Fresh off working 15 days straight because my burn out boss couldn’t get it together to hire someone else, I headed to Philadelphia to check out the Revelation Records rehash tour heading through America during the summer of 1998. I kind of didn’t like most of these bands, but we wanted to see In My Eyes and interview Dan O Mahoney, so off we went.
I remember absolutely nothing about Battery, but I think Good Clean Fun jumped on after them. They had just put out their demo, so the, uh, “joke” was pretty fresh at this point, which would end pretty quickly. That band got so bad in almost record time. It was pretty funny how quickly “the scene” turned on them.
I had gotten an advance CD of the In My Eyes LP a few days before, so I packed it in up front and was one of the few people going off for their new songs. I remember not a lot of people checking them out for some reason and nor did Speak 714 get a lot of crowd action.
Better Than A Thousand was an absolutely disgusting spectacle of cheesy slogans, Ray seriously telling the crowd to be quiet and them going quiet, and all this weirdness. John and I entertained ourselves with some kind of stage diving “contest” at some point and then went off for whatever Youth Of Today cover they did. Shit seemed so contrived and fake.
We interviewed Dan after their set for about 30 minutes before he had to bail. A few days later in New Brunswick, he kind of blew me off when I came over to their table to say hello. If I am in my forties still singing straight edge songs I haven’t believed in for 20 years sometime in the future, just fucking kill me please.