A year or two later, they were playing a Christmas show at the 9:30 and it was sold out. Their booking guy gave me a call and asked if we would play. This was odd to me because I had been told by several club owners in DC that we would never be allowed to play in DC again.  After all, that's part of the reason we moved from there in the first place.  So we were excited because PCP Roadblock was going to play at a nationally recognized club for like 2000 people and we didn't even have any records out.

None of us had ever seen GWAR.  This is irrelevant except for the fact that anyone who's seen GWAR knows that the openers always get booed and heckled relentlessly.  This would not be new to us though.  I remember dodging bricks and cinderblocks at prior gigs, and we've all woken up in the ER after shows before..  so a little heckling from teenagers is more cute than anything I guess.

So I'm living in DC at the time and since my band still ain't up from Richmond at like 9:00, I figure I'd better get to the club with my guitar and act like I know where they are. I get there and the manager is like, "So you guys going to fuck up my club because I hear you think you're going to destroy our club and burn us down and you think you can pull one over on the mf'n 9:30 you're barking up the wrong tree asshole blah blah blah."  ...a real dickhead. Again, nothing new.  No big deal, right?

I go outside and it's like 10 degrees outside (This becomes more relevant later).  I see the van show up but man, its coming fast and it whips around that little street next to the club and goes a little too far and then it's in reverse while it's still going forward.  And there are these guys there who work at the club and they're there to load for us, which is new to us.  But our bass player, Mike, doesn't see them and he almost runs over the guys, and they get pretty pissed.  Then he gets out of the van and starts cussing the guys out for not letting his sister in, who's already in the club.  Then he storms into the empty club and starts demanding that they let all his friends in.  The guys really steaming at this point.  And he's yelling at everybody while they're yelling at him.  So they tell us we can't play the show unless we keep our bass player outside until 1 minute before we're supposed to go on.

It turns out that our friend, Skillet, who rode up with him had been feeding him this sort of coffee flavored whiskey or something.  Oh, and some beers too.  And who knows what else.  He was ripped.  So instead of waiting out in the van, Mike goes to the Velvet Lounge (PCP Roadblock banned from there 1 year prior) to get Long Island Iced Teas.

We're hanging out back-stage and things start to get pretty cool for a bit. There's free beer, food, and some groupie chicks even stop in.  But there's like twenty of our friends trying to get a piece of this back-stage thing, so the security manager stops caring and takes off after telling us to keep all the weird smells out of the main area. Well, the guy comes and tells us to get our bassman and get on so we do that and play and he's falling down and the sound is terrible and there's kids throwing bottles and cigarettes at us and that's done.  The reaction from the crowd sounded like an angry roar from some sort of African death tribe about to feast on their enemies.  That's pretty much what it was.

I was going downstairs and I kept hearing everybody say, "PCP Roadblock really sucks."  They were practically chanting this.  So I joined in.  It was over.

"Hi"

"Hi.  Are you in PCP Roadblock?"

"Yeah.  I play guitar."

"Yeah.  You guys were pretty good.  I really think you should come with me."

Ha Ha!  I was drunk enough that it seemed funny and exciting.  What had we done?  Where were we going?  I felt like Han Solo in Return of the Jedi when he and Luke were being taken to the Sarlak Pit, but they're like, all cool because they're badass, and they've got the ability to get out of any situation.  That's really what I was thinking.

 But what had we done?  I wouldn't find out for another two hours or so.

The funny thing was; we had done nothing this time. They bring me to this room and there's seven chairs lined up against the wall.  There was Skillet and his friend.  His friend had come down from Maine and had never even heard of our band before that day.  My brother, Charlie was also there.  Apparently he had been questioned for about a half of an hour already because "he knew something".  Mike, the bass player, was also there with his timid boyfriend, who had also never seen us.  And Bobby, the singer was there.  They sat us down in front of the gorilla.  He had tattoos all over his face and neck and he probably weighed about 400 pounds.  He sat facing us and nobody said a word.

"What are we in here for guys?"

Nobody answered, but Bobby gave me this look like, 'shut up, man'.

I was sort of laughing and joking for a bit, but I learned soon enough that we were facing some jail time and that this was no laughing matter. But I still wondered, what for?

They brought in this punk rocker kid about a half hour later and he took Polaroids of each of us. We made funny faces and held up the appropriate fingers.  I couldn't believe that this "punk" was cooperating with these guys.  I told him that he was a real punk.  Like as in the jail sense of the word.

We were being punished for some unknown crime.  Maybe the burning house in Virginia, the pornographic flyers in Richmond?  General Strike House fiasco? The truth was that we had done no wrong this time.  We had done no wrong the other times.  This was our curse.  The reputation we had on that coast at that time was so foul that getting a show meant cleaning warehouses for scumbags just so that we could play for the night.  If it weren't for Tattoo Bill and PCP Roadblock, the 120 Marshall showspace would not have existed, period.  And we didn't throw that table at the Hole in the Wall in Richmond.  It hit our bass player in the head.  He had to get stitches.  Why would we have thrown a table at our bass player's head?  "Nigel" threw that table.

"Nigel" had done the crime at 9:30 club that night.

The owner/manager guy's back in the room and he sort of fills us in on what had happened.  There was some sort of flood--backstage.  The sprinklers had gone off and apparently sprayed so much water that there was a waterfall that went down the stairs and onto all the sound equipment.  According to this guy, the damages exceeded $100,00.00.

Then the cops were in there.  Heckel and Jeckyl.  They were wise-asses, cracking jokes and threats like we were going down for murder.  I knew we were doomed when they brought in the DC pigs.  These guys had beat up our singer one time for running from skinheads.  They were really chummy with the 9:30 guys.  You could tell that they couldn't wait to bring us in.  And when they ran our records, we all got nervous.  We all had bad records, but we had been through this numerous times before on the road.  While the one cop was running our licenses, the other one was palling around with the "real punk" photographer.  They were cracking jokes and snickering at us. We just had to sit there and act cool.  I was sure they would bring me in for that public urination charge that I hadn't appeared in court for.  Who knows what Bobby was thinking about?  And I'm sure as hell glad our drummer made it out before they started detaining us.  Adam was off with some girl long before the incident even happened.  They asked his name, but none of us seemed to remember his last name.

After another hour or so, they told us that we wouldn't be charged because nobody had confessed or admitted to anything.  We also would not be allowed into the club for life.  Damn!  I'm never going to see Gin Blossoms in DC!

But they were still smiling.

As we were led out of the detaining room, we were told that we had thirty seconds to get out of the club or we'd be arrested. As we walked through the main lobby, GWAR was hanging around getting paid, and I remember Danielle, AKA Slymenstra Hymen, getting in Mike's face and saying she was going to kill us and Dave (singer) yelling and some craziness.  But I just held my head down and walked out the door to my freedom.  Then, the owner/manager guy come out and threw all of our merch onto the ground in front of us.  Then, he threw a hundred dollars into the air.

"That's your pay, assholes!!''  He looked crazed.

As we went down to pick it up.  The guy came back with a pressure hose and proceeded to spray us down individually (Keep in mind, it's 10 degrees out). "It's only water, right?  Dickheads!!  HA HA HA!!"  Oh yeah, water.  Ha Ha.

They were all getting their laughs.  Even the pigs held their nightsticks at their sides and nudged each other, giggling.  They were waiting for us to do something.  Any little reaction and we'd be beaten and taken to the pumphouse, and jail's the last place we wanted to be at 3:30AM in Northeast DC.

We got in the van, freezing and soaked, tired, and frustrated beyond belief, drove about a block down V St before we heard the sound of all four tires blowing and the engine stalling.  We had been sabotaged.  All hoses and tires had been cut.  We got out of the van, grabbed what little equipment we could carry and walked to Mt Pleasant, where I was living at the time. There was liquor there.  No beer, just liquor.  That's what we needed.

The 9:30 had heard that we were screw-ups.  We had no manager, no contracts, and no business playing a club that size.  They sent no security to sit outside of our backstage area.  People were coming in and out the whole time.  After the beer ran out, we got tired of the cramped space and split. Some guys had stayed around to smoke grass and liquor they had brought themselves.  We were all gone when "Nigel" lit a fire under the fire sprinklers to see what would happen.  Nobody in PCP Roadblock was there for that.  We were all downstairs drinking at the bar.  Nigel was halfway to Richmond when the cops showed up.

We used the $100 to fix the van.  Luckily, Bobby and Skillet were skilled mechanics or it would have cost thousands.

I heard later that the damages at 9:30 cost 40, 60, and 100 thousand dollars from various people around town but later heard that nothing was actually damaged. The following week, 9:30 ran an ad in the City Paper with a picture of a fire alarm on it. I ran into Dave Brockie a few days later at the bodega by my house.  He shook my hand and apologized.  Apparently, GWAR had been banned the first time they played at 9:30 for shooting ketchup out of a rocking horse.

Independent bands should not play corporate clubs like the 9:30 Club.

They're not there to support musicians and the underground scene.  They want money.  They will come up with any excuse not to pay you.  Anyone who's ever lived the DIY thing knows this and I will warn every new band to stay away from these clubs unless they plan on getting a serious agent and record contract.  and then you're part of that circuit.  That's it.

GWAR signed a terrible contract in the 80's that basically kept them from receiving any money from their record sales.  Their stage shows cost fortunes and there's so many members that they have to play clubs like 9:30. It was a very nice gesture of them to offer us that gig and I am still grateful.  It was the best and the worst night of my life.  but business and PCP Roadblock don't mix.  PCP Roadblock doesn't pay our bills.  If we wanted to make money out of music, we'd stop playing noise rock or we'd dress up like monsters and pour blood on our audience or play pop-punk.

As for the guys at 9:30... I still get warnings from time to time in DC that they plan on getting us back for what we did.  One girl said they were going to get us with baseball bats.  All I can say is, we've already been punished for a crime we didn't commit.  I think that allows us to do something to them, right?  Double jeopardy?  But we don't plan on playing DC again.  As long as I've been playing shows, DC has had one of the most uptight and phony music scenes in the country.  and we're quite comfortable with being banned in DC.  There's a thousand other places to play.

PCP Roadblock now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.  After nine years, we continue to be hands-down the most DIY band in the history of independent music.

As I sit in my cubicle writing this, 21 stories above San Francisco's financial district, I can only think about how much I look forward to going on the road and playing more hell-gigs.

Andy Roadblock