When we got there and checked it out, we knew they were gonna hate us. The band before us all had matching outfits, peach colored shirts and vests, cute little matching Peavy amps and maybe a horn or two. This was summer or fall of '76. David Robinson was the drummer at the time and Mike Lewis on bass. There was deafening silence as we set up and the tension was thick.

    If you've seen pix of early DMZ then you can imagine how people in Peabody in '76, with all these guys lookin' like Pete Rose with moustaches and bowl haircuts, were reacting to us lookin' all weird. We played the first number. The club manager is on us like a hawk. He pulls Jeff aside. Jeff comes over and says "He wants us to turn it way down." Peter Greenberg looked at me and rolled his eyes, he had this stack of 2 Ampeg cabs with 4 10's in each and had no conception of 'down'.

    Half way through the second song the guy's on stage with us, stoppin' us. Says if we "don't turn the fuck down, you're outta here!!" and walks away. Jeff turns to us and yells out "Search and Destroy" our standard set closer... he looks at me and Peter and says quietly, "Crank it and don't stop". I was never more proud of the boy. The guy was waving his arms at us frantically to stop....we didn't even notice...he called the cops...by the time we finished the song, 4 cops were there and were on stage sayin' we had 10 minutes to start our cars. We started packin' and the manager was rantin' and screamin', so to make him really happy, we asked him about our pay.

    Robinson was all flustered 'cause the cops followed us right on our bumper to the Peabody town line.