Day 1: Thursday September 10th, 1998. Muncie, IN. Stevie Ray's House of Wax
"Get Outta my way Jerky."

Day one of our first tour in over five years. Yeah five years. The last one took us from the East coast to Chicago and back. This time around wasn't going to be so extreme, just the midwest and back. We set out for Muncie, Indiana in Brian's GMC Jimmy with a U-haul trailer, Danny Noonan as Roadie/Groupie Supervisor (Chris' original position, but he's in the band now, so..), the new "Who Are We?" 7" in hand and the hope of meeting some cool people along the next 2000 miles. We left at 2pm from the Roscoe Rock Hall after a night of playing and hanging out with The Fiendz at Speak In Tongues. We'd be seeing them in a couple days for a couple more shows together.
We heard a lot of cool things about Stevie Ray's House of Wax in Muncie. Muncie is the home of Ball State University, where you can learn about agriculture, balls, corn, and well, the Balls. Stevie Ray sounded like a cool guy over the phone; Very mellow, laid back. He was all that and more, eventually letting both us and Rod stay on the floor of his store for the night. (This was also the first of three nights that we would be playing with Rod, from Dayton). The record store itself wasn't all that big, but they had a lot of vinyl, clothes, and had housed some great shows in the past.
We pulled in at 8pm, or at least we thought 8. It seems that for whatever reason most of Indiana ignores Daylight Savings Time, and it was only 7pm Muncie time when we pulled in. We were only slightly deterred on the streets of Downtown Muncie, finding our way after a quick call to Stevie Ray. We were probably brain-dead from looking at corn for the entire 5 hour trip down. We unloaded our gear and since we had an hour we didn't think we had we had time to catch a bite at Greek's Pizzeria, where there's a two cigarette minimum and more waiters than customers. It's funny, after nine years, I haven't learned to NOT eat Pizza before playing a show. I think I've finally learned....
At showtime, Rod (Mark, Jeremiah and Nate) played a good set of fast melodic hardcore/punk. They were hard to describe because each time you thought they sounded like something, they kicked into a totally different style or melody. This was the first time we had seen them, and we liked what we heard. They played to about 15 people crowded into the main display room at Stevie's record store. Rod played a quick 25 minute set and we set up.
We stuck mostly to the new material that we just released on 7", and that will be the new CD early next year. The Muncie set was: Stare-Biff the Cat-Self Control-Whether-Switch-Never Be The Same-Loose Truks-Puzzles-Tilt-Lies-So Like Mine-My Kind-Different Eyes-Lets Go-Annie Mae-Three's Company-You Might Think.
We played a tight set, we went over very well with the small crowd that was assembled. I gave everyone a song as we went through the night and everyone was generally pretty happy with the show. We sold a few CDs to some kids and Stevie Ray bought a bunch of CDs and 7"s to sell in the store. He was impressed with us and invited us to come back and open when a bigger band was coming through.
The Unknown at Stevie Ray's House of Wax, Muncie, INDIANA. Photo By Dan Noonan.
We were bumming about a place to crash until Stevie came through again and told us that the shop was ours for the night. A good way to start the trip. A good show and a free floor to sleep on...We hung out for a while, got some drinks and it wasn't before long that six of us decided to explore the great campus of Ball St. And it wasn't long after we left that the hunky tandem of Wayne and Jeremiah latched on to two unsuspecting goth coeds sitting at a bus stop along the main drag. Dan, Mark and I talked to ourselves about Dayton and Cleveland and such while the other guys talked to the girls. Then, like a scene out of Suburbia or something, these two Hoosier-hickland chumps, complete with tattoos and earrings, decided to walk through the group of us and push Wayne and Dan. And its not like we were in their way or anything, I mean the one guy had to take like three extra steps to get in a shot at Wayne. As they walked through they exclaimed "Get outta my way Jerky!" We shrugged them off. Later they drove by in a Camaro saying something about our moms....whatever. These were two classic meatheads. We started to get cold so we headed back to the store. They convinced one of the girls, Jill, to come back with us, while losing the other one to go and drink wine with her ex-boyfriend. How quaint. We ended the night drinking at Stevie's and the Beauty Boys ended up going out again to walk Jill home, meeting up with more girls to write home about.

Day 2: Friday September 11th, 1998. Bloomington, IN. 602 SMitchell

"Listen guys, no one likes us, and no one likes our band; so let's go to bed."

2AM Clevo time. I mean Indiana time. Bloomington will probably go down as a bust, but hey, it was still OK. We played at a house that does shows fairly often; 602 S. Mitchell St. right near the campus of Indiana University. Slyvia and Slingshot Episode set up the show with us, them, Rod and I Quit from Massachusetts. Needless to say we were the odd balls out. But actually, now that I think about it, all the bands were pretty different from each other and it made for a pretty well rounded show.
The day started off pretty mellow. We had only a two hour drive from Muncie to Bloomington. We got up around 11am and thanked Stevie Ray for letting us crash at the record store. We all set out to reconquer the great cornfields of middle Indiana.
The first great midwestern joint of the trip was the Omelet Shoppe, just outside of Indianapolis on Rte 37. We just woke up. Breakfast was on the mind. We're there. It looked as if we'd walked into Huck's (we'd seen many of those on the way). Huck's logo, redneck smiley-man, complete with no front tooth, was now staring us dead in the face in the form of our favorite waitress. Don't get me wrong, we all had great omelets. But they couldn't spell worth a damn. CAT FISH, two words? Monday THU Friday? We relaxed and got sick on too much cheese and headed back to the road.
We got into Bloomington and quickly realized that it was much more active than the great mecca of Ball St. We got into town about 3pm and found 602. It was early and everyone was anxious to check out the sprawling scene in Bloomington. So off we went on foot to roam the campus of IU and the streets of Bloomington. We had some direction; a record store, pizza shop and a Salvation Army.

Bloomington cops take a screaming shoplifter out of a card shop. Photo by Ken Blaze. 		We got most of the way down town and we're walking toward this card shop when two cop cars come screaming down the street and pull right up on the curb in front of the card shop. Two Big Bufords (straight outta Moberly...) run into the store and drag out this little black kid, like 10. He's screaming and yelling and crying and these cops got him by the head and the legs. He must have been shoplifting, and he was oh so dangerous...I got off a couple of shots as they pulled him out of the store. Better spot news than I see in a week at the newspaper. That was the extent of the excitement for the afternoon as the band, sans Danny & Rod, walked back to the house to crash.

We had great expectations for a rocking party (thinking back to 705 in Salisbury, MD.) so we waited for the party to begin. I guess all the people in the town were at the million dollar hundred-year-old frat houses we saw along Main Street. The turn out wasn't all that great, we did draw a few kids from the Ft Wayne area (all right Sneetch) and we made a few new friends. Set was good my voice was starting to go... The Bloomington set was:Stare-Biff-Self Control-Whether-Switch-Never Be The Same-Loose Truks-Puzzles-Lies-Annie Mae

The night ended with another stroll out to IU with Wayne, Chris, Nate, Jeremiah and I.Wayne and Chris were hoping Nate wouldn't continue his trend of introducing himself by saying: "Hi, I'm Nate, but you can call me booger." They didn't have to worry because we walked and walked and all we ended up doing was finding Dagwood's sub shop. We of course had to test out the subs. It was then that Wayne led us back to Slingshot's house with the wisdom of the evening: "Guys, no one like us, no one likes our bands, so lets just go to bed." We headed back to play Trivial Pursuit and watch the Simpsons.
Ah but before I forget. The worst news of the day was that Club Karate, the site for tomorrow's show, was rumored to now be closed. Slingshot Episode said they received an email saying the club was gone and their show was cancelled. I called Corey and asked her to go and check my email to see for sure if we were cancelled as well. We'll see.
Slingshot Episode in Bloomington, IN. Photo by Ken Blaze.

Day 3: Saturday September 12th, 1998. Milwaukee, WI. Club Karate

"Dude, there's that dance club!"

Day 3 was supposed to be in Milwaukee, but here we are in Merrillville, IN. at Dollar Inn. As I feared, Club Karate cancelled the show because the landlord closed them up. We found out for sure when I called Corey and got the email message. Oh well. Not much we can do. We knew the chance of a cancellation so the day was pretty lazy.
We hit a Salvation Army before leaving Bloomington. We got a few shirts and Brian got some old books. Danny cam out with the best buy of the day; an old seventies dating manual called "Going Out! Going Steady! Going Bananas!"This book is just about the funniest book I've ever seen.
We stopped at the Sunshine Cafe in a city just north of Indy and took a roundabout way up the west side of Indiana. We made a quick drive through Lafayette to see if Purdue University had anything to offer. We quickly realized there was nothing to offer but the same jocko-frat boy crap that IU had...
The drive up Indiana was uneventful except for the freaky guy that bummed money off of me at one rest stop to try to buy a new hose for his car so he could get to Kentucky. We then saw him 60 miles up the road doing the same bit. Needless to say he took off when he saw us again. The opposite way from Kentucky.
Not much really happened before we stopped in Merrillville for the night. We stopped there because I picked up a guide that said this city actually had a mall and some things to do. Brian and I hit the putt-putt at "Celebration Station" (I won 50-52) while the Roscoe-Noonan pack tried to find their way to the local teeny bopper dance club called "Zero Gravity."They were halted by the lack of sidewalks and a rather large interstate between the hotel and the club. They even got stopped by the local cops for curfew. "You boys should be happy you look so young." Too bad. No statutory club listings tonight....Doh!
We ended the night watching Voyager and The Terminator. Chicago is only 30 miles up north. At least we're out of meathead land...

Day 4: Sunday September 13th, 1998. Chicago, IL. Fireside Bowl

"Mohawk Mania"

Well today was the day for the infamous Fireside Bowl. We drove in from Merrillville and the ride was only about 45 minutes to the Fireside on Michigan Ave. We decided to wait at the Fireside for a friend of Wayne's, Michiko. Michiko does a zine in Chicago called Basura, and we hadn't seen here in about five years. She had about an hour before she could meet us so we hung out in the local neighborhood playing a weird baseball game with twigs and bark. I think I beat the WayneChris team like 54-27 or something. It was a strange baseball game thats for sure. We would have kept going, but Michiko showed up.
We decided to try and and do something since we had like three hours to kill. Wayne and Chris ended up going with Michiko and Brian Danny and I went downtown. The Roscoe's went off to find some Japanese store or something. The other 3 of us had no luck doing anything since there was nowhere to park with the trailer in all of downtown Chicago. We saw a lot of things as we drove in circles for the entire 2 or so hours. The Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, Rainforest Cafe, the lakefront, Viacom; we passed them all. I had one chance to jump out and check out the Viacom store for like 15 minutes while Danny and Brian drove around the block again. It worked out as I got to get some neat-o Star Trek stuff on clearance at the Viacom store. Clearance, its like my favorite word. So that was the extent of our trip downtown.
We got back to the Fireside at 5 and met up with the Fiendz who just got in from Madison, WI. We told the Roscoe troupe to be back at 5:30. Things started to get rolling at about 5:15 when Brian, the club guy, showed up and let us know that there were now a total of 6 bands on the bill that night, and we needed to set up right away to start playing at 6:30. What the hell? 6 bands? Yikes. I guess two bands were added late and the headliner brought a band with them. So it went from 3 to 6 and we went from playing at 8 to 6:30. I guess I can't complain though. We did get to play and Brian was a really cool guy about everything.
So of course we had to start loading up and the Roscoe's were nowhere to be found. I was worried that something happened to them and our show at the Fireside would get all screwed up because they were shopping. I hate when we split up on tour, its too stressful. So Brian and I we one edge and the night was starting off on a sour note. The lineup for the night was: The Unknown-The Fiendz-American Steel-Jinx-The Forgotten-Peter and the Test Tube Babies. One band was local, and Peter was the biggie from England.
We played a pretty good set. Better than the night before. Stare/Self Control/Whether/Switch/Puzzles/Lies/Different Eyes/Never Be The Same. It was a short set because there were 5 more bands to play. 30 or 40 people saw us play (pretty damn good for 6:30) and about 10 of those people really got into us. Of course by the end of the night about 300 people were there for "peter"
The Unknown at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago, ILLINOIS. Photo by Joe Mahoney.
The Fiendz played next and were totally awesome playing mostly "We're the Fiendz" songs. The next 4 bands were all a blur. They were all 77 punk english anarchy. Mohawk Mania. And all bad. About 10 ,years ago I would have loved this show, but after hearing bands and playing music for the last 9 years, I and the The Unknown, have come to have pretty high standards for bands. None of these bands were original, talented or in anyway interesting. But we were definitely in the minority as 300 kids went nuts all show long. It was fun going to a punk rock show, we just didn't fit with this crowd. The story of our lives. Of course the night wasn't without its excitement. A couple of fights broke out between a few chicks, I met a cool skinhead named Gary and all in all it was fun. Everything was wrapped up by 11, we got our 50 bucks and left for Denny's.
Unknown fans at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago, ILLINOIS. Photo by Ken Blaze.
Ah but the excitement just didn't cease. The ride out of Chicago was probably the most eventful thing that happened all trip long. We were split up. Wayne was driving with Michiko, The Fiendz were behind them and The rest of us were behind the Fiendz. The plan was to drive out west toward Michiko's house at stop to get some grub. All was well as we travelled along the highway until we got to the split with I55 where we needed to get off. A semi decided to get in between us and the Fiendz. We made the exit, but Michiko and The Fiendz thought we couldn't make and the ended up staying on the same highway. We just watched through the windows as they slowly pulled away down the interstate. We ended up on some third highway and completely lost. So we pulled off at the next exit, got out the map and within 5 minutes we were back on track for where we needed to go. The problem now was that we didn't know where we were going. There was talk of Denny's near where Michiko lived but that was all, and wouldn't have been enough.
About 20 minutes later we pulled up behind the Fiendz. How we did it I don't know. We got off immediately there after at an exit I would have never expected. Whoa. Thats another reason why I hate splitting up......

Day 5: Monday September 14th, 1998. Iowa City, IA. Gabe's Oasis

"Look dude, quarter beers!"

We drove into Iowa City early after crashing out at a rest stop near the Quad Cities for most of the night and early morning. It rained all night and made for a crappy sleep. Both the Fiendz and we pulled into a Motel 6 and got rooms fro the day and tonight after the show. Coralville is where we stayed. The day was a pretty lazy one. There wasn't a whole lot to do and the club was just ten minutes away. The Fiendz had an in store early evening gig in Cedar Rapids but we decided to stay back to do some laundry, eat and relax. We had the room, so why not use it up.
We got up to Gabe's at 7pm for load in. It was a good size club, similar in size to the Phantasy Nite Club in Cleveland. We were on the bill with Girl Trouble from Tacoma and The Fiendz. From looking at the wall of photos, everyone has played in this club on their way to somewhere. ALL, MTX, Groovie Ghoulies,Apocalypse Hoboken......Its a good spot in the middle of the country, in the middle of nowhere. We got to play Cirqus Voltaire pinball while waiting to play...
Before the show; Wayne Chris, Joey and I went out walking the streets looking for some Iowa University students to come to the show. Joey was passing out Fiendz stickers. I also needed to refresh my supply of Halls since this trip was really starting to take its toll on my voice, not to mention my allergies have been hellish. I don't think any of the people we talked to actually came down, but it was fun to ask.
We started the night at about 10:15 and surprisingly there was a number of people in the club besides the other bands. My voice was feeling a little better, but I was completely blocked up from the damn allergies.Set:Puzzles/Self Control/Whether/Switch/So Like Mine/My Kind/Never Be The Same/Loose Truks/Lies/Different Eyes/Annie Mae/Seems So Real/You Might Think
We were very tight and to my surprise my voice got stronger as we did the set. The people that showed up, 15-25, by the end of the night, really got into us and the other bands. The Fiendz came up and did a rocking set as usual. Harmonies blazing, tight as hell. Jerry was throwing in some very Unknownish guitar riffs, at our request, and it was to hear him try to do the Chris thing. Girl Trouble came up last and played stuff very similar to the Cramps. It was pretty different and the place really got into them. It was a good turn out for Monday night in Iowa City. Even the bartender/booking guy, Doug, said so. He invited us back anytime, preferably a better night of the week. Maybe we'll be able to get back someday.....
The Fiendz at Gabe's Oasis. Photo by Ken Blaze.
Wayne was gettin a little lucky with some strung out chick. Both he and Chris could be seen many times coming back from the bar with a glazed look exclaiming "Dude, quarter beers!" So needless to say they got ripped. Wayne was happy to oblige a gril he would normally not even look at. "Yeah, I'm in the band."..... Her strung out friend (boyfriend?) took it upon himself to call us all names as we unloaded our gear down what was probably the worst loadin stairs I have ever seen. These were the kind of stairs that most fire escape have; metal, painted, and really slippery when wet. (And we they were.) Anyway , this guy was spouting off "Fag" "Asshole" and other vulgarities at both us and the Fiendz. He was actually pretty funny to listen to. He could barely speak or stand. It wasn't the biggest crowd but the show was great all the same.
We went back to the room in Coralville and hit the Perkins for a late night snack. Tomorrow we lose Danny.

Day 6: Tuesday September 15th, 1998. off

"Where's Danny?"

We had the day off after rocking out at Gabe's and the drive into Springfield, Il. wasn't all that long. The day started with us taking a trip to the Iowa firefighters memorial so Brian could check it out. We also finally found a damn post office. five days and we hadn't had a chance to get any freakin' stamps. After a fairly busy morning, we drove Danny to the Iowa City greyhound, which was nothing more than an old gas station, a bid him a fond fairwell. He needed to get back to Speak In Tongues because he booked a show there for Thursday night. Danny did a great job as Roadie MAn and we got to know him a little bit better. It was sad to see him go. We let him go and headed for Springfield.
We weren't in any rush, so we took the roundabout way and eventually ended up in Lincoln, IL. We were looking for a place to eat a family style dinner (such was the tour trend) and we came across this little city of like 500 people. We drove up on the Lincoln fire station and got directions from the two firemen sitting outside. Brian had wanted to trade a shirt with some out-of -town fire station from anywhere, and he finally got his chance with these guys. We ate at Daphne's Family restaurant. Chris had like a pound of meat on the biggest gyro we'd ever seen. Wayne had steak. We tried to eat big meals because we only ate once a day.
We got into Springfield and drove right to the Asylum. Its a coffee house kinda thing thats been doing shows for just over a year. It was closed that night so we couldn't get in to get any info about tomorrow's show. I was a little worried because I hadn't talked to the guy who booked the show since last month. PLus, Mark from Rod said he had a show cancelled out there because the guy didn't do any promotion or book any other bands.
The Unknown at the Laundromat. Springfield, ILLINOIS. Photo by Ken.
So we found the place and decided to go cruise the town. Springfield is bigger, a lot bigger than I had ever thought. It was basically a Mentor type place with some really old historic buildings and Lincoln burial sites, homes, tombs whatever, everywhere. We stumbled onto Spillway Lanes and figured what the hell, we needed to kill time, why not bowl a few games? So Brian Wayne and I bowled (*we all got like 100-150 points WOW) and Chris hung out with Gary. Bowling only killed about half of the night. We managed to find an all-night laundromat/arcade on a map at the bowling alley, so we decided to head there for the rest of the night. We almost beat the X-Men game with the 4 of us going at once. I got stuck with Dazzler at the end on my last continue.We finished up with Craven's Laundromat, oh by the way it didn't have the 40 games it advertised, only about 12, and headed back to the highway to crash at the nearest rest stop. We crashed in the Jimmy and slept pretty crappy. This must be allergy land because today I never had a minute of clear breathing.

Day 7: Wednesday September 16th, 1998. Springfield, IL. The Asylum

"Hey do you guys know any ALL?"

We woke up from a pretty cramped sleep and wondered about tonight's show. I got hold of Jeremy, the guy who booked the show, at about noon. He sounded surprised to hear from me. He informed me that he couldn't find anyone to play with us because it was a Wednesday night and all the kids we in school. He told us he wouldn't even be there because he had to work. We were told to ask for Steve when we got there at 7:30.
We went and got a room for the rest of the day and night. Oh great no one knows about the show, there's no local band, whats the point of this day. We killed the day off by watching more bad tv (village of the Giants) and having a chinese dinner.
So we went over to the Asylum at 7:30. There were people drinking coffee at a bar surrounded by the coolest environment for a club/coffee house that I have ever seen. There were about 10 couches from Thrift shops scattered around, a couple pool tables, pinball (addams Family), Galagga, and an assortment of bookcases stuffed with books. The ceiling was lined with tiles, all hand-painted with crazy designs and pictures. The back room, or band room, was originally a greenhouse. The stage was there with a few more couches and a pool table.
The Asylum, Springfield, ILLINOIS. Photo by Ken.
Steve, the owner of the place, was a cool guy who filled us in on what happened with the promotion for the show. Apparently the guy who booked us kinda dropped the ball and had some personal problems. Steve didn't even know about the show til this week and he wanted us to know that he would've done more promotion wise if the circumstances were different. So no one knew there was a show. He offered us a chance to play if we wanted to. Normally the place gets a usual draw of 10-20 kids just hanging out drinking coffee or whatever. So we said what the heck we're here to play.
A couple of hours went by as we hung out with the local kids and Steve and his awesome dog Zeke. He was the most mellow puppy I've ever seen. After a few cups of coffee, games of pinball and talking, we decided to hit the stage. at 10 about 15-20m kids were walking around in both parts of the place. We played a short set that about half of the kids really really got into.Set: Never Be The Same/Loose Truks/Self Control/Whether/Switch/She's My Ex/So Like Mine/My Kind/Puzzles/Tilt/Lies/You Might Think.
Everyone sitting watching us gave us a huge ovation after each song and they genuinely like what they heard. One guy, Jim, and his (ex) girlfriend Jill thought we sounded a little like ALL and just happened to want to hear anything off of Allroy's Revenge. I didn't want to play "Shes My Ex" because my voice was so blown out, but when he said that album and we knew the song....We pulled it off. I held up OK.
After the set these great kids came up and all bought shirts and CDs and 7"s We made a killing in merch, nothing like what we do in Clevo. The one guy, Cory, (who owned the adjoining skate shop) bought a bunch of stuff for his store. We spent the rest of the night talking with these really awesome kids. The Asylum was definitely a cool place. So what I thought was going to be a terrible show, turned out to be the best one yet. The shows we were the most worried about, we just the opposite. We retreated back to the hotel to catch some Jeff Foxworthy talking about rednecks (how fitting) and we crashed, ready to take on Evansville, IN.

Day 8: Thursday September 17th, 1998. Evansville, IN. Meskers Park Shelter 17

"You're not charging money tonight are you??"

We had another relatively short drive to get into Evansville. The trip was only about 5 hours and like just about all the travel time this week, it went pretty quick. We had to meet our friend Mike Smith at the Eastland Mall and from there we'd head over to Meskers park.
We rolled into the mall at 4pm and stumbled into Mike Smith wearing an Unknown shirt at the food court. It had been two years since we were in this Southern Indiana town and we remembered some of the landmarks from the last time out. We ate a crappy lunch at Sbarro and something "Pete's" mexican food.
Mike needed us to take him home and then pick up a few things for the show. He doesn't do many shows in town anymore so he wasn't as organized as he could be. In any case things worked out and we got everything we needed for tonight. It took us about an hour or so and then we headed over to the park.
The shelter was a concrete building set way way back in the woods at this place called Meskers Park. There was also a zoo close by and we were hoping to get a glimpse of that. The only things inside were these picnic tables that weighed like a million pound each because they were made out of logs. We did all of the prep work (setting up the PA, moving tables, finding wood to hold the drums in place) in front of the friendly Meskers Park Rangers. It seems that you aren't allowed to charge admission to a public place and these guys were there to make sure Mike didn't. AS soon as we pulled up they were waiting by the shelter asking for the "renter" of the place. Mike assured them there was no charge and they let us get to work. I don't know how he did it, but Mike still managed to get us some money for the show. Thanks Mike!
We were first up, Mike wanted to make sure we played to someone and he was also afraid the noise might be a problem. So if things got shut down, we'd at least play. We played another short set: Never Be The Same/Loose Truks/Self Control/Whether/Switch/Puzzles/Annie Mae/Stare/Biff The Cat/Different Eyes/Lets Go/Lies And we went over pretty well with the local kids. A few of them got the postcards we sent out. See! the mailing list really works!!! And we had a good time.
Next up was the Retros, a sloppy poppy punk band, followed by Hog Love Dog and The Gasgusslers. They were a mix of rockabilly, metal and the Misfits. At the beginning of their set, I wondered why all these Mohawk guys were into this band. They were really tight and really metal/rockabilly. But then at the end they busted into three Misfits songs, and I knew why those guys we into them.This was also the second band on the trip to play "Ace of Spades" by Motorhead. Weird.
We ended the night partying over John's? house (the singer from Hog LOve..) and he invited us to stay. A lot of people came over from the show. Everyone was great and we had a good time talking to the Gasgusslers all night. There were a lot of cool people partying all night. We wanted to get a jump on the drive to Dayton so after about two hours we headed off. I drove of course, no one else was able to even walk straight. Dayton here we come.

Day 9: Friday September 18th, 1998. Dayton, OH. Phillipsburg Community Center

"Anime rules."

The drive into Dayton went quickly. We were all excited to get back to our home state. We drove right to the club, er, community center. This was to be our third show with Rod, and this is their home town scene. We expected to have a cool last night. The Rod guys showed up about an hour after us and things got rolling from there.
To my surprise, the community center was surrounded by a huge cornfield. I thought we had our fill of those going through Indiana Illinois and Iowa. I guess Ohio really is included with all the hick midwest states. I got a chance to talk to Mark and Jeremiah and Nate from Rod and tell them how the tour was going since we left them. Mark was letting me in on their upcoming shows and all the dirt on the Dayton/.Columbus scenes...
Without Wayne this show would have been a different story. For like a whole hour before the show Wayne was sitting outside of the Phillipsburg Community Center talking to kids and showing off all of his artwork. He always carries a small portfolio of stuff to show people when we go out of town. So before the show even began, I sold all of our t-shirts with the Anime design (you know the guy running) The kids we pretty impressed with Wayne. This made the night very successful for us, because not only did we sell a lot of shirts, a lot of the kids really dug the music and bought CDs as well.

Boy Genius opened the show to a good sized crowd. They played a punkpop set. We were up next and got to play to a nicely half full center. This was one of those cities where the kids who came out to the show were really interested in the bands because they don't get shows that often. All three bands played to a great crowd, full of energy and always attentive to the bands. This was turning out to be the BEST show of the tour. We played Stare/Biff The Cat/Self Control/Whether/Switch/Puzzles/Annie Mae/So Like Mine/My Kind/Seems So Real/Never Be The Same/You Might Think. All the material went over very well. There were even a lot of girls in the audience for once, so I ended up writing out a set that included a lot of our "girly" songs. And for the first night we actually sounded kinda bad, but only for the first three songs. We were burned out and it took us a few to get warmed up, especially me and my voice. But after all it was a great set. Our first trip to Dayton was a great one and we will definitely be back.
Rod at the Phillipsburg Community Center in Dayton. Photo by Ken Blaze.
The tour went extremely well; far better than I ever thought it would. I want to thank everyone who came to see us or helped put up the shows or put us on their floor or did whatever. If I forgot your name in this list forgive me, my memory sucks, but here goes: Stevie Ray, ROD (mark,nate"booger",jeremiah), Jill, Leslie, the two idiot hicks in Muncie (just for being the hicks we knew you were) Mike Retread, all the people at Stevie Rays, Slyvia and Slingshot Episode, 602 Smitchell people, Sneetch,Omelet Shoppe, Salvation Army,all the rest stops in the area because Gary kept following us all over the place; and to sleep at of course, Brian at the Fireside, Michiko, THE FIENDZ (jerry,joe,zeckle,larry), The guy and gal from Beloit at the Fireside, Gary the skinhead,Denny's, The Lincoln firemen who gave us directions, Daphne's, Doug and Gabe's, The Gabe's door guy, the girls at Gabe's, GIRL TROUBLE, Steve and the Asylum, jill2 and jim, Zeke, Mike Smith, HOG LOVE DOG AND THE GASGUSSLERS, kara, all the Dayton kids, BOY GENIUS, everyone that signed the mailing list, and lastly Danny Noonan for hittin the road with us and learning the Roscoe lingo.

I'm running out of ideas on what else to tell and my hands hurt so I'll end up here. See you at the shows.

Ken,Wayne,Chris, Brian-------The Unknown.
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