Stepping up to the plate.
The overall realization within the punk and hardcore scene
was that it couldn’t sustain the momentum from the early 80s. The raw energy element
had grown progressively thin by the later part of mid-80s. The overall punk
aesthetic had morphed away from its center in terms of music, dress, and
attitude, and started mixing with other genres of music. By 1987, playing punk
and hardcore was regarded as passé and frowned upon. In a conversation I had
with Karl Alvarez (Descendents/ALL) concerning the stylistic changes in the
80s, he said something to the effect of how every band had changed sounds and
moved away from punk, with the exceptions of his band and DOA who had both
weathered the storm and continued playing punk non-stop for thirty plus
years.
On Minor Threat’s posthumous Salad Days 7” EP in 1985, vocalist Ian MacKaye scrutinized changes
within the scene through an introspective recollection on the record’s title
cut: “Wishing for the days when I first wore this suit, baby has grown older, it's
no longer cute.” Similar sentiments were echoed in other bands songs including
Dag Nasty’s “Never Go Back” on their debut Can
I Say LP: “I'm looking at pictures and I'm thinking of those times, those
times have changed man, and so have I.”
Dag Nasty represented a stylistic evolution in the punk
scene. Driving at a more tuneful and melodic sound and shying away from the
rough and tough hardcore grit, the members of the band spun from (Minor Threat,
DYS). The resulting sound was what my friends and I started gravitating towards.
When I called Randy “Now” prior to my month-long excursion
to the East Coast to inquire about bringing Dag Nasty and 7 Seconds to Denver,
he was keen on having me bring his bands to Denver. Randy casually asked what
happened to all the older promoters in Denver. I knew for a fact that both Jill
Razer and Headbanger had distanced themselves from the scene and were both done
with promoting punk shows. Honestly, I knew little about booking shows. I simply
played in bands and had learned a few tricks of the trade by observing Jill and
Headbanger. I naively approached the task with the attitude thinking promoting
would be an cinch.
I called my buddy Steve Cervantes, an old school LA Punk
transplant living in the foothills of Denver, to see if he wanted to help me
bring Dag Nasty to town. We were already collectively publishing our fanzine FlipOff -a nod to his homies who
published Flipside back in Whittier.
Becoming concert promoters seemed like a logical extension of our photocopied
rag. While bands like the Germs, up until Minor Threat, was more his generation
of punk, Steve was pretty open and excited by newer bands. To bring Dag Nasty and
promote the show, we agreed I would do most of the legwork. His main interest
in our joint adventure would be to help out financially. Steve had a real job,
a wife, and was almost ten years my senior. He took me under his wing and
shared stories about his involvement in the early days of Southern California
punk. Steve gave me that push I needed to become a promoter and later, the
encouragement to start a record label.
In late July, Dag Nasty rolled into town. I had secured the
DAV Hall on East Colfax Avenue in Aurora plus a PA system for the event. The
veterans running the hall were a bit skeptical when the punk rockers started
trickling in. They asked for reassurance that kids wouldn’t sneak in alcohol or
doing drugs in or near the venue. My high school pal, “Billy Idol” Brett agreed
to work security. Brett’s task was to make sure no one damaged the PA or knock
holes in the bathroom walls, and to keep booze off the property.
An hour after the show started, Steve and I were on edge
because the band had a $750 dollar guarantee, but we barely pulled in $600 at
the door. We were desperate for more people. Stepping out of the venue scanning
the sidewalks on Colfax Avenue, hoping to spot a lost punk rocker looking for
the show. We still had to pay for the PA and the hall. On top of that, the band
was late, they finally showed up thirty minutes before they were scheduled to
go on.
The bassist of the group, Doug Carrion, got out of the van
with no apologies, nothing. The other guys piled out and wanted to start
unloading. Doug sniffed me out pretty well, sensing he had the upper hand. He
told his guys to stop unloading and demanded we pay them $750 before playing
their set or they were going to get back in the van and drive to the next town.
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The first show I promoted. Mohican Youth was a made-up band "Toledo" Pat and I created but never materialized. Collection of the author. |
This was the time I wished that I had had the wisdom of
Headbanger or Jill. The conversation might have gone like this: “All we have is
$500. Take or leave it.” I knew their next gig would be at least a nine-hour
drive in either direction. $500 for relatively unknown band in a market like
Denver was killer money. Instead, the way the real conversation unfolded was: Doug,
Steve, and I walked over to the payphone near the club, called, and woke up
their booking agent Randy “Now” on the East Coast. After passing around the
phone for five minutes, we finally settled on a price and hung up. The three of
us walked across the street to an ATM, and Steve withdrew money. We handed Doug
$650. Back at the venue, Doug gave the rest of the band the green light to
unload. The only parts I remembered about the band’s set was when they blew out
the venue’s fuse box a couple of times. In the end, no smashed bathroom walls, no
broken bottles. The kids had a great time, everyone got paid, but we lost our
collective financial ass. I could hear Headbanger and Jill singing, “Welcome to
the club.” Steve and I vowed we wouldn’t let another band take advantage of us
like this again.
About a month later, the 7 Seconds show was set for the same
DAV Hall. The morning of the show, I arrived to drop off the remainder of the
deposit. One of the grumpy veterans told me he didn’t like the way we had moved
the American flag off the stage the last time we had a show there He complained
that the bottom corner of the flag had touched the ground. Of course, I
apologized profusely. He disappeared into the back office and emerged with my
initial deposit. “Sorry, we won’t be able to host your bands here tonight.” I
raced over to the payphone and called Steve at work to tell him what had transpired
with the venue. I drove home in a panic and flipped through the Yellow Pages,
calling every hall and lodge in the hope that one would come through.
Dave Clifford in his fanzine Given Time wrote: “7 Seconds actually showed, and it was a good
thing. Bob Rob was almost in tears trying to find a place for the show, and
luckily, the American Legion, run by the drunkest hick I’ve ever seen, let him
do it there.” 7 Seconds and Justice League arrived early at my parent’s house.
While my mom cooked and served the bands a late lunch, I told them what had
happened in that morning. I was upfront when I asked them not to have high
expectations in regards to people showing up and/or getting paid very much. 7
Seconds was cool and told me that anything towards gas would help; they just
wanted to play for the kids.
We caravanned from Aurora across Denver to the
out-of-the-way American Legion Hall at the edge of Arvada. The punk rock phone
tree and last minute flyering paid off: nearly 200 kids made it out to the
show. My partner Steve’s favorite part of the evening was the handful of
drunken old veterans piling out of the bar behind the main hall hooting,
hollering, and dancing.
Sigh… It was time
to make the donuts again, but more like recoup money from putting on shows. Any
sensible person would have chalked up the losses and moved on. Instead, my
stubbornness propelled me dig deeper, and further entrench myself into the
realm of Denver punk. I dropped in at the donut shop and asked my manager for
my old job back. Considering the lack of applicants flooding through the door
hoping to land a graveyard shift frying donuts all night, she obliged. I signed
some paperwork and was back at work the same night.
I felt slightly pathetic returning to my former job. I
started thinking about several of my high school friends who were packing up
and moving on to college. Then I thought about my coworkers, especially the
baker who had trained me. At the ripe old age of 35, he had a reputation within
the company and was respected by everybody. He was my sensei, the donut sage...
I imagined myself with his sort of clout: a five star, go-nowhere, flipping
donuts in the fryer in the middle of the night at 35. Fuck that! I just promoted
a couple of punk shows and came off a 4,000-mile mind-blowing road trip. That
first night back was a heavy dose of what I was returning to; it was the moment
of clarity I needed. There was definitely more to life than living in the
confines of Aurora, Colorado.
A couple of days later, I surprised my dad by telling him I
wanted to enroll in fall courses at the Community College of Aurora. He was
skeptical, but agreed to pay the tuition. (He didn’t think I would last more
than a semester.) The trick would be to juggle a full load of college courses
plus a fulltime job while promoting shows. Making donuts was the sacrifice, but
it was the ticket, which allowed me to actively bring bands to Denver and
eventually put out records.
The Changing of the Season
In the fall of 1987, I started making new friends in the
scene. Arnold from the Acid Pigs approached me and asked if I would be
interested in starting a new band with him and Jack of the Pigs. My former
band, Idiots Revenge, had played together with them the year before. They were
cool guys, and I dug their music, so I jumped at the opportunity to play bass
in what was to become Short Fuse.
During the same time, through the shows I was promoting, I
had became closer friends with Dave Clifford who played in Deviant Behavior in
Boulder and a skater kid named Rich Jacobs from the Denver Tech area. I
regarded the pair as the posi-straight edge crew. Although I wasn’t straight
edge at the time, I admired what they were doing. Seeing people waste away in
the drug and booze haze of the Denver scene had become counter productive to
the creative process of making music. I latched on to Dave and Rich because
they brought the fresh and raw energy the scene needed. We all looked up to
what was going on with Dischord Records in Washington DC and admired their
tight, cohesive, and self-supporting scene. We collectively imagined something
along those lines happening in Denver.
The impetus for bringing like-minded positive kids together
was the violence we were witnessing at shows and the adverse musical directions
bands appeared to be taking. At the time speed-metal and paisley-hair rock was well
underway. We wanted to move away from that and become immersed in music played
with sincerity with a message. The group of kids who were mainly responsible
for setting the stage for an emerging positive youth crew movement in the
Denver/Boulder area were the 8 Flights Up/Splat! kids attending CU Boulder.
They had tried to create a space and movement centered on positivism, living a
substance-free life style, and aspects of vegetarianism.
Bands echoing positive sentiments were gathering momentum
all over the country in pockets like suburban New York City and Southern
California. While 7 Seconds represented the old guard, even their sound evolved
while they continued speaking on topics of equality, unity, and personal
matters. Kids across America and Europe were picking up on this growing
movement bands like 7 Seconds helped foster. New bands were popping up all over
the map, and the kids were creating networks via touring, fanzines, and
word-of-mouth.
My friend and I were swept up and excited by this infectious
transformation. I was telling Rich about starting a record label to document
music from Denver, along the lines of what Duane Davis of Wax Trax did, by releasing
local bands on his Local Anesthetic label. Of course, there were other regional
labels out there just as inspiring: Dischord Records in Washington DC and Touch
and Go in the Midwest. Rich told me I should just go for it. Since the records
would be financed by my donut-making paychecks, we deemed it appropriate for
the label to be known as Donut Crew Records.
Rich and I thought the first release should be a 7” EP
compilation showcasing newer, less established bands we already knew and were
friends with. I called a couple of groups I had helped with shows such as, End
of Story and Acid Pigs. Rich’s band, Atomic Dilemma, and his newer, straight
edge group, Keep In Mind each wanted to contribute a track. Although, our
recently put together Short Fuse band was relatively new, we recorded one of
our songs for the record too. The project came together and was released in
early 1988.
By 1988, most of the people and bands that had been part of
the early ‘80s Denver punk scene had changed musical direction or dropped out.
Several scenesters had moved away to college or enter the workforce. My buddy
Shawn befriended Choke from Slap Shot and wanted to bring the group to town for
a New Year’s Eve show. We tried to collectively book them, but the show never
materialized. As a consolation prize, Shawn and his brother booked rooms at the
Westin Hotel in Downtown and invited Slap Shot to ring in the New Year with us…though
the guys in band were straight edge. After downing several beers chased by
bottles of Dom Perignon, Choke and company escorted Shawn and me to the toilet
to vomit our indulgence. After worshipping the porcelain god, Shawn came up
with the motto to start off the New Year: “Straight Edge in 88!” Giving up the
booze made sense at the time plus most of my more recent friends already
abstained from any sort of vices. It was time for me to move in that direction too
and concentrate on booking shows and putting out records.
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