Best overdose I ever saw at a rock show was in San Francisco at some inner city commune called The Farm. It was staffed by old hippies and full of hardcore punk kids. This was the mid eighties and I remember the punk band MDC was on going on about capitalism and dead cops while off message right in front of the stage about half a dozen skinheads were slapping the shit out of one of their brethren who’d apparently done a little too much junk. One would grab him by the collar of his leather jacket and give him a full bodied crack across the face. Another would give him a crack across the face the other way. Each took their turn slapping him and finally after a maybe a dozen blows he came to. Best practices, I guess. They yanked him up and walked him around on rubbery legs, dropping him once or twice. Eventually he was sort of standing on his own, while they were trying to slam dance and falling down. By then there was some band from Seattle on with a gorgeous singer and one of the skins tried to yank her into the pit by her ankles and she brained him with the mike stand. He went down hard, bleeding profusely, but I don’t think he noticed, he was up again, laughing and wobbling and giving her shit and fell down again, blood everywhere. His friends dragged him out by his collar and tried to staunch the bleeding with a band shirt they stole off the merchandise table. About that time I said let’s get out of here and on the way out a kid in an MDC shirt cajoled a buck out of me for a Revolutionary Worker. Make sure to read what Chairman Avakian says about the fascist war on drugs, he said. I said I would. All drugs should be legal, he said. Sure, I said, why not.