#mark arm

MARK ARM: [...] We played Detroit a couple of days before Halloween — it was the big Halloween punk rock show starring Samhain, which was Glenn Danzig’s band right after the Misfits. I remember driving into Detroit, and we’re like, “This is going to fucking rule — home of the Stooges, the MC5!” We popped a Stooges tape in, and we’re ready for a real cool time. As we drove into Detroit, we realized that there’s really no place for us to pull over. It was a bombed out, burned out, shell of a town, with these shadowy figures huddled in corners. We ended up finding a hotel that looked safe enough to us milk toasty Seattle kids. We went to breakfast the next morning and the waitress asked us in a thick Michigan accent, “Are you guys gay? You guys talk gay” [laughs]. This was an indication of how the show was going to go for us that night. Jeff had poofed up his hair, and was wearing this pink tank top that said San Francisco in cursive, purple lettering. And all these people in their black leather were fucking livid. I thought we were rocking hard — rolling around on the ground and playing the shit out of our songs — but people just couldn’t get past the way we looked; Jeff in particular. There was this one girl who kept spitting, yelling “Faggot, faggot!”