The Quakes-1986-87 (Documentary)

The long story....

We had arrived in London a few weeks prior to this festival. We were looking for shows ...any shows we could get on. We went to the Klubfoot and passed out demo cassettes and contacted as many people as we could. Our chance came when one band cancelled at the last minute for a festival in Belgium and we got the spot through Roy at Nervous records.
They (Roy and some of the bands)would all be traveling by van and ferry to Belgium. We dropped off our instruments (guitar and double bass) at Nervous. They would be taking our equipment for us. There was no room in their van for us and we were worried about traveling with our instruments because we had no work permits.
We were going to travel on Friday October 16 by train and ferry to Belgium. There was one problem....The Great Storm of 1987(google it). The storm hit in the very early morning of Friday Oct 16. The power was out . All trains and ferries were cancelled. Our big break to play a show in Europe seemed lost. The storm had passed but there were trees down on the railway lines and ferries were still not running.
Our only chance to get there was to fly.We had only a few hundred dollars between the three of us. They were not refunding our money for the ferry tickets for some reason. We gambled and spent ALL of our remaining money on three tickets to Brussels. We did not even have enough money for subway(tube)tickets to Heathrow. In those days, you could get away with jumping the turnstiles or running past the guard if you didn’t have a ticket.That is what we did when we arrived at Heathrow, we jumped the turnstile and ran!

On the plane,I said to the guys, “you better eat all of those peanuts and anything else that is free because I don’t know when we will be eating next”. We had no money to get from the airport to the festival which was 45km away. Our plan was to take a taxi and upon arrival, I would try and find the promoter and get some money in advance to pay for it.
There were no cell phones in those days.When we arrived, it was Saturday afternoon already and they thought we were not coming. They said if you want to play, you have to go on shortly. We got our instruments and tried to tune them up and get ready. At that time we were probably more concerned with our hair than weather or not we were in tune...after all there wasn’t much we could do about our lack of musical ability, but I could make my quiff as big as it could go and that must count for something :-)
We were really excited to play to such a large audience of people that understood what we were about.Watching the show now, its easy to hear that we were out of tune and not the best musically but we put on a good show.
We had no hotel to stay in ( they thought we weren't coming and sold our room) and ended up sleeping on the floor in the hallway of a hotel that some of the bands were in.The next day we had to get back to Brussels. We started walking hoping we would get a ride from some psychobillies headed that way.We finally did get someone to give us a ride to Brussels.

Upon our arrival at Heathrow, the customs people started asking all kinds of questions.
We had been given a six month stamp on our passports just a few weeks earlier so we thought that there would be no trouble getting back in. They separated us and questioned us for a few hours before finally denying us entry into the country. They put us right on a plane bound for New York. Our instruments had to be shipped back to us later as they were in the van back to Nervous records.
Getting in and out of England became a real problem for us over the next few years.

Here are the songs we played at the festival.

Pack our bags and go
You’re dead
Psychobilly Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
1000 Cats
Show me
9 Lives
You are the scene
Psycho attack
Where did it go
Psychobilly Cat
Hots for you baby

covers
Brand new Cadillac (Vince Taylor)
C’mon Everybody (Eddie Cochran)
Fishnet Stockings (Stray Cats/Lew Williams)
Daddy Blues (Sonny Burgess)
Worried bout you baby (Dale Hawkins)
October 17 1987.
Paul Roman-guitar/vocals
Rob Peltier-slap bass
Dave Hoy- drums

Видео The Quakes-1986-87 (Documentary) канала leedspond