*Brrrrrring!*
Man...
*Brrrrrring!*
I hate it...
*Brrrrrring!*
... when that wake-up call comes...
Yes, good people... I had a small hangover...
We gathered up our stuff and everyone sauntered out to the parking lot in
typical DSO fashion, which closely resembles the classic "large family on
vacation with NO organization AT ALL"...
"Anyone talk to Mike an' Sprout this morning? Are they even AWAKE yet?"
Corso and Hazdra make an appearance, then suddenly Corso is missing... Sprout
materializes, but no Maraat... Scott makes the rounds, gathering room keys...
Ahmer is telling a bad joke or making a play on words leaving groans of pain
in his wake... John is meandering around oblivious to the mounting chaos...
Corso turns up again, but now Hazdra is missing... I suddenly remember with
horror that there are TONS of coffee places in town and he could be
ANYWHERE... Rob and O'Day are here, hands in pockets... Nej? Anyone??? Debbie?
OK, there's Hazdra... a big cup of coffee in his hand... Maraat steps into the
sunlight... Where's Norm? AND DAMMIT, WHERE'S THE DOG???
"Uh... Cameron... we don't HAVE a dog..."
"Oh... right... well... if we DID... Corso, it'd be YOUR turn to walk it..."
Scott pulls the Touring Vessel up, forgetting to close the back and leaving a
steady trail of back packs and duffle bags across the lot... and we finish
packing up. There was another trailer totin' van in the lot this morning, and
we found out it belonged to one Susan Tedeschy, a blues singer who someone had
heard had a single that was somewhere in the top five in the nation, and we
met and talked to some of her band and crew... really nice folks... turns out
they had been on the road for something like a year promoting Susan's new
album...
...suddenly, a week-long tour feels like no big deal...
Susan was very cool and we told her about our experience at the Fox (which is
where she was to appear that night)... and after some more "break a leg" stuff
we saddled up for our ride into the mountains and a part of the greater Denver
area known as Aurora...
After lunch it was my turn to drive, just in time for the mountains... now, I
had driven through the mountains before... but not in a manual transmission
car, so in the words of a wise man, "This Gonna Be Good Fer A Laff"...
"Steep grade"... "Runaway Truck Ramp"... "Soiled Underwear"... these were the
terms running through my head as we drove... and after a few ups and downs,
the "Underwear" bit was foremost in my mind... Scott, sensing I was a bit
tense... perhaps it was the white of my knuckles on the steering wheel that
gave me away... offered... no, INSISTED... that I let him take the wheel... he
practically grew up out here (his folks have had a place in Vail since before
it was a hot spot) adding "You should really be looking around at the scenery,
you know, for the Road Rash Papers and all..." just so a bit of my manhood was
left intact... bless you, my son...
Now, a question to our friends in the mountains... what's with the old mine
entrances straight out of a cartoon? You know the ones I'm talking about...
the ones that have housings of old planks nailed together in the most rickety
way possible, lookin' kinda like a window board-up job in a monster movie? I
kept waiting for Festus from "Gunsmoke" to appear, waving his pan and shouting
"GOLD! Hee Hee! GOOOOOLLLLD!!!!" with a big toothless grin...
Don't get me wrong... I like rustic miner settings better than driving
through, oh, Tennessee and being told to "SEE ROCK CITY" or "RUBY FALLS" on a
big billboard amongst nature's splendor... EVERY TWO MILES FOR EVER AND
EVER...
Man, the views were unreal to those of us who spend our lives in a canyon of
steel and concrete... and the more we drove, the more we talked about moving
out to the mountains. It was at this point that Scott started digging for a
tape...
John Denver to be specific... I'll leave it at that...
We pulled up in front of the club around 2p... Quixote's True Blue... a tiny
place sort of "attached" to the Riviera Motel... more on the motel in a
minute, but the signs read "Microwave and Cable in Every Room" ... oh, and
"Clean", "American Owned" (neither of which, apparently, was the case)...
The front door of the bar was covered in band stickers... a bunch of which I
recognized... Shakedown Street, Dexter Grove, etc... and when you walk into
the place, if you're a Deadhead, you instantly know you're home... the walls,
ceiling, EVERYTHING, is completely covered in Dead memorabilia... posters,
stickers, license plates, tapestries, concert pics, ticket stubs... we even
found an urn in the basement marked "Garcia's Ashes" but nobody had the nerve
to open it... I mean it was FULL... they had EVERYTHING there...
...everything except a stage that would accomodate the DSO... oh, and a whole
slew of channels were out on their console... 8 out of 24 channels were
fried... my powers as well as my patience were about to be pushed to their
limits... see, Scott has it in his head that tonight MUST be a Brent show.
Up until the Fox show, Scott had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that
we'd have to do a Vince show due to the lack of space and channels available,
but once he got a taste for the B3, there was no denying him... he had this
glaze over his eyes when I began pleading with him over this issue, so I shut
up like a good engineer should and tried to be constructive...
It took us about two hours of debate and rearranging, tempers seeming about to
flare and then dissipating, but we finally got the organ on stage (the
drummers were kind enough to strip their kits to the bare bones with no extra
percussion) and got everyone set up in as functional a fashion as possible,
and with a few McGyverisms I got all the inputs I needed into the console...
and one of the house engineers (a different Dave) from the Fox showed up with
a ton of gear it turns out I didn't need but he DID have some compressors and
gates which I gratefully made use of, and sound check went fairly
painlessly... a little "Lazy Lightnin'" and such and we were done...
Quixote's put out a great pasta meal for the entire crew, and I ate the best
meal I had had since getting on the road... and then we repaired to the
Riviera Motel to unwind... yes, we got rooms there... it seemed like a good
idea at the time...
"Seedy" would be a kind term... let's just say that renting by the hour in
this place was proooooobably not unheard of... even the stains were stained...
I slept on the floor that night, but not because I found Nej in my bed and I
wanted to be the gentleman... no no...
Around 9p I shuffled back across the parking lot to the bar and there were
people hanging out in front, inside, everywhere... and the vibe was good...
when the band finally got onstage I realized that there was NO WAY I could see
the band or they me, so I had to ask for a stool to stand on... the place was
so packed people were standing on the fireplace mantle (one of those round ski
lodge deals) in the middle of the room... an apparently common practice that
Doc the house engineer informed me was "where it definitely sounded the
best"... unfortunately this meant some folks got a great view of a drunk
hippie's ass for the night... including ME...
The show that night was 3/22/85, and again Scott came up with a good one...
the first set opened with a "Stranger" that set the tone perfectly... complete
with loud crowd "Woop" after the "Let's get on with the show"... a great "Cold
Rain & Snow" (for Nej and Rob, inside joke), other high points were "C.C.
Rider", a jammin' "Cassidy", "Esau" is always welcome in my book and the band
usually plays it well but this one stood out to me... very raw... and a "Don't
Ease" that had the entire room dancing as much as possible without beating
each other up with flailing arms...
Set break was a repeat of the Fox, with a ton of people hanging out and
talking with the band... where's my water, dammit? And then it was back up for
another set... everyone was very nice in letting us get to the stage and such,
and without further hesitation John kicked up the opening chords to "Scarlet
Begonias" to massive crowd approval... this has always been one of my favorite
songs, but there would be no "Fire" tonight... as the jam slowly morphed into
"Hell in a Bucket", I got that chill which means something beautiful had just
occurred... John turned out a sweet "Ship of Fools" and then the train pulled
into "Terrapin", causing the room to jump about thirty degrees in
temperature... "Drumz" was powerful and grooving, being that the boys were
"restricted" to their base kits, and a short "Space" gave way to a rare
"Spanish Jam" which blossomed into "Truckin'>Smokestack Lightnin'"... as I've
said before, "Truckin'" has taken on a whole new meaning to me, being on the
side of putting the show on, as opposed to buying my ticket... and when John
sang "All of my friends come to see me last night" during "Black Peter" there
was another great cheer from the crowd... and "Sugar Mag" put the cap on it
with an explosive "SSDD" reprise... after the "Baby Blue" encore Scott squared
up to the mic and delivered an also rare "Mr. Fantasy" elective encore with a
tease of "Hey Jude" to send everyone home...
The band stood around and greeted as many people as they could before the bar
shut down, and then we broke down our gear and packed up, Crew Chief Beau
efficient as ever gave me a heart attack when I turned around and suddenly my
racks of equipment were gone...
"Beau-ness!!! WHERE IS MY GEAR???"
"It's on the trailer, man..." (look of confusion on his face)
"Ok, Ok... man, you scared the... nevermind... good job..." (look of passing a
kidney stone on MY face)
Bless that boy...
When all was said and done, we headed over to the skeevey motel to get some
rest before heading to our next (and DEFINITELY most memorable) gig at
Garton's in Vail...
"OHHhhh... you guys are playing Garton's?" asked Fox Theater Dave... "That
place ROCKS... I mean LITERALLY..."
"Wha-?" I said, somewhat out of it.
"The stage BOUNCES, man... like a good six INCHES..."
"Oh... cool... whatever..."
...little did we KNOW...
COMING SOON: My &*@%! Road Rash Journal, "Anyone Else Need A Good De-
Lousing?", "A Trailer Too Large" or The Great 500 lb. Deadlift, and the Stage
Tossed On The Swirling Sea... See ya soon!!!