The Year 1998 In Review (to June)

I haven't seen quite as much of John lately since the Motards broke-up, but just to catch you up to date, John's been VERY polite everytime I've seen him out and about - perhaps to counter the fact that his current band with guys from the Didjits and the Dwarves are calling themselves the 'River City Rapists'. Not very polite as band names go - so maybe he's trying to compensate. Although I hear they might be changing their name to the River City 'Racists', which is equally impolite, but also pretty hilarious in a 'gee-who-can-we-offend-next' sorta' way.

One good story I heard was that at a recent show, everytime John went to sing, one of the other guys in the band grabbed the mic first and sang the song for him. I'm surprised he didn't just quit on the spot - so I'd say that was pretty polite of him to put up with that. Another thing that happened was when some knee-jerk feminist group got all pissed-off about the name, and decided to stage a protest at one of their shows. They put up a flier at Sound Exchange announcing their plan to picket the show, boldly declaring 'Rape is NOT a joke - let's show these 'rapists', blah-blah-blah..." Naturally, all that did was garner the more press for the band, and the bartender at the club on that particular night subsequently commented how LAME their mock-protest was... apparently they wouldn't even cross over to the same side of the street the club was actually on, and as soon as it began raining, they gave-up and went home. One of the other guys in the band allegedly made a big deal about the flier for the protest hanging in the window at Sound Ex, but it wasn't John - so for being at the center of all this controversy, he had very little to say about any of it. Once again, I'd have to say he was being pretty damn polite.

Another interesting John Motard sighting I had was at another show my band was playing. During one of the other bands, some school-children - er, I mean, 'punk-rockers' - started slamming and one of them nailed our drummer and made him spill his beer. Our drummer has a very low-tolerance for such pre-pubescent foolishness, and anyone who knows the Collegians should know better than to try and come between a member of our band and their beloved beer. He threw the rest of his beer at the guy, who then proceeded to cold-cock him one, and the next thing you know they were both on the ground trying to throttle each other. Someone pulled them apart and John helped smooth things over since he knew both parties involved. Things could've gotten REALLY ugly at that point, but ever the diplomat, John helped cooler heads prevail in the end. Once again - John was being tres polite.

Chuck Trend

POLITENESS RATING =

8