Black Beauty, a brand new Tom Stevens song, is now on the MySpace player.

I just finished this mix tonight. 

Last week as I was trying to finish writing Black Beauty (the verses came last, trainspotters), another new song popped out.  That one was more formed than this one was at the time.  I will finish that song next, and share it with you.

Enjoy, please.

Tom

Songs added: the old and the new

I've added two songs to the player recently: Just One Night with You and Curtains for You.  Just One Night with You  I wrote in about 1981 and is taken from my very first solo record, Points of View.  Curtains for You is a brand new recording, a cover of a song by The Only Ones for inclusion on an upcoming tribute album.  This was finished last weekend (October 26-28, 2008).

Just One Night with You is a perfect example of the songs I was writing at the time.  My old band Magi had broken up, we lost our Silver Lake condo, and I found a two-room converted garage they called a "beachhouse" on 9th Street in Santa Monica. 

From my memoirs:

The night I moved into my Santa Monica apartment was creepy.  There was a lizard on my porch.  Attempting to settle in just gave me the intense, unsettled feeling that permeated the place.  There were fist holes in the wall of the living room when I moved in.  It was a two-room apartment, kitchen and living room in one, the bedroom (with two dilapidated beds) in the other.  There was no bathroom in the house, that was outside in another building.  Slugs would hang on the wall while I showered.  I tried to ignore all this, remembering that I was paying $195 a month for a place that was nine blocks from the Pacific Ocean.  I was also just thankful to have found a place at all.  It has not been an easy search.

I started becoming obsessed with songwriting.  As I wrote more songs, I would hear new ones everywhere.  Little snippets of a chord progressions or a cool phrase would appear.  I wrote dozens of songs during that period on my Martin acoustic, using a crappy but functional portable cassette recorder as an electronic notebook.  I'd sit with pen and paper and scribble down lyrics, or play guitar until a recognizably good chord progression appeared.  Other times a formed song would play in my head, and I would try to record it as fast as I could.

Just One Night with You was one of those songs using a simple process: breathe in the intense vibes that lived in the fist holes in my new home, and breath out 3-minute pure pop songs, as an exorcism.

As for Curtains for You, that came about when Hawk from The Plastic Pals passed along an invite via MySpace recently.  Would I be interested in covering a song by The Only Ones?  For those of you who are too young or don't remember, The Only Ones were a very fine South London band from the late 70s - early 80s.  They were on the turntable a lot at Tower Sunset during the time I worked there.  I hadn't heard them for years, but remembered a nice body of songs on those records, so I immediately accepted the offer.  The choice was not easy, but the song Curtains for You found me, and the riff stayed in my head for days.  I hadn't recorded anything new in 2008, owing to a rough year that I may explain someday.  So, playing and singing the song was easy and actually quite a joy.  Navigating the studio was another thing entirely.  What you don't use you lose, the old ad used to state, and it's true to an extent.  My little studio engineering tricks were not lost, just sleeping in the corner.  Once I woke them up with a fire hose and warm blanket, I was able to juggle the controls on autopilot and focus on doing the best job on singing and playing as possible.  Wow, I forgot how much fun it is to record!  Must do this more often.

The site for The Only Ones tribute is http://www.myspace.com/nottheonlyones.

Since someone already asked: the guitar I use on Curtains for You is not my usual Strat, but rather my 90s Gibson SG-1.  Black guitar, U.S. made, one humbucker pickup.  I found it in a local pawn shop for just over a couple hundred bucks a few years ago and fell in love with its great sound and feel.  Amazing it took that long to own a real Gibson electric guitar.

I put my aging studio computer through such paces that it decided to die right after this Curtains mix was completed.  Luckily it was apparently just the power supply, which has now been replaced.  More recording should commence shortly.

Tickets are $18 ($20 at the door) and are now available through http://www.ticketalternative.com/Events/990.aspx

MySpace now allows six songs to be uploaded.  I have no idea exactly when this change happened, but my friend Lina brought it to my attention this weekend.  Since Lina has a better knowledge of my songs than most, I asked her to pick one of my songs to add.  I was expecting another pick from my new Home CD, especially since it just got a great review in The Big Takeover 61 (plug, plug).  Instead, "I'm sort of torn between the tried and true Mustang Car or even Insomnia," she replied, "although I've also had the thought of you putting up "How Do You Feel What's Real?"

"How Do We Feel What's Real?" it is!  Thanks, Lina.

Some history: I originally wrote this song in 1986 while on tour with The Long Ryders.  We actually played and demoed a Long Ryders version of it. For you trainspotters, I submitted five songs for Two Fisted Tales: How Do We Feel What's Real, The Upper Hand, Sad Sad Songs, 17 Ways, and A Stitch in Time.  The latter made it to the album and 17 Ways was recorded but kept off the record and CD.  The Long Ryders demo of 17 Ways was released on Anthology on Polygram, now out of print.  The remaining two songs I recut and released on my Points Revisited CD.  But no recording of How Do We Feel What's Real has been released legitimately on anything, ever. 

For the record: I did NOT leave The Long Ryders because I didn't get enough songs on the albums, contrary to what some band histories infer.  Funny how those rumors get started.

Anyway, road stories and in-jokes galore reside within this song.  The opening lines refer to the Stockholm police pounding on our road manager's door in the morning after a particularly wild night.  Although this song was written during the Reagan era, some lines certainly ring true with our current president.  Even the departure of Alex MacNicol from Green on Red is referenced in the "the big dog's left his home."

This version of How Do We Feel What's Real was recorded, along with a few other not yet released songs, sometime last year shortly after I finished Home. 

I figure that MySpace Song Number Six should change fairly frequently, so you can now consider it request night on the bandstand.  What would you like to hear?

My old band Magi was history by late 1980. Two of the guys had already moved back to Indiana.  They were soon using the Magi name to play more gigs.  I didn't mind.  We gave up our condo in Silver Lake, and I moved to Santa Monica.  I lived alone in a rather intense, creepy garage on 9th Street converted to a so-called "beach house."  It was nine blocks from the Pacific Ocean and rent was $195/month.  There were fist holes in the wall of the living room, and two dilapidated beds nearly filled the only other room in the house.  The bathroom and shower were in a separate building.  My first neighbors were a quiet and odd young man and woman who told me they were brother and sister.  However, passionate sounds coming through the thin wall at night were not the type usually heard from siblings.

I had no TV. I did have my records and stereo, my Martin D-18 acoustic guitar, and a small cassette recorder.  That was when I started seriously, nearly obsessively writing songs.  A Tower Records co-worker, Alan Seymour, was a songwriter and in a band called The Adaptors.  He liked my songs, encouraged me and planted the "write one every day" concept in my head.  I was far from one-a-day prolific, but I was often finishing one or two songs each week.  Most were not great by any stretch, but it was part of the reinvention process into which I was forced after Magi's breakup and the lack of another band.  This reinvention was not without its immediate rewards.

The creepy vibes of the Santa Monica house, combined with the dominance of L.A. punk, influenced my music, but in an opposite fashion.  Rather than surrendering and writing creepy punk songs, I would instead write simple, innocent, straightforward pop songs. I fashioned them like weapons against the din.  I was listening to a lot of Byrds, Buddy Holly and Big Star.  I strived for simplicity and emotional honesty in the face of punk posturing and the ghosts of anger I heard through the holes in my living room.  I would often casually strum Buddy Holly songs on my Martin after coming home from work, as if to exorcize demons.

Another co-worker at Tower Records, Lauren Fowler, now known as Lauren Adams, was also a songwriter.  She needed a bass player for a gig she was doing at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.  I accepted, and used the opportunity to observe the scene.  At the Troubadour in 1980, Monday nights were "hoot nights."  You waited outside the club until it opened, and then signed up to play onstage for fifteen minutes.  If someone liked you, you got a slot to play at another hoot night.

One Monday evening, I drove my soon-to-be-dead 1968 White Rambler to the Troubadour.  I waited in the doorway, signed up, and played my first solo show ever.  My solo fifteen minutes onstage went over well, and I was hired to do another show.

I noticed an unusual vibe in the crowd that night.  Although I'd certainly heard of the place, I'd only been to the Troubadour once, when Alan Seymour took me to see his friends The Bangs play. The vibe tonight was different, and I sensed that it was not just because it was Hoot Night.  The crowd was attentive and polite, smiled at times, but looked drained and even a little sad.  The next act mentioned something about their "favorite rocker" who died that night.

It was December 8, 1980.

I left the Troubadour shortly after my set, still none the wiser. Before I drove home, I decided to stop at Tower Records to hang a bit.  On the way, the AM radio station was playing Beatles songs non-stop. 

After the second song, the word came.  John Lennon had been shot dead in New York City.

Tower Records was already in full pandemonium when I arrived.  Lennon's records had flown from the shelves within minutes.  Bootleg souvenir hawkers were already beginning to arrive in the parking lot outside.  Inside and outside of the store, people were weeping.  Every major media organization sent crews that were literally running in the door.  They mercilessly badgered anyone showing any emotion, and their cameras zoomed in like vultures on the teary-eyed mourners.  I instinctively went into Tower employee mode, despite being off the clock.  The Tower phones were ringing non-stop ("Is he REALLY dead?"), customers kept pouring in, and my friends on the late shift needed help which I gladly gave, as did the masses that were streaming into Tower.  Those masses wanted answers, hope, and resolution.  They could get none of the above.

Christmastime was far from the same that year.

In hindsight, it was very strange for me to have played the Troubadour on that night.  Lennon fans know it as the place where he and Harry Nilsson consumed too many Brandy Alexanders, and Lennon came out of the bathroom with a Kotex on his forehead. (He: "Don't You Know Who I Am?" Waitress: "You're Some Asshole with a Kotex Stuck to His Forehead.")

At Tower, I found my friend Elaine, the woman I would marry three years and three weeks from that night, and we hugged for a long time.  I can still remember that hug.  It was healing.

I was 24 years old.  Once again, our world had changed, and not for the better.

The Columbia Hotel quickly became a second home to us.  We almost always stayed there while in London, and we grew quite fond of the place.  Sometimes the Columbia was full and we'd have to endure the dark and dingy Averard Hotel instead, but, even then, we'd make the short trek to the Columbia bar, sneaking in to see friends who would invariably be there.  The desk clerks all knew us well, and Francesco at the bar always treated us kindly, with quiet dignity.  He sometimes opened the bar when we came in late en masse, even though he was not supposed to do so.

Frequent guests at the Columbia in late 1985 included Dave Hill and Noddy Holder from Slade.  Slade was the toast of the UK in the early 70s, when loud guitar bands in silly haircuts banging 200-second pop songs ruled.  Slade may have been a hit machine in the UK in their day, but they never broke as big in the U.S.  I'd became a lifelong fan from the Friday night I saw them play Cum on Feel the Noize on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert TV show in the early 70s.  I'd also seen them live a few times, including a South Bend Indiana gig in 1973 where, strangely, King Crimson opened for them.  This pairing no doubt embarrassed not only Robert Fripp, but Slade themselves, who were huge admirers of King Crimson. That night, as Fripp spoke to the boogie-hungry crowd, he was interrupted by someone in the audience pathetically yelling, "ROCK AND ROLL!"  Robert calmly suggested that if someone wished to hear some rock and roll, they "should purchase a transistor radio and tape it to their ear."  Dave Hill remembered that incident as I told it with a grin and wide eyes.

Dave Hill and I became friends over many pints at the Columbia bar.  Dave was the Slade guitarist with the bowl-cut hair and big smile.  He was outspoken and friendly. I could ask him anything without seeing him flinch.  Besides talking the usual guitars, amps and tour trivialities, we discussed parenthood.  My son James was on the way that February. Since Dave was already a veteran dad, we also talked in depth about the art of fatherhood.

Noddy Holder was always the character onstage and on camera, but quite a few times when I saw him at the Columbia, he was worse for wear and barely able to speak, possibly due to the number of pints he consumed.  Although I recall him at my table at the Columbia bar more than once, soaking up the suds with Dave and myself, I don't recall him saying much.

One evening I was sitting at a table in the bar, having a pint of lager and reading Hammer of the Gods, a Led Zeppelin biography.  I was at the part where Noddy Holder is mentioned, and as if on cue, Noddy walked past me and nodded hello.  I without warning (and rather rudely, in hindsight) burst out due to my misreading: "Hey Noddy, what's this about you almost joining Zeppelin?"  He paused, then looked down at the floor for a very long few seconds, shook his head, then continued walking without saying a word.  I immediately regretted my outburst, but it was too late to retract my words.

After a little Q&A from Sid ("WHO do you want to give this single to?"), I presented Dave with his own copy of our new single, Looking for Lewis & Clark.  He seemed pleased and curious.  Next time I saw him, he immediately blurted out, "I heard your new single -- it's GOOOD!" His eyes bulged with enthusiasm.  I felt it a great honor.  Later Noddy reviewed the same single favorably on BBC radio on a review panel that included Roger Daltrey and Phil Collins.  Daltrey and Noddy loved it, but Phil remained on the fence discussing it with a condescending tone. I was instantly glad I never had to suffer through a meeting with ol' Phil.

Silently, Dave Hill was sensitive about Slade's failure over a decade before to duplicate in the United States their amazing success in the UK and Europe.  I felt the frustration in his voice when the subject turned to touring in the US.  After 17 hits in the UK including six number ones, they instead struggled and felt cursed across the Atlantic.  As for the reaction of my friends to Slade back then, I recall that some actually hated them on Don Kirshner, the same way they hated The Ramones a few years later on the same show.

Among the many times I saw Slade in concert, I attended a triple bill at the Masonic Temple in Detroit in the summer of 1974 with 10cc, Robin Trower and Slade.  10cc got only polite applause, but the crowd enthusiastically ate up every Hendrix-borrowed riff from Mr. Trower.  Slade headlined and provoked mixed reactions.  A large contingent in the crowd rushed the stage and joined in enthusiastically with Noddy's every call-and-response and danced joyously in the aisles.  So much so that the police began to hassle those in front.  I had brought my trusty tape recorder to this show only to have it confiscated at the entrance and held until the concert was over.  At the same time the fans were having a blast up front, others rose angrily from their seats, flipping off Slade and yelling "you suck!"  Was this the future Kiss Alive crowd?

The mixed reaction puzzled me, especially coming from a Detroit audience.  I can only imagine what Slade discussed after the show in their dressing room and hotel.  By 1985 Slade may have felt down due to the strange turn of past events, but they were far from out. They'd found new life to their careers via MTV, which provided their biggest hits in America, over a decade after England was putty in their hands. And Slade was recording once again, which prompted their stay at the Columbia.

As for The Long Ryders, our second successful 1985 tour of the UK and Europe was about to segue into Christmas 1985 back home with my family in Ventura, CA. Another baby was due for us in February, and the biggest U.S. tour of our careers was to commence in March.  On the heels of a top 40 hit in the UK with Looking for Lewis & Clark, The Long Ryders seemed set to take the same success back to America in 1986.  We were inspired, confident, and I was on top of the world.

I wrote this a few years back, and it still feels relevant.  Hope you enjoy.

i need no flag to claim it
my love she sleeps tonight
and I finally realized this is my home . . .

Elkhart, Indiana stands almost exactly one-hundred miles east of Chicago.  Interstate 80-90 runs through the northern part that borders Michigan. The land stolen from the Potawatamis and Miamis became a mecca for band instruments, Alka Seltzer, and more recently, recreational vehicles. It is still an industrial heaven and abhorrent to original thought. Conservative in politics and religion, it nonetheless spawns lots of misfits that break free and carve their own niche.

I've been reading Kenneth Rexroth's autobiography. Another lost Elkhart-bred boy. His tales of hanging with his Native American friend and observations of the land and feel make me sad that those times are gone.

So-called progress has long since changed the landscape almost completely, attracting an urban feel to a once quiet town. Profits over humanity. From all over the Americas people flood in, often penniless, to work in soulless factories, pounding profits and flushing away rights and dignity in exchange for a paycheck to survive, and for the privilege of modern consumer-culture indulgences.

I grew up there. The public school system didn't (and probably still wouldn't) know what to do with a kid who could read and write fluently at three, play guitar with abandon at seven, and immediately challenge everything. The mold was slammed down on me early, and my family, silently or not, taught me to play the game. Here they rarely educate children to broaden the mind or enrich the soul, but rather to prepare the young for proper droneship.  Sit down, shut up and assume facelessness.

I escaped once. Hollywood was at first invigorating, like a mad, happy dream. Lots of people from all over the world, many just like me,  searching for a way out of something or a way to somewhere. I found plenty, oddly too much, of what was lacking back home. Insane, fiery spirits, wild speed music, intensely beautiful women, and hope. The future was mine. Grab on and hold on tight.

Ten years later the thrill was gone. When did the end come? The band broke up. My car had been stolen twice within a year while I was recording. I found myself again doing jobs for money in places I would never be seen in otherwise.  A boss was making obscene phone calls at all hours to my house, probably in retaliation for my telling him to fuck off during one of his attempted power trips.

Some money showed up and I was gone. Back to Indiana. Home.

My parents were living in the same house I grew up in. My bed was still there. My father and I finally started talking man-to-man in brief wonderful moments. Less than two years later I watched him reduced from strength to defeat to a sneaking cancer that finally killed him. He passed on May 31st, the same day his mother and father died. Six weeks later my appendix burst and I nearly died as well.

I lived.

After all this, depression set in. Life was slow. I wanted things that didn't exist. My thoughts of the past were glorified in my head. Memory easily reveals only what's comfortable. I was also reinventing myself and didn't know it.

I don't know when it was, but later, a cloud lifted. That ugly melancholy, that in hindsight I realize I craved, was leaving, and I didn't even miss it. I started to be comforted by the sight of the familiar arrangement of trees in a field near my home. The roads were also familiar and led anywhere I pointed the wheel. My family was here. It was somewhere that was mine.

Traditionally, Elkhart's history remembers those who assumed power and/or made freight trains full of cash: the businessmen, the politicians. Maybe some were indeed honorable human beings as well. The artists, poets, musicians that broke free and continue to walk the globe making noise are not talked about in their own hometown. And the silence is deliberate.

Right now, though, a light, beautiful snow is slowly falling down on the Saint Joseph River as I look out of a window of the 19th century house I lay down to sleep in every night. And that is just enough to remind me why I'm here.

I don't consider myself a superstitious man.  Break a mirror?  Clean it up carefully and buy a new one.  Draw aces and eights while playing cards?  Write a song.  Spill salt?  You know what to do. 

I am familiar with karma.  The term is often misused, but I never argue with "you reap what you sow" logic.  And sometimes, it is demonstrated in unexpected, powerful ways.

My family found itself renting a decent enough house years ago on West Franklin Street in Elkhart, IN.  Franklin Street is a winding road with lots of crazy drivers, and we lived just east of where the speed limit jumps to 50 MPH. The road then leads to South Bend (home of Sneaky Pete Kleinow, R.I.P.) and points west.

There was no on-street parking in front of our house, and our driveway was an accident waiting to happen.  You either backed into it from the street, or backed into traffic on the way out. all the while hoping that no one whipped around the curve and smashed into your car.  Traffic habitually flew around that curve.  I even got a speeding ticket there in my youth.

I soon discovered a safe way to enter.  Another driveway from a side street led behind a beauty salon and another house, then connected to my driveway.  I was overjoyed to find it, and started using it exclusively.

One summer day, I saw a rusted car parked where the back driveway connected to mine.  Inside the car was a guy in a dirty white ribbed T-shirt.  He smoked a cigarette while watching my daughter on the swingset.  I quickly confronted him.  His name was Ed.  He made a sweeping motion with one arm while he talked to me, explaining that he owned all of the properties to the west of my house, and that I must stop using his driveway immediately.  Just because.  He then drove away.

A little investigation confirmed that he was indeed the landlord of that sweep of properties.  But I figured I was doing him no harm, so I continued using that back driveway as I had before.

I was nearing my house late one night and suddenly had to hit the brakes.  Ed had laid a very big log across the driveway, obviously to block it.  I got out to move it, but it apparently weighed several hundred pounds.  That damned log blocked access to both my driveway and the beauty salon that he owned.

We heard sirens nearby about a month or two later.  Jumping to the window to catch what was happening, I saw the flicker of orange flames through the window of the beauty salon, and smoke starting to rise from the building.  Someone had left a clothes dryer running inside.  The lint in the dryer had ignited, and the fire spread from there.  The salon was closed, so no one was hurt.

I saw the flashing lights and the firemen out of their trucks.  But instead of readying their hoses to put out the fire, they were all frantically trying to move that damned log so they could get the fire trucks in.  This took several minutes, as the fire continued to burn.

Ed never did move that log back, and I don't remember ever seeing him after that night.

"At least you didn't die in Italy" - Juno, the case worker in the movie Beetlejuice.

"I don't want to play electric guitar. I might get electrocuted." - my son, age 6.

Florence, Italy, December 1985: Another stop on The Long Ryders second European tour. We'd been on the road since October, traveled thousands of miles, slept little, and were nearly delirious.  Greg came onstage with the words "Eat Me" written on his forehead.  Since I was the designated setlist creator, I used the loopy vibe to completely skew our set for the evening.  Out went several of the songs we usually played, and in went Danny & Dusty covers and other unusual songs. Some local guy, drunk in his black leather jacket and doing his best Jim Morrison jumped onstage as we started playing Gloria, and had his sloppy 200 seconds of fame.

Italy was beautiful beyond words, and always very kind to us.  The food was an art form.  Driving through Italian countrysides revealed small towns with winding paths and centuries-old small shops and restaurants. The men and women aged beautifully, with grace and style. The fans at the gigs were warm and passionate, although sometimes their passion went to an extreme.  Once we were recognized, some fans would not leave us alone, no matter what we were doing.  One price of fame, I thought.  At the Italian concert halls, the promoters would set up in front of the stage what resembled a reversed baseball backstop with wire mesh.  It was their attempt to keep fans off the stage. The first time I saw this backstop, I figured that it was pure over-reaction.  We'd seen some wild crowds in the UK and elsewhere, but never was wire mesh needed to separate our fans from us.  I always loved shaking hands with the crowd and getting warm hugs from exuberant female fans.  But our first gig in Italy demonstrated why those backstops were needed.  The crowd pushed violently forward all night, and there were fans in front with their faces pressed against the wire mesh as we played.  Watching them, I imagined them examining the waffle-like imprints on their faces in their bathroom mirrors the morning after.  Further back in the crowd, I caught glimpses of smiling fans jumping up and down, holding their tape recorders overhead. They'd tape our set, then try to interview us on the remaining tape after the show.  We didn't mind.  It was flattery.

We saw other unusual things at gigs in Italy.  One of our first there was at the Communist headquarters in, I think, Rimini (road haze sets in).  The building included a radio station and concert hall. "The fascists hate rock and roll," it was explained to us, and they showed us the bullet holes in their building from frequent fascisto drive-bys.

Tonight in Florence, the weirdness continued.  Upon our arrival at the hall, I noticed that our amps were set up on a pure metal stage.

Playing an electric guitar in the old garage days meant you got shocked. A lot. If your amp's polarity (the direction of AC, alternating current) was different from the polarity of the PA that your mike was plugged into, a jolt would be felt when you touched the microphone and the strings of your guitar at the same time. I never liked getting shocked, although I think some of my fellow band members did.  One guy even volunteered to test the strength of 9V batteries with his tongue.

This also brings to mind when, as a school kid in about 1973, I saw a band called Uriah Heep at Notre Dame University.  Their bassist Gary Thain had been badly shocked days earlier in Dallas under similar circumstances: an electrified microphone.  During their show, I'll never forget seeing Gary suddenly fall backward into a wall of Marshall amplifier stacks, which came tumbling down on him like building blocks.  Not long after I witnessed this, he died.

Meanwhile, back the Florence soundcheck, our excellent British crew were setting everything up for our show. Three months on the road had not dulled their ability to get everything right. This type of expert care was a form of heaven for weary traveling musicians. I tuned my bass and plugged it into my amplifier as usual, then cautiously stepped across the metal stage to the microphone. To test for shock potential, I had a trick that drove sound crews nuts. I held the back of the wooden bass neck and slowly brought the metal bass strings to my microphone without touching the mic with my hands. Damn good thing I did this. An ugly orange curve of electricity went from microphone to string, Bride of Frankenstein-style. For the rest of the night I could still see the temporary burn superimposed on my retinas, like a flashbulb from hell.

It seems that the town factory had shut down for the night, and about 700 volts of electricity was going through our amps and PA.

Rather than canceling the show, our road crew, deep into their show-must-go-on work ethic, ran a long cable from the PA to outside the hall, and literally buried the cable into the ground.  This "grounded" the PA (or "earthed" as my Brit friends would say) to prevent those stage shocks.  I later found out that our local promoters grabbed a guy representing the venue, and under fear of violent death (this was Italy, and those promoters did not mess around), they made the venue guy stand guard over that buried cable during the entire gig.  Our show went on, the crowd loved it, tapes were made, autographs were signed, and back into the van we went.  Yet another London show was coming soon with a live recording planned, and then home to L.A. for the holidays.  I couldn't wait to see my baby daughter Sarah and my amazing, beautiful wife Elaine, who was now seven months pregnant.

The Long Ryders were in the midst of their lengthy Fall 1985 tour of the UK and Europe.  We were supporting our new State of Our Union LP and hit single Looking for Lewis and Clark, playing live on BBC-TV's Whistle Test with Andy Kershaw, when the word came.  We were asked to go on tour with The Alarm in the new year, playing dates at U.S. colleges during spring break. Those Alarm guys were already our pub pals, and plenty of pints and laughs were had at the Hotel Columbia bar with Mike, Eddie, Dave and Twist when The Long Ryders were calling London our second home.

Although the 1986 Alarm-Long Ryders tour mainly centered around colleges in New England, it was slated to begin in Stockton, CA on April 9. Upon our arrival in at the venue in Stockton, we noticed that our backstage door was adorned with a sign that the Alarm guys had scribbled and posted to welcome us: "Finally, a GREAT opening band!" We were backstage later that evening when, unexpectedly, the entire show was suddenly canceled. Mike Peters was very ill. Immediately I flashed fearfully on the UCLA show looming in three days.  It was to be a major event, complete with an MTV live broadcast.  We wondered if Mike would recover in time.

Fears were dashed when we did our first successful show of the tour at The Fillmore in San Francisco a mere two days later. Mike's earlier illness was not evident at this show. I recall the Fillmore's Gestapo-like ushers and Alarm fans in the crowd with simpatico hairspray. Immediately after the gig, we began the six hour haul down I-5 to our homes in L.A.

Sleep came and went, and Saturday, April 12, 1986 dawned. My parents were in Los Angeles from Elkhart, Indiana to see the concert, our family, and especially their new grandson.  During the concert they got the VIP treatment, watching their son play in front of 12,000 people on TV while enjoying the amenities of an on-site hospitality room, My father couldn't stop talking to his friends about what he experienced that day, his friends later told me. 

Stage lighting in indoor venues usually prevents the performer from gauging the size of the crowd beyond the first few rows. At UCLA in broad daylight, the 12,000-strong masses were in plain, awesome view. It was dizzying, by far our largest crowd to date. MTV did not broadcast The Long Ryders' set, and it was clearly The Alarm's day to shine. For us, the hometown opening act, the crowd did show respect and some enthusiasm. For The Alarm, they went absolutely bonkers.

The rest of the tour was great fun. Greg Sowders and I were the party hounds in The Long Ryders at that time, with Stephen and Sid being the reserved ones. The Alarm had a similar two-for-two split with Dave and Twist the party guys. Dave, Twist, Greg and myself often embarked on some wild adventures throughout the tour.

The Long Ryders already had two 1984 U.S. club tours under our belts, but we spend 1985 almost exclusively on tour in the UK and Europe. The Alarm tour allowed us to resume playing the States, this time in larger halls.  My favorites were to mid-size Palace-era theaters like the Orpheum in Boston, the Beacon in NYC, and the Tower in Philadelphia.  Besides playing for more people at once, playing bigger venues gave us a feeling that we were at last starting to get real traction in the United States.

The Alarm's kindness was constant. They let us ride in their tour bus during a particularly long haul from Corpus Christi to San Francisco. Their crew (no doubt helped by our bribes of fifths of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes, added to our rider for this purpose) gave us full lights and sound. This was fairly unheard of in a world where jaded, grizzled headliners often do their worst to sabotage wide-eyed opening acts. Instead, The Alarm were then a youthful, high-energy, hard-working band riding high on the charts and loving every minute of it with quiet intensity, all the while keeping to an all-must-share philosophy with their opening acts.

During the last show of the tour, at Irvine Meadows near L.A., we had an on-stage shaving cream battle, and joined them during their encore to play a Maggie Mae/Stand Down Margaret medley. My sister-in-law was caught up in the vibe (and a few drinks) and begged me to introduce her to Mike Peters, which I did.  Ah, starstruck kids.

Ending the tour was nearly tearful. We said our goodbyes.  As we promised, we did see each other again soon, on their side of the pond.

Mike, Dave, Eddie and Twist: wherever you are now, a million thanks for the respect, the fun, and... everything.  Your kindness will never be forgotten.