Things with the DAGGERS were getting crazier and crazier. We had devolved from a punk band into some sort of violent minstrel show. One night we were playing with our backs to the crowd, chuckling to ourselves at our rapier wit; and next thing you know, Rob is trying in vain (in horrible, painful vain) to break a beer bottle over his own head onstage (I finally snatched out of his hand after about 10 swats. Either that bottle was unusually hard, or Rob's head was; cuz he was really blasting himself, over and over, and the bottle wouldn't break; it was brutal, the crowd screaming in shock after each unsucessful try, I will never forget that awful "GONG!" sound it was making. I finally grabbed the bottle away and shook it at him like a scolding babysitter "What are you doing?!? Are you trying to give yourself a concussion? 'Cause I'm not driving you to the hospital!"). We had a show one night at Fireside and I shoulda known what kind of night it was gonna be when Dan showed up with a black garbage bag in hand that he wouldn't explain.
Dan woulda been perfect for "Jackass". He's funnier, tougher, crazier, and more charming than every one of those guys. I once watched him sweet talk his way out of a red-handed DUI to a female cop, and in his teens he broke both legs jumping a fence while running from the cops, amongst countless other tales. Everyone who knows him has one. He's mad at me right now and hasn't spoken to me for a while, and that's cool. I still love him. He's just that kinda guy.
So, when he walked into the club with a VERY conspicuous black garbage bag in tow, it didn't seem that unusual. Not that it wasn't gonna be BAD, it just wasn't unusual, ya know?
We set up our shit and when Rob asked him about the bag, Dan just chuckled to himself and laid it behind his bass amp. We launched into the set and things started out great. Good crowd, we sounded realtively musically coherent; cool. Maybe we can just play a normal show, get all the way through the set, and leave the stage like a normal band for once.
But it just wasn't meant to be.
About three songs from the end, Dan decided the crowd was losing interest and figured it was time to liven up the joint a bit. He dropped his bass onstage in the middle of a song and while we played on, watching him, as he walked over and grabbed the garbage bag. We all smiled to ourselves, knowing whatever this was, it was gonna be good.
The crowd noticed the bag too, and seemed to surge forward a bit, perhaps expecting free goodies. Bad move.
Dan sauntered up to center stage, holding the bag over his head. You could feel the anticipation in the room. A true showman, he held it up and witha great flourish he ripped off the bag to reveal: a cow's head. Not a cow's SKULL-a cow's HEAD. Eyeballs, nose, the whole nine. It was revolting. He held it up for a second so the crowd could really see what it was, then lofted it deep into the Fireside crowd. People were literally screaming and running for cover as the bovine corpse's head (which had to weigh a good 30 pounds) flew through the air. I watched people dive out of the way as it bounced across the scummy floor. People were throwing it at each other, everyone was screaming, all hell was breaking loose. It flew onto the stage and landed hard on one of my guitar pedals, smashing it with a sluice of dead cow head juice, and I figured that was my cue. We loaded up and walked right out the front door, stepping around the scum trails the cows head was leaving as it was kicked around the floor like a morbid soccer ball by belligerent punks.
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