Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
Show Posts
9211
Non-Music Shit / Re: Your worst fight at show?
« on: October 12, 2006, 12:17:07 PM »
Okay, okay...I just remembered. This happened at a show. It just wasn't a show that I wanted to be at.
A little background first...
I moved into this punk house back in 1995 where a buncha KDVS DJ's lived including the manager, who by then was fast becoming my best friend. We shared a half-converted garage three ways with this other punk dude who had just moved recently from Texas, but had already fallen into KDVS. This dude was deep down a nice guy, but he was still very young, had an unusually weird childhood from what I could gather, and was emotionally probably not even a full-fledged teenager yet. So overriding his nice-guy qualities, he had this constant need to try to be the punkest punk-ass in a tri-county area. And he wasn't smart about it.
We did pal around a lot, the three of us, but after a while, he became a little withdrawn from us. We had learned that he was hanging out with a lot of skins in Sacto. Perhaps he thought they were a lot punker than us roommates or anyone else in college-y Davis. Seeing that Todd and I were just very individualistic and hardly ascribed to punk fashion, I think our roommate (name withheld to protect a fellow who's grown up to be a totally alright dude) was looking for a group to fit in with, so he fell in with these skins. Skins in Sacto had caused a lot of trouble previously to this, busting several venues with extreme vandalism and uncalled-for drama games, and the cops were on their case all the time. SS can probably tell you more. There are a lot of stories.
Anyway, our punker-than-thou roommate invited his best friend from Texas to come live with us, so we were soon splitting this garage four ways for $67.50 apiece per month, the three of us in the garage, and this other guy, a real groadie dude who was effusively punk and compulsively wrote graffiti everywhere. He was also the nicest guy ever, but he was practically as dumb as rocks. You could dare him to do anything, and he wouldn't think twice about it, and then he'd only regret it after reading the grossed-out expressions of everyone else....and that would take a few seconds to sink in for him.
So together, these reunited old Texas punk friends were establishing their mark in Davis as champions of some punk contest that they set the rules for. And as the main villain in this story continued associating more and more with the skins, he soon wound up in the band with a buncha them.
Meanwhile, he was still doing a show on KDVS, and this is also when I was the program director, in charge of enforcing standards of quality and compliance with FCC indecency/obscenity regulations. And my punk-ass roommate was causing me a lot of grief with his show which was a piss-poor rehash of the same oi and streetpunk songs over and over each week. I don't know how many times our listeners needed to hear "Short Haired Rock and Roll." Worse, he was especially daring at trying to get away with a lot of dirty talk, and he wasn't always smart enough to curb his innuendo from becoming "patently offensive, " even as vaguely described by the ridiculous FCC rules.
I wanted to punish him and even suspend his show, by my best friend, the general manager of KDVS, was also the "head of household," and he figured that each time our renegade friend crossed a line, it gave him the perfect opportunity to get his lazy ass to wash his dishes or do other chores. But after a while, this routine wore thin and upset a lot of other KDVS staff who complained of our double standard. We had kicked other DJ's off the air for less serious infractions, yet our roommate was getting punished with "wash the dishes" or "mow the lawn."
I bought the "Taco City Rockers" compilation and donated it to KDVS almost as a gift for our wayward roommate who'd surely enjoy the LP based on his connection to the subject of the record, San Antonio. We listened to it at home first, but when the "skinhead poet" Paul Love song came on--which included the lyric "I'm gonna take your dick and slice it in half and use as a big fuckin' pussy!"--we all laughed, but as laughter subsided I told him, "Now you know, [name], you can't possibly get away with playing this particular song on the radio." And he soberly acknowledged that fact and promised he'd play all the songs except for this one.
The following show he did, however, he played the fuckin' Paul Love song. See, the GM buddy and I were known to be going to the Bay Area to see the Oblivians at the Kilowatt. Unfortunately, their van broke down, and we didn't care to stick around just to see Dura Delinquent and, I dunno, Mensclub or some shitty other band. So we drove back home early and caught our roommate playing Paul Love, and then getting on the air to say that he was warned not to play it, "but, I dunno...like, whatever, man! Like, how punk is that, y'know?" It was so pathetic. My blood was boiling. I was ready to go kick his ass. As we were speeding back to Davis, our roommate continued talking and getting into prurient territory, analyzing the process of his dick getting soft after pulling out of his GF's cream-tart. Pretty saucy stuff.
We busted into the doors and removed him from the air and told him we'd deal with him later. We did decide then that he needed to be suspended.
The following weekend, he planned a party at our house and wanted his band to play it. This would be the first time any of these Sacto skins had come to our house. I dreaded the thought of hearing his band and dealing with these meatheads, so I made plans to leave the scene and go to another Bay Area show. It was Babyland at the Berkeley Square with some absolutely dreadful East Bay teen bands, plus Dustin Diamond's band, Tribal Disco Noise...possibly the worst band I've ever seen! But definitely worth it for the laughs and the shit-talk that was traded all the way home.
Some other friend drove me, and I left my car at home, on the curb across the street from my house.
As we neared my house, we noticed the entire block was closed off to traffic by police and the fire department. I saw tons of smoke from a fire that had just been extinguished. I was worried that part of our house had caught on fire. It wouldn't have surprised me. But as I walked towards my house, I realized that the fire crew had just put out a fire that had gutted my car. It took almost a minute for me to realize that it was actually my car. And apparently, flames were burning about eight feet high above my car because the tree limbs above my car were also smoldering.
My punk-ass roommate ran out to me in the middle of the street as I was still speechless and numb, and he was apologizing over and over to an extreme. "Omigod! I'm so sorry! I'm sorry...the party got too outta control! I'll pay to replace it! I promise!"
Police were trying ask me who might have a motive to set my car on fire, and I was still too shocked to even take inventory of anyone with even the slightest motive. It was then that my roommate tried to throw a mutual friend of ours under the bus, concocting some beef that he might've had with me that I was unaware of. I was like, "Zach is pissed at me? Really?" And then it occurred to me that he was doing this to take the heat off himself and his new skinhead friends. It became clear to me that this was a retaliation for my decision to suspend his radio show. And I became so enraged then that I began running toward the house, yelling "Which one of you fuckin' cowardly skinheads did this shit? I KNOW IT WAS ONE OF YOU!!" People tell me I was pretty over-dramatic, but dude...I was beyond control. I mean, I was putting myself into some serious danger which lingered over me for the next several months, through near-daily death-threats phoned in to my house, work, and everytime I was on the radio.
I was seriously gonna just start punching any skin indiscriminately, but they all began breaking for home. The entire place cleared out just before my throat went raw from yelling in a rage like I'd never felt before.
Our fourth roommate was this dude's best friend, so naturally, when forced to pick a side, he picked the other dude's side. And we remained roommates, splitting that garage four ways throughout this ordeal with the death threats. It was hard for me to get a wink of sleep. I slept with my shoes on everynight in a swivel chair in the living room which could turn to a window leading to the backyard if I needed to escape a sneak attack from skinheads who constantly warned "We know where you live." I'd usually only get to catch up on sleep from about 1:00 to 3:00 after class and before my work shift, as I'd doze off during re-runs of Barnaby Jones (I sure wish they still aired that show).
It was during this time that I was attacked by the fourth roommate. I was completely asleep and was awakened by a hard blow to the head. I didn't really feel the pain...only the startling effect of being suddenly awakened. Perhaps only because I was already accustomed to sleeping lightly with an escape route always in mind, I sprung immediately into defensive action, kicking his nuts from my sitting position, springing up to connect a solid combination of body-blows before connecting on a hard butt-of-the-palm punch to his chin which sent him back.
I chastised him for being so cowardly as to attack a sleeping person. Just at that moment, the villainous roommate emerged from our garage/room, still dressed for sleep. He urged his friend to continue fighting. But my appeal to his friend caused him to break down into tears and apologize: "I know I fucked up, man! I'm sorry. He put me up to this. He told me that you said some shit about me."
Maybe it was true, but when did people not say shit about this guy? He was like a cartoon character punk...he was hilarious! Had I talked about the time he made the toilet overflow and picked up his own giant submarine shit with everyone else's bath towels and his best friend's drying work shirt? Or had I talked about how he lost the tip of his finger trying to unstick a faulty dispenser in a milkshake machine at his food service job, cutting the flesh all the way to his bone? Dude was full of funny stories, and he usually just laughed right along. But this time he was convinced to kick my ass.
Well, it didn't happen. And I'm still undefeated. Mostly from just avoiding this kinda shit altogether.
My skinhead troubles didn't clear up after nearly a year, so I moved secretly to another town, withdrew from KDVS, and hardly even spoke to anyone from Davis or Sacramento.
Around that same time, skins were kinda diffused as the musical interests of streetpunkers and youth crew blowhards strangely came together on the basis that both groups had nearly the same jock meathead mentality. They were each a man's man.
This dude that did so much to change my life soon grew up a lot and is alright by me, and I've forgiven him for the whole ordeal.
A little background first...
I moved into this punk house back in 1995 where a buncha KDVS DJ's lived including the manager, who by then was fast becoming my best friend. We shared a half-converted garage three ways with this other punk dude who had just moved recently from Texas, but had already fallen into KDVS. This dude was deep down a nice guy, but he was still very young, had an unusually weird childhood from what I could gather, and was emotionally probably not even a full-fledged teenager yet. So overriding his nice-guy qualities, he had this constant need to try to be the punkest punk-ass in a tri-county area. And he wasn't smart about it.
We did pal around a lot, the three of us, but after a while, he became a little withdrawn from us. We had learned that he was hanging out with a lot of skins in Sacto. Perhaps he thought they were a lot punker than us roommates or anyone else in college-y Davis. Seeing that Todd and I were just very individualistic and hardly ascribed to punk fashion, I think our roommate (name withheld to protect a fellow who's grown up to be a totally alright dude) was looking for a group to fit in with, so he fell in with these skins. Skins in Sacto had caused a lot of trouble previously to this, busting several venues with extreme vandalism and uncalled-for drama games, and the cops were on their case all the time. SS can probably tell you more. There are a lot of stories.
Anyway, our punker-than-thou roommate invited his best friend from Texas to come live with us, so we were soon splitting this garage four ways for $67.50 apiece per month, the three of us in the garage, and this other guy, a real groadie dude who was effusively punk and compulsively wrote graffiti everywhere. He was also the nicest guy ever, but he was practically as dumb as rocks. You could dare him to do anything, and he wouldn't think twice about it, and then he'd only regret it after reading the grossed-out expressions of everyone else....and that would take a few seconds to sink in for him.
So together, these reunited old Texas punk friends were establishing their mark in Davis as champions of some punk contest that they set the rules for. And as the main villain in this story continued associating more and more with the skins, he soon wound up in the band with a buncha them.
Meanwhile, he was still doing a show on KDVS, and this is also when I was the program director, in charge of enforcing standards of quality and compliance with FCC indecency/obscenity regulations. And my punk-ass roommate was causing me a lot of grief with his show which was a piss-poor rehash of the same oi and streetpunk songs over and over each week. I don't know how many times our listeners needed to hear "Short Haired Rock and Roll." Worse, he was especially daring at trying to get away with a lot of dirty talk, and he wasn't always smart enough to curb his innuendo from becoming "patently offensive, " even as vaguely described by the ridiculous FCC rules.
I wanted to punish him and even suspend his show, by my best friend, the general manager of KDVS, was also the "head of household," and he figured that each time our renegade friend crossed a line, it gave him the perfect opportunity to get his lazy ass to wash his dishes or do other chores. But after a while, this routine wore thin and upset a lot of other KDVS staff who complained of our double standard. We had kicked other DJ's off the air for less serious infractions, yet our roommate was getting punished with "wash the dishes" or "mow the lawn."
I bought the "Taco City Rockers" compilation and donated it to KDVS almost as a gift for our wayward roommate who'd surely enjoy the LP based on his connection to the subject of the record, San Antonio. We listened to it at home first, but when the "skinhead poet" Paul Love song came on--which included the lyric "I'm gonna take your dick and slice it in half and use as a big fuckin' pussy!"--we all laughed, but as laughter subsided I told him, "Now you know, [name], you can't possibly get away with playing this particular song on the radio." And he soberly acknowledged that fact and promised he'd play all the songs except for this one.
The following show he did, however, he played the fuckin' Paul Love song. See, the GM buddy and I were known to be going to the Bay Area to see the Oblivians at the Kilowatt. Unfortunately, their van broke down, and we didn't care to stick around just to see Dura Delinquent and, I dunno, Mensclub or some shitty other band. So we drove back home early and caught our roommate playing Paul Love, and then getting on the air to say that he was warned not to play it, "but, I dunno...like, whatever, man! Like, how punk is that, y'know?" It was so pathetic. My blood was boiling. I was ready to go kick his ass. As we were speeding back to Davis, our roommate continued talking and getting into prurient territory, analyzing the process of his dick getting soft after pulling out of his GF's cream-tart. Pretty saucy stuff.
We busted into the doors and removed him from the air and told him we'd deal with him later. We did decide then that he needed to be suspended.
The following weekend, he planned a party at our house and wanted his band to play it. This would be the first time any of these Sacto skins had come to our house. I dreaded the thought of hearing his band and dealing with these meatheads, so I made plans to leave the scene and go to another Bay Area show. It was Babyland at the Berkeley Square with some absolutely dreadful East Bay teen bands, plus Dustin Diamond's band, Tribal Disco Noise...possibly the worst band I've ever seen! But definitely worth it for the laughs and the shit-talk that was traded all the way home.
Some other friend drove me, and I left my car at home, on the curb across the street from my house.
As we neared my house, we noticed the entire block was closed off to traffic by police and the fire department. I saw tons of smoke from a fire that had just been extinguished. I was worried that part of our house had caught on fire. It wouldn't have surprised me. But as I walked towards my house, I realized that the fire crew had just put out a fire that had gutted my car. It took almost a minute for me to realize that it was actually my car. And apparently, flames were burning about eight feet high above my car because the tree limbs above my car were also smoldering.
My punk-ass roommate ran out to me in the middle of the street as I was still speechless and numb, and he was apologizing over and over to an extreme. "Omigod! I'm so sorry! I'm sorry...the party got too outta control! I'll pay to replace it! I promise!"
Police were trying ask me who might have a motive to set my car on fire, and I was still too shocked to even take inventory of anyone with even the slightest motive. It was then that my roommate tried to throw a mutual friend of ours under the bus, concocting some beef that he might've had with me that I was unaware of. I was like, "Zach is pissed at me? Really?" And then it occurred to me that he was doing this to take the heat off himself and his new skinhead friends. It became clear to me that this was a retaliation for my decision to suspend his radio show. And I became so enraged then that I began running toward the house, yelling "Which one of you fuckin' cowardly skinheads did this shit? I KNOW IT WAS ONE OF YOU!!" People tell me I was pretty over-dramatic, but dude...I was beyond control. I mean, I was putting myself into some serious danger which lingered over me for the next several months, through near-daily death-threats phoned in to my house, work, and everytime I was on the radio.
I was seriously gonna just start punching any skin indiscriminately, but they all began breaking for home. The entire place cleared out just before my throat went raw from yelling in a rage like I'd never felt before.
Our fourth roommate was this dude's best friend, so naturally, when forced to pick a side, he picked the other dude's side. And we remained roommates, splitting that garage four ways throughout this ordeal with the death threats. It was hard for me to get a wink of sleep. I slept with my shoes on everynight in a swivel chair in the living room which could turn to a window leading to the backyard if I needed to escape a sneak attack from skinheads who constantly warned "We know where you live." I'd usually only get to catch up on sleep from about 1:00 to 3:00 after class and before my work shift, as I'd doze off during re-runs of Barnaby Jones (I sure wish they still aired that show).
It was during this time that I was attacked by the fourth roommate. I was completely asleep and was awakened by a hard blow to the head. I didn't really feel the pain...only the startling effect of being suddenly awakened. Perhaps only because I was already accustomed to sleeping lightly with an escape route always in mind, I sprung immediately into defensive action, kicking his nuts from my sitting position, springing up to connect a solid combination of body-blows before connecting on a hard butt-of-the-palm punch to his chin which sent him back.
I chastised him for being so cowardly as to attack a sleeping person. Just at that moment, the villainous roommate emerged from our garage/room, still dressed for sleep. He urged his friend to continue fighting. But my appeal to his friend caused him to break down into tears and apologize: "I know I fucked up, man! I'm sorry. He put me up to this. He told me that you said some shit about me."
Maybe it was true, but when did people not say shit about this guy? He was like a cartoon character punk...he was hilarious! Had I talked about the time he made the toilet overflow and picked up his own giant submarine shit with everyone else's bath towels and his best friend's drying work shirt? Or had I talked about how he lost the tip of his finger trying to unstick a faulty dispenser in a milkshake machine at his food service job, cutting the flesh all the way to his bone? Dude was full of funny stories, and he usually just laughed right along. But this time he was convinced to kick my ass.
Well, it didn't happen. And I'm still undefeated. Mostly from just avoiding this kinda shit altogether.
My skinhead troubles didn't clear up after nearly a year, so I moved secretly to another town, withdrew from KDVS, and hardly even spoke to anyone from Davis or Sacramento.
Around that same time, skins were kinda diffused as the musical interests of streetpunkers and youth crew blowhards strangely came together on the basis that both groups had nearly the same jock meathead mentality. They were each a man's man.
This dude that did so much to change my life soon grew up a lot and is alright by me, and I've forgiven him for the whole ordeal.
