The "Thanks, Toss" Tour, April-May, 1996

Named for our beloved drummer's last-minute inability to make the trip, the very first BFD tour of any kind was also the most fun for your humble narrator. Frank Briggs performed heroic duties as Toss' emergency replacement for the tour, and more text-related info on this topic is available over at The Life of Bryan, Acts 11 and 12. I dug deep to find these shots of innocent days gone by.

On bass, we have Thing from The Addams Family. Oh, lordy, was my hair long back in those days. Credit Michael Harrison for this amazing, hi-res shot.

 

In the backyard of Casa Beller in Westfield, NJ, I stand proudly next to our vehicle for the tour--a cargo van from Rent-A-Wreck stuffed with lawn chairs for extra comfort. For some reason I felt it necessary to carry a hairbrush in my left hand at all times during this tour.

 

Onstage at Red Square North in Nashua, NH, the second--and worst--gig of the tour. We were one of five bands that evening.

 

Feeling better the next night in Burlington, VT, at the now-defunct Club Metronome (R.I.P.). I'd been wearing jeans with large holes in them my whole life, and in the mid-90s the fashion world finally caught up with me as grunge ruled the earth. Unfortunately, when grunge went out, so did the jeans, victim to fickle fashion fallout. I'd do just about anything to be this thin again, except starve myself for weeks on end.which is what it would take at this point.

 

This was taken just seconds after the shot that ended up in the Half Alive In Hollywood CD. There were a lot of these moments both on and offstage during this tour, a trip that nonsensically took us back and forth to each coast of the States twice, at a time when the stakes were lower and the adventure factor was through the roof.