Story #2… I saw the Criminals and Against All Authority at Bottom of the Hill, and danced so hard to AAA, i pooped my pants. And kept dancing. The end.

Needless to say, It may not have been my craziest punk show but it was a nice introduction.

I had a couple pieces of Butthole Surfers vinyl–some EPs that included “Live PCPPEP” which had my then-favorite song to play really loud, “BBQ Pope”.

The show was in Sacramento’s Convention Center, in a room that was normally used for trade shows. There was a stage set up in a corner of the huge hall, and about 500 slam-dancing (this was before the Age of Mosh) Sact0 punks showed up. It was all ages, and there was no alcohol, but my friends had industriously snuck in our #1 punk rock liquor of choice, Peppermint Schnapps.

I was enjoying a minty buzz by the time the Surfers took the stage. This was before they had the dual naked drummers (I got to see that spectacle 3 years later on Halloween at The Farm). Gibby was the focus, and for a good part of the show, a blinding strobe light flashed, and I started getting hypnotized–good thing I wasn’t epilectic.

During one of their last songs, Gibby grabbed a giant stuffed panda bear, ripped off the head, and started throwing handfuls of the fluffy filling out over the crowd. With the massively loud volume, general weirdness, and the strobe light going, this was a rather mind-bending effect of jerky stop-motion snow coming from a headless bear.

I’d never taken drugs before, and, ears ringing, I left the building feeling totally high. I imagined that this must be what acid or shrooms was like…and I found out 3 years later that I was pretty much correct.

Even though I don’t care for them much anymore Converge were crazy. There was no stage and the place was packed. Kurt would swing his guitar around his neck then throw the guitar out at people and catch it on the DUN DUNs. He was seriously battering people in their faces. I was almost strangled by finger points and Jacob took his mic threw it into the crowd, it wrapped around some guys neck. Then he began to run down the stage and the mic cord flew off the guys head… the guy had 7 ear piercings and some of them came off. When they stopped playing and people cleared away there was seriously blood all over the place. It was a mess.

Best show ever: Stalag 13 in 1997. Spazz, His Hero Is Gone, Brutal Truth, Black Army Jacket, Atom and His Package. That show was brutal too because back then it was a no no to mosh for some reason. Some crusty punk was a little drunk running into people, the lights went out and when they came back on, crusty’s face was beat in.

Rich from NJ walks to the front of the stage and flips OLC off in a very animated fashion. All of OLC and a bunch of their friends clear the stage, surround Rich and begin beating him in a roving pile that moves around the entire venue destroying everything in its path (think cartoon bar fight: chairs, tables, fists, etc). People are screaming and crying, everyone is fighting, a few girls get punched in face, someone calls the cops. In the confusion, NJ Rich scrambles into the bathroom, climbs out of the window and escapes. The cops show up and tell a group of Canadian kids who are yelling about how much the US sucks to leave the country. We grab our merch, get into the van and get the hell out. A block away from the venue, one of the stop signs is tagged with “Clevo Clan Stay the Fuck Out of NYC”. I don’t think any of the Integrity/OLC crew came East for more than a decade after that. As a result of the fight, OLC was immediately kicked off of Victory records. I bought all remaining OLC merch from Victory’s distro and made good money selling it to French hardcore kids on ebay.

my best Gilman show: Spazz and Dystopia (’97 or ’98)
my best ABC No Rio show: Stratford Mercenaries (feat members of Crass and Buzzcocks…’97 or ’98)

Alaric rules.