Show Day -
Left West Lafayette about 11AM. Stopped for lunch at McDonald's. Headed to Cincinnati for a show at the Jockey Club that is actually across the river in Newport Kentucky. Arrived in Cincinnati about 4:30 - went to music store and got my snare drum fixed. One of the lug nuts broke the night before. $2 dollars. The guy at the store was real nice.
As time went on, I gradually began to play harder and we needed more durable equipment. The amps and some of the drum equipment on this first tour were very basic and we soon needed to get better gear. I learned the hard way that I needed to carry a spare snare drum and a spare kick pedal. These two items in particular receive the most abuse and need constant care. Also suffering damage the first week or so of a tour were my hands and throat. My hands needed to bulk up on calluses and my throat was usually hoarse for a few days from the groaning and gasping I made while playing. Good thing I wasn't singing backup vocals.
Went to club across the river. The town is really depressing. Voted 2nd worst place to live in America (St. Louis came in first in somebody's poll). Poor, no jobs - the street over from the Jockey Club is the strip - there are 3 or 4 Go-Go or strip joints on every block. We didn't have to be at the club until 7-7:30 so we went to a laundromat and did 6 loads of smelly laundry. It's nice to be clean again.
I didn't clean that paragraph up. Really!... "What? There are strip clubs here? - NO - sorry, we need to do laundry." As far as laundry goes - remember, we're 5 guys (6 on later tours) in a van with all our band gear plus all our clothes and personal belongings. Almost everyone carried a large duffle bag with about a week's worth of clothes and a smaller bag for books and a Walkman etc. It was tight in there and it got smelly real fast.
Got to club - did sound check - great system. Waited until 11:15 to go on. We were supposed to 'headline' but decided to go on first - the other bands were Amazing Grace and Raw Power. 'AG' were from Miami and were touring with Raw Power from Italy. The deal is that 'RP' uses an American band's equipment. 'AG' were sort of metal like - really boring. Drummer was way too flashy - really boring. I didn't see 'RP' - I fell asleep in the van. The rest of the guys said they were really bad too. We got paid $62 dollars. The other bands got $40. Left the club about 3AM. We did a good show - so far we've done really good shows. I hope it continues.
Here's what little I could find on Amazing Grace. Here's a good page on Raw Power. We must have been considered the 'headliner' since we made a few dollars more that night (and the promoter must have liked us - see below). Here is some Jockey Club information.
Stayed with Bill L. the promoter - nice guy. Off to Chicago tomorrow for 3 days off. Play in Indianapolis on Tuesday the 9th. Our first week has been pretty good. I hope the fun lasts until September.
I seem to be in a good mood about the situation but lets remember that September is a long way away...
Posted by Dean at July 5, 1985 05:00 PM
The Jockey... wow. There's not much of a music scene in Cincinnati, but the Jockey was at the center of it, and that center was in Newport. The club itself appears to be a former VFW hall or something similar. It was a big square box with a crappy, leaking ceiling and a tiny bar in one corner. Most of the floor was covered with 3x3 pedestal tables and most of those tables were covered in cigarette burns. The stage took up the entire small end of the room (there was just one big room) and it was approx 4 feet from the ground. The speakers on either side seemed massive. I remember them as being at least 6 feet wide and too tall to climb on. There was a cage at the door from the alley for security. Our band (the Press) played there sometime in 1987 and two of us were too scared of the area to make the gig! Unfortunately, the Jockey's heyday was a little before my time. I was out of HS in 1986 and didn't discover the scene until summer 1987. Sometime soon after, Jockey was sold to the cab company next door. They tore it down, and it sat for a while -- rubble and those 3x3 tables. I put a couple of tables in the back of my pickup truck and they supported my audio equipment while I was in my college house. By the time I moved, they were deemed too crappy to follow. The Jockey tribute/memory page I look at is http://home.fuse.net/hohorecords/jockeyclub_history.htm
All that I can remember about that day is that there was child in the Laundromat named "Bubba" and that Bill's house was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a river pilot. I should also point out that the REAL reason why we didn't go to any of the Strip Clubs was due to our elitist preference for strippers with teeth.
Years later, when Cincinnati found itself embroiled in the Maplethorpe controversy, all I could think was "Well, duh. After all, the place is crawling with ghosts, toothless strippers, and kids named 'Bubba'."
