The week before the show, we received an e-mail from a girl named Susan. (See below.) Wondering if the Onion would still be in business after "Punk Rock Night", the show with The Saturn V did indeed take place, as Tom, "the owner" had forgotten all about his threat of closing down the club!!! And a great time was had by all, on both nights! (Except maybe for those guys who got punched.)

I went to see Mike!'s band again last night at the Purple Onion in North Beach. It's an odd little club. You go down a flight of stairs, none of which is actually as long front to back as a standard foot. The walls are mirrored, and there are a few booths. The bar has a sort of lemonade stand look to it - a window cut in the wall, opening to a small room with a cooler.

The special lighting effects were sparse. There was a lamp with a multicolored shade that the owner would spin once in a while. There was a disco ball, and from time to time the owner would climb up in one of the other booths and flip the switch to turn it on or off. None of the controls for anything appeared to be at all close to one another.

The bands flipped a coins for play order. The first band played a short set, then the second band went to play. They were having some fun, but then the club owner (Tom) somehow got involved in the show (I think the band people announced that he was the sexiest man alive or something like that, and he said something in response). They starting yelling at him, and he jumped up on stage and tried to kick things. They had a nice long shouting match, and the guitar player, a woman in red pigtail braids, charged him, trying to impale him with her guitar neck. Eventually they got on with the show, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves.

During the third band, the microphones kept going out. A little over half a dozen songs in, the vocal sound went out completely. Mike! and Nick kept singing, and eventually the sound came back. After that song, Tom, the owner of the place came up on stage and told us all that the reason the sound went out what that some guy with dreadlocks (he also had a pierced septum with something that looked like a twig in it, which extended out a ways on either side of his nose) had taken it upon himself to turn the volume down on the sound board. He asked us all to beat the guy up and throw him out. He actually did manage to eject that guy and a few others who got involved in a bit of pushing. The band resumed its play. The drummer took off all his clothes.

The owner came back and picked out some more people to yell at and eject, and told various ones that they were the one who killed punk rock. He asked us to go outside and kill the people he'd thrown out.

More people started yelling and pushing. The owner kept talking about how he was going to shut the place down and kill us all. Nick tried to start playing a few times, or to make comments, but Tom told him not to play and took away his mic. He said they could never play there again. He told us the place was closed and we all had to leave. People were not settling down, and Tom chased a few people out on to the street. Since he was off the stage, Mike! called out that this was their last song, their closing-the-place-down song, and they played.

I can't keep track of the owner's comings and goings at that point, but he did not manage to throw us all out. Mike! and the band played several more "Last Songs," including one the drummer requested because he could stand up and play for part of that one.

Things calmed down, and the last band set up to play. The lead singer for that band had these fuzzy red pants on, more like fake fur. The crowd was thinning out at this point, but everyone was still having fun. Some guy threw a full cup of beer on the furry-pants guy. Beth held up her lighter, presumably to dry him out, but maybe just to cause havoc. He took off his guitar and ran up the stairs. All the other band members ran after him. We all wondered if Beth had actually set him on fire, but she really wasn't that close where she could have. It turns out that he chased the guy who threw the beer on him up to the street and beat him up as quickly as possible. He did most of the job by slamming the guy's head down on his knee. Lots of blood, and maybe some loose teeth.

They all came back and played some more. Tom got on stage and thanked the people who were good and swore there would be no more punk rock at the Purple Onion ever again, but he probably won't remember he said that.

Things calmed down, and people started filtering out. I stopped at the top of the stairs to talk to a few people and see if I could find out what all this was about. The guy with the fur pants came upstairs. Police cars rolled up. He started to stroll away down Columbus, but then it turned out that he was walking directly toward the guy he had beaten. The guy's girlfriend started waving and yelling for the officers to go down to where they were, so fur boy started running.

Some people went down to find out what was going on, and then came back and reported that the police were talking to both guys (Furry and Beaten), and that Beaten admitted to the police that he had thrown the beer on Furry. Furry was calm and pointing out to the officers that Beaten was drunk and he was not, which won him a lot more credibility points. I finally decided to go home, and never heard if an arrest was made.

--Susan