The Damned Damned Damned project was anticlimactic, of course, but a purely positive experience and that's all I can ask for in this life. Everyone at the Fun House was on their best behavior, I got to play as loud as I fucking wanted, earned a small amount of free bourbon and ten bucks to boot. Jeremy made me proud by declaring onstage that "everything the Damned did after this record sucked ass," thus alienating 75% of our potential audience and driving many of them to the back porch area of the bar to ignore us.

I broke a string on "I Fall," just three fucking songs in and wham, right during that great bridge ("I'm a fallin angel, fallin down, be a fallin angel, wontcha come on around"). Luckily, the crestfallen look on my mug drew a good samaritan to my side, a bass player from a suburban-Seattle Oi band who offered to help and changed the string in about a quarter of the time it would have taken me. I admit that threw me off my groove and there were some tuning problems that I had to finally just ignore, but for the most part I kept it together and there were a few transcendent moments where we were all playing the same thing at the same time. Unfortunately, now I want to buy a bass amp, which will be hard to pull off without some sacrifices ... I should never have sold the Sunn.

Brother James did a fine job as Brian James, and I'm glad to report that I resisted his insistence on all of us dressing up in "punk" costumes. "You gotta get in the Halloween spirit," he said, "come on, that's what punk is all about!" I disagreed with calm ferocity even as he taunted me, but he just couldn't understand that what he interpreted as a fear of letting loose was simply my innate sense of dignity ... so James spray painted his hair an egg-yellow color, wore white lipstick and convinced drummer Vic to mascara on a pencil-thin moustache (which I have to admit looked awful cool). A pair of pink sunglasses was my only concession, so when the moment of truth onstage came, I got looser than anyone in the room and looked sharp doing it. Baby, these Seattle cats need to relax and get righteous ...