Wow this thirty band thing. It’s like some kind of plague. Infected, I tried coming up with thirty bands I shared the stage with and all I could come up with was Beatlemania, the Norman Luboff Choir and Corrosion of Conformity. Then I remembered I wasn’t actually on the bill, that was just the line up of the Lollapalooza no one talks about. I was supposed to be on a Gong Show once, sharing the stage with Chuck Barris, but cell phones weren’t invented yet. I played drums for Sky Saxon twice in one night, neither time voluntarily. And I remember once opening for Green Day, they were the 13th band on the bill, we the first. We were so first, in fact, the manager wouldn’t open the doors and our half dozen fans stood outside, listening through a window. Sort of like the sound check we never had.

I did have a guy leap stark naked into my drum kit once. To make things worse he was the guitar player. One of the guitar players. The other was slithering across the stage like a snake. That left me and the bass player, or just the bass player, actually, as there was a naked stoned guitarist flailing about where my drums used to be. I remember another time when the stark naked daughter of the district attorney of Ventura County ran screaming across the floor into my drum kit but didn’t fall in. I don’t remember if I said anything, but I do remember that her rack toms were bigger than mine. Heavy metal sized. An autistic guy fell into my drum kit once.

When this stuff stopped happening I got bored with drumming and became a jazz critic.

I did actually play with Joe Baiza a couple times at Al’s Bar on No Talent Night, but his attorney told me never to mention that. I also opened for Black Flag the very weekend they got arrested for playing punk rock music. In fact, they had just gotten out of jail. The LAPD called them nuisance in publics or something like that. Anyway, they put them in jail and this song is called revenge and it’s for them. It’s not my imagination, I got a gun at my back.