Great Almost-Riots I Have Known

-or-

Great Riots I Have Almost Known.

Transcribed by John as told (mostly) by Gordon

We were at UC Davis (sucks!) in 1988 or 89. I think Jon Petey or James the poster child was Axe major at the time... We were doing our usual act, um, heckling the players, calling the referees blind... I think this was when Davis had the coach who chewed on towels. This guy was famous as a crazy guy.. .. He'd been there 15 to 20 years. He used to eat towels. We'd mimic and mock him. (Gordon puts fists in front of mouth side by side) Aruuuuuhhhhhh!!!!! This game there were particularly stupid frat boys, and some unsupervised feral yard monsters who started throwing stuff at us... Pennies, skittles, wadded up papertowels and paper cups... The kids were just behind us... And since this is in the first person, I guess I can say... No wait get rid of that line... You f**ker... stop that!!... I managed to scare the little kids away by threatening to call security and their parents. The frat boys also quieted down for awhile. But we had this inflatable reindeer, this being around the holidays ( in December sometime). So we were using this reindeer in various ways suggesting that Davis sucks and would suck anything on 4 legs.

-- (Storyteller's break for expletive) F**k, If you're going to do me, do me.

-- (John: sorry. I can't type that fast.) --

The reindeer. So after the game (which we of course, lost) we were playing at the battle.These frat boys charged down the stairs onto the floor and grabbed the inflatable reindeer. They also intimidated Erna, just a little bit.. She was the one who was holding the reindeer, and they took it from her.. And they did it in such a way that we were more than just a little testosterone charged.. Cary Bellak, I think it was Cary Bellak. But I might be hallucinating, it might not have been Cary Bellak.. And I know Oompah...were right there. Somehow one of the Davis guys got knocked down... Several more of us sort of "stood up";.. Then the security guys showed up... No cops, just the guys in yellow windbreakers... who of course wanted us to go away. But we managed to shame them into getting rid of the guys who really started it.Umm... Thus ended this riot. At another one I didn't see so closely, Mike Messersmith, a former GM, was thrown on the ground so violently that he had internal injuries and had to spend several days at the hospital.. The last riot that I almost didn't see was when Nick "Chief" Burmeister was counciled by a university policeman after some Montana Tech players had some anger management issues.

Steph: Why do I have to tell it??

Gordon: You can do it. It's part of thinking about the audience that makes the whole thing go.

Steph: Okay. It was my first gig.Umm.. Okay, it was a really sunny warm day... ummm.. And everybody was sick of having to be at the football game. And football sucks. It does. (giggle)...You can't do that.. oh man this is hard... It started out with the non-rookie band members being their loud, obnoxious selves. At least the band has more brains than brawn.. I don't want to do this now. They tried to get into the heads of the football players... First we started pissing off the football players.. They were totally paying attention to us.

Ryan: The coach actually said something.

Gordon: If you can get the coach to say something, then you've won.

John: Go on Steph.

Steph: The coach was competing with us for the football players' attentions.. and then the game got really close. I know it was one point off when it ended.. It was down to a couple seconds too. And then, like, at the end of the game they really got pissed at us. They tried to put some of the blame onto us.. Somehow the cop found out about it. He told Chief that since they'd been talking s**t, he wouldn't back them up if the football players tried to do something. Okay, and then as the cop continued to be up in Chief's face, I walked away wondering why I joined the band.. But now I completely understand. You can, like, add stuff to it.

Gordon: That's all the great riots I can tell you about right now.. Well, I guess I could tell about the time at band camp... The time at band camp... well.. the time at band camp goes something like this.... (silence) We had this pretty ordinary band camp... yeah. it was like most other band camps... um... The thing that happened was: it rained. It rained about 1 o'clock on saturday night.. Different band camps, different thing happen. So, about half the people had gone to bed ( digression about how the park was nice without benches... ) So it's starting to rain and people were going to bed and there's still a pretty big pile of pallets.. Some people were kind of worried... and they were like ieeeuuuehhhhh... and Mc Steve Haney... starts grabbing pallets and throwing them on the fire. he's yelling "burn it all!". People start throwing off their clothes and dancing around the fire. The rain pours down. Everybody who has gone to bed is huddled in their weak and meager little tents with water dripping around their feet...While everybody who's stayed up is warm, and happy, and just a little bit wet(editor's note: wet is always good.)... The pallets bured for about an hour,and that's about how long the rain lasted. . . . . Then the wetty-sweat people went to bed, and the cold, shivering people tried to sleep.. Back up. Gimme a little edit here. In many ways it was a riot because Haney threw anything they could burn in the fire. It just opened up and whu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-um ..I confess. I was one of the people who was wrapped up in a tarp because I had to get up. That was the year that Earth First guy got crushed.. I had to get up early and go up the road to the protest. That was back when I was still a journalist.

Christina: I have to show you something. I have to show you something. I have to show you something. hold on hold on. okay okay.. come

Gordon: Click click,boom boom, digety digety.

--Gordonicon