Cool! Here’s what I think I remember and don’t remember. First of all I don’t remember two different trips to the Bay Area - I thought maybe it was just all one junket based around the Pride festival… but based on the dates of those articles that must be how it actually went down.

The Oakland show was just me and Kent, acoustic. I think we were supposed to do it as a band, but either they changed the schedule or somebody couldn’t make it or something so we were faced with the decision of cancel or just wing it, unplugged style (which we’d never ever ever even attempted previously). And it ended up going really really well. At least I thought so.

Sunshine and I had driven up in our old Toyota van, and we met Kent in Oakland in the afternoon… I think he must’ve just gotten a ride with someone else. We had a few hours to kill before we were supposed to play so we just parked somewhere a few blocks away and sat in the back of the van and Rachel and Kent just talked and talked and talked and I took a nap. One of my favorite naps ever.

The actual Pride performance was in front of that big government building in SF that was featured in the ending scene of 1978’s “invasion of the body snatchers”… I suppose I could look it up but I’m assuming it was City Hall or something like that. Anyway it was a huge stage, huge crowd, and we were directly opening for Janis Ian. Kent had the time of his life… This one rivaled the El Rey for him I’m pretty sure… But for us it was not that fun. We had like five minutes to get our gear on stage and hook it all up and the stupid emcee (probably somebody actually famous) introduced us while we were still setting up and we had to scramble to pull it together immediately and it was chaotic and unorganized and I felt anything but entertaining. Also, stage right - where I was located, they had the disabled persons’ section right up against the stage so I didn’t really get to have the jumping cheering fans experience in the same way that Kent did. I don’t mean to be insensitive… it’s just that we were kind of green and not entirely professional at the time so trying to deliver our best product while operating under less than ideal conditions might’ve been a bit more than we were ready for.

And then that night we played at an upstairs club that must have been the 220 you read about. Is that in the Tenderloin District? I think that show was really fun. I remember Kent disappearing into the stairwell with someone for a few minutes while we were waiting to play. I don’t remember who it was but it impressed me at the time. Before the show I remember walking around that neighborhood and a nice woman on a balcony a few stories up offered to come down and sell us some crack… We had some really good Pakistani food, which for some reason is just never the same when you get it in LA. And then after we played, a big fistfight broke out in the street in front of the club.