Vitally was also in a band called The Rejects, and one thing I'll never forget is every single show we ever played that Vitally showed up to, there would be a fist-fight between him and Felix Havoc. They would beat the shit outta each other. It was guaranteed.
If the two were present, and we were playing, they would fight. I usually missed out on the actual fight itself, but afterward, both would usually claim victory. I honestly don't even remember what it was all about. But at one point, I thought it might become the main attraction to our shows.
Depending of course on where we played. For instance, neither one of them were at the show we played at a blues club in St.Paul. And this is one of the strangest shows I remember. The crowd was made up entirely of middle aged lesbians who were in NO WAY punk rock. But they loved our song "I Wanna Be A Dyke." So much in fact, they made us play it twice, at which time they began festively throwing bar stools around the place. Good times.
Bob and myself moved into a loft downtown St. Paul. We moved in with a friend of ours, Troy Stark, or "Deli" as some referred to him. He hated that name and had gotten it simply because at one point he had worked in a deli. I'm sure there's an amusing story behind it but he never told me, and no one ever calls him that anymore.
Troy was really cool about me moving in. In the start, it was only supposed to be Bob. But at the time I was living at my mothers apartment and it just wasn't big enough for the two of us. I was really miserable living there at the time and even though I eventually returned, I had to get out of there just to save my sanity.
So he went along with us and allowed me to follow Bob. Back then, I lived off a diet of ramen, and fried baloney sandwiches. Troy hated the smell of fried baloney. He'd come home and yell out "who's frying baloney?!" And it was obvious it was me, but it's fun to yell anyway.
Troy was at, at the time, playing bass for Mondo Trasho, a band I remembered from my old days at the "Pryor Studios", a run down building on University Ave. and Pryor in St. Paul that had practice spaces in it.They used to rehearse in one of the rooms at Pryor where the the band I was in when I was 15-16 had a room, as well as Impaler.
We all were in the basement. There was another really small room in that basement as well, and it was occupied by an old heroin junkie named Pat. This guy was off the fuckin' hook. He would sit in his tiny closet/room and fight with his girl friend who was like 19 (he was pushing 50!) and they would scream at each other, she would cry, he would yell, they would do dope, it would be quiet again and then the whole thing would start over. He was supposed to be the "caretaker" of the building but his main income was from selling dope.
More than once the cops had come there, busted down the door, searched the building and fucked with everybody. Some smart-ass asked one of the plain clothes cops once if he had a warrant. The cop held up a baseball bat and said; "yeah, this is my warrant! ). I saw some crazy shit in that space.
Back to our new place, Troy, Bob and myself also shared the place with Craig Waters. Craig was always a great drummer. He eventually moved out to Ca. and ended up playing drums for the BellRays.
Mondo Trasho was Troy, Craig, Bradly J, Bill, and Terry. They rehearsed in our place as well as us. It was a 2500 sq. ft. warehouse space on the third floor of a building downtown St. Paul. On the ground floor of our building was St. Paul's Premiere "Butt Rock" bar called Ryans. The two floors above it had a little over 30 rehearsal rooms and it took me a little while to get used to the noise. But eventually, I couldn't sleep without it.
Across the hall from us was a band called Nobody's Breakfast. I never really understood their name but they were really good and soon, we became good friends and ended up playing a lot of shows with them. I still see a lot of people from that crowd and still talk from time to time. They were all alumni of the UMM, Morris. And Mitch, their guitar player and singer was once the program director for their radio station KUMM - "The only station that puts KUMM in your ear."
We played a few shows downstairs at the bar, it wasn't really our crowd back then, (the bar is now called Station 4, and has punk shows on a regular basis) but it kind of became a regular thing for us to play there on nights when they didn't have a band scheduled, or someone cancelled, etc.
So we started just moving our gear down in the freight elevator in the back, and right in to the stage and we'd just kinda have band practice on stage and make a quick $50 or $60. We got a lot of practice being on stage that way. But some shit would always get wrecked when we would play. Some asshole would start pitching bar stools, or the sound guy would freak out because he didn't like the way we treated his mics, one time, a huge cast iron sink ended up on the stage.
I have absolutely no idea how, I was way up on that ridiculous drum riser and couldn't see the stage. Not a regular sink, but a big fuckin' double, almost laundry-room type sink. Prompting the phrase "Quincy Punx... and the kitchen sink!"
I believe it was that year that MRR along with Flipside put out a magazine called "Book you own fucking life - An Independent Punk Rock Resource Guide". This became the "how-to" manuel for shit-loads of bands to look for labels, book shows, tours, punk zines, places to eat, record stores, you name it, I think we booked our first attempt at a tour mostly through that rag.
But it had band listings as well and that's where we discovered "dink." dink (you gotta write their name with a lower-case "d", or else they would get mistaken for that other band, Dink.) was a band from Cottage Grove and we liked their description in Book Your Own Life, so we called them for one of our Ryans shows.
They were fucking awesome! And it was the beginning of another beautiful friendship.
They were a lot like us. They sang about beer, lumberjacks, and bullshit. They had a demo tape called "Burp, Fart, and Kick Shit" which I still have and as soon as I learn how to post an audio link, I will. This band is how I first met Billy Morrisette, he was the guitar player. He later ended up in Scooby Don't, and eventually Dillinger Four. We began talking to Todd Congelliere about putting out a 7" on Recess. Initially, it was going to be called "Everything you wanted to know about punk, but were afraid was true". But that was STUPID.
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| Get The Humans 7" 1992 |
So we ended up calling it "Get The Humans", which was first and foremost a quote from "Planet of the Apes." But according to Kyle, it's also what Jim from the Kung Fools yelled as he drove his car up on to the sidewalk. Todd had the idea of making the cover kind of a booklet, which we thought was cool and we could make like a comic book out of it. I used to draw comic strip about us and dumb shit that was only funny to us, the guys all seemed to think it was funny. So I drew a bunch of comics to use as the pages inside the cover. (later pressings would omit this feature) Dave did an "activity page", and I drew a goofy picture of us for the front cover. Funny part is, It really looks like us.
For the centerfold, we defiled a picture of ourselves and a bunch of cry-babies got all bent out of shape about it because we used the words "dyke" and "homo." This was the early '90's, and the "fashionable" thing to do was try to call everyone else out on not being P.C. I mean shit, of course I have ethics, but THIS band was supposed to be all about escapism.
You know, jokes? Whatever. This would later result in somebody who worked a K Records sending them back to recess with a note saying; "why don't you take these and melt them down and make some raincoats?!" We still had some songs left over from the sessions with Chad we did at the THD House, so we took them in and had them re-mixed by Tim Mack.
This would end up being the first of many times in the studio with Tim. We started side one off with a sound bite from the original Quincy "punk" episode. Quincy and some woman discussing the impact that this "violence oriented punk rock music" had on vulnerable kids. It was wonderful.
The songs we ended up using were;
-Part of the Problem
-Fuck P.C.
-All About You
-Fuck You (if you can't take a joke)
-Beer Brigade
-We Rule
-All About You II
All About You II (or, too) is nothing more that the exact same recording, only with me singing instead of Dave. It ended up as Recess Records #6, and got pretty good reviews all around.
Jeff Bale started writing about how much he liked us in his column in MRR, and I called their offices to run a new ad and ended up talking directly to Tim Yohannon. When I told him who I was and what ad I was calling about he said "ahhhh, so when am I gonna get my article about you guys?" and a couple months later, we ended up being featured in the magazine. It was pretty much the biggest exposure we had gotten at that point. A friend of mine from high school, Sam Tracey did the interview.
Sam would later publish two books, "How to Rock And Roll", and "Bicycle! A Repair and Maintenance Manifesto." He came up with some pretty wacky questions like, "Is Minnesota in denial about the number of lakes it has?" I wrote a little intro that everyone at rehearsal thought was cool, and we gave it to Dave to type up and he changed it all. (the intro, not the interview).
We went with it anyway. So not only were we making enemies with the new record, (and a few fans) but with our MRR interview we included some pictures of us. One of which shows Dave wearing a Sid Vicious-like swastika t-shirt. Ha! We got shit from all angles. Quite literally too! In addition to a pile of angry letters, someone went so far as to actually send us a box of feces! Right to our P.O. box. With a bunch of used tampons thrown in for good measure.
We later on ended up with the person responsible for this package on tour. We knew it was him, but he never said anything. And I think it's because before we knew it was him, we played a bunch of shows with his band on a little leg of one of our tours, and we got along great. Him and the rest of his band thought we were nice guys. Which we are. But I think he had re-evaluated his opinion of us and didn't want to spoil anything. Either that or he was just a spineless vagina.
My "Acting" Debut
Right around this time, Troy's brother Tim, worked as a set designer for some production company that did T.V. commercials. He told me and Bob that they were holding auditions for "punk" looking types. At the time I had a 10" green mohawk, so we thought we should give it a shot.
I mean hey, if one of us got a part, it was a quick $50 or so. We went down there and they had us say a couple of lines and honestly we didn't really think that much of it.
The next day Troy called us at home and said Tim told him they wanted to use me. And I would be paid $1000.00!!! Fuck yeah! So the first thing that happened is this wardrobe lady called me and asked if she could come by my apartment and look at some of my clothes.
No problem.
She dug through a bunch of my dirty laundry, throwing a shirt aside every here and there, and proceeded to take out a bag and begin packing them all up. "Don't worry, you'll get them back." she assured me. Belts, boots, even nick-nacks from around the place.
They called me up and told me that I had to get an agent, and that I would have to sign a union waiver with the Screen Actors Guild and A.F.T.R.A. (the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and made me an appointment for a talent agency.
I went downtown and sat in a waiting room among a bunch of people dressed in their best, 8x10's in their hands and got a bunch of raised eyebrows when I was called into a woman's office ahead of everybody. After signing a bunch of papers she informed me of when and where I was to show up for filming.
It was a sound stage in Minneapolis on Nicollet & 26th. Right next to Garage D'or Records. The night before me and Troy's girlfriend charged my hair with this shit called "Vavoom." My hawk stood straight up for a week. I had to lay down in the back of the car on the day, but I made it there at 8 a.m. and was informed that I had already made $800.00 just for making my call-time.
They were filming another commercial on a set next to the one I was working on. And walking through that set, felt a little weird, because most of all the stuff used to make it look like this kids "hang-out room" came from our loft.
The commercial was for Best Buy Co., right after they began selling C.D.'s in their stores. The premise of the commercial was a bunch of people saying "Well if they carry" (insert music type) "than I'll" (do something they wouldn't be caught dead doing). For example, one of the scenes was a Heavy Metal guy saying "If they carry Obituary, I'll cut my hair!" then they would show the C.D. at a "just too goddmned good to be true" price, and then cut to the metal guy, with all his hair cut off, and Best Buy's logo shaved into the side. How outrageous.
So my part, I was one of three punk rockers (all wearing my clothes no-doubt) walking down an alley, (because alleys and dumpsters scream Punk Rock) and the guy in front of me says; "Tell you what, if they've got Screeching Weasel. I'll get a JOB!!! and we all burst out laughing saying things like "yeah, a job Bwahhhaahahah!!! THEN they show the Screeching Weasel C.D. and...
cut to,
Interior: 3 workers in a fast-food restaurant. 1 is dumb-foundedly looking through a mess of order tickets, another (me) mops the floor. The 3rd says; "Welcome to Mr. Gristle sir, would you like any fries with that?"
I looked hilarious in the hair-net they fitted me with that barely just covered my charged hair and left the bald sides of my head exposed.
It was an interesting process, but monotonous. And when I read the script, it called the band "The Screeching Weasels." An error I corrected immediately.
While filming the "restaraunt scene, I kept knocking this stick they had me using to look like I was mopping into the counter. Seriously, a fake mop! A prop-mop. This drove the sound tech nuts. After something like 12 takes, everyone would just yell out "Miiiiiike" every time I would bang the set. I had a blast.
The best part of that whole thing, was watching the holier than thou anti-establishment punk rock scene's reaction to a commercial for a huge corporation, use Screeching Weasel in their ad campaign. The second best thing was the look of confusion when I told them it was me. Well, another good part was that all in all, after residuals, I cleared just over $2500.00 for 8 hours of "work", (if you can call siting around smoking cigarettes listening to snobs complain about their catered lunch of salmon fillets, or orange-glazed chicken breast "work") and a total of 15 seconds of air-time. Nice work if you can get it.
Exactly two weeks after this thing was shown, we played with Screeching Weasel and the Queers at Coffman Union at the U of M. I didn't get a chance to tell them it was me at that point, but later on when Dan Vapid came through and played guitar for the Queers at a show in the Scooby Don't basement, he got a pretty big kick out of the fact that it was me in that commercial.
I made sure that during filming, there were plenty of Quincy Punx flyers on the wall in the background of the alley we were filmed in. Not to mention the shameless self-promotion of wearing a Q-P t-shirt in the first scene.
Right. So there's a LOT of graphics going in this post so I'm gonna stop now, or it's gonna get really long. (which really doesn't matter anyway) -M
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