The first weekend this past June, a big two-day party went down in Rutland Ohio (about 4 hours south of Cleveland). JFA and a bunch of other bands were playing, plus there was a bunch of skateboard-related things going on with pro skaters going down there and a bunch of ramps set up. I didn't think too much about the event when I first heard about it, the only thing that really interested me about the whole was that JFA was playing, which is pretty rare these days and they were real good when I saw them back in 1993 or 1994. The fact that the Confederacy of Scum Supershow 98 was the same weekend pretty much made me forget about the whole thing. JFA was also supposed to play a matinee show Sunday in Cleveland, which ended up being cancelled. I was at a show the Thursday before this show and after asking around, it became obvious to me that I was not going to make it to Charlotte for the Supershow. Someone ended up showing me a flyer for the JFA show, and I found out that the event was free. Well, finding someone to drive somewhere in Ohio is a lot easier than finding someone to drive to Charlotte, so I ended up heading down there to catch JFA Saturday night and drink some beers, etc.

After finding a ride, the next step was to get directions to the show and make sure that would still be enough going on down there to make the drive worth it. This didn't seem to hard, after all, they had a phone hot lineup as well a web site. First thing I did was check out their web site. It was very out of date, mentioning the show as if it was far in the future. But it also gave the phone # and said to call for directions. I was about to abort the whole idea of going down which I just got an answering machine with no info/directions on it whatsoever. I decided to try one more time and finally got a hold of someone who obviously had been drinking quite a bit over the weekend. But he managed to give me some directions from Cleveland and assured me that there would still be a lot going on down there and that we would still be able to catch JFA if we left soon. Unfortunately, I got disconnected during the call - called back, and once again got the answering machine. I didn't know how much of the directions I had missed, but it seemed like I had enough to make it down there successfully. So off we went.

The trip was quite a bit longer than I expected. It takes a little less than 2 hours to make it from Cleveland to Columbus, and I figured the distance to Rutland would be about the same. After being on the road for a couple hours and checking the map at a rest stop along the way, we realized that we were only about halfway there. At least I had a bottle of MD 20/20 to sip on during the drive. An hour or so later, we were starting to get kind of worried - we were completely in the middle of nowhere, my friend's cell phone was no longer working so we couldn't try calling the hotline anymore (we had earlier, with the phone being busy every time). It had been quite awhile since we had seen a payphone or a gas station and we weren't sure we were still heading in the right direction. Finally, we found a gas station. At what turned out to be the only stroke of good luck on this trip, a car full of punk rock types also pulled in the gas station. I figured they were either trying to find the show as well, or were leaving. Talked to him and they said they were leaving - which I automatically assumed to mean that the show was either over or winding down slowly. But they said it was still going on strong, JFA hadn't played yet and that people would be drinking outside til sunrise - the only they left was because they had a long drive back to West Virginia. This news, as well as getting directions and finding out we were only 20 minutes away raised my spirits considerably. I ran into the gas station, grabbed a six-pack and we were on our way once again.

At this point, I assumed we were homefree - I had beer, directions and the promise of an all night party with live bands to look forward to. Maybe this trip would be worth it after all! We got to the street that the event was on and we began to look carefully for a dirt road that would lead us to the parking lot. After 15 minutes of searching, we still hadn't managed to find anything...we turned around thinking we had missed it somehow. We looked close once again going the other way...still nothing. By this point, we had assumed that it must have been either one the things we had assumed to be a driveway or a regular road. So we decided to try a bunch of them in hopes of finding the show, nothing accomplished by this except wasting a lot of time. After nearly two hours - we called it quits - the bands had to be over by now and it didn't look like we were going to find it anyhow. We went back to the gas station that we were at earlier to use the payphone to find out exactly how we fucked up. The goddamn payphone was still busy, obviously off the hook. Nothing left to do now but begin the long drive back to Cleveland...

What is the point of telling you all of this? Nothing big really, besides getting to vent some of frustration about the whole ordeal. But I do ask you to keep a couple things in mind if you ever throw a big event that will draw people from out-of-town (the people who organized this show obviously expected people from Cleveland, there were flyers around and it was mentioned in a monthly Cleveland magazine). If you have a website - keep the damn thing updated! I know as well as anyone that this is not the easiest thing to do, and it is easy to slack off on it. But it is not difficult to at least get some directions up there. Next thing is - if you advertise a phone hotline - have one! I know that having someone answer a phone while there is an outdoor party going on is difficult if not impossible. BUT there was an answering machine - why not put some relevant info on there to help lost travelers instead of some stupid message asking "cute punk girls to leave a message"?? Finally, the most important thing to do requried very little effort....simply putting up some signs on the road to show where the parking lot was since this show was so isolated and difficult to find. I talked to people the next day back in Cleveland who had attended the show - and we were on the right road in the right area. Our only problem was that there was no way to see where things were going on from this street in the dark. The 5 minutes it would have taken them to put up a couple signs could have saved us ten hours of driving for absoultely no reason. JFA may be playing another party at the same location in September. After this experience, I am most likely going to say fuck it and just hope that a Cleveland show actually goes down this time around.

More Apt. 2324 E-zine #2

Intense Mutilation Interview
Mentors Interview
REO Speedealer Interview
A Look Back At The Plague
Record Reviews
Live Reviews
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