with The Spermbirds and Rikk Agnew's Yard Sale, and the club was so hot and humid you wouldn't have believed it. The steam coming off the crowd looked like a fog machine or something. Every now and then somebody would open up the back door to let in cool air, but that just made the moisture in the air condense into a billowing fog! Rikk Agnew's guitarist happened to be a fan of ours, and he asked us if he could get onstage during our set and sing one of our songs. He was a really nice soft spoken guy, and of course we welcomed him to come on stage with us. He decided he wanted to sing a song of ours called "Lisa's Father." That song has a long talking part in it and he said he knew it, so we were like, "Yeah

77 Tony Patino let's do it!" He also promised that he'd get naked while he did it. He got up there on the mic and started stripping as he spoke the part, and when all his clothes were off he wrapped the microphone cord really tightly around his balls and pulled on it. He was screaming really loud into the mic and making all these crazy faces, then he did a little more of the talking part and pulled out this huge safety pin. He held that safety pin up, heated up the sharp end with a cigarette lighter, and then rammed it right through his dick, all the while screaming his guts out. At one point he got up close to our singer Tomas and actually safety pinned his dick to Tomas' jacket. That was back before piercings were such a common thing and we were kind of freaked out about it. We kept playing though, and after the song was over we just left the stage. Rikk Agnew That was Dan, our guitarist in my solo group. He had this strange fetish during that tour and was into putting sharp objects thru his dick. During a song Alice Donut was doing that Dan knew the words to, he jumped on stage and started doing vocals. Then during a long instrumental middle part he grabbed a part of the raincoat that their singer would always wear onstage, and attached it to his dick with a rather large safety pin right through his dickhead. A couple of girls up front got sick and passed out. They were already woozy from the heat and lack of oxygen. I never thought I would see a band/gig more explosive than Black Flag, but I did that night. Every couple songs various band members and audience members had to open the back doors and get some fresh air. It literally looked like the place was on fire from the generated steam and heat billowing out!

78 The Road JOSEPH GENARO the dead milkmen

One time we were gassing up in Norman, Oklahoma and we were given a free car wash with the fill up. I’d imagine the van was pretty dirty because we went ahead and took it. I don’t remember seeing any warning signs about vans or anything, but apparently ours was a little too wide for that particular car wash, because it got stuck in the guide rails in there and we had to wait over night for the Texaco people to come help us out. We probably could have simply gotten a wrench or something and took the rails off, but they refused to let us do anything without the Texaco service people. They had to come all the way from Dallas, Texas or something and we had to let the van sit in the car wash over night. We got a hotel that night and that was the only hotel we got on that entire tour. Most places we went we either knew people or begged strangers to let us crash on their floor., and things can get a little interesting when you live like that. I remember once these people gave us a place to stay and the guy said, "My girlfriend lives here with me and we're probably gonna’ fuck tonight, so just ignore the noise OK!" Another time our singer Rodney and our bassist Dean woke up to some angry man with a gun. I guess some girl had invited them to sleep over and her boyfriend wasn’t too happy about it. He woke them both up, gun in hand, and said, "Get up and get the hell outta’ here assholes!" I wasn’t there that night. I just heard about that one later.

79 Tony Patino LIZ MCGRATH tongue, miss derringer

Tongue was playing in Nogales, Mexico sometime in the late 90's or early 2000's. We got into town a bit early so the promoters showed us around, and warned us that there may be a storm coming and that we should stay close to the club. However, seeing that we were in Mexico the guys couldn't resist the lure of the alleged donkey show, and it wasn't long before they found a willing guide who could take them to such a place. Our guitarist Ivan and I stayed at the club, which was a two story bar and restaurant where the bands played upstairs and the restaurant was on the bottom. By nightfall there was a healthy storm underway. We missed sound check as the guys still had not returned, and by the time the second band was on I started to get worried because by now the storm was out of control! There was rain coming through the ceiling, the singer was getting shocked, the bands amps had to be put on chairs as water was pooling around them, and when I looked outside the street had become a river. I'm not lying when I say that there were people in inflatable boats floating down it! But the place was packed and the crowd was on fire! With every band the pit got bigger and everyone was having a great time. People were hanging off the balcony and the people floating outside were cheering. The weather only added to the excitement and every time the electricity went off people started to stomp and cheer. We switched time slots with the forth band, then the fifth band, and I was about to give up hope when someone started yelling, “Lengua aqui aqui!” I made my way to the balcony and saw three figures looking like creatures from the black lagoon wading through the armpit high water. The band was finally back! We made our way onstage, some of us covered in dirty diapers, plastic bags, food wrappers, and all sorts of unidentifiable slime and took our positions with the audience cheering us on. We played one of the most fun shows I can remember! The guys never did see the donkey show either.

80 The Road SAL CANZONIERI electric frankenstein

Around 1998 we were on an east Coast tour with The ADZ from California, and while driving to Baltimore an eighteen wheeler truck clipped the front of a small jeep that was driving with the top down. It caused the jeep to flip up and over and land upside down. It happened right in front of our tour van. We stopped to see what happened to the person and me and Tony from The ADZ went under the car. What we found was a young girl with long blond hair, hanging upside down from her seat belt with her shirt pulled off. It appeared that her face had hit the ground, and there was a huge pool of blood and teeth all around her head. It was very surreal. All I could smell was her blood and her perfume as soccer balls and books were falling out of the jeep on top of me. Her engine was also still running and there was super loud blasting out of the stereo speakers. Plus her boobs were out. I felt really bad for her. Strangers kept stopping and peering under the car saying stuff like, "She's dead, she's a goner!" I yelled at them to shut up because if she wasn't then they were encouraging her to give up and really die. Plus I could hear her laboriously breathing, being that she was hanging upside bleeding. We were afraid to move her out of the car in case she’d broken her neck or something and didn’t want to make things any worse. We had no choice but to leave her that way until medical help could come. Suddenly the jeep started to really smoke, so without thinking I crawled under her and reached up to turn off the engine to stop the gasoline from flowing into it. People thought it was about to explode with me still under there with her. Luckily, at that moment someone with a fire extinguisher sprayed it all over the area of the carburetor and gas line going into it. I ran out from under there at that point and realized that she and I could have both died if it had exploded, which it was close to doing it seemed. When I went back under to see how she was doing I noticed that

81 Tony Patino she was no longer breathing. Right then I realized what I could do to revive her, thanks to my long time martial arts experience! I told the singer for The ADZ to hold her forehead so she wouldn't move, then proceeded to press some pressure points on her leg and body until she was suddenly revived and coughed up a big clump of blood and gook. She also woke up and started thrashing her arms around and being completely distressed. I ran around beside her and whispered to her that she was just in an accident and a truck hit her jeep and flipped it. I told her to just accept it and that there is nothing she can do right now. I told her this over and over and asked her to please stay calm and just don't think about it, just to wait for medical or police help to arrive. She looked at me and made some gesture like she understood and nodded slightly. I can still remember her eyes looking at me with a very frightened look. By now there was a huge traffic jam behind the accident scene. It was a whole half an hour before help came. A car drove along the grass on the side of the highway and stopped where we were and a doctor got out and asked what happened. He started clearing out her mouth and administering CPR. I told him what I'd done and he said, "Good, there would have been no other way to revive her." The police finally arrived, and after telling them everything we'd seen they said we could go. Needless to say, both bands were not only late to get to the next show, but very distracted while playing. Man, what a scary thing to deal with while on tour! The really weird thing about it all was that things kept happening to make sure that I was there at that spot at that very time. First our singer took a train from NYC to my house, but he got on the wrong track and went away from where we lived. He ended up having to come all the way back which made us look for shorter ways to get where we had to go. Twice I took alternate routes and twice there were detour signs that put me back at the same place! Right when I said, "Shit, we're back where we started from," we saw the jeep pass us with the loud music and then bam! the truck clipped her! So the thing is, if I wasn't at exactly that time and place, she would have indeed died, being that no one else in the radius would have known about pressure points and all that. Well, I thank God all the time that I spent so many years practicing Chinese Martial Arts, it was well worth it!

82 The Road JON WURSTER superchunk

In December of 1992 we did a tour of Australia and we flew to Japan from there. It was winter in the US when we left, so I wore a sweater when I got on the plane. We flew into Sydney and it was summer down there. No longer needing my sweater, I left it at our Australian booking agent’s office. We went on and did about a two week tour of Australia and I got my sweater back when we got back to Sydney. It was winter in Japan, so I put my sweater back on, along with a heavy jacket, and we flew over there. We were well aware of the laws about bringing drugs into Japan and how tough the penalties are if you get caught. When we got off the plane we went through customs and everything and they were pretty thorough. They pretty much put you under a microscope. We made it through customs with no problems, got our luggage, and we went to the hotel. I got in my room and looked forward to a little relaxation. We were all a little tired from all the traveling so it was nice to be able to just kick back for a little while. I took off my big coat, reached into the pocket of my sweater, and there was a huge joint in there. I was in shock because I could have been totally fucked if they found that thing while we were coming through customs. Not to mention that fact that I had no idea how it got in my sweater! Our booking agent was in a room just a couple of doors away so I called him and said, "Listen I just found a huge joint in my sweater!" He said, "Oh my god! You better come over here!" I went over there and of course he smoked it. When we got back to the states a few weeks later there was an urgent phone message for me from the booking agent in Australia. I guess what happened was while we were out touring there his brother had been going around wearing my sweater and left that big joint in it. He'd forgotten all about it until we were long gone. I don't know what type of penalty one joint would have gotten me in Japan, but it would have been something…..right?

83 Tony Patino GREG HETSON circle jerks, bad religion

Bad Religion was touring Europe in the mid-nineties and we did a show in San Sebastian, Spain. It was actually more of a disco than a concert venue. I think it held fifteen hundred people legally but they must have had about three thousand people packed in there. I mean it was packed! We started our set and just as we went into the second song half of the floor collapsed and fifteen hundred or so people fell right down into the basement. It was the part of the floor directly in front of me, right up against the stage. There was all this smoke everywhere, and when I looked over there was nothing in front of me but a big hole. I walked to the edge of the stage and looked down and all these people were looking up at me from about ten feet below. Luckily, before the show our sound guy decided to strap our PA to some beams on the ceiling rather than just having it free standing. Otherwise the stage might have collapsed too. It was a really eerie situation. We helped a bunch of people out and luckily nobody was killed. There were some broken bones for sure though. The phone line for the club didn't work, and not many people had cell phones back then. The promoter had one but apparently it wouldn't hold a charge. He kept plugging it in but it wouldn't work, so nobody could call to get help for a long time. On another European tour we were traveling in a big Mercedes panel van. It was a little bit smaller than a UPS truck, but it held all of us and all of our equipment. We were cruising through Germany on the Audubon during the slow rush hour, and we got smashed from behind by a semi. The force of the impact pushed us about a hundred feet into the back of a bus. Our booking agent, who was sitting up front by me, hit his head right into the windshield. Our guitarist Brett was lying up against the back doors so he just went flying. He couldn't breathe and we didn't know if he was dying or what! We got him out of the van and everybody was freaking out! We had no idea what was wrong with him! Luckily he'd only gotten the wind knocked out of him. I got hit in the

84 The Road back of the head with a road case and had a big lump from that. We all got banged up a little. Some kids that saw it happen pulled over and actually gave us a ride to the next show. The van ended up getting towed and we had to get another one to finish the tour. All our German driver had to say was, “They took my tank!!”

ZANDER SCHLOSS circle jerks, joe strummer

When I first started playing with The Circle Jerks they decided that I had to wear a tuxedo for the first three shows. I guess it was my initiation of sorts. I'd only just rehearsed with them so far, where basically everybody just stood around as they played. At the first gig everybody started jumping around on stage when the music started. I was like, “Holy shit! Everybody's jumping around! I guess I'm supposed to be jumping around too!” I started jumping around and going to the front of the stage and stuff. The music was faster than it'd been in rehearsal so that confused me too. We started the set with sort of a medley. I think the songs were Letter Bomb and In Your Eyes. I was up at the front of the stage and people were high fiving me and shaking my hand and stuff. I guess all that distracted me and I missed the sound-off to the next song. At the next show the band put down a line of duct tape back by my bass cabinet and forced me to stand behind it for the rest of that three month tour. I think I had to stand behind a tape line for a good year or so. Greg Hetson: He was so excited that he kept stopping between songs and shaking hands and talking to people. He was practically signing autographs from the stage. The tape kept him focused. Zander: In 1987 Circle Jerks were on tour down in Florida and played a place in Miami called The Cameo Theater. During the show we sort of dismissed the bouncers because they were letting skinheads beat up on people. The bouncers took a break and the skinheads started policing the show. Greg: The bouncers just weren't doing anything. It seemed like they

85 Tony Patino were almost siding with the skinheads. Our singer Keith said, "If you guys are just gonna’ stand there and do nothing, then why don't you just leave!" The bouncers walked out and all hell broke loose! The next thing we knew there was kind of a mini-riot! Zander: The skinheads started beating up on people, including one of the guys in one of the opening bands. I think one of the guys from The Necros flipped them off. All of the sudden about fifty skinheads jumped up and starting beating up people on the stage. I ended up hiding behind my bass cabinet waving my bass over my head trying to protect myself. In the end the bouncers were mad at us and wanted to beat us up, the skinheads were mad at us and wanted to beat us up, and I just ran all the way down the beach back to the hotel. The next day the band had to drive from Miami all the way out to Arizona and I wasn't really into that idea. I decided instead to take a plane to the Bahamas to spend a few days by myself, then fly back and catch up with the other guys later. When I got to the Bahamas I found myself sitting on the beach drinking a bottle of rum and looking for some pot. Eventually I hooked up with a local who was walking down the beach and he took me to one of the little towns up in the hills. I sent him out to score some weed but he came back with crack cocaine. We ended up going to his cousin’s house and smoked it up, and they asked me for some money to go get more. I gave them some money and they went out to score some, leaving me at the house. There was a woman there too and she started flirting with me after they left. By the time the guys returned I was in the bedroom with her and they broke the door down to get at me. The one guy said, "HEY MON! I have a love interest here!" I guess I was messing around with his love interest. I jumped out the window and they chased me all the way back down the hill. The day after that I was back on the beach working on another bottle of rum when another guy approached me. This time I was a little more successful. We scored some weed and he took me around the island on a scooter showing me the local hot spots. We went to a restaurant and he showed me the “island way” to eat conch, with the lime and tomato and salt and hot sauce. It was delicious! All in all I had a wonderful day drinking and smoking and running around the town. Later on as it was starting to get dark, we ran out of pot. He took me up into this shanty town and left me by the side of this house while he went to score. I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and eventually a pack of wild dogs

86 The Road came up and started barking and growling at me. He showed back up after about forty-five minutes and we went to his friend’s fishing boat down on the beach. We went into the bottom hatch, he opened up the package, and it was fucking crack cocaine. I was like, "Oh God here we go again." We started smoking it and eventually the guy started rocking back and forth. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he started growling and mumbling. I decided it was time to get the hell out of there and went for the door. I was trying to get the door open but somehow I was locked in and I just couldn't get it to open. All of the sudden he came up and grabbed me from behind and was yanking at me and pulling on my shirt. All I could figure was that he wanted my shirt. I took it off and gave it to him and he opened the door and let me out.

KEITH MORRIS black flag, circle jerks

In the early eighties we used to play at a place outside of Cincinnati called The Jockey Club. We always had amazing shows there, always a great turnout. One night we got through playing there, shook hands, tried to score drugs, tried to figure out where the liquor store was and said our goodbyes. I remember this kid was smashing empty bottles against the wall outside the club and we drove away just as the police were pulling up. We all breathed a sigh of relief. We got to the hotel, and actually I think it was a motel. During that time we were staying in more motels than hotels. A hotel is where you can pick up a hooker. A motel is where you drive right up and talk to the person in the little office and then you drive back to your room. So anyway we got to the motel and we had this ongoing scenario where our drummer would have a little bit too much to drink and he would start getting homesick, or he was longing for his girlfriend, or he didn't want to be out on the road. Back in those days we’d be gone for three months at a time. None of this two weeks here, two weeks there shit that bands

87 Tony Patino do these days! Chuck was getting homesick and he was getting sick of us. When you're trapped in a van anywhere from three to ten hours a day it's really easy to start disliking other members of your musical organization. I was sharing a room with Chuck, and he was drunk and chain smoking and complaining a lot. I rolled over in bed about 3am and noticed that he was on his hands and knees next to his bed with his duffel bag, stuffing all his clothes into it. Not folding them up and putting them in there neatly but just shoving them in there. He was grumbling and mumbling saying he was quitting. I just rolled back over and went back to sleep. About an hour later I woke up again and noticed that he'd removed all of his clothes from the duffel bag and had them all laid out on the bed. After about five minutes he started cramming them back into the bag again. Apparently he'd been packing and unpacking for about six hours, not able to make up his mind as to whether he was going to leave or not. The next morning when we woke up, everybody brushed their teeth and took a shower or whatever and we all got out into the parking lot. Everything was covered in snow but there was this circular track around the parking lot leading right back to our van. It seemed Chuck had gotten one of the sets of keys to the van. We would never let him drive! He was just one of those guys that you didn't want to place your lives in their hands. He'd either decided he didn't want to leave and was just driving in circles in the parking lot or he didn't want to abandon us there. I don't know what was going on in his mind. It looked like maybe he couldn't find the driveway to get out of the parking lot and just kept driving in circles in the snow all morning until he gave up. We were a little bit angry that he was planning on just driving off without us, but at the same time we couldn't be angry. He stayed to play with us a few more days.

88 The Road BOBBY SLONE rock n roll terrorists, the loaded nuns

I was in a band in 1996 called The Rock n Roll Terrorists. It was me on drums, Vinnie on vocals, and Adam, who now sings for The Hookers, on guitar. We didn’t even have a bass player. There was a club in our town called Area 51 that used to have a thing called Terrorist Tuesdays because we played there every Tuesday night. There wasn’t a cover charge or anything and people would just come in, get wasted, and trash the place. We did that for weeks on end and it was always a blast. A lot of people always showed up and had a really good time and there was never really any drama. One Monday night, a band on Records was on tour and had played there. Apparently they had a successful show and had the next day off, so they asked the club if they could stick around and play again on Tuesday. That was OK with us. We thought it would be cool to have another band on the bill. The only problem we had was that they wanted the club to do a cover charge so they could get paid. Like I said, we never charged anyone to get in. We said, “You guys can play but we aren’t charging a cover” and they got all huffy and puffy about it. The whole night they were running around the club flappin’ their jowls about it. At one point during the night, I went across the street to this loft where Vinnie lived. On my way back I ran into Vinnie in the middle of the street and he said, “Dude! Those guys have gotta’ go down, they’re talkin’ too much shit!” I walked up to the main shit talker, punched him in the eye, and a bar brawl quickly ensued! It was basically our band against them and their roadies. By the time it was over there were tables turned upside down, bottles broken, and blood everywhere. Out of nowhere their van pulled up and Mr. Shit Talker jumped out with a baseball bat and started waving it around like he was a bad ass or something. While all of their battered peeps stumbled back to the van he shouted, in his very menial tone, "We'll be back!" The best thing was out of all there shit talk and whining they never even got to play!

89 Tony Patino DON BOLLES the germs

Back around 1979 The Germs had a show booked at a place in Riverside, California called The Great Gatsby's. X was also supposed to play and it was a pretty big show. I guess they'd never had a punk rock show at that place before because when the club owners started seeing all the punks showing up they freaked out. The place was completely packed and they just pulled the plug on the whole thing. Everybody was pissed off, people started arguing, and somebody just happened to have a tape recorder going so there's an audio recording of it all. There was no music playing or anything, just a bunch of voices. You can hear our singer Darby yelling, "They're throwing us out! They're not gonna’ let us play! Do damage!!" He was totally trying to incite people. You can hear our manager yelling, Exene from X was yelling, the club owner was yelling. It was crazy how many bad vibes there were in that room. People were just fucking hating each other and it was a horrible scene. It slowly escalated into a near riot and it’s all on this tape. In 2005 after we'd gotten back together, we did a big show in Los Angeles at the Olympic Auditorium with and some other bands. I wanted to try a little experiment and play that old tape from The Great Gatsby's through the PA, subtly, while we were playing to sort of incite people. Our guitar player Pat, in a moment of genius, suggested that we do it after we play. We played our set and had our sound guy start the tape right at the end just as we were walking off the stage. There wasn’t any music playing, just the Great Gatsby's tape. It was basically and experiment to see if anyone in the crowd would get subliminal bad vibes and if they would act on them. The crowd had been really well behaved all night and shortly after that tape started rolling the room changed. I was almost as if it became that room in Riverside back in 1979. You could see people getting nervous and anxious. They started getting hostile, and eventually they started fighting. People got stabbed and everything! It

90 The Road was insane! In the end the crowd started rioting, obviously because of that tape. There was no other reason on earth for them to be acting that way. Our little experiment worked so well! It was fucking nuts! They had to call the cops in and everything. It was sort of like back in the day when Devo used to play really low frequency tones that made the crowd spontaneously shit themselves.

MATTHEW MCCOY uk subs, billyclub

UK Subs were on a US tour in 1989/90. The line-up was Charlie Harper on vocals, Karl Morris on guitar, Brian Barnes on bass, and me on drums. Birth Dfx was a bunch of young upstarts from Kenosha, and they were touring with us. We had been on the road for about a month and were sharing an old late 70's motor home, pulling a trailer with our gear. The makers of the motor home had named it the “Free Spirit.” We renamed it a “fucking piece of shit rust bucket!” We always traveled in style! We had played Long Beach the night before. A rocking show as I remember. Anyway, we all went fucking around in L.A. the next day before heading down to San Diego. So both bands jump into our home on wheels and got on the freeway with a few crispy, crunchy punks along for the ride. Now remember, there had been eight smelly men in this tiny space for a month and we had never ever thought to empty the cess tank which by now was bulging with a month worth of punk rock debauchery, puke, piss, shit, and God knows what else. We’d gone about ten miles when Birth Dfx drummer Tommy Pasta, who was driving, yelled, "Well you don’t see that every day!" We all looked up to see our trailer overtake us while bumping the side of the motor home, spitting drums, cabs, amps, merch, and basically all our gear out the back. It ripped a hole in the shit tank and a months worth of the worst, well you can imagine….. sewage had totally covered two Japanese men in a yellow convertible. Those poor fuckers! I'm sure they

91 Tony Patino were scarred for life. Now that’s punk rock! G.G. Allin would have been proud. The only thing I could think to do was throw them a few of our tour shirts from a distance so they could wipe the shit from their eyes, with Charlie shouting, "No Matthew not the shirts here's some toilet paper!"

BRENT BELKE snfu

The first time we ever went into the United States was when we went to record our first album. We were doing it for BYO Records out of California, and they actually brought us down from Canada to record it. We had a few shows lined up on the West Coast, but basically we just drove straight to California from , which was about a three day drive. Right before we left our bass player Jimmy said, “Oh, I forgot to mention I got a charge for some pot one time.” We asked him how he planned on getting across the border and he said, “I’ve got a plan! Don’t worry!” We got to the border near Montana where they checked us all out, and they said, “OK, everybody can go through except this guy. He’s not allowed into America.” They also said, “Don’t try crossing the border again with that guy!” We turned around and went back to the nearest gas station and said, “So Jimmy what was your plan?” He said, “I don’t know. Go home I guess!” We were like what? The only thing we could think of was to drive west to Vancouver and cross the border there. We got to Vancouver, which was about a twelve hour drive, and called up a guy we knew there. He lived in Vancouver but was also an American citizen so we figured he could help us out. It was a Sunday and they didn’t sell alcohol in Canada at all on Sunday back then, so we decided our friend could tell the border guards that he and Jimmy were simply going over the border to get some beer and they’d be coming right back. We told him to call us once they got across and then we’d drive on over. No problem! A half hour later he

92 The Road called us from a Denny’s restaurant and told us they would wait for us there. When we got to that border they said, “Do you have the paper work for all your equipment?” We said nope, and they said, “Well you have to register all that equipment. Here’s a thirty page form. Fill it out!” We had to go back and register everything in Canada, and it took about four hours of going back and forth before we finally made it through. When we pulled into Denny’s we couldn’t find Jimmy anywhere. We sat there in the parking lot waiting around and eventually we were like, “That fuckin’ asshole, let’s just go and leave him here!” Our manager said, “Wait! Wait! You guys just wait right here!” He came back twenty minutes later and he had Jimmy with him. We said, “Where was he?” and he said, “I just looked around for him.” He said he was looking around and thinking, “What would I do?” He noticed a motel next door so he went and checked it out. Wouldn’t you know it, he found Jimmy there! We didn’t think about the fact that he’d sat in Denny’s for about four hours. You can’t really hang out anywhere for four hours! I guess he got sick of sitting there and checked into the motel. He’d only been in there for about an hour, so they negotiated a deal with the clerk. That’s why it took them so long to get back. We got in the van and drove on to California and recorded our first album. After the record was released we went out and toured for two months straight. Of course Jimmy said, “Man I’ve got a girlfriend now, I don’t want to go on tour,” so we should have just left him at the border before.

93 Tony Patino JOHN STABB government issue

Jack Grisham from TSOL influenced me to start wearing wacky outfits on stage. I lived at the Dischord House in DC briefly, and the other people that lived there would be out at thrift shops and see crazy looking clothes and they'd say, "Let's get Stabb to wear this! He'll wear anything." I remember one time somebody gave me this electric green tuxedo with these tails and everything. Then I went out and got this huge clown shirt that had big red polka dots on it and a collar that was so big you could have flown with it. We played this show with The Misfits in 1982, and it was their first trip to DC. My hair was all black and I spiked it up and wore that clown outfit. Brian Baker from Minor Threat was playing guitar for us at the time, and he was getting more and more embarrassed by my onstage wardrobe. He was backstage after the show and somebody from The Misfits told him, "Yeah you guys are a cool band! We think you’re really cool and stuff, but why does your singer have to dress like a fucking clown?" That really bothered Brian, and it made me wanna' go out and where more and more obnoxious things just to irritate him. He was like, "Please, please stop wearing this stuff." The worst thing you could say to me at that time was, "Nobody's taking us serious as a hardcore band because you're dressing up like a goofy clown." I'd just say, "Ok.....I'm gonna’ wear worse." In 1985 Mystic Records flew us out to the West coast for a little mini tour. They were planning on putting out a record for us, so we got some free studio time at the Mystic Studio in Hollywood and played a handful of gigs out there. It was me, Mitch Parker on bass, Tom Lyle on guitar, and Mark Alberstadt on drums. I think that was our second or third line up. They hooked us up with a Winnebago and everything.

94 The Road On that particular trip we played in Azusa, California with and The Dead Milkmen opening for us. At the time nobody really knew who The Dead Milkmen where, and about five years later we ended up opening for them. In the long run I think it was because they actually had real management, as we on the other hand, managed ourselves, and very badly at that! We were leaving the gig that night and we heard this big loud bang and discovered that we'd blown a tire. We ended up having to get the Winnebago towed to a gas station to get it repaired, and when we got there the guy repairing the tire reminded me of Sylvester Stallone in that movie Nighthawks. He had a beard and he was all buff and everything. He asked us if we were in a rock band and we told him yeah, that we were a band called Government Issue. He was all taken aback and told us that when he and his buddy got back from Nam they had this great idea that they were gonna’ form a band and call it Government Issue. He went on to tell us how they planned to have guitars shaped like M-16s that would shoot laser beams everywhere and they'd have this killer stage show and all that. He seemed to be really into the fact that he was hanging out with a real band too. After he fixed the tire we went to pay him and he refused to take any money from us. In the end we got away with giving him a Government Issue tee shirt as payment. In the summer of '86 we went on a North American tour and borrowed our friend's van. It belonged to Richard Gibson, the guitarist from a band called MFD. They were a local band out of Virginia that played a lot of shows with us in DC. MFD's bassist went with us as our roadie and driver, and from day one we could tell that van was gonna’ give us nothing but misery. It ended up being what I called the Miserable Van Repair tour. One day we were just about to play a big show in Athens, Georgia at the 40 Watt Club where the guys in REM hang out and stuff. When we opened up one of to get out it just fell right off. We were already miserable at that point because every day something happened to that van. We had to drive through the middle of Death Valley out in California and the air conditioning broke down, so we were just

95 Tony Patino sweating like pigs. We were in Winnipeg, Canada on our only day off from playing and had to look all day to find a dip stick because the last person that gave us an oil change forgot to put the damn thing back in! We ended up having to get one in a junk yard. Sometimes Richard would call us up and ask us how it was going. I told him once that the tour was going fine but I was going to turn his van into a coffee table if it made it home. I told him we were gonna’ have it compacted and just set it in his driveway. We didn't do that, but each one of us at different times got so pissed off that we punched a hole in the wall of it. Next to every hole I'd write the reason the hole was put there and the date that it happened.

COLIN ABRAHALL gbh

Our first show outside of England was in Rotterdam and we had to take a twelve hour ferry from Harwich to get over there. The show was amazing and we all went out afterward and bought flip knives, which are illegal in England. On the ferry back to Harwich they put us all in cabin number 526 and the cabins around us were occupied by this party of young school girls. Our friend Lumpyjack was with us and he decided to write notes that said "DRUGS PARTY IN 526" and pushed them under the doors of the school girls. None of the rest of us knew anything about it. We got back to Harwich and boarded a train to London where we were to catch another train back home to Birmingham, and as we got off the train in London there were all these cops everywhere with police dogs. They made a B-line right to us and said, "C'mon lads, you've got to come with us!" We asked what was going on and they said, "You're the lads in 526 with the drugs aren't you?" We were like, "What? We haven't got any drugs!" They arrested us anyway and searched us all individually. They didn't find any drugs but they found flip knives on

96 The Road me, Jock, and Ross. Everyone else had them too but they must have hidden them, or the cops just didn't find them. The three of us were thrown into separate cells and charged with “possession of an offensive weapon.” We'd also bought a bunch of duty free cigarettes on the ferry and they let us keep those with us, but not our lighters. So we had to sit there in a jail cell with about 200 cigarettes and nothing to light them with. After about twelve hours they let us go and said, "You'd better be back here for court in the morning!" We ended up bumming around London and sleeping in doorways and stuff until the next day. In court all they did was fine us each £30. Around 1987 we did a big two or three month tour of the US with a new drummer. He was a big German guy named Kai, and he ended up losing his bags with all of his personal belongings in them two times during that tour. After the second time, he went out again and bought new bags and new clothes and everything. Eventually we realized he'd lost those bags too. He didn't know it yet and we didn't tell him right away, because we knew he'd go crazy. I think we were in Atlanta when our roadie took great pride in telling Kai he'd lost all of his stuff back wherever we'd played the night before. We all ended up in a Waffle House and were sitting there eating. There were about six of us sitting there, and the table was completely full of plates of food and stuff, and Kai was still really pissed off about it. I think he was pissed off at himself mostly, and our roadie just kept winding him up about it every chance he got. Finally Kai lost it! He stood up and screamed at the top of his lungs, then cleared the entire table with his arm. Everyone's food, plates, drinks, condiments, and everything went flying, the he kept screaming and ran out of the restaurant right into a police car. The cop was pulling into the parking lot for a cup of coffee or something and this six foot five, screaming German landed on the hood of his car. We all had to run out there and explain how he'd just lost all of his stuff for the third time to keep him from getting arrested. In 2008 we did a bunch of dates on The Warped Tour in America. We were on our way into San Francisco around six in the morning and there wasn't much traffic on the road at all, then all of the sudden this vehicle came past us with four old people in it. They got about 200 yards in front of us and somehow lost control. They swerved around, hit an embankment, and flipped over several times before landing back on their wheels. We slowed down quite a bit as we went by them, and all you could see was blood and guts. It was horrible! We pulled over about

97 Tony Patino 100 yards past them to call the police, and they told us to please stay where we were. When they arrived our tour manager walked back there to tell them we were the ones that called and they told him everyone in that vehicle was dead. A few days later we were driving along the freeway again. Ross was driving and everyone was relaxed and talking to each other. There was a big truck ahead of us and Ross decided to get up around them, and as he was over-taking that truck, the back draft, or side draft or whatever, completely shook the van. Two of our wheels were actually off the ground and the other two were screeching and skidding. That wreck we'd seen was still fresh in our minds so everyone was screaming and yelling. Ross finally got the van back under control and for about ten minutes nobody said a word. We were just all sweating, staring straight ahead in dead silence. Anytime we passed a big truck after that we'd all hold our breath, then once we got safely past it you’d hear a big collective sigh of relief all around the van.

NICK RAZOR gfi

We play in Las Vegas a lot and we've got a lot of good friends out there. One particular night we played at The Cooler Lounge and we brought a cage we'd built. It was something like what you'd see in a Go-Go bar, but we’d made it out of wood and PVC pipes. Sometimes we’d put it up on stage and invite girls to dance in it. When we were up there playing there were two girls in the cage getting really rambunctious, and right around the third song into our set they ended up tipping the cage over on its side, right on top of some guy that just happened to be standing on the side of the stage. I guess he was a little drunk, and he got really pissed off and started taking it out on me like I'd made it happen on purpose or something. All through the rest of our set he was up front staring at me screaming, "Fuck you!" and "You fuckin’ asshole!” I just ignored him. I didn't see him when we got off stage so I guess he left or went outside or something.

98 The Road The next band that played was friends of ours, and I was in the crowd watching them when I noticed somebody in the pit grabbing another friend of mine who was up near the stage. Basically one guy was holding my friend so another guy could punch him. I wasn't about to let that happen and I jumped over a table and got one of the guys in a headlock. I brought him to the ground and started beatin' his ass, and the guy singing on stage saw what was going on and said something like, "If anybody has a problem with Nick Razor and G.F.I. you can come fuckin' talk to me about it!" Yet another friend of mine in the crowd heard that, but heard it wrong. I guess he thought the guy on stage was saying, "Fuck Nick Razor and G.F.I.," and he reached up and pulled the singer off the stage and into the crowd. I was friends with all these people, but they didn’t necessarily know each other. At that point there were like four fights going on and the band just kept on playing. One of the bouncers grabbed me and drug me outside and read me the riot act for a minute, and when I made it back inside there was a huge bar fight going on! All of the sudden I heard all these voices and it was the cops telling everybody to get up against the wall. We ducked out the back and got away, but there were quite a few arrests made from what I heard. It was just a big mix up, because my friend thought the guys on the stage were talking shit about me, when they were actually sticking up for me. When we got back to our hotel the whole sidewalk was taped off because there were two dead bodies in front of the building. Apparently they'd been shot gangland style.

ED IVY rhythm pigs

Our first LP came out on Mordam Records in 1986, and we ended up out on the road for what seemed like forever. Back then by the way, the fax machine was a novelty, and of course there weren't any cell phones or email, so we booked most of our tours using hacked MCI phone cards…..and writing lots of letters.

99 Tony Patino When you’re on the road that long you do whatever you have to just to make it to the next gig too. Some of the time we wouldn’t have any money except what we needed to buy gas. In situations like that we had certain routines we’d utilize, like going into a store and distracting the clerk while our roadie grabbed some cookies and cigarettes off the front counter. During that tour we recorded Choke on This, our second LP in Austin, Texas and then made our way up to New York. From there we flew to Amsterdam where the had set us up with a European tour. That whole tour was nuts! We actually bought a little Ford station wagon in Amsterdam and that was our transportation for the tour. We were playing all the youth houses and little all-ages clubs, and we even had a Dutch sound man named Jeroen who spoke French and everything. By the time we made it to , Jeroen had left and it was just the three of us. We played a basement show at this youth center in Alessandria and it was really hot down there! Our drummer Kenny was a long haired rock n roller who loved his hairbrush and liked to drink a lot of beer. He always played with his shirt off, and at the end of the night he ran out and sat on the door step. He was sitting there in that cool mountain air with steam rising off of his hot skin, and when we went to play in Torino the next he ended up staggering into whatever room our guitar player Greg was in and fell down on top of him. We got him to a really old hospital and it turned out that he had Pneumonia! While he was in the hospital we ended up hanging out with the Torino punk rockers and this great band called Negozione. They took care of us, and we were at mama’s house eating pasta every night! It was great, but we were losing gigs while he was in there. It held us up for about two weeks, and it was becoming pretty obvious that Kenny wasn’t getting any better, so we called his family and they flew his tired ass home. We wanted to finish the tour, so we got Billy Atwell from The Inbred to come out and join us. Billy’s flight was landing in Mount Pesta, which is between Torino and Milano, so Greg jumped in our little station wagon to go pick him up. On their way back the Ford station wagon we bought threw a rod in the motor and they ended up stranded in a little town called Greggio! They made it to a BMW dealer there and the mechanic said, “Clearly your engine’s blown.” They were telling me all about it over the phone and I said, “Well I guess tell them to fix the fucking thing then!”

100 The Road We’d already lost two weeks’ worth of shows so we said, “Fuck this, let’s take the train!” We were traveling with a trap case and a snare drum, our guitars, a couple of Marshall heads and our duffel bags. We just figured people at the shows would lend us whatever else we needed. We got all our shit on the train and were heading for Switzerland and the train went about thirty clicks up the line and just stopped! It sat there for about three hours and eventually people started raising hell! It turned out it was a fucking train strike! They sent a bus to pick our asses up to take us on to Tiaso, Italy on the Swiss border. We were gonna’ take the train from there, and then our friend from Germany was coming to get us. We got to Tiaso and they booted us off the bus on the Italian side, so we had to walk all our shit across customs. We were dragging all that stuff through customs and they just looked at us like, “Dude! What about you guys?” It’d been like three weeks since we’d played a show and it was depressing as fuck! We finally got on the train and were just inside the Swiss border when our buddy Monkey showed up in his dad’s big fat Audi! Monkey is this crazy ass seven foot tall German punk rocker! We drove back into Germany and Monkey said, “Hey hold on a second.” He pulled over at a rest stop and went in the bathroom. When he came back out he had this big lump of hash that was all wrapped up in plastic wrap. He popped it out and made this big weird hash joint that looked like a trumpet or something. We were just like, “Oh man this is too much!” We played at another youth center that night and we were exhausted! After the show we were hanging out with some of the locals drinking those big warm beers and people started telling jokes. We were all so tired that every time somebody told a joke we’d sit there and laugh until we were crying. They were speaking in German too, and we didn’t even know what the fuck they were talking about. We did a few more shows and then drove all the way from Germany back to Greggio to get our car. Of course the mechanic took our 2200cc motor out and stuck a 1400 in it, so now we’re driving a real dog! We jumped in and drove over to the English Channel where we got on the ferry to a gig with MDC in Bristol England. Things were finally looking up, and the MDC guys were glad to see us. It was only the third date of their tour and their singer Dave’s voice was already blown out. When we pulled up to the club, the manager said, “There’s a parking lot in the back, go ahead and put your car back there and it’ll be fine!” I went back out to the car to get some shit after we played and it was gone! I went back and said, “Hey Greg where’d you move the car too?”

101 Tony Patino He said, “I didn’t move the car!” We all ran back out there and the car was definitely gone! Inside of it was all of our living gear, all of our passports, every bit of money we might have made on the tour, and our plane tickets home! We only had like £18 between us, so we were fucked! MDC hadn’t even played yet and word had already gotten around. Everybody gathered around us and Dave from MDC pulled out like seven greasy fucking one dollar Yankee bills and said, “Man I’m real sorry. You guys take this right here!” One of the other bands that night was called Visions of Change, and they were going to be our host band while we were there, which meant that we were going to be doing a bunch of shows with them and staying at their place in Leamington Spa. We had nothing, and we had a gig the next day, so one of them went and rented a Ford transit van, which is like a smaller English style van. The one we ended up with was old school as hell too! It looked like some kinda' James Bond shit! So we had two vans, with all their gear and all our gear, and about eight or ten people and their girlfriends and a dog. The first night I think we went to Wales. We were coming from Leamington Spa so it was about five hours. We were all sleeping on the way home, when the van started making all kinds of noises. It was fried, and we had to call somebody to come pick it up. You aren’t supposed to take passengers in those things, so the only problem we had was trying to explain away all the people that were there. All we could think to do was call the truck company and pretend there were only three of us. Everybody else would just hide in the back of the van and hope nobody looked back there. Somebody finally showed up in a big yellow truck and pulled the van up onto the back of it, and we were all being super still in the back. They never even knew we were there! Once we started moving we were all back there smoking and drinking and goofing off! It was a five hour ride back and pretty soon some of us had to piss! Then what do you do? This didn’t happen just once either! It happened like three or four times! Those vans are pieces of shit and they just can’t take it. The Visions of Change guys were cool as shit though. We played a bunch of gigs with them and every day we would wake up and they’d feed us. They were all vegans though, so every day we were drinking tea and eating these goopy grey masses of whatever the hell it was. Finally we got back to the English Channel to take the ferry back to Amsterdam. While we were on the Ferry this Scotsman was there, and he was going off on punk rock and stuff. He also started ordering shots

102 The Road of Scotch and challenging us to drink. I ended up getting physically poisoned on whiskey from that, and we were supposed to play another show that night! They had to carry me off the boat and everything. I ended up being able to play the show though, and I guess we did OK. It certainly wasn’t our best performance ever though. About that time we got a call from the cops. They’d actually found our car and recovered two of our passports! We hopped on a train, went and got the car, brought it back across, and resumed the tour When it was finally all over our minds were pretty much blown! We actually ended up releasing a live record we recorded while we were there called I’m Not Crazy, I’m an Airplane.

KEITH BRAMMER die kreuzen

After our first single Cows and Beer came out in 1982, we'd grown tired of and we didn't think anyone understood what we were trying to do there, so we decided to move out to California. We imagined that it'd be "God-like" for a band like us out there. We had friends there and figured we'd be able to play all over the state and make lots of money, so we packed up the van, said our goodbyes, and headed out West. Our first show in California was at The Cathay De Grande in Hollywood. We pulled up to the club and started unloading our stuff, and instantly this cop walked up and handed us a ticket for about fifty bucks. He said, "You can't park here." We asked him where the signs were and he said, "There aren't any signs, you just can't park here. You should know that." We told him we were from Wisconsin, and he told us he didn't care where we were from, then got his car and drove off. We were like, "Fuck this! We don't want to live here." We ended up with a couple of days off and ran into this kid that offered to let us play at his house. He said we'd have a big bar-b-q, and there'd be tons of food, and we could play in his backyard and tons of people would be there. We weren't doing anything else and we were no

103 Tony Patino stranger to house shows, so cool…..no big deal. When we got there that kid and about five of his friends were skate boarding in the empty pool in his back yard. We had no idea where to set up our gear and when we asked him about it he simply handed us an extension cord. His mom was there too, and she spoke no English whatsoever and was obviously very displeased about us being there. We said, "Yeah man, you said something about food.....we're kinda' starving." The kid said, "Oh yeah, sure," and dropped a package of hot dogs into some boiling water. We actually set up and played too, but only to about ten people. We stayed with some friends for a couple of days and decided to try San Francisco because we knew people there too. We got there and we really liked it, then we were told that if we wanted to practice we'd have to rent a space, and it would cost us about thirty dollars an hour. Where we were from we always practiced in our houses for free. We also realized renting a place to live was gonna’ be pretty expensive too so we decided we didn't want to live in San Francisco either. We played one show there and had another one booked for a later date, but we were out of money and had nowhere to go. Lucky for us we hooked up with these two guys that let us stay at their house, which was really nice. We ended up staying there for almost an entire month with practically no money. Sometimes we would go buy these giant bags of potatoes and just eat potatoes. We also went to this damaged food warehouse. Like when a pallet of food would fall off a train or something, they would sell it there. Our plan was to play the upcoming show and make some money, then head back to Wisconsin. When that day finally came and we went to play the show they told us, "No, sorry, we got somebody else to play." Luckily though, we'd met somebody that hooked us up with the Dead Kennedys. They were huge at the time and we ended up playing with them at The On Broadway, which was upstairs from Mabuhay Gardens, the place we were originally supposed to play. I think DOA played that night too. It was phenomenal! There were a hundred times more people there and we got paid enough to start heading home, as long as we had few gigs to play to pick up a few bucks on the way.

104 The Road

The following year we were on tour and driving through Louisiana. Anyone that’s ever been through there knows about that stretch of freeway that runs between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It's one long bridge that sits just above the water. Once you’re on it there's no place to go. No exits or anything. We were driving across it and the van just died right in the middle of it. We got over to the side of the road and all these cars were zooming by us. We were thinking, “Ok, all we need now is a cop to show up and give us a giant ticket." We were just sitting there when this guy pulled up behind us in this giant old Pontiac or something. That was back when we all had really long hair, and we’d been on the road touring so we looked like hell. The guy got out and asked us if we needed any help, and we told him how the van had died and we were stuck there. We thought maybe he could run and call somebody or something, but he said, "Get on back in the van and I'll push you." We figured he would slowly push us off the bridge. He got in his car and got behind us and started pushing, and next thing we knew we were going about sixty miles an hour, powered only by his car, pushing our van with all of us and all of our equipment in it. We got to the end of the bridge and pulled off into a McDonald’s parking lot or something, and we all got out and thanked him. We asked him what his name was and he said, "My name’s Calvin! I live in the swamp!" He told us all about how he and his wife lived in the swamp and how they go hunting and this and that. He asked us if we knew what was wrong with the van and we told him we had no idea. He said, "Hang on I'll get some tools." He went and got some tools out of his car, got under our van, and fixed it. I still have no idea what was wrong with the van, but whatever it was it was something that he knew how to fix. He was just the nicest guy too. We tried to give him some money but he wouldn't accept it. We played an outdoor show on a farm somewhere in Michigan once. I think it was outside of Ann Arbor or Lansing, but it was literally in the middle of nowhere. The people that lived there were basically hippies, so it was kinda' like a commune. They grew all their own food and all that. We were always hungry on the road so when they offered to feed us we were all for it! We started with what appeared to be boiled weeds, then there was this carcass of something that they'd roasted. It was kind a' small and it kinda' looked like a dog. We were like, "Hey what is this?" They said, "Oh yeah, that’s a goat! We killed ole' Brown Foot and roasted him up for ya!" I was really hungry at the time, but eating

105 Tony Patino something that has a name is really kind of difficult for me. I tried it though, and it was really gamey. It tasted about like what you'd expect a goat to taste like. We played a show in '86 in Los Angeles at the Olympic Auditorium. It was Motorhead, DOA, a couple of other bands, and us. Before we played, I somehow managed to slash my hand open on my amp case, and of course it being a big auditorium and everything they had no type of first aid, so I ended up duct taping my hand together to keep it from bleeding all over the floor. We were leaving after the show and for some reason our roadie got into an altercation with some bikers and they ended up throwing a bottle at our van and cracking the back window. Half of the band emptied out of the van to go after those guys, and immediately got their asses handed to them. Our guitarist Brian and I stayed in the van. He was like, "I'm not goin' out there! Fuck that!" We ended up having to go sit in the parking lot of East L.A. General while the other guys were in there getting stitched up. It wasn't horrible, but they definitely got their heads cracked.

BRANT BJORK fu Manchu, solo artist

One time around 1998 while I was drumming for Fu Manchu, there was some talk about maybe playing a gig in Phoenix. We had discussed it, but I don't recall ever confirming the gig. A few weeks later I was at my apartment with a couple friends. It was a Friday night and we were having a good time. We had some steaks on the grill and a case of beer, and we were all at least six

106 The Road beers in when the phone started ringing. Sometimes when I get in my own little world doing my own thing, I just let the phone go. We were all eating and bullshittin' the night away, so I wasn't answering it that night. After it seemed to be blowing up a little bit I decided I'd better answer it. I picked it up and it was Brad Davis, our bass player. He was like, "Hey Brant what’s up?" I said, "Brad, hey fuck! What’s goin’ on bro?" Brad said, "Where are you at?" I said, "I'm at home man, throwin’ some beers back and eatin’ bar-b-q! Why?" He said, "We're in Phoenix! We've got a gig tonight! Don't you remember?" Keep in mind this was before everyone had the internet, cell phones, texting, and all that shit. It was about 8 o'clock at night and I asked him what time we were supposed to go on. He said, "In like three hours!" I told him, "Don't worry! I'll make it!" I got off the phone and asked my buddy Death Metal Cole if he could jam us out to Phoenix. He was like, "Holy shit man!" We live in southern California, so Phoenix is about a five hour drive. Maybe a four hour drive if you’re really hauling ass! We were all pretty much drunk and just said fuck it! I threw my drums in the back of Cole's red truck and we all got in. We did about 100 miles an hour getting out of town, then got onto 10 East and boogied out toward Arizona. We got pulled over and given a speeding ticket somewhere , and luckily the guy didn't give Cole a breathalyzer or something because he would have gotten a DUI for sure! When the cop left we hauled ass all the way to Phoenix. When we got to the club we pulled around back, opened up the door, and the place was fucking jam packed, and all of our gear was set up on the stage except for my drums. We pulled the drums out of the back of the truck, set 'em up, and bam! we just blew out the show and kicked ass! We got there about 12:30, maybe 1am, and I think the crowd only had to wait about forty-five minutes for us.

Around 2005 I was playing with my band Brant Bjork & The Bros. We were on tour in Europe and we were doing a gig in Venice, Italy. We'd never played this place before and it was a small venue with a small stage. At the back of the stage there was a huge glass window overlooking the sidewalk and the street. The band was set up right there in front of the glass with the back of our amps up against it. We did our sound check and I went and sat at the bar. The owner of the club came up and asked me if I liked rum. I'm not a

107 Tony Patino huge rum drinker, but I like to drink so I said, "Sure why not!" He said he had some really good rum from somewhere in the Caribbean or something. There wasn't even a label on the bottle, but he claimed it was really well made stuff. He wanted to have a couple of drinks with me, and it doesn't hurt to get in good with the owner, so I let him pour me a glass. I took a little sip and thought, "Wow! I'm not a rum connoisseur or anything but this shit does taste pretty good!" It was nice and smooth and everything so I finished that glass and said, "That was really good man, thanks so much!" After we enjoyed some conversation he said, "Hey! Have another one with me!" I thought, "Ok why not, it's toward the end of the tour and all that and we're havin' a good time!" He poured me another glass, and twenty minutes later we'd polished off about half of the bottle. I was pretty wasted at that point, no question. The other bands had played, people were crowding into the place, there was a nice turnout, and it was our turn to play. We got up there and it was so packed that the people in the front of the stage were sitting down so the people in the back could see. About four or five songs into our set we would do this extended song, and we would jam quite a bit in it. It could turn into a sixteen or seventeen minute song on any given night. About halfway through the song I would do this thing where I would try to get feedback from my amp. I'd put my guitar up on my amp, really get some feedback, and really get into it. Usually as I was doing that I'd sort of go to another place emotionally. It could bring up a lot of angst and anger and frustration and I'd release a lot of stress. I'd hit my guitar against the amp more and more, and sometimes if I drank too much of the wrong stuff I had a tendency to snap and see red. This was after a good five weeks on the road and I wasn't getting along with my drummer, and we were all worn out. So that night I fuckin' snapped! I took my guitar and jammed it into my speaker and then turned around and broke it on the stage. It ended up breaking in half, and one piece of it flew over this girl’s head in the front row, barely missing her by about four inches. Then I turned around and kicked my amplifier, and my Marshall head flew up and shattered that big window behind the stage and landed out on the street. I completely kicked our drummer off the drums and went off on the drums for two or three minutes as my guitar player and bass player continued playing in total shock. When it finally wound down, I stood up off the drums and started looking around, and every single person in that club was looking right at me. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The club owner jumped up onto the stage and ran right up to me., and I just looked at him and

108 The Road said, “Dude, I am so sorry!" He said, "That was fucking amazing man! That was fucking great!!" We got paid that night but I had to pay for the window and all the damage. I'd never broken a guitar before, I'd never kicked a guitar head through a window before, and I'd definitely never kicked a drummer off his stool before. That was a rare occasion for me and I haven't gotten drunk on rum since then. That particular drummer and I were pretty good at not getting along anyway, so he handled it well. That particular band wasn't together much longer though.

BRUCE WINGATE adrenalin od

I once played a gig in a cow pasture in Des Moines while tripping on LSD. In my defense, it was not my intention to do so. In 1985 I was a guitarist for Adrenalin OD and we were on our second cross- country tour of the US. The directions the promoter had given us said to turn off the highway onto the dirt road and follow the signs. So we drove for a while but we didn’t see any damn signs. In fact we didn’t see anything but cows and sheep. The further we drove the more of them there were…soon the dirt road parted a sea of Iowa beef. Their black eyes stared at us from behind fences strung with barbed wire. We had never seen anything like this before and could only presume they’d never seen a touring punk band from North Jersey come down the road. Finally we saw it! Nailed to a post on the side of the road was a wooden sign with spray-painted letters reading “AOD.” That was us, we had top billing. An arrow underneath pointed the way to our punk rock show. In a field ahead, PA cabinets and kegs of beer were being unloaded from pickup trucks. Someone waved us through the gate and welcomed us to The Circle A Ranch. The “A” standing for “anarchy,” naturally. Our arrival had created a buzz, and enthusiastic introductions were made to the movers and shakers of the Des Moines punk rock scene.

109 Tony Patino With several hours to kill before show time, it was decided to clean up and air out the van. After hauling four musicians, one roadie, and a merch guy across the country for several weeks, our tour vehicle had begun to reek like the drummer. Trash was picked up, stinky clothes were bagged up, and the windows and doors were all opened. It was then that our roadie remembered something. Several days before in Madison, Wisconsin he had traded a small quantity of pot to two girls for three hits of acid. Now that the van was clean, he could retrieve them from the interior panel they were hidden in. A screwdriver is produced, and it was noted that we have no show or traveling scheduled for the next day. LSD wasn’t really our thing, we were your standard issue, blue collar weed and booze type dudes. Acid was shit. However, we were about to play in a field in Des Moines. “It’s probably not even that good…if you take it before you go on, you should be feeling it after your set,” says the roadie. The bass player and I opt in. We kick into our first song, an instrumental about our band versus Godzilla, then we follow that one with our musical tribute to White Castle hamburgers (no offense, cattle). About ten minutes into our set it becomes apparent that our roadie had massively underestimated the credibility of the two girls from Madison. I am trippin’ my balls off. I look over to the bass player and he does not look good. His has become an Altamont. “I looked over at you and you were ten feet tall,” he would later say. Actually I’m about 5 foot 6. Since we were playing outdoors, everything was powered by a generator, and acoustically, it created this weird audio loop. We could hear the generator behind us, then our picks hitting the guitar strings, then after a millisecond delay we’d hear it all come out of the PA in front of us. It was just a tiny little loop, but was perceptible enough if you were on acid to kind of blow your mind, man. The generator, which also ran the lights, would crap out periodically. So we'd be playing and then all the sudden it would go pitch dark and totally silent. Then somebody would fire the generator back up again like they were starting a lawn mower and the power would sputter and then come back on. It gave our performance the feel of an epic struggle. Somehow we made it through our whole set. I remember looking over at

110 The Road our drummer when we finished and dew had formed on his drums and steam was rising from his head. The guy who set up the show said we could stay at his place and we took him up on his offer. We were in the van following his pickup with the PA in it. Someone put in a cassette of the second record, which seemed totally appropriate for my LSD trip. The bass player disagreed and kept yelling, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” A Husker Du tape was substituted and this seemed to calm him down. We finally get to the promoter’s house. He was a little guy with a shaved head. Apparently he was an artist because as we were heading into the house there was all this art work on the porch, which was obviously where he painted. He showed us some of his art, and all of his paintings were of this little dude with a shaved head hacking up bodies with axes and knives. The bass player and I decide that we’re just going to sleep out in the van. When the rest of the band found us in the morning we were both still awake and each smoking fat joints while watching Des Moines farm reports on our portable, battery-powered, black and white TV.

KIM SHATTUCK the muffs

In 1993 we had a show in Saarbrucken, Germany. We didn’t see the promoter at all before the show, which was unusual, because most of the time the promoter is the first person you meet and they're around to help you with different things. We did our sound check, all the other bands played, it was getting late, and we still hadn't seen or heard from him. Eventually we were on stage blasting away really loud and this little Danny Devito looking guy appeared on stage. He snatched my microphone as I was singing and started yelling stuff in German. He seemed really wired, and basically he was saying, "The show’s over! This show’s canceled!" The club was completely packed and people were booing and yelling. It sort of dawned on me that he must be

111 Tony Patino the promoter, and all I could figure is that we were playing too loud because we were really loud that night. We were totally pissed off because you just don’t pull the plug on a band when their all charged up right in the middle of one of their songs. I spotted this heavy drinking glass on the edge of the stage and I snapped! I grabbed the glass and smashed it right on the top of his bald head, and he started stumbling around the stage bleeding all over the place. I was like, "Oh crap!" One of our roadie's looked at me and yelled, "Get the hell outta’ here!" Somebody we knew in the crowd said, "C'mon I'll hide you," and I ran off and hid in the back of the bar. I thought I was in trouble for sure. The promoter guy ended up walking to the hospital, so he couldn't have been hurt too bad…..right? Eventually the roadie that yelled at me found me back in the bar and said, "The police wanna’ talk to you." The last thing I wanted to do was go to jail in Germany so I was scared to death. He promised me that all they wanted to do was talk to me to get my side of the story. In the end I had to go down to the police station with our road manager Wolfie, who spoke English and German. We were sitting there waiting and all these people were going in and out. There were lots of druggies, and women that must have been prostitutes. I'd just gotten off stage so I had a bunch of make up on and was still in my stage clothes, so I sort of fit right in. Wolfie was already getting sick of me because I'd been getting in trouble throughout the whole tour, so he was sort of lecturing me. All of the sudden this little German dwarf walked up to Wolfie and started muttering something in German, looking me up and down the whole time. Wolfie said something back to him and laughed, and the dwarf walked away. Apparently he thought I was a prostitute, and I guess he thought Wolfie was my pimp. He wanted to know how much I charged. When the Police finally took me back to talk to me, this really super cute German officer with an English/German dictionary started asking me questions. As it turned out, the show promoter was a known drug pusher and the police had been looking for him. That's why I didn't get in any trouble. I guess they liked the fact that I'd sent a known criminal to the hospital and made it possible for them to catch him. By 1995 we were starting to get a little more popular and were playing in much nicer places to bigger crowds. We'd been on tour for a really long time and we were exhausted when we played a place in Austin, Texas called the Electric Lounge. That club had been around a while and people in Austin loved it. The trademark of the place was a

112 The Road huge, obnoxious, blinding neon sign that hung across the back of the stage that said "ELECTRIC." It was gigantic and it hung right behind the drums. It was right over our drummer Roy’s head as we were playing, and he was saying it was messing him up. Neon lights don't put off any heat or anything but I guess something about it was just bothering him. Our bass player Ronnie hated it too because it was so bright and he said it was making his amp hum. We all hated that fucking sign! Apparently the people in Austin were split on their opinions of it. Some people loved it and some people hated it. The people that loved it really loved it though, and it became sort of Austin institution. We had a great show and the place was packed, but that sign tripped us up throughout the entire set. During our last song we were just making a bunch of noise up there, making our amps feedback and being all punk rock, and Ronnie started spearing things with the end of his bass. He was spearing it into the drums, into his amp, and just poking at everything with it. Eventually he looked up at that sign like a shark seeing its prey, then lifted up his bass and speared it. The sign snapped right in half and the left side of it fell to the ground. People in the crowd started making all kinds of noise, with half booing and half cheering. We could hear people yelling fuck you, and threatening us and stuff. The club owners went crazy! They were totally pissed at us because that sign was expensive, and it was like folklore in Austin. A lot of really famous people had played there in front of that thing and there were pictures all over the walls of the place to prove it. They had no plans of paying us whatsoever, but our road manager finally talked them into paying us as long as we promised to fix the sign the very next day. Luckily it wasn't broken into a million pieces or anything, so we were able to get it retubed, and we all got up the next morning and found a place in town that could do the job for three hundred dollars. Of course we made Ronnie pay for it.

113 Tony Patino MIKE MAGRANN ch3

In our very early days of touring, a road trip would usually be a weekend jaunt up to San Francisco or a drive through the desert to Arizona. Being a band in Southern California was like that. We didn't have the luxury of all those different cities bundled together like you had on the East coast. Nah, it took mind numbing drives along the freeway just to escape the Death Star- like pull of Los Angeles' tractor beam. And it being the early days of hardcore punk, there just weren’t a lot of goddamn places to play! We'd hear about some beer hall out in Phoenix, usually owned by some deaf alcoholic widow who snored through the mayhem inflicted on her bar each weekend. And word would spread, “Hey, there's a new place to play,” and all the L.A. bands would descend on the place like locusts, stripping it down to a destroyed shithole before moving on to the next poor suckers' joint. Somehow we got booked for two nights at a club in Tucson called The Backstage. It was rare to have a two night stand anywhere back then, but we didn't question it when offered. We drove out there overnight on a Thursday, drinking the whole way of course, and made it into Tucson just as the sun was rising over the desert. There was a motel called the Tucson Inn, run by a family of Vietnamese immigrants, and the rooms were about eighteen bucks a night. We checked into a couple rooms and continued drinking by the murky pool all day. We were all in good spirits, me and Kimm, Larry and Mike Burton, and our (drunken friends) Chris, Duane and Mike Schmidt. I had a paper on Hemingway’s' Nick Adams stories due by Monday, so I brought a few paperbacks. I figured I'd knock out my homework while resting in the air conditioned room all day. No big deal. I never opened those books up, but I did discover the restaurant next door to the motel made a drink called the Rattlesnake, which was five parts booze with grapefruit juice, so I was learning something. By the time show time rolled around we were all just blasted! We got

114 The Road up there and did our set, and were pretty surprised that we started and ended the songs together, and the crowd actually liked it! With a second wind, we closed down that little bar and went back to the Inn to continue our night. How it came to be that me and Kimm, my best pal since the second grade and still my band mate in CH3, got into an actual fistfight that night is still a puzzle. Maybe I made a crack about his then girlfriend, who was along for the weekend, or maybe I wanted all the show money to buy bathrobes (a strange habit I still have out on the road). But there was an argument, cuss words yelled, I took a swing and missed, and Kimm landed a jab straight on me and broke my nose. So this puts us at 4am on Saturday morning. We still had another day to get through, and another gig to play that night. I was staggering around the motel room trying to bleed on anyone who was pretending to sleep. Kimm had a fucked up guitar playing paw, and now he had to contend with his girlfriend who wanted to immediately drive home. We split off into two different factions, and those with girlfriends along woke up the poor Mamasan to get another room while I rallied the boys to start the new day with a warm Budweiser. The sun rose over Tucson as we closed the blinds, and were waiting at the restaurant door when they opened at 11am to start in on the Rattlesnakes again. The two rooms stayed incommunicado for most of the day, me continuing to rant about my poor beautiful schnozz in the trashed bachelor pad, while Kimm soaked his swollen hand in a cardboard ice bucket in the other room. At one point we got the bright idea to set a small fire to the mattress of one of the beds. After we burnt a satisfying fifteen inch diameter hole in one mattress, we then had the fantastic idea to start taking dumps in the drawers of the dresser. I don't know why these brainstorms never occur when you're sober, but at the time it seemed so logical! If you've never seen a turd sitting in an empty particleboard drawer, well let's just say it is a piece of art that can only be improved by putting a lit cigarette out in it. So proud we were

115 Tony Patino of this tableaux, we decided to take it over to the couples' room and leave it on their doorway. Retaliations occurred as they must, and when Kimm and Mike Schmidt burst through our door we were in the bathtub. We had reasoned that the pool was far too dirty to swim in, so Chris, Duane and I were sitting side by side in the bathtub in our boxers. Kimm and Mike had taken a fire extinguisher off the hallway and sprayed down our room, and also tossed the turd into the bath with us. We were all crying tears of laughter. Kimm and I hugged it out, and bless the powers of friendship and punk rock, we reconvened to make it back to the club and play the second gig. We made toast after toast to the good people of Tucson and were allowed to stay in the bar until the sun came up on Sunday. We returned to the motel all buddies again, only to find the doors padlocked from the outside. We sent Duane to the office where he found Mamasan beside herself! Seems she went into the room to tidy up, only to find it dusted with extinguishing agent, odd ritualistic holes burnt into the mattresses, the drawers defiled and floating in the bathtub. “You tota the room! You tota the room!” She kept screaming. Duane finally calmed her down, telling her how the room was fine when we left for the night. But he had seen some suspicious looking Marines hanging around the hallway, and it looked like they were on acid! It seemed reasonable enough for her to unlock the room, allowing Duane to get my books out of there, allowing me to finish my homework on that long drive home.

116 The Road BRIAN BRANNON jfa

Some of the more memorable things about touring to me are just skating with some of the local people. We knew we were only gonna' to be in town for one day, sometimes only a few hours before we had to play, so we just wanted to go straight to the local skate spot. We never did any sound checks or anything. We’ve bombed down some crazy death defying hills too. For me personally, there were a few times where I was lucky to make it out alive on some of those hills. I would just jump on my board and go straight down, and most of the time I didn’t even look to see what was at the bottom. There were a couple of times where I almost didn’t live to regret it! It was after a show in Memphis one time, and we were staying at this girl’s house. We were driving to her house, and I wasn’t really paying attention to where we were going, but I noticed that the bus was chugging up this really steep incline. It had a pretty powerful engine and it took all it had just to get up it. Then we’d go down a deep valley then we’d go up again. When we finally got to her house I said, “Hey you guys seem to have some pretty good hills around here!” She said, “Oh yeah we’ve got lots of those!” I said, “How about you take me to one of them and I’ll bring my board?” We went down the street and she said, “Here, look at this one!” I said, “Yeah that looks good, I think I’ll skate down it.” She was like, “You’ll die if you skate down that hill!” I said, “I’ll tell you what.....you give me a kiss and I won’t do it.” She said, “I can’t give you a kiss,” and I said, “Alright, well here I go!” I put my board down, and as soon as I lifted up my foot I was immediately going too fast to do anything but hold on for the ride. It was a foggy night too, and you could only see about twenty feet in front of you. Beyond that, the street just disappeared into the mist. I put my foot just wherever when I first started out, and it was in kind of an awkward place on the board. My feet were kinda' close together and you really don’t want them to be tight like that when you’re going down a big hill that fast. I didn’t really want to move them though because I

117 Tony Patino didn’t want to jiggle the board and lose control. It was a really narrow street with cars parked on both sides and I was just zooming down this hill passing all these cars. There was barely enough room for a car to come through and I was right in the middle just flying along. I’d say I was probably doing about fifty miles an hour! I was thinking, “I wonder what’s at the bottom of this hill?” I was hoping it didn’t empty out into a busy street or something!” Even though it was two or three in the morning, I still didn’t know if traffic was coming through or not. I looked down at the bottom of the hill, and it did empty out into a big street, but the real problem was that it was a T intersection. There was a big store at the bottom of it with a curb and a sidewalk, and then there was a brick wall. When you’re going that fast you can’t really just jump off because you can’t run that fast, so my only alternative was to just ride it out! I could see myself hitting that curb with my skate board and then flying straight into that brick wall, and that didn’t sound too good! I looked over to the side and there was a plate glass window, and that was even worse! I looked way over to the right and there was a really narrow alleyway full of rocks and stuff. It was way over to the side though, and normally there’s no way to cover that amount of a turn going that fast. I guess I had magical turning abilities that night though, and somehow made it over there and went up the driveway. I was zooming through all these rocks and pebbles and broken glass and stuff, and finally came to a stop, then I got up and brushed myself off and walked all the way back up the hill. The whole ride probably lasted about a minute, but time kind of expands when you’re on the edge like that! The girl that I was trying to get the kiss from actually ended up hooking up with our drummer! Damn!

118 The Road CHRISTOPHER LONG dead lazlo's place

We have always felt an affinity with Corpus Christi, Texas. Our friends in that town have always gone out of their way to make us feel welcome from the first time we set our smelly ass feet on Corpus soil. Our show there on Halloween 1999 was something more than "special." We were doing this tour as a four-piece because our drummer Jeff quit and we were too proud to replace him. Out of both necessity and spite, our singer Gizz Lazlo was pulling double duty as both drummer and singer. We sounded tight, fast, and mean. We were playing an unannounced show at a club there that we’d already outgrown, and we got to town early to hangout and party with our now long time homeboys. They didn't disappoint us either. Now, there are many things we could discuss about this leg of this tour. The drunken two day drive from Las Vegas, the drunken bar hopping, or the acid trip strip club adventure, but the absolute highlight has to be the infamous Zero's shooting incident in Corpus. As I remember it, it was a packed Halloween show in a small rock and roll bar. There were lots of fun, friendly people and overtly flirty girls buying us shots and high fives and back slaps all around! We hit the stage around midnight as the club's super-secret surprise guest, and the crowd went off! I remember them being really rowdy and near out of control., and about halfway through our set a large fight broke out. Normally we would admonish those fighting for being dickheads and then resume playing, but we had no chance to do that. Before I could figure out what was happening, whoever was getting beaten was out the side door and being chased by five to eight angry fans of ours. After that our set resumed to great fanfare and glorious cheers. We weren’t planning on hanging around as we had to pull another all-nighter to Pensacola, Florida for a show the next night, so we humped our equipment out of the club and into the trailer for our long- ass trip to the coast. I was standing in the parking lot talking to some cat

119 Tony Patino when I heard pop, pop, pop! It was Halloween, and people had been lighting off fire crackers all weekend. I made a quick glance around the side of the trailer and saw a puff of smoke and didn't think much more about it. Fire crackers, no big deal, right? Well I was really fucking wrong! There was another couple of pop, pop, pops! and this kid I was talking to grabbed me and pulled me aside screaming, "Get the fuck down, he's shooting at you!" I didn't find out until much later that the asshole shooting at us was the same guy that had been dragged out of the club during our set. The van was parked right next to the side of the club by the back door entrance. I was standing there trying to figure out what the fuck was happening when I saw two bullets come bursting through the side of our trailer and bounce off the wall right next to me. Gizz and our bass player Steve were standing in the back doorway of the club trying to get everyone inside. Bullets were bouncing off the walls and people were running around all ducked over like a scene from a Vietnam movie. Steve and I jumped through the door when we heard Gizz say "Where the fuck is Ike? Someone needs to get Ike? He's still in the fucking trailer!" Gizz and I peeked out the back door at the trailer to find our lead guitar player Ike frozen with a confused look on his face. Another bullet tore through one side of the trailer and out the other side. It didn't take much prompting to get Ike to make a B-line to the back door of the club, followed by a barrage of bullet ricochets, flying pieces of broken brick, and the smell of gunfire. We jumped through the back door of the club like Bruce Willis in some bad high-budgeted cop flick, fleeing Alan Rickman and his evil band of Euro-trash thugs. I remember bullets flying through the club while 350 or so terrified patrons hit the floor in a panic frenzy. I could see Gizz shut and lock the backdoor from where I was hiding behind the mixing board. People were crouched down in booths, lying prone on the floor, squatting behind the bar, and stealing drinks from the bartender, who didn't seem to mind at all. Hell, he was passing them out! After all, a panicked populace needs something to calm them down, right? Steve and I were kind of drunk and the adrenaline was pumping. I think we were the only cats standing when I distinctly heard Steve say, "Dude, the van's open! That dickhead is gonna’ steal our shit!" Now why this made sense to me I'll never know. That little shit didn't care about stealing a guitar. He was more concerned with shooting people. Lots of people! I mean, he had a pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. He wasn't fuckin' around! It seemed like he was especially focused on shooting the members of our band.

120 The Road Steve and I had had enough, and I think the word's fuck that guy, let's get him left my inebriated lips as we gathered up all the bravado we could muster and rushed the front door. Everyone looked at us like we’d lost our fucking minds. Steve kicked open the door only to find the little shit standing front and center, point blank, rifle aimed at whoever was dumb enough to make their escape. "Pop, pop!" The door shut and we ducked. Someone handed me a large bottle of whiskey and I drank deep, trying to figure out how this was all going to end. All I know is we had a whole lot of real tough Texas hoods looking at us like we were crazy. The next few minutes were kind of hazy. People stood up, looked around, and surveyed the damage. No one seemed to be hurt and the police finally showed up. I guess they caught Corpus' "Dillinger," and we walked around looking at the shot out windshields and bullet holes in our guitar cabinets. Jesse the promoter, had a warrant for his arrest so he borrowed a hat and some clothes from us. He stood amongst the witnesses incognito as we were all taken aside and interviewed by the cops. They quizzed us about the whole who, what, where, when, and why of the incident. Right about that time I noticed blood running down Gizz's left arm. "Bro, you're bleeding." I was starting to freak a little bit at that point. My homie just got shot! What the fuck? Paramedics showed up and gave first aid to our Gizz while news crews and newspaper vultures began to circle around looking for a story. The police were actually really cool, but insisted that Gizz get checked out at the local hospital. One funny thing I remember was some girl shouting in a thick Hispanic accent, "Don't take him there, that's where Selena died!" We ended up going to the hospital, and because the cops told him to, Gizz gave a fake name so he wouldn't get stuck with a hospital bill he couldn't pay. Imagine that, being advised by a cop to give a fake name for a gunshot wound. It could've been more serious, but it is the law that hospitals have to report all gunshot wounds, so it was back to even more cops and stupid questions. Our van and trailer got searched, and we got harassed. Gizz got fixed up, including a tetanus shot in the arm he didn’t get shot in, and we were on our way to the next adventure in a van with shot out windows and a drummer with two dead arms.

121 Tony Patino GIZZ LAZLO dead lazlo’s place, uk subs

In 1999 the UK Subs were asked to do something called The Social Chaos Tour. It was one big American tour that featured several legendary punk rock bands. I got the call from UK Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt on a Wednesday. Apparently their drummer wasn't going to be able to make it over from England and they needed me to fill in for him. I needed to learn their twenty song set in two days, so Nicky was going to drive down from San Francisco to Los Angeles to do a quick rehearsal with me. This seemed like a good idea on the phone, but when Nicky arrived at my house he was exhausted so we didn't go to the studio to rehearse. The next morning we had to take off to San Francisco so we could make our flight to New Orleans where the first show of the tour was. We drove up north and made it there by night fall. We caught our flight to "Nawlens" and arrived hours before the others so we sat and waited for the flight from London. About three hours later we started noticing a bunch of people quickly walking for the exits and Nicky said, "I guess they're here." We stood up, and I started recognizing some heroes from my youth. Members from The Business, Vice Squad, The Vibrators. Then I saw the grandfather of punk himself, Charlie Harper, the singer of UK Subs, stumbling along with their bassist Alvin Gibbs. I was in awe and got really nervous for the first time in my life. Charlie and Alvin walk up to Nicky and I, and as they introduced themselves to me Charlie began asking Nicky all sorts of questions. I couldn't even understand them with their thick, heavy English accents. We all meet up at the baggage claim and everyone got their luggage, guitars and gear. Imagine being at an airport surrounded by all these punk rock icons. I've never been star struck before but that was just incredible to witness. A bunch of legendary aging punks fresh from what they began calling the Reunion Flight.

122 The Road As soon as everyone had what they needed we headed to the where we were met by the tour's road manager, Tool. Man, that guy couldn't have been given a better name. There he was in a Viking helmet with blonde braids! All anyone could ask him was, "Where's the nearest pub, mate?" At that point I knew I was going to fit right in! We were all escorted to our awaiting tour vans and RVs and were off to the first show. I got to talking with my new band members on our way to the show and I immediately had to take notes as to what they were saying. Their slang was completely different and unexpected so I had a hard time understanding what was being asked of me. Thankfully Alvin took me under his wing and made an effort to make me feel comfortable the entire way to the venue. When we got there I made my way to the backstage area where the 10+ bands had already started performing. I noticed that DOA was already midway through their set and I had to catch a glimpse of them in action. I noticed my friend Bones, DOA's guitar tech, standing there waiting to hand Joey Shithead his next guitar. He ran out and handed him a freshly tuned guitar and was making his way to the backstage area when he noticed me. He asked me what the hell I was doing there. When I told him that I was drumming for the Subs he handed me a beer and we cheered to what we could only imagine was going to be a great tour. After my first set with the Subs I went to the merch booth and noticed another familiar face. It was none other than my longtime friend Rev. Rob Ruckus, the bassist/singer of The Vermin from Las Vegas, who was there to enjoy the show with some friends. That first night was a blast and it didn't end there. I could go on and on about the rest of tour. There's the night Murphy's Law showed up and drank all the beer backstage in and/or got me fucked up at Niagra Falls. There's the night were we played a hand of poker with the guys from TSOL and Jack Grisham grabbed my cash and said, “All in,” and I lost everything. There's also the night I was hanging out getting lit with Jimmy from Murphy's Law and Vinnie from , and we all ended up grabbing a cab to drink at Manitoba's in New York City. I could keep going.....

123 Tony Patino JEFF DAHL power trip, solo artist

Power Trip is probably where the bulk of my touring insanity took place because that's back when I was still getting loaded and all that good stuff. That would have been around 1982 to 1984. We were basically just five guys in a van with a huge pile of drugs going from one side of the country to the other. We went out to the East coast once and played places in Nebraska, Denver, and Chicago on the way. We were kind of one of the first bands to go out there from Los Angeles too. A lot of the bands out on the road these days are basically doing it on their parent's credit cards, but my parents were way too smart for that. With Power Trip, the truth of the matter is, we were having such a blast the entire time simply because we were so loaded. As long as we had gas money to get to the next show everything was cool. A normal day on the road for us was to pull into town, play the show, and then try to make friends so somebody would let us sleep on their floor or something. We'd get paid beer, pizza, and maybe fifty bucks if we were lucky. In retrospect, things worked out, but there were always typical things that went wrong. We brought a tour manager with us named English Frank, who was well known around L.A. back then. His big claim to fame was that he used to be the road manager for Motorhead, so that was good enough for us. We figured he knew what he was doing and he'd look after us, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. When we finally got to New York, we played our show and did our “find somewhere to crash” thing. I had a friend there that I was staying with, a couple of the other guys found some people that they could crash with, and English Frank and our guitarist Ed found a couple of girls and ended up going off with them. They all jumped on the subway and headed out to Queens where the girls lived, and Frank & Ed somehow talked those girls in to spending their rent money on drugs and alcohol.

124 The Road English Frank wasn't a real clean guy. Actually I guess it's safe to say he was a bit of a gross. He had these dentures that were always falling out, and sometimes he'd have to stick them back in with super glue. Anyway, they were partying and everything, and he started to get a bit amorous, but none of the girls wanted anything to do with him and they told him to take a shower or something. He got really pissed off and said, "Well fuck you then, I'm gonna’ fuck your cat!" I guess he was standing in the shower and he grabbed their cat and drunkenly tried to mount it. Of course the cat was freaking out and Frank ended up getting his groan area completely shredded. In the meantime one of the girls was on the phone with me yelling, "You’re road manager's trying to fuck my cat! Get him outta’ here!" I was like, "What do you want me to do? I'm in the city!" She was freaking out on the phone about it and said there was blood everywhere. I said, "Listen, just start feeding him Quaaludes or something until he passes out," and thats exactly what they did. When he showed up for the show the next night, his entire groan area was completely scratched up and he seemed to be in a lot of pain. He'd also lost a couple of his teeth somehow. I asked him about it, but he didn't remember a damn thing. Ed was there and he was just about as loaded as Frank, but he said, "Yep, it happened!" Apparently he was trying to make some kind of stupid, drunken, loaded point. Those girls actually came to the show too and they were pretty good sports about the whole thing. That story made its way around L.A. in no time. People were like, "Hey Power Trip went out to New York and guess what English Frank did….." Unfortunately English Frank is dead now and so is Ed. About half of the people from that Power Trip era are gone now.

125 Tony Patino ERIC DAVIDSON new bomb turks

We did the South By Southwest Festival in Austin in 1995. Our main gig was at a club called Emo's, and then we played a few parties afterward. The first one sounded pretty cool party too. There were some other bands on the bill, and the Beastie Boys’ DJ was supposed to be there spinning records and stuff. It was way outside of town, like twenty minutes away from the festival, and when we got there it ended up being a house party with the bands were playing in the living room. There were about a hundred people packed in there and they'd built a stage out of plywood. We knew right away the whole thing was gonna’ get shut down because there were tons of kids drinking and stuff. There was a ceiling fan right above the stage and when we played my head kept hitting it every time I jumped up in the air. We got through about three songs when the electricity started going out, and right about our fourth song the cops rolled up, so we just high-tailed all our shit out of there. The other party was being thrown by these two girls from Los Angeles that did this magazine out there called Fizz. It was a nice glossy covered magazine all about trashy rock bands and stuff, and they wanted us to be the surprise band that played right before the party ended. It was about two in the morning on the last night of the festival when we drove all the way back into town for it. When we got there nobody was there but Exene Cervenka from the band X. She was having some kind of a gallery show there. It was a big warehouse space, and they had these temporary walls set up displaying some of the paintings and colleges she'd made. Eventually another band showed up and started setting up their gear, and word had gotten out that this party was going to have free kegs of beer. The place had double doors on the front that were locked with a chain, and I could see arms sticking through the door like something out of a fucking zombie movie. All these people were outside yelling and

126 The Road trying to get in, and when they finally opened the doors everybody just flooded in. There were about 400 people in there within just a few seconds. So it was the end of SXSW, these people were already hammered, and then they found out about this party with free beer. We finally started playing at about 3am, maybe later. About two songs into our set, I put my foot up on a stage monitor and the sound guy said through the monitors and the house speakers, "Hey, quit fucking with my monitors!" After that I swung the microphone by the monitor and it made kind of a feedback noise, and he said, "Stop fucking with my monitors!" We were just a few songs into our set and he actually cut the sound completely. At that point the crowd was like farrell dogs because the kegs were going dry, and people started getting violent. Eventually the sound man actually jumped up onstage and started shoving me and trying to grab the mic out of my hand saying, "You guys are done! Fuck this you’re done!" I said, "Dude I didn't break anything! I didn't do anything wrong!" He said, "Fuck that! You're outta’ here!" He took the mic from me, and some people up front start yelling, "Let-them-play! Let-them-play"! The whole crowd was eventually yelling, "Fuck you! Let 'em play!" Next thing I knew two or three guys hopped up on the stage and started wailing on the sound guy! I mean really, really wailing on the guy! I tried to pull them off of him and told them to leave the poor guy alone but it was pointless. I ended up saying, "Yep, fuck it! Let’s get the fuck outta’ here." I just backed away and we all just started loading up our shit. We eventually found out through various people that the sound guy really got his ass kicked and decided to sue those girls from Fizz Magazine. Maybe they kind of fucked up by having a free beer party at the end of SXSW, but they were such super nice girls and I felt kinda’ bad that he decided to sue them. I really did try to calm down the situation for a second or two but there was just no calming it down. It was as if a sea of people just kinda' came up on the stage out of nowhere. In the end they had a benefit show to pay for a lawyer because Fizz didn't have any money. We even played the benefit show and I told the crowd, "You people are basically paying for this benefit show because we fucking pissed off a sound guy".

127 Tony Patino WILLY JOHNS the candy snatchers

The first time we actually went on the road was in 1994 and it was awful! We had all of our equipment plus five people in a Volkswagen bus that we had to push start every time. All we had out at the time was one seven inch single, and for some reason we thought we'd do really well. That tour lasted about thirty days and we played every state in the continental US pretty much. We were lucky to get five or six bucks some nights and we slept in every little shithole there was. We were starving the entire time. We went to Chicago in 1998 and were playing a place called The Big Horse. After we got there we went and ate some Mexican food, and our drummer Serge ended up hanging out in the van and drinking a fucking gallon of whiskey all by himself. When we played he couldn't even sit on his drum stool so we ended up getting this guy out of the audience. We just said, "Hey can anybody here play drums?", and some guy came up and took Serge’s place. About the forth song in Larry said, "Hey somebody get us some shots," and somebody came up with a tray full of shots. I took a shot and we started a song, and when I burped I realized it was Tequila! If I even smell Tequila I throw up! Larry was kneeling in front of me singing and I threw up all over the back of his head. Matt saw me puke, so he started puking, and in the end the whole stage was covered in vomit. I spotted Larry outside afterward trying to pick up chicks with chunks of Mexican food and puke in his hair. After the show Matt and I ended up meeting some girls. They were doing the whole I’m in college! I'm a lesbian thing, and we ended up going home with them. We got to their place and they started getting busy, so Matt and I joined in, staying as far away from each other as possible while still trying to get laid. I finished up and went and got a beer, and was sitting on the couch rubbing one out watching them, and the music was just blaring the whole time. All of the sudden I looked up and there were two big ass black cops standing there looking at me! We

128 The Road couldn't hear them beating on the door, so they just came right in and were standing there watching me beat off like, "What the fuck is going on in here?" They just wanted us to turn the music down. We played at a college party in Auburn, Alabama around 2001 and these girls let us stay at their house. The guy that was our roadie at the time was a complete idiot and ended up getting drunk and pissing everybody off. I’d had enough of his shit at one point and ended up getting mouthy with him on the back balcony and pushing him. He went back hard into the railing, the rail broke apart, and he landed on the ground about ten feet below. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I guess he just landed wrong or something, because it looked like he wasn't breathing and we all thought he was dead. We were all drunk as hell, and it was four or five in the morning and we just weren’t sure what to do. We wanted to just keep partying, so we dragged him under the house and covered him up with leaves hoping to figure out how to get rid of the body later. Well, everybody was pretty shocked when he stumbled back into the house about two hours later muttering, "What happened?" That guy had a rough tour with us, I’ll tell ya!

JOHNETTE NAPOLITANO concrete blonde

The road then, it wasn't like it is now. That was pre-cellphone, pre- laptop, it was better in a lot of ways but of course I can't see now how we ever got along without these things. I wouldn't know where to start with a road story, there are too many. There's the time my tampon fell out onstage. There's the time I had to put my cat in the fridge in the RV driving through the desert in 116 degree heat to make the gig in Chicago after 2 flat tires and getting there right after the opening act came offstage, only to shoot a couple of nervous tequilas and pass out after the first song. The time the three of us were on the way to the gig in the back of a cab, scared to death as the cab driver, in a fit of road rage, informed us he has a gun under the seat. Ah, and then the time, when we

129 Tony Patino were on Sting's tour, and it was a long tour and we used to drive right after the shows at night... the label had a party for us in Kansas City and for once, I wanted to party after the shows. I had an asshole for a tour manager who said if I wasn't back at the hotel on the bus by 7:30 am they would leave without me. I woke up across town in the morning and missed the bus by 15 minutes the prick had left without me. Now that I think of it, why the hell didn't my band wait for me? Pussies. Anyway, Indeed I had to, in my streaked face and stage clothes and sweat from the night before get myself to the airport and on a plane that they weren't certain I should have been allowed on at all to get myself to the next city, land, and get to the Ultra-Megadome in time to go onstage the next night. I fired that guy before the last show and we had the best time on the bus we'd had the whole tour, that Napoleonic bastard. Still, my band were pussies.

FELIX GRIFFIN dri

On our Crossover tour in 1995, we were flying over to England and of course I got really drunk. When I got on the plane nobody wanted to sit next to me because I was being belligerent as hell, so they stuck me in the back of the plane with Odie, one of our road crew guys. As I was sitting down I started cussing at Odie about something, and all of the sudden a hand came from between the seats and poked me right in the face! I looked behind me and saw that it was some guy I didn't even know, maybe about forty years old. Everyone was still getting buckled in and I stood up and started having words with the guy. Odie grabbed me and was pushing me away when the guy sucker punched me. I went after him, pushing Odie who was between us, and breaking the seat. So I ended up on top of Odie trying to punch that guy on the other side of the seat. People were screaming and yelling and pulling me back off the guy and I was just freaking out on him. Our guitarist Spike was sitting in the very back row, about five feet

130 The Road behind me. He was watching what was happening and just started grabbing his bags, because at that point he knew we were gonna’ be thrown off the plane. Spike was always kind of quiet, but you definitely didn't ever want to fuck with him! The guy I was fighting with was still standing up, and Spike grabbed him by the front of his hair and very forcefully sat him back down in his seat, then raised his fist all the way up to where the overhead compartments were and socked him so fuckin’ hard that his family instantly started screaming! I took off running toward the front of the plane, and this big box of cassette tapes that I had just exploded all over the plane. We were all tossed off the plane and the cops were waiting at Kennedy Airport for us. Luckily, because the other guy assaulted me first, we were able to get on another plane about twenty minutes later. One time we were checking into a hotel and our singer Kurt had to leave his ID at the front desk in case there were any damages to the room. That night, Spike and our bassist Josh came in wasted with a bunch of people and started trashing the place. Kurt and I were in there asleep, so we got up and went back to sleep out in the van. The next morning I woke up and went up to the room and it was all messed up! They'd bashed in the sheet rock and everything. Everybody else came down to the van and told Kurt (who had no idea about the damages to the room) to go get his ID. He innocently walked in to get his ID back, and the hotel desk clerk ended up calling the police and holding him there. He thought he was going to jail for sure, but we ended up paying for the damages and got the hell out of there. We did a tour one year and I was a complete wreck the entire time. When we played in Miami I bought a whole bunch of blow and was smoking it out of a tin can right up until we went on stage. I was in the back of the bus just geekin' out, and had to take about ten Quaaludes to come down with. We played the show, and I have no idea how I did it. We were in Orlando the next day and I was getting into it with our sound man during our set. It got so bad that I ended up jumping off the stage right in the middle of the show to go kick his ass! I ran through the crowd and found him hiding from me, so I threw him across the room and went back up on stage and took my drums and threw them into the crowd. Odie the roadie had to duct tape shit back together that night. It was Tallahassee a few nights later, and at that point the rest of the band was sick of my shit. My floor tom kept falling over as we were playing, and I looked over at Odie like, "What the fuck!" He'd had it with me too and grabbed the floor tom and just tossed it back behind the

131 Tony Patino stage. That pissed me off so I kicked the right side of my drum kit completely off the drum riser, and right about that time Kurt came running around the side of the riser and fucking sucker punched me right in the eye! I dropped my sticks and tackled him and we fell off the riser and were rolling all around on the stage trying to kill each other! I said some things on the mic, then threw it into the crowd, hitting some poor kid with it. We ended up having to give him a bunch of free merch just to keep him from suing us.

MAURO CODELUPPI raw power

We were playing in Madison, Wisconsin on a 1985 tour, and while Davide was doing a guitar solo I saw that the people in the front started pointing at him and laughing. I thought it was because of the funny faces he makes, but when they didn't stop I took a look at him and I saw what they were pointing at. Well, his jeans had just split at the front and his dick was on display for everyone to see. I let him go on a little bit longer and then I told him to look down. You should have seen the look on his face! We quickly finished the song and he ran backstage refusing to come back out. After a while we managed to convince him, and he finished the show keeping his guitar down low to cover up his baby. On another tour the following year, I think it might have been near Indianapolis, these guys insisted that we go to their house to sleep. Since they insisted so much and told us that they had a nice big place with lots of space to crash, we went along. As we went into the pitch black house, the lights suddenly came on and there were four guys in there with baseball bats waiting to beat the shit out of us! Just as they were about to start swinging, one of them took a good look at us and shouted to the others to HOLD IT! and told them that we weren’t the band they thought we were. Apparently a band had played there earlier in the year using their equipment, and managed to blow up the heads on a couple of their speakers, and had also stolen some things from them,

132 The Road and they thought it was us. It was a lucky escape. One of the years we went back over was 1998 and we hadn't been to the US for several years. The first day, we played in NYC, and we met these young guys in a band from Kentucky called Infected that were going to be our support band for the tour. After that show we did something we'd never done before, and have never done since then, especially with someone we didn't even know. We put some of our gear into their van. We were in a small mini-van with seven people, so there wasn't enough room in ours. The next day we went to the club we were playing at in New Jersey, and when the guys from Infected showed up they were kind of avoiding us. They were completely staying away from us and wouldn't even look at us. When we finally asked them what was wrong they told us they'd parked their van in a bad part of town and someone broke into it. The only things that were stolen were our things, which where two Gibson guitars that belonged to my brother Giuseppe. None of their things were stolen because they were locked up underneath. I thought Giuseppe would lose his mind but we calmed him down. He borrowed a guitar for the show that night, and then we just went to the bar, got drunk, and laughed about it all. Well…..sort of. In the end we went to a guitar shop and bought him a Gibson SG that he played until he passed away in 2002. Now that guitar hangs on the wall of a bar in our town where he used to spend a lot of time.

133 Tony Patino BLAINE COOK the accused

There was a reign of terror that The Accused took part in that involved syrup of ipecac, super glue, stink bombs, and telephone terrorism. We'd be on tour and we'd call up people at big record labels and say things like, "Hey this is Dave Mustaine from ," and ask to speak to whoever the head person was at that particular label. The secretary would patch us through, the person would get on the phone, we'd tear 'em a new asshole, and they'd hang up thinking they'd just been cussed out by Dave Mustaine. For those that don't know, syrup of ipecac is a vomit inducer. You can buy it over the counter in the states at just about any drug store with no problem. We used to spike people's beers with that stuff all the time. We were playing in Sacramento one time and had some spiked beers in a little fridge in our van. I grabbed a beer and unfortunately it was one of the spiked ones. I guess you've gotta’ do it at least once to find out what it's like. Sort of like getting tazered, or getting sprayed in the face with pepper spray. I noticed it had this sweetness to it, and then I started burping. All I'd eaten that afternoon was a big bag of Cajun peanuts which quickly came back up. We always tried to keep some super glue handy when we were on tour too. We were usually pretty cool at most of the hotels we stayed in, but I think it was in St. Louis where the clerk was just being a real dick. Well, we broke all the light bulbs and then super glued them back into the sockets, we super glued the telephone receiver to its base, and I think we might have even glued a couple of light switches in the “on” position. Sometimes we would buy those little glass stink bombs and roll them up in a piece of paper to make them look like a joint, then crack one and toss it into the crowd while we were playing and people would think it was a joint and pick it up. Sometimes we’d drop one in somebody's jacket pocket and they'd walk around wondering why the smell of rotten eggs was following them around.

134 The Road J.J. PEARSON toxic reasons

We were booked for a week once up in Calgary at a place called The Calgarian Hotel. One day while we were there, our bass player Rob and our manager went out to a drug store and Rob got caught stealing a tooth brush. The cops ended up actually throwing both of them in jail and asking them what the hell they were doing there, and of course they claimed to be tourists. After sitting in jail for a few days though, they cracked and said, "OK, OK we're in a punk rock band and we're playing at The Calgarian Hotel." When the cops found that out the club was raided by immigration police and they arrested everybody in the band except me, and deported all the other guys back to the states. We did a tour in 1985 in a beat up old Ford Econoline van that we bought on the actual day that we were leaving. It was kinda' customized with sort of a bed in it, so it was perfect. We left San Francisco in it and our first show was in Reno, Nevada. We didn't know it, but we'd been driving the whole time with the emergency brake on, and the hub of one of the back tires was glowing red. The seal in the axle had also broken and caught on fire. We were at a gas station in Truckee Tahoe when we noticed it, and the mechanic ended up having to put a new axle on the van. He said, "How much money have you got?" We hadn't even made it to our first show yet so we only had about 175 bucks. He charged us 150, so we had twenty-five bucks left over to get something to eat, plus we had to stay there for a day while they fixed the van. Truckee is the town where the infamous “Donner Party” were stranded back in 1846 and ended up having to eat each other to survive, so we were all joking about who was gonna’ die first so we'd know who we were gonna’ eat. Our guitar player Bruce was the skinniest one so we figured he'd be the first one to go. We ended up missing the show in Reno. Later on in that tour we were driving through New York City hitting all these potholes, and somehow it broke the suspension of the van, making

135 Tony Patino it come right through the floor, cutting the pipe in half that runs from the gas cap down to the gas tank! We ended up getting a hose with a locking gas cap on it, and chaining it onto the back door of the van. So whenever we got gas we had to put the nozzle in the hose and pump a little until the hose filled up. Then we'd wait a minute until the hose emptied down into the tank, glunk-glunk-glunk-glunk, then repeat the process over and over. I took a half an hour to fill the damn thing. We were touring with DOA, and they would usually just get sick of waiting and take off without us. After the suspension broke there was 360 degrees of play in the steering, so whoever had to drive would be completely exhausted by the time we got to where we were going. It felt like your arms were about ready to fall off or something. Also, whenever you hit the brakes it would make this awful clunking sound. Our only hope at that point in the tour was just to make it to the next show each night and hopefully make enough money to fix the damn thing one day. At one point we stopped at a gas station and told them about the clunking sound, and they put the van up on a lift to check it out. After looking it over the guy said, "If you drive that van off of this lot I'm calling the cops!" According to him the only thing holding the body of the van to the axles was the shock absorbers. He fixed us up and we made it as far as Indianapolis where the van died. We were trying to get it into this girl’s driveway and we had to kick the front tires really hard to get them to turn because the steering column had completely snapped. Once we finally got it parked there, that's right where we left it.

136 The Road ROB LUCJAK toxic reasons

After being arrested, jailed, and deported from Canada for stealing that toothbrush, I was told if I tried to enter Canada again I would be jailed for two years. Well, some years later I snuck back in with the band and my girlfriend. When we were playing in Ottawa. We'd just come back from Europe and had brought a young German roadie named Fish with us. My girlfriend and I walked up to the border crossing and told them we were just going to visit for a day and that someone was going to pick us up, and we showed them credit cards and licenses. Of course I was nervous as hell that they were going to enter my name into their computer but they didn’t. They just let us right through. Once the rest of the band made it through they picked us up down the road and off we went. About ten minutes later a Canadian cop tailed us for a while and pulled us over. I was like, “Oh shit! If they find me here I’m going to jail!” I remember hiding in the back all covered up with sleeping bags and gear. Whoever was driving was speeding, and I think we got away with a warning. Later on, we made it to the gig and needed to unload the gear, and our roadie asked that we let him drive. We’d tortured him for miles and refused to let him drive because we didn’t trust him yet and he didn’t have a license. We said, “OK Fish, go ahead. Here's the keys, enjoy your five minutes of fun.” A half an hour went by and we were wondering where the hell he was! Did he hijack our van? Did he get homesick already and drive over the ocean back to Germany? Finally our bass player showed up and said, "Fish just backed up into the main boulevard without looking and crunched into the ex-mayor of Ottawa! The cops are looking for you!" Of course the van title was in my name and we didn’t have any insurance. I was like holy shit! I just took off running and hid away in some room somewhere for a few hours. I ended up playing the show, but fully expected to be raided on stage by the Royal Mounted Police, thrown in shackles, and stuffed in a

137 Tony Patino cell for a few years. My poor dad who has the same name as me was hassled by phone and mail to pay for the mayor’s crunched car repairs. It never got paid and I was never to be found.

SICKIE WIFEBEATER the mentors

We first started playing under the name The Mentors in 1977, but our first real tour actually wasn’t until the summer of 1987. We went out with another Los Angeles band called St. Vitus and covered most of the United States. A lot of crazy shit happened on that tour! One particular story that comes to mind involves us driving from Atlanta to Florida. We’d played in Atlanta that night and the next show was in Daytona Beach. That seemed like a long drive so we decided to go ahead and get on the road right after the gig. Our driver Horndogger drove until about 6:30am and the sun was coming up and he was getting burned out, so I came up with the bright idea that I’d take over for him. At about 7am on the 4th of July, I got pulled over on I-75 about sixty miles South of Atlanta in Butts County, Georgia. I was still fucked up from the night before and ended up getting a fucking DUI. The actual town that they took us too was called Jackson, Georgia, and it was a total backwoods, countrified place that hated Yankees. They ended up giving me more than one breathalyzer, and I think I was a .18 or something like that, which is pretty good! They took me in, and they had to take my picture a couple different times because I guess they didn’t know how to load the film into the camera or something. I think that might have been my third DUI, and it was the easiest one to get out of that I’ve ever had. All I had to do was pay them 400 bucks and then I was outta’ there! I never got anything in the mail from them or anything! Something was up with the tags too! I think they might have been expired or something, and they totally impounded our van! They were nice enough though to steer us in the direction of one of their friends that was selling a Toyota truck for 500 bucks! We went ahead

138 The Road and bought it and hauled ass down to Florida, but we missed the damn gig! We were up partying that night at someone’s house in Daytona. It was overlooking the beach and you could walk down there and everything. You could even drive on the beach too so, we drove our replacement truck on down there and were on the beach drinking beer and having a fire and all that shit. It was about 7am and the sun was coming up and our singer El Duce was all fucked up and ended up passing out cold, standing up, leaning backward across the hood of the truck. We were with some girl and she started putting lipstick and all that stuff on his face. Somehow he ended up with this little skirt on too. His jeans had fallen down between his ankles and she was like, “His pants fell down! Should I try and pull ‘em back up?” Somebody said, “No, just put that dress around him!” I don’t know where the fuck it came from but it was like something you’d see an ice skater or a tennis player wearing back in the seventies. So there he was with lipstick, mascara, eye liner, eye shadow, the whole works. What an ugly looking dude too! All the rest of us went up to the house to get some more beer and left him down there alone, and as we were coming back, we looked down there and a cop car was cruising up toward him. We all just jumped back and hid somewhere so we could watch what was going on. The cops pulled right up there to him, then got out of their car and shook him until he woke up. Of course El Duce didn’t know what his face looked like, and I don’t think he noticed that he had that little dress on at first either. They must have asked him for some ID or something because all of the sudden he started reaching into wear his pants pocket used to be and there was that frilly little skirt thing there instead. We could tell he was a little bit puzzled by that. The cops didn’t look fazed at all! They were looking at him kind of funny and looking at each other a lot, but they just let him go after about fifteen or twenty minutes of fucking with him!

139 Tony Patino SEAN ROMIN schleprock, decry

One time when I was on tour with Schleprock, we were in Plano, Texas, and I ended up meeting this cute hippie girl. She didn't seem to belong it that area at all, but more like she belonged in maybe Oregon or something. She and I hit it off pretty good, and she told me that her birthday was the next day and she wanted us to come to the party. We all went over there the next day and it was a huge bar-b-q. They had two grills going with a bunch meat cooking, and a bunch of hamburger buns laid out so this guy could put patties on them straight off the grill. Our bass player liked to play a lot of jokes, and wasn't in a very good mood for some reason, and he took a hamburger bun and disappeared into the bathroom. When he came back he had taken a shit and put it right on the bun, then walked right up and put it back where all the other buns were sitting with hamburger patties on them. He'd even shaped it to look like a hamburger patty and everything! It was incredible! People were horrified! Hell, I was horrified too. People were standing around and pointing at it and stuff and asking who the hell did it until somebody eventually got rid of it. At that point I was all apologetic and I told that girl, "That asshole bass player of ours did it, I'm sorry." I was on tour with Decry in 2001 and we played a show at Gilman Street in Berkeley. I'd gotten food poisoning or something and was in really bad shape, and one of the women that worked at the club told me she was a nurse and had the bright idea of suggesting I get some Imodium A-D. I went and bought some and drank it, but as it turns out Imodium A-D stops you from shitting, which is the last thing you want if you've gotten food poisoning. All it did was plug me up with the poisoned food in my stomach and I stayed sick all night long. I guess the rest of the band didn't believe how sick I really was, because early the next day all they wanted to do was go bar hopping around San Francisco.

140 The Road We were traveling in a short school bus, and the other guys refused take me to a hospital, so all I could do was try to sleep up in the bunk the whole time with stomach pains. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and I forced them to stop the bus so I could bail. They pulled over in a downtown parking lot, and I literally fell down the steps of the bus and landed on the asphalt and just laid there in the fetal position holding my stomach. Our singer Farrell said, "If you’re so fucking sick go find a hospital," and they drove off. I don't really remember how I got there, maybe I got a ride from somebody, but somehow I ended up at a hospital. I had drugs on me and I was sitting in the waiting room sandwiched right between a hooker and a cop when our bass player Rik came in and said, "C'mon man, we gotta’ go!" How I made it through the San Francisco gig I have no idea. Later in that tour, we were in Oklahoma City with a day or two off and we didn't really have a lot of money. We ended up staying with this girl for a few days and meeting up with one of the local record store owners who was a fan of ours. We went into his record store and he said, "Cool, Decry's here! Close the door!" He locked the door and him and his wife broke out these huge piles of coke. We all did a shit load of coke with them, and eventually he just closed the store down and we all went back to that girl’s house. We were all coked out and the record store guy’s wife kept looking at me really funny the whole night. Finally she pulled me aside and said, "Me and my husband, we don't care, sometimes we get a little freaky- deeky if ya know what I mean." As it turned out, she wanted me to join them for a threesome. I was actually a little horrified at the whole idea and ended up not doing it though. Just the way those people were, it just didn't seem like a good situation and I didn’t want to let my wall down, so to speak. Nobody did anything with them, but we needed somewhere to stay so our drummer Justin took one for the team and ended up sleeping with the girl that owned the house. Actually I think Farrell and Justin were in there messing around with her but I’m not sure. Afterward Justin just sort of took over and became like the man of the house and was in the kitchen with an apron on making breakfast for everybody the next morning.

141 Tony Patino JEFF CLAYTON antiseen

Our first reak tour was in 1992, and when we got to our show in Chicago some water pipes had busted in the city and the part of town we were playing in was completely flooded. We couldn't play that night, but of course the tour kept going. The next show was in Peoria, Illinois, and the promoter there didn't read our press kit until long after he'd booked us, and decided he didn't want that kind of stuff in his club and basically canceled the whole show the day before we were supposed to show up. A few days later we were playing in Lawrence, Kansas and realized our next show was in Spokane, Washington. Well Spokane was a twenty-one hour drive and we had twenty three hours to do it in. We were making pretty good time, then we got into the Rocky Mountains and a blizzard came through and we had to get a hotel room and sit it out. There's another show missed! We had to really hustle to get to the next show, which was in Eureka, California. When we got there, there'd been an earthquake and the only place that had power happened to be the block that the club was on. So we got to play that night, but the other band on the bill was Citizen Fish. Antiseen and Citizen Fish? What the fuck kinda’ line-up is that? There was a really good crowd there, but they started filing out of the place right before we got on stage. Our next show was in Los Angeles, and so far we had no reason to think anything could screw that one up. Our guitar player always had his ear to the ground when it came to politics, news, current issues, and all that, and he was reading a newspaper and said, "Look! In the next couple of days they're gonna’ be reading the verdict on those cops that beat up Rodney King. If that doesn't go right it could be a big problem!" We didn't think much about it and we were just excited to be going to L.A.. We had plans to meet up with Rudy Ray Moore (black comedian, musician and actor, best known as Dolemite the pimp) and take him out to dinner. I just couldn't wait to meet Rudy Ray. We'd already talked to him on the phone and set it up and everything!

142 The Road When we got into town we were supposed to stop by the apartment of a guy that used to work for Flipside Magazine. We got to his place and he came running downstairs and said, "Have any of you guys seen the news? You really need to come up here and take a look at this shit!" Me and another guy stayed in the van, and all the other guys went on up there to see what was going on. When they came back down they said, "Man.....we've gotta’ get the fuck outta’ here!" We plugged in this little TV we had in the van and started to check out all the shit that was going down, and when we looked up in the air we started seeing big black clouds of smoke and helicopters off in the distance. As it turned out, the club we were supposed to play at was right down in the middle of all that, so we said fuck that! We kept a double barrel shot gun in the van, so we loaded it up and drove through L.A. ready for any shit that would have gone down. What we were traveling in was more like a small white bus than a van, and the top of it had a huge rebel flag on it, so people were looking at us like they wished we were fucking dead! About twenty minutes after we got out of that area they closed it all down and wouldn't let anybody in or out. Everything went pretty smooth after that, but after the tour was over we were driving through Louisiana on our way home and the fucking van broke down. When we finally made it back home we ended up with a crisp twenty dollar bill a piece to show for our efforts.

SCOTT REYNOLDS all

One thing about touring, is it seems like there's never anywhere to take a shit. You'll show up at a club after driving all day and they'll end up having the worst bathroom you've ever seen in your life. That seemed to happen every night with us, so we eventually ended up buying this thing called a Trailblazer, which is basically a camping toilet. It's kind of like a lawn chair with a toilet set and a plastic bag that hangs below it. We would keep it in our equipment trailer, and

143 Tony Patino after we unloaded all the equipment people could go in there and use it. You could lock yourself in there with a screwdriver, then hang a flashlight from the ceiling and take a dump. We were pretty excited the first time we took it on tour! The first time we actually used it was when we were in Canada. Our roadie Bugface said, "I'm gonna’ do it! I'm gonna’ use the Trailblazer!" He went into the trailer and we all stood around outside and waited. We were all like, "Hey how's it going in there?" because we were so excited to finally have a clean toilet. When he came out he had his bag of shit and was shining the flashlight on it so we could all check it out. I remember everybody cheering and jumping and high fiving, just totally stoked! Things went along pretty well for a while until we ended up in Connecticut and were completely out of bags. We'd been out of bags for a few days and we were all frustrated and sad. We'd gotten tired of sneaking into the ladies room, which in most cases was only marginally better than the mens. There was a landfill or something out behind the club. I remember there was a pond over there, and an old broken piano, and some old car bodies and stuff. Our other guy Mike the Pike said, "Fuck it! I'm gonna’ go take a shit out there. I'll just sit on the Trailblazer without a bag and shit on the ground!" He grabbed the Trailblazer and headed out, and I grabbed a camera so I could try and sneak some pictures of it. He was sitting out in the middle of that open field smoking a cigarette with a magazine on his lap taking a dump by the pond. I remember he was wearing a "G-Whiz" tee shirt from that band G-Whiz. I was hiding behind a bulldozer trying to snap some shots and he spotted me and said who's that? When he realized I had the camera he actually started posing for me with this big pile of shit below him. As I started to walk away I said, "Hey, somebody’s fishing over there." There was nobody there, but that startled him, and as he turned around to look the Trailblazer completely collapsed underneath him. He went straight down, with his feet straight out, and ended up sitting right in his own shit! When he stood up he said, "Did I get any on me?" I took a look and there was about two pounds of the most sticky, disgusting shit on his ass and legs, and it was covered with little rocks and stones. I snapped a picture of that! All he had to wipe himself with was a few of those "wet ones" napkins, so he was trying to wipe it all off with those and it just wasn't working. It was so disgusting that I started gagging and ended up throwing up a little. Eventually he took off his G-Whiz tee

144 The Road shirt and started wiping his ass with it until he got himself cleaned up enough to go back inside the club. Later that night we went back out there with the rest of the guys to check out our smashed up Trailblazer, and he picked up his shirt and said, "G-Whiz…..” The skinhead thing had gotten really big in the late eighties, and we saw a lot of skinheads in Florida and Texas. Every time they showed up at one of our shows they were in a big group and they basically ruined everything, every time. We were playing in Miami once and it was supposed to be an all age show, but the promoter had set it up in a twenty-one and over place. There were tons of kids there and everybody was pissed, so we got into it with him and told him to find us another venue. He made some phone calls and we went out and told all the kids that we were moving the entire show to another club where everybody could get in. We all went over to this fancy night club looking place, and there wasn't much room for the band at all. We had just enough room to play. When we started our set people kept getting on stage and , and it seemed like every time they did I got kicked in the face or something. I ended up saying, "Listen! I know stage diving is a lot of fun and all that, but there's just not enough room up here and the stage is wet. Please.....don't stage dive!" We went into the next song and this little skinhead jumped up there to stage dive and our roadie Mike grabbed him and threw him off the stage. Well, as he went out, another skinhead grabbed Mike and pulled him into the audience. I could see he was in trouble, so I threw my mic down and jumped in there to help him, and I must have gotten hit about twenty times. All the sudden the music stopped, Bill grabbed one of his cymbal stands, and all hell broke loose. Once we got Mike back up on stage, I grabbed the mic and said, "You fucking skinheads," and basically gave them a piece of mind in a big way. Once I was done spewing I said, "Now everybody have fun," and we started playing again. When the show was over and everyone was starting to leave, I saw a bunch of skinheads pointing at Mike and saying, "Just wait until he gets off that stage and we’ll get him." I went up to Mike and said, "Mike, just stay up on this stage." All of the sudden I could hear something going on over in the hallway, and when I went out there there were some skinheads screaming at Bugface, who was really drunk. I thought those guys were gonna’ kill him. I ran to get some bouncers to even the odds, but as I went to do that one of the bouncers ran up covered in blood. He pointed at Bugface and said, "You threw a chair at me!" Bugface said, "I

145 Tony Patino didn't throw a chair at anybody!" I was thinking, "Great! Now we don't have any help from the bouncers, so it's just me and my drunken roadie against all these guys." Again the bouncer yelled, "You threw a chair at me!" Bugface said, "Dude! I did not throw a chair at you! I don't know what the fuck you’re talking about!" I told the bouncer that he was my friend and if he was saying he didn't throw the chair that I had to believe him. The guy yelled, "Fuck you! You didn't see what happened!" I started screaming at the bouncer and arguing in my friend’s defense, and they ended up basically shoving all of us and all of our equipment out the back door. As we were driving off Bugface was all drunk and going off about everything. He said, "They pulled Mike in, and then I saw you go in.....and that’s when I threw that chair!" I was like, “You did throw that fucking chair??” The whole time I was arguing with that bouncer when I should have just said, “Yeah he threw a chair at you! Go ahead and kick his ass. I’m gonna’ go inside and get a drink.”

MIKE MCCARTER infected

We were up in Green Bay, Wisconsin on a tour in 2009, and the place was giving out free Pabst beers to everyone. We had a good show that night and I was slammin’ the Pabst’s like there was no tomorrow. There was an older lady there that kept saying she was a Penthouse centerfold in 1972 or something, and she kept hitting on me and my buddy Craig from the band we were touring with. Some of the guys kept saying she was really a dude, but I'm not so sure about that. Eventually my vision became impaired and I had to go pass out in the van. When I woke up the next day I was in the van alone, sweating to death with no idea where the hell I was at. There were houses all around but I didn’t know which one the rest of the guys might have been in. I kept calling everyone's cell phones but nobody was answering. As I was sitting there I started getting stomach pains, I guess from all

146 The Road that Pabst I drank or whatever I might have eaten the night before. I could tell something was building up inside me but there were no stores or anything in the area as far as I could tell. I had to just sit there and try to work it out, and eventually I ended up shitting all over myself. It got all over our blankets and stuff and was just a real mess. Sooner or later I got somebody on the phone and found out we were actually in Chicago, parked right by the home of a good friend of ours. I went in and got cleaned up and everybody got a good laugh out of it, and we had to throw a bunch of stuff out, like blankets and stuff. Luckily Chicago was the last date of the tour so we only had to make the trip back home with that awful smell in the van.

RYAN YOUNG off with their heads

Any band that spends any significant amount of time on the road is bound to have van troubles. Off With Their Heads has been no exception to that. We bought a conversion van from one of our friends in Minnesota in 2005. It made it as far as Tucson, Arizona before breaking an axle. Luckily it broke right next to a garage. They told us it wouldn’t be worth fixing due to all the other problems with it, but one of the guys working there had almost the same van and he was trying to sell it. This is where the “Blue Van” entered the picture. We changed vans that afternoon without missing a show. We were on our way back East to drop off Josh in New York and wrap up the tour. Somewhere in the middle of Indiana I heard a strange clunking noise coming from the engine. Then it started to smell really strange. Justin and I decided we should probably pull over and check it out. So we casually pulled over on the side of I-65 and popped the hood. Justin unlatched it and held the hood up only to find that the entire engine was engulfed in flames. His first reaction was to slam the hood back down and get away, but mine was to put the fire out. I told him to open it back up and grab some water jugs from the van.

147 Tony Patino He screamed at Josh and the roadie at that time that there was a fire and to get out of the back of the van and help put it out. The funny part was how Josh got out when he heard, “Fire!” Now this roadie we had was a good dude, but one of the most worthless people to have on the road with you. He didn’t help do anything and just consumed drink tickets for the band. He also didn’t have any money and needed to be supported. At that time the band didn’t pay for itself, and certainly didn’t make enough to pay members. So the idea that this guy comes in and is taking band money to survive really got to us and we couldn’t wait to drop him off. Anyway, Josh was sitting on the inside of the van and the roadie was sitting next to the door. When Josh heard the word “fire” he grabbed the roadie and threw him back into the van, climbing over him to get out! Even amidst all the chaos of the fire Justin and I both laughed at how much of a George Costanza move that was. We had a bunch of empty bottles in the van, and there was a small creek near where we had pulled over. We all ran back and forth from the van to the creek filling up the bottles and throwing them on the engine. Within a few minutes we had it all under control. The alternator was glowing orange, which was the giveaway that it was the problem. We started laughing because our running joke is that we are cursed and will never get a break. In the middle of that laugh the alternator burst back into flames! We had to run back to the creek and repeat. It finally stopped glowing and cooled down. We got a tow to the nearest town, sat at a diner for three hours, and were back on the road that same day. I guess the fire didn’t damage much but the alternator and a few wires. We dropped off the roadie and didn’t miss the show. Our first trip to Europe was in 2008, and we did six days in the UK. The last day of those shows was in South Hampton. We were all celebrating because it was the last show with our friends Four Letter Word from Wales. The show was great and everyone was having a great time. Benny, our German booking agent and driver, hadn’t had a chance to let loose yet. Since we were sleeping walking distance from the club he was free to drink all he wanted. I remember seeing him while we were playing. Not a typical Benny day. After the show we were all loading out while Benny was passed out on the stage. We basically loaded him out of the club along with all the gear. We threw him up into the loft in the back of the van. He was lying down but his feet were hanging down out of the back. As Josh was

148 The Road trying to load a guitar cabinet into the van, Benny wound up and kicked him right in the face. Josh always gets pissed off, but this was a whole new level. He walked down the street and got a styrofoam container of beans. While we loaded out the rest of the gear Josh was just leaning against the building by the van eating his container of beans and glaring at Benny. No smile, just a hateful glare. I went back into the club to do a dummy check but decided to take one last look at the van before going in. What I saw when I looked was Josh grabbing Benny’s passed out legs and just beating the shit out of them Charlie Murphy style. While he was beating, he was screaming, “YOU. DON’T. KICK. ME. IN. THE. FACE. YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!!” All the while Benny was screaming, “FUCK YOU! YOU AMERICAN PIECE OF SHIT!” I almost collapsed laughing, which made Josh even angrier. Benny slept in the van that night. The next morning he had no memory of any of what had happened. Classic! We were on another tour in Europe the following year playing a festival in Holland. It was a great time. The problem was that they put us on last at , and it started around 3pm. Whenever that happens we tend to spend our spare time drinking strange European booze that we find in discount grocery stores. Fast forward nine hours. We played a shitty set and headed back to the van. A guy we met a few days prior gave us a couple pills that he said would make for a good time. Josh and I took them at about 1am. Mistake number one! Everyone was far too fucked up to drive the van anywhere so we decided to just crash in the van. Josh went with some friends to a campground to finish off his night. I sat in the driver’s seat debating whether or not to smoke a cigarette for about five hours, regretting taking that pill and listening to everyone snore. Eventually the sun came up and Josh came back to the van saying that we needed to go back to the camp ground because he left his wallet there. We spent about a half hour trying to find the place. When we finally did he went looking for it but had no luck. We decided to go back to the venue and wait for the promoter to come back to see if it wound up in some kind of lost and found. They finally showed up, but said nothing had been turned in. While we were debating what to do an older man came into the venue and handed the promoter a wallet. He was a local farmer that said he found one of his sheep chewing on the wallet and thought that it had

149 Tony Patino to have something to do with the festival. Everyone’s eyes shifted to Josh with the question of, “How did a sheep get a hold of your wallet while you were on ecstasy?” He never answered us. Radio K is the local college station for the University of Minnesota. We never cared much for them and they never really cared about us. When our record From the Bottom came out and sold a significant number, they started to show a little interest in the band. We did not share this same interest. As far as I know nobody really listens to that station anyway, and I don’t consider us to be much of the “exposure whore” types. In 2009 the people at got an email about how Radio K wanted us to come in for an interview and to play a few live songs. They were really excited about it thinking it was a much bigger deal than it really was. We agreed to do it, but had no intention of actually going into the studio. The plan was just to stand them up and go get breakfast instead. At the time we were on tour with a friend’s band from Denver called St. Fall Apart. We came up with an idea that trumped the no show. We decided to send St. Fall Apart into the studio and pretend that they were us. Now don’t you think that an indie radio station that specializes in local music should at least know a little bit about a local band that has gone as far as Off With Their Heads had? Absolutely not! They did no research whatsoever and bought it hook, line and sinker. St. Fall Apart look and sound nothing like us. They went in, did an interview, and played one of our songs acoustic and with piano. Justin and I were running other errands listening to them live on the air. It was priceless! I remember playing the show that night and seeing one of my friends who does a punk show on that station from across the room. He made eye contact with me and had a giant grin on his face. He came over and shook my hand, telling me that it was a great prank, but to not tell too many people because if the station found out they would be livid. I sure hope nobody finds out! That would totally suck!

150 The Road PETER BLACK the hard-ons

We were driving through a really rural part of Italy out in the middle of nowhere back in 1989 and I'd been telling everyone I smelled something odd. I've got a big nose though, so of course everyone just kept making fun me. They were like, "Mate, you don't smell anything it's just your fucking huge nose!" I was like, "No it's a burning smell! I can smell it!" Sure enough our van caught fire. It was a real old piece of shit, and poof, flames came up almost a foot high right between the driver and passenger seat where the gear shifter was. We tried to put it out by bashing at it with anything we could find but nothing was working. We were pouring soft drinks all over it and it just would not go out. We pulled over to the side of the road and there was nothing around us except farms. We opened up the back doors and drug out all of our equipment and built up a barricade to hide behind with it because we figured it was gonna’ blow at any moment like in some fucking movie. Half of us stayed there and the other half ran to find help. Our bass player Ray found a farmer working out in a field and ran up to him and was trying to explain to him that our van caught fire, but the guy couldn't speak one word of English. Ray started making "fire" motions and "explosion" motions and stuff like that, and the guy just kept basically telling Ray that he didn't understand him. Ray saw that the guy was a smoker, and gave him the "give me a light" motion. He took the guys lighter and flicked it on, then pointed to the flame pointed back to the road. It finally made sense to the guy and he ran into his house and called the fire brigade. Eventually they came and put the fire out and had to tow the van away to a garage in this tiny Italian village. It was obviously like a father and son team running the place. We were talking to the younger guy because he spoke pretty good English and he was telling us about how long it would take to fix and all that. At one point he looked at us kind of funny and said, "You guys look like your in a band or

151 Tony Patino something." We told him we were, and you should have seen the look on his face when we told him we were called The Hard-Ons! His jaw completely dropped and he said, "No! I have tickets for your concert!" Our bass player Ray is Korean, and he's also our artist. Occasionally he'll sort of make a commentary about racism in his artwork, and he drew us as three KKK members on the back of a particular record that we had out. You could see under the KKK hoods that there was a Korean guy, a black guy, and me with my big nose, so people just assumed I was Jewish. We caught quite a bit of shit from the skinheads about that, but luckily we had enough fans that whenever we had skinheads at the shows things wouldn't escalate too badly. When we did a European tour that year they used that picture as a tour poster in Germany. One of the shows that we did on that tour was at a German youth center and was organized by a bunch of kids. It was a really cool place and it was a great show. We were hanging out afterward and all of the sudden this girl came running into the place screaming at the top of her lungs, "The skinheads are coming! The skinheads are coming!" They quickly barricaded the front of the building and those skinheads went on a fucking rampage! They had these mad slingshots and they were shooting the windows out of the place and bashing the shit out of people that had gotten left outside. Some of the bigger guys inside were like, "Open the door! Open the door! We'll fight 'em!" I was upstairs looking down in disbelief at all the fucking carnage. When the skinheads finished bashing out the windows and beating down all the people outside, they took to the cars. They had baseball bats and shit, and they smashed so many fucking cars we couldn't believe it. Our van was pretty much next in line before the cops finally showed up and put a stop to it. Another funny thing happened when we played just outside of in a town called Jolon. Our manager was driving us out of town after the gig and he noticed something weird in the rear view mirror. When he pulled over there was this guy literally attached to the back of our van. It was one of those older vans that had a little platform

152 The Road thing on the back, and he was basically holding on with his fingertips. We were just getting near the outskirts of the city limits and were doing about eighty kilometers an hour, which is roughly fifty miles an hour, and as soon as we pulled over the guy ran into the bushes. He was hiding behind bushes and trees and stuff, and whenever we went near him he would run off. We'd go back to van and he'd run back out from the bushes and fucking attach himself to it again as we drove off. We'd stop and get out again and he'd run into the bushes again. We literally couldn't fucking shake the guy. Eventually we pulled over and chased him for quite some time until he was away from the road quite a bit, then we bolted as hard as we could back to the van and took off. Even then, as we sped off, he almost got to us. We were driving along and we could see him back in the distance running after the van. That was one of those what the fuck? moments for sure!

GREG NORTON hüsker dü

Hüsker Dü's first real tour was in the summer of 1981, and our first stop was in Calgary. Our initial plan was to drive up to Canada and cross over into Emerson in Manitoba, then go up to Winnipeg and take the Canadian route into Calgary. When we got to Emerson the immigration people there told us our work papers had mistakenly been sent to Coutts, instead. They were more than willing to allow us into the country on a visitors permit, but they did point out that we wouldn't be able to play any shows in Calgary without those work papers. They said it would make more sense if we took the US highway over and just crossed into Coutts and get the papers because it’s about a three or four hour drive from Coutts into Calgary. We turned around to head back and take the US drive and ended up getting hassled right there by the US guards. We tried to explain to them that our work papers had been sent somewhere else and they said, "Nope! Not buying it! If they wouldn't let you into Canada there must be something going on!” They said, “Why don't you

153 Tony Patino go ahead and park that van right over there and everybody come inside!" We all got out and they searched through everything in the van. Eventually the U.S. customs guy said, "OK, who's the driver of that van?" I told him it was me and he said, "…..In my office!" I went in there and he said, "OK, we found several marijuana seeds in that van and this is just one of them." He set something down on his desk that looked a BB or something, and I just looked at it and said, "That's not a marijuana seed, and you know what?.....this is bullshit! I know that van is clean, and I know that we’re clean! We're not bringing anything into Canada and that’s a rented van!" He asked me for the rental papers and I pulled them out and gave them to him. His response was (literally) "You're lucky that's a rented van or you'd be delayed here a hell of a lot longer than you already have been!" We jumped back in the van, drove to Shelby, Montana and spent the night there. The next day we woke up, went across to Coutts, and got our work permits without any hassle at all. For our first tour that was a good way to start. When we finally made it to Calgary we did a week long set of gigs at this place called the Calgarian Hotel. They booked us for a week and gave us a room upstairs and everything. The Calgarian was basically an old hotel with a bar in it. It was full of ranch hands, oil workers, and Native Americans all day long, then about seven o' clock it would switch over and the punk rockers would come in. It was kind of a crazy scene. From there we went down and played some shows in Vancouver and Victoria, then we went to Seattle. That's where we first met Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys. He invited us down to San Francisco, and we ended up basically living at his house for about three or four weeks. He tried to get us on a bunch of shows down there at Mabuhay Gardens and stuff like that. While we were there we did a show in Reno with DOA. Actually Ken Lester who was DOA's road manager set it up for us. It was the very first time that we ever played in Reno and all the information was exchanged over the telephone, so when we got down there we'd been billed as "Who Screwed You." We thought that was pretty funny!

154 The Road DAVE WOODARD billyclub

I was singing for a band called Billyclub in 1999. The guys in Billyclub were Karl Morris, from the Exploited, Matthew McCoy, who used to play drums in UK Subs, and Terry Bones on bass. Terry was the original drummer for Discharge and he'd also toured with bands like The Business and Ministry to name a few. I was pretty stoked to be in a band with all those old punk rock dudes. We did a really long tour with GBH that year. I think it was something like fifty-three shows in fifty-seven days. The tour started in Boston and we were based out of Dallas, so we had a pretty good drive just to get to the first show. A buddy of mine lived in Lexington, Kentucky which was right about at the half way point, so we did a warm up show there. That show kicked ass and later we went to an after-party in town. Some college girl started hitting on Terry, and as it turned out she had a boyfriend. When her boyfriend saw what was going on he started shit with Terry. Big Mistake! It turned into a big ruckus, but the college guys realized they were out of their league and finally shut the fuck up. They stayed pissed off though. We spent the night in Lexington and left for Boston early the next morning. We were flying down I-64 East and I think we were somewhere around Morgantown, West Virginia. I was driving and the rest of the guys were relaxing in the van\, when all the sudden the van started shaking really bad. It wobbled really violently and I heard, and felt a loud clunk! I looked out the driver’s side window and the front wheel of the van was completely unattached, rolling alongside the van. It was going the same speed as the van too almost as if it were struggling to keep up with us! My heart just stopped! Before that could finish registering in my head the whole van lunged and tilted forward and we started scraping down the freeway,

155 Tony Patino apparently grinding along on the rotor that the wheel used to be on. Nobody else in the band had any clue what had just happened and they were all screaming their brains out! Matthew McCoy:When it was all happening me an d Terry were in the back of the van and he was holding a bag of chips. We looked at each other, and in slow motion he said, “Want a chip?” I said, “Sure! Are they salt & vinegar?” I hit the brakes, and as we were slowing down I watched the wheel speed on ahead of us. As we finally came to a stop I watched it hit an embankment and fly up into the air, then land in a river down below us and float downstream. I couldn’t believe it! We all climbed out of the van and looked at the rotor and one whole side of it was grinded down completely flat. Eventually a State Trooper showed up. He was checking out the van and noticed all our equipment in there and said, “Are you guys in a band or something?” We told him what we were up to and he said, “You ever listen to Ministry?” When we told him Terry Bones actually played in Ministry he said, “Noooooo shit? I was cranking Jesus Built My Hotrod in my cruiser when I pulled up here just now!” He called a tow truck and they towed the van to a local garage where we had to buy a new rotor and wheel. The mechanic told us that the lug nuts on that wheel had obviously been loosened. In the end we decided it must have been those jocks back at the party in Lexington! Once we finally made it to Boston and met up with the guys in GBH, so many fun and crazy things happened that it would be a book all in itself! We played at this place called Harpo's in Detroit, and when we were sitting at the merch booth and a couple of skinheads walked in. I didn't think anything of it, but then like twenty more walked in. I'm talking about big, mean looking, hardcore skinheads with swastikas on their shirts and all that shit. It didn't really bother me that much, but some of the other guys on the tour were starting to freak out a little. They hated that shit! When Billyclub played those Nazis just loved us, I guess because we were all white and Karl had a shaved head, I don't know. They must have thought we were some Oi band or something. A band called Against All Authority played after us that night and they had a guy in the band that was from the Dominican Republic. I was upstairs in the dressing room kicked back on a couch and I heard some shit going

156 The Road down out there during their set, and I don't even think they got to finish playing because they were getting fucked with so bad from the skinheads. There were about 1,000 people there that night and the skinheads were the minority, but they were still pretty intimidating. When GBH went on, about two songs into their set I heard their singer Colin yell, "That's it, if you don't stop that shit we're outta’ here!" I decided to go downstairs to see what was going on and I saw their guitar player Jock, their drummer Scott, and Colin, all jump off the stage and into the crowd. Apparently those skinheads had jumped some guy and beat him up about twenty on one. I was still standing there trying to figure out what the hell was happening when the violence started making its way into the backstage area. Colin ran up to me and screamed, "Good God man! Get some weapons!!" I was running up the stairs and Jock just flew past me like I was standing still. When I got up to the room he was up there gathering up whatever he could find to use in the fight. He smashed a bar stool onto the floor, then picked up all the legs, and started handing them out to everyone. I remember seeing Terry Bones square off with this one really big skinhead. Terry kicked him square in the nuts and it didn't even faze the guy. Colin had picked up this really long iron rod and just speared it at somebody and it actually nicked Karl in the neck. He's probably still got a scar from that. Colin Abrahall I ran into the back and this big skinhead was chasing me. I was sort of cornered back there. He kept poking his head around the corner and I was throwing things at him. There was this six foot long pole sitting there by me. It was sort of like a broom stick but made of solid metal. I was brandishing it like a spear waiting to see his bald head pop back around the corner. When I saw him again I threw the spear, but that time it was Karl. Karl Morris I got smacked straight in the throat. I thought I had my fucking throat ripped out. As it turned out, Colin had thrown a metal pole at me!" A security guy finally came out with a shot gun and cleared the whole place out. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. We were in the shittiest part of Detroit and we had to have two security guards with shotguns stand outside the door while we loaded our equipment out, then we drove around the city for a good forty-five minutes to make sure nobody was tailing us before we headed on out of town.

157 Tony Patino SCOTT LUALLEN nine pound hammer

In our early years, 1986 to 1988 in Lexington, Kentucky, Nine Pound Hammer were basically the house band at a dive bar called Great Scott's Depot that was sandwiched between two old strip clubs, Comers and Boots Bar. We'd play after-show parties there for big tours like and , Georgia Satellites and Jason and the Scorchers, etc. The scene was really hoppin’ due to a new college radio station 88.1 and lax law enforcement, so there was a great mix of high schoolers and old punks. One night our guitarist Blaine and I shocked each other so bad that the power went out. People said the lightning bolt between us was blinding. Those two strip clubs provided a steady traffic of old floozies goin' back and forth between clubs. Blaine and I were parked in my ‘75 Pontiac Granville convertible “The Crawdaddy” drinkin' Boone's Farm and smokin' some weed one night when an enthusiastic lady stopped by for a swig. She said, "Stay right there. I'll be right back for your show." She came back and lifted up her top, then stuck match sticks in her nipples and lit ‘em and started swingin' 'em around. We were speechless! Nobody said nothin'! No laughin' or anything, we just sat there in shock. She said, "Bet you ain't seen nothin' like that before," and just walked off.

158 The Road BRIAN PULITO nine pound hammer

You kinda' need to know Scott and Blaine and their personalities for this story to be funny. Blaine doesn't really like to be touched, and he's a bit on the claustrophobic side. He also has a really mean look about him even if he's happy. Then you've got Scott, who is this big guy who talks a lot about aliens and government conspiracies and stuff. These are two guys that have had a pretty tense relationship at times. They've been in a band together for a long time and you know how that goes, or any relationship goes for that matter. At times it’s hard for them to be in the same room with each, other much less being in an elevator that stops working for a long time. It was 2008, and we were in Eindhoven, Holland playing at this huge music complex called The Effenaar. The building itself is about five stories tall, and has a big auditorium in it and a smaller club with a bar. We were in the backstage area, which is actually up on the top floor of the building, and of course there were all kinds of extracurricular activities going on. After hanging out for a while and enjoying all the goods of the country, we got called down to do a sound check. We got on the elevator and made it down to the first floor. It was one of those elevators that had two sets of doors, and the outer door got jammed and wouldn't open up. The inner door kept opening and shutting, but the outer door just wouldn't open at all. There was a guy who worked at the Effenaar with us who kept thinking that we could just go back up to a different floor and get out, but every time we tried the inner doors would get stuck, the elevator would start going nuts, and everyone was worried we might get stuck between floors. Keeping the inner door open was the only way we could see a sliver of light to the outside, otherwise it felt like a mass coffin in there. At one point Blaine was ready to kill the guy. He basically said, "Look motherfucker! If you let that door close one more time....." After a while everybody starting thinking they couldn't breathe and

159 Tony Patino that there wasn't enough oxygen in there. You know how that shit goes, your mind starts running away with you. I was a little uptight about it at first, but once I noticed Blaine and Scott and the looks on their faces I couldn't stop laughing. It was really funny seeing those guys basically stuck chest-to-chest in a really small elevator with seven or eight people on it. They were really starting to sweat and go at it. Our bass player Mark and I just couldn't stop laughing. Our tour manager over there is this really cool guy named Manny. He has a very cynical, but military way of handling situations, and he's really good at telling saying, “Get up! Let’s go! We’ve gotta’ be here! We’ve gotta’ do that,” which is what you need when you're on tour. He's also been on the road forever and will not hold back when an opportunity presents itself. I think he got the biggest kick out of everybody watching Blaine and Scott while their heads were getting ready to explode on that elevator. He was really stirring the pot too. Between Blaine's buzzed out claustrophobia and Scott's nervous ranting, Manny was having a field day. There was a big crowd gathering outside the elevator, and I think they were getting ready to take a hatchet to the door or something. I was getting tired of the guy from Holland not doing anything because he was so scared at that point that Blaine was going to stick a knife in his ass if he did anything, so I pushed my way up front and figured out that there was a hidden latch that opened the outer doors. When the door finally popped open we were all literally sprinting out of there like the Grim Reaper had a hold of our shirt tails. It felt like we were stuck in there for hours but it was probably more like thirty minutes. To this day I think Blaine still takes the stairs.

160 The Road PENELOPE HOUSTON the avengers

The first show we ever did outside of San Francisco was in Los Angeles, and we'd only been together for a couple of months. I don't think we even had any singles out or anything yet at the time. The show was at The Hollywood Palladium. There were some people who were trying to put on this thing they called “Punk Rock Extravaganza,” and the headliners were Blondie, Devo, and . Somebody who was setting it up had heard of us and they asked us to come down and play. They even offered to fly us down from San Francisco and everything, so we were really excited about the whole thing. When we arrived that day the promoter put us up in an apartment building. It was a couple of tall high rises that faced each other, and when we woke up that morning and went out onto the balcony we saw that somebody had jumped off a balcony on the other building and splattered themselves on the sidewalk down below. When we got down to the Palladium we found out that we were going to be playing last, after Blondie. We were just like, “What the fuck?” We should have known something weird like that was going to happen. Of course everybody started clearing out and we ended up playing to a very small and select group of people. About four songs into our set, Danny just smashed his drums down and ran into the backstage area and started breaking all the mirrors and smashing everything! He got dragged out of there, and his hands were bleeding from breaking light bulbs and stuff. It was pretty ugly! The show got reviewed in Slash Magazine and they actually raved about us. In the end it was a good thing for us, even though the whole thing was pretty frustrating. That was basically our first out of town experience.

161 Tony Patino The biggest show we ever played was the infamous Sex Pistols show at Winterland in San Francisco. That was a pretty amazing experience! Just to piss people off, Malcolm Mclaren, the Sex Pistols manager, asked a local band who the worst punk band in town was. They told him that would be Negative Trend, so he scheduled Negative Trend to play after The Sex Pistols. So The Nuns were the band that opened the show, we were the support act for The Sex Pistols, then of course everybody left after The Pistols played and the guys from Negative Trend were all pissed off. There was a lot of craziness going on at that show, with people getting beat up and thrown out and stuff. Rock critic Richard Meltzer was the announcer, and he got dragged off the stage and beaten by some of 's goons. The Sex Pistols actually stuck around town for a couple of days and showed up at a party some friends of mine threw. Sid actually over dosed on heroin there and they had to take him to the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.

162 The Road DAVE BROCKIE gwar

The first touring Gwar ever did was in an old school bus we'd bought, and the fastest that thing would go was about forty-five miles an hour. When we first got it we stripped most of the seats out and left an open area in the back so we could just throw shit in the back door after we played every night. After the show was over we'd take those disgusting, dripping wet costumes, and just throw 'em in there and drive on to the next gig. We did that for about three years, and it was horrible. The costumes were getting destroyed and the whole inside of the bus just stunk. We didn't even have bunks to sleep on, we just had a big pile of cushions, pillows, and dirty laundry in the middle of the bus where all ten of us would sleep in a big pile. It was pretty disgusting. Our first coast to coast tour was in 1988 and it was absolutely insane! Even when the Scumdogs Of The Universe record was kicking ass and we were playing really big places we were still rolling around in that school bus. We really thought that we were making it though. The fact that we were able to drive around in that bus and get paid to play those ridiculous shows.....we thought we were styling. We thought we were the kings of the world back then. We were contemptuous of bands that were riding around in big fancy tour buses. That was for super stars and shit as far as we were concerned. Our first European tour happened in 1991, and over there we were riding on a real tour bus. To get all of our stuff over there we throw it all in a big shipping container and send it about three weeks ahead of time and it just sits there until we show up. It's expensive as shit but that's how it's done. Scumdogs Of The Universe was originally released on a label from England before it got sold to Metal Blade Records in the States, and when we went to London we immediately had a major impact over there. People were saying all this crazy shit about us. They actually brought Gwar up in Parliament and said, "Who the hell is this band that murders people on stage?" Apparently they didn't want to

163 Tony Patino admit to themselves that it was obviously a fucking joke. After we played our first show in England, there was a review in the papers where they said, "I went to see Gwar and I was so disappointed! They didn’t kill people at all, it was just a bunch of rubber dummies!" They actually thought we murdered real people during our set. How fucking stupid is that? Obviously our costumes are one of the main things that draw people to our shows. Sometimes they can get uncomfortable as hell too. A lot of how comfortable or uncomfortable they are depends on what happened the day before. Like…..how wet did they get during the previous show? Did they freeze when we drove though Milwaukee? Did I get a chance to lay mine out and let it air out? We've learned over the years to buy little space heaters and stick everything really close to them, and we also try to keep the dressing room around eighty degrees to let everything dry out too. We do everything we can to make them as comfortable as possible, but there's no way that they can ever really be comfortable. Drinking!.....that's one way to make it OK. The only time my costume really messes with me is when it's really hot, because I've got that form-fitting thing on my head, which can get pretty brutal! One night I actually passed out during a performance because of it! I managed to make it to the side of the stage, but I passed out! The costumes might be uncomfortable, but they're still really fun to wear. When I get that thing on my body I really do transform into a monster from outer space. People expect you to play the part too. You can't just put those things on and half-ass it. If we did that we probably never would have gotten anywhere. The fake blood is a big part of it too. In the early days we used to take fire extinguishers and fill them up with water and food coloring, and every time we played a gig we would have to know where the closest tire pump was so we could pump them up. That was the really low-tech way of doing it. I think at the most, those things could hold maybe thirty gallons or something like that, which is still a lot of blood to squirt around. Now I guess we do around 100 gallons a night. We played one time in , Yugoslavia and all these people came to the show all dressed up in really nice clothes. There were people there wearing sweaters and ties and shit like that. It was like something you'd see at a dinner theater, and as soon as we started squirting blood they all just ran out into the street screaming.

164 The Road MARK BURKE phantom rockers

We played with in Wisconsin a long time ago, and after the show the sound man, Joe, offered to let us stay at his place. He had to stay behind to pack up all his gear, but he gave us directions to his house. He told us where to go and said it was a blue house and the door would be unlocked. We got to the house around 3am and walked on in, and ended up making some sandwiches and helping ourselves to his beer and whatever else. We were sitting there in our underwear eating, drinking, and checking out some porno tapes he had, when all of the sudden this old guy came walking down the stairs and yelled, "Who the hell are you?" I said, "What do you mean? We're Joe's friends from the club!" He said, "Who the hell is Joe?" Apparently we'd ended up in the wrong house. He was trying to call the cops on us, but we talked him out of it. I was like, "Listen mate, we're from England and this is all just a mistake," and he let us call the club to talk to Joe. As it turned out it wasn't a blue house we were supposed to look for. It was a house with a blue door. We were in a supermarket somewhere in France and bought a bunch of food. We were all a little hungry and spotted a nice table and chairs to sit down and eat. We were sitting there eating and a store employee walked up and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Were having some lunch." He said, "This isn't a place where you can sit and have your lunch. This is furniture is for sale." We packed up our stuff and walked out, and as we were leaving there was a tourist bus in the front of the store. It started letting off all these old people, and our guitar player Harty decided to rip my pants down just as we got close to all of them. I was wearing these jogging pants with the snaps going all the way up each leg, and he pulled them so hard that all the snaps came completely undone. I tried to pull them up but there was just nothing there to pull up. I had a grocery bag in each hand and no underwear on, so all I could do was cover myself with the bags and make my way to the van.

165 Tony Patino We did a US tour in 2001 just about a month after the 9/11 disaster. When we played in Seattle there was a guy there that thought we were Phantom, Rocker, and Slick, that band two of the Stray Cats guys did. He was buying us drinks all night, and had basically just given the bartender his credit card to hold and told him to give us whatever we wanted. We never told him we weren't who he thought we were, and everybody got hammered. The entire time he was sitting with us talking about how much he loved the Stray Cats and how cool it was to hang out with us. As the night went on there were coming in and filling the place up. Lots of them had make-up on and they had the psycho haircuts and stuff, and that guy was so drunk I don't even think he noticed them. When we started playing the place was packed and people were going crazy, and I saw that guy out there in the pit, all wasted and dancing around. He was just a regular looking guy out there in the middle of a bunch of maniacs and he stuck out like a sore thumb. Well I guess at some point he made somebody mad, because everybody started sucker punching him. I felt bad for him and I kinda tried to get them to leave him alone, but it was just too much! He was got pummeled!

VICTOR KRUMMENACHER camper van beethoven

We were on tour in in 2004 promoting our New Roman Times record, and our equipment trailer got broken into. They actually cut through one of the walls of it with a chain saw and took everything but our amps, and we ended up having to finish the tour using borrowed or newly purchased instruments. For the second leg of that tour we headed down south. We were in Dallas, Texas and we got broken into again! In twenty-five years of touring nothing like that had ever happened to us before! That time, we put the word out on the internet that we needed to borrow gear in each town, and just went from place to place using different

166 The Road instruments every night. If somebody showed up with something we could use we'd get them into the show for free. We went to Europe on that same tour, and things were going really well at first. It started off with a sold out show at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, which is basically this really beautiful hall that's funded by the Royal family. Robyn Hitchcock came out to see us that night, along with Jon Paul Jones, and it was sorta' one of those “I love my life” moments. After the London gig we all got in a double-decker tour bus and headed out on the tour. The bus driver was a big guy from London named Bob Strange who apparently was also a boxer. We played in Amsterdam and everything went really well, then our next show was in Paris. We were on the bus heading toward Paris and I was falling asleep, when all of the sudden we hit something. The bus was wobbling all over place, and I thought for a minute that it was gonna’ go out of control, but it finally came to a stop at the side of the road. I went out to take a look at it, and there was this huge gash all the way down the side of it. I asked Bob what the hell happened and he said, “We got hit by a truck!” He said they didn’t even stop either! We got to Paris really late, but we were able to play the show. We played a few more shows after that one and eventually made our way into Germany, where the promoter was this guy named Uli who we’d been dealing with for years. He used to work with , and was sort of this old school alt rock guy. Uli came up to us and said, “Did you guys know your bus driver is asking for coke?” He said, “You guys don’t do drugs.....right?” I said, “No, we don’t do drugs! He said, “Well he’s asking for coke!” I said, “He can have a beer from time to time and that’s fine with me, but no drugs!” We had a day off when we got to Berlin and our singer David said he wanted to go to Prague. I’d already been to Prague and I decided to stay in Berlin. So half of the band decided to stay in Berlin and the other half got in the bus and drove to Prague. I left all my gear on there, but it was a tour bus and there was almost always somebody on it, plus it was alarmed, so I didn’t feel like I had any reason to worry about it. The rest of us got up the next morning and spent the day around Berlin. We had some drinks, went to a museum, had a good diner, and generally just had a really good time. The show the next day was in Dresden, so I got up that morning with Jonathan and Greg and we hopped on a train to meet up with everyone else. That was about a two hour ride, and then we took a cab

167 Tony Patino from the train station to the venue. When we were pulling up to the venue we noticed that the bus wasn’t there yet. We started thinking that they must be a little late or something, because Prague wasn’t that far away. When we got inside, the promoter there said, “So have you heard? Your bus was stolen!” I was like, “What!” This would have been the third time our gear was stolen in the past three months, and this time it was even worse because we were in Europe and it was a rented bus. The promoter said, “Yeah, it’s gotta’ be halfway to Moscow by now!” Our tour manager was down in Prague with the rest of the guys so I called him up. He said, “I don’t know what’s going on! We saw Bob, I gave him a 600£ tour float to buy fuel for the bus, and he just disappeared!” They contacted the Prague Police and got in one of the cop cars and went driving around town looking for it. Eventually they stopped by a BP station, and there was the bus, parked right behind it. It was abandoned, with a little note from Bob Strange saying that the accident we’d gotten into wasn’t caused by us being hit by a truck, but by him falling asleep. I guess the bus company was planning on making him fix the bus, which would have cost a couple of thousand £, and he just couldn’t afford it, so when he got that 600£ float he knew that was his ticket out. Apparently he just parked the bus and caught a plane to Jamaica or something!

RIKK AGNEW christian death, solo artist

It seems almost every time I'm on tour I have the most extraordinary experiences. Weather it deals with "Murphy’s law,” my penchant for being a freak magnet, or extreme-coincidental witness/participant. So personally I would have to say that the last show of my solo 1990 European Fall Tour in Berlin was one of the most interesting. We got to the club on time and there was a parking spot reserved for us directly by the stage door. The venue was open, the promoter was

168 The Road hanging out front talking to a couple pals and waved, introduced himself and his pals, who were going to (and did, beyond the call of duty) take care of any and all our needs. He then introduced us to the barkeep and set up free drinks for the whole night. The sound man was nice, freshly set up, and ready to roll. A couple fans hanging out offered and moved in our gear and helped us set it up. The sound check went smooth and sounded amazing, even the monitors! Then the promoter walked us to the room where we would be staying the night. It had eight comfy bunk beds, a clean restroom with a shower, and laundry machines! The fans had already brought our luggage to the room. Then he took us to an eating area and there was a buffet spread to die for! We ate and took naps, got up and had a drink or two, and one of the fans had some of the most killer hash I ever smoked. We all chatted up with the fans, who brought a few frauleins to our area to party with us. We played a great set, no noticeable fuckups and no gear breaking down. I don't think anyone even went out of tune! After the set we scurried to our room to cool down, and by the time we were wound down a bit the promoter brought us some cold ones and asked if some of the kids could come back and meet us and get some autographs. They were polite, humble and excited. They knew a lot about not only my history, but also my band mates’, who I usually hand pick from other bands. Then more beer, more hash, and all of us had a warm body to "sleep" with including our twenty year old female keyboardist. We woke up and talked and laughed for a while, had a wonderful Euro-breakfast of breads, cheeses, juice, fruit and beer! We took our time showering, doing laundry, bidding farewells, and exchanging info and saliva! One last big salad spliff of weed/hash and off we drove into a very beautiful sunny crispy day! That was weird!

169 Tony Patino

footnotes

Ian Mackaye’s input in Tim Leitch’s SNL story is originally from “ vs. Ian Mackaye” on www.nardwuar.com

Blag Dahlia’s contribution was taken from his book “Eliminating Yesterday” available through Greedy Media

James Brogan’s contribution was taken from his book “Tour Stories and Other Third Grade Tales”

170 The Road

photo credits

MOJO NIXON bullethead JOHN STANIER jeremy farmer TEXAS TERRI apollo star CHRIS GATES mathew sturtevan BRANDON CRUZ judy lyon WILLIAM WEBER stacy adkins GERRY ATTRIC ike taylor WES TEXAS ike taylor ANIMAL provided by animal TIM BARRY chrissy piper NICKI SICKI provided by nicki sicki RICHIE LAWLER nicole kibert DAVE DECKER nicole kibert JOHN KASTNER andrew macnaughtan SCOTT MCCULLOUGH provided by scott mccullough BLAG DAHLIA ami barwell KARL MORRIS provided by karl morris JIM COLEMAN provided by jim coleman STONEY TOMBS tony patino MIKE WATT elena perez CHRIS BARROWS eric julian TESCO VEE provided by tesco vee NATE WATERS provided by nate waters TIM LEITCH sue tsoi IAN MACKAYE provided by DONNY PAYCHECK carley rochester GINGER COYOTE stacy tuttle BEN DEILY provided by ben deily SAM WILLIAMS greg dixon FARRELL HOLTZ tony patino TONY OFFENDER jeanne lemieux SAMMYTOWN tony patino JAMES BROGAN sean greene DEREK O'BRIEN josh withers DAVID GIFFEN/ALICE DONUT bartleberry jones JOSEPH GENARO nina sabatino LIZ MCGRATH provided by liz mcgrath SAL CANZONIERI lady tracy JON WURSTER elisabeth vitale ZANDER SHLOSS rhoda rohnstock GREG HETSON rhoda rohnstock KEITH MORRIS rhoda rohnstock BOBBY SLONE provided by bobby slone DON BOLLES provided by don bolles MATTHEW MCCOY provided by matthew mccoy

171 Tony Patino

BRENT BELKE marc baril JOHN STABB scott munroe COLIN ABRAHALL tony patino NICK RAZOR trena schroede ED IVY/RHYTHM PIGS provided by ed ivy KEITH BRAMMER jay brown BRANT BJORK stephan bohlig BRUCE WINGATE mike marques KIM SHATTUCK/THE MUFFS provided by kim shattuck MIKE MAGRANN kimm gardner BRIAN BRANNON jim iseri CHRISTOPHER LONG isa houston GIZZ LAZLO kristi krown JEFF DAHL provided by jeff dahl ERIC DAVIDSON vinz guyot WILLY JOHNS provided by willy johns JOHNETTE NAPOLITANO amber boggs ALICE BAG margot reyes FELIX GRIFFIN rhoda rohnstock MAURO CODELUPPI rhoda rohnstock BLAINE COOK marco giampaolo JJ PEARSON provided by jj pearson ROB LUCJAK provided by jj pearson SICKIE WIFEBEATER provided by sickie wifebeater SEAN ROMIN tony patino JEFF CLAYTON alana leilani kim SCOTT REYNOLDS ken salerno MIKE MCCARTER provided by mike mccarter RYAN YOUNG genna howard PETER BLACK matt palmer GREG NORTON brooks peterson DAVE WOODARD tony patino SCOTT LUALLIN tony patino BRIAN PULITO devin miller PENELOPE HOUSTON patrick rogues DAVE BROCKIE greg dixon MARK BURKE tony patino VICTOR KRUMMENACHER mr. monkeyman RIKK AGNEW provided by rikk agnew BACK COVER PHOTO kimm gardner

172 The Road

Author/editor bio

A native of Tampa, Florida, Tony Patino has spent time as a concert promoter, a booking agent, a columnist for music magazines, an artist/tour manager, and the A&R person for an . He has experienced first-hand the unpredictability of the music business and life on the road, and decided to bring the insanity of it all to interested readers. He currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife and three children. He hates things sometimes.

Check out tonypatinosworld.com and 40amp.com

173 Tony Patino

Get on .com and pick up Life and Times, an epic novel about the art of rebellion.

174 The Road

175