Kerry: The last year we played� What year was it, Artly?
Artly: It was right after Reagan was shot, 1981.
Kerry: The place was packed. We threw a couple of TVs in the creek for "Kill Your TV." A surfer girl came down and surfed on the creek.
Tom: We did a song called "Young Republicans."
Artly: To David Bowie's "Young Americans."
Tom: One of the guys comes out in Ronnie's head.
Artly: A rubber mask.
Tom: But Artly had somehow gotten down to the creek from a block away and comes slithering up. He whips out a starter's pistol and starts shooting Ronnie.
Artly: It was right after the assassination attempt.
Kerry: After the show the president of the Symphony came backstage and said I want to speak to you, come up to my office. I thought, oh boy, he's going to congratulate us. Everyone was so happy. We get up there and he goes, DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN. You'll never play here again! I'm like, don't do what? Don't throw the TVs in? The big dildos? I said, what did we do? He said, You shot the president! I started cracking up. (The booking agent) got a call that night. Mike! There's a problem. The Savages have shot the president!
Why you walk in circles on 6th Street every Halloween.
Artly: Jim Franklin did a pumpkin stomp every year since he first invented art. So we're playing the Ritz Theater on Halloween of 1982.
Kerry: He'd say Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, get on a ladder, throw a pumpkin down and everybody would stomp on it. This time we got on the marquee of the Ritz. Here's Franklin in his garb. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater and he'd throw that pumpkin in the street, and everybody would cheer. After a while, people said, let's throw these pumpkins back at all of these people, 20 or 30, who shouldn't be on the marquee anyway.
Artly: They started throwing whiskey bottles and broke all of the neon on the Ritz sign. We had to flee for our lives. We happened to have a US Army smoke grenade. Why mention names.
Kerry: No names.
Artly: It's been seven years (the statute of limitations) and he's not in the band anymore. We were very fire conscious and set out an upside-down washtub and on top of that the smoke grenade was put. Smoke is heavier that air so it was like a curtain that poured off the marquee like water. They did stop throwing things at us, but the smoke went into the Ritz Theater as well. Somebody called fire in the theater.
Kerry: Don't ever do that, I've heard.
Artly: They called the fire station, which was one block away. They could not get there because of the mob of people. The next year they realized they had to do something in case of emergencies, so the barricades went up. That's why everybody walks in circles on Halloween.
Kerry: Or at least that's our version of it. We'll take responsibility.
Changes.
Artly: About 100 people have come through the band.
David: We all have artificial knees.
Kent: Not to mention prostates the size of grapefruits.
Kerry: Most of us don't live together now. We all have our own homes.
Future Savages.
Kent: My two sons are now sitting in with the band, so it's truly a generational thing. The sax player (son) got his girlfriend from sitting in with us.
Kerry: They understand the concept.
Kent: Be in the band, meet girls, be with the girls.
Kerry: How old is she? Is she one of our 45-year-old stragglers? You're cute, sonny. Come here. Can I buy you a little whiskey?
A few days after that final gig at Steamboat, a gimme-capped college student who is younger in years than the Uranium Savages are as a band, spotted Kerry Awn out and about in Austin. His eyes widened as he recognized the wild man from the stage. "We were just cracking up," this newest fan said. "Y'all are much dirtier than the Scabs!"
END