RAR was a traveling caravan from hell. MDC had their own van. fixed for touring with a loft and all the comforts of punk a rock touring band . We had a van but it was not all fixed up and was bare bones. I;m not sure if DRI had a van or not. some of the travelers had cars and the Crucifucks were stuck on the Big yellow sschool bus which had the cooking things used by the staff of RAR. some guy...a driver or omething..a tall kinny long haired hippy dude had his baby on the tour. a little kid, maybe three...always in a filthy diaper. dogs, weed, lots of different types of us were there. the big guy with huge hair that i had seen on stage doing, i think, a sound check, when i walked in the club the first night was a poet...of sorts. doing spoken ord while playing a little cassieo key board thing....i remember he had a clothes hanger tangle in his hair....and a very skinny wife that waited on him handd and foot. what a couple! i really can't remember past that. to many people for the project. the agreement being the staff would provide a place for the band to stay and feed you two meals a day.the first night we met a woman who was the tour manager named Christy. I think she hated us due to MDC insiting e be added to the line up. e ere nothing but an added head ache to her. she a nice enough but i could tell she could be scary if needed. Allen, her partner, was the sound man. skinny, buzzed hair and cute guy. both were a little spactic, but nice. after the show Chisty told us they had lined up for us to stay at the apartment of one of the local club promoters. it sounded ok to us. He told us he lived in a walk up old building in downtown cicncinati. the club got pretty croded and at the end of the night e lokked and looked but couldn't find him. everyone was in the van waiting and Debbie was searching for him all over the place.. hen he came back to the van another guy aswith her. he told u he lived at the same place and could guide us there. the other guy had already left he said. somehow during the night Debbie had twited her leg and poped her knee out of place....she literately had to pop it back in order to walk. her leg was killing her. as e pulled up to the old, what looked like an abandoned office building, we asked the guy, "people live here?". "Oh, yeah, it's the best squat in town".
Oh, boy, i though....the cops are going to come and beat me and drag me to a Cincinnati prison.
everyone grabbed their bag and headed to thee door. Poor Debbie was mortified when we saw the endless stairs ahead of us. like, hundreds of stairs. 5 floors up. the room was big but very dusty and messy. Debbie and i yelled, "we get the bed". since her leg was so fucked up no body put up a fight. Glen, and Buxf piled sleeping bags at the end of the bed and Pat wasleeping in the van.
a huge window was right at the head of the bed with a long ripped up curtain hanging above us. the as a fight eh Glen stole Debbie's pillow in the middle of the night. but the real fight was with the window and curtain. a huge rain storm movedd in and i was awaken with rain blowing through the glassless window and the long curtain had some how blown around me and Debbe both sort of tying us together in a wet knot. after untying the roap like thing and moving the bed we slept till the sun was shining through the same window. i had to pee really bad. i had no idea where a bathroom was, but went looking. the place was so different in the light of day than the night before. it was a hughe old office building. no electricity and when i found the toilit in a dusty hallway and lifted the lid i saw theplace also had no water. a dry toilit with piles of shit in it looked at me. more than making me sick i couldn't wait for Debbie to see it. i pissed in the filty sink and went back to the room where everyone was gettin up. hangovers and a sence of wanting out of the place hit us all at the same time. Debbie's knee was better and we all filed down the stairs to a balmy morning. hot and steamy and ready to go.
the plan was to meet the rest of the crew a some address we had gotten the night before. and to have our first breakfast with the whole bunch.
who knew that some kind person had donated thousands of Turkey Dogs to the Yippie to feed us. thousands. not being a variegation at the time i had a fw with some white bread offered. MDC ere very political with their no meat policies so they had a huge bag of carrots and a juicer supplied by the RAR staff. so while they were buzzing their carrots and drinking their juice the rest of us were downing turkey dogs and while bread. soon we were all off the the next city where some poor kid had agreed to put u all up....the surprise came to him qnd his horrified parents when a school bus, 4 or five vans and about 50 or so freaks piled out to rock against everybody.