San Diego Reader

New Local Musician Resource, Backstage Raider, Diplomat Delivers, Priest Prediction

Contents:

1 – GigSanDiego.com – New Local Musician Resource, courtesy Ike Turner drummer Bill Ray

2 – Backstage Raider: He Mooches Meals From Rock Stars

3 – Backstage Rider On The Storm: He Removes the Brown M&Ms

4 – Judas Priest’s “Nostradamus” – my prediction….

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NEW LOCAL MUSICIAN RESOURCE

On his website GigSanDiego.com, local drummer Bill Ray explains “Gig San Diego was created by professional musicians, for professional musicians. It is (currently) an open-registration format that caters to the musician who actively plays gigs in and around SD. The site is independently administered and is not to be held responsible for any bad information gleaned from the annals of our forums. We recommend you keep a firm grip on the realities of any situation; unlike McDonalds, who pay millions for a spilled cup of coffee in the lap, all we have is some pocket lint for your lawyers.”

The site includes a venue directory, local music MP3s, gig announcements, and classified ads, as well as useful information like directions, gas prices, and bulletins on stolen equipment to keep an eye out for. Message board topics include music stores and instrument repair, local recording studios, road recommendations and rideshares, lessons, jam sessions, and more.

In one of the site’s most informative AND entertaining sections, Ray posts load-in tips for various venues around town. Below are some excerpts:

Patrick’s II downtown: “Parking sucks…use the alley on the left side of the building, unload your stuff, then go park. I like to park at 7th and E in the Parkade, $5 weeknights, $10 weekends…backline not provided.”

Pala Casino: “You don't need to bring amps because it's a canned scene, as in everything is headphone mixed [and] run through the board live…I recommend bringing your own headphones, because the house ones might just be covered in sweat.”

Hotel Del Coronado, back patio: “Architects back then must have drank a lot, because the place just sprawls…find the delivery area, unload, park. Drag your stuff through the corridors [and] you will eventually come out in the guest area. Trek it through that hallway and out the doors.”

Humphrey’s Backstage Lounge: “Pull up in the handicap slot at the west end of the building…large cases will have to be stowed in the car or in their shed.”

Viejas V Lounge: “You end up cutting through the casino. Backline not provided…beware, do not open your laptop out there. They always blow a gasket!”

Dick’s Last Resort, downtown: “Watch out for projectiles.”

Victoria Rose posts of the Lucky Star Restaurant, on 54th Street, “They frequently forget to unlock the gate and have to be called…watch out for the first door that is heavy and ready to slam shut at a moment's notice. Use the supplied rock near the door to prop it open. I am not kidding!”

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“When Axl Rose found out I ate his sub sandwich, he was ready to kill someone,” says “Tweeter Donruss” (not his real name, ‘natch). He’s recalling for me one backstage party among the hundred or so he claims to have crashed.

“I snuck out of there before anyone told him it was me! But that was a royal chow line, man - shrimp, crab legs, this sweet juice they served in metal cups, damn.”

He says Gn’R’s after-show buffet was spread in an open tent where everyone mingled, including friends of the band, roadies, select young ladies plucked from the audience and at least one local jazz fan who hates rock and roll but who loves to mooch free food.

“I walk up all cocky like a hotshot roadie,” explains Donruss. “I wait until the show was over to sneak [backstage], so the guards would be busy dealing with groupies and DJs and stuff. My coat has a lot of flaps and [guards] get this illusion of a pass flapping around. If I act official enough, they don’t even blink and I can go wherever.”

Where he usually wants to go is wherever the food is.

Donruss says he used to live on the streets, where he hated getting into lines for free meals at local churches and shelters. “If you’re not there right on time, they tell you to get lost, and the food’s not worth standing around. Except Thanksgiving and Christmas...they pick up guys off the street and drive us to a movie theater or a church and totally stuff us.”

Donruss can’t stand rock music (“Give me Miles Davis any day”) and he doesn’t always know anything by or about some of the rockers he’s rubbed shoulders with…

…but he does know that anyone playing the Sports Arena, Coors Amphitheatre or Cox Arena will probably hire the best caterers and lay out the most free food and booze.

“My last actual job was L.A., doing phone collections. I lost it for being late so much and then I lost my place. But the streets were okay. There’s a lot more safe places to sleep up there but finding enough [food] to ‘nack on was tough.”

He says one time he just happened to be by Universal Amphitheatre, as a show was letting out. “I just walked in ‘cause the doors were open. I found so much good sh-t on the floor and under the seats, I was in heaven! Not just snackbar food, but stuff people snuck in...wine flasks, weed, pipes!”

Outdoor events are particularly lax about manning the gates during the closing hour or so. “They let you bring in picnic baskets and bottles! It’s incredible what people leave. Untouched sub sandwiches, barrels - not buckets - of fast food chicken, and a sh-tload of diet sodas and water.”

Donruss chose San Diego as his new home turf in 1992, after using the free bus ticket given by a family member who wanted him to visit his La Mesa home.

Though he found what he called “makesh-t ways to earn cash,” he still found himself often low on cash and big on hunger.

“I really like flying below the radar and not having to keep someone else’s schedule,” he says.

“I’m not a drunk, I’m not a bum but I’ll do almost any drug any time if it’s free or cheap and, yeah, I am pretty d-mned lazy.”

For awhile, he earned money by collecting aluminum cans and recyclable bottles. “I turned [them] in for cash at a place near Imperial [Avenue]. My hideout was right up the street, in some thick bushes on private property, along a fence behind a house, so I didn’t have to worry about the city coming to cut sh-t down and chase me out or trash my sh-t. That’s what they do when they find out someone is living there.” He doesn’t say whether the private property owner knew or approved of his residency.

He set about visiting concert halls and clubs along the bus routes. Seemingly – to my mind, anyway – putting more effort into mooching than many put into their actual jobs.

Donruss says he found easy trespass at most local venues, but few lunchable leftovers. “Getting in is easy near the end of the night. But there’s not much in the seats. I used to find lots of food at Humphreys, but [patrons] have to buy it there and it’s always the same old, same old. All the medium size places suck.”

Bathrooms, he says, are a treasure trove of illicit drugs, dropped wallets (“I keep the cash but I’ll put the wallet in a mail box”), lighters, liquor flasks and loose money. “Guys sit on the pot and get high , maybe ‘cause they don’t wanna share, or they’re with someone who’s not into it. And stuff drops out of their pants, especially if they’re f-cked up.”

“I find twenties once in awhile, but usually it’s fives and tens. Sometimes they’re a little, uh, wet, but that’s okay. I might dry them with the hand dryer.”

Scouring the seats after a concert nowadays, tho, is a competitive effort.

“There’s a bunch of kids doing the same thing, a lot of the same ones at each show. It gets so we’re all running through the rows looking down between the seats trying to be the first one to score something good. The smart ones start at the top seats, so security can’t see you and herd you out the door. Up where it’s dark is where people do their drugs anyway, that’s where stuff’s more likely gonna drop.”

Donruss’ first trip backstage happened by accident, when he was mistaken for a roadie at Jack Murphy Stadium concert. “I was near the side of the stage and some guy just handed me a piece of equipment and told me to take it back to the break room. I didn’t know what I was holding, and I had no idea what or where the break room was, but I went off like I’ve been doing that all my life.”

Backstage, between the aluminum tentpoles holding up a vinyl tarp and piled onto several rows of cloth covered folding tables, he found what he describes with a laugh as “the pot at the end of the rainbow, or the pot roast anyways!”

Caterers were just finishing the gourmet display of meats, fish and decadent deserts, including many dishes Donruss had never seen or sampled. “Have you ever had truffles? I wasn’t impressed. Didn’t eat the caviar, I know what it is. Mousse, that’s pretty good, and this stuff had like a crust on top and came with a cookie on the side.”

He says nobody under the tarp was touching the food --- it was obvious the lavish spread was intended only for the band and their guests.

After talking to him, and picking up on his hungry-outlaw vibe, I can just picture him eyeing the buffet and trying to remain inconspicuous, breathing in all the tempting aromas and struggling to hold himself back from that chimerical “pot roast at the end of the rainbow.”

He snuck a few chips into the dip bowl and managed to grab an errant sandwich when he thought nobody was looking (“I chewed quietly”), earning glares from at least one other bystander. What must have been a maddening half-hour passed before the twenty or so people milling around seemed to decide that the band wasn’t coming any time soon, if at all.

On some apparently unspoken cue, everyone converged on the buffet tables all at once, including - especially - Donruss.

“I had three plates and two glasses, like a waiter, and I filled ‘em all up!”

After eating fast and gulping down five or six beers (“I didn’t know until later it was ‘near-beer,’ no alcohol”), Donruss loosened his pants and walked out via the same checkpoint he’d entered, leaving the stadium very happy, and VERY full. “I went whole hog that time, for sure!”

He’s reluctant to talk further about dates, venues and methods, and at this point we’ve already talked on the phone for almost 90 minutes. “What I told you is enough to make it interesting, I don’t wanna shoot myself in the foot.”

He’s still doing “makesh-t jobs” around town, but he says he’s living in a house with family members, paying his own bills, and generally doing well.

All ‘pending one’s definition of “well,” I think to myself, but I don’t say this to “Tweeter” (which, by the way, was the AKA he requested to go by when I said I wanted to write about his many Missions of Mooch).

“I only crash a couple of concerts a month now,” he says, “sometimes not even. Everyone wants to get backstage, to be close to the band guys. I just wanna get my hands on the food.”

There’s a pause, as we both probably conclude that last sentence was more than self-evident.

“I hate competing with groupies and all that sh-t. Besides, all the big rockers are going vegetarian, or they don’t f-cking drink or party, so it’s like a church picnic back there.”

“Either that, or they’re too f-cking cheap to lay out a good spread for the rest of us.”

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Brian Lewis didn’t hire the entertainment while serving as venue manager for Humphrey’s bar and concert showcase on Shelter Island. However, he feels the experience he gained there from 1990 to 1992 prepared him for booking and marketing jobs at several pivotal San Diego venues, including Mission Beach’s Catamaran resort hotel where he ran their Cannibal Bar.

“I liked the backstage responsibilities [at Humphrey’s] best of all because of the interaction…I’ve been a big music fan since I first saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.”

“Humphrey’s was doing about fifty concerts a year, sometimes two shows on the same night. My job was making sure the performers were satisfied when they got there, setting up the backstage catering and fulfilling all the requirements passed on by the production manager. Or [I worked] from a list written into the ‘rider,’ [which is] part of the performer’s contract.”

Early on, he worried about being starstruck, but working closely with the venue’s famous guests wasn’t as intimidating – or as disillusioning – as he’d feared. “The type of acts at Humphrey’s aren’t usually known for bad behavior. Most…found the place so comfortable, they’d just relax and be regular people, their everyday selves. I didn’t recognize him at first [but] Huey Lewis was talking to me in the hospitality suite while we watched Clinton lying through his teeth on TV. Dana Carvey would come into the inside stage and just chat with everybody. George Benson will hang out at the pool bar and drink Mai Tais and then come inside and say ‘hi’ to people.”

He feels that most performers, especially A-list draws with the most to lose, don’t want any trouble due to the media’s willingness to tear them apart. “It’s usually in the audience where you find people with the biggest problems. The funny thing is we can have Michael McDonald and everyone’s dancing in the aisles and drinking like fish and nothing happens. Then Tony Bennett comes in…and we had trouble with this older woman acting up.” He says the woman was drunk and shouting, upsetting nearby patrons. “We had to kick her out and put her into a cab, and she was fighting the whole way.”

Growing up in Point Loma, the diverse tastes of his six older siblings exposed him to a wide array of songs and performers, but Lewis’ early career goals had little to do with musicians, nightclubs and Bennett-crazed inebriates. “I studied business in college, worked for the Spagetti Factory chain and at one point I was taking maitre de jobs and planning a career in food service.”

Twenty-seven years old in 1985, Lewis replied to a want ad by mailing his resume to a blank PO box. “I thought I was applying for a fine dining job…it turned out to be Diego’s on Garnet (Avenue, in Pacific Beach). I’d been there maybe once or twice with a friend but Diego’s liked me, liked my ideas and they said they wanted to hire me for a management position, with a generous salary.”

The offer caught him by surprise. “I think [I was hired] because I was creative and artistic, and that helps in designing ads and promotions. I was always interested in how things were sold. [I] even studied magazine ads, billboards and TV commercials.”

Humphrey’s

His new career allowed him to put his flair for design into new menus, a kitchen layout, newspaper advertisements and event promotions. “The weekends would be so busy that we’d need the weekdays to lick our wounds and recover in time for the next weekend. We did about five mil[lion dollars] that year…the dollar margaritas special was going on and we’d have lines around the building.” Diego’s and other nightclubs hoping to attract new patrons operated “in the spirit of friendly competition, whereas today it’s more of a battlefield.”

“There was Wrangler’s Roost in El Cajon for country [and] contemporary rock at Park Place, which is now a bowling alley. Our only real competition was Confetti’s in Mission Valley. They had a thing called Club Piranha, adult alternative music…I did a parody of [their] event and called ours ‘Club Mean Fish.’ The ads had a giant big mouth bass swallowing a piranha.” Asked about his proudest accomplishment during the two years he worked at Diego’s, he replies “I guess [it was] making the place busy every night. I brought in KGB on Sundays, on Mondays we had $1.50 Name That Drink, 91x had their own night…the crowds came by having radio stations sponsoring [events].”

A partnership in a Mexican restaurant drew him briefly to Washington state, but he soon returned to San Diego to take a job as marketing and promotions director for a new club then dubbed Belmont At The Beach (later the Hop, then Chillers and currently ‘Cane’s). “I went head to head with my former employers at Diego’s. Their biggest thing was the Tuesday Dollar Margarita night and so on the same night I had 91X at Belmont with ninety-one cent drinks. Bikini contests had started there and I brought that over to Belmont…we just kind of buried them.”

Belmont Park

However, Belmont never developed as he’d planned. “There were so many operational problems. We opened without a liquor license while we waited on it from the ABC so it was hard to compete with other bars. Plus, the dynamics of the beach area are low priced meals and we were serving expensive dinners. And from the get-go, there were protests about the whole Belmont Park development, on the liquor license, on the roller coaster being rebuilt…they [the residents] didn’t want the noise, didn’t want the traffic, didn’t want the natural things that happen when you develop and improve [an area]. The biggest problem was that the place was owned by a limited partnership of forty people. I put in a lot of blood and sweat but it didn’t end up working out.” He quit in early 1990 and the club was closed by summer.

“I ended up taking a position at Humphrey’s, in charge of entertainment and management for the inside bar and venue management for the outdoor theater.” The outdoor theater presented noise problems, though not from the music being too loud. “At some of the quieter and more intimate shows, we’d have people in the audience talking too loud, drowning out the music. We’d try talking to them about it at first and if they continued to cause a problem we’d have to remove them.”

He inked the next credit on his resume in 1992, when he took a marketing position at the Barefoot Bar, in the Princess Resort on Mission Bay. “Every Saturday and Sunday, we had a band called Doctor Chico’s Island Sounds…then their lead singer got arrested and went to jail for being a PB rapist! The group had gotten really popular and only one of the seven guys was a criminal so I met with them and talked them into staying together.” Lewis came up with a new name, the Banana Republicans, and the band remained a staple at the club for several more years.

He feels his marketing strategies for the club made it very profitable. “We did things like making footwear optional and you could even wear a bikini in the bar. There’d be a line for two hours to get in and we got to a business level where we did a hundred thousand dollars in one day. The previous year before I came in, I think they did less than a half million dollars in business. By the end of my first year there, we were doing two million."

As to whether he received percentages or bonuses from the increased profits, Lewis replies “Let’s just say I quit in 1994.”

After taking some time off to try his hand at consulting work and fatherhood, he accepted an offer to work for Humphrey’s once again. “When the Rolling Stones played the stadium, we did a promotion called ‘Gimme Shelter Island.’ We rented three double-decker buses and had two hundred and twenty tickets for the show. [We] offered a package deal for $150.00 that included a commemorative T-shirt, a three course dinner, beverages and a tribute band called Sticky Fingers played a three hour show in the [Humphrey’s] bar. Then we put everyone on the bus and all of us went to see the Stones with Carlos Santana.”

In early 1999, the General Manager of Paradise Point, which had formerly been The Princess Resort, made what Lewis calls an offer he couldn’t refuse, if he’d return to work at the Barefoot Bar, a position he accepted and kept for nearly two years. “We almost doubled our previous numbers for the best day [income]. But at the same time, they were changing format and going through an entire renovation. The [marketing] I worked at didn’t match what the new owners wanted. They were catering to people willing to pay top dollar for the rooms. They didn’t want music festivals or theme nights, which is fine, that was their decision, but it kind of eliminates what I do for a living.” He walked away from Barefoot in August 2000.

The Catamaran, home of the Cannibal Bar

Lewis’ next position was booking the Cannibal Bar in PB, bringing in top-flight acts like former Animals leader Eric Burdon and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, as well as Hootie and the Blowfish, Dave Mason and The Psychedelic Furs.

“There’s a lot more competition nowadays,” says Lewis. “You have the Indian casinos, there’s Cox Arena. Humphrey’s ties up eighty-five to a hundred performers a year. Viejas is up and coming...when all the other clubs are bidding against each other to pull in a touring act that can only do one night and one venue in San Diego, I have to get pretty creative to come out on top. But I like being creative. And I definitely like being on top.”

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THE (NEWEST) RETURN OF JUDAS PRIEST

Judas Priest is putting the finishing touches on their double-album rock opera, “Nostradamus.”

=sigh=

Will I ever tell the grandkids about how I – along with a hundred like-minded miscreants - once crashed the gates of a Judas Priest concert at SDSU’s Outdoor Amphitheatre? Inebriated and ticketless, one and all, most of us got into the venue, tho it was awhile before SDSU brought any more metal acts to their stage.

Is this to be filed under “proud rebellion” or “embarrassing fiasco” in my musical memory bank?

Back then, you couldn’t hawk a loogie without hitting someone in a black Priest T-shirt. To a kid just discovering the camaraderie of shared noise and the aphrodisiac effect that leather jackets have on girls with big hair and tiny skirts, Judas Priest were our metal Buddhas. It didn’t matter that they had to put colored stickers on their guitars so they’d know how to play the notes. They rode Harleys on-stage, and they could even take a lame Joan Baez song like “Diamonds And Rust” and blow it up into the goofiest heavy metal dirge this side of Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom.”

Not even the mighty Tap could drive teenagers to Satanism and suicide with subliminal lyrics, as Priest were once accused of doing (the band actually had to defend themselves in court).

But ah, my foes, and ah, my friends, back in their heyday, this British quintet once rocked the world.

Okay, a lot of us suspected something might be up with lead singer Rob Halford, all dolled up in his leather studs, his cute little fetish belt, and that ersatz biker hat. He dressed like the lipstick kids from every Frankie Goes to Hollywood video.

So I wasn’t surprised when he came out of the closet. I still kept up with his post-Priest projects. I was really into his band Fight, despite the mocking I got (and still sometimes get) from friends who’d once shared my love of all things Priest.

A lot of those fans dropped by the wayside after Halford came out. Metalheads who worshipped Rob and dressed just like him, all the while thinking that they were the epitome of macho heterosexual studness, did they somehow feel betrayed?

Are they happier now that he dresses more like Rip Taylor raiding Elton John’s closet?

I talked a couple of those people who renounced and reneged on all things Priest. They shake their heads and look down when they speak Halford’s name, looking for all the world like the guy on Jerry Springer who’s just been told his wife wants a sex change.

Priest’s peak year was probably 1984, with the release of Screaming For Vengeance, a million seller for the band. Then came the slide into oblivion, which even the most devotional fan would have to acknowledge or be labeled delusional - Defenders Of The Faith (uggh), Turbo (eech), and Live (retchspew).

Still, few po’ white boys like me can resist pumping their fists to classic cuts like “The Ripper,” “Tyrant,” “Stained Class,” and “Living After Midnight.” Even had I known all along about Rob, I doubt I would have lost sleep worrying about what he was or wasn’t pumping backstage with his own fist.

Priest concerts were hard rock summit meetings like no other. 20,000 angry, disaffected and slightly drunk teenagers all gathered together to pay tribute to sonic gods. The Ram It Down tour was sublime metal heaven. Even the stage set was designed to look like a steel mill, with gurgling vats of molten metal and clanging wheels and cogs everywhere. And, hey, seriously, is there any better music to ball to?

But all great bands must end (listen up, Mick ‘n Keith). As things went downhill, Rob quit Priest in ‘93 to form Fight.

Guitarist Glenn Tipton didn’t waste words describing the split. “It wasn’t a shock initially that Rob wanted to do a solo project,” he told me in an interview for Soundwaves Magazine. “He got our blessing to go ahead and do it. But it quickly escalated on the managerial side and eventually Rob expressed that he didn’t want to continue with Bill Curbishley, who’d been our long-standing manager and a friend of the band. I’ve got the greatest respect for Bill, so once that started it was never easy to reconcile the situation.”

Legal battles ensued, between Rob, Columbia Records and management, and eventually the burning flame flickered into darkness. “It’s a very sad thing,” said Tipton, “that Rob’s search for a solo career - and everybody’s free to do what they want in this band - has deprived kids of Priest as it was. It’s sad, but that’s life, and far be it from me to say it’s a wrong decision.”

It’s worth noting that Tipton characterized the group’s fans as “kids”...it is, after all, entry level music. Rudimentary rock. Lots of thumping and humping and crude poses self-consciously designed to appeal to libidinous teenagers. But that’s why we loved them, isn’t it?

No doubt inspired by the success of fellow comeback cartoons Kiss, Judas Priest wants to turn it up to eleven just one more time, presumably before shuffling off for the tar pits. Sher, senior citizens can make with the metal. But I have my doubts ….

Does the world really need – or even want - a lengthy, ambitiously staged “rock opera,” about Nostradamus, from ANY metal band, even – especially – Judas Priest.

I fear that there may not be enough Priest fans left in the world to storm a concert at SDSU any more. I fear that Priest has returned, not with a bang but with a whisper. I fear that the dream is over, our revels now are ended, and all that’s left is to be embarrassed at what’s become of metal’s once reigning gods.

And I thought the Kiss “reunions,” with anonymous young guys wearing Peter and Ace makeup, was the ultimate betrayal of all things rock.

Oh, well. At least AC/DC can still rock our world, and are about to once again….. (Please, Angus, I’m beggin’ ya --- DON’T come out of the closet!)

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