Monday, September 15, 2008

That first Consumers gig, the one at the cowboy bar

I wish like hell I could remember the name of the cowboy bar where I booked the Consumers first show. I can see it pretty extraordinarily clearly in my mind's eye, I can see that one guy's body flying though the air as I stood by the front door, I can see him landing against that pickup truck's rear wheel with his neck all crumpled in and under, and I can seem him laying there twitching. I just can't remember the name of the damn place.

It was over on the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Camelback Road, and it had a little parking lot in the front, but you entered from the rear. Which was not to say that it was anything like a gay cowboy bar — my bet is there wasn't any such a thing in all of Arizona in them days, buckaroo, and you probably would've got your ass whipped (the old-fashioned regulation way) for even just suggesting any such a thang. But one of the things that intrigues me is that it was sometime in the most ridiculously hot part of the summer of 1977 that we did this, and it was six months or so later that the Sex Pistols tour of the US visited such spots as Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio, and the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas. I think the point is that we just knew. The information was in the music and the culture and the moment. We knew that we wanted it to be more confrontation than concert. We just couldn't know how it would play out.


2 comments:

bobc said...

the Mantiki

Nasrudin said...

Whoa!
Dan!
Dude!
Where ya' at!?
Give me a holler....

Damn straight — the Mantiki!!!

(Boy, was that ever ironic!)

Funny that all these knuckleheads seem convinced that it was the Zoo.... which came later....


Hope you're well and swell and all....