Joe Nelson - Insted roadie extraordinaire

Our resident west coast connection, Joe Nelson, toured many times as the roadie for INSTED on their tours across the U.S., and we were certain he'd have something cool to say about those times out on the road. Needless to say, he delivered again. -DCXX

Those were such great tours with Insted. All four of those guys, plus the other roadie, Chris Fenn, are just the best people the world has to offer. I would say looking back at those tours it was just the usual shenanigans bands pulled. We'd always load up on fireworks at "South of the Border" in South Carolina, so we could shoot them at cars on the interstate, which is obviously safe. Also being 18 - 19 year old boys, we were constantly trying to hook up with girls. We'd sneak into baseball games or the local water slide park on our off days. Sometimes somebody had a ramp in their area that I'd skate. We'd of course always have BBQs with everyone before the show, then after the gig go to some party at a local's house. Just innocent fun, but "real" fun if you know what I mean?

We also all played sports. Bear, Kevin, and I were pretty decent basketball players so we'd challenge everyone to 3 on 3 games. I think we had a run of like 50 - 0 during the summer 1989 tour. Actually, a pretty funny football game happened between us and Burn. We'd always split our crew in New York. Half of us would stay with Mark Ryan, Alan Cage, and Gavin Van Vlack in their little basement apartment, and the other half would stay at the Schism house which was Ray Cappo, Alex Brown, and John Porcelly's two foot hall of an apartment. Both apartments were in Brooklyn which wasn't as ...ummm..."hip" as it is today.

Anyway, Burn was talking ungodly amounts of shit about being such great football players, and how California kids were "soft"...and blah...blah...blah. We put together a game of like Gavin, Chaka Malik, Alan, and two other local dudes vs. Insted. The game was in some nasty Brooklyn Park, on a rock hard patch of dirt with about 3 blades of grass sticking out of it. What Burn failed to realize, however, is that football is a game of speed. I just remember the first five pass plays for us were Kevinsted precession bombs for touchdowns to either me or Bear. We also intercepted everything they threw at us. Then they tried the "well let's give it to Gavin and just have him bull us over" play. However, we would just take out his legs so he'd get five yards...at best. They quit after 30 minutes.

Looking back at all of it though I always talk about the summer of '89 tour being just the greatest summer for a lot of us, especially me. That summer, Insted was out for 9 weeks, from like mid June through August, so basically the whole summer. The other bands that were out on the road, or shared a show or two with us were Gorilla Biscuits, Judge, Bold, Reason To Believe, Uniform Choice, Underdog, Up Front, SNFU, Verbal Assault, Vision, and a bunch more. Every show that summer was like a "Who's Who" for straight edge hardcore of the day.

We had such a blast. I mean think about this: GB, Bold, Reason, and Insted all stayed in the same Ft. Lauderdale, Florida house for like a week straight, maybe longer. I mean there's really nothing better then being with 25 of your friends at some random Florida beach all day long, then having a massive slumber party all night when you're 18... is there? It really, truly was such an amazing moment in time in this spot of the world to be alive.