At my alma mater, the annual spring bacchanalia was known as Goat Roast. This event, which took place at a different location each time, provided an excuse for the student body to drink a lot of beer, hear some music, and enjoy the spring sunshine for a day – roasted goat was indeed available, though most participants declined to partake. Since the campus was (and is) located in a dry county, the event itself typically took place in a more-or-less secluded cow pasture just across the county line.
The only recompense most of the bands who played Goat Roast received was free beer and t-shirts. That was enough to motivate myself and three friends to put together the only band of our college years and work up a few songs – “Roadrunner”, “Someone I Care About”, “Clash City Rockers”, “Submission”, “Sweet Jane”, an original called “Iguana in the Sauna” that turned the bass line from Flipper’s “Love Canal” upside down and shoved it under a bunch of Seussian lyrics, and a raggedy-ass cover of Doktors for Bob’s “Half-Assed Drunk”.
The day of Goat Roast dawned clear and bright – and the monsoon started an hour or so later, lasting most of the morning. We were supposed to haul our gear out to the site at around noon. At eleven or so, the skies cleared, so we shoved our stuff into a couple of cars and set off. Our directions said to exit the freeway, turn right, then turn left at the first road we came to. Our directions neglected to mention that the first road was almost completely hidden by a row of trees, so that you couldn’t see it until you were already on top of it.
We exited the freeway immediately ahead of the rented Ryder refrigerator truck that (we soon learned) contained all the beer kegs. We managed to drive past the road where we were supposed to turn, realized our mistake immediately, and pulled off onto the shoulder. The driver of the beer truck, seeing us stop, realized that he too was about to miss the turn, but instead of stopping and backing up as we planned to do, he apparently whipped the wheel hard over to try to make the turn, still doing 25-30 mph. This was not one of the smarter things the driver ever did. The truck, loaded with beer kegs, tipped up onto two wheels, wobbled, and was on the point of tipping onto its side when the right front wheel housing struck a guy wire supporting a power line pole at the intersection. The impact ripped off most of the fiberglass wheel housing, but also arrested the momentum of the truck enough that it dropped back onto all four wheels and came to a stop.
All four of us in the car were watching throughout. Our thoughts of “what a dumbass” turned quickly to “holy shit” as we realized the truck was about to turn over, then to “Oh fuck!” as we realized that the guy wire they’d hit supported a power pole, which supported a power line, which was, after the impact, twanging back and forth violently immediately over our heads. The guy wire had parted completely and it seemed likely that the pole and power line would be succumbing to gravity soon as well. The driver shoved the 1980 Monte Carlo in which we were riding into reverse and floored it.
The power line stayed aloft, however, and when we saw the beer truck start off again, we followed. The road wound for several miles through the woods, never more than a single-lane dirt road. In many places, the rains earlier in the day had made it almost impassable. Nevertheless, we eventually arrived at the site close behind the beer truck. A little too close, as it turned out. Apparently, among the other items of equipment demolished on the truck by the collision with the guy wire were the hydraulic lines for the brakes. The event organizers directed the truck to a spot on high ground where they intended to park it. When the truck stopped moving forward, it almost immediately started rolling backward down the slope – directly toward us. Our driver once again exercised his high-speed reverse driving skills, and we again escaped injury.
We were a bit skeptical about whether dozens or hundreds of cars would be able to make it down the narrow mud track to the site, but the organizers seemed determined to carry on, so we unloaded our gear in the barn where such things were to be stored, and headed back into town (the first band wasn’t on for three hours or so, and we were scheduled second or third).
As soon as we were back on the freeway, another torrential downpour started. We all agreed that there was absolutely no way they’d be able to go through with the show. If nothing else, it seemed likely that the next car to attempt that road would sink up to the axles after that much additional rain, and it kept coming down for the next two hours. Accordingly, when we got back to the apartment where a couple of us lived, we started drinking beer. In a fairly short time the four of us, with a little help from a couple of other guys, had consumed most of a case and a half of beer. We were all well past wet and on our way to full up. And then the sun came out.
We still tried to convince ourselves over the next hour or so that there was no way the show was going on – the rain would start again, the road had to be impassable, there was no way they’d risk running that much power to a bare dirt stage with nothing but a lean-to roof over it and that much water on the ground, etc. Nevertheless, we all knew, from the way the day had gone already, that the show would go on and we would be expected to play.
We were all far past any notion of driving ourselves back out there, so we recruited a couple of sober souls to get us to the show on time. Collectively, we agreed that we were far too drunk to perform, and there was no way to back out, so the only option was to get drunker, which we proceeded to do.
I recall only brief flashes of time during our performance, though my memory has been eked out by cues from a tape recorded from the sound board during our set. The evidence of the tape suggests that I did in fact manage to yell (one can’t call it singing) and play at the same time through my stint as vocalist and guitarist on the two Modern Lovers numbers, and that my performance on bass through the next four songs was not appreciably worse than my performances on bass during rehearsals had been. For our final number, “Half-Assed Drunk”, I ended up sitting at the drum kit with sticks in my hands hitting things semi-randomly. It was just as horrible doing it as it must have been to hear it then, or as it is to listen to the tape, and it was enormous fun.
After our set, two more bands completed theirs. The third had just started when the skies darkened, and the wind started blowing. A drizzle started to fall. Then, seconds later, the squall hit. The roof over the stage was built as a temporary lean-to sort of thing attached to a barn, and it was higher at the the front of the stage than at the back by the barn. Naturally, the 40-50 mph winds of the squall were blowing directly into the stage from the front. The roof began to lift, with its two-by-four supports rising ten or twelve inches off the ground. Almost immediately, the crew killed the stage power, and all of us who were standing around the front of the stage grabbed onto the two-by-fours to try to provide enough human ballast to keep the roof from going airborne at least until the band onstage got their gear into the barn.
Everybody lived. I’ve often wondered what story they told Ryder when they tried to return the truck.