After a few years the band had become a bit more of a machine with constant gigging in and out of town on weekends and even during the week as well as churning out some merchandise that, coupled with gig money, started a nice steady cash flow for us.  Ever since the band’s inception a big part of our regular audience were G.I.’s from the army base and from Junction City.  They loved metal, and they also loved drinking excessively and getting a chance to legally beat the crap out of each other in front of the stage...perfect crowd for us (they spent lots of money too).  A few of the regulars eventually became our gig friends by helping us load out, clearing a crowd when needed or even buying the last round of the night.  So after we began spreading out wings more we realized that the biggest paying gigs were the ones in our immediate area, and some of our biggest and most loyal fans were commuting from Junction to see us.  After several offers to play JC, which were quickly declined, we thought “what the hell?” and set up a gig with a young JC band in the early summer at a dive called the Silver Star.  I advanced the gig with the guy from the band that offered the show; $150 in cash for a headlining set and a small bar tab.  I can’t tell you how many out of town shows we played for $100 and a floor to crash on, so this looked good.  I believe it was an early Friday evening when we took off from our rehearsal shed to that night’s metal destination of choice…

We rolled into JC and immediately hit the club, the Silver Star was an upstairs bar and much to our dismay the staircase was 35 steps up and very NARROW with a full glass door at the bottom leading out onto the street.  Not fun, as Boomer decided to bring his entire bass rig that night…Ampeg head, two 18” Black Widow cabs and two 15” Force cabs…a sheer wall of bass!  Guitars were a little simpler, straight half-stacks for Doug and Brian.  Drums?  Well we could definitely have been called “thrash” or “speed” metal to a large degree and Alan our drummer had the Pearl spaceship speed metal kit; double kick, four toms, seven cymbals including two Chinas, snare drum and carpet, cases for it all and a rack to mount everything on…not to mention a rotary fan for those “hot nights”. 

Gear loaded in…meet hosting band…where’s the beer?  After pressing flesh with the owner and finding out that our tab was minimal, we decided we’d take our early drinking business elsewhere and come back to drink more and destroy the joint later.  While scouring the immediate vicinity there it was…the Blue Malibu strip club.  Now we had certainly hit a few shoddy and shady unknown strip joints roaming about the central Midwest, but hell here was one very close to home with “50-CENT DRAWS” as the special!  Shit, I can’t remember who won the race to the entrance.  Inside it was dark and thick with smoke, which still couldn’t cover the over-perfumed smell from the…um, girls.  The two ladies (I’m being very gracious here) working the floor were in pretty rough shape, and it took a few minutes to realize that there wasn’t even a stage in the place, just the chicks going from table to table dancing in front of the biggest spenders.  All hideousness aside there was still the matter of 50-cent draws, and we all circled a table and ordered two at once.  It didn’t take long for the dancers to visit the rock n’ roll table, and we were feeling very generous as the beer was cheap and hell this was already turning into a great story!  More beer!  After the fourth or fifth round a decent looking, well-curved blonde careened out from behind a curtain and our faces lit up like kids at Xmas.  She immediately bounced our way and we began tossing some loot at her, and as she arched back facing the table Boomer points to her midsection and shouts, “Ahhh!  Look at the scar!”  Seriously, the bitch had a C-section scar as visible as large hatchet wound.  “OOOOOOOOHHHH FUCK!”  We downed our suds and shot outta there quick and trekked back to the club a couple of blocks away.  Horrid!

Back at the Silver Star the hosting band were mid-set, and we couldn’t believe what we were seeing and hearing from the stage.  This “band” was certainly metal, but the singer was in a completely different world than the rest of the band although you could tell that he thought we was pulling it off.  Facial expression, hand gestures, posing…he was truly going for it.  Each of the other players were struggling to stay afloat and keep up, and the lack of cohesion of anything resulted in all of my guys turning right around and heading outside to hang in the van.  There were about 40 or 50 people at the time in the club, mostly G.I.’s waiting in front of the stage to rage with a more convincing act while some other locals were shooting pool and drinking in the rear of the club.  I saw one of the G.I.s who had helped us load out at a previous gig and offered a hello, he said he was excited to see us play and I agreed.  At $3 a head I knew that our guarantee had probably already come through the door, and after another half of a “song” form Band A from Town B in State C I had to get outside as well.  Time for one of those doobies, brothers!  I remember feeling a glimmer of regret while descending the stairs, and that for some reason maybe this wasn’t going to go so well.

The stage was a bit small for us, but then again most of them were.  The PA was adequate for a room of that size, I believe there were two cabinets and one horn per side that bookend-ed us on the 2-foot stage.  We tore in to something fast, and right away the jarheads were up front dancing and wailing while the (few) chicks scattered to the walls.  Finishing the first number to a quick roar it seemed like this could be a good set, we all had enough piss and beer in us to tear the place apart and storm out with everyone’s asses on our pocket.  Dudes began to launch each other into the walls of the small pit, and I saw one guy barely miss the PA stack stage left after getting shoved by two others.  Right about the time I could start thinking about the bad possibilities, another zipper-head was hurled directly into said PA stack…causing the top horn speaker to tumble off onto the stage and graze the left arm (the neck arm for a righty guitar player) of Brian while also barely missing the headstock of his guitar.  So as a full-fledged fight between 3 or 4 guys in front of us erupted we stopped the show and tended to Brian to make sure he and his gear were okay.  As we’re getting the horn placed back on the stack, the fight gained in numbers and started moving down the stairs and out the door of the Silver Star.  For some reason we must have had our stormtroopin’ boots on that night because we actually started a third song thinking, “hey, the show must go on!”  Well most of the excitement seemed to be with the fight taking place on the street downstairs, because we had a mere 15 or 20 people left watching us rip through another number.  Cops showed up to speak to the owner and witnessing patrons, and the place became a stale sort of dead zone.  We don’t deserve this shit, we’re outta here.

After a quick tear down we avoided all the commotion in front of the club by hauling our gear down the back fire escape.  I’m not sure if the metal stairs were physically wobbling or if it was just the weight from all of us plus the gear working our way down, but no one felt safe and I’m not sure about anyone else but I may have even closed my eyes at one point during the descent.  After the gear was loaded Doug and I entered the club again from the front, and there were still plenty of cops and questions mulling about.  The dude didn’t want to pay us the full amount of cash due to our shortened set, and after beginning to argue with him about what had taken place and how our guitarist was almost crushed by the stupidity of his patrons, we said fuck it and took half of the cash and called it good.  Since it was an early night for us and a short trip home, the only right thing to do was gather at the bar to begin telling the story to our fellow bands and rockers, and to reassure each other of the fucking twilight zone episode that had just happened.