Stop 5. 407 W. 30th St. ATX 78705. Mon. Feb. 22.
This was really a great place to live in 1985-1986. The Beach (now the Crown and Anchor pub) club was in full swing, and not only did my band at the time the Elegant Doormats get to play shows there, but there was a steady stream of amazing music being booked there constantly. I wish I had kept some kinda list, but of the shows I remember seeing…Scratch Acid. Hickoids, Texas Instruments, Butthole Surfers, Criminal Crew (who made fun of us because we had keyboards), Zeitgeist, Glass Eye, Daniel Johnston…ad infinitum. You could literally crawl to my house from there. My roomies Tom Goodwin and Steve Chiles were pretty cool, both contributed to Doormat recordings, and we even did some live stuff in semi-trenchcoat disgiiuse as The Men In Coats. One of the more remarkable things going on there was that we were Shock-Headed Peter’s practice space. Tom played synth and vox in this short lived band that included David Sims on bass, Bill Anderson on guitar, Cindy Brodt on vocals….and who was it on drums? I forget. Rich Malley? I was in awe of Scratch Acid, so having Sims playing in my living room…whoa. I was both afraid of and had a crush on Cindy at the same time, and Bill played in Poison 13, kinda the lords of the scene around then. I think they have a track on a compilation…oh yeah, they changed their name to Shockhead and their track is on the “Bands On The Block” comp.
Incongruously, I was working at a rattan furniture outlet delivering the goods during this time. Having failed to find a job in journalism in Austin and not wanting to leave…whatcha gonna do? I wrote for Cretin Bull, I wrote a bit for the Chron and the Texan, co-founded a literary magazine called Fatalist Monthly….tried to keep my hand in it, ya know… It was a pretty shitty job, and I was pretty bad at it, so my coworker/van driver Joe Wilwerding referred to me as “Worthless”, which is such a great nickmane that Wendy and I have started using it for Malcom Reed on “Star Trek: Enterprise” ‘cuz he can’t seem to do anything right. Regardless, I was Joe’s weed connection, so he was forced to keep me on. We took many long detours to various destinations, always using Loop 360 because there were never any cops on it and we could smog out to our hearts’ content. Our boss Donnie always wondered what took us so long.
The house looks surprisingly similar to when we lived there, though you can tell it’s been gutted and remodelled, and it now has a separate door to what was my room…damn, that woulda come in handy.
This was the most eventful bike ride yet. Of course I had to stop at the Crown and Anchor for a beer on the way back, and then riding through UT campus down what used to be Speedway I hear someone calling my name! Holy cow, it’s Reed Caylor, who I’ve known since…oh wow, the house on Jeffersom right after this one, 86-87!! He had been swimming at the UT swim center and was on his way home to his domicile ooff of 35th. It was nice to chat…how many years has it been since I ran into someone randomly, both of us on bikes? God knows. Then, right after I crossed the river, I stopped at the bathrooms on Auditoriun Shores to pee, and I made the supreme mistake of attempting to adjust the bike seat’s height cuz it was riding too low. Holy fuck, the whole thing basically fell apart in my hands, and the bike seat was now so low that trying to ride it was comical. I was so low on the bike it was like I was a circus clown, my knees practically brushing my chin. Needless to say I had to walk the bike a considerable part of the way home. Luckily Mellow Johnny’s was able to put a new post on the seat for a very low price while I waited, but of course it took lazy me weeks to get this simple task accomplished, putting the kibosh on the bike riding for a while.
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