Slam tour diary 6/6/1990 Houston, TX. Ah, yes! our gig at Fitzgeralds, I remember it like it was 30 years ago….which is to say, not at all. Generally, something really good or really bad has to happen for me to remember individual gigs. Some are stamped on my brain and some have just dissolved. Fans of the Museum of Jurassic Technology will be familiar with the work of neurophysiologist Geoffrey Sonnabend, who held that memory is an illusion, and that forgetting, not remembering, is the inevitable outcome of all experience. Anyway, in the absence of details of this particular show (and any fans that were there are encouraged to share), I’ll share instead how some of us passed the time on long drives in the RV.
We had a mid-sized Fleetwood Tioga, basically, a small ‘living area’ that included a dining table, a mini-kitchen, a toilet (altho all were encouraged to only use it for micturition, unless absolutely necessary), a shower, which was never used, except as a closet, and a bed over the driver and passenger seats. There were warnings everywhere not to occupy that top area while the vehicle was in motion, but it was a popular place to lie down on daytime drives, as the view was great.
Jeff and Gary, however, had staked out a space on the dining table where they set up a small TV that Gary had brought and hooked up Jeff’s Nintendo system. They had one game, Bases Loaded, and they played it constantly. They gave the players and teams ridiculous names and kept the stats of all the games. Jeff can, to this day, I’m sure, tell you the names of the teams and the players. I remember the obvious joy that the two cousins got from playing this rudimentary video game whenever they had a chance.
Bill and I never joined in and I can’t remember how we each passed the time. Bill was probably reading books about UFOs. I was used to being the bands’ road manager but now that job was filled and I had time on my hands. I had used our time while recording in Charlotte to get a North Carolina driver’s license since my home state of Massachusetts had refused to grant me a renewal, citing the $1200 of parking tickets that I had accumulated while living in Allston. I used our engineer, Steve Haigler’s address as my ‘home’ in NC and I passed the drivers test as if I’d been driving for 13 years. The best part of being the driver was that you got to pick the music that played in the cassette player. That would get me into a little trouble on the other side of Texas. Tomorrow: Yet another day off (not a good sign) so we head to Austin.
https://www.giantbomb.com/…/history-of-baseball-vide…/92605/
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