Green Apple Quick Step had finished up a show in Portland with Ten Minute Warning - bar closed, gear all packed up in the van. The Ten Minute Warning crew was long gone, but we were still there. With us, there were a few stragglers. Drunk stragglers. Which is certainly a different level of inebriation than drunk band members with a three-plus hour drive in front of them. The "after party" on this night consisted of a case of canned beer and a mild hangout session as an excuse to not get promptly on the road home.

There is the inevitable fleeting, mostly platonic, ilk-inspired pairings at the end of a night like this. A few groups of no more than four people, including what ever band member or pair of band members is acting as the social nucleus, standing around verbally killing time.  Some folks are just naturally prone to be the last one to leave a show. A lot of times, that trait is enough to ensure some face-to-face time with those you came to see perform.

A small club show like the one we'd just finished playing has no grand, security-guarded, backstage pass, meet-and-greet, end of the evening sorta bullshit.  It's just another night at a shitty rock club that just happens to have an out of town guest. For all you know, the folks hanging around could be club regulars - not even there to see you, just happened to get lucky and stumble across a band that doesn't suck.

Other times you run into fans.  Especially with a band like GAQS, which was a viable candidate to go all the way (when all the way was still ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP!!!!).

You had the big four - Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam and Nirvana. All except Nirvana were managed, at one time, by Susan Silver, Kelly Curtis, or both. Sure there were A LOT of bands that got attention after, and even before, it all went crazy, and if you would have asked anyone in the city who was going to be THE band to come out of Seattle and make a mark, four out of five music fans would have been certain it would be The Melvins, Mudhoney or Tad. But looking back it was bands under the Silver/Curtis umbrella that made the deepest stamp in the existing market place. 

But even after those big four got major record deals, it still didn't come across like there had been this big commercial crossover. At the time, it seemed like the freaks and weirdoes who had less than nothing in common with the music groups we grew up on had somehow found their way in the back door to the big time. It left not just a city but an entire generation of musicians with the impression that any jackass with a loud guitar and maybe 50 friends could be the next Kurt Cobain.

It was never clear - not for a long time after the wave broke - that THE most commercial bands had been the ones to make the biggest impact. Not commercial in the way metal and butt-rock had become commercial in the late ‘80s and very early ‘90s - a tired, played out, caricature of itself. The bands from Seattle that made an impact had the luck (preparation meets opportunity) of being professionally represented by people with the foresight to recognize the Seattle music community and its purity of untapped commercial viability.  

They were the only proven game in town - Susan Silver and Kelly Curtis. Between 1990 and 1995, if Silver or Curtis took a shine to your band you were going to get a major label record deal. Period. No question. People who cared about music all over the country were going to hear of your band and, more likely than not, hear you on the radio. In 1992 there was only just beginning to be a difference between a fresh band signed out of Seattle on the strength of a Curtis/Silver recommended major label deal (GAQS for example), and one of the big four. They were ALL rockstars. They were assumed to be rich and on the same tier.

For the fan, its hard to imagine why their favorite band, who once seemingly had the same amount of success and opportunity on the way up as, say, Pearl Jam, a few years later could come to town and play the same crummy little club that they see their friends awful band play at once a month. It's so hard to fathom, that many times fans don't make the connection that it might be sore subject. They want to talk to about it. They want to understand. They want to go over the whole thing, find someone to blame. Or better yet, someone to call to set it straight. It can't be too late.

These subjects of conversation are the rule rather than the exception. Out behind a dive-bar rock club, after hours, with a bunch of drunks (mostly dudes) - it's going to come up. Sure, there are different levels of intensity, different lines of questioning, and different levels of inebriation - but it's all the same subject. All you can do is agree with them. 

"I KNOW, man! I love that song too."

"I KNOW, man! It sounded great on the radio."

"I KNOW, man! That intro is killer when yer stoned"

"I KNOW we have Pearl Jam's manager. No, dude, we can't call Eddie Vedder."

You pray for some sort of diversion - which almost never comes.

Almost.

This night, there was a guy in jean cut-offs and white basketball style high tops. No shirt. No socks. Shoulder length, drunk messed up, dirty blond curls. Boyish ambition stamped into slur. Maybe he was 25. I have no idea where his shirt had gotten to. He would prove to be a diversion you couldn't even dream up. 

Drunky's buddy, mostly to shut him up, agreed to have a running race with him. Buddy had indulged in a few drinks himself, but not nearly as many as our blond hero. It took Drunky almost getting his ass kicked by Buddy before he could be convinced him to run the race.

The two had walked about 50 yards away before we really understood what was going on.

"They're going to...race?!"  

And then they were off. Buddy was going to win. There was never any doubt. Drunky was four strides back. Five strides back and waning.... then a sudden face saving burst from to try to make it at least honorable. Drunky got as close as three strides behind as they approached where everyone stood as a quasi finish line.

At the last moment, the unimaginable.... Drunky launches himself across the non-existent imaginary finishing line.

He lands on his hands and knees, popping straight up and rubbing his hands on his stomach. It all happened so fast it was hard to know what to make of it. Drunky had just done a finish line dive on what was basically an asphalt alley. His knees were a little bloody. It was hard to tell about his hands. He wouldn't stop rubbing them on his stomach. They couldn't have looked good.

Drunky was a little upset, as if there had been some unfairness in the contest. Perhaps some unseen fixing of the outcome?  He was adamant that he should have won. 

Then he started talking to Tyler, Green Apple Quick Step's singer. Tyler thinks he should've won.

"I coulda beat him," Drunky tells him.

"You CAN beat him! You have to race him again," Tyler tells him, the last bit almost under his breath, like Kevin Nealon's Subconscious Man from Saturday Night Live.  When it registered with Drunky what had to be done, it was as if he'd come up with the thought himself.

"I wanna race him again!!" Drunky suddenly lets out.

Without hesitation (or conviction) Tyler responds, "What?! You can't do that!!"

But it was too late. For the next ten minutes Drunky almost gets beaten up again trying to convince Buddy for a rematch. Buddy finally relented just to get ol' boy off his back.

They walked back to the starting line. All watched, amazed. There was an official, "On your mark. Get set. Go!" this time.

Buddy was in the lead, but Drunky was possessed. He could win! His eyes were wide open. He was moving. His run started out straight, in a few strides evolving into a lope - a fast lope, but almost like there was a gyroscope inside him. He was definitely at the top end of his ability to project his body forward with his legs, and the race was only three quarters done. He wasn't winning, but he was certainly within striking distance.

And then for a split second he seemed to be floating. Or flying. Or both. He had leaned too far forward, and now looked like Pete Rose sliding into home. This was clearly unplanned.

Unlike the previous dive for the finish that he had at least been able to drag his feet through, this one was instigated by the slightest trip as he loped from his left foot to right, resulting in the tiniest bound off his left foot as he tried to regain balance. Soon, he was airborne, falling forward.  This time it was going to be his face or hands that took the alley full force. He instinctively chose the hands. It was like watching a train wreck.

Unbelievably, he bounded right up again. This time his hands were bloody. It wasn't like Surgery Channel bloody, but it was gross. He took a few seconds to pick some gravel out of the hamburgers that now acted as his hands before going right into his best Don King impersonation, demanding a third rematch. Did I mention he was drunk?

Buddy needed no prodding this time. He was on board. Down the alley they went.

On your mark! Get set! GO!

LOPE LOPE LOPE.... Goddamn? Is he going to win this one? No way!! GO DOOOOD!!!! GOOOOOOO!!!!!

They were halfway down the alley when Drunky held his first lead. He was running his ASS off. The cheers were fueling him. It was within reach. You could see the realization in his bugged out eyes. The lope was almost disturbing.... and then once again the startled look of flight crossed his face. 

Third verse, same as the first.

This one was more heart breaking than anything else. It's a disturbing thing to watch a man on his way to insanity. We all realized that. You needed that Rocky Balboa ending to make the gore leading up to it, and the egging on, personally acceptable. We didn't get that. Again, after slapping the asphalt, the guy bounded up. Even with all the booze in his system, it HAD to have been exceedingly painful.

Again he wanted a rematch.

At that point, as the racing had become the only real reason the alley still had any occupants, we were forced to re-direct the focus of social attention. We told him it was the greatest thing we'd seen in a long time, and to please not do it again.  We gave him a band t-shirt. He was STOKED.  He could STILL win a rematch, he demanded, but as least he had a prize. A few minutes later he was walking away wearing the shirt chuckling to Buddy as if he had won every race.

We got in the van and made our way home.

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.