Part 11:Kentucky & Detroit-CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER/ANGKOR WAT TOUR 1988

     

     On our way north for the next show at Blondie's in Detroit, we drove up through Kentucky from Tennessee. While I was driving down the highway in the middle of nowhere, this car next to us was giving me these weird looks and pointing towards the back of our van, or better yet the U-haul trailer. "Hey guys, will one of you look out the back window and see if something is going on? I don't see anything from my side mirrors" I don't remember who it was that looked out the window and saw sparks flying down the road. O' Fuck! Our U-Haul tire, I mean rim! The tire was completely gone, it probably looked something like Blackie Lawless's flaming cod piece rolling down the highway. Hahaha. I wonder how none of us noticed this sooner? Man! We are screwed now! We are stuck in the middle of bum fuck nowhere's ville Kentucky, it's really fucking hot and humid, it's starting to get dark and the Angkor Wat guys were miles ahead of us! GREAT! What now? I pull over, we check out the damage, have a few laughs and hope that the Angkor Wat guys notice that something happened and that they turn around to come look for us....... The side of the road where we pulled over was just dry brush and trees for as far as you could see, all the way  around you. I'm Pretty sure we were all wearing shorts and tshirts since it was so freaking hot. Bill on the other hand was just wearing a tank top shirt and was just wearing a pair of flip flops. While we're hanging out taking pictures of the beat up rim and goofing off, Bill all of a sudden freaks out and starts frantically checking his body from head to toe. Bill got Ticked!, a few times. We are so lucky that he found them early and that we/him were able to pull/burn them out before they burrowed in and started sucking. The people driving down the highway, I assume got some good laughs at our expense....... 5 guys on the side of the road, half naked, flapping their arms around, checking eachother for ticks.  As the sun started setting, we were starting to get a little concerned about anyone coming to help us out, but as soon as that happened the Angkor guys pulled up and rescued us from a possible tick infested Kentucky nightmare. After a few more hours, a tow truck picked us up, got us into the closest town where we could get the U-Haul wheel fixed the next day. Once the wheel was fixed, we were back on the highway heading north towards Ohio. This time though we caravanned much closer to each other. THANK YOU! A.W. Mike, Dave, David, Danny and Adam for saving us! You guys Rule.

Dayton,OH-day off 

Don't remember a thing about staying in Dayton, I'm sure all we did was hang around the hotel or go to the mall or something. 

Angkor Wat & Cryptic Slaughter vans outside of our Detroit hotel

July 15th 1988

Detroit,MI-Blondie's

Dave Nuss and Danny Lohner destroying Blondie's in Detroit!

Thrashing during Cryptic Slaughter's set at Blondie's

Rob, catching some air!

Rob, Les and Bill!

Scott, Bill and Rob getting into the groove.

     

     Detroit Michigan and the home of Justin Ivey and his killer War & Pain fanzine. ( In the next month or so, I will be adding scans of old Cryptic pieces from a bunch of old zines such as War & Pain, Uniforce and D.O.D., to name a few. More on that later.) Justin was a longtime friend and Cryptic Slaughter supporter. When we got into town we hung out with Justin and had some beers. Us and Angkor Wat had hotel rooms a pretty close to the infamous club Blondie's where we were playing, so the night before our show we went down to the club and hung out for awhile! Great seedy run down kinda club that had stencils of all the bands that played the club in the early/late 80's on the ceiling tiles. You pretty much name a Metal or Punk band from that era and they played Blondie's at one time or another. The place is still around too, which is quite amazing. This is also another show where I never found a flyer or ad for the show, oh well! I remember the club staff being really cool and giving us pitchers of beer. We drank more beer in Detroit than anywhere else on the whole tour. The beers flowed like water in Michigan, it was quite wonderful, plus you got .10 cents back per can, which equaled.....More beer! Once again the crowd response was tremendous for both bands, lots of thrashing during both set(s). Once again I don't remember if there was an opening act. I  wish it would have been Repulsion! At the end of the night, after the show our burly, bad ass, tattooed, muscular, very cool bartender chick loaded us kids up with many pitchers of wobble pop (beer) while we loaded our gear. From there we moved the party back to one of our hotel rooms, our  bartender/waitress even joined us. She must have liked the fact that the guy that she came back with had a mowhawk too? It was an instant connection. She proceeded to take off his hat, take him into the next room and ride him like a suped up Harley on a bumpy road. Naturally, in a drunken stupor, a few of us snuck into the room and filmed snippets of this punker porno in between fits of drunken laughter. Both of them had to have known that we were in the room and lifting up the covers. I think they were to drunk to care. My sides hurt from laughter, just thinking about it. Any evidence of this was destroyed years and years before the internet and thats a good thing! As the early morning hours crept up, we finished the beer pyramid and crashed out. 

After the show at the hotel room. Bill, Brinkman and our Blondie's bartender.

Les and our Blondie's bartender.

Les and Mike Titsworth trying to finish our beer pyramid. That's only a fraction of the beer we consumed too!

CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER and ANGKOR WAT - Outside of our hotel in Detroit July 1988. Right before we took off to Canada and what would end up being the end of the tour as we know it.

Left to Right: Mike Titsworth, Dave Nuss, Les Evans, Adam Grossman, David Brinkman, Bill Crooks, Rob Nicholson, Scott Peterson and Danny Lohner

Rob in Detroit on our day off in the hotel room, enjoying some cheese, crackers and a beer while telling us a story. Probably semi hungover and or semi drunk. Actually, probably both.

NEXT UP: The Canadian Border, Cocaine Foot Powder and the beginning of the END for Cryptic Slaughter!

    

CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER flyers

Some more old CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER flyers from my collection. 

Don't remember if this show ever happened. It was somewhere close to San Diego.

What an awesome lineup of  bands!

Original old flyer that Scott Peterson (drummer) cut & pasted together.

Another Crazy Show at Fender's in Long Beach,CA

Old flyer that Dan Clements from EXCEL put together.

Original CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER Death Records/Metal Blade Records 8x10 glossy.

Part 10:Memphis,TN-CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER TOUR 1988

THE MONSTERS OF COCK TOUR 1988

July ? 1988

Memphis,TN-The Antenna Club

     

     Next morning we took off to Memphis for a show at the Antenna Club. Don't remember much about the drive to Memphis, except I believe this is when Rob got a speeding ticket somewhere in Arkansas. The only other highlight was pulling into Tennessee somewhere and stopping at a K-Mart to pick up some stuff for the van (We kept losing oil. Bill was our super mechanic) and toiletries. While we were there I picked up a cheap 35millimeter camera(finally). Why I didn't pick one up earlier is beyond me. No one else had brought a camera (maybe someone in Angkor Wat did, but I haven't seen any pics from them), once again I don't know why none of us really documented any of this, except for myself. I'm glad that I've been able to save all the flyers,cassettes,pictures and letters from a few of the Angkor Wat guys over the years. It's definitely helped with my memory while I've been writing this. When I first thought about doing this, I talked to Scott and Les on the phone for a few hours, to get their take on a few things and to see if they remembered anything else, that I may have forgotten. Same goes for some emails between myself and Mike Titsworth from Angkor Wat and Rob Nicholson. Over the years, Rob has done so much touring around the world, that he didn't really remember much from the tour, except a few key things that we've already talked about. Got a little sidetracked there, let's get back to Memphis.

     Pulled into Memphis and found another crappy cheap motel, close to the club. Before the show we hung out at our motel which had an outside pool. That was perfect since It was a southern, hot, sticky, humid summer day so.  Once we got situated a few of us decided to hangout at the pool before the show. While we were goofin' off we noticed there were a couple of black guys sitting down at a table next to the pool drinking and shootin' the shit. A little while later, two white guys come sit down with the two black guys and start talking. Not sure what they were conversing about, none of us really thought anything of it. 3 or 4 o'clock rolled around so we all left the pool to go back to our rooms, take showers and get ready for the gig. Maybe an hour later while we were walking to our van, we passed the 2 black guys from earlier, we exchanged some friendly banter like, "hey what's up" and headed into the parking lot and hopped into the van. Next thing we know, a big red neck truck with a gun rack pulls up next to us and the two white guys from the pool start frantically babbling to us in their heavy soupy southern drawl "Y'all seen them fuckin' ni***rs that were at the pool earlier? We're gonna fuckin' killem!". WTF?.....Uhhhhh, no we haven't seen them! As they go screeching off. Whoa! I'm in a racist version of the twilight zone! (In a thick southern drawl) That there was one of the most bizarre thangs I ever did witness. I guess we just got a serious taste of the hillbilly south, something we've never really been exposed to growing up in LA. These guys seemed like they were out for blood. I sure hope that those guys never ran into each other, cause the outcome, I'm sure would have been grim. 

     The Antenna was another cool run down punk, metal club. Never saw a flyer for this show and I don't remember if there was an opening band or not, I assume there was but I don't remember them, so they must not have made much of an impression. As you can see by the pictures, it was another great show with a decent turnout of maybe 100+. Mike Titsworth from Angkor Wat told me that the promoter flaked on our full guarantees for the show. After the show, someone invited us over to their house for a party. Of course we obliged to their Southern hospitality. After that, things got a little hazy. Nothing exciting happened at the party. On a side note, it was at this point where we dubbed the tour "The Monsters Of Cock Tour 1988" because the "Monsters Of Rock Tour" (Van Halen,Scorpions,Dokken,Metallica & Kingdom Come) at the time was either in town the day before or the day after we were passing through.

Here is where the actual pictures start. All the shots were taken by me and a few have been used over the years in some publications like "Glorious Times" (CHECK OUT THIS GODLY BOOK!), the Cryptic Slaughter Relapse reissues for "Convicted" and "Money Talks" to name a few. Here are the rest that have never been released until now. Enjoy.

NEXT: We blow a tire, Bill get's ticked and we drink a lot of BEER!

Les catching some rad air!

Angkor Wat sound check

Rob catching some air

                                                     

Part 9:Houston,TX-CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER TOUR 1988

PART 9

July 5th 1988

Houston,TX-Axiom

Phew! That was the most intense and  anxious 160 mile drive ever! When we pulled into town, I don't remember if we got a hotel room or not. I dont think we did since it was so late at night and I vaguely remember sleeping in the van. During the day we just hung out and probably went to the mall or something. Probably around 4 or 5 o'clock we loaded our gear into the Axiom. At that point, the club promoter told us he received a bunch of calls last night from our friends in Austin, saying they'll be driving over from Austin to bust our heads at the show tonight. From that point on it's safe to say we were all on edge for the whole night. I think it was at that point that Dave Brinkman (Angkor Wat singer) told us he was packing heat. Don't know if that put me more at ease or ramped up my anxiety? From here on out, we went about everything as we normally would on a show night, except we kept an extra eye on the door in case we had to rumble with our Hammer Skin friends from Austin. The Axiom was a pretty cool club, kinda dark and run down with a good rock n' roll vibe, kinda reminded me of a club here in Portland called Satyricon. Cool thing that happened during Angkor Wat's soundcheck was when Rob got up and sang Black Flag's "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie". I was able to record both bands sets from the soundboard that night. Before the first band went on, I was selling merch for both bands and these two super fans approached me who were heavily into anything death metal/grindcore and kept telling me that Cryptic Slaughter had to to play T.D.M.! (To Death Metal) First song (if you can call it that) on side 2 of Money Talks. At first I thought they were joking, but they were dead serious. At the end of each sentence they would give me a complementary Tom G Warrior death grunt, straight off of Morbid Tales. After giving them a few stickers to hopefully shut em' up, they gave me a demo by NY's Baphomet and an original copy of England's Sore Throat demo. You can hear these guys yelling at the band in-between songs on the live songs that are on the "Convicted" and " Money Talks" reissues on Relapse Records. Check out the cool live footage from this show on YouTube. I don't remember anything about the opening band Afterbirth, who I assume were from Houston. Once again Angkor Wat put on an amazing energetic live set. Cryptic Slaughter took the stage and ripped into song after song from Convicted and Money Talks before playing a few new songs from Stream Of Consciousness (which went over great with the crowd, even the Death Metal duo liked em'.) After an encore or two the show was finally over. Never thought I would be so happy for a show to be over and to pack up our gear and leave. All of us were ecstatic that no one from Austin ever showed up. Time to catch up on some sleep before we head off for Memphis tomorrow.

Next up......another weird motel, swimming, the Monsters of cock, redneck hillbilly's and guns.

Rob chillin'  in Memphis. I think he's grabbing an imaginary beer.

Adam Grossman, Rob Nicholson and Danny Lohner in Detroit.

Yeah! Buddy.

Scott Peterson, Adam Grossman and David Nuss (back) and Danny Lohner on the floor in Detroit.

Mike Titsworth and Scott Peterson in Detroit.

Bill Crooks flipping me off in Detroit. Leave me alone and let me sleep!!!

Part 8:Austin,TX-CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER TOUR 1988

PART 8

July 4th 1988

Austin,TX-The Ritz (Shitz) Theatre

     I don't remember what we did on our day off on July 3rd. Odds are we went back to Corpus Christi and hung out since it was close to San Antonio and there were places to stay and things to do. I remember a day or two before the 4th Les was calling the promoter in Austin to advance the show, get directions etc, but wasn't able to get ahold of him. Anyhow, on July 4th we pulled into a rainy Austin and searched around for a motel. After searching for awhile we were only able to find this really classy looking shit bag of a hooker roach infested motel somewhere. The inside of the rooms looked like they were out of some old horror movie, faded curtains, stained sheets, dirty shag carpet, brownish grimy tiles in the bathroom, completely gross! At some point, Les was able to contact the promoter who told us when load in was and that he wasn't able to possibly fulfill our guarantee, which I'm sure wasn't much by today's standards. Regardless, both bands split for the club. Angkor Wat got to the club a little bit before us and were already unloading their gear into the Ritz Theatre. Myself,Bill,Rob,Les and Scott all walk into this old run down theatre and immediately notice rain leaking from the ceiling, down onto the stage and floor in front of the stage. The promoter was nowhere to be found, just a few of his stage hand goons, who were no fucking help whatsoever. The bottom line was that the promoter was not around upon load in, didn't return our calls, was completely unwilling to work with us or commit to the bands basic necessities, such as our guarantee, safety, etc, etc, we quietly told the Angkor Wat guys that we were not going to load in our gear and play the show. The Angkor Wat guys agreed and we quickly helped load up their gear and hit the road back to the hotel. Let me make this very clear that both bands did NOT at any point want to let down any of their fans! This was a hard decision but it was the best thing to do for all of us at the time. Our sincerest  apologies go out to the fans that waited outside in the rain, possibly bought advance tickets (which I doubt since it seemed that the promoter never even did any promotion. For years I have searched for a flyer for this show and never found anything.) and were left out in the cold on their 4th of July plans. It could have been a very memorable 4th of July, instead it turned into somewhat of a nightmare.

     About a half hour or 45 minutes later we pulled up to our hotel. We had a short pow wow between us and made plans for the rest of the night. Out of the Cryptic guys, Scott and Bill decided to stay at the roach motel and rest. I don't remember which Angkor Wat guys stayed behind, I think Danny Lohner and Adam Grossman did? Myself, Rob, Les and Mike Titsworth from Angkor Wat piled into our van and decided to hit the town for the 4th of July. I think Dave Brinkman and David Nuss went out for something to eat, not quite sure. I remember that we drove down the main street where the Ritz Theatre was, to see if there was anyone outside in line. Low and behold there were a lot of people milling around, probably wondering where the fuck we were. I'm sure if anyone noticed us driving by, they would have run after us, to try and get us to come back and play or they would have thrown anything they could have found at us. An hour or two later we pull into the parking lot of the motel and go to our rooms. Scott and Bill come out of there room obviously very freaked out and shaken up. While we were gone Bill or Scott looked out of the curtains and saw a bunch of Hammer Skins with baseball bats and crowbars looking for us! From what everybody said, these guys waited for us to show up for a few hours. I felt bed for the guys that were holed up in their rooms while these guys were outside, ready to bust heads. I can't even imagine what would have happened if Scott or Bill opened their door and walked out into that. It would have been bad, i'm sure! How the fuck did they know where we were staying? Later that night, Danny, said that he told someone at the theatre while they we loading in, where we were staying. DOH! Luckily neither of the bands vans or u-hauls were at the motel when these guys showed up because I'm sure they would've busted up our shit really fuckin' good. We converse quickly with the Angkor Wat guys and decide that we need to get the fuck outta Austin as fast as possible. Just in case these guys show up again and beat us to a pulp, which was highly likely. So within what seemed like a 1 minute Chinese fire drill we had our bags and bodies into the van and were on the freeway to Houston for tomorrow nights show at the Axiom. Sorry Austin. 

Les in K-Mart parking lot somewhere in Tennessee

Cryptic Slaughter van, Les and up front, Rob flipping me off and Scott. K-Mart parking lot in Tennessee.

 Bill making a phone call at  our hotel room in Memphis.

Rob disgusted with our hotel room in Memphis.

Part 7:San Antonio,TX-CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER TOUR 1988

PART 7

July 2nd 1988
San Antonio,TX-Showcase Special Events Center
     Good morning and Happy 21st Birthday to Les Evans!!!!! We all dust off the cobwebs from the night before and gather up the troops at one of the guys from Angkor Wat's house and load up gear and merch while we wait for everyone to show up. After waiting for a significant amount of time for Angkor Wat's roadie Kenny, we all decide we can't wait any longer, so we head out of Corpus for San Antonio. Not long after we're on the road we pull into a Denny's for some food. All 10 of us squish into a booth or grab a table close by and talk about the show last night, why their roadie flaked out on them and what was possibly in store for tonight's show in San Antonio. About 5-10 minutes before we were done eating, Bill excused himself and headed to the bathroom. None of us thought anything of it until later. Once we're done, all 9 of us go up to the cash register to pay each bill individually and head towards the door. One by one we walk out the front door where Bill nonchalantly rejoins us and slips out the door. The waitress didn't even notice Bill was gone, so by the time she noticed there was something missing, we were either long gone or they were just happy to get rid of us and didn't even want to bother. I'm sure they didn't miss their $2.99 grand slam breakfast. From here on out Bill became Bill "dine and dash" Crooks for the rest of the tour and he lived up to it each chance he got, without ever getting caught too. The rest of the ride to San Antonio, I rode in the Angkor van and listened to Dave Brinkman's awesome cassettes of the Larm, Groovy Aardvark, Devastation,Rose Rose and Watchtower while we all shot the shit about music and got to know each other.

    We pulled into San Antonio in the late afternoon and went straight to the the Showcase. It was a huge place that probably held 800+ people. The club filled up quickly with rabid fans before the first band even took the stage. Cerebral Distortion took the stage first, they were a young 5 piece band that played in your face simplistic thrash that leaned more towards punk. Their youthful energy got the crowd pumped up before the next band Gloomy Gus took the stage. Truthfully, I don't remember a thing about Gloomy Gus (If anyone can direct me towards a recording of theirs or more info on them, I'd appreciate it). I was busy pulling double duty on roadie detail since Angkor Wat's roadie never showed so I was probably somewhere either selling merch or helping set up drums. Once again Angkor Wat hit the stage like a fucking tornado and crushed everything around them as they ripped through another killer set of songs from their upcoming record. After the show, Mike Titsworth's dad said that Angkor Wat's live show "Inspires Insanity"! I would say he nailed it with his analogy. After a short set change, Cryptic Slaughter blew onto the stage in a speedy frenzy igniting a few circle pits throughout the club. As each song played, the pits seemed to grow in size and rabidness until the show was over.  So far these two Texas shows were way beyond our expectations. All the people that we hung out with after the show and at the merch booth were extremely cool and truly interested in the band and their music. Oh shit, we gotta hurry up and load up the gear it's getting close to beer thirty and we had to celebrate Les's birthday! He was stoked to finally be able to buy beer legally, but by the time we got to the store it was too late. Bummer. That's ok though, we hit a party for awhile at someones house and had a few beers. I don't recall where we stayed that night or what we did the next day since the next show was in Austin on the 4th of July. We probably dine n' dashed or hit a Wataburger.......
For the 4th of July we encounter cockroaches,rain,baseball bats,crowbars,skinheads and a midnight drive

Les feeling the Cryptic groove.

Cryptic Les and Bill with Rob catching air.

Cryptic Bill

Chillin' in the  Cryptic van. Back to Front.

Bill "Dine N' Dash" Crooks (striking a pose), Dave Nuss,Les Evans (reading Playboy) and Dave Brinkman in the Angkor Wat hat.

Adam Grossman and Rob Nicholson after a sweat induced show. Rob is thirsty for beer!

Adam and Dave in the back and Rob in the front. Cruising K-Mart in the South.