As predicted, the El Paso Custom Car and Chopper Festival unfolded into a night to remember. The plan was to meet up with my friends Jack, Mike, and some of their friends at our favorite downtown watering hole, La Nortena at 7 pm. From there, properly lubricated, we’d head over to the street festival to enjoy Mini-Kiss and BOC.
Early the day of the show, Jack called me and said the rendezvous time had been moved up to 6 pm. No problem. I called Mike and informed him of the change. He said he worked until 6 but not to worry as he’d take off a few minutes early. The new plan was for Mike and me to meet at a parking lot downtown and then head over to meet Jack at the bar.
Soon it was time to head downtown so I bid my family farewell and rolled my black S-10 south. I got to the parking lot where Mike was supposed to meet me at 6 pm on the nuts. Maybe 2 minutes after I shut off the truck, Jack showed up as well. He had decided to meet up with us there. We stood outside my truck, in the incredibly hot El Paso evening until about 6:10 pm. By that point, I was completely dehydrated and urgently needed a cold beer. So I called Mike’s cell and told him to meet us at Chama’s, a bar right across from the parking lot.
Jack and I went into the bar and ordered a couple beers. For the hundredth time I began to explain to Jack that he shouldn’t be a Dallas Cowboy’s fan because they are a bunch of fucking douchebag dildos. Alas, this time he didn’t seem to listen to me either. His loss. Before we even finished the first round, Mike walked into the bar and we were ready to go. Jack and I slammed the rest of our beers and hopped into our trucks to head down to La Nortena.
Upon, getting there, we met up with one of their mutual friends, a woman about our age. We began to buy buckets of beer and drank the evening away while eating some dinner.
Somewhere along the line, Mike’s famous shots began to show up at our table. For those of you who don’t know Mike, he has a tendency to concoct the most interesting shots made up of multiple liquors that are usually between 100 and 150 proof. They are always delicious… like a combination of something very tasty and jet fuel.
Finally, darkness descended upon the great Northern Pass and the last of Jack’s friends arrived, a couple who was also about our age. I don’t recall their names but I remember the guy had this SWEET button down KISS shirt with all their faces on it. I was enthralled (and getting progressively drunker as I slammed beer after beer and shot after shot).
9 pm rolled around and the group decided it was time to head over to the show, about 10 blocks away. Upon entering the festival grounds (a blocked off portion of the downtown streets), we were immediately presented with rows and rows of motorcycles. Every man and woman who owned a motorcycle (non-crotch rocket) must have driven it to Texas Ave. that night. I’ve never seen so many bikes in my life.
After walking for what seemed like forever, we reached the end of the motorcycles. Directly after them we saw some motorcycle games being played where a man would drive his motorcycle under a big limbo bar and a hot chick on the back of it would throw a water balloon over the bar and try to catch it. We watched this for a few minutes and quickly learned that the point wasn’t so much to catch the balloon (though that is what the teams had to do to advance to the next round), rather to have the water balloon hopefully land on the woman’s tits and explode, dousing them with water. Fascinating.
But the time was slipping away and we had to get to the stage to secure our seats and our next round of beers. So we left the motorcycle Olympics behind and finally reached the stage at the far end of the festival. The stage itself was actually very small and we were able to get some spots pretty close to the wall that separated the VIP seating from the cretins. Unfortunately we were the cretins. NOTE: Later in the night I convinced one of the women in our party to try to bribe the security guy into letting us into the VIP section. Can you believe that dildo turned down $40 to let 4 of us in? Fucker…
Anyhow, we chatted for a bit while they were setting up for Mini-KISS. I think I eventually made the rest of my party nervous because I kept moving us forward at every opportunity to the point where we ended up standing in a place where we were between the sound board to our right and a bunch of seats to our left. It was at that point that the rest of the crew began to slowly head back to our previous position as I believe we pissed of the lame fuckers that were sitting down behind us. But I stayed my ground. This was festival seating for Christ’s Sake and I’m not about to give up a good standing position so some lazy fucker can sit on a plastic chair. The reasoning for the others retreat finally dawned on me as some cunt behind me said, “EXCUSE ME”. I turned around and she said with a less than polite tone, “Could you move over I can’t see”. So I moved over about 1 inch and turned back around and stared at her for awhile. As predicted, her stupid ass didn’t bug me again because she knew what time it was. You don’t fuck with David while he’s trying to get a good view of Blue Oyster Cult. I’m like a lion marking my fucking territory out there. Little did I know at the time that this encounter, while pretty much a non-event in my mind, ended up setting the tone for the rest of the night. At that point, the mixture of beer and now aggression started a chemical reaction within me that turned me into Big Drunk, Meathead Hillbilly for the rest of the night – or BDMH syndrome.
As the set up of for Mini-KISS dragged on, I realized I needed more beer, a common side effect of BDMH. So I headed back toward the beer tent with drink orders for our entire crew. As I was standing in line, it dawned on me that I was going to miss the opening of the Mini-KISS set because over the dull roar of conversation I heard:
“All right, El Paso! You wanted the best, you got the best! The hottest Little band in the world, Mini-Kiss!”
Following the tell tale KISS opening, were the chords of “Shout It Out Loud”. I thought to myself, “so far so good. They got the opening right.” Immediately after that though, the beginning of my elation turned a bit sour as I heard the vocals for the first time. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a midget sing before but I didn’t envision it to be the high pitched warbling that I was hearing. I looked to the stage to see what was going on but the combination of distance, the sound board tent, and intoxication prevented me from seeing anything that could explain the body that this odd sound was emanating from.
I collected our delicious, thirst quenching, 24 ounce beers and quickly hustled back to my turf so I could investigate further.
What I saw was mini-Gene Simmons, mini-Peter Cris, mini-Paul Stanley, and mini-Ace Frehley. Mini-KISS. But that is where the gimmick ended and within minutes I would get progressively pissed at these little motherfuckers.
Even in my drunken state, my mind was still working (albeit slowly). Why is mini-Paul so much taller than the rest of them? Maybe mini-Paul is a dwarf, not a midget? So I concentrated on mini-Paul for awhile until… wait a fucking second! Mini-Paul is a woman! She’s not even a midget woman. She’s full sized! That’s a fucking rip off!
Disgusted, I turned away and started chatting with the group (another woman they knew had showed up as well). After another song or so I turned my attention back to the stage.
That’s when I noticed that mini-Gene was playing a six string. Hmmmm. I hear a bass guitar but mini-Gene isn’t playing it. I guess mini-Ace is playing bass. And as I was turning my head to the other side of the stage I thought, “well if mini-Ace actually plays bass why didn’t he just dress up like mini-Gene… that would have made more sense”. Then my gaze settled on mini-Ace: six string guitar. Hold on a fucking second. I scanned the rest of the stage looking for someone in the shadows playing the thundering bass that I could distinctly hear. Nothing. Then it dawned on me. THESE FUCKING MIDGETS AREN’T PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS! The horror!
I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to sober up. I studied the band even more closely. Well fuck me standing in the rain, mini-Gene is NOT playing that guitar. And mini-Ace isn’t playing his either. He’s riffing solos in a part of the song that is just rhythm. And fuck me, mini-Peter isn’t even playing those fucking drums. He’s not even remotely on beat. Basically, Mini-Kiss was a pre-recording of a decent KISS cover band with a normal sized woman singing real vocals. She was the only one “playing” her instrument (vocals). And she wasn’t even a fucking midget!
I was disgusted. I was betrayed. I spent the ENTIRE next song holding up my middle finger at the band. Fuck them.
But then my middle finger became tired and I realized they weren’t even worth my “fuck you” so I just started drinking again. The freak show wasn’t over, however, because mini-Gene got on the mike and said that we were in for a real big treat because they were going to play their own version of a classic KISS song next. To my horror, mini-Gene’s guitar suddenly came to life for real and the band launched into “New York Groove”.
Let me ask you a question. If you were in a KISS cover band and you were only going to bother learning how to play the guitar part to ONE fucking KISS song… would it be “New York Groove”? For those of you who are not KISS fans I’ll answer for you: NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! That song is fucking stupid. Shit, I’m not even sure it is even a KISS song for that matter… is it really an Ace solo song? This was some horseshit right here.
So here we are, listening to “their version” of “New York Groove”. But wait, it gets worse. Because mini-Gene is playing his guitar (for real), and She-man is singing (for real). But that’s it. There is no other sound. Yet, mini-Peter is “playing” his drums and mini-Ace is “strumming” his guitar. But the fucking sound is turned down on them. How fucked up was this? No more pre-recorded music. Just one guitar playing (poorly) and some fucked up warbling vocals. My mind was blown.
What’s a poor boy like me to do? I started drinking even heavier to drown out this abomination.
I was deep in the throws of my unrecognized case of BDMH by that point and barely noticed that show was finally at an end. One of the last songs they played was “Sweet Child of Mine” by GNR, featuring mini-Ace actually playing the guitar for Slash’s famous opening (mini-Gene was playing make believe again). Figures, mini-Ace can only play one song too and IT ISN’T EVEN A FUCKING KISS SONG!!!!!!!
When their set ended I was booing as loudly as I could and screaming “FUCK YOU” at the top of my lungs. That got a charge out of the audience around me because I think by that time most of them had also realized that we were stood up by the opening band.
Then I got to thinking, I hope NONE of my ticket money is going to these little fucks. Little fucking con artists. BOC better be getting ALL my money. I turned around and realized that there were only going to be about 10,000 people squeezed into Texas Ave. at a maximum. This is far down from the 20,000+ that was at the street festival last year when I saw BOC open for Styx. I began to worry about what BOC would think when they hit the stage. Did they know a fucking little band of con artists that can’t play music was their opening act? Had someone cleared that with them? I was embarrassed on behalf of the city of El Paso. I just hoped BOC could forgive us. The last thing I wanted was for them to say, “Fuck this place” and never come back. Finally, I began to panic: would they even come out on stage at this point? Shit, I couldn’t blame them if they were sitting on a side street, watching that fiasco and decided, “fuck this boys, we’re gone”.
So as my mind was reeling and I was hating on those accursed midgets I didn’t even notice that my crew had led me over to the other side of the audience. It was balls hot where we were standing and they thought it might be cooler more towards the middle of the street. This was the turning point of my night and the final catalyst for what was now a full blown outbreak of BDMH because while I was deep in thought, I met a man who would end up being my best buddy for the rest of the night.
He was 47 years old and from Arizona (I think). He had a little woman up in New Mexico but she couldn’t come down for the show. He was about my height but in much better shape… like he either worked out or he worked good, hard manual labor during the day.
I first met his acquaintance as he was trying to work his magic on the women in our group (he was standing just to the let of us). He’s advances were crude at best and it was pretty apparent to everyone but himself that none of the women were impressed. Even after he invited us to his house after the show to party he could get no takers of the female persuasion. At the time I didn’t question why a man from Arizona had a house in El Paso… I didn’t even question it when he took out his hotel room key later in the night and asked if anyone wanted to go party in his hotel room. But the ladies picked up on it quickly and dubbed him as bad news.
This signal from the women, though, I did get especially after the following conversation:
My new buddy: Hey, I’d like to (fuck) those girls (the ones with me, Jack, and Mike).
Me: I bet!
A few moments later, when his short attention span was distracted elsewhere, I turned to two of the women with us and said:
Me: You know, if you play your cards right you could end up with that guy tonight!
The Girls: (Laughter)
Me: I’m serious, he just told me he wants to fuck you.
The Girls: You’re kidding. He did not.
Me: He most certainly did.
The Girls: (Cackling, slightly nervous, a bit horrified).
It was at that point that I realized I’d have to keep myself between my new buddy and the girls for the rest of the night. No worries.
Somewhere during all this drama, BOC hit the stage. I was pleased that they didn’t just bail on us. That just shows you the kind of stand up guys they are.
They opened with “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” which I thought was strange yet awesome at the same time. After the initial orgasm of rock I realized that Allen Lanier was missing. He is the band’s 3rd guitarist / key board player. There was some slightly overweight, boring looking white guy with bad facial hair in his place. This kind of saddened me because that brought the original BOC number down to just two: Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma. Now, if you were only going to have two left those would be the two you would want, for sure, but still…
In addition, the bass player from last year was missing. In his place was Rudy Sarzo, most famous (in my eyes) for playing with Ozzy for awhile.
But let me tell you, BOC rocked hard, as usual. And all the fuel of beer and hatred of mini-KISS left me in an overly aggressive mood (Ah, the old BDMH). As my buddy and I were sharing stories of how much we loved BOC, something very awesome happened on stage and I ended up punching my buddy in the shoulder as a result. At the time, this seemed like a normal, meatheaded bonding kind of thing. And I was right as my buddy seemed to love it as he returned my punch with a big, old fashioned high five.
So that was the mode of operation for the rest of the show, I would punch my buddy in the shoulder, or grab his shoulders and shake him violently, and he would turn around and give me huge high fives. As the night wore on, my punches got harder and harder but he didn’t seem to mind. We were fast friends.
Song, after song, BOC rocked the crowed out. It was truly a good show (I’ll mention more of it at the end when I post the set list). Mike was desperately waiting to hear “Godzilla” and when it finally came on I swung around and punched him in the shoulder. I think he thought it was a bit odd because our crew is not the meathead type. But he is an old headbanger from the 80’s and I think he had reverted back into that mentality during the show so he didn’t really mind. At one point I tried the same move on Jack, who recoiled in horror as I tried to punch him. Jack is certainly not the meathead type and probably never saw the true West Virginia hillbilly that I am when I’m chocked full of beer and venom. Well, he did that night.
But alas, as quickly as the show started, it seemed to end. Shortly thereafter, I lost touch with my new buddy. Things were moving quickly now as I was to the point in my drunkenness where memory starts to become less than reliable and time moves in strange patterns. We were suddenly back at the bar (which was now closed) and we contemplated continuing the party. But I was tapped out. Between the beer, the heat, all the punching, and getting my ass rocked off I had no more to give.
Early the day of the show, Jack called me and said the rendezvous time had been moved up to 6 pm. No problem. I called Mike and informed him of the change. He said he worked until 6 but not to worry as he’d take off a few minutes early. The new plan was for Mike and me to meet at a parking lot downtown and then head over to meet Jack at the bar.
Soon it was time to head downtown so I bid my family farewell and rolled my black S-10 south. I got to the parking lot where Mike was supposed to meet me at 6 pm on the nuts. Maybe 2 minutes after I shut off the truck, Jack showed up as well. He had decided to meet up with us there. We stood outside my truck, in the incredibly hot El Paso evening until about 6:10 pm. By that point, I was completely dehydrated and urgently needed a cold beer. So I called Mike’s cell and told him to meet us at Chama’s, a bar right across from the parking lot.
Jack and I went into the bar and ordered a couple beers. For the hundredth time I began to explain to Jack that he shouldn’t be a Dallas Cowboy’s fan because they are a bunch of fucking douchebag dildos. Alas, this time he didn’t seem to listen to me either. His loss. Before we even finished the first round, Mike walked into the bar and we were ready to go. Jack and I slammed the rest of our beers and hopped into our trucks to head down to La Nortena.
Upon, getting there, we met up with one of their mutual friends, a woman about our age. We began to buy buckets of beer and drank the evening away while eating some dinner.
Somewhere along the line, Mike’s famous shots began to show up at our table. For those of you who don’t know Mike, he has a tendency to concoct the most interesting shots made up of multiple liquors that are usually between 100 and 150 proof. They are always delicious… like a combination of something very tasty and jet fuel.
Finally, darkness descended upon the great Northern Pass and the last of Jack’s friends arrived, a couple who was also about our age. I don’t recall their names but I remember the guy had this SWEET button down KISS shirt with all their faces on it. I was enthralled (and getting progressively drunker as I slammed beer after beer and shot after shot).
9 pm rolled around and the group decided it was time to head over to the show, about 10 blocks away. Upon entering the festival grounds (a blocked off portion of the downtown streets), we were immediately presented with rows and rows of motorcycles. Every man and woman who owned a motorcycle (non-crotch rocket) must have driven it to Texas Ave. that night. I’ve never seen so many bikes in my life.
After walking for what seemed like forever, we reached the end of the motorcycles. Directly after them we saw some motorcycle games being played where a man would drive his motorcycle under a big limbo bar and a hot chick on the back of it would throw a water balloon over the bar and try to catch it. We watched this for a few minutes and quickly learned that the point wasn’t so much to catch the balloon (though that is what the teams had to do to advance to the next round), rather to have the water balloon hopefully land on the woman’s tits and explode, dousing them with water. Fascinating.
But the time was slipping away and we had to get to the stage to secure our seats and our next round of beers. So we left the motorcycle Olympics behind and finally reached the stage at the far end of the festival. The stage itself was actually very small and we were able to get some spots pretty close to the wall that separated the VIP seating from the cretins. Unfortunately we were the cretins. NOTE: Later in the night I convinced one of the women in our party to try to bribe the security guy into letting us into the VIP section. Can you believe that dildo turned down $40 to let 4 of us in? Fucker…
Anyhow, we chatted for a bit while they were setting up for Mini-KISS. I think I eventually made the rest of my party nervous because I kept moving us forward at every opportunity to the point where we ended up standing in a place where we were between the sound board to our right and a bunch of seats to our left. It was at that point that the rest of the crew began to slowly head back to our previous position as I believe we pissed of the lame fuckers that were sitting down behind us. But I stayed my ground. This was festival seating for Christ’s Sake and I’m not about to give up a good standing position so some lazy fucker can sit on a plastic chair. The reasoning for the others retreat finally dawned on me as some cunt behind me said, “EXCUSE ME”. I turned around and she said with a less than polite tone, “Could you move over I can’t see”. So I moved over about 1 inch and turned back around and stared at her for awhile. As predicted, her stupid ass didn’t bug me again because she knew what time it was. You don’t fuck with David while he’s trying to get a good view of Blue Oyster Cult. I’m like a lion marking my fucking territory out there. Little did I know at the time that this encounter, while pretty much a non-event in my mind, ended up setting the tone for the rest of the night. At that point, the mixture of beer and now aggression started a chemical reaction within me that turned me into Big Drunk, Meathead Hillbilly for the rest of the night – or BDMH syndrome.
As the set up of for Mini-KISS dragged on, I realized I needed more beer, a common side effect of BDMH. So I headed back toward the beer tent with drink orders for our entire crew. As I was standing in line, it dawned on me that I was going to miss the opening of the Mini-KISS set because over the dull roar of conversation I heard:
“All right, El Paso! You wanted the best, you got the best! The hottest Little band in the world, Mini-Kiss!”
Following the tell tale KISS opening, were the chords of “Shout It Out Loud”. I thought to myself, “so far so good. They got the opening right.” Immediately after that though, the beginning of my elation turned a bit sour as I heard the vocals for the first time. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a midget sing before but I didn’t envision it to be the high pitched warbling that I was hearing. I looked to the stage to see what was going on but the combination of distance, the sound board tent, and intoxication prevented me from seeing anything that could explain the body that this odd sound was emanating from.
I collected our delicious, thirst quenching, 24 ounce beers and quickly hustled back to my turf so I could investigate further.
What I saw was mini-Gene Simmons, mini-Peter Cris, mini-Paul Stanley, and mini-Ace Frehley. Mini-KISS. But that is where the gimmick ended and within minutes I would get progressively pissed at these little motherfuckers.
Even in my drunken state, my mind was still working (albeit slowly). Why is mini-Paul so much taller than the rest of them? Maybe mini-Paul is a dwarf, not a midget? So I concentrated on mini-Paul for awhile until… wait a fucking second! Mini-Paul is a woman! She’s not even a midget woman. She’s full sized! That’s a fucking rip off!
Disgusted, I turned away and started chatting with the group (another woman they knew had showed up as well). After another song or so I turned my attention back to the stage.
That’s when I noticed that mini-Gene was playing a six string. Hmmmm. I hear a bass guitar but mini-Gene isn’t playing it. I guess mini-Ace is playing bass. And as I was turning my head to the other side of the stage I thought, “well if mini-Ace actually plays bass why didn’t he just dress up like mini-Gene… that would have made more sense”. Then my gaze settled on mini-Ace: six string guitar. Hold on a fucking second. I scanned the rest of the stage looking for someone in the shadows playing the thundering bass that I could distinctly hear. Nothing. Then it dawned on me. THESE FUCKING MIDGETS AREN’T PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS! The horror!
I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to sober up. I studied the band even more closely. Well fuck me standing in the rain, mini-Gene is NOT playing that guitar. And mini-Ace isn’t playing his either. He’s riffing solos in a part of the song that is just rhythm. And fuck me, mini-Peter isn’t even playing those fucking drums. He’s not even remotely on beat. Basically, Mini-Kiss was a pre-recording of a decent KISS cover band with a normal sized woman singing real vocals. She was the only one “playing” her instrument (vocals). And she wasn’t even a fucking midget!
I was disgusted. I was betrayed. I spent the ENTIRE next song holding up my middle finger at the band. Fuck them.
But then my middle finger became tired and I realized they weren’t even worth my “fuck you” so I just started drinking again. The freak show wasn’t over, however, because mini-Gene got on the mike and said that we were in for a real big treat because they were going to play their own version of a classic KISS song next. To my horror, mini-Gene’s guitar suddenly came to life for real and the band launched into “New York Groove”.
Let me ask you a question. If you were in a KISS cover band and you were only going to bother learning how to play the guitar part to ONE fucking KISS song… would it be “New York Groove”? For those of you who are not KISS fans I’ll answer for you: NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! That song is fucking stupid. Shit, I’m not even sure it is even a KISS song for that matter… is it really an Ace solo song? This was some horseshit right here.
So here we are, listening to “their version” of “New York Groove”. But wait, it gets worse. Because mini-Gene is playing his guitar (for real), and She-man is singing (for real). But that’s it. There is no other sound. Yet, mini-Peter is “playing” his drums and mini-Ace is “strumming” his guitar. But the fucking sound is turned down on them. How fucked up was this? No more pre-recorded music. Just one guitar playing (poorly) and some fucked up warbling vocals. My mind was blown.
What’s a poor boy like me to do? I started drinking even heavier to drown out this abomination.
I was deep in the throws of my unrecognized case of BDMH by that point and barely noticed that show was finally at an end. One of the last songs they played was “Sweet Child of Mine” by GNR, featuring mini-Ace actually playing the guitar for Slash’s famous opening (mini-Gene was playing make believe again). Figures, mini-Ace can only play one song too and IT ISN’T EVEN A FUCKING KISS SONG!!!!!!!
When their set ended I was booing as loudly as I could and screaming “FUCK YOU” at the top of my lungs. That got a charge out of the audience around me because I think by that time most of them had also realized that we were stood up by the opening band.
Then I got to thinking, I hope NONE of my ticket money is going to these little fucks. Little fucking con artists. BOC better be getting ALL my money. I turned around and realized that there were only going to be about 10,000 people squeezed into Texas Ave. at a maximum. This is far down from the 20,000+ that was at the street festival last year when I saw BOC open for Styx. I began to worry about what BOC would think when they hit the stage. Did they know a fucking little band of con artists that can’t play music was their opening act? Had someone cleared that with them? I was embarrassed on behalf of the city of El Paso. I just hoped BOC could forgive us. The last thing I wanted was for them to say, “Fuck this place” and never come back. Finally, I began to panic: would they even come out on stage at this point? Shit, I couldn’t blame them if they were sitting on a side street, watching that fiasco and decided, “fuck this boys, we’re gone”.
So as my mind was reeling and I was hating on those accursed midgets I didn’t even notice that my crew had led me over to the other side of the audience. It was balls hot where we were standing and they thought it might be cooler more towards the middle of the street. This was the turning point of my night and the final catalyst for what was now a full blown outbreak of BDMH because while I was deep in thought, I met a man who would end up being my best buddy for the rest of the night.
He was 47 years old and from Arizona (I think). He had a little woman up in New Mexico but she couldn’t come down for the show. He was about my height but in much better shape… like he either worked out or he worked good, hard manual labor during the day.
I first met his acquaintance as he was trying to work his magic on the women in our group (he was standing just to the let of us). He’s advances were crude at best and it was pretty apparent to everyone but himself that none of the women were impressed. Even after he invited us to his house after the show to party he could get no takers of the female persuasion. At the time I didn’t question why a man from Arizona had a house in El Paso… I didn’t even question it when he took out his hotel room key later in the night and asked if anyone wanted to go party in his hotel room. But the ladies picked up on it quickly and dubbed him as bad news.
This signal from the women, though, I did get especially after the following conversation:
My new buddy: Hey, I’d like to (fuck) those girls (the ones with me, Jack, and Mike).
Me: I bet!
A few moments later, when his short attention span was distracted elsewhere, I turned to two of the women with us and said:
Me: You know, if you play your cards right you could end up with that guy tonight!
The Girls: (Laughter)
Me: I’m serious, he just told me he wants to fuck you.
The Girls: You’re kidding. He did not.
Me: He most certainly did.
The Girls: (Cackling, slightly nervous, a bit horrified).
It was at that point that I realized I’d have to keep myself between my new buddy and the girls for the rest of the night. No worries.
Somewhere during all this drama, BOC hit the stage. I was pleased that they didn’t just bail on us. That just shows you the kind of stand up guys they are.
They opened with “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” which I thought was strange yet awesome at the same time. After the initial orgasm of rock I realized that Allen Lanier was missing. He is the band’s 3rd guitarist / key board player. There was some slightly overweight, boring looking white guy with bad facial hair in his place. This kind of saddened me because that brought the original BOC number down to just two: Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma. Now, if you were only going to have two left those would be the two you would want, for sure, but still…
In addition, the bass player from last year was missing. In his place was Rudy Sarzo, most famous (in my eyes) for playing with Ozzy for awhile.
But let me tell you, BOC rocked hard, as usual. And all the fuel of beer and hatred of mini-KISS left me in an overly aggressive mood (Ah, the old BDMH). As my buddy and I were sharing stories of how much we loved BOC, something very awesome happened on stage and I ended up punching my buddy in the shoulder as a result. At the time, this seemed like a normal, meatheaded bonding kind of thing. And I was right as my buddy seemed to love it as he returned my punch with a big, old fashioned high five.
So that was the mode of operation for the rest of the show, I would punch my buddy in the shoulder, or grab his shoulders and shake him violently, and he would turn around and give me huge high fives. As the night wore on, my punches got harder and harder but he didn’t seem to mind. We were fast friends.
Song, after song, BOC rocked the crowed out. It was truly a good show (I’ll mention more of it at the end when I post the set list). Mike was desperately waiting to hear “Godzilla” and when it finally came on I swung around and punched him in the shoulder. I think he thought it was a bit odd because our crew is not the meathead type. But he is an old headbanger from the 80’s and I think he had reverted back into that mentality during the show so he didn’t really mind. At one point I tried the same move on Jack, who recoiled in horror as I tried to punch him. Jack is certainly not the meathead type and probably never saw the true West Virginia hillbilly that I am when I’m chocked full of beer and venom. Well, he did that night.
But alas, as quickly as the show started, it seemed to end. Shortly thereafter, I lost touch with my new buddy. Things were moving quickly now as I was to the point in my drunkenness where memory starts to become less than reliable and time moves in strange patterns. We were suddenly back at the bar (which was now closed) and we contemplated continuing the party. But I was tapped out. Between the beer, the heat, all the punching, and getting my ass rocked off I had no more to give.
Another BOC show in the books, complete with massive amounts of beer and rock and roll. It just can’t get better than that.
-David
As promised, here is the set list with a few other thoughts:
1) This Ain’t the Summer of Love
A really interesting choice to open with. At first I thought it an odd choice but quickly realized it was genius.
2) O.D.’d on Life Itself
Fucking awesome song.
3) Burnin’ For You
One of my all time favorites (top 5 for sure)
4) Shooting Shark
Really happy they played this one again this year as last year I had to take a piss during this song. I waited in line for like 25 minutes last year trying to piss. Thank god this song is like 600 minutes long.
5) ME 262
A really nice surprise. Love it.
6) Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll
Probably my all time favorite. FUCKING ROCKED HARD.
7) Golden Age of Leather
Never heard them do this one that I can recall.
8) Last Days of May
Biggest surprise of the concert. I love this song and it sounded GREAT live.
9) Godzilla
You gotta love it. Mike sure does.
10) Don’t Fear the Reaper
The fan favorite. Some knucklehead brought a cowbell with him and fired it up during the song. I wanted to pound that fucktard into the asphalt but he was too far away and I was just too drunk to move.
11) Hot Rails to Hell (encore)
Love the song but this really startled me. This is the first time I can remember that Reaper wasn’t their encore. So they get big points for switching it up. What was even stranger was they let the new Allen Lanier replacement sing the song. I’m not sure why. At the time I wondered if someday Eric or Buck will leave the band and they are grooming this guy to take over the vocal work? Say it ain’t so.
Long Live BOC!
