From 1982 to 1988 I played in a band called Marginal Man. A product of the punk/hardcore scene of the early 80's in DC, we put out three albums (this is pre-CD) and the band enjoyed some respectable underground popularity. The first record was on Dischord, the second on Enigma, and the third on Giant Records. We toured North America twice and did a whole bunch of East Coast dates. Having broken up in 1988 after two raucous farewell sets at DC's 930 Club, it never ceases to amaze me how many folks still remember the band the how many kids take the effort to track down my phone number and E-mail address and ask about the band.

One thing folks seem to ask about (and also seem to have misconceptions about) is what it was like to go on the road as a young punk rock band in the 80's. While touring these days is still not the easiest thing to deal with, touring the DIY circuit was a little different back then. These are journal entries from five days of a month and half long tour. We are in Florida and are five days into the tour. From Florida we were to head to Louisiana, work our way to California, and then head east through the Midwest to get back home.

June 13, 1984
Gainesville, Florida

Driving from Atlanta to Gainesville.

See an exit for "Climax, Georgia." Wonder what goes on there?

LATER: We played a pretty good set. Someone taped it and was really into our stuff. So much so that he played the tape at the party after the show. Then he played it again. And again. AND AGAIN. He must've played the thing about five or six times. I like our songs, but once is enough.

Anyway, so here we are sleeping on this hardwood floor. We're just beginning to fall asleep when the two girls who live here come stumbling in drunk and trip over Steve. Since they were drunk, we decided to start playing with their minds. They told us about the band they are in called "pH. 4.5" Apparently, this is the pH of the human vagina. "How about a litmus test?" offered Mike. I couldn't stop laughing. After playing with their minds a bit more, they left us and we fell asleep.

June 15, 1984
Miami Beach, Florida

We arrived in Miami at about 4pm. This is a really tacky town. I can't figure why people would pay good money to come here. It seems like a real waste.

We found tonight's venue, a run down bar in a dive of a hotel. You drive down the road and see all these "nice" hotels. Then you see ours.

The place is really run down. The sink in the bathroom in the hotel lobby has been ripped out of the wall. It has no lights and the floor is covered with some sort of unidentifiable liquid. The lobby has buckets scattered all over the place t catch water dripping from the ceiling. The chairs and sofas in the lobby are dirty and torn. The water in the swimming pool in back has this dark green color on it and you can't see the bottom.

The bill tonight is Scream, us, and a local band. Really looking forward to seeing Scream. They're finishing their tour and ours is just starting. It's a two-night gig.

The club kind of looks like a cheesy cocktail lounge. The stage is virtually a part of the bar. It's literally attached to it. The waitresses wear these skimpy Tarzanesque leopard print outfits. The promoter reminds me of a person that hangs around bus stations picking up runaway girls. Everyone here is sleazy.

Dinner tonight is a cold can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli. A new low in gourmet dining.

The soundman is inept. He has no idea what he's doing. Our sound is shit and so is everyone else's. Scream was great. The local band sounded like Discharge. I'd swear that there were only three songs and they played them over and over. The singer was this kid about 5'2" with liberty spikes that stuck out a foot from his head. He had a thick Cuban accent that sounded really weird when he did his stage rap because he was trying to talk in an English accent.

"Oi, dees nix soohng gooes out to all you poonks in skeens, boot I kin see that 'deeres noone oof you lot out 'dere, so foohk you."

Folks seemed to like us, though I didn't think we played that well and they didn't know our stuff. Everyone said they liked us and that the second night is always the crazy one.

The promoter is putting us up in the "Penthouse." This is supposedly the "nice" room. The bathroom sink is ripped out of the wall, the toiled is backed up and is permeating the smell of stale urine throughout the room. The shower is this concrete hole and has no shower head. The floor of the whole "suite" is filthy and littered with liquid and ashes. The room has this funny smell from the fact that the club owner and one of the barmaids were screwing on the floor before we got there. They were leaving as we were approaching the room. After looking around, Steve opted to sleep in the van. Good move. We'd been so hot and sweaty this leg of the tour that the rest of us wanted to turn up the A/C all the way. The room became a refrigerator. It was so cold I ended up wearing almost every bit of clothing I brought with me: A jacket, flannel shirt, two T-shirts, sweat pants, sweatshirt, socks and a cap.

June 16, 1984
Miami Beach, Florida

Woke up to the sounds of breaking glass, hammering and shouting. This is apparently a produce of the "renovation" the building is undergoing. The smell of stale urine permeating the air is the product of a clogged toilet, and the refrigerator like quality of the air is the product of an overzealous air-conditioning unit. I managed to turn off the A/C about 4am. We might have been hot and sweaty when we went to bed, but we were all very cold now. We woke up at about12:30, retrieved Steve from the van, and had breakfast at the IHOP. We had plenty of time to kill because we weren't supposed to hit stage until about 10pm. We went to the beach for a while. There was almost nobody there except for about four senior citizens. The water was flat and littered with loose seaweed. I can't complain though. That was my bath for the day. Anything is better than that shower.

So, it's the second night and everyone says the second night is the best since there are more people overall and a lot of folks come to see both nights. We can only hope.

Ran into Dan the Fan from Orlando and his crew. He apparently is remaining true to his word and has driven for five or six hours to make an appearance. This guy has to be the least jaded individual I've ever met. He told me he wouldn't have thrown so much support behind us if we weren't as good as we were in Gainesville.

The local opener faced a pretty unenthusiastic crowd. That got me worried that folks wouldn't be on to us, but they went absolutely apeshit during our set. Kids were jumping off the bar onto the stage. At one point, so many folks were on stage that the owner got paranoid and got on stage and started hitting all the kids. Seeing this I "accidentally" smacked my guitar into his head and knocked him into the crowd. Sorry about that, but don't mess with our audience. Things got so crazy that I accidentally hit some kids with my guitar when I was playing. Sorry about that guys. Didn't mean it. Some of them got hit hard, too. Thing is they were so pumped up that they didn't even flinch. We did "Double Image" as an encore and the place exploded. Folks really seemed to like it and it was really cool talking to kids saying that they got into it. We even got decent pay too.

Scream were AMAZING. Best show I've ever seen them do. They did a cover of Helter Skelter that was nothing short of cathartic. We loaded out and left to go directly to someone's house in Melbourne to crash. COOL! NO more dive "Penthouse."

June 17, 1984
Melbourne, Florida

Slept all the way from Miami. We pulled into a McDonalds for breakfast. I felt even more hideous than I looked, which was pretty bad since I hadn't shaved or had a real bath in days. I could barely walk into the place. We arrived at the house in Melbourne at about 10am. You pass a whole bunch of really nice houses, and then there's the house we're crashing at. I was a little apprehensive because the place looked a little small and run down. I figured that didn't matter as long as it had a floor. I never anticipated that there would be a large, belligerent Doberman inhabiting the house and that the place would literally smell like a swamp. The smell threw my head back and jarred me out of my groggy state. The bathroom was a disaster area. We haven't had a fully functioning bathroom in several days. The shower floor had a dead roach on it. The floor of the room was dirty and covered with some unknown liquid. I scouted around for some toilet paper in case what was available ran out. I looked under the sink and found no toilet paper. However, I did find a well worn issue of Partner Magazine with a cover story on "Bobbi's Breasts." Gads.

Anyway, I still needed paper so I looked in the cabinet next to the sink and still didn't find any paper. However, I did find four issues of Playboy and a magazine called "Teenage Hookers." Obviously a member of the boo of the month club.

Finding no toilet paper, I decided to use what was there and hope for the best. I flushed the toilet only to discover that the water wouldn't go down. I panicked as the water level rose and was relieved when it started to go back down. I took a shower and noticed that the water kind of had a funny smell to it. Whatever. I didn't give it a second thought. The shower was really touchy. Move the knob one way and you got scalded. Move it the other way and you lost all hot water and froze. If you're in there too long it ran out of water and cut off.

I got out of the bathroom and mentioned the plumbing problems to our host.

"Oh yeah. Be careful with the toilet. I'm having septic tank trouble so the sewer system is fucked up. Oh, and don't drink the water either. Its OK to shower with, but the backed up sewage gets back into the system, so don't drink it. I never use the bathroom here anyway."

"What do you mean" Where do you go to the bathroom then?"

"Oh, I go to the bowling alley down the road."

Suddenly I didn't feel nearly as clean as I did a few minutes earlier.

The rest of the house is also worth mentioning. He has a wall of pictures of himself (vanity, all is vanity), eight or so of the latest, most sophisticated guitars, walls covered with record covers and music memorabilia, a Porsche 924, a half-pipe that is falling apart in his back yard and a Doberman appropriately named Damien (remember the movie "The Omen"?) that drove everyone absolutely crazy. It jumped on us, tried to eat our food, smelled up our clothes, attacked Steve, and generally made a lot of noise. I love dogs, but when Andre muttered that he wanted to buy a gun to kill the mongrel, I offered to chip in. Both Andre and I spent the night in the van to get away from the dog.

June 18, 1984
Melbourne, Florida

Andre and I were the first to wake up. He had some difficulty gaining entry t the house because of a large obstacle named Damien. Damien also made the evening interesting with his barking, scratching, banking around, and fleeing from the house at 4am with owner chasing him down the road screaming "Get the fuck back in here," repeatedly. I swear I thought the police were going to come answering a disturbing the peach complaint.

We headed out to the laundromat to do some laundry and headed for the beach. None of us went in the water because none of us were really in the mood. We noticed that nobody seems to go to the beach in Florida.

We decided that although our host was a really cool guy, we didn't want to spend another night there if we didn't have to. Although our next show is in Baton Rouge at Jacy's two days from now, we're going to head out of here and hit New Orleans and then head to Baton Rouge to find Jacy's and try to find a place for the night.