This story gets told quite often. In fact, my wife was just telling her Dad about it over the weekend in Illinois. While I still 'worked' for the Carroll College newspaper The New Perspective, I had set up an interview with punk rockers No Use For A Name at The Rave in Milwaukee. My wife and my brother came with. I was supposed to meet the group, do the interview on the tour bus, then go to the show right after. Simple. I called the tour manager and he said meet outside the tour bus. Waited. No one came out. Eventually Matt Riddle, the bassist came out. I asked him if I was interviewing him and the rest of the guys...He said "well you can interview me, let's go inside the club". Okay. So we went backstage. He offered me a beer and we did the interview. It was a great lengthy interview, and then he pointed to these mysterious doors. He said they busted the lock on them after sound check and explored a little bit, then asked if we wanted to come with him and the guitar techs to go explore some more. So of course we went. So me, my wife and my brother got to see the famous "haunted" pool that rarely anyone gets to see unless you perform there and can break the lock. They had said a girl haunts it who drowned some many years ago. There was graffiti everywhere from previous explorers. It had that awesome old smell to it. Some don't know that The Eagles Club used to be a gentleman's club with the ballroom on top, a ring for boxing and a pool with lockers. We crawled all over the place. The creepiest thing we saw was a chair and keg in the corner of a barely lit area. No ghosts, but it was an awesome experience. After that, I said thanks for the interview and we headed inside. After the show, I was fortunate to catch singer/guitarist Tony Sly outside where I got him to sign my copy of Keep Them Confused. I probably should have had Matt sign the album booklet too. Oh well.
It was an amazing night that neither my wife or my brother will ever forget.
