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| July 4, 1981, Fresno, Calif. |
Funny how you remember things, and I was prompted by this footage from Fresno, Calif., to do so.
This is early in the set, we opened with “Signal”, part of
which is seen here. Then go into
an unrecorded song that I can’t remember and another. We’d rewrite these and
move parts, they were flexible elements of the set, setting up songs like “Rat
Patrol” and “Off to War.”
The Fix came to play this July 4 show opening for the Dead Kennedys
at the behest of Biafra, who was kindly good-mouthing our first single. We got
into town, did a sound check and left.
Anything is better than hanging around a
venue all night waiting to play. Nothing good comes of that.
We were staying at the home of Ralph, the singer from Capitol
Punishment, a local band. His parents were out of town, he lived with his
parents. Nice place. although it didn't take much to impress us. It was a place grown ups lived. (BTW, Ralph's bandmate, Dale, is doing a great job in recent years of documenting those years in Fresno)
On the way back to the Belmont Ballroom, we stopped for some
food. This was a part of the tour where we still had some money left over from
playing Texas and Arizona. We ended up being late to get back, and the promoter
was cool but you could tell he wanted us to get the fuck up there. Missed 7
Seconds, who opened. I look at this video and realize we stood real close
together, the Michigan guys against this crowd. At one point, a guy came from
behind me out of nowhere and launched himself off the stage as the crowd started
to dig into the pit halfway through.
That night we went back to Ralph’s and had a pretty good
party. At one point we had a blackout, the kind where the electricity went
down. A couple nights later we headed over to Reno to play against with 7
Seconds. About a week after that, we recorded Jan’s Rooms in LA at the
Music Lab with Spot. We weren’t making any mistakes.
