Every special Capital Centre memory of music and sports and childhood wonderment told by Nestor to retrospective author Kevin Leonard at Costas Inn in Dundalk on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. Interviewing ZZ Top, meeting James Brown and getting a backstage tour from Jon Bon Jovi. What a place!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
capital, center, tickets, story, beastie boys, capitol, leonard, ticket stub, called, parking lot, nestor, play, smithereens, book, abe, heavy metal, friends, ringling brothers, nice, dude
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Kevin Leonard
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
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Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, tassel, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. Leonard Raskin tonight pulling my lottery tickets away from the set here. I’ve been giving them out like Oprah, like you’re a winner, you’re a winner. These people won five bucks. They won seven bucks. We’re we’re taking pictures. We’re at Costas in beautiful Dundalk. It’s not a beautiful day outside, but the sun will be shining if the Ravens win and the Orioles continue to win and stay alive, we are in the midst of a segment I’ve waited a long time to participate in. There’s a capital center book. It’s a retrospective book that was written by Richard friend, Kevin Leonard and Jeff krulick. I happen to have Kevin Leonard here with man, you got handwritten notes. You got all the stuff you want to get in, Leonard won’t leave. He’s over here. He’s about to order dozen crabs and stay awhile. Use his own did you take the mallet? You to take the mallet, the Lena Raskin global mallet that I opened a beer with a little while ago, and I’m giving lottery tickets out. We’re having fun, but I have this mystical box with all my alphabetized ticket stubs of my childhood, and there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tickets in here. And you know, there are some shows that I remember for my own personal reasons. And then I was the music critic, like I talked about Jon Bon Jovi getting a shot in the butt, and I talked about Robert Plant, but the nicest guys I ever met in rock and roll, and I’ve already referenced them, Leonard, I can’t believe that I told you this story earlier. The nicest guys ever to me as a music critic. They refused to do a pre interview with me. They demanded that we do it in person. And it was the guys in ZZ Top, and this is when they’re doing tonight. They were a big band. I mean, this was like eliminator afterglow tour, right? So I met them underneath and sat in their backstage room while they went through their sunglasses and they were talking about this Mississippi. I have this on tape. This is you can listen to this at Baltimore positive. You can just click. And so I have these weird memories there that are more than getting drunk in the parking lot, chasing girls, right, being there for a hockey game, waving pom poms and yelling every time I was at Hatcher, touch the puck Right, right, right, exactly, all right. Well, here’s
Kevin Leonard 02:11
a question for you.
Nestor Aparicio 02:12
Since you was Murphy, Larry Murphy, I’m
Kevin Leonard 02:13
sorry you spent so much time there. I everybody that I interviewed that had any interaction with the performers. I asked them a question for my own curiosity. It’s certainly not in the book. I said, who was the biggest pain in the butt to deal with? And it was unanimous. Who do you suppose it was
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Nestor Aparicio 02:31
musician?
Kevin Leonard 02:34
I’ll give you that as a hint. Yes, it is a performer.
Nestor Aparicio 02:38
Well, this musician must have come back and forth many times to be that much of a pain in the butt, right? Like, no, how I Okay, so let’s How often did this performer play there?
Kevin Leonard 02:47
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It was more than once. That’s all I know. What era 70s, you know, either take a guess. You make 1000s of people there, yeah, but some of them had to be a pain in the butt to you. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 02:58
mean, anybody that wasn’t sober, which is half the musicians, you know, I mean, like, yeah, I don’t I does this person have a reputation for being like, well,
Kevin Leonard 03:08
I didn’t know about it. It possible, but I didn’t know about it.
Nestor Aparicio 03:13
Male or female? Male? Barry Manilow,
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Kevin Leonard 03:17
No, all right. Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond, yeah, yep, they said he was and I’m
Nestor Aparicio 03:25
trying to talk my wife into seeing the jazz singer. Don’t be like. Neil was very nice to me and I met him at the Capitol center.
Kevin Leonard 03:30
They said he was just impossible. He had it in his contract that down in the bowels of the Capitol center where the limo would let him off, he had to have curtains from the door all the way to his dressing room. No one could see Mr. Diamond. It was just stuff like that. It was more than that. But that’s just,
Nestor Aparicio 03:48
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he’s Neil freaking diamond, you know? I mean, anyway, he was, he said it was, well,
Kevin Leonard 03:55
here’s no one there, so here’s, here’s another. Actually, this is my favorite story about concerts, and this one is in the book I’m
Nestor Aparicio 04:01
whipping stuff out. Go ahead.
Kevin Leonard 04:03
We met with a guy named Mike Barger on we become pretty good friends with him. He was a concessionaire for Ogden, and he he and his partner did the concession booth for T shirts and hats and stuff up on the concourse. I remember the name Ogden services. Yeah, correct. And so the band The police is going to play that this night. And he said it was very common that hours before a show, that you’d see performers walking around the concourse because there was nothing else to do. And he said, Here comes sting and Stuart Copeland jogging, or with his walk, just walking around the concert the concourse rather and they see the their their booth, and they came over and started looking through the T shirts. Now they didn’t recognize him. And his partner said, hey, get away from our stuff. We’re not open yet. And sting says it’s okay. We’re the police. He thought he meant the Prince George’s County police. He said, well, then you ought to know better. Get away from our stuff. And sting said, Really, we’re the police. He goes, I heard you the first time. Get away from our stuff. So sting and Copeland go backstage, and he’s he’s not happy, and he told them his manager, I’m not going on until that guy comes and apologizes to me. So they had to send the whole contingent up to the concourse and convince this guy, what he did, and who this guy was, and he did, and the show went on. But
8Nestor Aparicio 05:26
I met Michael Hutch under the Capitol Center. He autographed the ticket for me some I’m just trying to think of like, here’s my Iron Maiden. You’ll appreciate. This is my photo pass from the pit at the Capitol center, you know, but doesn’t say capital center on it. So that’s not fun. I mean, there’s something a mystique about the logo itself. Oh, yeah. And I need to hear that story, because the logo, and, you know, I’m holding up all sorts of capital center stuff here, and the book is here. And, I mean, this was, I want to tell this story when you’re done, because this has to do with Def Leppard and Mike Messina, which is, yeah. So anyway, this will be a good story. Well,
Kevin Leonard 06:00
we did track down the guy who did the design has passed on. And, you know, he did the logo that everybody’s familiar with, but he also did all the branding. Do you remember the four icons in the parking lot?
Nestor Aparicio 06:11
Eagle patriot. Hold on, help me, Leonard, there was an eagle lot. A patriot. Come on. There were four lots. Yep, capital lot. Is that a capital lot? Yep,
Kevin Leonard 06:22
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and stars and stripes. Stars and Stripes, I never would have got because so we, we put the book in force different sections, using those logos as identifiers. Because, you know, when we started comparing notes, anybody that went to capital center, you remembered those icons. Otherwise you were looking for your car for hours. It was such a humongous parking lot. Yeah. So now the other thing I have to give you some Grateful Dead stories.
Nestor Aparicio 06:45
My journey ticket from 82 All right, go ahead.
Kevin Leonard 06:47
So you know a Poland was a little bit older. You know, he was not rock and roll. And every time the Grateful Dead came into town, he had no idea what was
Nestor Aparicio 06:58
going I never went to those shows. Dude. I was not a dead guy. I tell him already, not that all the time. They had a
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Kevin Leonard 07:05
an office in a separate building in the parking lot, back in the parking lot, and a Poland’s office was in there. And he couldn’t believe his eyes when he looked out his window and a bunch of naked deadheads were taking a bath on the shower drips. Yeah, of course, they were air conditioner Yeah. And
Nestor Aparicio 07:23
then he sent, they sent their asses up to Merriweather. And then they destroyed downtown Columbia. You know, they got thrown out of there for a while. I love you deadheads, but, my God, take a bath for crying out loud. I mean, you know what I mean. And
Kevin Leonard 07:33
another Grateful Dead con. They were there numerous the Grateful Dead actually recorded three albums at Capitol center, but another time for
Nestor Aparicio 07:43
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man, Billy Joel and the innocent man, torn 84 I camped out with Richard Abrahams for that, I got to get Richard out to tell some stories. Eighth row man, we camped out for two days. Right to J Mike Collins, appreciate that, and look at how ugly these this is serious, like you get these tickets at the heck company and 4040, years and eight months later, I’m pissed because I got an ugly ticket stub. Who wants this ticket stub?
Kevin Leonard 08:10
Seriously? Don’t look at me. We got, well, you had to
Nestor Aparicio 08:13
get out of the capital center to get a capital center ticket. I mean, I’m being honest with you, I look back and it’s disappointing. That’s all I could say. It’s
Kevin Leonard 08:22
time to get over it. Okay. Anyway, you know, ugly this ticket stop
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Nestor Aparicio 08:27
is for Billy Joel in 1990 Whose idea was this, and who thought I was gonna get 50% off the CPI Photo Finish. I’m gonna use that. You know, many Roy Rogers milkshakes out if I, if I would have turned these, you know, I would have missed out on anyway. Go ahead, keep telling fun stories about being a jerk, the imagine that
Kevin Leonard 08:48
a bunch of deadheads without tickets somehow shimmied up onto the roof and then to feel the vibration. No, they’re trying to get in. And they found the air conditioning ducks, and they went in through those and they dropped down into a Sky Suite, which was certainly out of their price range, but a bunch of dirty hippies just falling out of the ceiling
Nestor Aparicio 09:11
that comes with the head shell, I can That’s a feature, not a bug,
Kevin Leonard 09:21
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a Poland the Capitol Center’s very first week. It was a bullets game, the Allman Brothers Band, the WHO Johnny Cash and Disney on Ice. That’s not a bad start. But during the Allman Brothers, which was the very first concert, Abe Poland is walking around the concert concourse. Smelled some funny and he said, What’s that? Smell funny cigarettes. And the guy was told me the story said I had to explain to him a if you’re gonna have concerts, you better get used to that. So, you know, here’s
Nestor Aparicio 09:53
a capital center story that’s a universal, all right, this is a total universal. And I use this reference. Yes, anytime I see this, and we don’t have a whole lot of women in the room, but if we did of that age or that era, any concert, any concert, I’ll go through any of these from that era, from 1980 on. I mean, straight on. You mentioned Allman Brothers and weed, very few shows I didn’t smell weed at that rush concert. Saxon for sure. First time I was in the capital center, I smell weed in the first 30 minutes for concert, right? But women using the men’s room. Women using the men’s room is an enduring capital center tradition that to this day, when I’m anywhere and women have too long of a line, and they got a bum rush the men’s room, and they come in and they titter, and we all like laugh and hooted them and say, Go. You know, we all have wives and sisters and mothers. We love women. Go. But the capital center was the mothership for all you 60 something women out there lying your granddaughters that you weren’t tanked in a Ted Nugent show and had to go pee and you one time you peed in the men’s room at the Capitol center. To every one of you did it, every one of you, it’s true. You Jeff, it’s right. It’s true, absolutely, sure. And also, I need to know about the capital center. Well, by the way, you mentioned the sky boxes. Yeah, the press box at the Capitol center for hockey was in the corner near the press room. That’s where I witnessed a lot of hockey. I mean, I covered the team for years and years, Bob fashay and, you know, just all up in that corner and underneath, above the portal, I didn’t know what the hell a portal was. I mean, P, O, R T, every time you got a seat at the Capitol center, it said portal, right here. Enter portal. Who uses the word portal? Like, what else in your life? If you heard the word portal used for other than the capital center, but above the portal, there was like a glass and a little box. And I don’t know if they were designed to be little press boxes at one point, or they were thought to be used that way, but in 1992 in the summer 1992 I was on the radio, doing my show. Kenny Albert was at HTS at that time, and the caps media department, so that would have been Luke corletto And Micah booked. All was gone by then, Julie. Was Julie, I love you. Still there probably, and they did a media thing at the cap center, and we all went down. And it was a skate, it was a get to know the play. Was media day for the for the media and the players, and 92 maybe Terry Murray may have been, who was the donut guy? Who was the donut guy? Red hair, come on. Devil’s coach, Jim Schoenfeld, yeah, go Have another donut. Yeah. Donut guy may have been him 92 they had a media thing, and we went down on the ice, and they had a game for the media. And there’s 30 of us, you know. I mean, Rimmer was probably gone. Then I’m trying to think of who the people were. And some of the guys were, like, older folks. Jimmy Jackson was alive, then he couldn’t play hockey. They had us down. We played hockey, golf, and I played hockey. So they gave us a stick, and we had to hit the puck into the centers. And whoever did the best, they had prizes for the media. You know, it was like just to try to be nice, and it was with any big thing. But one of them, the, I think second place was you could pick an event and have a skybox for a night, and I played hard. Eddie Franko Vick was there that day. Eddie might have been scoring, but it was like hockey golf for 20 of us to try to compete, to show us how hard hockey was, to go out on the ice and try to move the puck and control like a bocce ball, right? Literally, on the ice. That beautiful baby blue. You gotta tell the baby blue ice story. You know that story. I’m not sure television that the ice was always baby blue there. Yeah, yeah. They had a tinted, yeah. They had a tinted for television, yeah. Only place they did that, right, right, right. Um, this before HD, and all that stuff. So we went down the ice and I won the competition to whatever distinction that I got a box. So I got a box with eight people, and this meant, like, maybe getting a limo. I’m 23 I’m on the radio eight months, like, literally not even really nasty Nestor. The Orioles are a big deal because Camden Yards of summer 92 and I was always with the team, and Mike Messina, I became friends that summer when they he was pitching and playing great Sutcliffe, all those guys were on the team, Brady Anderson, Cal all that, and moose and I love music, and we would drink beer after games and Hooters and a balls downtown just now, DSX. Now, what is it called? It’s called the Pratt street Ale House. I called it the D I called it by sec. Name, you call it PJ crickets. And we went down. We got a limo that night, and moose, you know, was making probably 100 grand, anybody but mega, he wouldn’t, right? He was a rookie. I mean, $137,000 he wasn’t rich. But we chipped in and got a limo and me, him and his brother and all my beer buddies went down to see Def Leppard, and we got to sit in Portal box five. I don’t have any other box tickets in. I got press passes at the Yazoo. I got tickets of all colors and denominations. But this was a night we had, and this was when they played in the round. This was the tour, infamously, where things were happening under the stage there with various fans that probably would me to them. You know, Joe Ellie has silver hair now, so, you know, but, but this was probably that, so this was the adrenalized tour. So, yeah, so I get so many memories, man, well, no, let
Kevin Leonard 15:53
me talk about the caps for a minute. Let’s go, because you probably don’t know this as how he actually got the caps. Well, this is part of the process. So when he opened the capital center, he was told by everybody, every financial consultant, you had to have two tenants, which meant basketball and hockey. Well, what else is there? Well, he already had the bullets, and by his good luck, as they were building the capital center, the National Hockey League was in the process of expanding by two teams, and the front runners, if I remember this right, were Kansas City and Cleveland. So they got into that process late, but they had to get a hockey team or the capital center may not have lasted five years. It just wasn’t economically viable. So they had this brilliant idea. They said, why don’t we get Irving Feld, who owns Ringling Brothers, to help us? Because they’d already had Feld at the Capitol center, so they knew him, and he, he already plays it all the arenas that have hockey teams. He knows everybody. Did
Nestor Aparicio 16:56
he own the ice cap page too? No, no, because the ice cap page only went to the capital center, never came to the city. Well, that
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Kevin Leonard 17:02
was, that was their own version. Okay, that was not the ice capade, oh,
Nestor Aparicio 17:06
okay, all right. Well, I just remember when I was a kid, there was a lot of things that didn’t come to the arena, and I understood it. But this created that Mystique I told you about, because I never got to the Capitol center till I was about 11. But that first 11 years, the bullets won titles. And, you know, the capitals had ice hockey and and the eagles were playing there, and Elvis and kiss and all these things that you’re too young. Yeah, maybe you’ll be 12 one day, you know, like, so I missed out on all of that. So here in these stories is the best. So
Kevin Leonard 17:37
they think that this is a stroke of genius and get this guy to lobby for him. Well, what they didn’t know is that everybody hated Irving Feld. He was universally hated. None of the arenas owners liked him. So he didn’t do anything to get the team and he
Nestor Aparicio 17:53
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brought the stinky animals in. That was his thing, right? You know, that was this thing. But the but the arenas must have hated the low. It was just a it was a lot for the arenas, I would think at that time, so they probably drove a hard bargain. Well,
Kevin Leonard 18:04
they get the team through their own efforts, they get the team. We all know that the next year, when Ringling Brothers comes in, Irving felt sits down with Abe, and he says, Well, I helped you get the hockey team. I want this. And I want the he wanted a free Sky Suite. He wanted all the concession sales. He won. It was ridiculous, what he wanted. And ape said, No, you didn’t help us at all, you know. So this started a feud. So for the next few
Nestor Aparicio 18:34
that’s why the circus was at the DC armory. Exactly, I took my kid to the DC armory, to the circus when it was like 387, 88 like, Wait, there was a circus at the DC armory,
Kevin Leonard 18:46
but there’s more. So Abe said, You’re not playing a capital center anymore. And Abe went and created his own circus called circus America, and they played date for date. When Ringling Brothers was down at the armory, circus America was a capital center. If Ringling Brothers took out a half page ad in The Washington Post, circus America took out a full page, you’re
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Nestor Aparicio 19:07
saying Tom Petty wasn’t the only petty to pay. This was a blood feud
Kevin Leonard 19:11
for years. And I don’t know, I never, I never heard the story of how they made
Nestor Aparicio 19:16
nice, almost like me and Angelo’s letter. I mean, really, you know, they
Kevin Leonard 19:21
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did. And eventually, ringing brothers came back and they kind of buried, man,
Nestor Aparicio 19:25
oh, it’s a good Phil Chenier, come on the biggie, whoo, did you?
Kevin Leonard 19:30
You remember the puck chick? No, no, no, the picture of in here, really, really nice. Elena Russo is her name.
Nestor Aparicio 19:40
Oh, I know Elena. She’s the puck chick. Yeah, I didn’t know that. I call her Elena. She
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Kevin Leonard 19:44
was a freshman at Elena was my neighbor PG Community College. Elaine is the best. And there’s a picture. She used to escort the big shots around the ice when they she was
Nestor Aparicio 19:53
telling us she’s six feet tall, she’s beautiful, and she’s a great person. She
Kevin Leonard 19:56
told me when combination, when she escorted Larry. King, the whole place booed. And she was like, she didn’t know what to do. But then the next time it was Bert Ernie, there’s a picture for Bert Ernie in there. And everybody cheered Judas
Nestor Aparicio 20:07
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Priest, may 3119 86 and legendary Well, I got a heavy metal parking lot story. So this is heavy metal parking lot. I want to show this, especially for John Allen, who was sat in this seat here, who’s my heavy metal friend. So the band The smithereens, dear, dear friends of mine, the late great Pat dinizio was a buddy of mine, and I would all. I used to get on their bus and run around the west coast with them and watch dumb movies. And they always had this joke about me being the Nestor, because there’s a movie called War of the Worlds, or battle of the something where there’s a Nester that’s the protagonist. But they always, always, always said, Dude, you were in heavy metal parking lot. And I’m like, I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Like, dude, there’s this thing called heavy metal parking lot. Like, we have it on VHS. We watch it on the bus all the time. We piss ourselves because it’s funny and it’s and this is in 19 No, no, no, no, no, but the time frame is 1995 6789, late 90s. I’m out on the road with the smithereens, and one time they load me into their bus in Cleveland after a show at the agora, and they put the tape on of heavy metal parking lot swearing to me for years that I’m in it. And I’m like, I don’t, I wasn’t at that show. I mean, it was a summer of 86 I remember the show. I was a music critic. Then I was not at the show. I had tickets to, I could I’m like, I wasn’t at the show guys. I’m like, I’m using No, dude, it’s you. It was priest and Maiden, and you’re in it. I swear to God, they it’s you. And I’m like, Alright, man, you know. So finally, they viewed it. Now you can Google it, you can watch it. Now, I own it on DVD. But back then, like you couldn’t go to YouTube and watch it. You had to have this very esoteric videotaping from the PG Community College Television. Is that right? I mean, I’m good. I’ve had those cats on University of Maryland exhibit. They were local dudes who were Wayne’s World, who had a camera in 1986 they had a camcorder and some semi professional community college
Kevin Leonard 22:22
equipment, you know what I mean. And one of them was Jeff kric, one of my calls. That’s why he
Nestor Aparicio 22:26
should come out. That’s how I know his name. Yeah,
Kevin Leonard 22:29
yeah, that was Jeff’s film.
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Nestor Aparicio 22:32
They see now we’re coming full circle.
Kevin Leonard 22:35
They just did a three day retrospective of Jeff’s films in Brooklyn. This is the serendipity of
Nestor Aparicio 22:39
what we’re doing here with this capital center retrospective. Kevin Leonard’s here. He wrote the book with this guy, so that this is perfect that we’re leaving off with heavy metal parking lot. Let you say whatever you’re gonna see in your closing statements. We watch it. We laugh like hell, and it’s a bunch of like Dundalk, 1986 Teresa’s very familiar with that being 84 graduated Dundalk, and I’m an 85 or only Hall of Fame I’m ever getting into, huh? So trust me on that. You too, right, exactly. And it’s not me. You didn’t me. It’s not me. But there is a scene, and it’s 1986 and the person they thought, the reason the Smithereens thought it was me is I owned a live age shirt, okay? And it’s, it was, it was a one of the typical 80s, like my paradise, there was a jersey, like it came to here. It was weird, right? It always cut tight, and, you know, whatever, I always shrunk like a, you know, but the kid in the movies wearing the Live Aid shirt and the Smithereens guys knew I had it and I’d worn it before, and they’re like, Dude, it’s you, it’s you. It’s not me. It wasn’t me. I’ll tell crew like that, it wasn’t me. I’ll look through the ticket stubs and make sure I don’t have a 86 but I wasn’t me. And but that movie is an iconic, iconic part of the capital, sir, and it’s in the first 30 seconds, so if you watch it. You see the kid in the parking lot everything, you know that’s pretty much the movie I just gave you. Pretty much it. Hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on I’ll drop the mic with this. You gotta have the hair out. Come on. Natty bow, over here, capital center, 86 man, priest rules, I want to hear man, Alicia. Man, is that good? It’s pretty accurate. Tell everybody how to find this book. Dude, well, I drink up warm beer. It’s all warm with that EBO and cold. No dimmer, you know,
Kevin Leonard 24:36
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go to our website, laurelhistery.com, and just click on shop, and you will see it there, stories,
Nestor Aparicio 24:42
pictures, never before seen, right? Many, yeah, and the only way that I can have this is to give you 50 bucks and take it home, right? Basically, right? Because this is a lot of this stuff are. The are a bunch of this that I have in my closet, but the missing. Parts like the Elvis Presley part, right, right? And let
Kevin Leonard 25:03
me show you one thing, yeah, sure. Go Please, yeah. Let’s do it. Just to show you the level of the art, no, the Rowdy
Nestor Aparicio 25:11
Roddy Piper there, the level the research that we
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Kevin Leonard 25:13
did. Oh, that sports. Here we go.
Nestor Aparicio 25:16
So wait, break this that. Tell me how many categories this book has, well,
Kevin Leonard 25:20
it’s four sections. There’s one section on the venue itself, sports, concerts, and then everything else. Because, well, while you’re looking,
Nestor Aparicio 25:26
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I’ll tell one more story, because you mentioned the quiet room. Go ahead, you’re like, it’s the first place to have a quiet room. Yep, I today invited someone that I love probably as much as I love Teresa, and I love her more than Leonard. Nope, nope. Leonard, I’ve known her longer. Tracy Brennan Kelly, my redheaded friend who drank with me at my wedding 20 years ago. Tracy was the assistant PR person for the capital Center. She worked for a man named Bob zur flu. I talked to him. Yeah, Bob’s a wonderful man, please. He’s still with us. Yeah, I got to have him on the show. So flu took me seriously as because my name was in the paper and a son, I was the I went down and got concert tickets. The bands were a little irregular, you know what I mean. And I would interview a band, and I would get down there to have review tickets, and the tickets wouldn’t be at the box office. They would send me to the backstage door. I knew that route better than anybody, right? The whole ramp you get stopped. People were drunk. Hey, kid, what do you do when I look nine years old like I look 12 when I was 18, right? So I look like I didn’t belong, like all of that, and Bob and Tracy took pity on me. And you know how Bob has a professional voice. Did you talk to Bob? Bob’s on the phone with me, and Bob so I would call was a number 792, 9280 I believe was the number from Baltimore, because you had to have a direct Baltimore number. And I called down, and Bob invited me down with Tracy. And Tracy was little older than me and rambunctious, and her husband played a band called Bruno. Loves Dave. She’s a rock and roll girl. She went to Van Halen shows and parties and all that, and then worked at the Capitol Center. She and Bob said, Bob said, Nestor, you don’t want to go through these bands or a pain in the ass. We’ll just leave you. We’ll leave you review tickets every night. Tracy will take care of you. Just tell Tracy when you’re coming down, and we’ll just have the tickets, and that way you don’t get boxed out. So I would always say to the band, leave me tickets, leave me passes, because they that’s how we get the backstage passes. And if they were too drunk, stoned, high, didn’t want to deal with me, did had a problem, you know, Bon Jovi’s sick, the tickets would still be there and I could get in. Sometimes I’ve had to have an extra pair, and I give them back to Tracy or whatever, but either way, they took care of me as a music critic. Oh, man, from 86 to 92 all those years, I invited Tracy today, she’s got a J, O, B, couldn’t come. I wanted her to sit in and tell her stories, and she said I’d be too nervous. And I’m like, well, you’re gonna have to come on and tell the stories. But she was awesome. So I want to say that the if you tell me whatever night the Beastie Boys played, I’ll tell you that that’s the night when they came out with the giant phallic symbol in the middle of the stage and the cages with the dancing girls. And, you know, because you had to fight for your right to party, right? And that was the warm up pack for Run DMC, you know? So, it was black, it was white, it was rap, it was me, it was rock, it was young, it was sex with a capital S and E and an x. This is what Madonna’s like, a virgin and Motley Cruz girls, girls. It’s same era, right? So Tracy calls me as the music critic, and the guy who covered I was a grown up at 20. Bob was probably 21 maybe 2021 she said, we’re doing this thing called a quiet room. And I’m already a parent at the time. I’m I got a five year old, and she said, we’re gonna do this room that was a dining room. It was like, it was like a catering room in the main Executive area. It was twice the size of Costas room, you know, was it was the room. It was the size of Costas the bar, and this big, literally, same table, circle tables where, if Abe was giving a speech to all the employees, or if they were having a luncheon or whatever, they probably could see 200 people, maybe, maybe 250 and it looked like a cafeteria. Pretty. Look like a multifunction It was nothing sexy. There’s some nice pictures of Elvis on the wall or whatever, because it’s capital center, but it wasn’t anything fancy, and I had really only been in there a handful of times. I mean, what purpose would I go in there? And they turned that into the quiet room, and she had me down there that night the Washington Post off Channel Nine, seven. They all had cameras out. And we got down there, and I have a notebook. She said, get here early. We’re gonna open it up. You could talk to some of the parents. You can write a story. And so the idea was, you could park your car, send little Teresa at 14, and her sister Marge, who might be 16, you know, into the show and or might be 11 and 13, like, you know, might not yet, might be more like that. But mom, or, you know, Dad could be there, get Leo by, drop by. I watched the game up. I’ll have and women were in there knitting. They brought, they brought things to do for two and a half hours. They had, you know, Entertainment Tonight, or whatever was on television. They had a television in there. And I went in, and the cameras were there, and there were steps to the downstairs that were kind of like almost nice. They were carpeted. It wasn’t, it was a nice indoor area, but there was a roped off air. You go down and I’m in there and I’m talking to moms and dads and sisters and brothers. Were there to kind of tag along a little bit, I think was free coke and popcorn and hot dogs were two bucks for, you know that, chicken tenders, you know, whatever, for the kids. But there was no entertainment other than you could hear the rumble, because, you know, the double doors led right out to the concourse, right? So I’m up there, and it’s crowded, and there’s a hubbub going on with the people. And add rock, the three Beastie Boys walk into the room. They come up the steps for the camera, you know. So this is a put on for the media, right? And they come up, and the Beastie Boys now are there mugging with the parents. We’re not just all one big penis on the stage. We’re like here. You know, they weren’t like that. They were like, normal guys, not the stage act. You know, they were like, just dudes, and they were signed. I they signed the back of my ticket stub, my Beastie Boys tickets. One of them has left us and has value and like all that. But like that quiet room the night they opened it, it was landmark. Everybody in the media covered it, yeah, and the Beastie Boys showed up in the room. Nobody had cameras. You know what I mean. There’s no evidence other than if they signed something and now March and Theresa come out, and dad’s like, yeah, I met the Beastie Boys. He came. They came in. They were nice kids. They seem like businessmen. So I met the Beastie Boys in the quiet room. So the things you remember, yeah, 35 was 3035. Years later. So yeah, I just
Kevin Leonard 32:20
want to leave with this. This is a kind of an example of the depth and the level of research that we did so between Bobak, no, we spotted this. This is a screen capture from Rocky and there’s a capital center boxing poster on the wall. Wow.
Nestor Aparicio 32:36
Hold on. Give me, let me show that. Is this never before before seen on the internet, I don’t know, never before seen, never before seen on the internet. This is the kinds of things you could do if you go to laurelhistery.com How much is the book? 50 bucks, 50 bucks, and worth
Kevin Leonard 32:50
50 bucks. But we did some research, and like Jason, worth, worth every penny turn. Oh, absolutely. You just, you just structure. I
8
Nestor Aparicio 32:57
knew he was a nationals fan. I knew it. I outed him. I took me an hour.
Kevin Leonard 33:03
I forgot what? Oh, we found out that there is a printer in Philadelphia that does all the boxing. Wow. And they so, I guess they just grabbed one from the capital center and put it like
Nestor Aparicio 33:13
a boxing poster. Yeah, tonight at the Philadelphia spectrum. Yeah, absolutely. And I love the spectrum too. I mean, the spectrum has a history, just like this, that those buildings of that era. I mean, the garden has five histories of that. That’s up when you go to Mass square. Thank you, man. I don’t shake hands of most people at this time of year. I got a Purell myself, but have a crab cake on me. We’re gonna get some Oysters Rockefeller. We’re gonna talk about the Maryland Health Connection. It’s very important. I mean, I can’t, since I’ve invited you on, I’m getting really excited about having you on, saying to learn stuff, capital center, retrospectives, the book I’ve got my ticket stubs out here, and the ugly wins, my Billy Joel, my journey, my Def Leppard, heart in Kansas doubleheader. Man John elefante, singing. Play the game tonight, right there. 1983 December, 5. I love man and Nancy. I’m Nestor Costas. It’s all brought to my friends at the Maryland lottery in conjunction with Liberty pure solutions, our friends at wise markets always putting things together. Here. We’re gonna be back at Pizza, John’s. Leonard’s gonna be joining us there for my birthday, his birthday, Sammy hagar’s birthday, Jim Palmer’s birthday. Orioles are gonna be getting ready to play the the Astros in the American League Championship Series. Ravens are gonna be we play your team. I’m just trying to see if he’s a commander fan. Is that your team? Your commanders used to be Attaboy. Come on over to the purple baby. Come
Kevin Leonard 34:38
8
on until Dan Snyder bought it. Yeah, I
Nestor Aparicio 34:40
know. I know all about bad ownership. I’m an Orioles fan. I’m Nestor. We are W, N, S T am 1570 towns in Baltimore. Kevin Leonard, good man. We’re Costa. Stay with us. We’re gonna learn stuff. You.
