You Know You're a Geezer When...

[classof77]

....this is actually a topic. But..having a (almost) 14 year old daughter who is into punk and suddenly your old stories are cool....Well, here's a list of my top rock and roll moments (extraneous of actual performances):

Going to buy tickets to the Sex Pistols at the Cleveland Agora only to find out the band had "canceled"--news traveled slow in those days.

Working in a private hotel in West Hollywood where Keith Richards is staying (New Barbarians playing the Forum). Hotel loses his laundry. I run all over in my hotel monkey suit (including the cleaners--"Do you know who's laundry this is?!@) Find it in another guests room--several hours later. Keith--registered as Neal Down--smiles.Girl friend snarls. Body guard/manager throws me $5. Later, a messenger leaves Bianca Jagger's stage pass at the desk. I steal it. As I'm ending my shift Bianca Jagger shows up...I spend 15 minutes trying to get the pass out of my pocket to somewhere where they can find it

I'm writing some lyrics with a band in LA and bluff my way onto Rodney Bingenheimer's KROQ show--by saying "I'm from Akron". We get through the doors but not on his show because he has Ray Manzarek on--who is producing X....
A week or so later the same ruse works on Dusty Street's KROQ show....she asks us to bring chablis. So its me, the guitar player and the sound man (who drinks most of the "chablis" and knocks her mic off the boom). The single gets its one and only play. (I think we brought a gallon of Almaden Mountain Chablis--ironic in that I sell real wine now for a living.)
Then a friend and I go to the Troubador in West Hollywood to see X. Its sold out but we get seats at the bar so you can hear the set pretty well and see the band every time the door opens. My friend spots Ray Manzarek at the bar....next thing we know we're buying him drinks and he's telling us Door's stories.

I've been in LA a couple weeks when the Shah of Iran falls. Most of his family seems to live in Beverly Hills. I'm on a bus on the way to work and get caught in the riots. I write a lyric. I get sent to "The Masque" to try and push it. I get a lot of 'we're not political". Cool graffiti and some interesting bands (Germs, Black Flag, Go Go's).

I'm working at the Holiday Inn in Chinatown LA (which is actually in Boyle Hts--East LA-and about 5 miles from Chinatown). I check in 999. I had seen them at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go the night before. A year later I'm back in Akron (at a Holiday Inn, going to school) and I'm checking in 999. A hotel regular who is standing nearby asks them if things are better in the UK because of the marriage with Princess Di.... The phone rings. It's Dusty Street from KROQ in LA who is supposed to be interviewing 999. It's a very existential moment when I wonder if suicide wouldn't be better....

[tepista]

Good stories. I was probably 10 or 12 at the time. I listened to Rodney and Dusty Street, but I was too young to go to the Masque. I still see Rodney walking down the street now and again.

[CorwoodRep]

Man, you have awesome stories for your kids. The only story I have is that I know the grandkid of a marginally famous person and the marginally famous person isn't all that like they say on TV. Damn it my life is boring.

Does the Masque still exist, by the way?

[tepista]

Does the Masque still exist, by the way?

Nah, it was only around for a few years.

[CorwoodRep]

I should probably have known that, but if I'm too lazy to look it up on wikipedia then I deserve the fate of looking ignorant.

[tepista]

read "We Got the Neutron Bomb" it is to the LA scene what "Please Kill Me" is to the NY scene.

[In A Rut]

read "We Got the Neutron Bomb" it is to the LA scene what "Please Kill Me" is to the NY scene.

both great books. the stories about TSOL (especially Jack Grisham) in "We Got the Neutron Bomb" are crazy.

[threecoffins]

read "We Got the Neutron Bomb" it is to the LA scene what "Please Kill Me" is to the NY scene.

both great books. the stories about TSOL (especially Jack Grisham) in "We Got the Neutron Bomb" are crazy.

I'll put it on the list, for sure.