February 12, 1986 - Hollywood, CA
Show Day -
Sunny to Rain
Up late, breakfast again. Dave R. gets spare tire and takes van to be tuned up. We wait at Lee's. The van takes longer than expected. We leave for Raji's about 6 or so. We speed there - get there at 6:45. Set up and sound check. Club is small - sound is OK. Meet Mojo - cool dude. 28th Day is OK - nice people.
This is a record release party for the "Enigma Variations" and our first encounter with Mojo Nixon. Later in 1986 we spend Thanksgiving with him in San Diego. 28th Day was another Enigma band on the "Variations" compilation that featured Barbara Manning. We will end up staying with Barbara in San Fransisco in the Fall of 1986 while on the tour promoting "Eat Your Paisley".
Crowd arrives - lots of people. Mojo plays - great. 28th Day play - I didn't see them. We play good show - sound was good for me. Crowd was cool. Over at 12PM. everybody leaves - club goons are shitheads. We pack up and go to the Firefly bar and hang out with 28th Day. Steve Wynn was there. Bar tender was cool -lit the bar gutter with lighter fluid a couple of times. Leave at 2:30AM.
I think "The Firefly" was a hole in the wall place off Hollywood and Vine - there might be a new swanky place in town called the "Firefly" now... this place was smokey and old school. The bartender would walk the length of the bar and pour lighter fluid in the gutter and then set it alight - we all cheered. I guess the fire marshall was out of town that night. Steve Wynn was in 'Dream Syndicate' at the time.
Posted by Dean at February 12, 1986 04:29 PM
Raji's was a fun spot. It was badly damaged during the 1994 earthquake and was later knocked down to make way for a subway station.
Later,
Bubonic
Ya know - great idea - lets build a subway in an area that's prone to earthquakes!
What in the world is the LA subway like?
It's not a huge system and was plagued with problems from the start. Historic buildings sank inches, huge sinkholes opened in the ground, lots of disagreements as to where the stops would be placed... It makes it easy to get downtown from Hollywood, but will get you about 1 mile short of the airport (after taking 3 different trains.) It works at some levels, but overall it's a mess and they should have spent the money putting more buses on the street. They don't even have a way of collecting tickets - no turnstiles, but the cars are sometimes patrolled by police officers asking to see tickets.
Later,
Bubonic
I went through a little phase of riding the LA subway when it first opened until I figured out it doesn't go anywhere that would do me any good. If you need to get from the Valley to Downtown, you're in luck, but otherwise...
Apparently there used to be an above-ground light rail system in the early 20th Century that went all over the city; the last remnant--I think it was called the Red Line--was torn down in the late '60's. I'm told (but have no way to verify this) that the trolleys were all bought up and then dismantled by Triple A and General Motors to get more people to drive cars--and, in fact, the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is based on this premise. Anyway, all of the big east-west streets in LA like Venice and Santa Monica have these huge landscaped medians in the middle of the road and that's where the tracks used to go. I recently realized that, had I lived in my neighborhood in, say, the 1940's, I could have caught a train two blocks from my house and ridden it all the way to where I work in Venice. Every time I spend an hour and a half in traffic on the way to the job I think about this and get pissed off.
Oh well.
Eli
