Mark Ryan's First Show

What was the first show you remember seeing?

I don't know which came first exactly, but I did see The Ventures when I was 12. They played at UNT. I think that was one of my first real shows, so that was a pretty awesome way to have a first show. It was the real Ventures, original lineup, everything. Later on, I saw some Denton metal bands. I did see Brave Combo when I was 13. I don't remember which one of those shows came first, but the one that made the most impression on me was The Ventures.

What was the first show you remember paying your own money to see?

I don't know because I lived in Denton when I was really young and then I moved out to Louisiana and I lived in a real small town throughout most of high school. So, even though I had been playing music since I was 11 or 12, I didn't really have the option to go see bands or anything I would like. When I moved back to Denton, I saw Baboon when I was in high school, so that was probably my first punk show.

So far, what's the worst show you've seen?

I don't know. I've seen so many bad bands and I've toured so much. I tend to just block those things out. Glenn Danzig at Fun Fun Fun Fest [last year] was one of the worst shows I've seen in a long time. He's an idiot on another level [laughs]. He almost caused a riot because he went on late and the festival could have lost their permit. So they shut the power down on the band and he was yelling at the crowd, telling them they were going to start a riot and keep playing. The worst part was that they were completely awful.

What do you remember about the first show you ever played?

I had started playing shows when I was 14 and I played in a high school jazz band and a country band in Louisiana. I remember being nervous, but I was just playing guitar. There was hardly anybody there so it didn't matter.

What do you remember about the first Mind Spiders show?

We played at Chaos in Tejas in a record store. It was a good show. We didn't really have many songs to play live. We only had six or seven songs. Somebody filmed it, which is a bad idea, so it didn't sound that great. A lot of people were curious about what The Marked Men were doing now. [Marked Men's] Jeff Burke's band The Notvist also played and they were great.