Right off the bat, a big ‘ol thanks to Robbie Kording for hookin’ me up with this one!
Ok, folks…here’s the first of two blog posts I’m putting up today! This first one is the Goofs LIVE at On Broadway on September 16th, 1995. Yeah…17 years ago this September, if you can believe that! I remember this show VERY well. This was an outdoor “street party” for a Battle of the Bands that was held that Saturday. A nice handful of Springfield bands played that day and the Goofs were the only ones that performed that weren’t of legal drinking age at the time I’m pretty sure. Except Buffy…I THINK she was at least 21 at the time. Maybe not…I dunno. The Goofs performed 8 songs that afternoon and ended up taking first place! Yup…they beat their adult counterparts! It just goes to show, and I’ve been saying it for a LONG time…we had some REALLY great shit going on back then, y’all!
Lucky for us, someone was thoughtful enough to record the Goofs’ set from the soundboard that day and managed to hang onto the tape all these years! I’m not 100% sure who Robbie scored this from, but if it was you and you’re reading this right now, THANK YOU!!
A few things to mention about this recording — the volume levels waver throughout. SO…it starts off sorta loud and then levels off after a couple of songs. Also…there’s an echo on the vocals sometimes and Craig’s voice is a little louder than everything else on a couple of songs. That happens with soundboard recordings a lot of times, though. “Speedwalker” (the first song) starts late. I guess the recording was started after the band started playing. The second song which I’ve always known as, “Green Giant” evidently has a different name? Craig says something like, “it’s called ______ feedback”. Chime in if you remember the actual name of the song. After “Retarded” Craig says something about a half-headed cat and I think it was Ryan who starts telling a story about Craig chopping off the head of a cat. What actually happened was he was taking care of my friend Josh’s cat, Skrappy at the time and accidentally got some paint on the cat’s head. He let it dry and tried cutting that part out of the cat’s fur, but Skrappy squirmed around too much and the scissors ended up cutting him. Craig somehow managed to close up the wound and gave him stitches and everything. I remember going to his folk’s house with Josh to pick up the cat, and when Craig came out with Skrappy, Josh saw the stitches on his head and was like, “Dude…what the hell did you do to my cat?” So, Craig explained everything and it was all good. The cat was fine. …and one last thing…after the song “Goofs” is played, Ryan tells everyone that they are playing at Anthony Bollero’s (me) house after their set. Yeah…if you don’t know that story, here’s what happened (brace yourself, this is LONG!):
The Goofs did a show at Strike-N-Spare East about 2 weeks prior to this show. The manager/owner, whoever didn’t like us from the very beginning. I got yelled at for sitting on the edge of a pool table for Pete’s sake! He was just looking for a reason to shut it down before it even started. Well, about 3 or 4 songs into the Goofs’ set he sees a girl dancing around with popcorn on her head and she starts flicking pieces out while she’s dancing. I guess that was the straw the broke the camel’s back, because he got FURIOUS and said, “THAT’S IT! YOU’RE DONE!” and literally pulled the plug on the band in the middle of a song. I remember Craig looking over at him and saying something like, “What the hell, dude?”, but there was no reasoning with the guy. So…the band starts packing up their gear, pissed off that they can’t play that night. I’m there with my friend Rick and I get to “brainstorming” with him. I’m thinking, “Hmmm…what can I do to save the day?” …and it comes to me — my folk’s are gone pretty much all night working at the Ethnic Festival. They won’t be home until after midnight. I’ll have the show moved to my folk’s house! The Goofs can play in the garage and I can close the garage door and the neighbors won’t even know! Brilliant! Rick thought this was the best idea I’d ever had, so he runs up to Craig and says, “Hey, you guys can play at Anthony’s house!” I chime in and am like, “Yeah! Everybody come to my house!” and proceed to yell out the address. So, the band packs up, and just about EVERYONE at the show follows the Goofs’ van out to my folk’s house. I open the garage door and the band loads in and so does like 100 various kids. They all start spilling into my folks house, head for the kitchen and liquor cabinet, go out to the backyard to smoke, etc. I casually go into the house and try to quickly run “damage control” and close off the living quarters and whatnot to keep folks out of my parent’s shit, and for the most part everyone was cooperative. Some booze got drank, but I managed to stop all of that before it got too out of hand. So, the inside of the house is good and I lock everything up to keep people out and the band starts. It’s great…the garage is packed like a can of sardines and everyone’s dancin’ and havin’ a great time. Then…maybe a half-hour or 45 minutes later, up comes the garage door. It’s my parents. They are home early from the festival. All of the kids scatter and head to their cars to speed off. My Mom gets out of the car immediately and finds me dancin’ like an idiot and is like “What in the hell are you doing?!” So I explain the whole situation to her like it’s the most natural thing in the world and ask her if it’s cool to let them finish playing. Then, I look at the car and there’s my Dad with his hands on the steering wheel staring blankly into the garage filled with a band and random kids. He doesn’t say a word. He’s just in utter shock of what is going on at his house. My only saving grace that night was the fact that my Dad’s best friend he grew up with was in town for the festival and he gets out of the car and is smilin’ ear to ear. He finds me and pats me on the back, laughing, and says, “Man…you’ve got some real balls to pull this off!”. He thinks it’s great and convinces my Mom and Dad to let the band finish. So…the band played on until about midnight that night. My Dad’s friend even came out to the garage to smoke and watched the band most of the night. He even said to me after a couple of songs, “Hey…these guys are really great!” After my folks had about all they could take (again, around midnight or so), they shut it down. They did pop out a few times before that and said “OK, wrap it up!” and the response from the band was always, “Ok, ok…one more, one more!”. That happened about 4 or 5 times. As the band was packing up, who walks up to my folk’s garage but Ladd Mitchell and Blueberry McGregor from Dirty Sarah. Ladd has his guitar in hand and asks if they can play. I laugh and tell them they’re a little late. They’re bummed, but understand and go back to their car. After everyone leaves my sister goes upstairs to bed and says something like, “Good luck” to me and I get a VERY stern talking to by my folks. I actually got off pretty easy as far as punishment goes. I had to clean up the yard which was full of cigarette butts and some various garbage and I had to wash and wax my folk’s car AND my Dad’s friend’s car, which he thought was awesome. I’m not exactly sure how I managed to get the OK to go to this Battle of the Bands show only 2 weeks later, but I’m glad I did.
So…here it is! The Goofs LIVE outside of On Broadway!
DOWNLOAD HERE
Also…another little “fun fact” — the photos on the back of the Goofs’ “Retarded EP” were taken at this very show!
…and just for the hell of it, here’s another “flyer” for this show. This came in the mail from the Goofs if you were on their mailing list:
ENJOY!!
