First Tour 1985
We got letters back from people who had heard our demo. A
guy named Brad wrote from Boise. If we played a gig in his
garage he'd pay us $200. So we started making a lot of phone
calls and got other gigs in Reno, Portland, and Ashland, Oregon.
I asked Mom and Dad if we could use the Country Squire station
wagon to go on our first tour, they said O.K. I had broken
the rear window a month earlier, so we taped some plastic
over it, threw our amps in the back, and took off for Reno.
We stayed at some guy's house after the Reno gig. He wouldn't
let us invite any girls back to his apartment. Someone snuck
a girl in anyway and in the morning snuck her out again. The
guy found her underwear, got mad and kicked us out.
In
Boise we played Brad's garage. He made flyers and all the
Boise punkers were there. There was a keg of some cheap beer.
If I remember correctly, there was always a keg of some cheap
beer. After the show Brad gave us all $50 he collected and
said sorry about the rest of the money, he was broke.
We
played in Portland at a club called the Satyricon. The other
band was called the Oily Bloodmen. Rich, the singer said that
we could crash out at his place. As soon as we got back to
his house, he started telling us stories about fucking little
boys with baseball bats and crazy murders. Erik was scared
of his house so he slept in the car. Rich turned out to be
a good friend who for years would come see us when we would
play in Portland. In Ashland we played with a band called
Society Threat. All 40 punks from the town showed up and then
we all went to someone's house for an after gig party. That
was the first time of what became a customary let's-play-get-drunk-and-take-hallucinogenics
trip to Ashland.
That
was the last show of that tour. We had no gig, but stopped
anyway in San Francisco on the way back to LA. A cop hassled
us for taking up a parking spot and just hanging out on the
sidewalk. Our roadie at the time explained that it was our
first time in 'Frisco'. The cop said first of all, it's not
'Frisco', it's 'San Francisco', and we don't want to get off
to a bad start with a ticket so we'd better move along.
