The days before social media

I know it sounds strange now, but back when I spent a lot of time on the road, there were no cell phones or internet. Basically, nobody could get in touch with us while travelling so we would make collect calls from phone booths or our hotel room to let whoever needed to know we were there safe and sound. These days it feels weird if I forget to take my phone when I go to the store! In the days before email, bands had mailing lists that we would send out every month. This was quite entailed, as we had to go from table to table on our breaks to ask for addresses for the list, then whichever band member did the list had to try and decipher the handwriting and transfer it to the master list, lay out the post cards with gigs and other info, go to Kinkos to get a bunch printed, then stamp each one individually and mail them. It was involved, but that was just the way it was done then. Very few gigs back then provided rooms out of town, and needless to say, we went cheap, so some fairly sketch places were stayed in! It was a different world back then, and I'm grateful to have been part of it.