Okay-this thread has finally motivated me to register w/ this board (after years of reading in silence).
I was at the December 1987 Pine St. Theatre gig referred to by the Mats as the worst show they'd ever played, and apparently the inspiration for the song "Portland" and the message in the DTAS vinyl. The following is an account I contributed to the Yahoo group "thereplacementsarecool" nearly ten years ago. I have edited this slightly. BTW, my memories of the show are almost entirely at odds with the account linked to above, but I suppose that out of such differing memories are legends made.
Portland 12-87, Part One
The Mats ended the '87
PTMM tour in a venue they had played in July:
Portland's Pine St. Theatre. Compared
with my bootlegs from that time, the earlier Portland show was, to put it
politely, rather loose (a personal highlight: Paul's
attempt at ZZ Top's "La Grange."). Still, I was
pleasantly surprised to see a second Portland show
advertised for December 7th. The show opened with
Mats buddies the Young Fresh Fellows, who did a
good set; for their final number, they began "Hey Good
Lookin'" during which the Mats highjacked the stage, with
Tommy settling in behind the Fellows' drum set (which
had a high cymbal attached to a swivel that Tommy
attacked with exuberant violence, and a goofy
grin on his face). After that bit of carnage finished,
the Mats proper went on about a half hour later. I
should note that my memory for set lists is pretty
unreliable, but I'm sure they opened with the Stones' "Happy"
that night (which would make sense-Portland radio was,
and to an extent still is, overpopulated with bad
classic-rock stations, and I'd think they might have heard
this on the way into town). At some point during the
next couple tunes (or fragments as the case may have
been), Paul kicked one of his bright green shoes (the
ones with the dollar signs on them) into the crowd.
After asking to get the shoe back ("Anybody? They're
size 9 1/2") and the crowd's refusal to part with this
peculiar souvenir, Paul and Tommy made the decision to
play in their underwear (in later interviews they said
they wanted to lead the crowd in a striptease; I
didn't recall this, nor did I notice the fact that
they'd apparently shaved off their eyebrows). What
followed was basically a "Shit Hits the Fans"
free-for-all, with one important difference: they played more
complete songs than on "Shit..." And like "Shit..."
what they managed to complete was pretty good.
As in the July Portland gig, "The Ledge" and
"Unsatisfied" were just about perfect (though they petulantly
refused to do "Alex Chilton", asking "Why do you want to
hear the single?" Obviously they weren't
familiar with the conservative local radio market). And two
covers stood out-my younger brother remembers a
balls-out rendition of "Raw Power" (I can only recall
Paul's ordering the lighting guy to "get that spotlight
out of my fucking face" beforehand); the cover I
remember most vividly was an amazing shot at Prince's "I
Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" with Paul
playing one of his best solos (on his trusty Gibson 335).
A friend of mine (and fellow Mats fanatic)
who managed a local record store was as blown
away by this one as I was (and let the record show
that the Mats were doing this tune about three or four
years before the Goo Goo Dolls released their version).
Portland 12-87, Part Two
I seem to remember great versions of "Hold My Life,"
"I Will Dare," "Bastards of Young," "Nightclub
Jitters" (an '87 tour highlight, with Paul stepping up to
the mic with cigarette and beer in classic
lounge-lizard fashion), and YFF Scott M. played some smokin'
bari sax on "I Don't Know." I suppose the main
difference between this gig and "SHTF" was the ratio of
dirt-to-diamonds (as it were) wasn't quite as high; they played
about 3/4 of a pretty good set along with the requisite
classic rock/oldies/pop covers reduced to an utter
shambles. According to the Mats, after the show the
promoters refused to pay the band (the gig really wasn't
THAT bad), they took one of their dressing room
chandelier rides and tossed a sofa out of a second-story
window. And as I noted in my previous post, the Mats
claimed this was their worst-ever gig when "Don't Tell a
Soul" came out (actually it was about a billion times
better than one of those '84 CBGB's shows I've heard).
Anyway, I had a ball...and I just loved the
fact that when they were on at that gig they sounded
as good as ever, and as for the rest, that
irreverant spirit was a joy to behold. A personal
postscript: two days after this gig I experienced heart
palpitations while smoking pot (for the final time as it
turned out, though the irregular heartbeat was here to
stay). Compared with the fear and loathing I associate
with THAT particular episode, the infamous Mats gig
I've described here was most definitely a high point
in a week marked by a decided low.
Postscript (12-7-10): I guess it's good I wrote that stuff in 2001,
since I remember less and less of it now. The show has become
almost legendary in Portland-even as recently as the release
of the greatest hits CD, someone in Portland referred to the
Mats as having been so drunk they were incapable of playing.
That's bull: I was standing about ten feet in front of Tommy
during that gig, and although there was a lot of screwing around, they
still managed to quite capably play many of their best songs,
to say nothing of the Prince cover. One other thing I remember
about that gig was Tommy's homemade necklace that consisted
of a piece of string looped through the center of a CD. That got
a laugh from anyone who saw it.
- cover abandoned
