The Quincy Punx Part 3 - "Who's frying baloney?!" or, "If they got Screeching Weasel, I'll get a JOB!!!"

Summer of 1992 we had our first 7" out and getting pretty good reviews, Recess Records had expressed interest in doing a second, and we've been playing around town a lot. Places like Fernando's, the 52 Bar (which is long since been torn town), and a basement on Lyndale called the Lizard Lounge. It was pretty much run by a guy named Vitally, who also had a Zine called Rustbelt.

 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.

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

The Quincy Punx Part 2 - We Make A Record

So with a regular bass player we started actually learning "how" to be in a band. Rather than just that small group of guys you know when your a teenager who drink together in a rented room so the cops don't harass 'em at the park, get together every night and invite all their girlfriends down to hear them "jam" and it ends up being one of those "now let me try it" bullshit sessions where some asshole knows ONE riff, say, "Paranoid" or "Blitzkrieg Bop" and you take turns jacking each other off passing around a guitar and a bong.

 We were creating our own songs, our own sound, and starting to really have a good time being productive. Keep in mind this is the first time for any of us in a real band. O.k., well, Dave played drums for a "band" that called itself A.I.D.S. (there were about one thousand, three hundred, and twenty two bands of the SAME name back then) but again, he only knew how to play one drum beat.

 I'm not sure how much they really did, other than a show during "Grand 'Ole Day." (a local St. Paul thing every year where they block off an avenue, "Grand Ave." to be exact,  and people walk around and drink, eat, and throw up on the street.) That's another thing that changed. Playing in basements started to be like going to shows rather than just going to a "party with a band." We'd open up for touring bands, people would pay, keg or no keg.

We used to play at a spot in St. Paul called the Speedboat Gallery a lot. It was a really cool little store-front art gallery/coffee house that used to have shows in it's basement.

It was pretty decent size for a basement, like two store-fronts wide.
 We played with the first touring band we ever played with there called Fiddlehead. Really cool guys who were super appreciative of the crowd and we ended up swapping T-shirts with them. I think our old bass player Pete was either still making them for us, or we just had them for that long. They liked our shirts because they said "Eat A Bowl Of Fuck".

Yup. First flyer ever.

It was '91 and I remember a lot of bands coming through that spot like Bikini Kill and Green Day.
My exact timeline is a little foggy but this was around the time we started really feeling that Jeff just didn't fit in. He was a nice guy and all, but he was a little hard for us to relate to. And he started coming up with a lot of ideas about the direction of our band and where he wanted to take it. He was really into bands like Foetus, and Skinny Puppy. Not that I think that shit is terrible, it just was VERY MUCH not us. He would come up to us usually individually, almost like he was feeling out our flexibility, and share some weird idea about our next show like, "hey, I was thinking for our next show, I'm gonna spray paint a giant red spot over my right eye so it looks like it's dripping red down my right eye.." or "I wanna start wearing costumes like Skinny Puppy does.. have you seen that guy?! He's outrageous!!! ", and we would be totally confused as to how to reply to this.
 I got to where we would just kind of pretend that we didn't hear it.

Bottom line was we needed someone a little more like us. Like I said, I liked him, but he wasn't right for the Quincy Punx.
We had another bass player lined up. A friend of ours gave him a copy of the demo tape we made in the basement and I guess after he heard we wanted a different bass player, he wanted to join up. I'm really not sure  how he got it really, I'd have to ask Bob.

 But anyway the guys name was Kyle and he worked with Bob at Ciatti's (a restaurant I will no doubt end up writing a lot about, as I ended up working there for like 7 years.) So Kyle had been learning our songs while we were still playing with Jeff. Because we all felt shitty and awkward about firing him and none of us wanted to do it. It ended up having to be me.

But before that, we got busted. Ever been there? It's like you were fucking another girl behind your girlfriends back. We were practicing with Kyle in the basement on a night we weren't even scheduled to, so we could kinda hit the ground running  once Jeff was out. And BOOM in walks Jeff. What did we do? We fucking lied.

We told him that it was a spur of the moment "jam" sort of thing, "you know baby, It just kind of happened." No shit, that's exactly what it was like.

 Within a couple of days, we had gotten together with Jeff, and over a few beers, told him we wanted to go with someone else. And you know what? He reacted to it like we should have just said that in the first place. "No sweat man."

He even explained that he could see it from our point of view. And after we left I felt a lot better. Until the next morning. Bob called me and said "dude, you gotta come over here and hear this." It was a message left by Jeff the night before. I guess he went out and got all drunk, and decided to leave the depressing "just got dumped and now I'm gonna die" message on Bob's answering machine. (because we didn't have "voicemail" in those days, we had tapes!) It just seemed kinda ridiculous seeing as we never shared the same ideas...

So at this point we've got Kyle. It was through Kyle a bunch of new shit opened up. Not only for us as a band, but for me personally as well. First off, he got me into the comics  Milk and Cheese - Dairy Products Gone Bad and Hate.

Kyle introduced us to the THD House, Jason Parker, Tim Kelly, and still one of my all time favorite local bands the Kung Fools. Jason Parker for those of you who aren't from around these parts ran a record label called THD. Which I always thought was a great name for a label. (the term THD stands for "total harmonic distortion" which if you didn't know is a spec term used in describing speaker/microphone/amplifier ratios in sound reproduction) THD was host to bands like Swiz, Gauge, Inspector 12, Holding On, Fury, and Pinhead Gunpowder.

Jason liked us, and agreed to put out a 7" for us. And back then, this was a really big fuckin' deal to me. It still is but for other reasons. Then it was the whole idea that I would be able to own a copy of a record, that's MY band! No shit. A real record.

 Now, it's a big deal because even though I hardly see him anymore, I think Jason Parker is one of the most decent guys I've ever met. And looking back, I think we were really lucky to hook up with a guy like him on our first time around. He agreed to put out 1000 copies of what was supposed to be titled the "Darby Was A Martyr" 7". We even plagiarised the cover of the Germs (GI) album. Both front and back covers, right down to a line on the back that stated "Not Produced By Joan Jett".

 However we neglected to put that title on the record anywhere. Instead, people referred to it as "(ME)" (which to us, stood for Medical Examiner ala Quincy M.E.)

 What is the title of this record?

We were so stoked by this that we tried to cram as many songs on it as possible. So it ended being done at 33 1/3 which allows up to like 6 minutes per side, give or take 20 or so seconds depending on sound quality.
It was recorded it in the THD house basement by Chad Dziewor who called it Temporary Studios. A fitting name as it just consisted of a small board in what I think was made to be a walk-in closet (the engineer booth) and the basement itself wasn't huge, although the THD house hosted more than it's share of shows. At the time, we recorded I think 13 songs. There might have been more but if there are, we never used them for anything. We recorded it all on 1/4 inch tape and this would be all the material used on our first two 7' E.P.'s. The (M.E.) 7" ended up having 8 songs on it.

They were;
-Darby Was A Martyr
-Safety Pins
-Heavy Metal Black-Mass Orgy of Blood
-Punker than You
-Brady Bunch
-Cereal Killer
-I Wanna Be A Dyke
-Boot Party.

It ended up being THD #10 and was released in 1992. The day we got them was really cool. We had our first "Stuffing party" If you don't know what that is, first off, get yer mind out of the gutter. It aint that.

The records were pressed and put into plain white paper sleeves and came just like that. The covers were done at a printer locally, and we had to insert the record into the printed sleeves, along with a separate lyric sheet (that was overflowing with misspelled words because it was hand written by myself), then insert those into individual poly sleeves. Now do that, one thousand times! It was a pleasure.

 A lot of you reading this have done this plenty of times and there's nothing you probably hate more. But you gotta remember that first one. The THD basement was the first of many other "Named" basements around town we began playing at this time. Touring bands would come through and play there.

 It was the beginning of a really active time in the local punk scene. The next wave of new bands was sweeping through the city with locals like Scooby Don't, the Kung Fools, Downside, Impetus Inter, The Strike, Dirt Poor, Bloodline, The Rejects, and Skaterbait, and Vile Babies.

For a long time a majority of the touring bands that would come through I would see in basements like the THD House, The Lizard Lounge, and and the Scooby Don't House which called itself the 35th St. Entry.

Clutch at the THD House - photo: Tim Kelly

 The THD house hosted bands like Clutch, All you can Eat, and F.Y.P., and the Lizard Lounge had shows by Chaos U.K., Summer's Eve (NY) and a lot more. After the release of our first 7", shows started popping up all around. And with Kyle, things got busy. It was awesome, we were a working band. Jason Parker had sent out some copies for review from a bunch of zines like Maximumrockandroll, Flipside, & More. And we began doing "through the mail "type interviews for peoples zines from across the country.

 Tim Yohannon wrote us a decent review in MRR and the 7" began selling pretty good. Jason sent a copy to Tesco Vee of the Meatmen, who was a bit of a role model for us, to which he wrote back; "Jason, Thanks for the record, It Rips!"

 Later on we would end up playing a couple shows with the legendary Meatmen, and I'll get to that. But Jason had sent a copy to a guy he knew in Torrence CA. named Todd Congeliere. Todd was a pro skater and is the founder/owner of Recess Records, and he got a hold of us because he was interested in releasing a second 7" from us.

Things are definitely picking up.    -M

The Quincy Punx Part 1 - Inception and Birth

So I'm going to end up writing a lot about this band, and for a number of reasons. The first being it fits into all three categories that I plotted in my first post. The next, and main reason is I've been a member of the band since it's inception, and for the most part have seen it through to the end, or what will ultimately be the end. The band was created by Dave DePriest, Bob Wood, and myself straight out of high school.

 Bob and Dave are two years older than me, they were done in '88. I was of the class of '90, but I tested out for my G.E.D. in '89. We all went to Highland Park Sr. High School where I hung out with Bob occasionally, but at the time I didn't know Dave very well.

 I went to high school through the '80's. And I started my high school career heavily into hard rock bands from the 70's with an ever present touch of metal. Bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Who, the Stones, and metal bands like Motorhead, Venom, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy's new "solo" band, (I remember when "Diary"came out) throw in some '60's pop like the Doors, the Animals, the Kinks, Cream and you've got a good idea of how little I was actually exposed to that early on.
Going back to my grade school years I carried a relentless obsession with two bands.

The first album I ever bought.

The first was AC/DC. "If You Want Blood..." was the first record I ever bought. And even though my mom asked at the time "you're not just buying that for the cover, are you?"
I was.
 Some of the other boys in the neighborhood had played "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" for me so I knew I wanted that music, however when I saw that guitar jammed into the guts of Angus Young in a school boy out fit, I promptly put down the copy of "No Mean City" by Nazareth I was holding (again, for the cover, but I'd never actually heard Nazareth) and said to my mom, "yes, I want this one."

 My mom was purchasing a stack of 8-tracks, Abba (a band I've got an almost sick, Tesco Vee thing for), Elvis, the soundtrack for "Hair" and an 8 track by my other obsession, and I got this straight from her, Alice Cooper.
She's told me years later that she used to put on "Welcome To My Nightmare" and sing me to sleep with "Only Women Bleed." I was only three years old in 1975 when it came out, but I guess that's why I've always had a strange familiarity with that album.

I will end up writing a lot more about Alice throughout this bolg, but reading the entire paragraph I just deleted that trailed off from high school to my earlier years of boozing and what-not reminded me to focus on the topic at hand.

Blind Approach Restless Nights

It was about my freshman year that punk rock arrived. In the form of The Clash, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's and the fact that almost every girl I developed a thing for in those days was into Punk. Keep in mind, this was the eighties, and punk and New Wave was exploding everywhere. I suppose some of my very first exposure to Punk, or Hard-Core came from the fact that was in the same school, and class as two members of Blind Approach. Who, by the time I was in 11th grade, had put out a 7" and even toured over the summer.

 I was amazed by this. They ended up releasing 2 7"'s "Restless Nights" in '88, and "New Age" in '89. Their guitar player Matt Henderson went on to eventually play in Agnostic Front. It was through them and a couple others, namely Noah Levy who sat next to me in science class, that I was introduced to local bands like Husker Du and Urban Guerillas, who in 1982 played a dance at my alma matter and were apparently forced to stop half way through because of "inappropriate" behavior.
Noah was one of the first people I talked to in Jr. High that I didn't already know from my old elementary school. He was (and still is) a drummer and we used to talk about drums in class.
He was in a band called Blissful Discharge, who later changed their name simply to Blisscharge. I heard a lot of other kids talk about them and seen their name written on the walls of the hallways but never heard them. I was jealous that he actually HAD a drum kit. I had now been exposed to a local scene.

I became aware of "shows" at places like First Avenue and the 7th St. Entry. Up until this point I had only seen "concerts", like AC/DC at the St. Paul Civic Center or Black Sabbath at the Met. But the Punk kids and the Metal kids didn't really co-exist at my school. I don't think they disliked each other really, they just for the most part didn't mix a lot. I think the kids into Hardcore thought the metal kids were a little silly.

I had dreamed about playing in a band since I was eight years old. I started my first band by recruiting a few other self-proclaimed "scum-bags" when I was fifteen. This sad attempt at a band turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of kids, well, I guess I was the youngest of them, renting a space  to hangout in and drink and do drugs whithout the risk of getting busted by anybody. Which honestly, was something else new and fun to me at the time.

 Sadly, I was led to believe that super human chemical intake and my type of music absolutely had  to go hand in hand. And so it did for many years, but that's a whole other topic. This "band" of mine, never played the same song twice. At least not when I was in it.
 Years later I would look back on that band and loath it for what it ended up as. A pseudo-Nazi Skinhead band, devoid of any merit what so ever. Needless to say, this Jew felt a little out of place. Not only with the swastikas that began hanging on the wall as time went on, but by the lack of any interest in making music. These days I not only don't consider it a band, I just plain don't consider it.

 I was eighteen by the time I started really trying to assemble another band. Me and Bob had gotten together with our friends Andy, or Ronnie from time to time, but nothing ever came out of that but us learning how to play along with one and other to Metallica songs. But Bob was always a choice. He was at least into punk where most everyone else I knew who played, thought punk was crap. Bob got me into some really cool shit like Suicidal Tendencies and the Clash.

I never actually met Dave properly until after I was out of high school. Like I said, I didn't really know him in high school. Two years ahead of me and totally different crowds, Dave walked around Highland as one of those "spikey leather jacket" type punk rockers. Who, oddly enough to me, hung out with the majority of the "preppy" types. He didn't look very approachable. And I'm not sure either crowd thought much of me. I had a handful of pals back at that school, and we kept to our own. But there were only a few real "Punks" at Highland. They were mostly older than me, and their little brothers or sisters were my crowd.

Dave at Highland Sr.

 The first I remember hanging out with Dave, was in a garage drinking beer from a keg, and Dave was drunkenly singing Fear songs. I was just drunk enough to think it sounded great. So I told him he had to be the singer of my band. Even though just a couple of years later he would develop his own style which sounds nothing  like that of Lee Ving. Over the next couple of years me and Dave became really close. Dave got me into a lot of great punk like the Damned, X, 45 Grave, and is single handedly responsible for my deep love of Channel 3. He's the first person that ever played them for me and I became obsessed with them for a time. Right after we began hanging out a lot he gave me a CH3 comp tape he made me for my birthday. I wore the fucker out. And I still don't have all their vinyl! He also turned me on to stuff like the B-52's, Gary Numan, and "Urgh, A Music War!"

I would always meet him halfway between his house and my apartment at the video rental place, we'd get a flick, some beer, and either head to his place or mine and drink and watch cheezy '80's gore flicks, or listen to music.
That's where the Whole "Eat a Bowl of Fuck" thing came from. A bad 80's horror movie called "Night of the Demons."

I'm not sure if he knew Bob from school, or just knew of Bob. But it was Dave and I hanging out in my bedroom at my mothers apartment drinking and spinning records with our mutual, and my best friend Betsy when we came up with the name Quincy Punx. It was if to say "Take this shit about as seriously as you do those stupid punks on Quincy or CHiP's." See that was the point of this band, we were fucking with all the sensitive  P.C. types Ala Meatmen, or Fear.

 Why, because it pissed people off. And to me, that was the point. Punk for the most part had thumbed it's nose at society for over a decade, and we were just doing the same, only to punks. Saying "you are all now boarder-line hippies." And somewhere from that point it was Bob, Dave, and Me.

We ended up using the basement in Bob's parents house as a practice space and we would make boom box recordings with Dave just leaning into the mic on the boom box to hear him because we didn't have a P.A. Our first song - Beer is God.

I was at welding school at the time, 1990, and I took three things home from that experience. First was the ability to weld, heh. Pretty good to. One of the best in the class. Second, a P.A. It was student grant money that paid for our first piece of shit "Partridge Family" looking powered mixer. And two cheap speakers. And last, thats where I met Greg Martin. He told me he played the bass. So I recruited him.
Me and Greg started hanging out a lot at school, ducking out to smoke pot or go to the bar for a while, and when I played some of our crappy recordings for him, he smiled and said "fuck yeah."

So we had a bass player. For about.... three practices.


I remember showing up at school one morning and a couple of the girls I hung out with came up to me and said, "Greg is sick. Really sick" And that's it!  I mean, that's all I'd heard about it. I never was able to contact anyone about it, or find out any information for the longest time. At first we had thought he'd just ditched us. Later on I'd found out this was not the case.
I'm still not sure if he had fallen into a coma, or it was induced, but either way, he was on life support with a feeding tube, a trache (not sure about the spelling on that) and apparently he'd lost all or most of the skin on his body due to some adverse chemical reaction to what he thinks, but can't prove, was shampoo. Most of this I learned after the fact but at the time, I didn't know anything but he was "very sick."

And this is the beginning of what was to be a bit of a "revolving door" of bass players. I think second was Pete. Pete was a really cool guy we all knew just from the "partier/criminal" scene (that we were all a part of to some degree) and for a brief period we were kind of close. Pete made our first t-shirts. They were the Eat A Bowl Of Fuck shirts with a Q on the sleeve.

He'd been down for a couple of practices, we played our first ever shows with him and I think it was actually at one of our first basement shows that he decided he wasn't, well in his words, "meant to do this." I just thought he was particularly fucked up that night and was only having  a drug and/or drink induced form of temporary insanity when he stopped playing and ripped all the strings off his bass.

Quincy Punx circa 1991 (L to R) Bob, Dave, Darryl.

But he never came back. At least that's how I remember it. I can be wrong, or he could have told more to someone else. I still don't really know what happened.
So we ended up taking on Darryl, for what I think was exactly two practices and 3 basement parties. Another one of the partier/criminal types that we all grew up with and actually, he had played in my first attempt at a band. So it really wasn't too long before his whole "Hate-Core" thing became too much for a Jew and a Nigger to deal with.
 At least, that's how he wanted people to think he saw us as.

 I mean, that's the kind of thing he preached. Why would he really bother trying come off to us as our friend?
Because we knew him for so long?

 I'll never forget him asking us to plat some public access show that I think, was some sort of feeble attempt at a white people rally.  It never came about, but at the time we were like, "um. our singer is black...hello?" He went so far as to tell us that if we combed his hair straight, he would "pass for Mexican."

 Folks, I can't make this shit up. I never understood it. But then again, back in those days, I never knew why I called a lot of people my friends. Another thing you'll hear a lot about throughout this blog is that I've got awesome friends. And I do. But through the years I've made my way around a lot of scenes and a lot of crowds and after nearly 25 years of this lifestyle, I've not only had the opportunity to hold on to those that have really been friends to me, but have taken a lot of time and effort to put a good distance between a lot of people and myself.

Next through the door was Soren. I barely knew this guy for more than a couple months. He used to hold "political rallies" - or at least, that's what he called them at parks and the State Capitol and what-not.

 He called his movement the "Revolutionary Dance Party" which, was named after famous Anarchist, Emma Goldman's quote, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." We played a show at his parents house (now THAT'S anarchy in my book!), with Darryl, where everybody hated us. And eventually after kicking Darryl out, Soren was just there. Eventually we kicked him out as well due to the fact that at the time, we were politically, if not socially retarded and didn't care to bring all that kind of political shit into the band.

I mean shit, everybody's got an agenda. Fuck that. It was from one extreme to the other.
 He did however get us a show on the front stairs of the State Capitol for one of his "events." We couldn't have cared less about his agenda and pretty much used it as an opportunity just to say we played there. The state police that were on duty for this thing had to warn us three times about screaming the word "Fuck" over a 27000 watt (I don't really know, it was LOUD okay) P.A. system pointing directly over downtown St. Paul. "The next warning" the cop said, "and you leaving in handcuffs."

Around the time of the Capitol gig, Soren's almost next-door neighbor Jeff, had joined us. Bass player number five. Jeff was a lot older than us. We were in our early twenties, (except for me I was 19) and I wanna say he was already in his mid to late thirties. Jeff was the first real regular bass player we ever had.

He didn't really fit in with us, but he was into playing and writing songs. It was actually a nice and very welcome change for the better. We started having regular practices, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 6 p.m. 'till 10. Like fucking clockwork. It was the first time we held a schedule, wrote songs with effort, and recorded.

We rented a eight track cassette recorder, used our shitty mics, to mic up the drums and did the guitar, bass, and vocals direct.
We recorded 8 songs;
"Darby Was A Martyr"
"Heavy Metal Black-Mass Orgy Of Blood"
"Safety Pins"
"I Don't Care"
"All About You"
"High Impact Camping"
"I Like Girls (Who Wear Doc Martins)"
"We Rule"

Our buddy Davis Hooker did the recording and played bass on one of the songs, "We Rule." 6 of these songs were copied onto cassettes and packaged with some kinko's style J cards and passed out to our friends as the "Heavy Metal Black-Mass Orgy Of Blood" demo. With a mix of live songs added to it to use up more of the tape. I even cut out labels for each cassette that were photocopied on sticker paper.

 The live songs were either from a basement show, or could very well be from our first show at the 7th St. Entry back when they did "New Band Night." I know at one point we had a recording of it from the board. In fact the Entry recording was the first we ever had of us that wasn't off a boom box.

It was around this time we started playing shows to more than just a basement. Among the first places we played were the Entry, Ryan's Bar, and the Speedboat Art Gallery in St. Paul.

Okay, next up when we get to part 2,  we let Jeff go, get another new bass player, and make a record. -M

Let's see where this goes...

This is pretty much my first effort in this arena, and lately that constant voice in my head has been a little louder than I usual. See I have this constant voice in my head.

Not like a schizophrenic sort of voice, I mean, I don't have conversations with it, basically it's giving a narrative, or a drive, it's a motivator. It demands creativity, helps me figure things out, and even plays music for me. Most people would call it a conscience, but mine is more like a story teller. So I figured I would try and write it down and it might just get a little bit of whatever it is thats going to satisfy it's demand.

First off, I am not a writer. And for me to claim to be would not only be an insult to you and me, but anyone who has ever aspired to do so. And my grammar and punctuation aren't all that hot either so don't bother pointing that out.

This blog will be pretty much be covering three topics. The only three things I've ever claimed to have any expertise in or at least talk about without me feeling like I'm bullshitting you or myself;

1) Music - Music is single handedly the main focus of 99% of my brains activity at any given time. I Play music, I follow music, I record music, I watch musicians play their music, I work with music, I listen to music, and I cherish music. Any memories of people, places, and periods of my life have a soundtrack etched into them. From rants about how much I hate radio, to collecting records (which I'm kind of a junkie for), to the bands I now, or have ever played in. I spent  a lot of years playing in bands, the most popular of which was the Quincy Punx. So far anyway.

2) Being a drunk/loser/asshole - Not as pleasant as the first, but I've spent the better part of my life ("better" meaning "larger") perfecting failure. Which should make you all feel a little bit better about yourselves after reading.
And that kind of merges into..

3) Stories about my life. You know, in case I forget.

Really, why do i think you care? Well I don't. But I've had some really good shit happen to me, bad too. I'll cover both sides AND I'll even call myself out on my own shit just to be honest and fair to anyone who spends any time reading this. -M