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First Tour 1985We got letters back from people who had heard our demo. A guy named Brad wrote from Boise. If we played a gig in his garage he'd pay us $200. So we started making a lot of phone calls and got other gigs in Reno, Portland, and Ashland, Oregon. I asked Mom and Dad if we could use the Country Squire station wagon to go on our first tour, they said O.K. I had broken the rear window a month earlier, so we taped some plastic over it, threw our amps in the back, and took off for Reno. We stayed at some guy's house after the Reno gig. He wouldn't let us invite any girls back to his apartment. Someone snuck a girl in anyway and in the morning snuck her out again. The guy found her underwear, got mad and kicked us out. In Boise we played Brad's garage. He made flyers and all the Boise punkers were there. There was a keg of some cheap beer. If I remember correctly, there was always a keg of some cheap beer. After the show Brad gave us all $50 he collected and said sorry about the rest of the money, he was broke.We played in Portland at a club called the Satyricon. The other band was called the Oily Bloodmen. Rich, the singer said that we could crash out at his place. As soon as we got back to his house, he started telling us stories about fucking little boys with baseball bats and crazy murders. Erik was scared of his house so he slept in the car. Rich turned out to be a good friend who for years would come see us when we would play in Portland. In Ashland we played with a band called Society Threat. All 40 punks from the town showed up and then we all went to someone's house for an after gig party. That was the first time of what became a customary let's-play-get-drunk-and-take-hallucinogenics trip to Ashland. That was the last show of that tour. We had no gig, but stopped anyway in San Francisco on the way back to LA. A cop hassled us for taking up a parking spot and just hanging out on the sidewalk. Our roadie at the time explained that it was our first time in 'Frisco'. The cop said first of all, it's not 'Frisco', it's 'San Francisco', and we don't want to get off to a bad start with a ticket so we'd better move along.
Erik quitsErik moved away to Santa Barbara so he wasn't going on the next tour. We found a drummer named Scott to replace him. Before we left LA we wanted to fill up the tank with gas, so we all reached into our pockets. Scott was leaving LA with only six dollars. What a dumbass.
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First U.S. Tour 1985Mike sold his car and bought a Dodge van for us to tour in. I can't recall how many times that van broke down. We eventually replaced everything under the hood. It was also kind of a cop magnet. We got hassled by cops everywhere we went. Maybe it was the huge NOFX spray painted graffiti style on the side. Lesson learned.There weren't that many places we could play. If we had a gig at a recreation center in Lincoln and nothing for days until Madison, we would play a basement party at some very nice or naïve person's house the next night, and then sleep on their floor for a week. We would play in front of hardly any people for whatever gas money, beer money or no money we could get. Mike booked us one entire summer tour playing only house parties. You buy the keg, charge two bucks for a cup, and give us the $60 you collected.
Scott joinsWe needed another drummer 'cuz Scott moved to San Diego, so we found another guy named Scott to play drums.Dave joinsWe also tried out and took on a singer. His name was Dave Allen.Winter 1985We toured the southwestern U.S. with the band Entropy, and played a couple of shows with Scared Straight and the Grim. We were a four piece again, and, with our roadies and girlfriends in tow were 12 people in that Dodge van. One night we all slept in the van and the condensation built up and froze under the ceiling. In the morning when the sun came up it melted the ice and made rain on us inside the van. We played a show on New Year's eve in Dallas and during our set I put down my guitar to fight with a skinhead. That was the end of that show.
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