T'was Never Thus

The Radiators (Rads) from New Orleans have been my favorite band since the first time I saw them in 1984 in Minneapolis, MN.  Oh sure over the years they came up against the Grateful Dead a few times and each time I chose seeing the Dead over the Rads just because, well...they were the Grateful Dead.  The magic those guys could weave on any given night was incredible and powerful, but not promised every night so you had to see as many shows as you could to make sure you did not miss one of the great nights.  I managed to see them exactly 100 times and most but not all were great shows.

With the Radiators however, you were practically guaranteed a great show every single night they went onstage.  The epic 3-set concerts they put on in the 1980's were a test of your endurance...just how much fun can one person handle, night after night?  That was up to you.  For me the Radiators were not only the backdrop to hundreds and hundreds of great nights, including my wedding to Nadia, but they were also a conduit to a huge network of life-long friends from all over the country.  I could post blog entries about nothing other than my weekends with the Radiators and never run out of material, but I will control myself.  The story below just popped into my head because it happened exactly 15 years ago to the day.

The Krewe of DAD's had arranged a pretty good 3-day weekend for the Radiators and their devoted fans that summer in Minnesota from 6/27-6/29/97.  The ‘DADs’ are a Krewe of extremely cool Minnesota folks who have been staging concert-parties here since 1982.  Most notably the annual Halloween costume balls that always prove to be an out-of-hand great time with The Radiators acting as the house band for those parties every year.  That is until sadly the Rads folded up the tent and shut down the band one year ago in June of 2011 after 33 1/3 years together.  The Krewe lives on without the Radiators and the Halloween bashes continue, but of course it is not quite the same without the Radiators.

The Friday night concert 15 years ago was a 90-minute drive south of us at the beautiful and friendly Harmony Park in Geneva, MN with a large outdoor stage in the woods and a lake right behind it.  Saturday night was scheduled for John Mackie's farm which was a 45-minute drive west of us in Waverly, MN...a large private gathering with ‘Twas Ever Thus’ as the party-theme.  This was the site of the famous ‘Between Two Fires’ bash three years earlier, with the outdoor stage set down at the bottom of a hill and a small river running behind it.  Then the mini-Minnesota tour continued on Sunday night in Apple Valley, MN with the Rads playing at the scenic Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater, another outdoor stage with a lake behind as a backdrop.

The Friday night gig on 6/27/97 was a great gathering of friends from all over the country, including one of my all-time best friends Special Kaye who drove up from Milwaukee, WI.  We all set up camp in the woods surrounding the stage at Harmony Park, with the party promising to go on all night after the concert.  Dave Ray and Tony Glover opened the show, and both their set and the Rad's long set were awesome.  The Radiator's encore of 'Out In The Woods' was appropriate and everybody left the stage area and drifted back to their campsites inebriated from the music.  The woods were dotted with campfires, and our group of close friends headed to the area that we dubbed 'Bookerville' with Ted Booker as the Mayor.  Ted and his wife Polly had rented a camper so we circled our tents around it.  It was a cool scene and the Radiator guitarists Dave Malone and Camile Baudoin even stuck around for a bit, hanging out in Ted's camper after the show. 

The next morning we wearily packed up our tents and drove back to Minneapolis to shower and get ready for the day's activities out in Waverly, another camping show at Mackie's farm.  This was the crown jewel of the weekend and expectations were especially high for those of us who were there for that crazy good time in 1994.  That first show there was on 7/16/94 and was one of the great nights of my life...it could be a whole 'nother story if I set my mind to it.  But basically the theme of the party that night was taken from a Radiators song “Between Two Fires” and there was literally 2 big bonfires on either side of the stage.  As the first set ended with the crowd pleasing “Wild And Free”, I watched Dave Malone jump off the stage, hop up on the hood of one of the band's rented Lincoln Town Cars and light up a cig.  I looked over at him with a huge smile and he smiled back screaming "Yeah baby!" at the top of his lungs while pumping his fists in joy from within his rising cloud of smoke.  This perfectly captured the mood of the entire scene, and the acid Mitch Manson and I had taken during the first set was happily starting to kick in.  The second set was buggy but great, and the night ended with the sun coming up on Mitch and I while we kicked the soccer ball over, through, and around all the tents set up in the field.

It was an all-around perfect night...however 3 years later on 6/28/97 the weather report was not good as rain was forecast with possibly severe weather.  I drove Mugsy Millen (this was a couple of weeks before we officially started going out for three long years) and a few other folks out from the city that afternoon and headed to Waverly.  We got about 10 miles away when the sky turned an ugly, creepy, dark greenish-gray.  The air was thick and eerily quiet, but then suddenly the wind, rain and hail hit.  We pulled into a gas station and waited it out for about 20 minutes until the craziness had mostly passed.

We got back on the road and continued towards Waverly, eventually reaching the small country dirt road leading to the farm.  I was driving slow and cautiously, weaving left and right to avoid downed trees and branches and about a mile or so from the farm.  Suddenly I hear a bellowing sound and look up to see a lone cow galloping up the road towards us at top speed, eyes wide with terror and drooling ferociously.  The cow and I stared at each other as she passed our car, and it was just all too weird watching in the rearview mirror as the cow continued her mad dash down the road while we ominously crept onwards to the farm.

We got to the entrance of the place and it was suddenly sunny now, but it looked like hell with trees and damage everywhere.  A tornado had run through the farm, collapsing the stage and filling Ed Volker's piano with gallons and gallons of water.  The show was cancelled, and the theme of the party was instantly changed in everybody's mind to ‘Twas Never Thus’.  We were not going to be denied our good times however, so we headed back to Minneapolis, called up a bunch of friends including Dave, Camile, the Rad’s drummer Frank Bua and their bass player Reggie Scanlan, and had everybody come over to Mitch's house for a consolation tornado party.  We had a birthday cake there as well for Mugsy and Camile who share the same birthday.  It sucked missing the show but we whooped it up all night and had a blast.

The next day was exactly 15 years ago on 6/29/97.  We headed out to the Minnesota Zoo for night-three with our boys and of course it was a great show.  They dried out Ed's keyboard, and he peppered the set list with numerous innuendos and songs pertaining to the tornado including “Hold Back The Flood”.  Two out of three shows ain't bad, and it was a weird but fun weekend.  15 years ago...so much has changed since then and yet it seems just like yesterday.  I really miss the Radiators.  They were like a friendly but hardcore tornado that would spin their way into your town and raise hell for a little while and then move on...but always with a promise to return.  New Orleans and Minneapolis formed the two ends of tornado-alley but San Francisco and New York City took a lot of direct hits as well, along with countless cities in between.

The tornado finally spun itself out after 33 years.  I saw their final shows 12 months ago in New Orleans, and it has been a long strange year without them.  For a third of a century these same 5 incredibly talented, extremely cool, and sincerely nice guys were playing their hearts out and leaving it all on the stage of a funky venue near you.  Thinking back, in all those years since 1984 I have never gone more than a few months at most without seeing them.  Now it is over and I feel like they have broken up with me with the old "It's not you, it's me." line.  The end of the Grateful Dead was sudden and tragic, but final.  With the Radiators however they are all still alive...and not making music together.  I know the road always wins, and their reasons are understandable, but it still doesn't make sense on a larger level and I will always hope that Dave, Camile, Reggie, Ed and Frankie will get back together some day and raise a little more hell.