Click on the artwork for the full scoop on each era...

There were only two bands that I wanted to be in, post COLD SWEAT: SAIGON KICK or Skid Row. Rachel Bolan, stubbornly being a founder and major creative force in the Skids, wasn’t really interested in leaving his post.

Bastard.

That left me hoping for Saigon’s bassist to vacate his. And he did, even if it was involuntarily. I got a call on a Monday morning in 1992, and was told that the band had fired their bassist and needed a new one.

Splendid, I thought. I shoved the necessary promo materials into an overnight package, sent them out and sat by the phone. They say chance favors a prepared mind, and I began to learn all the SK songs I could quickly stuff into my head.

Two days later, I was summoned to South Florida to audition for SK. I arrived after a red eye flight to be picked up by Spidee, Jason Bieler’s guitar tech. The ride to the hotel was a dizzying one, as Spidee had done his own windshield tinting and had cut the plastic exactly halfway down the glass. This made you violently crane your neck to either see out of the upper tinted section or contort downwards like Quasimodo to view the untinted, blazing Florida swampscape. To onlookers driving next to us on I-595, I must have looked like an epileptic Heron trying to see out of the windshield. Spidee was cheerfully unfazed and we chatted aimlessly on the way to the hotel.

Being beat from the trip (and neck fatigue) I fell asleep in my room, only to be awakened three hours later by drummer Phil Varone. It was time for a meal and my first actual face to face with the guys.

I walked out of the hotel and looked into the car and thought "Who in the hell is that?"

They were thinking the same thing.

Evidently, the camera loved us all, but not the same way. None of us looked like our photos, and we all stammered hellos. Luckily, Phil and Jay recognized each other, but I was clearly outnumbered and doubly disoriented. I clambered into a Chevy Corsica, and off we went to a Chinese restaurant.

The meal was going splendidly until this guy showed up at the edge of the table, looking at us expectantly. He wanted to sit down, but the other two were just blankly staring at him, so again I thought: "Who the hell is this?"

It was Matt Kramer and he was looking at me, thinking the same thing. I was beginning to sense a photographic pattern here.

And the meal continued.

We finished, got in the car and headed to a rotten section of Pompano Beach, right across from the Goodyear blimp Stars & Stripes' hangar. On the way, we had forgotten my bass, stopped for frozen yogurt, found out the band did all the songs off of both CD’s (except Chanel, Matt said; I was bummed), imitated Jerry Lewis and made jokes about dollar crack whores.

I had learned everything I needed to know about SAIGON KICK in my first hour with them.