Yellow and black attack

2005 REWIND - THE YEAR IN DRINKING

OCTOBER



INT. POP'S - EAST ST. LOUIS - THURSDAY - 9:33 P.M. - STRYPER CONCERT

When I was 11 years old, I went to my first concert - Stryper at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. It was me and my best friend at the time, a kid named David who moved to Pennsylvania several months later. We were Christian school kids who weren't allowed to listen to the radio but nonetheless used to sneak peeks at the forbidden world of MTV every time I slept over at his house. Big-haired heavy metal was all the rage, and its Christian equivalent was the band Stryper, whose members were always decked out in elaborate yellow-and-black spandex costumes. I spent sixth grade completely obsessed with the band, and I was ecstatic to see them in concert. David's mom took us to the show, and we tried our best to fit in, but it was much more a hair-metal scene than a Jesus scene. The noise and the crowd were too much for us, and we were out way too late for a school night. We left before the encore.

When I was 24 years old, I went to my first 24/7 bar - Pop's in Sauget, Illinois. Located in a cluster of warehouse-looking strip clubs and a late-night dance club, Pop's serves inflated-price drinks to night owls, service industry folk and representatives of the seediest elements of humanity not currently in prison. Pop's is a slice-of-life playground for a fearless social journalist like myself, and with various combinations of friends, I've been back a dozen or so times in the past three years. There's so such thing as being out too late when you're at Pop's.

This is the first time I've ever arrived at Pop's before two in the morning, though, and my past and present worlds are colliding head on. Stryper, who broke up in 1991 and didn't reunite until a couple years ago, is playing a show on a stage I've only seen graced with unenthusiastic, middle-of-night rock cover bands.

My friend Jason, a Christian school kid himself, was the only person in my current life morbidly amused enough to be dragged along. He remembers Stryper from their mid-'80s heyday, and he's spent several drunk nights at Pop's with me over the years. He's down for the colliding of the worlds. Our only concern is getting to the show in time.

"I only even want to see like the last third of the show," I tell Jason as he's simultaneously parking the car and fielding a cell phone call from his girlfriend, the doctor. "I'm more interested in talking to random fans afterward and trying to meet the band."

"We'll see plenty of the show, including every last note of 'To Hell With the Devil'."

"All I know is, if you make me miss 'The Rock That Makes Me Roll,' heads will."

"That's the cheesiest goddamn thing you've said all day."

My fears were utterly groundless, it turns out. Doors opened two and a half hours ago, and so far all we've missed is the opening band, budding young Christian rockers name of Subseven. The door bouncer tells us Stryper will be onstage within the next five minutes. I whip out my credit card to pay the twenty-dollar ticket price times two, and I swear I can hear that little rectangular piece of plastic groan.

I scan the crowd. Shit, there's not even 500 people in here. The first three people I see are two massively obese gentlemen in their mid-thirties (think Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons") and a dude in a wheelchair whose limbs are more twisted than your average Pop's patron at four in the morning. I hope he's not planning on getting healed at this show. I think the only thing the Stryper guys will be laying their hands on tonight is the door cash.

I spot the obligatory merchandise table, and I make a beeline. I've been out all day funneling beer into my body - a Stryper T-shirt suddenly seems like it would be a hilarious keepsake worth the 25 bucks. My eyes immediately light on a black T-shirt that features the original album art from Stryper's 1984 debut EP, The Yellow and Black Attack. Beneath the Stryper logo is a depiction of a blue globe whose continents are shaded in with yellow and black horizontal stripes. And they actually have one shirt left in a size XXL.

The shirt looks kind of weird on the display board - its sleeves are cut off with oddly shaped, feminine silver stripes. When I ask the merch stand guy if that's what they really look like, he shrugs. Turns out he's Stryper lead singer Michael Sweet's son, which means he doesn't really have to worried about being fired for lack of customer service skills.

Taking a quick glance around, I notice an attractive lady who's pushing forty but looks several years younger. She has one of the Yellow and Black Attack t-shirts folded over her left arm. I ask if I can take a look at it. She obliges me; it's just a regular old black t-shirt, and I'm sold. The credit card can keep on groaning, for all I care.

The attractive lady pushing forty notices my friend Jason, standing just over my shoulder, points a finger out at him and asks, "Is your name Jeremiah?"

He shakes his head. He does have an older brother named Jeremiah, also a Christian school alum.

"Jason? Jason Faxon?"

The attractive lady remembers Jason from our Christian school and probably more so from the church that was attached to it - Grace Church, one of the biggest in St. Louis. She elbows the man standing next to her, a toned-down rocker-looking type with a stocking cap and leather jacket.

"He's a Faxon," she tells him.

"He's a Faxon?!" He checks out Jason. "Jason! Hoooooh-leee shit!" The guy pumps Jason's hand up and down.

Now it's Jason's turn to act surprised. "Dale Delaney?!"

Now it's my turn to act surprised. "You're a Delaney?!"

This guy was like seven years ahead of me at Grace Christian School, but I remember his dad and mom and younger brother Bradley, who was way too cool to talk to me but seemed impressed with my sense of humor regardless.

"Your dad knew me from a baby," I tell him. "I'm Andrew Hicks. My mom works on the sermons with the pastor. She helped found that church like thirty years ago."

"You're a Hicks?!"

Needless to say, Jason and I end up hanging out with Dale Delaney and his attractive wife quite a bit over the course of the Stryper concert and after. But first, I tear myself away from the impromptu reunion to get a couple beers, buy the Yellow and Black Attack shirt and head to the men's room to change into it posthaste.

The door bouncer was right - Stryper's on stage within five minutes of our arrival, and "The Rock That Makes Me Roll" is like the fourth song they play. Delaney, who was one of the baddest-ass kids at Grace Christian and actually was expelled for his sinfulness and rebellion, is at the age of 33 still a massive fan of Stryper. He asks us if we got the new album. Neither of us can honestly answer in the affirmative. "I got it the first day it came out!" he brags cheerfully.

While Stryper's playing some bland, generic-sounding pop rock off their new album, Delaney and Jason rehash an adolescent memory. Namely, while on a youth group outing, Jason's brother Jeremiah was knocked down in a skating rink by an unchurched hooligan. Jason stepped in to talk trash, and the heathen and three of his friends wanted to fight. Trailed the church bus back and everything. Jason was outnumbered and outsized, and he had one quarter in his pocket. Called Dale Delaney, cashed in a favor, and watched Delaney and a handful of his big-haired rebel buddies beat the crap out of the unchurched hooligans. Supposedly, there's a butterfly-shaped blood stain on Grace's concrete sidewalk to this day.

"Does anybody out there remember the year 1983?" asks Stryper frontman Michael Sweet. The crowd, such as it is, roars appreciatively. "Well, this one's off our debut album, The Yellow and Black Attack, which only had six songs. It's called 'Loud and Clear'."

Delaney starts jumping up and down. He tells his wife they have to get closer to the stage. We tell them we'll catch up with them later. Jason and I need another beer.

We watch the next half hour of the show from the corner of the bar, which is completely uncrowded. Apparently, the Stryper concert attendees are taking that "Thou shalt not drink Bud Light from a plastic bottle priced at $4.25" commandment to heart.

Ironically, though, Stryper just had to replace their bass player of twenty years because the bass player had a huge drinking problem. And Michael Sweet's brother Robert, the drummer, has also been introduced from the microphone as being fresh out of rehab for the same reason. I crack a joke that we should have a cocktail waitress send Robert a Long Island Iced Tea on us, and Jason dismisses it as an insensitive gesture.

--

A couple plastic beers later, we get the urge to wander the concert, maybe actually integrate ourselves into the crowd. But first, a trip up the stairs to Pop's narrow, rickety balcony, where it seems all the parents who brought their small children are hiding. For 10:30 on a Thursday night in East St. Louis, there are a surprising amount of elementary-age kids in attendance. The parents probably think they're doing these children a world of good - one glimpse at the reunited Stryper and there's no way little Courtney will ever want to listen to Avril Lavigne or Eminem again. Who needs 'em once you've been hit with an all-out yellow and black attack?

There's a perfect spot on the upper level where the stage is directly ahead and you can watch the concert through hockey-stadium plexiglass. The noise is muffled, the view is perfect, and after one song, we end up talking to one of these proud parents trying to inaugurate his fifth grade daughter to the glories of Christian hair metal. He tells us all about the Stryper reunion show from 2003, which also played at Pop's but was sold out and featured classic songs he thought he'd never see the dust get blown off of.

"This time, no surprises," he says. "The set list is posted on the table next to the soundboard. Look."

I look down through the plexiglass - the guy's totally right. The entire path of the concert is charted in bold, 24-point Times New Roman font. There are two more songs in the regular set, then two songs in the encore and a scripted "closing prayer." Jason and I high-tail it down to the floor, so we can integrate ourselves into the heart of the crowd. Then, half driven by irony and half by the ghost of my 1988 self, I pump my fist and sing along with "To Hell With the Devil" and "Soldiers Under Command." Me and several hundred Bible-believing hoosiers.

The closing prayer is surreal. As stated, I've had a dozen or so dead-of-night drunk experiences at Pop's, witnessing bar fights and tittie contests, and I never thought I'd hear the entire bar fall silent and turn its full attention to Jesus. If just for ninety seconds. It's a stirring moment, beer buzz or no.

--

I've got beer in hand as half the attendees form a single-file line leading into the cordoned-off left half of the bar. Behind the curtain are all four members of Stryper, with Sharpies poised in hand. They've vowed to sign autographs for anyone who's purchased a vinyl copy of their 2005 album Reborn from Michael Sweet's none-too-personable teenage son at the merch stand. Christian school blast from the past Dale Delaney, who bought Reborn on CD the came out, is clutching a shrink-wrapped vinyl copy. He's dying to have the guys sign his ticket stub from a Stryper concert he went to at Laclede's Landing shithole Mississippi Nights in 1985.

But before he gets in line, Delaney wants to have a Red Bull and vodka and bullshit with us at the bar. And talk about his own days spent in a hair metal band, St. Louis' own King of the Hill. Delaney was their drummer, and he went with them to L.A. when their record label decided the time was right to promote the hell out of them and cross them over to the mainstream.

"I was out there for awhile, man. Partied with some crazy motherfuckers." He takes a sip from his plastic cup. "I dated Nicole Eggert from 'Baywatch' - well, this was right before she was on 'Baywatch' - for a few months."

"You bagged Eggert? Are you shitting me?!" My eyebrows just shot up. "I gotta shake your hand for this one. Next drink's on me - I had the wickedest ninth grade crush on Nicole Eggert. I used to watch 'Charles in Charge' every day on Channel 30 after school."

He snickers. "'Charles in Charge.' Yeah, Scott Baio was with her right before me. I got her away from him. That fucker couldn't stand me."

"And you made an enemy of Scott Baio?! Next six drinks are on me!"

Thus begins a five-minute digression into all things Nicole Eggert. I want every story he can cough up. One of those stories involves sex in the back of a limo on the way to the Emmy's, and I'm thinking I wouldn't have been privvy to its retelling had Dave's wife not currently been embroiled in Christian School Catchup conversation with Jason two barstools over.

I bring up a direct-to-video soft-core porn thriller Eggert bared her breasts in. Some early '90s affair called Blown Away, a movie whose sex scenes I had taped in grainy EP mode during a Cinemax airing at the age of fifteen or so and replayed several dozen times late at night with the bedroom door locked.

"She filmed that one while we were together, man. I totally remember reading that script one day when I was over at her place smoking a joint in my bathrobe. It was a piece of shit. I laughed my ass off."

"It had this hilarious love triangle between Nicole, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman."

"I did coke with Feldman."

"Were those guys trying to get with her during the whole shoot?"

"Shit yeah, wouldn't you?!"

"But they didn't succeed?"

"They knew better. I would've stomped the fuck out of those Coreys."

Dale's wife stands in line with the Reborn album and the Ziplocked 1985 ticket stub - she has to be up at 6:30 in the morning, and her patience is waning - while us three guys do shots at the bar. I learn King of the Hill's crossover chances were ruined when the Seattle grunge scene took over ("Fuckin' Nirvana!"). The topic of other Christian metal bands comes up, and Dale, Jason and I rattle off the santified shredders of our past. One Bad Pig, Tourniquet, Angelica, Holy Soldier, Mortification, Whitecross, Bride, and my personal favorite, Bloodgood.

"I know one of the guys in Bloodgood," Delaney says excitedly. "You know what they do now? They're plumbers. Like, they'll come to your house and plunge your peetrap!"

Before the wife returns, Delaney gets exponentially more sloshed and starts talking about how much he likes to fight, how in fact he wants to punch somebody right now. I suggest he take out his rage on the new Stryper bass player, since traditional Strypermania would dictate that the new guy was quite the poseur. Dale says hell no, he'd never punch anybody in Stryper, and he says this reverently.

--

Jason and I stay at Pop's long after Mrs. Delaney drags Mr. Delaney out the door and Stryper finishes signing images of themselves. On the way back from the bathroom, I talk to a trashy-looking woman in her forties who has been a traveling Stryper groupie since the mid-'80s. I ask if she ever tried to sleep with any of them. She acts like it's a completely foreign notion, says Stryper groupies are more like sisters and mothers to the guys in the band. But, shit, she sure has gotten drunk and nose-candied-up with Robert and departed bass player Tim Gaines more than she can count.

I talk to a man in his seventies who came to see Stryper because he saw six of their videos on MTV between 1986 and 1990. ("'Honestly.' That was a pretty big one for them. It was in the lower reaches of MTV's Top 20 countdown for three weeks.") This man is several times the music video junkie I am. He's been taping music videos for 25 years and isn't even a fan of rock, country or hip-hop. He likes classical music, but he thinks music video is an artform, and he's a collector and conneissour. And he can describe in disturbing detail every Stryper video he saw on MTV during the second Reagan administration.

And I talk to a guy a year younger than me who tells me with a completely straight face that he owes Stryper his life. As an adolescent, he was depressed for months straight, was determined to commit suicide. Until he listened to a little album called In God We Trust, from a little band wearing yellow and black and spouting inspirational lyrics like, "The devil's not your friend / The truth is not a lie," and, "There doesn't have to be any pain / Forever you and I will reign." That's enough to make any young man untangle his noose.

"I'd give anything to meet those guys," he says.

"Well, if you would've gave twenty bucks to the merch stand, you could have met them like five minutes ago."

"I don't have a record player, and besides, I already paid fifteen bucks for that album on CD. I just want to shake their hands and tell them they changed my life."

"I know where their tour bus is. Let's go see if it's still there."

"I'll go to their tour bus! I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid of anything!"

He says this two more times while sitting on his bar stool. I finally get him up and we head out the front door of Pop's. Make a sharp right and walk past the building into a wooden-fenced area whose gate is wide open with a tour bus behind it. The suicide guy keeps talking about how he'll knock on the door, he's not afraid, he's gonna do it. Thirty seconds later, I end up knocking.

A guy in his early twenties comes to the front of the bus and pops the door open, steps outside. Tells us the guys are all tired out from playing eighty minutes of killer Christian rock and roll and signing all those images of themselves after. He's the tour manager, this guy, and we trade stories about our childhood histories with Stryper. The suicide guy repeats himself yet again and makes the tour manager promise to tell the guys in the band that they saved some kid in St. Louis' life.

I tell the tour manager about how when I was in sixth grade, I had posters of Stryper all over my room, and my mom feared for my developing sexuality. My grandma gasped, realizing this band was the embodiment of the demonic creatures from the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:8. To quote the Apostle John: "Their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as THE HAIR OF WOMEN."

The tour manager gets a quizzical look on his face, then thanks us for our support over the years and hands each of us two souvenir yellow and black guitar picks bearing the Stryper logo. Jackpot. These babies are six bucks a pair at the merch stand. I pocket the picks and head back inside the bar that never closes. Away from the world I knew and back to the world I know.