Transcript
Speaker: I'm Mark McBride. And I'm Steve Brown. Welcome to season two of the Yo-Yo Player podcast, where two dusty old gray beards grab their friends and reminisce about the 1999 Fiend Magazine Yo-Yo Tour.
Speaker: This episode, a sideshow solidifies.
Speaker: I like it when things solidify.
Speaker: Remember this, guys? I remember one of the hiccups in the tour was, We were given away all these yo-yos. I think initially pretty indiscriminately, we were just given away a lot of yo-yos before we started really get given away from competitions and kind of being a little bit more careful about who we were giving them to. were just given a lot away.
Speaker: but yeah, so we we had like, there was a handful of merch drops as far as like X number of times. i want to say like four times, three, three or four times during the tour, like every week and a half, two weeks kind of thing.
Speaker: one of the stops would be a stop that your company would ship stuff to. And you would pick up your box and it would be there waiting for us. So we got like a wave of merch.
Speaker: And so, yeah, but we started just, you know, like that first day being like, what do we got? We're like, okay, I guess we get this, this is what we got. And then when we were told you got to do a show, then real quickly, it was like, all righty gang, time to get our old side show slash demonstrator chops out and figure out the show that we're putting on.
Speaker: Yep. And I mean, for the most part, I think, I think Nick was the only one of us of the gang who like, he hadn't done shows before. Like he was used to kind of doing like, like demos, right? He was used to being like, ah he was sponsored by Henry's. And he would be like hanging out at the store and just like teaching kids tricks, but he wasn't doing like stage shows, but he picked it up pretty fast. But all the rest of us, like, like we knew what you know, like we had fucking routines already on lock. Like we already, yeah like we had this all worked out. So like, I think the, the rotation and everything, we locked that in really fast. I think it was like two days and we had that like, like pulled together pretty tight. And then like the actual figuring out what were the actual like contests was going to be.
Speaker: Some us had a little bit of experience on tour, especially Steve and, um, But but ah we were we were treading new territory, man. Like nobody had any idea how to how to make this happen. there was you know I've got this book that Greg had given me of kind of how to run the tour. It had nothing to nothing to say about how we're actually going to give away fucking all these yo-yos, you know, how we're going to like... draw attention to our stage, how we're going to like have a crowd and demonstrate effectively and showcase yo-yos to a fucking warped tour population of punk rock metalhead kids.
Speaker: Nobody had any idea to do that shit. Right. Nobody had any idea. So we were thrown into that. And I remember like you know the first, the first few days, like just going, how, are we how do we do this? You know, how do we do it? And I think initially we just started having demonstrators up on stage, you know, that's what we knew. We knew, you know, you guys that had been demonstrated for a while knew how to work a stage and work a yo-yo.
Speaker: You didn't necessarily know how to pull a crowd in though. You know, we weren't buskers, you know? So like all those things of like, how do we maximize this experience, you know, for the crowd? How do we maximize our exposure in this environment?
Speaker: We had to invent that on the fly, you know, on site. And so like, yeah, we were were pretty young and dumb and all that. But what I saw happen was, I started off having no idea what we're doing, just trying to put demonstrators on that stage and give away yo-yos.
Speaker: We started off just giving stuff away and that got killed real fast. I don't, I think it if it didn't get killed before day one, it got killed the night of day one. And I remember It got killed. It was two days in and it was the head of security.
Speaker: Okay. And it was Kevin Lyman, the head of Warped Tour proper. Yeah. I remember him coming under our bus and saying, you can't give away stuff.
Speaker: And it was specifically, you can't give away yo-yos.
Speaker: Basically we weren't allowed to actually just give yayas away, so what we had to is we had to make people hurt. Because what, all your preferences. years passed. It wasn't last year, but was the year before. No, thought it was last year.
Speaker: No, it was the year before. I swear it was last year. Darren said it was the year before. Anyway, at some point, like some other company, like YouHoo somebody, was giving out this little like five cent promo yayas.
Speaker: And you go a rock concert and anything that puts hands the bands gets thrown in advance. Whether they like the band or not, it doesn't matter. The fact that they have some kind of projectile in their hands is enough for them to throw in. So they were pretty much banned.
Speaker: We said, well, you know, we have to give yo-yos because we're making yo-yo companies. it but It hadn't happened for us very much. It was because it had happened in the past. He's like, somebody did this stuff last year.
Speaker: You give somebody something, it's just getting chucked at the band. And we're like, okay, this is kind of our thing though. Well, you give out anything at a punk rock show, it gets thrown into at the band.
Speaker: Especially Eminem. Especially Eminem, yes. Eminem was the whipping boy. It was early. Real fast. Yeah, and i I remember being like, I was like, oh shit, what are we going to do? You know, we can't have that happen all the time. and I think it was fine.
Speaker: i think i think in my like my very young brain, i was thinking, fuck, what are we going to do? or Like feeling kind of doomsday about it. What if we gave them away as prizes? Because that was thing. can't just hand stuff to somebody. But if they earned it, they felt some sense of ownership and they weren't going chuck it at a band. So there's Kevin Lyman and his head of security, like – like lot us we're Ken?
Speaker: I think so. We can look it up. He was great. He was super cool. And so they were cool about it. I'm not i'm not busting their chops. Like their concerns were fucking legit. And we're sitting there going, like okay, how do we solve this?
Speaker: And the solution was as long as they as long as you gave away everything as a prize – in a contest that was cool right i mean we came with stickers like yeah could stickers definitely but all of like the actual yo-yos like we could only give them out if somebody specifically won it so we would have to make them jump through some kind of hoops like so we had to basically control gave them to just couldn't give everybody so we're doing our standard promo thing also you know i mean now we had a stage had the
Speaker: getting people out there running contests, pretty much an excuse to give them yo-yos. Yeah. we had to you know We had to make them earn it so that they felt a little more connected to it so they would be they would be a little less they'd be a little reluctant to actually just chuck it at somebody. Yeah.
Speaker: Plus they let us pick and choose who we gave them to. Yeah. And it was a great way to embarrass the hell out of people. Yeah, it was. Public mockery was the name of the game in the Bean Magazine Yo-Yo 10. Unquote. But I'll just give i' give a lot of credit to Steve in particular. it just seemed like as the thing was developing, we all got we all got thrown into it. i mean, you too, Mark, but I think I overlapped with Steve a little more in this. But I just remember like the very beginning, we were all so thrown into it. None of us knew what the fuck we were doing. Obviously, there's no format for this. And those first couple of weeks trying to kind of develop that format, I remember one thing that became real clear was Steve was real good on the microphone.
Speaker: Yeah. and And nobody else fucking was. I think I have this memory of like, OK, well, let's try this. Why don't we all take turns on the microphone and blah, blah. And like after, I mean, I think maybe Nick. No, his name was Nick. ah Nick taking his turn the microphone. We're like, no, well, why don't we have Steve just do it from now on? And it worked and it worked. And that was good. and It was a guy was a good move. You know, that was a good move for sure.
Speaker: Usually like we get you get like about four anywhere from three to six people up from the crowd and ask them basically to do stupid tricks, which Steve started billing as, these aren't real tricks. These are tricks we came up with drunk on the bus last night.
Speaker: Of course, the joke was that they were the same tricks every damn day. Actually, every concept i about the contest, personal contest tip. Bend over and throw the oil between your legs. Yeah, you can do it.
Speaker: bend over turn the yo-yo between their legs. We made them stand on one leg, hop up and down, pat their head, and sing any song by, like, we'd just pick a random band, like Misfits or Pennywise or whatever, make them sing a song, throw the yo-yo straight up in the air and catch it. we would make them We'd make them stick their finger up their nose, throw the yo-yo and catch it. We'd make them stick their hand on the front of their pants, and you'd throw the yo-yo and catch it, which always was fun.
Speaker: Sing National Anthem, to jump and kung fu kicks, break dance, stuff like that. But the one that always drew the most crowd and both people stopped for was when we got a guy, put him in the front of the stage and said, we're going to throw this yo-yo between your legs.
Speaker: You have to catch it between it comes back and smacks you with the balls. Yeah. And everyone loved that for some reason. Everyone loved that, man. So we ended up doing that an awful lot. We actually we actually got one guy, didn't we?
Speaker: We actually tagged one guy. I don't know. don't think He had those baggy-ass pants on. Yeah. And we had... Julius shot his mouth off in Northampton. So we made him do it. So we gave it so no, what we did we gave yo-yo, we pulled some kid up on stage and said, okay, the kid was going to throw a forward pass and Julius had to catch it with his butt cheeks.
Speaker: and And we said, you got it before kid? No, I've seen it. No, but I've seen it. That was the kid's exact words, no, but I've seen it done.
Speaker: We were like, gope you know, that's good enough for us. so we had go. Yeah, that's what you got for shooting his mouth off. Yeah, exactly. Right. To slowly starting to build this routine. And in my mind, the routine became this, which is routine became. Have a demonstrator on stage and try and pull the audience into it.
Speaker: Get something of an audience going. Start having competitions. Remember that became a big part of it. We'd have these little mini compet yo-yoing for non-yo-yoers competitions, you know, as I'd say, right? Little basic basic stuff, but have three people on stage and teach them how and have them do something and give away stuff. That would pull way bigger audience than just a demonstrator on stage. Now there's this audience participation. And then we kind of, we give stuff out for free at the beginning and give stuff more out at the end. We had a lot of stuff to give out.
Speaker: So we'd have them do this little competition and bring this crowd and give stuff away. And then we had the big ass crowd, then put a performer up on that stage and have them really show what's up, what can really be done with the fucking yo-yo. Right. And then get away some more shit, you know?
Speaker: So we developed that routine and Steve's doing his mic at MC, Mike, and, you know, and freaking getting people laughing and stuff. And I'll tell you, I mean, by the third week, I thought we were rolling, man. Like, really? I thought we were crushing it. We had big crowds around her. it's Like, we're in this group.
Speaker: we're in this group. We've got PlayStation. We've got freaking, you know, some other companies, whatever. And that, yeah, they're having some people over. They have a little competition. that is that We were pulling crowds, y'all. I remember it. We were pulling big crowds of people. Yeah. There was a point in the tour where they started specifically moving our booth around because we were pulling big enough crowds that we were causing traffic problems. Yeah, exactly. So, and we had, like, they would, um, Like they were in specifically like they stopped putting us near stages because they kept putting us near the bus stage. I think ah it was either the bus stay. Yeah. They kept putting us near the bus stage. And because, you know, remember the when we were like yelling at a veil on our PA and everything like that, we were like really close to the stage. But they kept putting us near the bus stage. um
Speaker: And A, like it sucked for us because it was hard for RPA to you know be louder than like a full punk rock band playing. But also what happened is we were pulling such big crowds because we would... you know, when they were putting us near the stage, we would specifically time our shows to be like right when the band ended. So there was already a big crowd of people there and we would immediately like launch into our shtick.
Speaker: And then we would pull this huge crowd and they would stay there in a much smaller, tighter space. And then it would fuck up traffic to the bus stage because then nobody could get past them to get to the stage for the next band. And all the vendors that were on either side of us would always complain that nobody could get to their booth.
Speaker: So, like, we had, i mean, there was multiple points, like, I think it was about two weeks into the tour, maybe three weeks into the tour, where, like, they were coming out to talk to us and they're like, Hey, listen, you guys need to, you know, we're like, well, we need to not be successful at the thing that we fucking paid you to be able to do. what do you want So there was, and i I remember you and Mark specifically having to like deal with that and like diffuse some tension and like, you know, make nice with the organizing team.
Speaker: I just, I think that's, we were a lot of credit, kill you know, i mean, it's a lot of, a lot credit the crew we had, you know, i mean, you, the three of us in particular, I think you two, I i was in the mix, but you know, I think the, the creative elements of it, you know, you guys were mostly in charge of. And I think in the end, like we really developed a fucking, a plan that worked, man. and Like we could have done it again and made it even bigger and better, you know, and that didn't have to be that way. You know, I think, you know, in retrospect, it's like, yeah, yeah, we made it where we dah, dah, dah, dah. But,
Speaker: Fuck, man, we could have like just kind of floundered with a bunch of demonstrators just taking turns on stage, you know, and not had the impact we had. We had a fucking impact on the tour. i remember I remember at one point there was some article. Did you guys get a hold of this? this Something got written Something got written up about Warped Tour.
Speaker: i think maybe the head of Warped Tour or something like that commented about all the yo-yo players and how like something to some the extent of, i don't know what's going on this year, but guys the yo-yo players are da-da-da everywhere. It's da-da-da-da-da.
Speaker: i don't Do you ever see that? do you remember that? sometimes I believe you. i remember jason I remember real early on, and this was this is one of the Texas dates, I remember real early on they they sent somebody out from Teen People Magazine to like cover the Warped Tour, and there's a they ended up taking a picture of me and putting it in like the warp tour spread. Cool.
Speaker: And I've still got a copy of it floating around somewhere, but it was, it was, you know, like a week into the tour. Like a week into the tour. It was just like, yo, Steve's in teen people. That's awesome.
Speaker: i didn't even know about that. You have to find that. Yeah. You gotta find that dude.
Speaker: Here's a story that I, that I remember. I'm hoping that you remember it, Jason. Um, is at some point early in the tour, maybe a week or two in,
Speaker: I remember like having kind of a gang meeting. We were all together in the back of the bus and talked about what we were gonna do with the show. like because we you know we We kind of like owned it down into like the basic little circus sideshow routine that we had as far as like having the contest and giving stuff away.
Speaker: And we're kind of like, okay, so what's working, what's not working? And what you know we went over like, oh, I like this bit, I don't like this bit. I remember having meeting. And then I remember Steve with like amazing conviction was like, okay, this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker: We're gonna do the stuff. We're gonna do the shows. And then at the end of each show, now that we were getting all of these BC yo-yos, I am gonna hand carve everybody's name in it like the classic Duncan demonstrators.
Speaker: and he said it with complete earnest. And there's this moment of silence that we all looked at each other and it just bust out into fucking laughter.
Speaker: you're You're close. You're close on that. it was... don't remember if it was BC's. I think it was Wooden Dunkin's.
Speaker: What it was is we had like a crap load of these wooden yo-yos. like Way too many. like Way, way, way too many. and What are we going to do with them? yeah yeah and and It was one of those things where we're like i mean you know we're running these little contests. We're only running like six or eight of these contests a day. Like according to the number of yo-yos we have, we have like 25 of these to give away like every fucking day.
Speaker: or It was like some ridiculous fucking thing. And I was drunk.
Speaker: And I was drunk and I was like, and i was like well, we just you know we'll fucking give them to people. And you're like, we can't just give them away to people. Remember, we had the whole fucking problem with blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I got it.
Speaker: I'll fucking carve their names into it. We'll do it like old school. I'll use the Dremel. I can go really, really fast with the Dremel. And I was like way into this. And I just, yeah. And I absolutely remember you guys all just look at at me and been like, that is literally the dumbest fucking thing we've ever heard. We are not entertaining this idea. Fucking can shut up.
Speaker: And I was so wounded at the time. And then the next day, you guys were giving me shit for it, and I only barely remembered even fucking doing I was, like, so hungover and tired. i was like, what?
Speaker: Did I? Okay. Hand-carved these yo-yos for every winter. Yeah. I was like, no, you're right. That sounds fucking terrible. I don't want to do it. Does anybody have any water?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, I think the fact that I had to write everything down means that I have the best memory of the tour. Probably. Yeah. So, I mean, even breezing through the the blogs that you had sent us or something, you know, it's still...
Speaker: It helps, but you know everything's still... There's just fuzzy moments. Oh, yeah. Just trying to remember shit. so It's almost like it was 25 years ago. Yeah, just a little bit.
Speaker: Almost.
