In Review

Strange Night At The Tractor Store

While in St. Louis, after signing a recording contract with an up and coming Artist Management Corporation, we booked all over that area. Even across the Mississippi into Illinois and small college towns further east.

One weekend, we were booked in a west side St Louis County club called "The Showroom". Which was a converted tractor dealership.

The west side was growing fast into rural St. Louis County. Farmland was being bought for suburbs for this fast growing and wealthy area of the city. Lots of rich brats far from downtown entertainment.

Several clubs and bars had been vandalized. Some band's equipment had been stolen and thrown in the Missouri River from some bridge out there. Just for fun!

Club manager told us to set up and sleep on the dance floor Thursday night. "Guard my place and beers are on the house" he said. "I have enough beer for Friday night. But if I have less than 100 people and run out, I won't pay ya. I know what I have. I know how much 100 people drink."

"Ah, yeah, sure, well, we want to come back so No problem, we got ya".

"Oh, and back the bus up against the back door. They won't dare come in through the front. Cops patrol this busy street and they're always trying to catch the little assholes."

"OK? Sure."

The empty bus was backed up against the back door. Our packing blankets were put down on the floor. We drank a dozen beers or more and smoked a couple packs of Marlboros.

The huge plate glass front windows for what had been a tractor show room allowed a constant stream of car lights to shine in all night.

Earlier that day we scoped out the stage. The stage was a spacious wooden floor with large divits and huge nails drived into the drum area. We had to go buy a crow bar to pull the nails out of the floor where some new crazy ass band called Alice Cooper played last week.

We asked "What crazy chick nails down the drums to the floor?". "Sorry about the stage floor. Cymbol stands kept falling over, so they all nailed stuff down not just Alice Cooper. Haven't gotten around-the-clock to fix that yet."

"No chicks" he said. "All guys. He changed his name to Alice for some crazy reason. They're gettin big now out west. They're on their way to the east coast, booking for travel money at small places like mine. People like weird shit ya know."

"Well, I guess we're just not that weird after all." I laughed.

"That's good, they were a mess but good showmen." He left us alone there then.

About 4:00 am we heard glass breaking from outside the locked back door. When they couldn't get in they broke all the windows in our empty bumble bee bus.

What a night!

After removing the nails, we got a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of 3/4 inch thick plywood to level the floor for my drums. St. Louis was a different world for sure in 1971.

Friday night was great and we did get paid but we never booked the tractor showroom again! Too many windows!

True story, I swear to god.