Old Crow is not a fine bourbon and back in the day shit

Back in the early eighties I bounced in a blues club. You had to walk down two flights of iron steps to get it. The place was underground and looked liked it was carved out of solid rock, back in the sixties it used to be a chinchilla farm. Back in the day when I worked this place Westport was nothing like it is now. You still had old hippies living above some of the bars and head shops were all over the place. Westport was like the wide-open frontier, it was also known as the undisputed drug capital of the Midwest. The drug thing got so bad Westport had to have it’s own security force. These cats not only carried guns, but they had dogs, big nasty steroid taking, back in the slavery day looking ass eating dogs who had no love for anyone. Word. And weren’t afraid to use em. I recall one morning after closing the crowd starting fighting in the middle of the street. These cats rolled up with the dogs and took the leashes off; it was like the fucking running of the bulls, but with these big ass dogs instead, another fine example of crowd control.
In the club we averaged five fights a night. It was also one of the first clubs in KC to stay open till 3 am. We entertained a very diverse bunch of people. You had the fedora wearing blues crowd who insisted on wearing dark shades at night. Then we had the Italian mob crowd who insisted on wearing dark shades at night. And not to be left out we had the burgeoning punk crowd who also insisted on wearing dark shades at night. And don’t let me forget the trailer park mullet crowd. And when it got fun was when all these different groups who insisted on wearing dark shades at night would start bumping into each other. Oh, I forgot the biggest crowd, the drug crowd. These guy’s were like roaches they were so underfoot. The drug dealers and me had a good working relationship, they wouldn’t deal inside the bar and I wouldn’t break my foot off in em. Other then that we got along pretty good. But I gotta tell ya, when the place was rocking and the mob guys would bump into the punk crowd who would shove em into the mullet people who would swing at the drug dealers. It would turn into a total pier six brawl. Even the bands were known to scrap with the crowd, and in the middle was yours truly. Here’s what I learned bouncing in a blues club.

I learned that you’d better not back down from the mob guy’s, if they saw you backing down or rolling over they owned your ass. Toss em like you’d toss anybody else, they don’t have to like you, just respect you. I learned to never take my eyes off anybody. The one time I did I ended up with my right eye getting cut out with a beer bottle. I learned that strippers are good people. It was strippers who caught me and pulled me back into the club and started first aid after I had climbed two flights of stairs trying to go after the guy that cut my fuckin eye out. I learned that punkers are pretty cool to hang out with, and if they really like you they will give you their women for the night. I learned that sitting in the back of a dark blues club with your arm draped around a real women and listening to the blues while sipping fine bourbon on the rocks will clear your head and free your mind.

After the blues club years I bounced in a rock club that had bullet holes in the front door and carried no bottles or glassware. We also averaged three to five fights every night of the week. This was back in the day that when a cat took a swing at you, you had better swing back or you were everybody’s punk. Big hair, spandex, and leather was the rule of thumb. On a good night the place could hold six hundred screaming people, and get this, the place only had six bouncers. The place originally started out as a cowboy club, and until the place closed “Asleep At The Wheel” would play there every year. I learned a lot of things working there.

I learned that Rob Halford of Judas Priest dressed his boyfriend in matching outfits and made him stand on stage where he could watch him. I learned that if anyone touched Johnny Winter he would run back to his bus and wouldn’t come out. I learned that Yngwie Malmsteen was a huge asshole. I learned that groupies will do anything, and I really mean anything to get on the bus. I learned that having a sweaty Joan Jett sitting on your shoulders while doing a guitar solo and at the same time trying to rub her pubes through the back of your neck is very cool. I learned that having the lead singer from Great White stop during a song and call me the baddest muthafucker he had ever seen, and the crowd cheering me is pretty cool. I learned that watching Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers walk into the crowd and tell everybody to sit on the floor cause he wanted to tell a story, and watching in stunned disbelief as over six hundred people did exactly just that, had to one of the finest examples of crowd control I had ever seen. I learned that having the wrestler, Jake The Snake Roberts get slapped by some drunk chick, and then me having to tell him he had to leave the bar had my guts in a knot. I learned that it’s not the fight that hurts, it’s the recovery. I learned to hate bachelor parties, cause when you got twenty guys that decide they wanna beat up on the bouncers and the before mentioned bouncers pulling out all the stops, getting “Old School” on their asses and sending half of them to the ER is not cool. Only because as soon as the smoke cleared the Cops camera crew came running down the ally but shit was all over by then and my mom didn’t get to see me on the TV. I learned that I really enjoyed a good moshpit, cause when you got a good pit rolling it’s the best relief valve for stressed out kids I have ever seen

"and the monkey flipped the switch"