We should've known.  We should've known that if we spent the entire drive to Portland listening to glam rock that something bad was going to happen.   We should've known that the hour and one half goddam mother-fucking traffic jam filled drive from Seattle to Tacoma was a bad omen.  But did we heed the warning signs?  Hell no, why would we do a stupid thing like that?

We were going to Portland, goddam it!  Home of Powell's, the best goddam bookstore west of the Mississippi.  Home of Callahan, the most twisted cartoonist of all time.  Home of Gus Van Sant and Katherine Dunn.  Oh yea, and the home of fucking Nike.  Girl Trouble was gonna play the Satyricon and we were gonna be there!  Woo-hoo!  We cranked the Gary Glitter, and analyzed the lyrical content of The Sweet's "Six Teens."  We decided that colleges should offer a course where you try to figure out just what in the hell the lyrics to Cheap Trick's "Surrender" really mean.  Especially that part about "Before we met your mommy served in the WACS in the Philippines."  Must be some Indonesian joke that's going 'round, we decided.

We ate some Mexican food at a place that I had remembered as being good, but it was really quite obnoxious.  Full of clean cut, scary looking all American types.  All I remembered was the giant margaritas, but I couldn't get a cocktail waiter to serve me.  Maybe it was my constant screams of "who do I gotta blow to get a drink around here?" that kept them at bay.  Who knows.  All we knew was that we couldn't wait to get to the Satyricon.

When we got there, we were greeted by the frantic pleas of Girl Trouble, asking us could we stick around after the show because they feared the van had died!  Oh no!  Of course we told them to go screw themselves, after all we were already in the club, and they couldn't very well take us OFF the guest list at this point, could they?  We said we'd stay, and they put their guns down.  Then we settled in for some drinks and good 'ole fashioned rock and roll, baby!

The Surf Trio played first, and they were pretty good.  But hey guys, a little truth in advertising would be nice, okay?  There are four of you, not three!  But they were all nattily dressed, and they put on a damn nice show.  Girl Trouble took the stage next, and since they are my favorite band in the whole goddam world, well I fear I cannot give an unbiased account of any of their shows.  So here's a biased one, screw you if you don't like it.

First off, let me say that the club was not very full, so Kurt told Michelle & I that he was counting on us to dance.  Hey, we're almost always the only people dancing anyway, so we weren't bothered by this.  And much to our surprise, we had a couple of very entertaining & funny guys that came up and danced with us!  One of them was dressed in a very crazy sixties manner, and he looked almost exactly like Crispin Glover.  It turns out that his name is Trace, and he is the lead singer for a Rolling Stones cover band in Portland.  Word on the street is that his band FUCKING RULES and are hilarious to boot.  We made a mental note to make a road trip to see them some time.  Needless to say that we all danced our damn asses off, as is the custom at a Girl Trouble show.  And lovely globe and smiley face key chains were tossed out to the adoring masses.  The show was good, but unfortunately the sound wasn't so hot.  But it was a blast.

The Liquor Giants came on later, featuring Wade Dotson, former member of the Gun Club.  They were good, but a bit too jangley for my taste.  I think I was expecting a darker, surfy kind of sound.  Instead they reminded me of REM, who I unfortunately do not like.  We spent the rest of the evening chatting with folks in the front of the club.

At the end of the night came the real fun.  Girl Trouble's van had indeed bitten the dust.  I drove my car around and we tried to jump the battery numerous times, but to no avail.  They finally did some sort of voo-doo on something inside of the dash, and got the damn thing running.  We tried to convince them to stay with us in our posh Travel lodge room, but they were having none of that.  I guess 7 people in a small room didn't sound too inviting.  So we said our good-byes and headed back to our hotel for some soft porn on Showtime!  Oooh, do we know how to party!

The next day Michelle and I shopped our asses off at Powell's.  My god, I spent over $80.00, and I can't even read!  I'd better get some hooked on phonics tapes, and pronto!  The best find of the day was "The Clash Before & After, Photographs by Pennie Smith."  Oh man, this is like porno to me!  Almost as good as fast forwarding to all the live footage in "Rude Boy."  I had to buy it.  I tortured Michelle the rest of the day by flashing pictures of the Clash boys at her.

Then we made a quick jaunt to the Grotto, a lovely outdoor Catholic shrine.  If you're Catholic, or lapsed like we are, I highly recommend this tourist attraction.  Great gift shop too.  I love that sacred shit!

We left Portland at 3:00, because we had plans to see Combover that night in Seattle (see Combover article.)  We thought we'd be home in plenty of time, ha!  The fates had other plans for us!

The drive was fine until we hit Olympia.  Then a couple of miles outside of the Big "O" traffic came to a complete stop.  We sat there for an hour, listening to the Blasters and trying to take our minds off of our bursting bladders.  Finally I decided I could stands no more!  I heroically found my way to the far right lane and got the hell off of the freeway in Steilacoom.  We didn't know where the hell we were, all we knew was that Fort Lewis was to our right, and bladder relief was somewhere to our left.

We drove and drove and drove until we thought we'd have to just pull over and pee in front of God and everyone.  Finally we saw the Puget Sound, and we knew there had to be some sort of relief for us just around the bend.  We found rest rooms and refuge in a very strange combination deli/tavern (with fluorescent lighting as well) at the end of the road in Steilacoom.  This place was something else.  There were g.i.s and old coots all hanging around, drinking and playing pool.  And good beer on tap too, not just Bud or Hamms.  We had ourselves some Mac & Jacs and some lovely sandwiches and settled in to enjoy the atmosphere.  We soon realized that we were the only women in the place, besides the workers.  And the boys were all either listening to gawd awful Alice & Chains/Metallica/Whatever the Fuck on the jukebox, or watching one of the two t.v.s, one that was tuned to Seinfeld, and the other that was tuned to some intriguing Warren Beatty movie from the 60's that had a bunch of go-go type babes in it.  We were mesmerized.  But like all good things, this experience had to come to an end too.  So we headed out the door, and somehow zig-zagged through the back roads of god knows where and found Tacoma and the freeway.  We arrived home at 8:30, only to turn around and go back out at 9:30!  Color us insane!

Visit the Girl Trouble web site!
Read my review of Girl Trouble when they opened for John Doe!