Oct 31 2001 @ Stone Pony Asbury Park, NJ

At 10:00pm, the Stony Pony experienced a hellified show on this Halloween, by the legendary Blowfly!! To me, Blowfly's particularly crude & graphic raps seemed to explain why he was on the same bill with Dirty Walt's Columbus Sanatation! (Don't believe me? Listen to Dirty Walt's CD "To Put it Bluntly"!) The Fishbone band members (minus Angelo Moore, who was the DJ for that night) backed up Blowfly...

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aka Fuck Marlboro, fuck 'em! That's just how I feel, man.

Hey all. Just got back after the Halloween show last night in Asbury Park, NJ. First the good news. It was absolutely a fabulous show. I think while the band is still deeply affected by what happened this past weekend, there also seems to be an overriding sense of relief among all of them that they decided to keep going with the tour. The new tunes just keep getting better all the time. Angelo was just a dancing machine. Plus I got to see him in his Black Elvis costume.

Now the weird part of the story. I arrived at the club around 6:30-7pm with my friend, Dan, to film the show for the documentary. By 7:15 we're all set up with our 2 cameras and a board feed. So I'm walking around inside and outside the club getting b-roll footage when all of the sudden I'm approached by 2 people who say that since Marboro is sponsoring the show, they won't allow any photography or filming of any kind to go on. I tell them I'm filming the show for the band, that I've been working with them for a few months nowand that I promise not to shoot any Marlboro logos. Nada. "Marlboro has a contract with the club that supercedes whatever agreement the club made with the band or you." From what I heard, they weren't even allowing the webcast to go on. So I go to Eric, Fishbone's tour manager and tell him the story. He then has a huge pow wow with the Marlboro people and the club owner. I give Eric a huge amount of credit. At one point he even said, "Either Marlboro goes or we go." Unfortunately, they don't bite. They say, "Fine, go." Well, the last thing I want to see is the band not get paid. So I start to pack up my stuff.

End of story, right? Not quite. Something told me to keep my wireless transmitter connected to the board so, if nothing else, I'd at least be able to record the audio portion of the show. Then inspiration struck me. I sent Dan into the club with a camera inside a rather anonymous looking bag. The band goes on and starts with "Party at Ground Zero." Dan starts filming from a discreet location. We would have been happy with just that one song, but nobody had caught on yet. So Dan moves up to get a better angle. The look of recognition on Angelo's face when he saw the camera was absolutely priceless. A whole hour goes by and nobody from Marlboro or the club has a clue that we're filming. It's only a couple minutes after Dan has put in a new tape that we're finally caught. Security escorts Dan toward the door and tells him they need to confiscate the tape. It was a struggle, but Dan was able to put together a look of disappointment as he handed over the nearly blank tape from the camera. The shot tape was safely ensconced in Dan's girlfriend's pocket.

So there you have it. What could have been a disastrous evening turned out to be worth all the effort. I'm exhausted. Anybody else have some interesting Halloween experiences from last night?

-Adam

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