El Paso Texas/The Scorpion Club, a good show as I recall but I remember much more about what went on before the gig. The other guys were throwing around a football outside in the parking lot waiting for sound check to start. Mark (who was never the greatest sports guy!) caught a pass and somehow jammed one of the fingers on his right hand. We took him to the local hospital and had it x-rayed, only to find out that he had fractured the finger! The doctor fixed him up with a splint and brace and we headed back to the club. We were not sure what would happen or if Mark could even play.
I know that this will probably sound like major ass kissing, but Mark has to be the greatest guitar player I have ever worked with. I don't know how he pulled it off, but he never complained once about his hand the whole way through that tour, and he played just as great as ever even with his temporary handicap. Mark with 4 working fingers is better then 95% of the other guitars players out there....

Tour buses, you have all seen them. They seem to represent status symbols and a level of achievement for musicians. If you have a tour bus, you have graduated from the days of being miserable in a van or car for hours at a time going crazy. If you have a tour bus, you must be on a big label that is giving you tour support.
We started out on this tour with a van and a truck and somewhere (I don't recall) we ended up going for a tour bus even though it was really not affordable considering the money we had from Atlantic for tour support.
As it turned out, we must have picked up the worst tour bus in the country! We were so happy to first set foot on it at the beginning, but we would find out that this thing was a dangerous piece of crap. Nothing like having the generator catch fire when you are driving down the freeway! This happened over and over. You need to have the generator on full time to run the A/C unit on the bus or it is next to impossible to breath. There were long stretches when we had no generator working and since the bus had hardly any windows, it was very uncomfortable inside. It was also summer time and there was a heat wave it seemed everywhere we went. (see Dave and Carl's UFO factor in chapter 5!)

I recall tempers flaring as the heat went up and up, but there were some funny moments as well. Geoff and I got so sick of the crap that was going with the bus, the lack of A/C, etc. that we went a bit over the deep end.
On one hot day on board the HELL bus, Geoff and I decided to see how hot and miserable we could get, so we covered ourselves up with thick blankets and started eating heavily salted pretzels all the while refusing to drink anything until I suggested to Geoff that we drink my contact lens saline solution (sodium based of course!) The other guys looked at us like we were nuts, but of course in some ways I guess we were on that hot 100 degree day...

Not to sound like we were all having a shitty time, because even though things were tough we were still living the dream of being signed and out on the road. Every day a new city and new people to see and things to do, another show to look forward to.
I hated the days off with no shows because I think when it was go-go-go non stop with a new show and new town every day you would get into a certain rhythm and mind set that would be interrupted on days off. Well, there was always laundry to do....

Dave Starr 7-18-01

Up next: The 1990 VR European Tour with Death Angel and Forbidden!