C H A P T E R  T W O

Lets pick up where we left off, shall we? It's spring of 1985, the bands original singer, M. xxxxx has left the band to pursue a "solo career". or should I say, a "so long'' career. he's currently in the "Where are They Now File". The rest of the band returns from Japan , depressed , freaked out. Enter Jizzy... As i said before, I had known their manager G. xxxxx from a previous band years ago. all of a sudden I get a call telling me that Dataclan needs a new singer. This wasn't a decision that the band made, by the way, basically they were told that if they didn't get me in the band all funding  from g. would cease. So that's how I got into the band. You might say that the guys weren't particularly knocked out with me at first. I really didn't fit in with them, I was sort of traditional rock and they were sort of Wang Chung. When I first joined I had a job parking cars in the upper class suburb of Encino, this would really fuck with my head because here I was trying to feel like I was going to be a rock star someday but always reminded what a loser I was by rich kids hurling abuse from their Beamers. Skid sold flowers to make a living, he would work a couple of days a week on busy streets on the side of the road, bouquets in hand ,making just enough money for pot, beer, and food. I never really knew where Jon got his money but I suspect he was a bit of a mooch. Joey was supported by his rich parents. now this was always a source of resentment for the other 2 guys. here we were starving, just making ends meet, and Joey was basically living off the fat of the land, in their opinion. they felt like somehow joey wasn't "pulling his weight" in the Suffering Dept. But this worked the other way as well, Joey's folks would always be there if the power was going to be shut off or we needed new speakers or if someone needed to be bailed out of jail. Joey's folks put in money to help the band countless times. Joeys folks also owned a piece of the LA forum, so we would always get treated to free Laker games, free lobster dinners, and a million concerts, for free. Funny, I never heard anyone complain then. Joeys folks were very supportive of him considering their academic background. He had quit school and a promising business career for the "pipe dream " we called music. My parents on the other hand, were not so supportive. As a matter of fact, they thought what I was doing was a joke. My parents freaked out when I told them I was moving to downtown LA to live in a warehouse with a bunch of guys and play music. Our manager, G. xxxxx, had found an abandoned building two blocks away from Skid Row. the REAL skid row. I had hardly been out of the Valley and here I was living in Hobo-ville. We turned the empty offices into bedrooms and the secretarial pool was our rehearsal area. I learned that this was a prerequisite to being in the band, moving in, living together. They had always done it this way. It made the band more then just a collection of songs; we really became a group; it made sense...soo... we started to play together. our first few gigs didn't go well . the band and I were incompatible musically. I was a tenor and all the vocals were in a baritone range. I really didn't fit. When I joined the band there was a bit of a personel switch, at first joey was on drums and this guy rodney was on keyboards. Now Rodney was on drums and Joey was on keyboards. But the funny part I learned was that Joey didnt really even PLAY the keyboards. they sorta played themselves. At the time the band used drum machines and sequencers, meaning that you could program the keyboards to play along with the drum track by themselves, sort of like a player piano. So joey's up there basically faking it. After a while this freaked him out so bad that he threatened to quit unless he could play drums again. 

1985 was the start of the "glam period" in LA and we were no exception. My hair was platinum blonde, we had black lips and red cheeks and flowers in our hair. My parents wouldnt even talk to me, all my friends were laughing at the freak. Skid and I were going out to dance clubs, the biggest one at the time was called "Power Tools", a huge gothic dance extravaganza with lazer light shows and day-glo dancing girls. This later became the "Scream Club", about which much has been written. This club was the launching point for Janes Addiction, Jean Loves Jezebel and other underground bands. Joey became chummy with the promoter and we were able to get in free, this was quite a coup. Being able to get in free meant that we could drink. Another club we went to was "Vertigo", although this was a bit of an upper class club, what would be termed a "90210" crowd. This was the scene. Fifty or sixty people would stand outside the club at one time and the bouncers would PICK who they thought was cool enough to come in. Skid and I would first fortify ourselves with liquor sitting in his car ,check our make-up, summon up our courage, and then stand outside the club, try not to feel self conscious in our garish costumes . Everyone got a good chuckle at us but we were always the first ones picked. Then we would have to run the gauntlet again and again once we were inside. We would always dance together. We weren't gay, we were just too drunk and too afraid to ask girls to dance. so we would just dance by ourselves. Eventually girls would ask us to dance, probably out of sympathy. Then we would always have to get harassed by macho schmucks because we were dressed like girls. This was part of the reason I think, that we stopped doing the makeup, it really was such a hassle taking shit from people all the time. It takes a lot of balls to dress up like a woman. 

That year we decided to make a record, an EP. making your own record wasn't as prevalent as it is today. G. xxxxx had a financial partner at the time, a big Mexican guy named R.. him and joey's folks and others put in the money and we set out to make a record. It was just a four- song thing and not very good. I still have a copy of it and it is funny to see us dressed up like queens. Our plan was, through R.'s contacts south of the border, we would go to mexico , we would do a tour in mexico and sell our record there. It sounded good in theory, so in the fall of 1985 the band and the two managers took off in a van to Mexico . Our very first gig was in a bullfight arena, no kidding, a huge, circular, multi-tiered bullfight arena. As anyone can tell you, down in Mexico Corruption is King. The only thing that saved our young asses from getting cavity- searched every fifty feet was R's imposing figure and his endless baksheesh. We were getting pulled over every couple of miles by the local politia who thought we were ripe for the picking. If it weren't for R. it would have been "Midnight Express" for the lot of us. Anyway, here we were in Mexicali , Mexico in the middle of a bullring peddling an EP by a band whose name the locals can't even pronounce. It was a disaster, the whole thing. after the gig, we all went next door to the disco, we were in full makeup so it was a necessity for our road crew to escort us to and from the bathroom so we wouldn't get killed. Sometimes I would forget that I was dressed like Ru Paul; I wouldn't understand people's hostility towards me. Then I realized, they thought we were gay. I guess in retrospect, we kinda were... 

On to the next show, Juarez, Mexico , home of the...well, home of nothing. Home of abject poverty, I guess. They had pulled two flat bed trucks together side by side in the middle of a baseball field and we were supposed to play there. This gig too was a disaster. Mexican kids like their rock heavy, at least they did that day, and our Duran Duran/brand of polished pop just wasnt cutting it. They all started throwing 50 -centavo pieces at us and believe me those things hurt when they hit you. MY biggest memory of that show are the kids throwing the coins at us and Jon scooping them up off the stage, thinking he was gonna be rich. 

The last gig on this fiasco tour was a place called Hermasillo. Another baseball field. This time things started out ok, until the crowd got a little too rowdy. One of the kids decided to get on stage with us and one of our roadies in his zeal pushed him off the stage a little too hard. The kid falls 10 feet down, suffering a concussion. All of a sudden the crowd turned ugly. they hoist the kid up on their shoulders, he's passed out like Jesus, and everyone's yelling "AMBULANCIA". then you start to notice little things,...like....there's no security. none.. You see in Mexico you have to PAY the police to protect you. We are in the middle of a baseball field all alone and dressed up like girls and rocks and bottles start flying through the air towards us. But just when it seemed like we were going to be killed the police came and saved our ass. So much for Viva la Revolucion. R. pulled out after this and we picked up where we left off, living in a building, broke, trying to get signed end of story...no moral. this was literally one of a million "get rich quick " schemes along the way to "Blackout". every band nowadays makes their own CD's, thinking that this will be their vehicle to get signed. as a matter of fact, ironically I was at the Rainbow the other night and who should come up to me but our old drummer, Rodney, and what does he do but hand me HIS NEW CD!! another dude comes up and starts talking to me and I realize that this is Rich, our old sound man for DATACLAN. now Rodney's been up and down for years, in and out of bands, never getting to grasp THE BRASS RING, and here he is, like the Ancient Mariner, his band a mediocre representation of Alanis Morrissette, still trying to get a deal....ouch...people often ask me if I feel cheated that love/hate didn't sell more records, you know, do I feel bitter about being dropped, etc. Well... one look at Rodney and I have to say no...