Spring Break

In the mid 80's I played in a band that toured the east coast and we were fortunate enough to play spring break in Florida. We started in Daytona went to Orlando then Tampa, Sarasota, Bradenton, Naples, back to Orlando then finished in Daytona. I can't really remember the name of the bar in Daytona. I remember it was on 4th st, ave whatever, 4th somthing. Only a couple blocks from the beach and they had a mini 2 bedroom apartment on top of the bar for the band to stay in. There was an oyster bar right next club. It was the first and last time that I've eaten oysters. To me, they were just gross. Our drummer, however, thought they were the cats behind and practically lived there during the day. He tried to explain to me how it increases your stamina and drive. All I could think of was why would he want to do that with his girlfriend 11oo miles away. I guess that explained the long showers. Moving on to erase that thought from my head, there was a dome on the beach, kinda like the Hollywood bowl, where they had concerts and whatever. I went there a couple times during the week and went inside, backstage. There wasn't any locked doors. Backstage was pretty much full of junk like broken chairs and such. It had a downstairs where the dressing rooms were. They were in pretty bad condition as well. The place felt haunted tho. I did find a picture that looked like it was taken in the early 1900's of a little boy on the beach. Felt kinda spooked when I looked at it so I ended up leaving it behind. Anyways, the week we were playing there, Heart was doing a free outdoor concert for spring break(hopefully, they cleaned up the dressing rooms and backstage for them). I tried to convince the other band members that we should go to the show, but I guess they didn't want to deal with the crowds. I ended up going by myself which was fine anyway because I think they would have kept me of making my way to the front. I had made my way to the front row by telling people that my girlfriend was up there or pointing over to someone I didn't know and yell "wait up" and people would generously let me through to my imaginary friend. So by doing that and making a few other sly moves, I had reached the front row ahead of what I guess would be at least 50,000 people. I had guitar picks with me that had the name of our band on them and threw one and hit Ann on the left breast, only to get a dirty look back in return...Sorry Ann. I was only trying to promote our band. I then saw this girl basically doing what I did to get up front. She was inching her way around people, weaving in and out. She made her way right in front of me and turned around, looked me in the eyes and passed out into my arms. She was really drunk or stoned or whatever. I started yelling at Crowd Control holding her in one arm and pointing with the other for them to take her. They told her to get my girlfriend out of there. I kept telling them she's not mine and finally after some convincing, they pulled her over the security rail and took her away. All in all, it was a good show but I had to leave early because we were playing that night. One other memory from Daytona, our guitar player had managed to score that night and we happen to have a "Where's the Beef" bumper sticker which we happily applied to his buttocks after we snuck into the room he was trying to prove his manhood in.

I'll have to pause here and tell you more about the other cities at a later date. Okay, I know I always say I'll write more about a subject at the end of most of my post and I will eventually.