Audio By Carbonatix
In this week’s edition of This Week In Dallas Music History, former Observer writer Keven McAlester tells the tale of his adventures in following The Toadies to South Padre Island for a special spring break gig in 1999.
Actually, the piece spends just as much time following the band’s roadie, Ken, “the Crazy-Ass Merch Dude,” as it does keeping up with the band.
The story reads like a timeline outlining the events of the day leading up to gig, which took place at the 6,000-capacity venue Charlie’s Paradise Bar. It starts off during the band’s sound-check, in which lead singer Vaden Todd Lewis plays the riff for “Crazy Train.” Meanwhile, Ken “the Crazy-Ass Merch Dude” comes up with a hair-brained scheme to purchase loads of cheap beer and sell it at a marked-up price to “desperate partiers” at 2:15 a.m., when the bars shut down.
Later on, the band finds out that the opening act will be a bikini contest, and, incidentally, so will the closing act. The band doesn’t seem to care, though. Writes McAlester: “Their mission, according to guitarist Clark Vogeler: ‘Get in. Rock ’em. Take their money. Get out.'”
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And that’s exactly what they did — and, yes, even Ken “the Crazy-Ass Merch Dude” got in on the action. He made a whole four dollars in profit from his beer-selling scheme. Check out the entire story after the jump.
If that margin is too tight, check out the story in our Observer archives.
