The Mighty Warlock Pinchers

You can still order the first Denvoid and the Cowtown Punks book from Amazon by clicking HERE.

From the forthcoming: Denvoid 2: The Colorado Crew due out in Dec. 2019, a short excerpt from our interview with the Warlock Pinchers. 

My introduction to the Warlock Pinchers came by way of the US Post Office. The band must’ve found my address on the first Donut Crew compilation and mailed me a copy of their self-released, This Is The Cobbler And He Hates Your Bellbottoms EP. Once I got past the title and opened the record that’s when I realized that these guys were waging war on the predictability of punk rock and perhaps music in general. An odd assortment of unrelated items spilled out from the off-registered two-color photocopied sleeve. The mess that laid before me was an absolute labor of love and it had my attention.   

I was curious about the music packed inside those grooves and couldn’t wait to set it on my turntable. The song title that initially caught my attention was, James Dean Is An Overrated Asshole. That needed immediate listening. As the record spun I stared at it completely dumbfounded. I looked at the cover then looked at the record then glancing at the pile of coupons, stickers and whatever else the band shoved in the sleeve. After the first side ended. There was still hope for side 2. Nope. It looked punk, but it sounded like bad rap over distorted noise…an instrument for New World Order torture. Aesthetically, it was the best thing to come out of Denver since the Bum Kon or the Frantix EPs. Maybe even better than Tom Headbanger’s handwritten zines and flyers...  

Interview by: Bob Rob (Medina) and Sonny Kay.

Eventually the band became five permanent members. How did the others join?

Andrew: I came in as a percussionist. I would go to the practices and play along with the drum machine. I was into industrial music, stuff like Psychic TV...I can beat on metal. I started doing backing vocals because the band came from seven people where everyone would yell the key words. I would start yelling the key words. Dan was writing, listing to all this rap and he was writing stuff where he could switch-off vocals to a tee. He could write something that was way more complex and play with having two vocalists where you could talk over each other, line to line and overlap. Dan was writing really cool stuff to experiment with vocals.

And Derek?

Derek:  This is kind of out of order, but my first show with WPO was at Penny Lane, and I think we were opening for Again!, Dave Clifford’s band.  Bob, I think you were putting on the show, and wouldn’t let me in without a ticket.  I kept pleading that I was “in the band,” and you finally rolled your eyes, and said, “yeah, sure” and let me in.  That’s the show where we had a squirt bottle filled with acetone for pyrotechnics, and the outside of it caught on fire, and then someone stomped on it, and we basically caught Mark’s drums on fire.  I thought Penny Lane was going to burn down and that I’d be fired.  No more rock n roll fantasy for me.

Dan: Our crew was Smedley's Van and the Warlock Pinchers. We'd try to play shows together whenever we could. They had a goofy sense of humor like we did, but they were doing something different musically.

Derek: I think the thing we all had in common was a combination of openness to - and interest in - everything, but at the same time an initial and total lack of respect for everything.  Things sucked unless proven otherwise.  Smedley’s Van wanted to make a whole album that sounded like Led Zeppelin just to show how unnecessary Led Zeppelin was.  It turns out we didn’t have the skills, and somehow ended up writing “Psycho Santa” which is even more sad because we were trying to recreate “Ghetto Defendant” with the Allen Ginsberg voice-over stuff (which we loved!).  So yeah, a long way of saying we had the same ethos.

Eric: I was a few years ahead of them at CU. A friend told me that this band the Warlock Pinchers were playing a party at my old house and that I should go check them out. It was amazing. Around the same time, I was helping Michelle Clifford out at the Program Council at CU booking bands at Quigley's. I was up at in the office of Program Council when Mark came around when the 7" was finished. Mark gave me a copy. I was always into the punk rock do it yourself thing. I was booking a show for Steel Pole Bathtub at Quigley's. At the show I told Mark it would cool to have a band with two bass players. Mark was like, "Well maybe, yeah."

Dan: I wasn't around for that conversation, but I definitely heard about it after the fact. Mark said, "We have a show at Quigley's” and the day of the show I got diagnosed with mono so I couldn't do the show. I couldn't sing. I think that's the day Eric was talking to Mark about that, because after that Mark goes, "I was talking to this guy Eric and he wants there to be two bass players in the band" I went, "Ok"

Eric: After that we practiced in the basement Dan's parents’ house in Louisville. I drove up, joined in at practice and that was it.

Andrew: There was the tour that there was the six of us.

Derek:  Yes, we did overlap for one show!  Salt Lake at whatever that awesome place was.  We were naked except for Brian and his dog food wrap… I think that’s the trip where I remembered that I forgot my guitar when we were north of Fort Collins.  I’m still sorry about that…

I think a lot of people underestimate the influence of the book, Pranks at the time. It was literally a how-to guide for culture jamming. 

Andrew: It sort of gives you permission to lie and do whatever. Also, trying to get shows on tour, you had to have a manager. But, of course we can't afford a manager. No club wants to talk to the guy in the band. So we had a fake manager. His name was Wil Wheaton. It was ridiculous because no one ever realized that Wil Wheaton was a child actor.

Dan: That came about by playing with the Butthole Surfers. They had the teen magazine in their dressing room. They were looking through them and there's all these pages with Wil Wheaton and their drummer Teresa said Mark looked like Wil.

Mark: I did!

Andrew: Since we didn't get sued by Tiffany, we weren't going to stop there, let's just say we got sued by Tiffany. So we made a press release and Wil Wheaton sent it out to all Denver’s media. We made a fake logo from Tiffany’s manager and put it on letterheads and everybody called. The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Campus Press Westword, Colorado Daily...They all called, wanting to interview us. I had this wall of Tiffany posters and flyers and magazine clippings and I had Tiffany shoe, which I totally made up. It wasn't her shoe. Yes, I did meet her, yes, I did interview her. So we fuck-up the interview and it sounds totally fake and I say I got her shoes which I got on clearance somewhere and I have this Tiffany stamp from a Columbia House mailer which I licked and put on the shoe. So I said Tiffany gave me her shoes when I interviewed her because she didn't want them anymore. It's all true, I'm a Tiffany fan but then I lied about the shoes for no reason. Lied about things that don't matter. The press is interviewing us and Wil Wheaton is not around...

Derek: Before Eric interrupts, I’ll just point out at that this point I’m still not in the band, but I’m living with Mark and Andrew and “Wil”.  You can’t imagine how much fun it was to answer the phone, trying to figure out as fast you could who was trying to call for whom and what to say/do in those split seconds.  Some kind of crazy chess game where we got to make up the rules as went along.  I’m still not quite sure how pulling a prank differs from just being an asshole, but it was a blast.

Eric: This is a good place to interrupt! I had an awkward encounter with Gil Asakawa form Westword because I was working at Wax Trax then. He came in asking about the Warlock Pinchers because they just got the press release and he was all hot to write this story about sticking up for the little guy. He was asking me and I was trying not to let him know I was in the band. It was actually Mike Serviolo who told him to talk to me. He asked me about Wil. So I had to face-to-face lie to him about Wil Wheaton. I told him "I don't know where he is." I guess I lied well enough because Gil's Westword story was one of the few to go to press before the lid came off our scam.

Acid Pigs and Short Fuse tour diary 1988

During the summer of 1988, I went on my first ever rock-n-roll tour with a band. Below is the tale of wide-eyed teens and musical instruments crammed into two vehicles traveling through the midwest and east coast. Still available: Denvoid and the Cowtown Punks: A Collection of Stories From the '80s Denver Punk Scene Click on the link to order a copy. http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com  

The Acid Pigs/Short Fuse split EP was released in the spring of 1988. Maximum RocknRoll gave the record a favorable review, plus Kaleidoscope and Caroline-two East Coast companies were distributing it. Since I had established a few East Coast connections, I thought it would be ideal for both bands to hit the road together. I brought up the idea of a Midwest/East Coast tour with Arnold, who played guitar in both bands. He was into it. After we convinced all the members of both bands to suspend their normal lives for the month of July, I devoted the remainder of late spring to booking our tour by calling and sending out promo kits to prospective clubs and promoters. The method behind my madness would be to cram eight people plus instruments into a Ford Bronco and an old VW van.

The Acid Pigs/Short Fuse Summer of 88 East Coast tour started with a hiccup; Short Fuse’s vocalist Todd was scheduled to fly into Denver’s Stapleton International Airport at 6:30 on the eve of our first show. Once he arrived, the plan was to pull an all-nighter and drive to Lawrence, Kansas. After waiting around for a bit, an announcement over the intercom informed us his flight would be delayed an hour. By the time 8:00 rolled around, the gate agent announced the flight had been diverted to Colorado Spring and was scheduled to land around 9:00. The agent assured us the passengers would be bussed to Denver.

Acid Pigs/Short Fuse Record Release show. Collection of Author.

The coach bus finally pulled into the airport parking lot a little after 11:00. Todd, with his meager carry-on bag, was ready to hit the road. We got into the Bronco and headed east on the stormy I-70 for the next nine hours. We were both wired from dining on Gatorade and sugary snacks from gas station gourmet isles. The drive was quiet with an occasional stretch of rain showers and lightning storms on the distant and flat horizon. We played padiddle, the road game that involves looking for trucks and cars with one headlight then punching your opponent in the arm to curb our boredom.  

Daylight broke just as we pulled into the sleepy college town of Lawrence. The air was thick, and the ground was still wet from the previous night's rain. We were both beat, and all we wanted to do was stretch out and catch a little sleep. After crawling through downtown, Todd spotted a park with a gazebo. I commented that we had just stepped into an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. We parked, found our pillows, and slept under the shade and safety of the gazebo until later that morning.

In the early afternoon, we headed over to The Outhouse, the club we would be playing at later that night. We were scheduled to open for the seminal SoCal punk band, The Vandals. The Outhouse is an infamous, tiny, one-room structure converted into a club a few miles outside of town in the middle of a cornfield. The Acid Pigs had already arrived by the time we showed up. They told Todd and me they had found young pot plants in the back of the club. A couple of Acid Pigs drove to the convenience store down the road to nuke the plants in a microwave to dry the leaves to smoke them. It was a long and hot summer day with little else to do. The excitement didn't get underway until The Vandals arrived in their posh Winnebago. They introduced themselves and handed us a brick of bottle rockets to fire them off at each other in the parking lot.

After loading in, Short Fuse set up on stage last because we were the opening band. Our soundcheck was horrible. I walked out of the club around dusk, and there were a couple of skinheads acting as sentries, standing on the wooden posts waving American flags at the entrance to the club. 

By the time we hit the stage, it was dark and 80 degrees with punishing humidity. The heat made us insane; we played like demons writhing on the ground drenched with sweat. The Acid Pigs played a rocking set. After the show, we met some people who were having a party at their house, and they offered to let us stay there. Everyone in the bands slept well, and we woke up to a hearty breakfast prepared by our host.

The following afternoon, we loaded up our vehicles and said our goodbyes. The Acid Pigs needed gas and pulled into a nearby station. After filling up then waiting to cross the intersection to catch up with us, a motorcycle behind them impatiently tried to pass. Unfortunately, their VW bus sideswiped the bike. The doomed motorcyclist lay on the ground unconscious, bleeding from the head wound; Jack of The Acid Pigs took off his shirt and wrapped it around the guy. The police and the ambulance finally arrived and rushed the cyclist to the hospital. The roadie/driver roadie was issued a ticket. This incident set the tone for the remainder of the tour.

Mini tour stickers posted on gas pumps and in payphones booths across America.  

Collection of Author.

We finally escaped Lawrence during rush hour and headed into the darkness of I-70. Hours later, outside of St. Louis on the opposite westbound lanes, Todd and I spotted the burning cab of a semi-truck with the silhouette of the trapped driver inside among the flames. It was a terrible sight. We coined our tour as “The Tour of Death.” We pulled into town and met up with the other van. It was time to put this day behind us.

None of us had ever been to St. Louis, so we thought we should visit the Gateway Arch and check out record stores. I wanted to get a pulse on what people did at night for fun. One record store employee told me he and his friends watch the folks in East St. Louis use the wood from boarded-up buildings to burn the city down. I waited for the punch line; he never flinched or offered a half-crooked smile. When we left later that evening, we drove east towards the glow of a fire on the horizon. Another wooden building gone, I thought. The record store clerk wasn’t bullshitting after all.  

It was onwards through Illinois, Indiana, and up north to Toledo where "Toledo" Pat was anxiously waiting for our arrival. He and longtime scenester John Stain had booked a show for us, but the venue had fallen through. So Pat scrambled and spent all day trying to find a hall and pleading with people to throw a house party. He eventually convinced a friend, Sinbad, to let us play in his basement.

Toledo flyer. Collection of Author.

The house show was in full swing, minus the brief glitch when the boys in blue stopped by. It was the place to be that Friday night. Pat did a superb job getting the word out and passing out copies of our music. Several people knew our songs, and we played a solid set that night. This would be the best show on the tour.

Unfortunately, The Tour of Death continued in Toledo when we crawled past, rubbernecking like the other cars in front of us, yet another accident. This time the injuries and fatalities were within arms’ reach. It should have been an indication to turn back; the perpetual gloom and carnage were beginning to weigh in. This was coupled with several shows starting to fall through.  

The following night was Detroit. The show came about because we had help from Joe “Hardcore” Picolli, a longtime Detroit scenester, and his brother of Jerome, the original vocalist of The Acid Pigs. The club was called Blondie’s - primarily a heavy metal club on the edge of what seemed like a war zone.

Detroit is a rough town. While I was out picking up a bottle of Gatorade at one of the convenience stores near the club, I experienced my first opportunity to place money into a revolving drawer at a counter completely enclosed by two-inch-thick Plexiglas. A couple of other places we wandered past barred the entrance into the store altogether; you had to ask and point for what you wanted, hand the cashier money through a slot, and then you’d receive your item(s) through a cage-like structure. It could have been a scene from a post-apocalyptic film.  

Short Fuse opened the show, followed by The Acid Pigs, Dave of the Pigs was stoked to be playing on the same stage that some of his favorite heavy metal bands had played on. After our set, I was outside in the driver’s seat of the Bronco, going over paperwork when a huge black guy with a deep gash in his forehead and blood running down the sides of his face put his head on the hood. He looked at me, shouted a couple of words, then stumbled off into the darkness. I cautiously walked back into the club to catch a couple of songs from the headlining band Ugly But Proud. Accompanying them on stage was a vagrant submissively seated in a chair while the band played its loud and aggressive metal-influenced punk. The band kept the man supplied with a brown paper bag of tallboy-sized beers as payment for his mascot services. When he finished one can, a band member would hand him another.

We returned to Toledo for a couple of days before heading towards Philadelphia. Todd's parents lived on the outskirts near Doylestown. The Acid Pigs' van was typically somewhere behind us and somewhat in the vicinity. They were a little more adventuresome and would disappear for days at a time until it was time to meet up for a show. Although we were on tour together, they existed as a separate entity. Our drummer, Warren, was like a kid with two parents who shared joint custody. He would spend half the time with us if he thought he could squeeze a bed and shower out of the deal, but he would tag along with The Acid Pigs for the party component. He was probably the smartest guy between both groups. 

Acid Pigs setlist. Collection of author.

Since we were within throwing distance of Trenton, New Jersey, Todd, Warren, and I drove over to meet up with concert promoter/booking agent Randy Now. Randy was hosting a radio show on the Princeton campus. He invited us to the station for an interview and spun our record. We asked about jumping on a bill at City Gardens. Unfortunately, we were a week late. He could have put us on the D.O.A., ALL, Government Issue show if I had called him earlier.

Regarding our impeding suburban Philly show put together by Todd’s friend Jeff. Jeff was the frontman for the straight edge band Multiple Choice. The venue was Jeff’s family’s barn a couple of townships away from where we were staying. The barn also doubled as sleeping quarters for The Acid Pigs.

The show was booked for a Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, Arnold hit the bottle early, so he could barely stand by the time we attempted to play. We took a stab at running through a couple of songs, but the frustration quickly escalated into fisticuffs. Arnold threw his guitar down and swung in my direction while yelling at me. His rage was the collective anger and irritation from how the tour was unraveling. Shows kept falling through; everyone was running out of money and patience. In retrospect, I did a shoddy job with the booking, and in the end, let down those who had relied on me.

Suburban Philly farmhouse flyer. Collection of the author.

We left the farm and drove to New York City, exploring Manhattan through the car windows for a couple of hours. Warren had a friend outside the city in Peekskill willing to put us up for the night. When we arrived, there was something odd about the kid; he seemed distant and lifeless. We gathered around the kitchen table with his friend’s father, and they started talking about the numerous car accidents his son had been in. Warren’s friend showed us his scars. It turned out the accidents involved drugs. The father just sat there with a look of disappointment and detachment. He interacted with his son like he had given up on him.  

We went out later that night to meet up with the kid’s friends. It was what you might expect from a gathering of bored and disenchanted suburban youth: lots of drinking and rampant drug use with reckless abandonment. We were parked on the cliff overlooking train tracks going into the city. A couple of the kids were carelessly swinging off the dead electrical and telephone wires hanging over the cliff. Everyone continued drinking and getting high while Todd and I watched in disbelief. Then, out of the darkness, I heard someone call out “Bob Rob” and when I turned around, it was a former high school classmate. We talked maybe five minutes before calling it a night. 

Todd and I were ready to bail on this depressing, life-sucking shithole. When we returned to Warren’s friend’s house, we were told how Stephen King based the book Cujo on the kid’s dogs and warned us about the rats in the basement. When Warren went upstairs to stay in his friend’s room, Todd and I half-joked about which one of us was going to sleep outside in the Bronco. Neither of us wanted to sleep in the basement. It was pitch black with no outside light seeping in. We lay flat on the couches with our eyes wide open, taking in all the strange sounds.

The following day was no better. We spent the first part of the afternoon meeting up with a few more of the kid’s friends. We drove to a nearby park so they could score and smoke crack. Afterward they took us for a drive on the winding roads. All I could think about was the accidents the boy’s father had mentioned the evening before. We ended up at a party, but Todd and I just hung out in the car listening to tapes. Warren was throwing a fit because we were acting antisocial. We went off on him and made it clear we were leaving that night. We drove to a payphone, and I called my friend Mark, the drummer for the band Slapshot to see if we could crash at his place in Boston. He made a few calls and put me in touch with Hank, the band’s roadie.

The initial hope for traveling to Boston was for a tentative show, followed by what would perhaps be our biggest gig at the Anthrax in New Haven, Connecticut, opening for DC’s Ignition. Todd, Warren, and I arrived in Boston late in the evening. Hank got us settled before going out. The three of us were beat; we decided to call it a night. We slept on the floor in the living room and the kitchen.

In the middle of the night, Hank's roommate staggered into the kitchen, stepped over me, and bumped into the wall. I sprung up to see a large, drunk, naked man holding his dick in his hand, hovering over me. He gave me a half-cocked glance and, with excitement in his voice, shouted, "Billy Milano! It's fuckin' Billy Milano!" Billy Milano was the singer in the then popular speed metal band Stormtroopers of Death. I was on the verge of shitting myself and frantically shouted, "I'M NOT BILLY! I'M NOT BILLY!" With disappointment in his voice and a limp dick still in hand, he apologized and walked over to the kitchen's back door to urinate off the balcony. On his way back through, he said pitifully, "Sorry, I thought you were Billy."

Indicative of our streak of bad luck, the Boston show didn't materialize, plus The Anthrax show was a couple of days away, and we still hadn't heard from Arnold and the other van. We were worried, considering the numerous accidents we had witnessed. I finally attempted to call Arnold's mom, but without success. The day before the show, I started calling every couple of hours. Finally, well into the evening, eventually, someone answered; it was Arnold on the other end. After a short moment of silence on my end, Arnold matter-of-factly said that he and The Pigs were done touring and had decided to return home. I hung up in disbelief. I walked around Kenmore Square, looking for Todd and Warren to tell them the news

Post-tour: Short Fuse did get back together to give it another shot. Because of the lack of practices Arnold and Todd didn't show put his show. It was the official end of the group. Collection of the author. 

 

From the time we arrived in Boston, we had befriended a guy and hung out with him. We told him our sob story about the tour falling apart. He jumped at the opportunity to get on board with us and offered to play guitar for our Anthrax show. We drove over to his practice space and played him our record. We unsuccessfully attempted to belt out a couple of tunes. It wasn't the same without Arnold, so we decided it was pointless to force the matter. I called the promoter of the Anthrax and left a message that we were canceling the show and the rest of the tour. I also phoned other promoters to relay the same story.

Todd phoned home the same evening and asked his dad, a TWA pilot, to hook him up with a one-way flight back to Philly. The following afternoon, Warren and I drove Todd to Logan International. Now it was only the two of us left with a Bronco packed full of band equipment. Warren and I decided to leave for Denver the following morning. Practically broke, we killed the afternoon bumming around.

The plan was to meet up with "Slapshot" Mark after work and stay at his house. However, that plan was hijacked when I tried to start the Bronco to the sound of a faint buzz. We ruled out the battery since it had been replaced the week before. Luckily Mark came to our rescue with jumper cables. While following him back to his place, the Bronco started to lose power, and by the time we entered a tunnel, the car died completely. Mark continued driving, never to be seen again.

Warren and I jumped out and pushed the Bronco onto what little shoulder there was. There was no way in hell we were sticking around a dead vehicle in a tunnel on a Friday night, so we got the fuck out of there as fast as we could. A tow truck pulled up, the driver told us what the deal was, a non-negotiable situation. The police also came by and wanted to issue me a citation for blocking traffic. The cop and the tow truck driver had a little chat, and it was decided if I gave the tow truck driver $100 in cash, I wouldn't get a ticket. I lost it, mentally checked out, had an out-of-body experience. From what Warren said, I had a total breakdown and blacked out. The only part I remember was shaking and babbling when the tow truck brought us to a garage in Watertown, near where we stayed with Hank. Hank was our savior once again.

Another version of the flyer. Collection of Author.

In the morning, the car mechanic asked a bunch of questions about the equipment in the back of the Bronco. He wanted to know if we were in a famous band and what sort of music we played. We didn’t dare say punk. He asked if we sounded like Aerosmith or The J. Giles Band, two of Boston’s finest, right? The diagnosis was that the electrical system in the Bronco was fried, and it would take him a couple of days to replace it. He and his buddy both laughed at and taunted us for driving a Ford and suggested we buy a Chevy next time.

We were stranded. I began selling off a couple of rare records I had picked up along the way just to feed Warren and me. We were emotionally spent and didn’t leave Hank’s house. My dad wired me $500 for the repairs. When the car was finished on the following afternoon, Warren and I didn't waste any time; we were westbound on I-90 towards Toledo. We arrived in the middle of the night, and I called “Toledo” Pat who had set us up to stay with Dirk from the band Majority Of One.

The following morning, Warren and I made a pact to drive straight back to Denver, no matter what. The only downside was that Warren didn’t drive. We only stopped for fuel and Gatorade. By the time we were in the middle of Nebraska, my eyes couldn’t take looking down the stretch of the interstate any longer. I was losing my mind and seeing double. We pulled into a rest stop so I could regain a bit of sanity with a few hours of sleep on a picnic table. Warren’s allergies didn’t allow him any rest. He shook me in a panic, telling me that he couldn’t breathe. We hit the road without A/C and the windows rolled up because of his allergies.

We arrived at the outskirts of Denver just in time to be punished by stop-and-go rush hour traffic. But, in all fairness, Warren wanted to be dropped off across town in West Denver. So, like an excited child, Warren jumped out of the car and raced into his grandma's house. And just like that, I was alone for the first time in weeks; with an empty nest and cooperative traffic, I merged into the ebb and flow of cars, thinking about the bed waiting for me on the other side of town.  

Edited by Rory Eubank.

Straight Edge in 88: promoting shows and putting out records.

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.

Cover of issue no. 2 to FlipOff. Collection of Author. 

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.

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.  

Some cool kid had made this 7 Seconds flyer that I had to go around and take down because the show was moved. The original flyer I made for the show belong to Rich Jacobs and is featured in All Ages: Reflections On Straight Edge, a book released by Revelation Records. Collection of the author.  

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.

Given Time, a fanzine created and published by Dave Clifford. Collection of the author. 

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.      

Colorado Krew artwork by Rich Jacobs. Collection of the author.

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.

Colorado Krew 7" EP cover. Collection of the author. 

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.  

Edited by Rory Eubank