Jackson, Mississippi used to have a club called “The Stage Door” it was a large club
holding probably around 500 people and was run by Clyde. Clyde was a rough ole cuss.
The story was that he was a retired undercover police officer. The reason he retired was
because his last assignment had been going undercover for 7 years with the Banditos
motorcycle gang. For those that are unfamiliar with the Banditos there are some things
that make this accomplishment somewhat impressive. The Banditos were the group that
for a long time controlled the serious drug trade in the south including New Orleans.
As motorcycle gangs go these people make the Hells Angels look like Sunday school teachers.
Clyde ran his club with an iron fist. If you got along with him you were guaranteed one hell
of a good time. If you didn’t get along with him you were just guaranteed the hell.

One of the last times I was at the Stage Door the band I was running sound for was the
opening act for a group called Lillian Axe. They had recently been signed by Atlantic Records
and were enjoying some success with the release of their first single. We had worked with them
before they had been signed so the party broke out as soon as they showed up at noon that Saturday.

Clyde had some sort of arrangement with the local authorities so that during certain concerts
he was allowed to admit all ages into the club when he had concerts. When that happened the
little girls would come out of the wood work for the shows. If you think things are bad if you’ve
ever attended a Hanson concert then you haven’t seen anything yet. At the Stage Door during
concerts they didn’t have to close the bar. All the beer and liquor was on sale just like normal
and the young girls knew that all it took was a little bit of rubbing up to the right person and
they were on their way to becoming just as intoxicated as everyone else.

Now, I’ve been in clubs all over the US, Canada and Mexico. People in the North are without
a doubt some of the better behaved drunks on the planet. In the northern states drinking is more
of a socially acceptable thing than in the bible belt of our southern states. People in clubs in the
southern states are just as wild when they commence to drinking as the northerners are reserved
when they’ve had a few to many. When you add the taboo of drinking in the south with a bunch
of wannabe teen groupies dressed in almost nothing on a hot sultry summer night and throw in a
rock band full of guys in leather and long hair you’ve got a party on your hands like you’ve never
seen before and the Stage Door that night was no different.

As soon as the band I was working for hit the stage the groupies were up on the tables dancing.
I knew that when the opening act gets this kind of action going on that the night will end up being
a wild, drunken brawl of a party. It was late summer and those little girls were ripping cloths off
like they were headed for a skinny dip. By the time we had finished the opening set, which was
about an hour long, I had seen more breasts of underage “Jail Bait” than you can find in two
Victoria’s Secrets catalogs and the Anniversary issues of Playboy and Hustler combined.

The number of these little cuties had to have been around 250 out of the 500 people that the
club held and I’m betting a good 200 or more of them were already on their way to consuming
more alcohol that any of them had seen in their entire life. As soon as they opening act
(they were called Styk and Move) left the stage they were swarmed by the horde of
drunken underage groupies.

Don’t get me wrong when I say this because, swear to Koresh, I’m not complaining.
I don’t remember 16 to 18 year old girls looking like this when I was that age.
Lots of them had breasts the size of small melons and they were proud of them.
I’m no expert on this subject but from what I saw that night it appears to me that
girls of that age and build have no need for any type of support.
No wonder older women are jealous of young ones.

I had to stay on the stage to help get ready for the headliners. In the meantime I noticed
that the band had disappeared. Normally they would be at the bar pouring down all the
free beer they could get so I didn’t think much about it. When I went outside to get the
bus ready to load equipment I was met with quite a surprise.

The bus we traveled in was a converted school bus. A wall was built about half way
towards the back of the bus. The equipment went in the back half and everyone rode
in the front half. The front had a couple of small couches and some old airplane passenger
seats that had been purchased at an American Airlines sale. The front half of the bus was
completely surrounded by young girls. We’re talking 30 or more with more of them inside.

When I entered the bus to move it to the loading dock I was surprised at what I saw.
The 5 guys in the band all had one or two girls each and all the girls were basically naked.
I’ve never been that close to so many naked young girls in my life. It was then that I noticed
most of the band was also sporting birthday suits and sex was “in the air”. I wish I had the
literary ability to do justice to what I witnessed. Little girl's shapely naked round butts moving
up and down, hands all over breasts and more standing outside waiting to get in. About half
of the girls outside the bus still had their tops off and they were all crowding to get in.

Now, being the sound engineer for a rock band does have some perks. You get to meet a
lot of women. Actually you get to meet a lot of women that want you to introduce them to
the members of the band. You get a lot of free alcohol from these women that want to meet
the band. You get a lot of very suggestive promises from women that want to meet the band.

What you don’t get is an invitation to join in the frolicking when it breaks out like it had in the bus.
What I got that night, and you can call me a pervert if you want, is that I got to watch this endless
stream of naked bodies pouring through the bus for about the next 45 minutes. By that time I was
more than ready to work my ass off and get back to the woman that was waiting for me at home.
ha ha
A mere 14 hour drive from Jackson. The equipment was never loaded onto the bus any faster than
what I did that night almost single handed. Let’s face it, at that point the band was not going to help do shit.

We pulled into Pine Bluff, Arkansas about 4:00 am where we stopped for gas. There was a small
convenience store located across from the filling station so as soon as the bus was filled up we
pulled across the street. There was a petite, older black lady working the register that night.
I guess when she saw all these guys with long hair and leather on she freaked and called the police.
By the time I had picked out a small carton of chocolate milk and some Twinkies there was the
biggest black cop you ever saw in your life standing next to the register. This guy must have been
at least 6’8” and weighed over 300 very muscular pounds. I found out later that he had been a
defensive lineman for Alabama. His name was Officer Dumas and in the end he turned out to
be a really nice guy.

Just as I was setting my Twinkies and chocolate milk on the counter Officer Dumas looked
down at me. “You got an ID on you, son?” he asked. I quickly informed him that I was only
purchasing Twinkies and chocolate milk. He laughed and told me we had scared the hell out
of the lady behind the counter and he was just there at her request. “I’ve got to round up all
8 of your drivers licenses now and run them, sorry for the inconvenience” he told us.

It takes a hell of a long time for the Pine Bluff Police department to run 8 drivers licenses at
4:00 am so after a while we got bored and started throwing a football around. Before long
officer Dumas joined in and got to talking to us about music and football which is how we
learned he had played college ball. Before it was all over Officer Dumas told his partner that
he was sure that nothing was going to come back on us so he was going to give us the licenses
back and let us go on down the road. He reasoned that since we were driving an old school
bus that if there was a problem they wouldn’t have any problems catching us and so about 5 am
we were back under way. Before we left Officer Dumas told us that we were all right for a bunch
of long hairs and that if we had any problems while in the state of Arkansas to let the cops know
that “Officer Dumas from Pine Bluff said you boys are OK!”

I should explain something before I get to the end of this story. Rock bands have to carry an
enormous amount of power amps to run the sound system. These amps are stored in what else
but an Amp Rack and those sucker are heavy, normally weighing around 200-300 pounds apiece.
Lillian Axe had used our amp racks to help power the PA in Jackson so they had been the last
thing loaded in the bus. In our hurry to get headed home we didn’t realize the amp racks were
making the front of the bus bounce unusually high causing the front wheels to almost leave the ground.
A fact we were informed of when a highway patrol officer outside of Van Buren,
Arkansas pulled us over that Sunday morning.

This guy was a real jerk. He was sure we were transporting some sort of illegal contraband
and he insisted on searching the bus. Of course the first thing he wanted to do was unload
those power amps from the back of the bus so he could poke around. I had been driving
the bus all night while everyone else was sleeping, probably because I was hormonally
motivated to get home as fast as possible. When we got pulled over by this jerky boy
Highway Patrol officer I was the one that had to deal with him while everyone else kept
sleeping in the front of the bus. The cop informed me of his intention to search the bus and
I quickly informed him that I had lifted those amp racks as many times as I was going to
lift them and he wasn’t going to get any help from me. I guess that pissed him off because
the next thing I knew we were surrounded by about 8 highway patrol cars. I honestly didn’t
think that the state of Arkansas had a total of more than 8 or 9 highway patrol cars so they
must have had every trooper in the state show up.

Now get this picture! Here we had 8 long haired leather clad guys. Some of whom had just
had the time of their lives with the jail bait in Jackson, Mississippi., all leaning against the guard
rail just outside of Van Buren, Ark. and we had 8 overweight troopers attempting to unload
and then reload about 2 tons worth of PA system, guitars and amplifiers on a July Sunday
along I-40. Those assholes had shit strung out for 400 yards behind that bus and then they
had the nerve to ask me to help them pack it back after they didn’t find anything in the back
of the bus. I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours so I politely told them to forget it and don’t break
anything putting it all back in. I also let them know that there was only one way it would all
fit back in the back of that bus and it had taken me about 2 weeks to figure it out.

Finally they finished putting all the equipment (except the amp racks) back in the bus and those
guys were really starting to work up a stink underneath their uniforms and bullet proof vests.
About this time one of them got the bright idea of searching the front of the bus and the whole
mess started all over again. After going through all our luggage they proceeded to start pulling
out the interior out of the bus. Next thing we knew they started getting excited and one of the
cops emerged from the bus holding what they claimed was a Quaalude that they had found
inside one of the couches in the bus.

“One of you boys better own up to this or we’re going to take everyone of you to jail” they
triumphantly told us. By this time I was beginning to get a little pissed. These jerks had kept us
at the side of the road for what was now getting into early evening and the best they could now
do was claim we were transporting illegal drugs because they found one pill buried in the bottom
of a couch. I tried to explain to them what had occurred in the bus less than 24 hours before hand,
(expertly omitting the part about the age of the girls) and told them that could have belonged to
anyone of them. Of course this just didn’t work for these gung ho bunch of back country assholes
and they continued to press for a confession from someone, all the time threatening that if someone
didn’t take the blame for this poor, nasty-looking chipped-up crumbling piece of contraband
they would take us all to jail.

At this point I had pretty much had it with the state of Arkansas and their bass ackwards
inbred moron troopers. Finally I asked them, “so what happens to the guy that claims it?”
“We’re going to give you a ticket and make you post a hundred dollar bond then you can be
on your way. You can come back to court and fight the ticket or you can not come back and
we’ll keep the hundred dollars and the whole thing is over with.”

“I was driving the fucking bus so I’m responsible” were the next words out of my mouth.
Shit, I figured these ignorant bastards had wasted almost 6 hours by that time and all they could
come up with was a pill that they claim they pulled out of the couch. I figured that I had no interest
in running for president or anything else and I was anxious to get home for strictly sexual reasons.
A hundred dollars seemed like a small price to pay to get home to the ol lady for an evening of
what I had been witnessing in Jackson that Saturday night.

I returned to Van Buren on the date that was on the ticket and told my story to the judge.
He was some sort of Republican prick and he gave me a big speech like I was some sort
of mafia drug smuggler then told me the fine was the $100.00 we had posted as a bond.
I made a joke about what judges do to pigs in Arkansas as I was leaving. Thankfully out of
earshot of the judge but not some of the local yokel cops and left.

I have however managed to get even in my own way. I managed to get several bands to
refuse to do fund raisers for a  variety of Van Buren, Arkansas Pig fucker charities since then.
I can guarantee you I’ve kept many dollars out of the hands of Van Buran merchants and charities.
I would encourage all you  bartcop.com  readers to do the same thing. It’s no wonder Bill Clinton
wanted out of Arkansas. With the exception of one really cool Police Officer named Dumas
I think I can say without hesitation that based on my experiences the whole damn city of Van Buran,
Arkansas is full of nothing but dishonest “plant your own evidence” pig fuckers.
 

by The Ledge