The Next Big Thing

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY GIRL TROUBLE!!

"Bon here.We’re not usually ones to brag about our negligible achievements but I just thought I’d share our anniversary with everybody. We’ve been thinking about it a lot so...Today, 23 years ago, and even on a Friday!, we played our first official show. Even though we’d practiced for several months before this (and even played a small house party to a couple people while everybody else went across the street to the Safeway to buy beer) we mark this day as the real beginning of Girl Trouble. It was a local community college Battle of the Bands. This wasn’t the scammy corporate, pay-to-play ticket selling contest. This was hosted by the ASB of Ft. Steilacoom Community College.

There were 6 bands, each band played 30 minutes, a whopping $3.50 to get in and every audience member got one ballot to mark their favorite band and put it in the ballot box. Nobody went on to other rounds, got a million dollar contract, played in Germany or the Warped Tour or was awarded any other pie-in-the-sky prize package. The winning band got 50 bucks and the chance to play a 45 minute victory set at the end of the “battle”. That was it. We luckily drew the fifth slot of the night. None of the other bands could figure us out. Those bands had barely heard of the Ramones, let alone The Cramps or the The Gun Club. Our guitar amp speaker was made out of plywood, Kahuna’s Ouija guitar was made in his high school shop class, Dale had an extremely cheap plywood Japanese “Fender” bass called a Vogue, and my little drumset was purchased for $70 at the Sears Surplus Store. We were quite a sight.

One band called 4-Play had more money invested in their bizarre leather chest harness vests than we did in all of our equipment. They brought all their nice new expensive amps in on custom-made plexiglas hand-carts. Mostly I remember being absolutely petrified (which of course, now is a big laugh!). I didn’t even know if I could get up on stage, let alone play! The wait was almost unbearable and all the bands seemed better than us (even though I now realize they were probably shakier than we were). We started off with the instrumental “Out of Limits” and Dale went completely out of tune. He got it back together and we didn’t let it phase us. All our friends showed up and that made all the difference in the world. Tim and Deb Olsen were there to help us. Tim didn’t know it would turn into a 23 year “career”, okay, volunteer job of producing records, taking band photos, printing Wig Out magazine and doing whatever else we didn’t know how to do. We wouldn’t have made it that first night without him, or probably for the next 23 years for that matter. Other Tacoma friends we could always count on were there, like Rose Alexander (RIP), Jim May (owner of Community World Theater - you know, where Nirvana first played), John Grant (our scary punk rock roadie), KP’s Dad Ray Kendall (a great GT supporter), several of his sisters, Dale’s twin sister Gale, and all the many 56th Street House alumni.

At practice the week before, KP came up with the idea that we should throw cans of root beer (!). This was a bold move that I was against, but he thought nobody would heckle us (aka beat us up) if they were enjoying a delicious beverage that we’d just thrown to them. It worked (although we never did throw cans of anything again) and started our tradition of bribing the crowd into liking us by giving them free prizes. We still do that today. Hey, it’s worked so far...The half hour we were required to play went so fast it was over before I realized it. We played all covers: some Cramps songs, “Tell Us the Truth” by Sham 69 and “White Girl” by X. The crowd was great, even the people that didn’t know us acted like they liked us! After the votes were counted we ended up coming in second. I was secretly relieved because I knew we didn’t have 45 minutes of additional material. We barely had the 30 minutes we’d just played! We didn’t win the battle but we still felt we were winners. Well, that’s what we were doing 23 yeas ago today. We’re still together, still doing shows, still friends, oh who am I kidding, we’re still family. Our great friend David Duet filled in for a year when KP went temporarily insane back in 85, but other than that it’s always been us four. I don’t think many bands can make that claim. We mostly want to thank each and every one of you, and you all know who you are, for years of support and continued fun. We really couldn’t have done it without all of you! We'll treat you to a root beer next time we see you..."

Your friends, Bon, Dale, KP and Kahuna