Smokey the Bear, Jeffrey Dahmer, GREEN DAY, THE OXYMORONS, and me...

Grog dug up some flyers the other day -- among them, this one for a punkfest that THE OXYMORONS played with GREEN DAY in 1992 (or thereabouts).

GREEN DAY and THE OXYMORONS were supposed to be the big draws, so GREEN DAY was slated to play last and we were to play right before them. We sat there in some park outside of Milwaukee pretty much all day drinking, listening to one band after another, and talking to people as they came by the van. It was fun for the first few hours, but by 10:00 p.m. or so, I was ready to play and get the hell out of there. We had a six-hour drive to St. Louis in the morning.

This park had a gigantic hot air balloon figure of Smokey the Bear sitting maybe thirty feet from the covered area where the bands were playing. At some point after sundown, somebody slashed it. The police showed up, saw that big expensive bear sagging, and kicked everybody out. So the show got moved to an apartment in Milwaukee occupied by a friend of the kid who had put the festival together.

The apartment was pretty huge and situated on the third floor of a three-story building. The lower two floors, strangely enough, were occupied by an abortion clinic. The building itself was located just a couple of blocks from Jeffrey Dahmer's old apartment building, which was still standing at the time. Dahmer had been arrested just the previous summer, so we all drove by the building and marvelled.

There were a lot of people on hand at the apartment. We decided to go say "hey" to GREEN DAY and offer a handshake to old Billie Joe. No response. Same from the other two members. Then GREEN DAY decided that they MUST go on first so that they could go to bed, even though they were staying in Milwaukee and we and the other band had to be in St. Louis the next day. We explained this and the fact that the crowd would greatly diminish after they played. Their only response was that if they didn't play right then, they were leaving. So we let them go on and, as we expected, when they were done, half the room was gone.

We recognized most of the people who had stayed, so we knew that if we played next, no one would see the last band. So we let them go (they were very cool but I can't remember their name) and ended up starting a six-hour drive to St. Louis at 4 a.m.

GREEN DAY begged and pleaded the owner of the apartment to let them stay there. She said "okay." Somebody put a GRATEFUL DEAD tape in the stereo. GREEN DAY's drummer threw it out the window, and they got kicked out. So they were outside singing "Trucking" and acting like it was no big deal. Then the bass player started sidling over, looking at us like he wanted to give us the privilege of allowing GREEN DAY to sleep in our van. We waved "bye-bye" and high tailed it on to St. Louis.

I heard later that the guy who had organized the show let them stay at his house. This guy lived with his parents. GREEN DAY showed up at 6 a.m. and promptly set about dying their hair in the guy's bathroom, getting hair dye everywhere (including the ceiling) and leaving a big turd behind the toilet. Wow. Punk rock, I guess. Anyway, that's the story.

So basically, they were assholes. But, what the hell? Kerplunk, Dookie, and American Idiot are really good records. I guess I just wish I'd never met them.

take care

---Jones()

ps. Grog also sent me the infamous penis flyer. I'll post that in a few days.