Backstage Stories

I went backstage a lot when I was dating a ballerina.

I met leon redbone backstage once. But he was too drunk to talk to me. His wife/girlfriend was really nice tho. She had a lot to say about Leon's drunkardly ways, which if he were sober enough to have understood, I do not think he woul dhave apprieciated.

My old boss at the record store got backstage at a Cheap Trick show sometime in the early 80s in New Orleans — he was about 19 at the time. He was drunk when he got backstage, and was thoroughly shitfaced by the time Cheap Trick even showed themselves to the people hanging out backstage. As he put it: "I think I barfed on Rick Neilsen. All I remember is looking down at those checkered shoes and feeling really nauseous..."

He woke up a few hours later in a nearby alley with the living shit beat out of him. Some good samaritan guy found him there, helped him up, and took him back to his apartment so he could wake up/clean up/sober up. After my boss had sobered up, the two guys started talking, and eventually discovered that they had been pen pals when they were kids. NO SHIT.

I helped be a stage hand for a few shows even though I had no clue what I was doing. I was an unpaid intern in a shitty venue's talent department if you must know, so I needed some cash.

While I guess I got to be backstage for all of these things, as they were all in venues that were large enough to have actual backstages, the only backstagey thing that I ever walked into was a near double-Asian-pleather-titted-groping session between two hoochied-out Asian girls and the lead singer of Monster Magnet. I was just like "here's your water," and then scuttled away.

On the first Fugazi tour a friend of mine asked Ian if they had any t-shirts for sale. "You should be into the band, not the t-shirt." Umm, okay.