Part 14: I become a Roadie (a proper one..with pay! sometimes…)
By now all the Steakie Roadhogs had their own places but we’d still get on it together at gigs and parties. We’d tried to form an actual ‘Club’ with fees and shit to finance stuff but it had fallen thru. We did have a few hell parties tho before the collapse! Perhaps if we’d put aside our ‘personalities’ and did it for a ‘sense of cause’ rather than a ‘sense of self-importance’ it may have worked a bit better. The skinheads had formed the ‘Taranaki Skins’ and a few of the punkers had tagged along with them. We were all mates tho but I was a bit shocked that some of my old punk crew shaved their heads and jumped in. I did get a Taranaki Skins shirt for myself by asking them for one…”I’m not a skin but gizza shirt!”.
I had travelled back to Whakatane for my Grandpa’s funeral. The Black Power still remembered their ‘Punk Rock’ cousin and hit me up for shrooms! Wrong season bro!
As people left for other cities and others decided hard drugs were more important than music/ crew/ community, I was asked by a mate of mine if I could drive them round the country. I’d met Nige not long after moving to Inglewood and we’d let him move into our flat when he’d needed a place to live. I’d seen a band called ‘Post Mortem Depression‘ Nige had been in and videoed them and The Toxic Avengers at a Hall gig as well as giving them some artwork for a tape they released. I’d seen ‘The Hard-Ons’ when they’d played NP and gone with Casualty and an Ozzie band (whose name I can’t recall..ooops) to Auckland and Hamilton as well as many other shows just as ‘travelling support’ but never as an actual roadie as such.
Our trip to the 89′ Anarchist Unconvention was memorable for the fight we had with some AK Skins and a rather comfortable bed I ended up in that weekend. (I have a couple of pics but they’re hidden in my room somewhere…if I find them I’ll post them later).
‘Nefarious‘, some of y’all old cunts woulda seen them, I’m sure there’s some label that could be applied to them nowadays (cos it’s all about the labels…) but I’d call it ‘Hardcore’ with tinges of ‘Scumpunk’ thrown in. Fuck knows and who cares! Stand-out shows with Nefarious were, Mount Maunganui/ Gisborne/ Napier with Man With A Dog. I collected over $1100 at the door in the Mount. My camo-pants pockets were bulging with loot! Two of us would do the door, myself and Chardie (he was a skin and a damn good fighter!). I was the ’nice face’ he was the ‘evil face’ (sorta good-cop/ bad-cop shit). If any crap went down Chardie would sort it out and I’d back him up (not that he really needed backing up!). The guy setting up the Gisborne show (Steve…RIP) even scored us porn to watch in the ‘Green room’:lol. I remember waking up on the floor of the room and looking up to see one of the ‘Man With A Dog‘ guys glued to his seat. He’d stayed up after the show and watched porn all night! I also recall wondering what a certain singer/ bassist was doing with his rather soaked trousers that morning as well. Chard got bottled by some chick but he stood there and took it! “C’mon bitch, Do it!”…Crazy cunt! I puked helicopter styles after having 13 Tequila laybacks (1$ each!) and filled the toilet sink with tequila and free pizza.
I can’t remember how long I worked with Nefarious for. I guess it was a year or two. I was at the infamous Sick Of It All show here in NP when one of them got beer poured on him. SOIA played to a crowd of NPHC at Section 8. Fuck all of us had ever heard of them, them being ‘sXe’ was looked on as a bit weird considering most of the crowd were all pissheads! The promoter had supposedly not paid Nefarious for the previous shows on the tour and Von Toxic was pissed off when he saw the fruit basket for SOIA backstage. Semp Skumhead pissed on the fruit and the guy from SOIA came back offstage and complained about the beer incident “Someone tipped beer on me!”… Boo-fucking-hoo. Von Toxic told him to ‘get his fucking ass back onstage and play or he’d kick his prima-donna ass over’. So there you have it. SOIA hate us…We don’t give a fuck.
Gigs at the POD, Hamtown, New Plymouth all blurred together in an alcoholic, pill-filled haze. Girls, drugs, rock’n’roll! The lack of crusties to hang around with in NP was noticeable, with most of the Tariki crew having moved back to Wellington or been assimilated into the NP scene. NP was fueled by drugs, alcohol, hardcore and punk rock. The SRH indoor soccer/ laser strike team won a few championships. Our outdoor soccer team (with the likes of Casualty and crew, the SRH) came second in the league. Not bad for a buncha drunk, leather clad, HC/ punk rock/ metal heads!
I was listening to more metal than punk/ HC now but either genre was/ is acceptable to my ears. Von Toxic, Johnny Milano (Sticky Filth/ Tension roadie) both had /have wicked music collections and flatting with them meant I didn’t have to buy music! I could listen to their stuff. Milano was more metal orientated, Von Toxic was more punk/ HC/ dark.
Hell Hall had come and gone. It was where Von Toxic lived with a motley crew of skins/ HC. A big old house with a hall attached to it just 5 minutes walk from town! Many a show was had there and it did get raided quite a few times. I moved into the house at the back on Molesworth Street.