I was running a computer Bulletin Board Service (BBS) called A Passage to Bangkok in 1994 when I first met Julio. He was an online member of my BBS and an active member in the message areas, especially on movies and rock music forums. I quickly could tell by his writing he wasn’t another dopey high school kid.
About a week after Julio first logged on, we got into chat mode and discussed music. Earlier that week I discovered Ronnie James Dio was playing up in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis to be specific) at the Mirage TNT club. I didn’t have anyone to go up with, so Julio suggested we go.
We had a hell of a time trying to find the venue of the concert since we didn’t know the Twin Cities well, but when we got to the club we saw the former Rainbow and Black Sabbath singer belt out songs like he was in an arena, rather than a venue that held 400 people. Julio and I saw Dio later at the Target Center in 2007 when he was on his second reunion wit Black Sabbath, where he got pissed at people throwing garbage at him on stage. Dio was only singing his songs from Sabbath at that concert. I digress.
Julio and I became fast friends and hung out in Rochester frequently. His family was very accommodating having me over frequently. I never stayed long because the place was beyond messy. I'd stop by for any special occasions, like when Julio ordered Woodstock II (Woodstock ’94) on pay-per-view for us to rock out to.
Back to the messy house, there was so much stuff laying around on the floor, especially in the basement. You couldn’t tell where the carpet ended and linoleum started. One time when Julio and I were watching Headbanger’s Ball or something on MTV his little brother and sister came down and had to push crap into piles just so they’d have room to sit on the floor. It was pretty crazy, because they acted like it was just normal to push open trash zones so they could sit and watch TV.
Another time Julio and I were hanging out when his Uncle George came over, as drunk as a Kennedy at an open bar. He had been out drinking wine that night and was unintelligible, but it sounded like he spent the night trying to pick up lesbians at the bar. That worked out for him about as well as a men's restroom at a Lilith Fair concert. It didn’t end well for him and a cop drove him back to Julio's parents place. For some reason he started trying to pick a fight with me? I had no idea why, but he was really getting under my skin. Julio said I had shown more restraint than he has ever seen from me. Julio’s mother loves me – I think partly because I didn’t kick her brother’s ass that night.
One day I discovered Julio had never seen Cheap Trick in concert. That's a high order crime for anybody that thinks he's into rock music. They weren’t as hardcore as most of the stuff Julio listened to, but I explained to him as I still do,
“Have I ever steered you wrong?”
Cheap Trick had a hard edged, yet melodic sound combining tunefulness of The Beatles with the agression of punk.
Julio had a voracious appetite for Lite Ice, and sometimes it created a situation where we couldn’t get home easily and neither of us would drive drunk. One fun instance was when he was in a Lindsay Lohan type of drunken stupor. Another friend drove him home only to tell us later, he had a full conversation with his backpack in the backseat of his car. He was totally convinced it was a buddy of his from school in Minneapolis.
The birth of a road trip to Milwaukee, WI for Summerfest ‘95 was born right there! We made sure we were on the same page with degrees of sobriety, so we could share driving duties on the long haul. We made some weak plans and left a day early. We made it to La Crosse, about an hour and a half from Rochester. La Crosse is a lot like AT&T cellular service, more bars in more places! We secured a place to stay for the night with Julio’s sister. He generally referred to her as Seacow. They had never gotten along as children and the nickname stuck.
These days she isn’t as large thanks to the medical miracles and taxpayer funded insurance. Gastric bypass was the cure for the image, but she’s still less than pleasant to be around. She is going to marry one of those really angry liberals – the ones who get in your face and want death to everyone that doesn't totally agree with every position they have. He likes to tell you how you wronged all those down and out groups, how you were personally responsible for their lot in life. He’s a real fun guy at parties! Stupidity cannot be concealed.
Julio’s sister was attending college at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse and was renting an old house with some other girls. She was mean spirited right from the start. Julio and I went downtown to the Red Lantern tavern. We circled around to as many bars as possible, and back to the Red Lantern for last call. The normal bartender, Bernie, who played the liquor bottles was getting up there in years, so we missed the traditional show. We did have our fill of beer and and te bar were closing, so we decided to head out. We finished the night by walking to Mr D’s for some cheap day-old doughnuts and then to Seacow’s place. We didn’t want to piss Seacow off any more than we had to, so we just slept on the front lawn.
The next morning we slowly started to make our way to Milwaukee. I grew up in Wisconsin, but I had never been to Milwaukee. We found the Summerfest grounds easily and started milling about. Summerfest is a great time with each bandstand sponsored by a different brand of beer. With so many bands and so many stages, there was a concert by somebody going on somewhere at all times. Also, the beer flowed easily.
We saw a few no-name bands play early, then we saw The James Young Band. James Young was a member of Styx, and they put a great show on. Cheap Trick played next. They performed a full set, and Rick Neilson must have thrown more than a thousand guitar picks, more pics than Barry Bonds does steroids. We had pretty good seats off to the left of the stage and the slight summer chill off the lake put the icing on the cake. It was a perfect evening.
We found the car and started to head back. As we started for Rochester we heard on the radio there was a shooting, right where we had been standing.
This was one of the few road trips Julio and I went on where we took his car. His car was one of those really efficient 1988 Honda CRX 2-seater coffin on wheels. He had that same car when he got married, when a week later some gangsta wannabe eating ribs while driving in his uninsured SUV T-boned Julio and almost killed him (coffin on wheels, remember). Gansta boy was pissed and sued Julio’s insurance. They paid him $8K just to shut him up and go away.
It was a straight shot back to Rochester so we decided to just hit the gas and cruise back home, about a 6 hour drive.
I don’t remember much about the first leg of the trip back – I was tired and tried to get a nap in so I could drive the second leg. We’d been up since sunrise (remember we slept on Seacow’s front lawn), and it was now a little past 2:00am. Julio was doing seventy when he sees a deer in the road. He tapped the breaks and ended up doing a 360 on the Interstate missing the deer by mere inches. Julio said the deer actually smiled at him. A Honda CRX meeting 400 pound deer would not have ended well for us or the deer.
After sitting in the car which we stopped on the highway, we counted our blessings for not hitting the deer and staying on the road we got going again. I took the wheel just outside Sparta, WI for the rest of the ride.
When we got back to Julio’s place it was almost 7:00am and we were both dead tired. We crashed on the couch to watch TV for a few minute, only to see a couple people had been killed on the same highway we drove home on. They had hit a deer, and it went through the windshield. I wonder if it was the same deer that smiled at Julio? At this point we thought we had a pretty good adventure, including beer, deer, and rock!
Jason’s mother came downstairs, so we figured we’d tell her our story of survival of a gang shooting in Milwaukee and the smiling deer, and she’d make us some food. We told her about the whole road trip in cluding the stories about the shooting, the deer, and how we didn't wake Seacow when we came home late.
She wasn’t interested. All she wanted to do was to read us the riot act. Seacow had called to complain about Julio and I sleeping on her front lawn. By the time Seacow finished she’d made it seem like we were zebra molesters about to go on a puppy strangling spree!
Seacow never made MY Christmas list!
Never skip an opportunity to see Cheap Trick.