We salvaged one audio track from this show, “Tug Of War” recorded live at the FM Station in North Hollywood, Sunday, July 23, 1989.  Tug Of War, a new instrumental song, written after keyboardist Marty Leggett joined the band.  We put it all together during a rehearsal at Bob’s house on Tularosa in Silver Lake back in January.  We often played “Tug Of War” as a first number to start the set because it was musically interesting and the dance group “Untamed” performed to the song in front of the stage adding another visual layer.

The song ‘Tug Of War’ started off tame, then gradually grew in intensity, (similar to the flow in the song “Money” by Pink Floyd).  It had a generous helping of distorted guitar and blazing flute and really stood out at the F.M. Station amidst a sea of heavy metal hair bands.  I liked opening with this song because it gave me a chance to “warm up” to hitting the skins as hard as I could for the rest of the set.

July 1989 was an electrically charged month for Parousia.  It began with Parousia’s live music video, “The Weekend Starts Tonight” broadcast on KSCI TV’s “The Hollywood Showcase For Bands”. The video did well and was broadcast several more times, eventually winning a spot in the finals; then on July 9^th we did a show at the world famous Whisky a go-go.

It was July, the middle of summer. Schools were out and people in the City of the Angels were prone to partying all night every night. The F.M. Station in North Hollywood often attracted a good crowd on the weekends and Parousia was headlining tonight, scheduled to play with two opening acts, Outcast and Fire Heart.  Later in the week on Tuesday, July 25, the band Young Gunns was performing. Young Gunns were a recurrent part of the hair metal invasion bands on the streets of Hollywood during the good ole days of the Sunset Strip.

Later known as Wildside, signed to Capitol Records, Young Gunns rose to a bit of notoriety in Los Angeles. You can hear their song, “Shake Your Ass” on the “Thunder and Mudd” VHS. (Their song appears as a soundtrack for a mud wrestling video with scantily clad heavy metal babes).  More of their songs are available on a compilation called “Young Gunns 2”, a collection of demos from 1988 to 1991 before the band was forced to change their name to Wildside and released one album under the Capitol label, “Under the Influence”. Two other CD’s were released after that.

A memory of note: On Saturday, July 22, the night before Parousia’s appearance at the F.M. Station, the band “Unstoppable” was playing. The members of Unstoppable happened to be our former downstairs neighbors, back when Patt, Claude and I lived in an upstairs apartment on Las Palmas Avenue near Sunset.

On rare occasion, Parousia would rehearse at Las Palmas and our neighbors, Unstoppable, didn’t like it one bit! They would pound on the ceiling and walls until we stopped.   Hey, when you’re a rock band ya’ gotta’ do what ya’ gotta’ do.  Sometimes we just had to have a rehearsal to tighten up a bit  before a show …  We never played more than a few songs.  You would think our neighbors; (the members of Unstoppable) would have some sympathy for us. But then I remember, this wasn’t Buffalo… no one was gonna’ cut us any slack here.