Reminiscence on City Gardens pt 5: Keith Morris Mixes it up with some local Skins

There is no other voice in Punk Rock that compares to Keith Morris. The Circle Jerks played many memorable shows at City Gardens over a span of 14 years. Here Keith speaks on confronting some local Skinheads at a show in 1989. Another excerpt from the forthcoming oral history No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: How City Gardens Defined an Era by Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico

Keith Morris: This “wall of death” is about as stupid as it gets and we’ve seen a lot of really ridiculous things because we are dealing with a ridiculous art form to begin with. So, the Circle Jerks are playing at City Gardens; I forget who was playing with us. You know how the room is set up at City Gardens; the floor goes all the way back to the bar. And I don’t mean the bar that is all the way in the back in the next room, I mean the bar that sits almost in the middle of the club. It’s the one you see as soon as you walk in the main doors. What was happening was these Skinheads; there was a group of maybe 25 of them, they decided they were going to show everybody who was in charge. It wasn’t about the music and it wasn’t about everybody having a good time; it was about them letting people know how tough they were and all of the crap that goes along with their whole scene. So they line up at the back bar and lock arms. The Circle Jerks are performing and I’m watching what’s going on and all these kids are kind of aware of what’s going on around them; they’re not just these stupid statues. They notice that something serious, something heavy is getting ready to go down. Some kind of wild-assed crazy stuff is getting ready to take place. So all of a sudden I realize that I can see the floor in front of the stage. I remember the floor there was black and white checkerboard. It was like the parting of the Red Sea. I’m wondering what the hell is going on here; why is it that I can see the floor when, just a second ago there was a mass of people covering it?

I look to the back and I see that there’s 15 or 20 of these Skinheads and they’re all locked arm in arm. It looked like a bullfight was about to happen. You know; you have the bullfighter and the red cape, or whatever he’s using, and the bull is huffing and puffing and it’s getting ready to charge. And I’m looking down on this floor and I see that there might be, oh, maybe 30 people in front of the stage. I put one and one together and get two and realize that these guys mean some kind of harm; that they want to hurt some people. And that’s not what the Circle Jerks are about. That’s not on the Circle Jerks’ list of “things we'll let people do at our show today.” I see them slowly charge toward the stage and I jump off the front of the stage and I go running at them. And it’s me against 20 or 25 Skinheads. I said: “you’re not gonna’ do that here. If you wanna’ do that you can go out in the parking; all you guys can go out and play in the parking lot.” People were shaking their heads like “this guy’s gonna’ get killed. These guys are gonna’ stomp him to death right here.” Well, fortunately for me, the bouncers had been paying attention to all of this. They seemed like they were kind of wondering; “OK, when do we get involved? Do we need to get involved? Do we just let these morons do whatever they’re gonna’ do?” Obviously they’d seen it happen a few times because I guess it was a regular occurrence at a lot of these shows. I had never seen it. That was the one and only time I had ever seen it. I’ve seen a lot of knucklehead dances; there’s the one dance where they kick and they punch and it looks like a f**king spastic monkey or a gorilla with a f**king M-80 shoved up its ass or whatever. You would think the bouncers would want to put a stop to that. You don’t want anyone getting hurt in your venue.

Well, whatever happened or why it happened; here’s how it went down at City Gardens. I’m in a confrontation with these Skinheads and I’m obviously going to get pummeled. The security guys, all of them, within seconds, were standing along side me. So there wasn’t going to be a confrontation because the bouncers were pretty big guys. Even the biggest of the Skinhead guys knew that something was going to happen. Maybe this was the time when the bouncers had finally had enough; maybe they’d seen enough of the stupidity to say to themselves; “here’s this little guy getting in front of all of these scary Skinheads…” I wasn’t really thinking about the outcome; I was just not going to allow them to do their wall of death, at whatever expense. Maybe I was hoping when it first started to look like it was going to get ugly that I was going to be backed up by maybe some of the people who were just there to see the show. My ass was basically pulled out of the fire by the bouncers who had probably seen enough of this and came to the realization that it was their job to do something about this. So, I’m off the stage, I’m gonna get killed. I don’t think that I’m gonna’ get killed because I’m thinking; “maybe I’m standing up for everybody in the room. Maybe there’s going to be 100 people behind me backing me up.” I don’t know how the situation is going to go down. Well, what happens is the Skinheads get all huffy and puffy and realize that it’s a no-win situation for them; maybe they were smart enough to realize that. OK; I applaud them for at least having that much intelligence. We continue; I think this whole event took maybe ten minutes, we continue to play. We finish our set; we’re headlining so we’re the last band on. I remember they had to have the show over by ten o’clock or something; the band had to be off kind of early. And when we would get through playing we would hang out; the guys would want to drink a few beers, dry off, collect our thoughts, try to get laid… all of that fun stuff. In the process the owner of the club says: “you guys can’t leave right now.” I don’t even think we had loaded our van yet. This is how intelligent these guys are. The owner of the club says; “you guys aren’t going to be able to leave right now because there’s a parking lot full of Skinheads.” And I’m thinking; “well… there was a room full of Skinheads 20 minutes ago; what’s the big deal?” But the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was going to be 10 guys versus 50 guys? Is it going to turn into this big, ugly, brutal thing out in the parking lot? It’s not like I’m afraid or anything like that. It’s just the way the owner explained it… He said; “if you want you can take a look outside.” What I noticed when I looked outside; and the only way you could look outside was by opening the front door, was that there were four cars with five or six guys in each car driving around in circles in the parking lot. And I’m like; “OK, what are they trying to prove? What are they doing here, why don’t they just go home?” Well, they want to beat up and kill the lead singer of the Circle Jerks. I start thinking about it and I just cracked up! I’m not going anywhere. And, the chances are, because it was a Punk Rock show or whatever you want to call it, the police are going to be showing up pretty soon just to see that there’s nobody hanging out or drinking beers on the hoods of their cars or any of that fun, teenage stuff. You know; whatever people do after rock concerts. They're out there driving around in circles waiting for us to come out and the really ridiculous thing is that if they really wanted to f**k with us they could have slashed all the tires on the van, on the trailer; smashed out all the windows. That kind of stuff. But apparently they weren’t even smart enough to do that. When we left nothing happened. We got in the van and drove away. They were long gone. We just hung out with the staff and Randy; when went upstairs and played pinball. You get really good at pinball when you’re on tour…

More excerpts from No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: How City Gardens Defined an Era by Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico are posted here.

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