Alright, is everyone packed and ready to relive the Slam tour that started 30 years ago today? We will do our best to remember a tour we probably worked hard to forget and present it in a more-or-less daily diary. If you have any memories of gigs on that tour that you’d like to share, please save them for that day so we can piece it together, together. Let’s begin on Day 1, 5/30/90. Destination: Philadelphia for the first show at JC Dobbs. (by Steve)
Leaving on tour, particularly a 6-week trip, was always a logistical challenge for any band, especially so in those pre-internet days. Arrangements had to be made to leave jobs, pay bills, and put relationships on hold. At the time, I was living in a big, shared house in Jamaica Plain, and I had to pay June and July rent and all my bills in advance, which would have been a burden. At that point in our career, we were getting a monthly stipend (I almost typed ‘salary,’ but it wasn’t quite that..) to be in the band, so that helped ease things. But the toughest part about doing our first summer tour was that we would have to put our weekly Sunday softball games on hold. Gary had organized those games, featuring our friends from the scene (and beyond) for the past 3 summers and they were always a high point for me.
This was the first tour that we were going to be traveling in separate vehicles and we were excited. We had rented a Fleetwood Tioga RV for the band to travel in and the roadies (Jim Vincent and Nic Close) would drive the gear in our Chevy Van. I’m pretty sure that our road manager/sound man, Woody Nuss, drove in the RV with us but I could be wrong. The personnel and the seating chart would change as the tour went along.
We had gotten the RV idea from a show we had played years ago with the Meat Puppets. After seeing how cool it was to have your own dressing room (altho I’m sure the Puppets did it so they’d have a protected space to smoke their odd-smelling, hand-rolled cigarettes), we had always dreamed of the day we’d be able to travel in style. To help with the logistics of the caravan, we bought CB radios for each vehicle and christened the RV, Linus, and the van Schroeder. We had a lot of fun those first few days, as I recall, pretending to be truckers keeping an eye out for Smokey.
I honestly have no personal memory of the Philly show so if anyone else in the band or any fans can fill in the details, I’d appreciate it. I’ll eventually cover every gig so please join in if you were at the show. Any setlists would also be greatly appreciated. I’ve got names in the book of some of the opening bands but if I can’t remember, please help out. Again, if you can wait to share your memories on the anniversary post of your show, that would be great.
There will be laughs, there will be tears, but always the Rock and the Roll. Come with us.
Calculating Route... 