Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [136]
As we got closer I could see that this was not the most beautiful of crowds: greasy hair, gaunt faces, tattered clothes streaked with dirt. “Well, they might not be pretty,” I thought, “but we’re gonna rock them all the same.” Besides, they sure as hell couldn’t be any worse than the crowd at the Murder Junkies show.
“Gonna have a good crowd tonight, boys!” I yelled jubilantly.
The van pulled up and I hopped out, waiting for the squeals of delight from my adoring fans. But there were none, and after a few seconds I noticed that the slovenly fans weren’t in the line for the Fozzy gig. They were in the line for the soup kitchen next door.
Delson got out of the van and commented drolly, “It certainly is a good crowd … for the clam chowder.”
We ventured inside and were assaulted by the stench of stale smoke and sour beer. The carpet was tattered and torn, with the stage being a small platform standing only inches off the ground. We were led up a flight of creaky stairs into a pitch-black hallway with a putrid, filthy dressing room at the end of it. The whole place reminded me of The Amityville Horror, and it creeped me out.
The walls had been graffitied with pictures of peepees and wee-wees, with such pearls of wisdom as “I’ll fuck you for a fiver” and “Rub poop all over my pussy” written underneath.
It was disgusting and I didn’t even want to put my bag on the floor, never mind change. There were a couple trays of congealed cold cuts and overripe fruit that I wouldn’t have touched for all the kids in Octomom’s womb.
Standing in the dressing room was giving me the heebie-jeebies (yeah, I said it), so I went into the blackened hall to make my way back downstairs. I was shuffling through the dark blinded, grabbing the wall for guidance, when suddenly a section of it stepped out in front of me. I squealed like Justin Bieber touching his first titty, as the piece of the wall morphed into a human being who’d just lurched out of a room. It turned out that the upstairs not only housed the outhouse of a dressing room, but was a hostel for the patrons of the soup kitchen as well.
Suddenly another vagabond ambled out of their room, then another, and soon I was in Anthrax’s video for “Madhouse.” I shook free like Marion Ravenwood from the skeletons in the snake chamber and ran downstairs to the safety of the stage.
We’ve always taken great pride in our live performances, but that night the fine fifteen people of London who showed up to eat soup, play pool, and see Fozzy (in that order) were treated to an eight-song, thirty-five-minute set.
Talk about speed metal.
A few months after the carnage of the Canadian tour, we were invited to headline the Delicious Rox Festival in Kansas City, along with Fear Factory and Drowning Pool. After the less than stellar turnouts of the last few months we needed a morale boost, and D-Rox was just the cure (along with more cowbell), as we were told that the previous year’s festival had attracted over 10,000 people.
We flew into KC and started driving to the arena—or so I thought.
After a two-and-a-half-hour haul we pulled into a farmer’s field with a makeshift stage assembled on it. It was only a few hours before showtime, and just like the Ottawa in-store there were more security guards than fans gathered around the front of the stage. As Delson would say, it was bleak.
Despite the lack of crowd the show went on as scheduled, and I was sitting in our trailer when there was a knock on the door. It was our soundman telling me that one of our fans had been hit on the head with a bottle thrown by a member of a band called American Head Charge (we’ll call him Dinkus). I went and greeted the poor girl, waited for the ambulance and took some pictures, then gave her some Fozzy merch. When I asked if any of the American Head Charge guys had come to apologize to her, she told me no and that infuriated me.
I marched straight to their trailer and barged in the door asking, “Are you guys going to apologize to that girl