Joe Nelson on No For An Answer and Dan O'Mahoney

No For An Answer at The Anthrax, photo: Boiling Point

Joe Nelson delivers yet again, and gives us the downlow on Dan O from way back when.

-DCXX

Well, Dan O' Mahoney was a blow hard mouthpiece before No For An Answer existed. He had a zine called S.I.C. Press, and came across as if he were a superior intellect compared to the rest of us. I learned to really love him later in life, we actually became great friends in the early 90s, but man he sure was tough to digest early on.

N.F.A.A. probably only succeeded at the very beginning because Gavin Oglesby and Casey Jones were so loved and respected throughout our little community. Dan on the other hand...not so much. 

For a while, the guys I ran around with, who were called the O.C. Sloth Crew, would fire extinguish anybody in H.B. wearing an N.F.A.A. shirt. That pretty much sums up how we felt about them. We would also toilet paper Dan's townhouse from time to time, and leave little notes on his garage saying something like "How about clean up time for an answer? Love the O.C. Sloth Crew," or "OHHHHH NOOOOOMAHONEY"...stupid stuff like that. Dan was a tough guy too, but I don't think he really knew what to make of us back then, or else he would have retaliated.

We actually all bonded finally at the Anthrax in Norwalk, Connecticut one night. N.F.A.A played a show there with G.B. and Chain of Strength maybe? A couple of the Sloth Crew dudes, including me, were out in New York so we went to the show.

What happened was all the trains stopped running back to the city, so nobody from California, except for Chain, had a way back to N.Y.C. This was like in late November, and I remember it was snowing at the time. It really seemed like a pretty bleak situation at the time. None of us ever entertained the idea of pooling our money for a motel room of course. That would have made too much sense I suppose.

The owner of the Anthrax eventually said we could just crash inside the club, and then catch the morning train in. I remember Porcell's last words to me as he pulled out of the parking lot with Walter Schreifles, Lukey Luke, Alex Brown, and Nicole Straight Edge were "Hey guys I see a soda can over there you can curl up next too!" What a fucker.

Anyway, the Anthrax was pretty warm inside so it wasn't the worst thing in the world, or so we all thought. What we discovered in horror was it was only warm because of the body heat that had collected during the show. About 45 minutes into the...ummmm..."sleep over," it became FREEEEEEEEEZINNGG inside. It was unreal. People were running laps around the inside of the club in a feeble attempt to stay warm. Everybody was curled up next to one another on the stage trying to use our collective body heat to prevent what we all thought for sure would be a major hypothermia problem. A couple dudes even broke down and cried. I don't remember what he said exactly, but Dan said something that busted everyone up. I realized "Holy shit, Dan is actually pretty fucking funny", which at the time was my only real criteria for making a person "OK" in my book.

So from that point on we were friends. Obviously everyone survived that night as well. The next morning we ate breakfast together, took the train back into the city, and any beef between any of us and Dan was forever squashed.