In the fall of 1985 I began working at Blue Noise Studio on West Bloomingdale Avenue just east of Central. I drove by there recently and it’s now Rock of Salvation Baptist Church. The guy who owned the place was a big fat Lithuanian dude named Mindaugas Maciulis, or just Mindau for short, who also lived with his family in an apartment that was attached to the studio. He had been some kind of child prodigy on piano. Mindau looked and acted a lot like the comic book store guy in The Simpsons. One night he and I snorted an eightball and when we were done he immediately picked up the phone and ordered a large pizza from Coluta’s. What the fuck?!! No wonder the guy barely made it to fifty.

I learned to work the big 32 track Tascam board and recorded lots of mediocre Northwest side metal bands. The kind that showed up in the Illinois Entertainer and played at Smiler Coogan’s or the Thirsty Whale. We even recorded bigfan’s friends from the Wild Hare, Dallol reggae band, They didn’t pay so we kept some of their equipment. Mindau and I had very different ways of working. He was a keyboard player with most obnoxious prog-rock sensibilities. Think Carl Palmer meets Krautrock. He had played in bands like Science Choir and Painter Band. And he liked to record with a lot of effects and production. My way was to set up the band with a couple mics in the room and record everybody at once, sometimes even the vocals. Mindau always used the vocal booth and he loved overdubs and bouncing tracks. He was always getting frustrated with me as if I were less than professional, when actually it was simply a matter of taste. But he was the boss.

Mindau thought I was a talented songwriter and attempted to mentor me, but I would have none of it. My band at the time was a quirky little outfit that played oddball pop songs. But I was losing interest. I wanted to play what I considered “real” hardcore or speed metal. Mindau had allowed my band to use the studio as a practice space, but eventually he became so disgusted with me that he banished us to the Lake and Carpenter space that he was managing at the time. I believe his exact words were, “If you’re going to play garbage, you can go to Lake Street with the other garbage.”

He thought he was punishing me but it felt like a reward. The Lake Street space was a party every night. Bands like M.O.S.H., Zno White, Funeral Bitch, Creature Comforts, Teens In Heat, and Little Darlings practiced there. We would all drink and get high together and jam all night. A couple of guys even lived there when they were between girlfriends. Mindau appointed me as sort of a pseudo-caretaker, mainly because he was too fucking lazy to drive down and take care of shit himself. That meant I was responsible for collecting the rents and making sure no crazy shit was going on there. Of course, I was right in the middle of all the crazy shit.

Going back a little further, this is the first song I ever wrote. I think it was in late ’79 or early ’80. This recording was made in somebody’s basement during that winter. We weren’t really a hardcore band, but we were loud and fast enough. There was room for bands with different styles at the time. It wasn’t until later on that a certain orthodoxy would prevail. I was dumb enough to buy into the stupid “rules”. But I don’t feel that bad. Even the Replacements bought into it with the Stink E.P.

There were really only two places for us to find out about new bands and new music. One was the zine, Maximum RocknRoll – which I didn’t care for much, as they pushed an orthodoxy of their own- and the other was Fast and Loud, a radio show that aired at 7:00 p.m. each Saturday on WNUR and was hosted by a Northwestern student named Doug Conn. I sent Doug a cassette that included this song along with three others- one called “Jack the Ripper”, another that was an unsophisticated teenager’s screed against Ronald Reagan, and a high-octane cover version of “Sweet Jane”. I also included a lyrics sheet for each song that had a goofy illustration I had done myself:





The next Saturday we all gathered around the radio eagerly waiting to hear if Doug would play one of our songs. Right out of the box he mentioned an awesome tape he had received from some local Evanston boys. He ended up playing the Lou Reed cover and this, the first song I had ever written. Better still, he gleefully read the lyrics:

I was watchin’ TV one day last week
and what I saw really made me freak
She’s an old French chef named Julia Child
So I sat right down to watch for a while
She cooked and cooked and drank and spilled
She made me feel real good for a while
She’s Julia Julia Julia Child

I wanna have sex
with the French chef

She captured my heart when she filleted her sole
She mixed my emotions in her salad bowl
Sex with her is my only goal
She baked me like a casserole
She cooked and cooked and drank and smiled
She really had a lot of style
She’s Julia Julia Julia Child

I wanna have sex
with the French chef

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod/julia-child

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Fucking great.

_________________
Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I enjoyed that one. I have one really early Henry Rollins cd not long after he left Black Flag and that
song reminded me of that for whatever reason, maybe nothing more than the genre.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Mindau was sort of like an older brother figure for us. We practiced at the studio attached to his house and we got high with him all the time. We would always ask him to come out to our gigs, but he never seemed really keen on leaving his house unless he absolutely had to.

There was a guy- I can’t remember his name but his band was called Blue Room- who started booking shows at this Polish dive bar on the south side of Belmont just a couple doors east of Central called Club Stodola. It was very strange to go in there at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday and see the punk rock kids mixing with all the old dziadzias. It was a typical Chicago bar, long going back from the street with a little stage in back. Hanging over the stage was this webbed netting. It hung down so low in spots that if you raised your guitar up a certain way, the headstock would get caught in the net. One night we played a show with the Slammin’ Watusis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIQIdJfUNoU) and one of their guitarists, Lee Popa, got pissed and ended up tearing the whole damn thing down. There was a tiny little “green room” behind the stage with an entrance from the alley where you would load in your gear. We would sit back there and drink before we played. There was a lot of graffiti back there written and drawn by guys in various bands.

Some friends of mine had a band called Incoming Wounded. The leader and frontman was Tom Billings who was a great artist. Tom and his brother Bob had a studio/living space on Division Street right across from a couple places we used to play, Phyllis’ and Czar Bar. Tom had gotten a favorable review of his work in some art paper out in San Francisco and had picked up a couple patrons. He had a very distinctive style and was starting to sell his work for big money. One night I was back in that little room at Stodola and I saw that Billings had done a drawing on the wall, kind of a poster for his band. I happened to have a razor with me so I cut the entire section of wall out and put the drawing in my guitar case. Some time later, we had a party at our apartment and a guy saw the drawing and offered me $150 for it. I laughed and declined. When I told Billings the story, he said it would be worth more if it was signed and that he would sign it for me. I never got around to having him do it though. Anyway, here’s the picture:



One Friday night we were over at Mindau’s just fucking around with our guitars and drinking some beers. We had a gig to play at Stodola later that night. Mindau came down and cut out some giant rails. The next thing you know he was talking like he was going to come to the show with us. We loaded up all the gear and headed over. It isn’t much of a drive down Central from Bloomingdale to Belmont. All of us were drinking except Mindau who just kept going into the bathroom to bump it up. I was pretty fucked up and we hadn't even started yet. Right before we went on, I got Mindau to set me out another big line. We went into the bathroom and there was a guy taking a piss in there. I was at the point where I didn’t give a fuck about anything so I said, “Get the fuck out of here and lock the door, we’re gonna do some coke.” I remember staring at the condom machine on the wall and I took the other guys into the back room and told them I had a new song and we were going to play it tonight. They looked at me like, “Come on, dude”, but I was insistent and they were nearly as high as I was. I showed them the basic structure and we went out and played it. It was very repetitive and I said “condom” more than John Cougar says “small town”. A lot of the other lyrics just came from the ads for the various products that the machine was dispensing. Later on when we were fucking around with it, Jeff decided that it needed some kind of bridge or something to break up the monotony. I didn’t really care. I often like a flat out wall of noise drone so playing the same three chord lick as fast as possible for a minute and a half is never a problem for me. But we took the chorus of AC/DC’s “Touch Too Much” and stuck it in there. It worked pretty well.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod/condom-machine

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

JORR, those are amazing. Can't believe you still have the recordings after 30+ years. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks. There's a bunch of other stuff I wish I had but I have no idea where it is. After a divorce and moving a bunch of times, shit is bound to get lost.

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

It’s funny, the things you remember and the things you don’t. I can’t say for sure where this was recorded. I think maybe plugged straight into the board at Martyr’s, possibly during a “Big C” Jamboree. But I can tell you I was playing a ’74 Les Paul with a Fender Twin and Bill was using an old Telecaster copy he had bought at a pawn shop when he was a teenager that we referred to as “Five Dollar Guitar” through a Super Reverb amp. Neither of us used any pedals. I got my Gibson from a guy named Chicago Slim who had a little shop on Sheridan near Loyola Park. I think I paid three hundred and some dollars for it in the early 80s. At the time I was in a hardcore band and I was immediately sorry I bought it. The thing was as heavy as a stone. I always played with the guitar banging against my knees and I moved around a lot, so I almost never used it live.

I also vividly remember Bill being pissed at me for failing to cut loose on the solos. He kept hissing, “Don’t hold back on me now!” between songs. In the Sonars I would have told him to fuck off, but it was a whole different dynamic when his name was on the marquee. I tried to give him what he wanted. I really don’t know why he didn’t take all the solos himself. He could do it a million times better. That motherfucker was a stern taskmaster when it came to leading a band. He was a regular James Brown. We had this young guy playing bass with us for awhile who called himself Kid Tuff. He had a ton of stage presence and he was always trying to upstage Bill. It would drive Bill absolutely nuts. I thought it was hysterical.

I had to be nearing the end of my “career” at this point. I’m guessing I was about 27 or 28 years old at the time. Rock and roll is a young man’s game. When I was playing in hardcore bands as a teenager, there was a guy who had a band and would come to shows named Johnny Chainsaw. He had to be in his mid-20s at the time. I always wondered why the fuck he was there when he was so damn old. Anyway, I’ve already told you, I’m seriously limited as a guitar player. In fact, I don’t even consider myself a musician. But you can hear that for yourself. I don’t own a guitar and haven’t picked one up in about fifteen years. Musicians can last forever. Rockers have a shelf life. Or at least they should.

To me rock and roll and drugs and booze were always inextricably linked. I had to get away from that. That demon life had got me in its sway. I never slid down as low as some of my friends did though. Kevin ended up in heroin hell and Bill ruined a lot of relationships before he quit drinking and found Jesus. This had to be recorded not long before that happened. I notice he refers to me as “Homewrecker” in the song and it was in the early 90s that I was seriously out of my head over a married broad I was fooling around with.

Speaking of that, I was really in a tailspin around this time. I can vaguely remember playing an open stage somewhere one night with a couple guys I didn’t really know. I’m pretty sure it was at Morseland. I taught myself guitar by playing along with the Modern Lovers album. I knew everything on there- “She Cracked”, “Astral Plane”, “Pablo Picasso”, and of course, the glorious “Roadrunner”. Anyway, I was so busted up over this girl going back to her husband I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I was drinking a lot and doing a lot of other shit too. There was a lack of sweetness in my life. So I was on stage blind drunk and probably high too playing “Girlfriend” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL7wYn-7DVI), playing the piano part on my guitar, and I was customizing the lyrics, taking the song from its original setting in Boston and putting it in Chicago. I’m sure it was sloppy. I know I was sloppy. But I know I cut it loose on that solo. That’s what emotion will do for you. I got to the last chorus and instead of spelling out G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N, I decided to use her name without really thinking about if it would work. It’s a good thing Rosemary has eight letters.

When Bill cleaned up he went all the way. There was a drunk named Ronnie who hung out around Augusta and Damen. The local hipsters called him “The Creature”. Bill started doing a Bible study with Ronnie and tried to help him get sober. It was coming along okay and Bill was letting Ronnie stay in his apartment. One day Bill had to go to his shop to give a guitar lesson. He was worried about Ronnie running to the liquor store while he was gone, so he told him he was locking him in the apartment for his own good. When he returned home there were cops and firemen all over in front of his place. Ronnie had tried to escape by climbing out of a second story window and had broken his leg. So much for that project! A few weeks later a hipster couple was walking by him and Bill heard the guy say to the girl, “That’s the asshole who locked Ronnie in an apartment.”

Also, Bill hated hip hop. He liked to say that the next Lightnin’ Hopkins or Jimi Hendrix was out there wasting his time with two turntables and a microphone. So he started this ministry for underprivileged little black kids. It was called “The Church of the Strumming Guitar”. He gave out free guitars and lessons. And he preached a little gospel in there somewhere too. I’m not sure if he’s still doing that these days or not.

I can’t take any credit for this one. It’s just a basic blues and the lyrics are all Bill’s. The incongruous section of the chorus, “She drinks like a fish and she looks like a Playboy bunny”, is about his ex-wife, Julia. She tends bar at Clutch 459 and Liars Club. If you ever see her, be sure to say hello. Julia is a fabulous babe. C’mon, America!

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod/three-things

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Back in my hardcore days there were a bunch of metalheads from the Northwest side who began crossing over and going to punk shows. I believe that a guy named “Motor” was the main cause of this. I have no idea what Motor’s real name is even though I’ve known him for about 25 years. He got his name from his tattoo that says “MOTOR” but was originally supposed to say “MOTORHEAD” before artist or client- or most likely both- became too fucked up to finish. Anyway, Motor showed up at a hardcore show, long hair and all, and hit the pit with a vengeance. That just wasn’t done in those days, as there were pretty well-defined lines between punk and metal. Sponge and Articles of Faith had played at Metro with Slayer and another metal band I don’t remember on a bill promoted as “Punk vs. Metal”. It wasn’t long after that that the scenes started to blend.

A couple of us in Hazardous Youth were hardcore guys and a couple others were metal guys. I remember Chris Splatter once saying to me, “The only reason I joined this fucking band was I figured those two longhairs would have pot. Just my luck, I wound up with the only two goons who never have any weed. Or cigarettes either.” I distinctly remember someone asking Timmy what brand he smoked and Timmy replying, “Whatever you’ve got.” One thing the metal guys did bring was a huge following of their friends who referred to themselves as “The Legion of Goons” or simply “The Legion” for short. They came to all the shows. They were always willing to carry a cymbal or a guitar in return for getting in for free.

Just a few years ago, a guy who worked for me was in a band called Alarms & Sirens. He invited me to a basement show and was shocked when I showed up and a bunch of guys were hugging me as if we were long lost brothers. “You know the Goons???? Those old guys come to all the shows and if they don’t like what a band is doing they move to the back and blast Motorhead or Slayer on the massive boombox Conrad is always carrying.” Some things never change.

One of the Goons who I knew pretty well, a guy named Billy, passed away a few years ago. This song is loosely based on him. One day at a backyard party I saw him with blood dripping off his lip and asked what happened. He told me he liked to pull the tabs off the top of beer cans and chew on them and he accidentally cut himself on a sharp edge. Fucking ridiculous. I also saw it as a subtle commentary on frivolous lawsuits.

This is far from a top notch recording, but it’ll do. Fuckin’ punk rock. I remember that no matter where I stood that day, my guitar was feeding back through the Marshall half-stack like a motherfucker, so whenever we hit a break I would kill my MXR distortion unit so the shit wasn’t screaming. In the middle of the song coming back on, I missed the pedal. If you listen at the end you can hear a Green Line train going right by the open window.

Drinkin’ brews
in the yard
Meister Brau’s
all we could afford
Bill put a pop top
in his mouth
Cut his lip, man
He bled to death

Death by Meister Brau (Meister Brau, Meister Brau!)
Death by Meister Brau (Meister Brau, Meister Brau!)

Down in the emergency room
the nurse has got the look of doom
He's gone, he's gone
That's the news
Look out, Miller
his mom will sue

Death by Meister Brau (Meister Brau, Meister Brau!)
Death by Meister Brau (Meister Brau, Meister Brau!)

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... ister-br-u

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

awesome.

_________________
@audioidkid

We usually didn’t play a whole lot of covers, although every band I was ever in played at least one Skynyrd song semi-regularly. I did like covering some of the Chicago bands I liked at the time, and sometimes even some I didn’t really like.

For about a two year period in the late eighties I would say Hazardous Youth was the preeminent Chicago hardcore band. We never really managed to get anything great on record, but we were a powerhouse live band. Timmy and Herb were the two Goons in our band and Timmy would often book shows for us on what I guess you might call the Northwest side underground punk/metal scene. What that meant was playing in some basement or hall for little or no money. At this point I had been playing in bands for close to ten years, and the fun of dragging a five foot tall Kustom bass cabinet and a set of drums around in 5 below weather had long since worn off for me. The Goons were younger and this shit was new to them. They would have played every night if there was a place for us to do it.

Some of the other bands on this “scene” were Industrialized Autocracy, Bottles Flying, Insolent Respect, and Snoopeez Tapeworm. When Timmy and I named our band we intentionally made the name very generic so it seemed as if you had already heard of us even though you hadn’t: Hazardous Youth. Every weekend there was a show somewhere with some combination of those bands and maybe a few others. Timmy wanted us to play every one. But I explained to him that we would build a better following by playing in the city less, rather than more. And sure enough, by refusing to play more than once a month at the very most, it became a much bigger event when Hazardous Youth was on the bill.

Richie Herrera was the leader of Snoopeez Tapeworm and he had booked a show that Timmy said we would play without my knowledge. Part of the punk rock ethic is supposed to be that the order of the bands doesn’t matter. But in reality, the top band almost always played last. But this was Richie’s show, so of course Snoopeez would be “headlining”. That pissed me off because I felt like we were the big kid on the block. But then I figured they’d be sorry they tried to follow us. We had played with these guys more than a few times and I had seen them play many more. We knew almost their whole set. So our bass player, Chris Splatter and I decided we were going to play some of it and play it better than they could as punishment for making us go on first. We did about four of their songs before Richie ran on stage and began singing along with me to one of their tracks called “My Balls Itch”. They were pretty good sports about it. And next time they’d know who should be headlining.



This is a song Splatter brought to the band. Technically, it’s a cover since he had originally played it in a band called Criminally Insane. He had written it with Mike Noth who was the frontman for that band. Both he and Splatter were working the door at Medusa’s at the time. I guarantee they never played it as ferociously as we did. This is a sloppy and poorly recorded version but you can get the idea. Anyone who has ever spent any time in a mosh pit will understand right away how the structure of this number kept the floor moving. It also provides a good reflection of our financial situations at the time. I was never a big fan of ramen, but I ate a whole lot of generic versions of Kraft Dinner.

Down to the SuperPlus
Four for a buck
When you’re fuckin’ starvin’
You don’t give a fuck

Macaroni, Macaroni, Macaroni and Cheese!
Macaroni, Macaroni, Macaroni and Cheese!

When you’re fuckin’ hungry
And out on the street
You don’t want no blowjob
Just something to eat

Macaroni, Macaroni, Macaroni and Cheese!
Macaroni, Macaroni, Macaroni and Cheese!

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... and-cheese

I’m pretty sure this next one was recorded at Batteries Not Included which was on the northeast corner of Webster and Clybourn. In any case, a bunch of suburban skinheads who I didn’t know were standing in front yelling shit all night. We had finished our set and they were screaming for more. We played this one just to piss them off. We had never played it before. In fact the Sign O’ The Times record had come out only very recently. But I was always a big Prince fan. I just blew into the riff and everyone else followed. Sort of. I think Kevin and I were singing off-key on purpose. Backing vocals by a guy who would eventually get his songs on Dawson’s Creek. At the end I was pointing at the biggest skinhead in his boots and braces and yelling, “YOU GOT THE LOOK! YOU GOT THE LOOK!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBkuiChImb8 *


* This used to be a link to the Prince cover but that little fucker (or his people) patrols the Internet jealously protecting his IP. I guess nobody has told him music is now free.

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Slowclap. Great story. I still think you were an early member of Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

_________________
CSFMB: Home of the small minded

By the fall of ’87 the Maggots had just about run its course as a band. We were fighting all the time and we had been playing together since the early '80s. So Tom and I decided to drive around and ask the first guy we saw who looked like he could rock to play with us. We drove down Addison and as we crossed the bridge going east just before we got to California, we saw a long-haired goon who looked to be in his late teens. He turned out to be Eric Herb. We gave him a ride home and asked him to play in a band with us. He said he could play many instruments and his friend Timmy played guitar and drums. We agreed to meet the next day at the game room across the street from Lane Tech where those guys hung out. So the following afternoon we picked them up and headed over to Blue Noise Studio. Timmy turned out to be a moderately talented but supremely confident guitarist. The kid was sixteen years old and he wasn’t afraid of anything. Herb was the kind of guy who could pick up anything and immediately know how to play it. His timing was impeccable, as if there was a clock in his head. We ended up writing six songs, three of which- “Grass”, “Fucked Up”, and “Death by Meister Bräu”- would become staples of the Hazardous Youth live set.

The one regret I have about this band is that we never really made a great quality recording. And I have no idea where any copies of the two best ones we did make are. The first one was a three song demo we recorded at Hell House with just Herb, Timmy, and me as a three piece- two guitars and drums. Alan Jones recorded it for us live on two tracks. Alan was an interesting guy and an innovative guitarist in a band called End Result. When asked by a fanzine interviewer why End Result had no drummer, Alan famously replied, “Because we think our audience can count.”


Alan Jones

Alan had lived in a group home on West Jackson Boulevard before moving into Hell House. He was one of several fascinating characters that lived at Hell House. Some of the others included Timmy’s sister, Tina, who was a good musician and songwriter herself and her boyfriend, Todd, a guy we hung out with sometimes named Ru, the late Junkie Stone, who claimed to be the only white member of the P. Stone Rangers, the brilliant Jake LaBotz, who you might have seen as the lead guitarist of the band Blueshammer that Buscemi’s character hated in Ghost World or singing “Wishing Well” on Rambo’s boat, and a guy named Mark Blade who played in a band called God’s Acre with Brian St. Clair, who would go on to play in Local H, on drums and Wilmette trust fund baby Peter Houpt on guitar. Fuckin’ Peter Houpt played guitar like a goddamn art student.

Anyway, the Jones demo probably captured our live sound better than anything we ever recorded. It was just super raw and loud. The mix was about perfect with the guitars just slashing through the drums that were at the forefront.

The other decent recording we made that I can’t find was a four song EP/cassette that we sold at Record City, Rolling Stone, and a place next to it that I think was called One Step Beyond.




Gary had joined the band by this time so I hardly played any guitar on it. It included versions of “Death By Meister Brau”, “Julia Child”, “DUI”, and a cover of a Lost Cause tune called “Bam!”. We recorded it on a four track machine at our Lake Street practice space with a guy named Jim Harvey. Jim was a really nice guy and he had a smokin’ hot girlfriend- a redhead named Katrina who had played guitar in the Plasmatics with Wendy O. Williams. Katrina played like someone who had studied at Julliard. I played like a fucking forklift driver, which is what I was. She’s old like me, but if you subscribe to Guitar Player you might see her some time. Her style is definitely not my thing. Where I come from we consider such playing grandiose, pompous, and self-indulgent. Still, I’ve never met another girl who could play like her. Maybe there isn’t one.


http://www.katrinaguitar.com/home.html

Here’s a shitty version of “Fucked Up”. The one we recorded with Alan was far, far better. The song is based on events that actually happened. I adapted most of the lyrics for the second verse from “Jingle Bells”. I think this was recorded on a Sunday when Casey and I were just hanging out at Lake Street watching karate flicks on TV and the other guys showed up. We obviously weren’t a straight edge band.

I like to smoke
I like to snort lines
I’ll be fucked up
on the day I die

Go over to Richie’s
Drug haven of the ‘hood
Smoke a joint, drop some ‘cid
Damn, that shit is good
Hangin’ out in the attic
Richie’s mom is getting frantic
Bong water on the floor
She kicks us out the door
We’re fucked up, man
We’re fucked up

I like to drink
I like to get high
I’ll be fucked up
on the day I die

Snorting lines of snow
in a stolen Chevrolet
Down the Drive we go
Blowin’ all the way
Bowls on Graffix light at night
Making spirits oh so bright
Stems and seeds are everywhere
It ain’t my car so I don’t care
We’re fucked up, man
We’re fucked up

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod/fucked-up

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Who are you in the pic?

_________________
@audioidkid

Far right.

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

A Tale of Two Drummers


Here are a couple songs that were written by Eric Herb. At the time he was running an AB Dick offset press at a place called KK Graphics on Diversey and Kilbourn. He would often think up songs in his head while he was running his press.

Eric started out playing bass in Hazardous Youth, as my friend Tom from the Maggots was originally on drums. But Tom didn’t really want to play hardcore or speed metal and he wasn’t the kind of drummer I needed for this band. So we added Chris Splatter on bass and Herb moved behind the drum kit.

Herb really made the fucking band go. He was a monster back there. It was like he was playing with hammers while wearing steel-toed boots. And his timing was impeccable. That was awesome since Timmy and I were always a little shaky in that regard.


Eric Herb

Eventually, Herb’s girlfriend made him quit the band. We replaced him with Gus Roman. Gus was widely considered the top hardcore drummer in Chicago at the time. He played in Lost Cause, Garbage Pail Kids, M.O.S.H., Life Sentence, and Beer Nuts. Gus went on tour with Gwar. He told me he put one of the costume heads on and nearly threw up, it smelled so awful.


Gus Roman

Gus was a quick, clever drummer with a lot more chops than Herb. But he lacked Herb’s power and timing. Herb was an indefatigable machine. He just never got tired. Granted, we were a punk band and the songs were short and the sets were usually short as well, but he could go all night without slowing down. Gus was a skinny little kid who used an inhaler for his asthma. I was always more cognizant of the order of the songs with Gus back there. With Herb it didn’t matter. But they were both great in their own ways.

Anyway, I think this was the first time we practiced with Gus right after he joined the band. Casey West was the bass player at the time. There are some obvious timing issues. As I said, Gus wasn’t as strong in that area as Herb was, and Timmy and I needed all the help we could get keeping shit together. In our parlance, it sometimes sounded as if we were “falling up the stairs.” It’s a good thing Casey was as steady as she goes and we could all play off him. We would often warm up by fucking around with Metallica’s “Whiplash”. The song gave Timmy fits. Herb would sneer at us when the timing of the guitars fell apart. Whenever I, or especially Timmy, would come slightly off time on any song, Herb would yell, “It’s another ‘Whiplash’!” Eventually, “It’s another ‘Whiplash’!” became a catchall phrase for anyone fucking anything up.

The first song is called “Asphalt Prophecy”. One day Herb came to me and said, “You know that song 'Wheel In The Sky' by Journey? That’s about the world.” No shit, Eric? Well, Herb thought we should have a song “about the world”, so he wrote this shit. The lyrics are idiotic and I considered rewriting them, but then I thought: Big Dumb Metal. Just leave it be. The song quickly became the opener for our standard live set. At some point instead of just counting four and going, we began by making a cacophonic racket with all the instruments- often a single note drone that we would let hang until Herb or Gus counted out the time.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... t-prophecy

The other one is “Hazardous Youth”. I guess Herb thought we should have a theme song. He walked in one day and picked up Timmy’s guitar and said, “I wrote a new song.” When Herb wrote a song he would have the entire thing completed including all the lyrics. I didn’t work that way. I would get an idea and develop it over time. Or Timmy and I would write together throwing ideas back and forth. Sometimes we would knock one out quick, but I had a tendency to overthink things. That’s why guys like Timmy and Bill were great songwriting partners for me. They didn’t think too much. It seemed like stuff just kind of came to them. Even now as I’m going back through this stuff, I see lyrics that I would change or things I would do differently with the songs. I think it was Leonardo who said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” But sometimes, you just have to leave well enough alone.

So, Herb played “Hazardous Youth” on Timmy’s guitar. He explained that, “It’s sort of like The Preamble.”

We- the Hazardous Youth
For- the Hazardous Youth
By- the Hazardous Youth
In order to form a more sane society

It was a manifesto against the Baby Boomer parents who had raised him and his contemporaries. Although, it certainly wasn’t personal, since Herb was very tight with his family and had a lot of respect for his mom and dad. It was more like, “You think we’re fucked up? Let me show you exactly how fucked up we really are and the part you played in that.” As a disaffected Gen-Xer often overcome with ennui, I could totally get on board with that.

We didn’t ask to come here but you brought us about
Now we’re going to beat you, put you down and stomp you out
Do not try to change us, we’re evil through and through
Sick, fatal and dangerous
We are the Hazardous Youth

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod/hazardous-youth

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Damn. That just completely messed up the mental picture for me of JORR.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

As a charter member of the "Im in my 40's and I though Charo was just some dumb Mexican broad with big tits who Bob Hope used to fawn over until I saw her play guitar once" fan club , I'll try not to convince the other members to call of the fatwah for such an affront to her. On a side note, could Les Paul have sued himself if he played anything but a Les Paul?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Would've been fourth or fifth guess for me, as well.

Love the tunes, JORR, and envy the experiences.

When I first met Bill he had just come back to Chicago after being down in Memphis for awhile. I think he was trying to absorb the musical traditions, but more than that, he loved Southern pussy. Unfortunately for him, instead of winding up with some Southern belle who had matriculated at Ole Miss, he often ended up with a sex worker.

He was speaking with this affected Southern drawl at the time. And my friend Tom who was playing drums with us asked him what was up with that accent. Bill said, “I like to talk like I’m from Memphis.” To which Tom replied, “That’s cool, but when you’re playing with us, do me a favor and talk like you’re from Villa Park.”

This is a song Bill wrote when he was playing in a band called the X-Men, probably around 1984. He was dating some chick from Naperville or Wheaton or some other suburban cultural mecca out that way. When he’d go to pick her up he saw all these shitty subdivisions under construction. Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There's a pink one and a green one. And a blue one and a yellow one. And they're all made out of ticky tacky. And they all look just the same.

He was also reading up a couple books at the time. One was Somebody In Boots by Nelson Algren. For some inexplicable reason Bill always referred to it as “Somewhere Boots”. He even wrote a crappy instrumental called “Somewhere Boots” which is on his album, Mystery Guitar. Mystery Guitar might be the worst record ever made. The other was a Mike Hammer novel. That’s where the “Mickey Spillane” stuff came in.

Well, they were beautiful to get what they need
They live in Styrofoam houses
Can’t afford no trees
Well, they were beautiful just like their mom and dad
Styrofoam people don’t live in a pad

Styrofoam people don’t read Mickey Spillane
Styrofoam people always melt in the rain

Cause I like people who eat in greasy spoons
Old men in Dago T-shirts, girls with sensible shoes
And wicked old ladies playin’ “Lady of Spain”
On their accordions while they’re meltin’ in the rain

On tour in Nashville, a clerk at a record store said this was the worst drum solo he had ever heard.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... oam-people

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

The big surprise here,that's me on the far left.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I knew Rich Herrera. I just found out in January that he had passed away.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Yeah, that's been awhile. I'm not sure who runs the tattoo shop now, but I think it was on an episode of Ghosthunters.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

JORR,
I somehow missed this thread until now. You are a real interesting guy. I have always regretted never learning how to play a guitar. I love music and always enjoy reading about it...Thanks!

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Thank you, jimmy.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

It's not too late.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

After the break up of the Sonars, Bill joined HiFi and the Roadburners on lead guitar. I never cared for that band. I find attempting to live like it’s 1956 to be utterly ridiculous. Once at a Big “C” Jamboree at Martyr’s, the guest band was a three-piece from England. I drank with those guys until the bar closed and they were cracking jokes about the other bands and much of the crowd in their rockabilly duds. They said they dressed up on stage but when they went to work the next morning they wore clothes from the 90s. “I got a fillin’ these bloody wankers wear these clothes all the time!”

Bill told me the Roadburners were like a gang. “It was easy to join and almost impossible to quit.” But quit he did. He put together a rockabilly trio with a stand-up bass player. They recorded one EP with Steve Albini. That record sounds as great as you would expect an Albini recording to sound. There are two great songs on there. One is “Delta 88”, which Jeff, Bill, and I wrote for the Sonars. The other is “Nashville Wedding”, a song we were working on at the end that Bill completed well after the demise of the Sonars. “Nashville Wedding” is a heartbreaking love song about Bill’s first marriage. When he sings, “I swear next time I’ll buy you that ring” it makes the hair stand up on your neck. He took her to Taco Bell for their honeymoon. It’s probably not a big surprise that one didn’t last.

Brush your teeth and comb your hair
We’re goin’ to a chapel where
Our love can be forever intertwined
Silky hips, nylon hose
Our love can finally be disclosed
Baby, I’ve got one word for you- it’s fine

We’re gonna have a Nashville wedding
Your love will be mine forevermore
Yeah, the flowers never made it to the church on time
Every time I think of Nashville I cry

Well, we made a little home out in the country
But ribbons and bows don’t make a happy home
Little things kept turnin’ into big things
Next train to Nashville she was gone

When we walked in the chapel that afternoon
We forgot to get the operator’s manual to
Our brand new convertible love affair
Love is not an easy thing
I swear next time I’ll buy you that ring
Baby, for your love there’s no compare

The rest of the record rocks okay but the other songs aren’t that strong. There were a couple longing odes to the Old West, a rockabilly celebration or two, something about the evil women do, and one true turd- a brutal song called “Zydeco Baby”. Bill would play extended versions of it while all the little girls in Lakeview or Lincoln Park bopped about. He knew how much I hated it. Shit, I constantly made fun of it. To this day, if he’s playing a gig somewhere and I show up, chances are good that he’ll say something like this from the stage: “My good friend Bob is in the house and I’d like to dedicate this next number to him. It’s his favorite tune, ‘Zydeco Baby’!”

Here's the whole record:

http://www.rockinbilly.net/#!rockin--pharoah/nhmyk

Around this time Jimmy Sutton was putting together his popular anachronism, the Mighty Blue Kings. That was some retro bullshit. We played some older styles, but I would call our stuff “now-tro”. We may have been 50s Twin Reverb men but we had a 1990s plan. The Mighty Blue Kings got popular in a hurry. Bill was jealous. So somehow he and this sax player Brian who went by the name “Big Fine Daddy” got a hold of each other and they started to play this swing crap. They played these gutless versions of some of the Sonars songs. It made me sad. They put out an album called Viva Le Rock n’ Roll. It had a couple moments, but for the most part it wasn’t good. “Ashley Rose” is on there and it sounds like it’s being done by Barry Manilow.

Eventually, Bill made a record called Mystery Guitar. Mystery Guitar is quite probably the worst rock record ever made. It’s a mix of boring instrumentals, rocked up gospel (“Keep On Rockin' With Jesus”) and brutal covers. The worst of it was a cover of the great “Walk Away Renee”. This song is well out of Bill’s vocal range and nothing can be done to change that. It’s a hard song to sing. He sounds like he’s singing it through a megaphone turned backwards while underwater. It’s just fucking dreadful. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so, because one day Bill got a call from some guy named George who said he ran a record label called St. George Records. He wanted to make records with Bill, but one caveat was that they must not be anything like Mystery Guitar.

So George started sending these old rock and roll guys up to Chicago to record albums with Bill as the bandleader. They did one with Dale Hawkins (the guy who wrote “Suzy-Q”), Hayden Thompson, Billy Lee Riley, and a Louisiana drummer named Warren Storm. I guess it was a decent payday for Bill and he liked playing with all those old guys.

Here’s a song we were working on when the Sonars broke up. It’s called “Behind The Sun”. This was also a tough song for Bill to sing. Sometimes you write one out of your range. Hell, that’s what broke up Mott The Hoople and started Bad Company. I’m pretty sure Bill later recorded this with another band. I thought it had a lot of potential but needed some work. I wasn’t keen on the lyrics. We were back to Bill’s obsession with the American West. That’s okay, but neither he nor I was ever good at covering broad themes. We were much stronger when our writing was more personal. I think most people probably are. Write what you know.

On this demo I played the lead. I was going for a surf sound. Like motherfuckin’ Dick Dale! You can get an idea of what a real guitarist could do with this song. There’s some space to work. I pretty much just repeated a scale. There is a point there though, right after that key change in the middle, where we’re really cookin’. I think I reached a pretty good emotional pitch there. Bill got excited enough to yell, “Heeeeey!” off mic in the background.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... nd-the-sun

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I know the last Hazardous Youth show was on Easter Sunday of 1991 at 950 Lucky Number. We played with Barbie Army and there weren’t many people there. I had had about enough at that time. It was right around then that I bought my first racehorse and I was busy with a lot of other shit. The band tried to go on without me, replacing me with a guy named Justice Leppanen, but it wasn’t the same. We had gone through a bunch of lineup changes, but there were two things you had to have for it to be Hazardous Youth- Timmy Matlock, and me. A friend of mine used to joke, “You’re hazardous and Timmy is the youth.”

In July of 1989 we had played what was probably our biggest show opening up for All at the old Exit on Wells Street. It was an all ages show and the place was packed. A very young black skinhead told me he thought we were great. That makes hauling the equipment worthwhile.



But I guess I should back up a little bit.

This was our first gig after Herb had quit the band. We hadn’t played live in a relatively long time. Gus had joined us on drums but there was one problem. He was still in Life Sentence. The original Life Sentence was Eric Brockman, Joe Losurdo (Joe made You Weren’t There with his wife, Chris Tillman. Ironically, Joe wasn’t there himself.), a drummer I think was named O’Connor, and Ray, the singer from Six Feet Under who Brockman quickly kicked out. I always liked Eric. His previous band, Antibodies was great and he had worked at Record City on Oakton and always recommended new bands to me when I’d go in there to spend my paycheck. When he and Losurdo split up they got into a beef over the name “Life Sentence” and I think they actually ended up suing each other. What the fuck! That isn’t very punk rock. Brockman wound up with the name and put together a new version of the band with Gus on drums and a Northwest side guy named Jeff Hauck on bass. They put out an album called No Experience Necessary. The sleeve features a big picture of Gus wearing a Hazardous Youth cap. Brockman wasn’t too happy about that, but the stylist was a chick who thought Gus looked cool. And he did. There’s a song on there about the conflict with Losurdo called “Win, Lose or Sue”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYVaJD1Ok5Q Anyway, Gus felt he had to honor his commitment to tour and that left us without a drummer.

We were practicing in Casey’s apartment on Division and Leavitt with Casey on drums. He was more than strong enough back there, but now we needed a bass player. This old black dude (and when I say “old”, he was maybe 35) named Cliff used to come over and drink and get high with us while we practiced and he started sitting in. So we decided to play the show with him. We practiced a lot and got shit pretty tight. We were ready for that show.

In the meantime, Life Sentence rolled back into town on their tour to play at Medusa’s. The tour headliner was a reconstituted Broken Bones that Terry “Tez” Roberts had put together. It featured our old bass player Chris Splatter and a pretty boy drummer I knew named Pete. There was no Bones. Just his brother and some dopes from Chicago. That prompted some local punk kid at the show to yell, “That’s not Bones! That’s Chris Splatter! I want my fuckin’ money back!” But it was good to see all the boys.

The day of the show we loaded our gear in. Casey didn’t have a proper drum kit but we figured we’d borrow the shit we needed from one of the other bands. A guy named Larry who used the name Lick The Dog Productions had set up the show. I knew All had to be getting All of the money. Except what Larry got. My buddy Tom walked right up to Bill Stevenson and said, “You don’t mind if we borrow some of your cymbals and hardware, do you?” as he was picking up the guy’s crash. Stevenson was all surfer mellow. “Like, cool, dude. No worries.” I didn’t really expect that from a guy who had toured with Black Flag.

The All guys didn’t know what to make of us. We had a bunch of Goons with us and we were probably pretty aggressive. I guess All had some kind of contract with a rider because there was a nice food spread with all kinds of meats and cheeses and whole loaves of various breads. I told Tom to get some ice and put all that shit in the cooler I had in my car. The All guys didn’t say shit.

So we got out on stage and it’s wall to wall people. Cliff thinks he a fuckin’ rock star or something. He’s got his moves workin’. We start with "Asphalt Prophecy" as usual. We do this one next. It’s called “Hi Mom (Don’t Worry, I’m Eating Right)”. It’s kind of an inside joke about a Goon friend of ours who got forty day in Cook County Jail for stealing a car. He was a big fan of the band. Upon his release the first place he stopped was our practice space on Lake Street.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... i-mom-dont

At that point I think All was a little frightened. I’m sure I looked like a man possessed. Edgerton and Alvarez were side-eyeing me. So then we blow into "D.U.I.". This is a true story about an incident my friends Tom and Willie and I had in the Northwest suburbs circa 1982. Luckily my record was expunged.

Drivin’ around, just me ‘n’ my boys
Drinkin’ cheap vodka from Hannah & Hogg
The stereo’s blastin’, my Nova’s unwound
But that Schaumburg cop just shut me down

Cruisin’ through the suburbs, yellin’ at girls
I avoided a collision on Plum Grove Road
Squealin’ the tires, Tommy’s door was ajar
Five minutes later I was cuffed to the car

Screamin’ and yellin’, I said, ‘Fuck this town’
The cop got mad and slapped me around
He said, ‘Gimme the keys, kid, you’re goin’ to jail
I called my mother to post my bail

https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... outh-d-u-i

After the show Larry gave me a check for $60.00. I figured that would be a burrito and a forty for each of us and we’d still have a couple bucks left over. I took the check and gave the other three guys fifteen bucks each. Cliff was furious. He thought we were cheating him. Like we made some huge payday. Finally, I had to ask him if he thought he was playing in Van Halen. The next day I took the Lick The Dog check to the bank where my dad worked and he cashed it for me. The check bounced.

_________________
His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

of course the check bounced.

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CSFMB: Home of the small minded

You should have seen my conservative banker father looking at the check. "Lick The Dog Productions. Lick The Dog????"

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I literally cannot read these lyrics without saying Marconi instead of Macaroni.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!