After the show, I thought the whole thing must have been an anomaly. Fans? In Belgium? Clearly we had just accidentally found kids so deprived of any and all entertainment that seeing four people wearing colored wigs and fabric tails blew their minds. I was wrong. Every show was like the first, and each was bigger than the last. No big deal, we were pros. Rock and roll was in our blood. We worked the crowd. We knew exactly when to "high-five," when to "down-low," and when to "too slow."

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The kids ate it up.

After a while, I started to believe in the myth. How could I not? A performance in Germany had a "Lance" fan section, a group of tweens so enamored with a surfing lion that mine was the only autograph they requested after the show. We spent the evenings carousing and drinking. We rode from town to town on a double-decker party bus with satellite TV and a bar. I stopped in Amsterdam, participated in local legalities at a coffee shop, then again at a bar, then on someone's lawn. I then spent an hour watching an organ grinder on a boat on the canals play music for pocket change. It was the most beautiful song I've ever forgotten.

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We were young, famous (among the 6- to 12-year-old demographic), and reckless. We drank with the locals in Brussels. Hooked up with bartenders in Stavenger, Norway. Then we performed on a 25-foot elevated stage for a pit of screaming children (and their mothers) in Ansbach, Germany. We even picked fights with soldiers at Ramstein Air Base. And by "picked fights," I mean quietly acquiesced when a group of enlisted stole our taxicab. But the retorts I came up with six weeks later were excoriating.