When we returned from playing CBGB's the summer of 1976 there was a new music club open in Minneapolis. The Longhorn Bar had formerly been a Jazz club where local greats Natural Life held forth and was the place that Steve and I visited if we had to spend any time in the bathroom. (The Longhorn was directly across the street from the Blitz Bar. The bullet holes behind the toilet in the stall of the Blitz's men's room reminded us of the person who had been murdered while sitting there- never a pleasant thought when you are trying to relax.) Before being a Jazz club the Longhorn Bar had been a Nino's Steakhouse and still bore the decor and the trappings of a restaurant trying to look "Western". There were wagon wheel chandeliers hanging from the low ceiling and garish red and black carpeting with the repeated outlines of longhorn cattle head silohuettes. The new owner Jay Berine was into the new music and before long "Jay's Longhorn" became a stop for New Wave bands that were
touring the United States.

The bar was under an adjacent parking ramp and the layout was this: As you came in you went down a half level past the bathrooms to the lobby area. There was an outer bar to the left and the Music Room to you right. The stage faced away from the street and you got in by proceeding through the lobby then turning right into the music room. There was a bar that ran most of the length of the room along the east wall, the stage was along the south wall and there was a DJ booth tucked into the southeast corner. The sound mixers had a little cordoned-off square in the middle of the room from which to run the sound. There was about a twenty foot deep dance area in front of the modest stage- it was only about three feet above the rest of the room, but was fairly deep and nice and wide too. A great innovation was that The Longhorn had its own permanent PA system- a novelty for the time. (One glorious night Steve and Dave and I had convinced other players to get up out of the audience and
join us onstage. Eventually we doffed our instruments and gave them up to other players joining the song until at last no Commandos were left on stage. We met back at the soundboard where we could sit with the engineer Steve Fjelstad and enjoy our own performance.)

The door was run by Jay's girlfriend Margaret. She almost always wore a pair of see-through pants that put everyone in a good mood. She was friendly, but tough. Musicians that weren't actually playing onstage that night all had to pay to get in. Cover charges were usually about $3. If you didn't want to see the music you could hang out for free in the outer bar and hob nob. This was a regular part of the early evening for all of us and there were regulars that infested this outer bar that we would look forward to seeing. Most of the players would hang here until our posses showed up and then make our way into the main room. Mary Karr and Sheri Nolthe were two very good looking poets who were going to school at Macalester College. Their routine was to greet regulars (and newcomers) with the sobriquet "Hi Horny!" and invite us to buy them a drink. No one was sure if they were more interested in us or each other. They did a good job of being obscure about this and enjoyed a lot of
free drinks and plenty of juicy speculation.

Dressing rooms were at the back of the bar and were often unattended. My friend Don and I would slip into the main dressing room while the touring band was onstage and relax with some of the tasty food and expensive alcohol requested on the band's "rider", ( A rider was the addedum to a touring band's contract that specified what special needs that band had in the way of food and drink. If you were feeling peckish there was always some food left over and plenty of top drawer bottles.) This was a good way to stretch our "entertainment dollars", but could lead to unhealthy overconsumption. One night Don helped himself to the entire contents of The Stranglers' remaining alcohol and them picked a fight with XXX, who jumped off the stage and engaged in some unfortunate fisticuffs. (I moved to the side and became a watchful "noncombatant"during this particular encounter.)

Shows at the Longhorn would end about 1:30AM with a throng standing on the street and asking each other "Where's the party?" The night was never over when the bar closed. We would get an address and between fifty and a hundred of us would carry on at the after party, usually getting home around dawn.

One night Tim Carr and I took off on my motorcycle and got to the party address first. We knocked on the door and a surprised woman let us in. We marched right to her refrigerator and helped ourselves to a couple of beers, followed moments later by scores of other people. It was the wrong address. That poor woman had to call the cops to get everybody out.