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Simon Bisley & Glenn Danzig @ ComicCon 1998
Photo from the book MISERY OBSCURA. Everyone needs a copy so go get one!
jasonotraeger: SAMHAIN/POISON 13 WABASH HALL SAN DIEGO 1985 This show was absolutely wild. San Diego, or Slow Death as the scene was nicknamed was a very violent punk scene on a good day and then there were nights like this one where all hell broke loose. Wabash Hall was a wide room with a low ceiling and a stage about three feet high. Samhain was a highly anticipated band since it was Glenn D’s first outing post-Misfits so the place was packed. Poison 13 an Austin, TX. blues-punk band featuring Tim Kerr and Chris Gates from (the brilliant funk-punk pioneers)  Big Boys opened the show. The SD scene was not known for having much love for bands that stretched the idea of what constituted “punk rock” and Poison 13’s slow, chugging, bluesy vibe was not well received. As their set progressed the crowd grew angrier and angrier until in response to shouts of “PLAY FASTER!!” Tim Kerr good-naturedly said “Why don’t you start your own band?” The crowd was not inspired by this D.I.Y. suggestion. Somehow the band finished their set and left the stage intact. Samhain came out and Glenn being the master he was, had the crowd whipped up into a frenzy in no time. The thick air of the room was filled with dark, aggressive, intensity and when the guys from Poison 13 waded into the crowd to watch Samhain they quickly became the object of heaps of derision. The crowd’s scorn turned to action and like a spark in a room full of gas vapor s—t went off. The SD thug-punks set upon the Texas guys but Chris Gates got the worst of it. Fights were nothing special AT ALL at a San Diego punk show, in fact I can hardly recall a show at that time where there wasn’t a brawl. The things that made this one notable was that it involved one of the bands getting wailed on and a good portion of the crowd dishing out the beat down. I was the furthest thing from a brawler and this was a scene where anyone with a brain would just cover his head and move to the side which is what I did. The whole thing was over in a couple minutes which (as anyone with experience in this type of scenario knows) is a long time when fists, feet, and whatever else are flying. My crew of friends and I would flyer and clean up after shows for Tim Maze and we got in free to all shows so we stuck around backstage after it was all over. Everyone was f—cked up, knots on heads, cuts, black eyes, torn up, some dudes were snorting speed. The hall was trashed. I remember Tim Kerr saying “San Diego is no joke!” Yeah, you could say that again. I don’t want to glamorize this violent s—t. I tell this story to paint a picture of a time. Putting up with this kind of mayhem was very tiresome and even depressing. It was a total pain in the ass that would ultimately ruin the “punk show” experience for me. This sounds like a gr8 story, but I think quite a few details are off my friend
santanico-pandemonium: ohh Oh my God…………..
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I tried to make it perfect, OCD is killing me, but yeah no other man can kneel close to a bookshelf and water and talk about lord Jesus doing improper things then follow it up with a shrug and silent chuckle and say it’s pretty funny OMG