The pledge I had once made to God to not fight was at that moment feeling like a spiritual hair shirt chafing me raw; I just wanted to take it off. I was the frontman for Pain, after all—impulsive wackiness was supposed to be my stock-in-trade. For instance, at a show once in—was it Charlotte? Richmond? I don’t recall—I threw myself off the stage near the end of a song, accidentally opening a gash in my head, and then leaped back on stage and performed the rest of the song with a triumphant smile and blood rushing down my face. Impulsive wackiness. Surely it was time for more of that now that Train’s road crew had sabotaged our show? What kind of frontman makes a no-fighting pledge, anyway?! One of our songs was called “Fight,” for freak’s sake!

I had made the pledge secretly back in 1993, six years prior to the City Stages gig. Incidentally, it was the result of a fight, and it involved a little bar in Tuscaloosa.

The bar owner’s name was Woody. I don’t remember the name of his bar, though it may simply have been…wait for it…“Woody’s.” It was on the Strip, across from the University of Alabama, and it was where Pose (bass player and co-founder of Pain) and I planned to have Pain’s first gig. Contrary to our intentions, it ended up being the location where I gave a grown man a beatdown.

It should be clearly understood that Pain was not an angry band. That’s really saying something—it was 1993, after all. Angry was in. Thanks to Nirvana, grunge and all of the chic bitterness that went along with it had gone from subculture to zeitgeist like an arabian simoom. Go to any bar, club, coffee house or bowling alley where people under 25 were allowed to loiter and you would see anger, self-destruction, sullen apathy and existential dissipation.

This was decidedly not what Pose and I wanted to be a part of when we set out to start a band. The name, “Pain,” was an ironic joke, an oblique reference to the silly cartoon violence endured by the Three Stooges, by Daffy Duck, by Simpsons characters. Our songs were frenetic but always melodic, with lyrics that were self-deprecating and jam-packed with geeky literary references.

We firmly believed that Pain would be a refreshing change to a world that was neck-deep in the angst of grunge, so once we had the right people and had adequately rehearsed we scheduled Pain’s inaugural show at Woody’s bar. People in T-town were officially buzzing about this strange, new musical project and attendance at our first show was shaping up to be strong. I felt like Captain Kirk about to take the Enterprise out on her maiden voyage.

Then, two days before the show, Woody cancelled it.

Pose and I decided to stop in and discuss his decision with him.

Woody’s bar was nothing special: cheap dark carpeting across the walls and grimy pool tables. Sunlight the color of old malt liquor stabbed through a half shuttered window and warmed the random patches of beer residue on the floor to a soft, greasy consistency. When Pose and I walked in Woody was sitting at the bar filling out forms. He was an average-sized fellow, with thinning hair and beady eyes.

I gave Woody less than twenty seconds to give us an explanation, which was delivered in a monotone mumble and amounted to: “Oh well, that’s what I decided to do and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Then I punched Woody in the face.

Off his barstool he went. I moved in fast as he tumbled to the floor and I clonked him a few more times across the cheeks. His eyes stared back in utter disbelief. It was like he had been raised in a Tibetan monastery and had never conceived of the possibility that a man could punch another man. His hands began to flutter weakly in front of his head, but that was all he had in terms of self-defense techniques.

I backed off. He scrabbled to his feet and shot like a feathered dart behind the bar.

That was good enough for me. Retribution had been exacted. Pose and I walked calmly out of Woody’s bar. We didn’t run—we walked, at a very casual pace. As the sunlight hit our faces Pose said to me, with admiration, “That was cool, man.”

We got about halfway down the block when one of Woody’s henchmen came racing down the street shouting at us.

“Stop right there! Stop! I just called the cops—you’re going to jail!”

I sneered, but clearly it was time for some reasonable evasive action. Pose and I quickly agreed to split up and meet later. Off I went down the street, but I had not gone more than a few yards before a brown unmarked police car roared onto the curb behind me. Their doors flew open and a couple of large authority figures deplaned.

A few minutes later I was experiencing the taste of dirt at one end of a blind alley and having handcuffs attached to my wrists. Apparently, there is something somewhere in Tuscaloosa’s city statutes about it being illegal to attack people. Yes, kids, if you’re reading this: Daddy went to jail.

End Part 2.

 Part 3 here.

If you missed Part 1, go here