New Bedford Fest

Before i moved to "Rodday" i stayed there a few times on the weekends. One weekend i showed up and sean asked me if i wanted to take a bus to New Bedford ,MA. for a Fest. At the time i was selling Dialers & copy cards, so it seemed like a good way to unload some & see some good bands. So on like 30 min notice i hopped on a bus with Sean. we got the back seat of the bus, you know the uncomfortable one that doesnt lean back. Totally sucked. But we made the best of it. we hung posters up in the back of the bus and made fun of people. yelled at random times in a tourettes sorta manner. threw trash at the people in front of us. I kept walking up to the bus driver to ask "are we there yet?". he was not a fan of our antics. When we arrived up north the bus driver had really had enough of us. he was not happy. nor were the rest of the bus. since we were the last people on the bus we were the last ones out. the entire trip i had planned on stealing the bus somehow. Sean dared me. so as we were walking out i gave sean my camera because i was going to try and move the bus 1 foot. The driver had stepped off and left the bus running. so i sat in the seat and tried my hardest to get the thing moving. but no luck. The driver came over and started yelling at me as i was sitting in his seat. he was PISSED... me and sean just started laughing at him and sean took the photos. Best bus trip ever.

New Bedford fest was one of my first fests i ever went to. Flagman had played it the year before, but i didnt make it up. This was also my first time being further north than NYC. So it was an experience. We both stayed in boston at different places. One of my old friends Becky from back home was going to school at Emerson in Boston, so i stayed on her floor for the weekend. Boston was WAY different than any city i had seen till then. it was WAY clean , and very "white". i felt out of place. Plus staying on campus was weird for me in its self. for example: i saw the old singer (zack) of this band from south NJ, Ideel, walking around holding a gold painted brick & wearing a green bandanna. i was confused. It turns out he was Pledging for a frat. yeah whatever.

The fest was pretty awesome. i met lots of people there that would end up being good friends till this very day. one that sticks out the most is Tre Mcarthy. I just remember seeing this guy that really stood out with blond hair and HUGE ice sickle Plugs in his ears. Then later Sean introduced us. We didnt really talk much, but a year later Tre moved in with us in the 314 N.19th st house. I also met Josh Grabelle there. His table was set up next to mine and he was selling these Straight Edge stickers and his zine "Trustkill". I just remember thinking, "man hes going to make a mint on those stickers" because straight edge stickers were never really made till that point. or i had never seen any. who knows. Scott Biben was also there. i knew him from middlesex shows "back in the day" (in reality it was like 3 years prior, just seemed like a long time ago then) He did a zine called Retrival inc. it was basically about shop lifting and scams. He had wanted to do an interview with me about my shoplifting experiences from back in the city gardens days. Thats a whole different story. I was selling Dialers. For those that dont know Dialers were a device that if you changed the frequency crystal in it , you could program it to make the tone of money in a pay phone. This was a huge part of the early 90's hardcore scene. I had my table set up and scott had his table set up. he was selling crystals to make dialers, i was selling dialers already made. He got pissed because i was making a profit on the dialers i was selling. I was selling them for the going rate of $50. He said i should be selling them for cost. For me it was a way to make money for food so i didnt have to shoplift. Scott was a weird dude, and still is. But who doesnt know that. He was always a nice dude to me, and we got along well. I think this show was the first time i met Rich Elrath. We used to call him "the Wizard" at shows because he looked like he could cast a spell on you. Good person & a nice dude, even if he later got beat up by cleveland for flipping off OLC @ the cleveland fest.

The fest was awesome. Lifetime, Damnation AD, Frail, Chokehold, Converge, Copper, 454 Big Block, and others. Damnation was the band i really wanted to see, it was my first time seeing them. Sean had given me a tape of the hangman 7" telling me i was going to love this band. he was right. i was instantly hooked. They blew me away. I remember during lifetimes set someone stage dove off of the balcony and landed on someones neck and hurt them REAL REAL bad. they got taken away to the hospital.

One night most of the show stayed at one hotel. it was a party of HC kids in every room. just people running around startin shit. Fun times. This was back when i was sorta nuts. i used to jump off of things....A lot. big things. this was the start of it. at the end of the hotel stay as everyone was leaving. i did a roof to roof jump over a walkway that was 2 stories down to 1 story. and across a 15 foot space. somewhere its on video, one of the frail dudes taped it. we had talked about it the night before, so it was all planned out to do it right as we all left. so i set up and did the jump. it was so far that when i landed my foot went through the roof. so i was about knee deep in hotel roof. that was the rental office roof, so they heard me. i jumped down off of there and got into a car and left. ha my first of many great escapes!

if you somehow in some odd way are reading this hotel owner....sorry.....my bad?

The trip back to philly was less dramatic. we were both tired as shit from a long weekend.