July 13, 1985 - Madison, WI
Show Day -
Cloudy/Humid
Woke at 12:30. Everybody was up. Had coffee and bagel. Kelly was at work. We did laundry - lots of it. Watched Live Aid on TV. George Thorogood with Albert Collins - hot. Pretenders were good also. Left laundry running and went to Big Boy for food about 4PM. Got back at 5:15 and loaded up. Laundry was still wet - off to Madison - no time to dry.
Live Aid! I forgot about that. And from Philadelphia no less. Ugg...wet laundry on a humid day...
Dave R. drove 1.5 hour trip - after detour we found club and arrived at 7PM. Did sound check - good sound - cross stage monitor system. We all like cross stage systems. Dave R. Joe and I went to make phone calls and dry the laundry. Dave B. and Rod stayed at the club. Called Julie (Becky's friend) - we would stay with her at the frat on campus. Dried stuff.
Cross monitors means that the stage monitors are on either side of the band instead of in front of us. I think it gave us more of an overall mix of the band and vocals.
Got back. "Beat The Naked" had checked. Rod and Dave were out walking. Joe Dave R. and I got some dark beer. We put the Killdozer boys and Julie plus 2 on the guest list. Bought newspapers. Gary Peterson had our picture and an article in one - good article. In another we were 'Critic's Choice'. People started to show up about 9:30. "Beat The Naked" were on at 10:15 - played to 11 - not bad. The promoter guy Roy was singer guitar player with them.
Roy ended up managing the band Timbuk 3. Remember them? I think we played a show with them a fews years later in D.C at the old 9:30 Club.
Place filled up with 84 paying people. O-Cay's Corral - western motif. Great neon outside the place. We went about 11:15. Played one of our greatest shows - others were at Steve Cross's party with the Johnsons and our 2nd show at Abe's. Really felt good. Crowd wanted us to play longer. We played our 45 minute set plus encore plus another song or two. Clubs(bars) in Madison close at 12:45? Weird - but town people have house partys. $2 bucks and all the beer you can drink.
This show is still one of my all time favorite DM sets. My memory of it is still one of perfection. In my mind at least we ruled that night. I can't remember the other shows mentioned here though. O'Cay's was small and run by an older woman. The stage was at the left as you went in the front door so in fact I could look over my shoulder and out the front window of the place. Sadly, I gather it was closed down due to a fire next door. We played there at least one other time - maybe a year later and I seem to remember that our set list from the year before was still taped to the stage wall.
We packed up our gear and went to frat where Julie and her friends lived for the summer. Unloaded - got cleaned up - went to party. We stole cups and didn't have to pay. Drank a couple of beers (outside). Crowded - 200 people? Cops came - nobody seemed to care. All of the sudden we hear a loud BANG. Cops turn to each other "Oh No!- the Car!" somebody had stuffed an M80 in the tail pipe. Nobody left or cared except the cops. Left party in search of another one. We found one - Rodney payed $20 for all of us to get in. Rude and strange people. We were drunk and started to destroy the place. They had poster board on the walls for people to write on. We wrote on them [poster board] and the walls. Spilled beer in all sorts of places. Dave R. poured beer in the freezer. Rod on the sofa. Dave B. Pissed in the trash can in the bath room. I pissed in a shampoo bottle. Rodney re-wired the hair dryer. They [the girls?] took a noise maker(?), 2 tapes, Smurf glass, small sauce pan. Dave R. and Rod pissed in the fireplace. Rod told the girl at the door "Give me $15 dollars back and we'll all leave." She did - we didn't. Later - "Give me $15 dollars and we'll leave." She did - we didn't. We finally left at 4:30AM. Left the tub and sink in the bathroom running - time bomb effect. We were BAD. Back to frat to bed at 5AM. Hot sweaty night.
Oh boy were we were rotten that evening. Truth be told I can't think of any other time we got that out of hand ever again (someone else might remind me...). For some reason that night we thought they deserved it?
Posted by Dean at July 13, 1985 06:48 PM
I forgot to add a side story...
Years later, while on tour and staying at a motel somewhere, we crossed paths with Albert Collins.
Our tour manager Dan got up early (as he always did) and was in the parking lot. There was a tour bus parked near our van. A fellow was working on the engine and generally checking things out. Turned out to be Collins himself! He drove his own tour bus. Sadly he passed away in 1993, but if you have a chance, check out some of his music.
i remember rodney telling this story on his site about a month or so ago -- i have to be sure and use this tactic at some point. an inspiration for brat in the frat perhaps? hmmm.
and about how old were all of you at the time? just curious.
We would have been about 23-24 years old...well...most of us.
Yeah, and on the way back to Julie's place after our evening of drunken destruction we snagged a really nice BBQ grill (a Webber Kettle, if I remember) to take back (as a present maybe?)with us... I can still remebmer to this day the astonished look on Roy's face as we were "performing our encore of destruction and mayhem" that night. It still gives me a laugh.
First, the reason that we thought they deserved it was because they did. Joe, Dave, and Dean - having attended real Colleges were unaware of the scam that party throwers were planning to pull on us. I, on the other hand - having attended a Cow College - had been down this road before. Here's how the trick works:
I group of people buy a keg and then charge passers by $5.00 each to come in and drink. After the passers by have two beers each, they are hustled, en masses, out the door by several large friends of the party throwers. After all, are the passers by going to complain to the cops?
We succeeded where others had failed because the guys that the party throwers were using for muscle were afraid of one of the girls who were with us. She had a Mohawk.
Secondly, I can't believe how lightly Joe is getting off here. Joe pissed in the fireplace. I repeat: JOE PISSED IN THE FIREPLACE. He also stole all of the knobs off the appliances and threw them out the window (the next day I went for a walk and, without realizing it at first, came across the house where the party had been the night before. The front yard looked like a rubbish dump. "What's wrong with these...Ohhh, shit!" I then took off running) along with all of the wall plates. He also stole food.
Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the exorcism that took place in the kitchen. Dave R. and I were approached by a woman who shouted "You think you're cool because you worship Satan, don't you?" Before we could explain to her that we didn't need Satan's help to be cool - it just comes naturally - she screamed "In Jesus' name I rebuke you." That's when the evil spirits left Dave R.'s body. Or, to put it another way, he laughed so hard that beer shot out his nose.
Rodney & All,
I can't believe this was almost 20 years ago! Angie (A) and I just got together last night in Madison and we sat and laughed our asses off about all the shit we used to pull. Guess who will always be our bestest crime partners? We decided to track you on line and Ang called me right away laughing hysterically. You guys were so insane to be around--and when we came upon these journal writings, we realized that this is the only historical documentation of one of the best years of our lives. We have no pictures and as our brains continue to misfire and critical synapses are lost, this absolutely made us smile.
I guess we should have tried harder to stay in touch. Your show was outstanding that night!
Love all of you. Be well and look me up
--Julie
p.s. Thanks for the grill.
