That Really Grinds My Gears!

Adventues in Record Collecting (aka my 2010 Record Store Day Aventure)

2010-04-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

I have gone out for all kind of different promotional events. I've met bands like Kiss, Gwar, Nuclear Assault & The Bosstones at in-store aperances. I've gone to Rubber Chicken Comics in Bellingham, MA for a bunch of 'Free Comic Book Day' events over the last few years, got some free books, taken advantage of some great sale prices and met some pretty cool Stormtroopers. I have even been out on Record Store Day, but this year I was taking it much more serious! There were a few records that I really wanted to get and quite a few more that would have been a nice bonus to get and I was determined to not leave empty handed!

Top of my list was the Revelation records reissue of the 1st Sick Of It All 7" pressed on clear vinyl. I have a black vinyl version, but this clear vinyl press was limited to only 500 copies and was a Record Store Day exclusive. Also near the too of my list was the Reissue of the greatest hits collection 'Ramones Mania', obviously by the Ramones. This special version is a double LP on green & blue split vinyl and is limited to 1000 copies. Rounding out my top 3 was a new 12" by the Beastie Boys that being billed as the "mystery white label 12 inch". No one knows what is on it, but it's limited to only 1000 copies so everyone wants one!

There was lots of other stuff that I was hoping to find but could live without. Reissues of the the first 3 (real) Pantera Records, 'Cowboys From Hell' (limited to 5000), 'Vulgar Display of Power' (limited to 5000) & 'Far Beyond Driven' (limited to 3000). A Devo 12" of new material limited to 2500. 3 John Lennon 7"s that comes with some postcards, a big poster and a special 45 adapter for your turntable all in a special box hand numbered out of 7000. A reissue of the Soundgarden 'Hunted Down' 7" pressed on orange vinyl by Sub Pop. A box set of 4 180 gram vinyl Joy Division LPs that wad limited to only 820 copies! A white vinyl 10" of 2 songs from the Courtney Love's reunited Hole and a few other odds and ends.

For Record Store Day 2010 I knew I needed a plan of action! In 2008 I had kind of randomly stumbled upon the event at a local Newbury Comics and really just got some free comp CD and stickers. In 2009 I was aware of the day, but didn't rush out to the stores or anything. I just headed to Newbury Comics again a few hours after they opened and was able to get the Slayer 'Psychopathy Red' 7", Bad Religion reissue 7" and the 180 gram vinyl reissue of The Misfits 'Walk Among Us' and a few free compilations and other swag. So this year as soon as the Record Store Day date was announced I started doing my research!

I downloaded the complete list of official RSD (Record Store Day) releases and used their site specific search engine to find the participating stores in my area. I started searching message boards local and national to get more in-depth info on the releases. I even got in touch with some friends that work at a few stores and got some 'inside info' about what records would be shipped to which stores in their chain.

Once I compiled all this information I was able to determine that there was really only 3 stores that were worth trying to get to in the amount of time that I would have. Thanks to my friend Roger I was able to find out that the Newbury Comics in North Attleboro, MA would be getting 1 copy of the Sick Of It All 7" and 2 copies of the Ramones Mania double LP. Unfortunately they would not be getting any copies of the Mystery Beastie Boys 12". That meant that I had to hit a minimum of 2 stores to even have a chance at getting the top 3 records on my list for the day and just getting to the stores would not guaranty me a copy of even 1 of my top 3!

Thanks to some people on the www.LotsOfNoise.com message board I found out that Time Capsule Comics & Records would be getting the Mystery Beastie Boys 12". Not only would they have it, but they would have at least 2 copies in both their Cranston, RI and their Seekonk, MA stores. Unfortunately Time Capsule would not be getting copies of Ramones Mania or the Sick Of It All 7"!

I was pretty sure that Armageddon Shop in Providence, RI would be getting some of the RSD exclusive releases, but they were pretty tight lipped and didn't really give anyone a heads up about what they were or were not going to have. Since Armageddon was going to be a total crap shoot I decided that they would be my number 3 stop of the day and if they had something I hadn't gotten yet then cool, but if not then I wouldn't have missed it at one of the stores that I knew was getting stuff I wanted.

My next course of action was to find out what time all of these stores were opening on Record Store Day so that I could schedule my Saturday morning. It ended up that Newbury Comics opened at 1:00 am, both Time Capsule locations opened at 11:00 am and Armageddon Shop opened at noon (or a few minutes after). I was pretty sure that I could leave home at about 9:00 am and get to Newbury Comics by 9:15 to wait outside until they opened at 10:00 am. The problem is that if I was in North Attleboro at 10:00 am the odds are that I couldn't be in Seekonk by 11:00 am.

Now I have 3 options to remedy this problem. 1. I could buy a Delorean and have a Flux Capacitor installed, but that didn't seem like the most cost effective route to take. 2. I could make a decision about which records were most important to try to get and just go to that store, but I'm a collector and I wanted them all! 3. I could find someone to 'help' me by going to one of the stores for me. Even though I would really like to own a Delorean (time machine or otherwise) and there are time when I think I might have to many records... option number 3 seemed like the best way to go. Like usual when I need help with something, be it a sill scheme or something actually important I looked no further than my best friend and better half, Jenns.

I knew that she would help me no matter what it was that I asked for, but I still felt bad asking her to stand outside a record store on a Saturday morning to help feed my silly obsession with slabs of collectible colored vinyl.... Not bad enough to not ask her though! I triple checked all my information about store hours, store locations and potential store inventories for Saturday and finalized my plan. Since Jenns usually goes to visit her mom on Saturdays I knew that sending her to Seekonk was out of the way and she was definitely more familiar with the location of the Newbury Comics. I decided that it made the most sense to have her go to the North Attleboro Newbury Comics and I would go to the Time Capsule in Seekonk.

After I asked Jenns if she would do me the favor and she agreed I went back to the Record Store Day websites list of exclusive releases and made a full list of everything that I could possibly want to buy. I gave the list to Jenns along with a brief explanation about where I thought the stuff would be, what the cover art might be and any other shred borderline useless information I could possibly think up.

Fast forward to the morning or Saturday, April 17th. Tired from a late night of poker with some friends (I won $20) I got up, threw on some clothes and brushed my teeth. I went over the list with Jenns one last time and then we both left the house at about 9:20 am.

Jenns headed straight to the prize and go to Newbury Comics in time to join 2 other people already standing outside in the rain. Luckily she made friends with one of them who said he would help her grab the stuff she was looking for which would be very helpful as the line got longer behind them. After a little less than a half hour of waiting in the rain the store finally opened and Jenns along with her assistant headed to the RSD display tables with post haste. When it was all said and done she walked out with a little over $100 worth of vinyl including the Sick Of It All 7", Ramones Mania double LP (numbers 1 & 2 on my want list for the day), Pantera 'Cowboys From hell' & 'Vulgar Display of Power', the John Lennon 3 7" box set, Devo 'Fresh/What We Do' blue vinyl 12", Elvis Presley 'Thats Alright Mama' 7", a Newbury Comics exclusive Ramones picture disc 7", a handful of free promotional records of assorted sizes (7", 10" & 12") and a Rob Zombies Halloween II movie poster all neatly packed up in a free RSD exclusive record bag. Not a bad score at all for a Record Store Day newbie that was doing me a huge favor!

When Jenns left the house and headed to Newbury Comics, I left the house to start my personal mission also. Since I had a lot more time to kill my first stop was actually Dunkin' Donuts. I got a large hot chocolate & an egg & cheese sandwich on an onion bagel and I was on my way! No more screwing around, I headed straight to Time Capsule in Seekonk, MA. I had only been there one time before and that was to pick up some comic book long boxes to finally put away the months of comic books that were covering my bedroom floor. I pulled in the Time Capsule parking lot at about 9:45 half expecting a small group of people to be standing outside, but I was wrong. There was no one standing outside and the parking lot was deserted, probably because they didn't open until 11:00 am. I was okay with the wait and had anticipated it the whole time so I sat back and started eating my breakfast.

At about five past ten a truck pulled up and parked. I immediately sprang to action grabbing my phone, hot chocolate and the rest of my sandwich and hopped out of the car. I rushed over to the front door of the store before the other gentleman was even out of his truck. I was first in line and I was proud... until about 2 minutes later when the man in the truck walked over with a set of keys in his hand and said "You're a little early, we don't open for another hour". I was deflated and embarrassed... but I was still first!

I explained why I was there so early and that I knew they didn't open until 11::00 and prepared to go and sit back in my car when he invited me in to sit and wait. I sat at an empty table and looked around at the shelves filled with graphic novels, recent and back issue comics and bins of records along the walls. After sitting for about half an hour the clerk said that his cash drawer was all set and I could buy my stuff if I wanted. I asked to be sure it was okay to buy the stuff early and he assured me that it wasn't a big deal and that he wasn't expecting a big rush. I walked up to the counter and looked at the Record Store Day releases on the wall behind him. I kindly requested the Mystery Beastie Boys 12" that I knew they had and the Soundgarden orange vinyl 7" that I saw on the shelf. I then asked if he had multiple copies of the Government Issue 'Joy Ride' LP and the Bouncing Souls 'Jersey Pride' picture disc 7" hanging on the wall. With in a few seconds he pulled out 1 copy of each form a box by his side and plopped them on the counter and started ringing up my purchase.

Two minutes and $30 later I left with the final record on my top 3 list for the day, plus 3 others that I had really hoped to be able to get. Not only did I now have almost all the records I wanted for the day, but it was only about 10:30 am. I was over 30 minutes a head of schedule! This new found time I revamped my previous plan of heading from Seekonk straight to Providence to go to Armageddon, which opened at noon. Instead with trusty Google Maps on the iPhone I got directions from Time Capsule in Seekonk to Time Capsule in Cranston. I was 99% sure they would have the same stuff, but I had time to kill and figured why not check just in case!

It didn't take long to get to Cranston, but by the time I got there Time Capsule was already open so I parked and went right in. The Record Store Day releases were once again behind the counter and there was a list posted so people could read the details about each record. Even though it was the same assortment as in Seekonk I got sucked into the excitement of the day and I picked up copies of the two No Idea Records reissue LPs by Lifetime, 'Jerseys Best Dancers' and 'Hello Bastards' and considered myself lucky to be able to grab a second copy of the Mystery Beastie Boys 12".

After I paid the clerk commented on my Slapshot sweatshirt and said they had gotten a Slapshot record on red vinyl that was up on the wall in the other room so before I left I decided to check it out. The record room isn't that big, but there's a lot of stuff in there! There was a 'Teen Wolf Soundtrack' LP that caught my eye, but it was a little pricey. I saw the Slapshot LP and it was 'Step On It' like I had assumed it would be. I believe it was priced at $40 which is not a bad price, but I don't really need another copy of it right now. Then I saw a really nice copy of the Warzone LP 'Open Your Eyes' that was priced at $45. I did a quick popsike.com search and decided it wasn't cheap enough that I needed to pick it up right away. I flipped through a few more stacks of records and then headed out for my next stop.

Another quick Google Maps search to make sure I was heading in the right direction and within about 15 minutes I was sitting outside Armageddon Shop in Providence. I knew they didn't open until noon, but also knew the odds were that it would probably be shortly after 12:00 that they actually opened. I hopped on the trusty iPhone and checked Facebook while I killed time and saw some posts that Armageddon had made promoting the new releases for the day and a request for coffee since it was going to be a long and busy day. Knowing I had at least 45 minutes to wait I made a drive a few blocks to the closest Dunkin' Donuts (my second DD stop of the day) and picked up 2 coffees and a soda and then headed back to Armageddon to finish waiting.

To my surprise by the time I got back to Armageddon there was 5 people waiting outside and 2 more pulling up at the same time as I was. I quickly grabbed my phone and the coffee and hopped in line. I joined in the conversation about what everyone was hoping to find and what they had already found at the stores they had already visited and then talked to Brian fro Dropdead a bit when he joined the line. By the time Chris opened up the store the line had grown quite a bit and everyone in it was excited to rush in and find their personal number one record of the day. If you've never been to Armageddon Shop I highly recommend that you check it out. Tons of vinyl, tons of CDs, tons of cassettes, zines, books, magazines, shirts and other stuff all packed into a pretty small space.

On a normal Saturday people come in and out of Armageddon, a few will hang out and chat for a while and the narrow aisles can sometimes feel cramped, but this was by no means a normal Saturday! Chris walked in the store and the 20 plus people in line filed in behind him. There was immediate confusion because there was no clearly defined location for the RSD exclusive releases that most people were looking for. Instead they seemed to be filed in the normal new release boxes by genre with the exception of the RSD 7"s that were in a small pile at the front counter. Most people tried to squat down to flip through the boxes of records on the floor while other people tried to squeeze by and push their way further into the store, but there was practically a roadblock as people searched for the hidden Record Store Day gems. After I handed off the coffees I had brought to Chris, I managed to dig through a few boxes but didn't see much of major interest. I fought the crowd and made a loop of the shop checked out the 2 boxes of 'rare' records that had been put out special for the day. Original presses of classic records by Youth of Today, Crass, The Beatles, Carcass, Subhumans, Underdog and many more all priced more than fair, but still out of reach for the current state of my wallet.

The one record that caught my eye and made me stop dead in my tracks was an original first press Minor Threat 'Filler' 7". This is the record that has defined Straight Edge for the almost 30 years! The bright red sleeve looked almost as crisp as the day it was printed. The bright yellow labels beaming like the sun on a hot summer day. Both the original lyric sheet and the additional Dischord inserts included and not yellowed at all. As if that were not enough there was a note written on the clear protective sleeve that explained how this particular 7" was originally owned by one of the Verbal Assault roadies and that he had gotten it directly from Dischord when it was released. So what was it that stopped me from immediately slapping down the cash for this record that is easily in the top 10 most relevant hardcore records of all time? It was the price tag which was $499.99. I will tell you that my credit card was burning a hole in my pocket begging to be used, but as good as the price was and as bad as I wanted it I refrained from spending the money. However I will also admit that there's part of me that is hoping that it is still there next time I go to the shop!

After more than a few minutes of holding and staring at the Minor Threat 7" I decided to get some air and maybe wait for the store to clear out a bit so I could take a better look at the new releases. When I stepped out of the shop there were 3 kids standing and talking about what they had bought. One was wearing an American Nightmare sweatshirt and one was in a Gorilla Biscuits sweatshirt so it was no surprise that they were talking about the youth of Today and Converge records that the one in the GB hoodie bought. After joining in on the conversation I found out the Youth of Today record is question was an original Wishing Well Records press of 'Break Down The Walls'.

A little back story... 'Break Down The Walls' was pressed by Wishing Well Records in 1987. There were 1000 black vinyl copies, 150 blue vinyl copies and 150 red vinyl copies. Wishing Well gave the band 100 red and 100 blue vinyl copies to sell at shows, but after only a couple of shows their van was stolen and the records were never recovered. It is a safe yet unfortunately assumption that they were destroyed leaving only 50 of each color remaining. In an even sadder twist its been rumored that a portion of the 50 red ones were warped beyond recognition when a record store owner purposely left them outside in the sun. This makes the red and even the blue vinyl copies one of the rarest hardcore records in existence.

Ok, back to my original thought. The kid in the Gorilla Biscuits sweatshirt had just bought a pristine mint and SEALED copy of the 'Break Down The Walls' LP. Like with most collectible records there is no way to tell what color the vinyl is without actually looking at it and if the record is sealed you cant look at it. Well, this kid wanted to know what color it was and nothing was going to stop him. Standing on the sidewalk he pulled the LP out of his bag and made a slit where the sleeve opened and slide out the inner sleeve. He peeked in and then slit out the LP for the rest of us to see the shinny brand new..... black vinyl. Yup, unfortunately for him it was not one of the super rare red or blue vinyl copies that he hoped, but he didn't care. He was still 100% happy with his $150 and said that after a quick stop at Taco Bell he was heading home to drop it on his turntable for its maiden spin! As much as I respected the fact that he opened the LP I know that there's no way I could have. Heck, I have some sealed records that are worthless compared to an original Youth of Today LP and if I don't need to listen to it then I don't see a need to open it.

One the 3 kids left with vinyl in hand I went back in to Armageddon for another walk through. I did see a bunch of stuff that would be nice to have, but nothing that felt compelled to drop the money on. I made another stop at the front counter to look at the Minor Threat 7" again and convince myself that I didn't need to buy it. I said bye to Chris and Ben and I headed out. Once I got in the car I decided that I was going to make a stop at the Newbury Comics in the Providence Place Mall since it was only 2-3 minutes down the street. I started heading toward the mall and I was barely there when I realized what a bad idea it was. After about 10 minutes in stop & go traffic I was finally at the entrance to the mall parking garage when I made my last minute decision to skip out on the mall. I headed back toward the highway and decided I would check out what was going on at the Newbury Comics in North Attleboro before I went home.

I knew that Jenns had been there when they opened and had gotten me almost everything that I wanted, but it wouldn't hurt to look again. When I walked in and checked the RSD display and was surprised to see a copy of the Hole 'Skinny Little Bitch' white vinyl 10" which I immediately grabbed because it was the only thing that was on the list I gave Jenns that she wasn't able to get. One of the people ahead of her in line had grabbed it, but apparently put it back after she left the store. After a few more minutes of poking around I found a couple of other things that I had kind of forgotten about but figured I would grab while I was there. After talking to Mike who works there for a bit and a quick walk through the rest of the store I left my 4th Record Store Day stop with the white vinyl Hole 10", a Deftones 7" of two versions of a new song called 'Rocket Skates, a Ted Leo & The Pharmacists 7" of two previously unreleased songs, an issue of Revolver Magazine and some random stickers, pins and other swag type junk.

After one more stop for some bad Mexican food I headed home to check out my newly acquired vinyl and tally up what this wonderful, yet cold and rainy, Record Store Day had cost me.

Heres what it looked like when it was all said and done....

Sick Of It All - clear vinyl 7"
The Ramones - Ramones Mania double LP
Pantera - Cowboys From hell double LP
Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power double LP
John Lennon - Singles Bag (3 x 7" box set)
Soundgarden 'Hunted Down' orange vinyl 7"
Devo 'Fresh/What We Do' blue vinyl 12"
Elvis Presley Thats Alright Mama 7"
Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated picture disc 7"
Beastie Boys - Mystery White Label 12" (I got 2 of these)
Government Issue - Joy Ride LP
Bouncing Souls - Jersey Pride picture disc 7"
Lifetime - Jerseys Best Dancers LP
Lifetime - Hello Bastards LP
Hole - Skinny Little Bitch white vinyl 10"
Deftones - Rocket Skates 7"
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - North Coast/Oldest House 7"
Assorted promotional records (7", 10" & 12")
Assorted promotional CDs & compilations
Rob Zombies Halloween II movie poster
Record Store Day promo record tote bag
Newbury Comics Tooth Face logo pins
Led Zeppelin promo stickers
Record Store Day promo stickers

And here is what it all cost me....

Records Jenns got from Newbury Comics $103.94
Breakfast from Dunkin' Donuts - $4.53
Records from Time Capsule in Seekonk, MA $37.15
Records from Time Capsule in Cranston, RI $$36.35
Coffee for Chris & Ben & soda for me from Dunkin' Donuts $5.92
Records from my stop at Newbury Comics $21.87
Bad Mexican food for lunch $6.02

Grand total for the day: $215.78

B.F.F.

2010-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Best – Adjective - having the most positive qualities;
Friend - Noun - person you know well & regard with affection & trust;
Forever - Adverb - for a limitless time;
____________________________________________

What makes a ‘best friend’? At an early age we make our friends in one of two ways. The first is a sort of forced friendship because our parents have some friends who also have kids and we are brought together whenever the parents socialize. The second is a friendship out of necessity because we don’t want to be the only kid sitting alone during snack time in kindergarten. Either way we end up with a ‘friend’, but what causes one friend to become ‘the best friend’ and how many ‘best friends’ can one person have? Are best friends replaced? Are people ever notified that their position of ‘best friend’ has been filled by a 3rd party and that their services as ‘best friend’ will no longer be needed? Maybe they could apply for a position in the ‘regular friend’ category as long as they’re ok with the demotion within the organization. By definition you would think that a person can only have one ‘best friend’ I mean unless the qualities that are being judged in order to determine ‘the best’ are found to be 100% equal in every possible way then there can only be on ‘best’ right?

I have had a few ‘best friends’ in my 36 years of life. That’s not to say that I don’t consider all of the past position holders to still be my ‘friends’, but something happened during the course of the friendship that severed that bond that defined them a friend as ‘the best’. I remember living in a 3 family house on Cote Avenue in Woonsocket when I was real young. I don’t remember both the other families, but one of them was the Gagne family and they had a daughter who was one of my earliest friends. There was also a family next door that I believe had 2 or 3 kids and we used to play out in the back yard sometimes. I remember Angie crying on one August day in1977 because it had just been announced that Elvis Presley had died, but I was already preoccupied with Kiss and the wonders of heavy metal to care. I couldn’t remember the names of the kids next door for the life of me and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never seen them again, but oddly enough a few years after we moved from the 3 family house the Gagne’s moved in next door and they were our neighbors again.

Around the same time we lived on Cote Avenue and probably for awhile after we moved to our new house on Achille Street, also in Woonsocket, I had some ‘forced’ friends that came in the form of Brad & Marissa, the son & daughter of Art and Linda Everly who were my mom & dad’s friends. Art & Linda, who earned the unofficial title of ‘Uncle Art’ and ‘Auntie Linda’ to avoid me calling them by first names or being overly formal and calling them Mr. and Mrs., lived in North Providence. I remember it being SO far away and it taking SO long when we would go visit. Reality check…. It was about 15-20 minutes even with traffic! We would go over quite often and see them around the holidays and for birthdays and stuff. The first time I ever slept in a tent was during a sleepover in their back yard. The first time I ever played with ‘Shrinky Dinks’ was over there. I also remember brad having this awesome toy gun. It was a huge green army gun that came with a helmet with visor and a bunch of other accessories. I don’t remember anything else specific about it except that it said “Monkey Division” on it. Wish I could still play with that gun! The Everly’s also had a really cool gingerbread house that they somehow preserved and would put out on display every Christmas. One of my most awkward moments actually happened at their house around Christmas. I guess I had been watching a lot of Happy Days and told my mom, “I want one of those sweaters with the letter on it”. Now I was talking about a cardigan sweater with a varsity letter on it like Richie, Potsie & Ralph Malph wore, but that was somehow lost in the translation because I was confused when I received a green pullover sweater with my initials embroidered on the chest as a Christmas gift from ‘Uncle Art’ and ‘Auntie Linda’. Alas I never got my varsity sweater.

After awhile we didn’t really see the Everly’s anymore. I don’t know why or what happened. Not sure if they moved or if there was a falling out between them and my parents, but no more “Monkey Division” for me. We did however move on to the Marques, Victor, Madeline, Luke & Elena. Elena was affectionately referred to as Pete because when Madeline was pregnant Luke wanted a baby brother and when Elena was born he refused to acknowledge that she was a girl and called her Pete for pretty much her entire life and eventually the rest of the family joined in. Anyway…. the Marques lived on a farm in North Smithfield. The ride to their house was another one that seemed like a 3 day excursion when in reality it too was only about 20 minutes. We used to go over for barbeques and other events. I think I might have slept over there a couple of times, but I’m not positive. I rode a horse for the first time at the Marques farm with Victor holding the reins the whole time. I also remember they had an in ground pool and one time during an argument Luke threw a soccer ball at Elena, who was in the pool with some friends. The ball hit the water and popped up smacking her right in the face. The pool immediately looked like a shark attack had occurred as the blood mixed with the chlorinated water. The Marques family eventually moved to Florida and we visited them once or twice down there on vacations, but that was about it.

By this time I was in school fulltime at Mercy Mount Country Day in Cumberland, RI. It’s a private Catholic school and I’m not Catholic nor do I practice any religion for that matter. During my first year at Mercy Mount I met a bunch of people that would be my friends for the next 6 years or so. Each one was my ‘friend’ for different reasons and some were closer friends than others. I remember Christian Mottrom, he was one of the class clowns in 2nd grade. There was one day that he wouldn’t stay in his seat and Mrs. Carvellie the teacher warned him and then literally taped him to his chair. He was wrapped in tape around the chair & attached desk and couldn’t get up. Imagine if a teacher did that to a kid today? Holy lawsuit Batman! Christian wasn’t one of my closer friends, but he did give me my first exposure to Ozzy Osborne when he let me borrow his ‘Speak of the Devil’ LP. Jimmy McVeigh was also one of my friends. He was really into sports and since I knew almost nothing about sports I just followed along with anything he said about them. I started collecting baseball cards at first because of Jimmy and kept it up because of a few other friends. I had a lot more friends at Mercy Mount that came to my birthday parties and invited me to theirs. I remember seeing Josh Hoxie quite a bit. There was also Natalie West, Jackie Clark, Monica Vigerstol, Chrissy Gianetti, Mike Pergola and a bunch more.

It was at Mercy Mount that I met one of the first people that could be considered a ‘best friend’. I’m not sure how I started talking to him or what we had in common at first but Kurt Brenner and I were almost inseparable for most of those early school years. I would spend a lot of time at his house and my parents became good friends with his parents, Bill and Jan, who I still refer to as Mr. & Mrs. Brenner to this day. Kurt also has a sister, Catherine that I was a good friend as well. I learned how to skateboard at Kurt’s house, got to drive his go-kart around the driveway, watched tons of movies and played with pretty much ever conceivable toy from the 80’s including the USS Flag, the monstrous GI Joe aircraft carrier! Our parents were such good friends that it was the four of them that opened Music Mania, the record store that I would eventually meet even more friends at. I’m not really sure what happened that caused the cut back in the amount of time I hung around at the Brenner house, but the times I spent there were a lot of fun.

When we first moved to Achille Street it was pretty much baron. There was our house and the house my grandmother & grandfather lived in and that was about it. Across from my house was an abandoned factory where they used to make cement pipes for sewers and stuff, but by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade they had knocked it down, cleaned the land and built 4 almost identical houses in its place. They also built houses on the lots on each side my house and on Prince Street which was an adjacent street. Once all these houses were sold and occupied I had another new crop of friends. There was Angie Gagne who used to live upstairs from us on Cote Avenue, Mike Cournoyer, Tom Oulette, Chet Oberhelman & Roger Lebrun. I spent a lot more time with Mike then with any of the others and around this time he was probably my ‘best friend’ of the time, but the whole group of us were all good friends. Chet & Roger were actually a lot older then the rest of us, probably by 20+ years, but they were kids at heart and we spent many summer days playing street hockey and volley ball with Chet or basketball with Roger. Most of the time I was at Mikes house was spent playing with GI Joe, Star Wars or He-Man action figures, watching wrestling or trading baseball cards. We actually had a couple of ‘baseball card shows’ in his basement and convinced some kids from school to come and spend money on ‘grab bag’ packs of cards we put together knowing they were worth a fraction of what we were selling them for.

I actually spoke with Mike a couple of weeks ago through Facebook and was embarrassed to find out that he lived across the street from me for a lot longer than I thought he did. We started getting into different things and spending less time together and in my head it was because he moved, but in reality it was because I moved to different things. It was not then and is not now a slight on Mike at all and hopefully he knows that. I think that it was meeting up with my next group of friends and really expanding on my love of music that separated me from Mike, but I could be wrong… hell I’m the one that thought he moved away 4 years before he actually did!

My next group of friends was the Woonsocket/Blackstone Dungeons & Dragons playing, acid dropping headbangers that I spent many a Friday nights with at Roller Kingdom (see previous blog) with. I’m not sure who from that group I met first, but the one that sticks out the most is Dave Key. Dave had a family, but was kind of a ‘drifter’ for some reason. My first significant encounter with Dave was one Friday late afternoon before heading up to Roller Kingdom. He wanted to take a shower and we were closest to my house so I went in and asked my mom and she said yes. Dave took a shower and within a few months was living in the finished attic room at my house. My mom had taken him in, not as a "charity case", but more to help him out. He had been in some trouble when he was younger and my mom thought she could help him straighten out.

Anyway it was through Dave that I became good friends with Ray Addam, Hans Grumbach, Ron Howard, Janet Clayton, Jay Garfield & Hans Benanison. I was also friendly, but not that close with Neil Busky, Neil Maltaise & a few others. While none of these people qualified as a "best friend" I did meet my next "best friend" while hanging out with them.

Mary-Ellen Boutiette was one of the girls that hung around with the Roller Kingdom headbangers and it’s only in hindsight that I see she was my best friend at the time. Before I had a car I would walk to Blackstone to see her, we would play Super Mario Brothers while on the phone racing to see who could finish first. Then after I got a car, a Bitchin' Camaro by the way, we hung out even more. I remember a few parties and one day at some sort of mini water park. Mary-Ellen even came to my 10th grade "prom" because I said I wasn't going to go so she ‘forced’ me to go. Unfortunately I was to shy and/or embarrassed to even dance with her once.

During the time I hung out with Mary-Ellen I was pretty close to a lot of her friends too. There was Becky Ryan, Malda Tykes, Allison Dubious, Jennifer Ray, Nikki Hebert and a few others. But eventually it became time to move on again.

Next up were Mike Garneau, Eric "Frenchy" Cameron, Keith Garneau & Liam Gray. There were others that I became friends with through those guys and eventually became really good friends with like Mike Brousseau & John Gilbert, but they came into the picture a little later. Mike & Frenchy I met at Music Mania and they are the two that formerly introduced me to punk rock and got me actually playing the bass guitar my dad had bought me. I hung around with those guys almost everyday for a long time and met a bunch of other people through them. When the band we had 'broke up' I started spending more time with Liam and it was through him that I got closer to Mike Brousseau, John Gilbert, reconnected with Kurt Brenner and eventually met Scott Reber, Michelle Milot, Jocelyn Russo, Doug Cyr, Michelle Lovedae and the rest of the Woonsocket high school punk rock crew.

It gets to a point where everyone & everything start to blend together... hanging around with assorted people from different groups at the same time and groups overlapping through multiple time periods. In fact there’s one person that overlapped from very early on in this story until the present. Mike Byrne. If you're reading this there’s a pretty good chance you know Mike or at the absolute least you know someone that knows Mike. My mom has known Mike since he was pretty young because she knew his family. Then as coincidence would have it Mike, along with Scott Almeida/Gardner (aka Mohawk Scott) was the first person to walk into Music Mania before the store was officially open. My dad chose not to say anything to Mike who was dressed all in black with a huge swooping devilock and Scott in full punk/bondage attire, mohawk fully erect and carrying an umbrella on a very sunny summer day, about the fact that the store wasn’t open yet. Years later I would hang out with Mike quite a lot and let me tell you it was always an adventure with Mike!

There was also a whole bunch of other people from Blackstone that overlapped from group to group. I remember hanging around with Chris Giguere, Chris Bolbi, Russ “Skully” Carter and a few other people at the same time. There was also Bob Lewis who was from Blackstone. I hung out with him a few times with Mike Byrne and some of the other Blackstone guys. We actually went on some crazy ‘mountain climbing’ hike in Diamond Hill State Park and I’m not even sure where we ended up! I think we might have gotten ice cream when it was all over though. I also ran into Bob Lewis, once again with Mike Byrne, but this time with Liam, Mike Brousseau, Gary Olson, Michelle Milot and a few other people. We all just showed up at Bob’s house unannounced one night and kind of took over. Someone was trying to eat fish out of an aquarium in the living room. Someone was peeing in the icemaker of the freezer. A couple of people smashed a jar or pickles in the basement… it was mayhem. Until Bobs parents came home! Apparently Bob was grounded and no one was allowed in the house. We filed out single file like a scene straight out of a movie. A few years later I got to hear that story from a different view. I ended up dating a girl that dated Bob during that time period and apparently meek little quiet Bob had gotten in a lot of trouble and then taken it out on his girlfriend… not cool!

I won’t even get into the Jamie Ciffo stories that involve Mike Byrne because I think Mike deserves his own blog entry. I will just say LOL at the espresso machine, the bowling ball, Burger Buddies, “sitting in the oven”, picking up Leigh hitch hiking, check cashing places, trading CDs for cars, Doctor Rhythm, the girls that played his hockey game and spit on the table, etc. etc. etc. If you know Mike, you know what I’m talking about!

Ok… where was I? I don’t remember exactly how I met Jeremy Girard, but I think it might have been through Sean Piggott. Sean had sung for a band called Anesthesia that had Mike Garneau in it. When Anesthesia broke up Sean started singing for Decadence (not the Boston Hardcore band) and Jeremy was in a band called Toxic Waste. I think I might have formerly met Jeremy after Toxic Waste and near the beginning of his next band, Malpractice. Malpractice was Jeremy, Leigh Gilbert, Al Fontaine, Matt Raines & Troy Warzawski. I spent more time with Jeremy than anyone else back then and we had a lot of hysterical times a few that also involved…. Surprise, Mike Byrne! But I was also good friends with Leigh and Al. In another odd coincidence I found out that I had actually met Al before. He shared the limousine that I took with Mary-Ellen to the 10th grade prom. I’m pretty sure we didn’t talk at all the whole ride, even though we were in the car alone for awhile. I’m also pretty sure part of the reason we didn’t talk was because I was in awe of Al’s white tuxedo with purple tie & cummerbund and his sweet, sweet mustache!

I met a bunch of other people though spending time with Jeremy, Leigh and Al and we had a bunch of times where we crossed paths with people from my past friend groups as well. I met Jenn Bourget through Jeremy and I’m eternally grateful for that. I met Brian Taft, Tim Belisle & Dave Sasquatch from hanging around with Leigh. I met Paulie ‘Kid Maple’ Fontaine & Lauren Healey hanging around with Al. I got a lot closer to Scott Reber partially because of all of them. I think more importantly than any of that I’ve had enough adventures both good and bad with those guys to fill 100 blogs. Beckie Mullen, BVC, Pantera & Skid Row, House of Pain, Biohazard, getting kicked out of the high school talent show, Blades of Steel, Roller Kingdom, The Getta, trash bags full of party hats & popcorn, skipping first period and going for breakfast, The Toy Box, Creepy Crawl, the New Jersey Star Wars convention, trombone wake up calls, The Big Gig, Gwar shows, Addams Family Pinball… I don’t know where I would be without them. They stuck by me even when I didn’t always stick by them and that’s what best friends do.

There are a lot of other people from a lot of other times and places that I am proud to call my friends. Jen Tobin, who was the best person I could have met at that point in my life. Roger Cadman who liked me even though I carried a Han Solo blaster to work with me (the Stormtrooper rifle was too big to carry). The whole Newbury Comics crew… Lisa B., Art, Chris Leone, Rasheed, Andrea, Pat A., Tommy T. and a ton of other people.

Mark McKay who was a huge influence on my life before I had ever met him and then literally changed my life after we became friends. All the rest of the Slapshot guys, past & present, Chris, Choke, Ed, Mike, Steve, Hank, John, Jaime and Jonathan. Plus all the other great people I met because of Slapshot like Ian, Buddha & Rob, everyone in Some Kind of Hate, Energy, All For Nothing, Champion, 7 Seconds, Sick of it All…. Okay…. I’m not really friends with guy in 7 Seconds or Sick of it All, but I did get to meet them and hang out!

There was a ton of awesome people that I met because of all the time in BME & BVC. Monty, Bill, Justin & the rest of the P13 crew, Jay Kobalt who is one of my favorite people on the planet, King Mike L, Fasad, Thrill, Paulie P., Ricci, Mario, Dave Lysik, NYC Joe, Berry & Thor, John Moss and countless other people and other bands.

I also have a group of people that I consider close friends even though I’ve never met most of them. All the regular posters on the Thorp Records message board (aka the Thorp Warriors) are amazing people that I spent a lot of time with each week. BD, Clevo, Gavin, CR83, LifeIsABitch, Discipline, Shawn Refuse, Mike Resist, Furly, Chad Beantown, NewBreedBrian, BKT, Panzerkreuzer, ShootingsScars, Reverend Paulie, Bombidol, Mark Lind, & MikeFromInhuman. As much as I hate being there, I even have a few friends at work. Talking to Jay, Butters, TJ, Jason, Kevin and a few other people do make the day a little easier to deal with.

So in closing, what is it that makes a best friend? Best friends mean it when they say come over anytime, here is a house key. A best friend tries to make you feel a little better about your video game skills even though he probably thinks you are really are pretty bad. A best friend will help you build a shelf to hold your records just because he can. A best friend will take a night off from work to hang out even though he’s busy, because you need to talk. A best friend buys you ice cream because she knows it will make you feel better on a bad day.

Thanks guys…

Just Another Victim...

2010-03-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

There’s been a few times in my life that I was slightly ahead of the curve in getting involved with something that would eventually become part of more popular culture. There are lots of times that’s a great position to be in, I have been able to introduce things to my peer group or just seem a lot cooler than I was by being involved in something from the start (that was a good spot to use the phrase ‘involved from jump street’ but I hate that term so forget it).

One example of this is collecting toys. I’m not as into it as I was a few years back, but when Jeremy and then I first started buying action figures there was a very small group of people, over the age of 8, that were really into it. Now it seems like everyone on an episode of Mtv Cribs has a room full of vintage Star Wars toys or action figures made by McFarland Toys.

Another similar example is comic books & general nerdery. I have been buying comic books steadily for quite awhile now. I (luckily) missed the comic boom of the late 80’s when every Joe Shmo was speculating on the potential future value and setting up at a flea market trying to resell last week new releases at 5 times cover price. The odds pretty good that most of these guys still have a basement full of ‘Death of Superman’ comics and full runs of Wetworks, Wild C.A.T.S. & GEN13 variant covers. The odds are even better that those comics are in discolored long boxes covered in boxes full of early to mid 90’s baseball cards that are now worth less then the powder white sticks of gum they are packaged with.

There is one example of this that I still carry with me today because it was basically beaten into me. It was early 1989 and I was in 9th grade at the Woonsocket Junior High School. I had been introduced to punk rock like Black Flag & the Sex Pistols by Mike & Frenchy hanging around at Music Mania, but I had also gotten a small taste of hardcore from hanging around with Kurt, Chris and a few other people from the ‘Woonsocket Skateboard Crew’. They gave me mix tapes of bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains & DRI. This was right up my alley because it was more inline with the songs I had headbanged to with breakneck speed at Roller Kingdom on Friday nights.

It was also around this time that I had my first exposure to real rap music. Prior to this time I had heard and liked the RUN DMC/Aerosmith collaboration on ‘Walk This Way’ and I had the Anthrax ‘I’m The Man’ 12”, but liking those songs was not a popular opinion in the headbanger sect. There was kind of an unwritten rule that if you were a metalhead you hated the ‘rapper kids’ and vice versa. Since I was a metalhead I tried to adhere to these rules, but it was hard and I knew eventually I would have to break them.

I had seen countless pictures of bands in various heavy metal magazines and always wondered about the different bands they wore shirts of. I discovered The Misfits because of Cliff Burtons Crimson Ghost tattoo. I discovered Motorhead because James Hetfield would wear their shirts all the time. I bought a Diamond Head cassette (big mistake) because Lars always talked about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. I even bought an Angel Witch (bigger mistake) record because Dave Mustaine mentioned them in the ‘Cliff ‘Em All’ home video.

I’ll admit when I first saw pictures of Scott Ian from Anthrax wearing a shirt that said Public Enemy with a gun sight on the back I assumed it was some clothing company or record label, but I was wrong. Eventually I found out that Scott was playing both sides… he was catering to us with his music, but he was secretly (or not so secretly since he wore their t-shirts) listening to rap music too! Eventually it got the best of me and I had to find out exactly what Scott Ian and probably the rest of Anthrax were up to! One night that I working at Music Mania I took the ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ cassette off the rack, made sure none of my headbanger friends were walking up Social Street and I popped it in the tape player. It started with ‘Countdown to Armageddon’ which is just an intro and not really a song, but then there it was… a minute and forty five seconds into side 1 a booming voice like I had never heard… “Bass… How low can you go?”… Wait, what I thought to myself, is this a quiz? Before I knew it the man with the booming voice was introducing himself to me. Apparently he was “The incredible D, Public Enemy number 1”, but I still had no idea who Terminator X was or what the hell the wax that he spun was all about. I sat and listened close understanding only a few words here and there until the end of the second verse. It flew by in a blur, but I was positive I heard him say Anthrax! I probably rewound and played that tape a hundred times that night until I was positive that I had heard him say “Beat is for Eric B. and L.L. as well, hell, wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells”. I didn’t know what it meant, but that’s definitely what he said!

After doing some pretty heavy research in back issues of Hit Parader and Metal Edge I found out that Scott Ian and the other members of Anthrax had been fans of Public Enemy for quite awhile and when the guys in Public Enemy (Chuck D., Flava Flav, Terminator X, Professor Griff and the Security of the First World) found out they thought it was so cool that they referenced it in one of their songs.

Now you need to keep in mind that this is years before the Anthrax and Public Enemy actually collaborated on a new version of ‘Bring The Noise’ and years before House of Pain broke the perceived color barrier of hip hop. It was definitely not common place to see a 15 year old suburban white kid with hair down to his ass listening to Public Enemy. So what did I do? I went to T-Shirt City at the Lincoln Mall and I got myself a couple of Public Enemy shirts!

I can totally remember both of them. One was a black shirt with a really big PE in yellow and white with the Public Enemy gun sight logo next to it. The other was my favorite of the 2, it said Public Enemy in a script font like the Chicago White Sox jerseys and had the gun sight logo under it and it was all in silver and white, again on a black shirt!

I proudly wore my PE (fans in the know were allowed to call them that) shirts and they were in heavy rotation right along with my Metallica ‘And Justice For All’ tour shirt, my Ozzy wearing a crown of thorns shirt and my Nuclear Assault ‘Mutants for Nukes’ shirt. It goes without saying that a lot of my metalhead friends were not happy about my new musical taste, but I didn’t care. I remember being in Spanish class and sitting right in front of Joey who was coincidently the same Joey that had first hit me with a pitch during my short lived little league career. Joey was a metalhead and a HUGE KISS fan. I remember turning around during class and drawing the Public Enemy logo on his Spanish book which was wrapped in a brown paper bag probably from Big D or Almacs. He would get so mad and immedialty scribble it out. Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that Joeys best friend Shawn later got a tattoo of a skull with SS (Schutzstaffel) under it. He said he chose it from the tattoo flash because it had the S’s from the Kiss logo on it.

Now even though a lot of my friends didn’t understand why I liked Public Enemy they never caused me any problems about it. Surprisingly enough, my problems came from the other Public Enemy fans. I was walking home from school on one of only 3 days of my school career that I ever had detention. I don’t remember what I had gotten in trouble for, but I had sat in silence for an hour along with my friend Kurt who also had detention that same day. By the time it was over we were leaving school much later than usual.

There was a really steep hill that lead the way to and from the junior high school. Since Kurt was one of the Woonsocket skateboard crew he hopped on his board and skated down the hill while I walked down to meet him. I was probably about 1/3 of the way down the hill when a car slowly drove by and someone leaned out and spit at me. I remember being so shocked that I had almost no reaction at all. No reaction until the car stopped and 3 people got out and walked toward me. I remember them commenting on my shirt and the fact that I was a ‘stupid white kid’ and then all of a sudden I was knocked to the ground and they started kicking me. I’ve never been much of a fighter but back then I was even less capable. I was on the ground in a pose that resembled the fetal position while 3 guys kicked me. Even though I was trying to cover my face I saw Kurt running back up the hill with his skateboard held high over his head. It was about this time that a tractor trailer truck, which was making a delivery or a pick up to one of the many mill buildings that surrounded the school, pulled over. The driver hopped out of the truck with some kind of club and the 3 guys got back in their car and took off.

I was definitely shaken up, but was more or less okay. Kurt and the truck driver made sure I was okay and tried to help get me cleaned up. I remember refusing to wipe my face for some reason. Like I was going to make some kind of ‘tough guy’ statement by showing everyone I had just been beat up. Eventually I continued my walk from school to Music Mania where I went almost every day. By the time I got to the store the blood on my face had dried and the scrapes on my arms and legs had started to scab over.

My mom was working at the store that day and her jaw dropped when I walked through the door. As I explained what happened my friend Jay came in. Jay actually became my friend because my mom was friends with his mom. Now comes the part of the story that I am least proud of. Jay got a hold of his older sister Kim because he thought she might know the guys that had just beaten me up. Well Kim did in fact know the guys and when she found out what happened she went to find them and read them the riot act. Kim was a tough girl and she stood up for her ‘little brother’ and his friends. During Kim’s conversation with the guys it was confirmed that they had stopped to harass me because I was a white kid (they were not) wearing a Public Enemy shirt and they suggested that I not wear it again. She assured them that I would wear whatever the fuck I wanted and that if they ever touched me again they would have to deal with her and that they really didn’t want to go there. Needless to say, they never bothered me again and I didn’t really have any other problems created by my Public Enemy shirts. I did have another similar problem about a year later though.

After I got into Public Enemy I checked out a few other rap groups and had started to listen to Ice T. Once again, keep in mind that this was long before Ice T was on Law & Order and shortly before he presented himself as a metalhead with his band Body Count. Anyway, I wanted to get a new baseball hat so I went back to T-Shirt City and I picked up a black hat that said Syndicate in bold silver letters on it. This was a reference to Ice T’s ‘posse’ the Rhyme Syndicate which I knew, but I also just thought the hat looked cool.

A few weeks later I was at the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs carnival in Woonsocket with Al and I was proudly sporting my new cap! We had probably just had a few rousing rounds of bingo and were walking through the midway area. Without missing a beat a guy walking toward us grabbed the hat off my head, placed it on his and kept walking. I turned to look at him and he looked back with a face that seemed to say ‘come on… try and take it back’ then he continued to walk away. I’m not proud to say it, but I admitted defeat and said good bye to the hat. I did think of a little jingle I learned in 2nd grade that went like this… “Share a friend, share a home, but never share a hat or comb or lice will make your head its home” and wondered if the guy wearing my hat had ever heard it.

I don’t think I had any race related problems after the carnival incident. I think it was probably partially in part to me not having any other clothes that someone wanted to steal and partially because by this time when it came to music, Public Enemy had crossed over with Anthrax and Everlast and Danny Boy had encouraged people of all races to ‘jump around’. I still like and listen to some rap music and even though its one of the most hated musical genres I do enjoy some ‘crossover’ bands that take some rap and some metal and some hardcore etc and mix it all together.

I can’t say that I learned tolerance from getting beat up and having my hat stolen because I didn’t. I can’t say that I learned to not hate or turn the other cheek… I probably can’t say I learned anything except that being a head of the curve isn’t always a good thing!

Bass! How Low Can You Go....

2010-01-29T06:30:00.001-08:00

Before I was born and for a short time after I was born my dad was in a band. Actually he was in a couple of bands, one called ‘Tanglewood’ and one called ‘Four Miles Ahead’ that actually put out a 45 (that’s a 7” for you punk rockers). ‘Four Miles Ahead’ was a four piece rock band in the vein of Cream, Deep Purple & The Who.

The bass player was Joey who my dad is still friendly with. Joey is married and has a son now, he drives a BMW SUV and plays cello but I’m sure he still busts out the badass Rickenbacker once in a while. Back in the 70’s he had an Ampeg ‘Dan Armstrong’ Lucite bass and an Ampeg 8x10 cabinet with matching head.

I don’t remember ever meeting the guitar player, but his name was Glenn. He had the Ampeg ‘Dan Armstrong’ Lucite guitar, which is real close to the top of the list of guitars I wish I owned. I’m not sure what he had for an amp, but it was probably some kind of Marshall or Sunn head and two 4x12 cabinets.

They also had a keyboard player that I don’t recall meeting. I don’t know what his real name was but everyone, including my grandmother, called him Fudge. I remember hearing stories about him having two giant Leslie cabinets he ran his organ through that weighed a ton and really sucked to move.

My dad played drums on a sparkle blue Ludwig set with pearl inlay and no bottom heads that he actually still owns. He bought another set of drums in the early 90’s when he started playing again for a bit, but still never sold the old ones. The more recent set is also a Ludwig, but it’s huge. 2 bass drums, 4 rack toms, 1 floor tom and a snare and for awhile it was all set up on a Tama cage with the cymbals hanging down and some Rototoms off to the side. Damn that was a visually impressive drum set!

So with my dad being a drummer and being really into music it was a natural progression for me to also be into music. As you may have read in earlier blogs it started with Kiss in the late 70’s and then moved on to Megadeth in the late 80’s and pretty much stayed metal until I found ‘punk rock’ and ‘hardcore’. Following in my dads footsteps and actually playing ‘music’ didn’t officially start until July 8th, 1989.

As much as I loved music I never really thought about playing an instrument until the late 80’s. Up to this point in my life I had started & quit more than a handful of things that had cost my parents a fair share of money. Apparently I had taken drums lessons for a very short time when I was 4-5 years old. Then I got all the gear to play pee-wee hockey, but that ended abruptly once I realized how cold it is in a hockey rink. I did the little league thing for one year before packed away my bat & glove. I also had a pair of rollerblades, but I’m still not sure what I thought I was going to do with those!

So even though I had put quite a dent in my dads’ wallet when I said I wanted to play an instrument he said okay. I think that the obvious choice for most kids is guitar, but that wasn’t for me… hell no, I wanted to play bass! When I told my dad, he was skeptical. He kept trying to sway me towards the guitar, but I wasn’t having it. He said “when you play bass by yourself it doesn’t sound like a full song the way guitar does…. Are you SURE you want to play bass?” Now as he is saying this I’m picturing Gene Simmons with his batwings and blood and fire and giant demon boots… oh… yeah… and playing his bass. In my head I’m hearing Jason Newsted rocking the intro to ‘Crash Course in Brain Surgery’ while he swings his head around and stomps across the stage… oh… yeah… and playing his bass.

So once my dad was done talking and I was done daydreaming about rock stardom we hopped in the 1985 Mustang LX and headed up route 146 to Ross Music in North Providence. I’m sure that my dad asked me multiple times if I was sure about the bass during the ride, but I don’t really remember that. I just remember knowing that my only specifications for a bass were #1 it needed to be black & #2 I wanted it to be a standard shape (I’ve smartened up about the shape thing since then…. the more sharp angles the better!) .

When we walked into Ross Music I was in awe. That place was tiny, but it was crammed with basically every rock based instrument known to man and everything you could possibly need to go with them. Cubby holes full of drum sticks in varying sizes, wire racks of guitar picks in a rainbow assortment of colors, miles and miles of cables with all sorts of different connector ends, guitar strings, bass strings, straps and pedals to make all sorts of chaotic noise! The back wall of store is where the guitars were, some hanging on the wall, others in stands on the floor making it hard to see them all and almost impossible to reach anything outside of the front row.

It was at that one moment that IF my desire to play bass was going to be swayed that it would have happened. Ross music was the one store in Rhode Island to get one of the SUPER limited (only 50 were made at the time) Ibanez Ice Man ‘Cracked Mirror’ Paul Stanley signature model guitars. My jaw dropped when I saw it the same way that it would if I walked into Guitar Center and saw one today. It’s just an awesome guitar! My musical interest was immediately pushed back to playing bass when I caught a glimpse of the price tag on the Ice Man…. $2400.00. If I couldn’t get my mom to buy a leather jacket so I could be a ‘cool kid’ at Roller Kingdom then I seriously doubt I could get my dad to buy a $2400 guitar.

I’m pretty sure that the first actual bass that I looked at and picked up was the one I ended up with. I remember the salesman asking if I wanted to try it and thinking, ‘but I don’t have any platform boots and there’s no pyrotechnics in here.’ My dad probably tried out the bass a little or at least looked at it more in depth then I did. Then the salesman directed us to the amplifier section of the store. I hadn’t even thought about that, luckily my dad was prepared for the full cost of this ‘new interest’ of mine. By the time we walked out of the store I was the proud owner of a brand new black Washburn B-2 bass guitar (serial # 88121358) and a Crate B-10 amplifier (serial # BIX 1394). My dad had convinced the salesman to throw in a Zildjian cymbals t-shirt for free so that he didn’t leave empty handed after spending $413.29.

I most likely made quite a racket with the bass and amp pretending to be rockin’ out once we got home and for the next few days. It was all fun and games until the ‘work’ started. The one condition of my dad buying the bass was that I had to take lessons. So one day after school my mom drove me to Larry Bee’s Music on Victory Highway in lovely Slatersville, Rhode Island. I will admit that I went into my first bass lesson with high hopes. I planned to walk out of there ready to replace Frankie Bello in Anthrax or at least shred all over his solo in their cover of Joe Jackson’s ‘Got The Time’!

So after a little walking around the small store, which had a much less impressive inventory than Ross Music did, and a little sitting around, it was finally my turn! I got up with my bass in hand, walked into the dark cramped room and sat down ready to rock. Much to my disgust and dismay I walked out of that room ½ an hour later no more rocking then I walked in. I had sat bored out of my mind learning how to hold the bass, where not to put my hands and the correct names of various parts of the instrument. I remember telling the guy that I wanted to learn to play ‘Crash Course in Brain Surgery’ by Metallica (I didn’t know it was really a Budgie song at the time) and he said that we would get to a point where I could pick a song and he would help me learn it, but it wouldn’t be for awhile. He gave me a book with all sorts of horizontal lines and weird black dots in it and I was actually assigned ‘homework’ to! Homework is not rock and roll!

I was totally mortified that I had my own bass guitar and amplifier yet I wasn’t a rock star. The teacher from Larry Bee’s actually expected me to understand notes, scales, sharps, flats and to play the bass with my fingers.. What the hell! Jason Newsted used a pick…. Gene Simmons used a pick… you bet your ass I was going to use a pick too! The lessons continued on for a couple of months I think, but that was about it. I stopped doing the ‘homework’, stopped ‘practicing’ and eventually stopped pretending to rock out. Sadly it looked like bass guitar was going to be added to my long list of failed hobbies.

Around this same time my mom and dad co-owned a record store on Social Street in Woonsocket called Music Mania. They sold some vinyl, lots of cassettes a few CDs, tons of pins, stickers, posters, patches and other assorted junk. Once the store officially opened the first item purchased was an LP by a band called Screaming Broccoli. It had an awesome cartoon of a stalk of broccoli looking totally pissed off and wearing fingerless gloves. This particular copy had the call letters of a college radio station scrawled across the cover in black marker which means that someone had appropriated it from the station and sold it and somehow it ended up at Music Mania.

Anyway, the person that came in and bought that LP was Mike who would become one of my best friends and the one that gave me my first full exposure to ‘punk’. I had heard about bands like The Misfits and Sex Pistols because their songs were covered by Metallica and Megadeth, but I had never heard the original versions until I met Mike. Mike lived down the street from the store so he would pop in often and since I spent a lot of time there we became friends. Mike played guitar and one of this friends Eric, who everyone called Frenchy because he was from Canada, played drums and they had a band called P.S.T. (Punks, Skaters, Thrashers). When they found out that I had a bass they invited me over to play. I was fully aware that I didn’t know how to play and I probably told them that at the time, but I was willing to try. Surely Mike and Frenchy wouldn’t pull out a book and give me homework to do, they probably just wanted to rock too! I remember being nervous when I saw that Mike & Frenchy really knew how to play, but it didn’t take long for me to feel comfortable. I think that it was literally 10 minutes before the 3 of us were actually playing a real song. I’m not sure if I knew at the time or not, but the song that Mike showed me how to play was ‘Public Image’ by Public Image Limited, not a bad place to start a punk rock career!

The three of us hung out a lot and would play all the time. They didn’t really mention P.S.T. anymore so we decided to form a new band. I remember sitting in the garage at Mike’s parent’s house trying to think of a name. I don’t remember any of the rejected ideas that came up, but I’m sure that more than a handful of them were really off the wall. What we finally decided on was RAID (this was either before the hardline vegan band called Raid or we were just unaware of them). It was the perfect name… not only did it sound cool, but it was a brand of bug spray and so was Black Flag… awesome! I drew up a logo for the ‘band’ and we kept playing in the garage. Around this time Frenchy had to move back to Canada with his father, so we got Mikes brother Keith to play drums, we recruited Liam who lived right down the street as a singer and for some reason we changed the name of the band to Double Bogey. I don’t know if I came up with the name or not, but I was (and still am) a big fan of it. First off, a double bogey is just about the worst score you can get in golf, which is fitting for a punk band that kind of sucks. Second, around this time I got in to more ‘hardcore punk’ thanks to Liam and had become a fan of Slapshot. So when we needed a logo for Double Bogey, it seemed obvious to me to use crossed golf clubs in the shape of an X so I drew it up and that’s what we used.

Double Bogey only played in public one time and it was at the Woonsocket High School Talent Expo on April 11th, 1991. We performed our ‘original composition’ entitled Raid (yeah original, I know). The song was more of less written by Mike and it was a guitar riff that I always liked and still play sometimes. Not long before we wrote the song we had seen a band called Low Meato opening for Murphy’s Law at The Living Room in Providence. Low Meato had a song where right in the middle, without any explanation they started playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath. It worked for them so we figured we would do the same thing and after 2 verses’ and 2 chorus’ (2nd verse same as the first) we broke into Paranoid for a bit and then back into the verse part of Raid (3rd verse different from the first) and then ended. We didn’t win the Talent Expo that year and I don’t know if it sounded good or not, but it was fun!!

That was probably the last time that Double Bogey played together at all. There were some ‘creative differences’ and debate over punk vs. hardcore and the band ended. The 'break up' of Double Bogey could have been the end of my bass playing career and for a little while it actually was. My bass and amp sat and collected dust until I started hanging around with a new group of friends. I had met Jeremy through some other friends when he was in a band called Toxic Waste and then saw a flyer he had made for his new band Malpractice. We started hanging around a lot and I met Leigh the guitar player, Matt the other guitar player, Troy the drummer and Al the bass player, who I learned a lot from the same way I had when I was first playing with Mike.

Sometimes after Malpractice rehearsed a few of us would hang out and 'jam' a little. Somehow I conned them into turning these jams into a funk/metal band called The Beckie Mullen Experience (maybe I'll do a blog on the details of BME). BME was the beginning of what would turn out to be a seemingly life long musical collaboration with some people that I consider to be my best friends. I played bass, Al played guitar, Leigh played drums, Jeremy sang and we talked Liam into being our 'DJ' even though we were not sure what that meant. We actually played some shows and recorded 2demo tapes at 2 different studios, but it eventually ended when Al and I moved to Boston. I would wind up playing music again with most of the same people, but not for a couple of years.

In addition to Raid, Double Bogey and The Beckie Mullen Experience I also played with a few other bands. Some never left the attic at my mom & dads house and some actually played shows and recorded music. There was Phineas Gage which had me playing drums, Liam back on vocals, Al playing bass and Scott playing guitar. There was Mother of God which was a group mostly put together by Jeremy (even though he wasn't in the band) because he felt bad there was no room for me in Malpractice at the time. I played bass in 'Mother of God' with Scott playing guitar again. There were tons of bands that featured just me and Al swapping instruments and writing stupid songs when no one else was around, but the only band name I can remember us using was 'Moderate Rock'. Our last and most successful band was The Blackstone Valley Crew which brought everyone back into the fold with me playing guitar, Al singing, Jeremy singing, Leigh playing drums and Scott playing bass this time.

There are a lot of memories both good and bad, but I wouldn't trade them for the world and from time to time I wonder if there’s a way to once again con those guys into playing like we did in the attic. I know it will probably never happen, but it is a nice dream to have.

So I may not have done by 'homework', I still don't have any batwings and I can't play the bass solo to 'Got The Time' but I do still have my black Washburn B-2 bass guitar and my Crate B-10 amplifier. They don’t get much attention anymore because over the years I upgraded and bought some other instruments, but mostly because I miss playing with my friends.

In 1989 my dad took a chance and spent $413.29 on something he had no reason to believe I would stick with and 21 years later that beat up bass guitar is priceless to me. Thank you Gene Simmons, thank you Jason Newsted, thank you Mike, thank you Al and most important.... thank you Dad.

It's beginning to look a lot like Kissmas...

2010-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

On December 25th, 1982 I got a Christmas present that would wind up having for the rest of my life.

It wasn’t the 1/16 scale talking Knight Rider K.I.T.T. complete with David Hasselhoff action figure that my mom & dad waited outside Child World in a snow storm to get.

It wasn’t the Tyco electric slot-car track with the cars that had bodies that would pop up when you went fast down the straight aways! That race track died an untimely death when Collie & Sunshine my mom and dads dogs started fighting in the living room basically ON the track.

It wasn’t the G.I. Joe ‘Headquarters Command Center’, which I was devastated about when Santa didn’t bring it. My Godmother however saved Christmas that year when she showed up with it sometime after dinner.

It wasn’t the Aeros-Ace BMX bike that I loved even though no one has ever heard of that company. I was convinced that it was some super high-end west coast BMX company and I was the only kid in New England with one! (I wish I still had that bike!)

*PHOTO NOT AVAILABLE

Nope… it wasn’t any of those things… so what was it you ask? Well let’s just say that even though I was 8 years old in1982 it was my first Kissmas! I don’t really remember any of the other gifts I got that year because the stand out gift was so good. I opened a brand new pristine copy of Kiss Alive II (probably the greatest live record of all time). Not only is it a double LP with a gatefold sleeve featuring a 12x24 photo of the band live on stage complete with smoke, fire and the drum riser towering high over the audience, but there is more to this LP. Kiss were the original masters of merchandising starting in the mid 70’s and continue to be today. So also included with this record was an 8 page 12x12 picture book showing Kiss from their inception in 1973 up to the release of the LP in 1977. There was also an order form with pictures of other Kiss merchandise you could order. This was many years before we would see images of The Demon and The Starchild on coffins & condoms, but you could order some T-shirts, the now classic silver sparkle Kiss logo belt buckle and the Kiss AM/FM transistor radio, which I always wanted (and still do), but was never able to get my dad to order for me. The last thing included was the like the holy grail to any 8 year old budding metal head… Kiss temporary tattoos! It was a small sheet with a bunch of tattoos like the Kiss Army logo, portraits of Gene, Paul, Ace & Peter, a star, a rose and 11 others. These were the kind of tattoos that you had to cut out the one you wanted to use and press it onto a pre-moistened spot on your body, let it dry and then pull it off so you could proudly display your Kiss pride until the next time that you mom made you take a bath.

Somehow 8 year old me saw the future that day. I resisted using those tattoos and can tell you that they are still housed in that same LP along with the book and merchandise order form and the whole package is resting comfortably amidst the rest of my Kiss records which complies the entire discography from the debut LP up to 1989’s Hot in the Shade (including the solo records, The Elder, Killers & both covers for Creatures of the Night). Each LP is sealed in a clear plastic protective sleeve and they are all complete with every merchandise order form, sticker, poster or any other swag that they originally came packaged with.

Ok…. So I have told you about the glorious gatefold sleeve and all the amazing free gifts that were factory packed in with those 2 classic slabs of black vinyl. What I haven’t told you yet is that there was something extra slid into that record sleeve. Two things actually.

Carefully slid into that gatefold through a small slit in the shrink wrap were 2 tickets for me and my dad to go see ‘The Hottest Band In The World’ at the Worcester Centrum on January 22nd, 1983!

I don’t remember my exact reaction, but I’m sure there was slight confusion with these most likely being the first concert tickets I had ever seen. Once the confusion subsided there was probably a gasp of some kind and then an overload of excitement.

I do remember it seeming like I was waiting months for the concert date to arrive when in reality it was only 28 days. I have a memory of lying in my bed with the lights off and waving a flashlight around shining it on the ceiling thinking that I was doing some sort of training for the spectacular light show I knew Kiss would have, but that’s about all. I don’t remember anything else that happened before the day of the show.

The fact that this was 27 years ago means that the memories have faded to some extent, but there are a few things that I can still picture like it happened yesterday.

1 - Standing outside the Worcester Centrum with my dad inline waiting to get in. I remember feeling even smaller than I actually was with the legions of denim clad, face painted heshers standing in front and behind me. I remember it was cold out and that the air smelled funny. The smell was something that I wouldn’t encounter again until I saw Alice Cooper at the Providence Civic Center in 1987 and then again the first time I saw Jimmy G. from Murphy’s Law singing ‘Who’s got the bong’?

2 – The opening band who for years I remembered as being Def Leppard, actually turned out to be Night Ranger. I don’t remember if they played ‘Sister Christian’ although I assume they did, but I do remember a rockin’ song called ‘Don’t Tell Me You Love Me’. It took me some years to find that song again, but once I did it made it on to my ‘favorite rock songs of all time’ list.

3 – Paul Stanley’s introductions to ‘Firehouse’, ‘Cold Gin’ and ‘Ladies Room’. I’m sure I remember these because they were near identical to the ones on the Alive II record, except I was there to see them live and in person. I also remember Paul wearing the Kiss fire hat. I don’t know if it was the one that says “Humper Captain” or the one that says “Kiss Engine 3”, but I clearly remember the fire hat along with the sirens and red lights reflecting off the smoke.

4 – I’m not sure exactly what tour this was, but the line up was Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Eric Carr all in full costume & make-up. I assume it was around the ‘Creatures of the Night’ album, but I’m not sure. I do clearly remember that the stage was a giant tank. The sides of the stage had big treads and the drums were on a huge riser that was shaped like the turret of the tank with a bunch of extra pipes that expelled smoke and sparks at different points in the show. During the drum solo the entire drum riser moved forward so that the turret was hanging out over the first 15 rows of seats. At the climactic ending of Eric’s seemingly endless drum solo the pipes bellowed smoke and the turret launched a huge explosion of smoke and confetti covering the floor of the arena!

5 – The most vivid memory I have of the concert is the bass solo. The one and only Gene Simmons standing on the huge tank stage all alone. The entire room dark except for a single red spotlight beaming down on him like a beacon from hell! A huge distorted rumble filled the air, followed by complete silence. Then another rumble and more silence. The rumbles started coming faster and faster and the silence began to be filled with screams & cheers. Suddenly the rumbles were almost constant with no silence and the cheering was louder as I intently watched, eyes glued on The Demon, not even daring to blink and then there it was… A massive flow of blood coming out of Genes mouth, staining the ‘Steins clown white’ make up that was already beginning to melt off his face, splashing his chest armor and then across the strings of the mammoth sized axe shaped bass guitar he wore more like a warrior then a musician. Then as fast as it had started, it was over and the stage went completely black.

As if I wasn’t already, after the concert I was hooked and I made it my mission to spread the word about Kiss to all the kids at the, ironically a catholic, grammar school I was attending. I would bring the ticket stub from the concert to school with me and would wear my ¾ length sleeve Kiss 1983 tour shirt to gym class at least once a week. Unfortunately for some of the kids, but fortunately for me it was around this time that a big rumor spread that Kiss were Satanists and that K.I.S.S. was actually an acronym that stood for Knights In Satan’s Service. As far as I was concerned, that just made them even cooler, but most parents didn’t agree with my opinion (luckily mine didn’t seem to care if they were Satanists or not). So when the kids at school were forced by their parents to get rid of their Kiss records and T-shirts they gave them to me! One of my friends that was forced to forfeit all his Kiss records actually started collecting Abba records at the suggestion of his mom…. Yuck! So many years later it’s thanks to that rumor, that I have doubles and triples of some of the early Kiss records!

My obsession with Kiss may have faded a little over time, I mean how can they expect me to show the same dedication when they have 2 different guys dressed as Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. Let me say for the record that there is only one Catman and there is most definitely only one SpaceAce! That being said, I do still sing along proudly to all my favorites and Kiss Alive II will always hold a special place in my heart and it’s partly in thanks to Kiss that I wanted to learn to play an instrument and I picked bass guitar because Gene was so cool.

So thank you Mr. Gene Simmons for over-merchandising your band of uber-rockstar cartoon character! Thank you for Kiss Mr. Potatohead, Kiss hotwheels cars and Kiss action figures. I thank you for Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park (Ack!) and I even thank you for The Elder…. Thank you.

The Kingdom full of Jokers...

2010-01-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

I spent most of my early teen years wasting time at a roller skating rink on the weekends, yet I think I only actually skated a handful of times. Roller Kingdom was ‘thee’ place to be on a Friday night in Woonsocket, RI, especially if you were a ‘metal head’. There was a group of ‘the regulars’ that included Dave, Ray, Neil, the other Neil, Ronnie, Brian, Ramob, Big Hans (who was later dubbed Muppet), Little Hans (who the hell has 2 friends named Hans?!), Sean, Jeremy, Al, Leigh and a few others. There was also a small group of girls (Mary-Ellen, Becky, Janet, Malda, Allison, Wendy & Lauren) that found some entertainment value in sitting around at a roller rink on a Friday night. For the most part we just hung around eating crappy pizza, playing video games like ‘Demolition Derby’, ‘Stun Runner’ or ‘720’ and just waiting, hoping, begging and praying for them to play a ‘real heavy metal’ song!

So you had about 10 guys all dressed in their own way, yet obviously in some sort of uniform that more often then not included black jeans (the jeans that had some sort of ‘stretch’ to them so they were kind of tight), a heavy metal t-shirt also usually black (generally of the persons favorite band, a band they were lucky enough to actually see in concert or a shirt they had recently picked up among the pipes, spoons & bongs at Buddha’s Bazaar). Hi-top basketball type sneakers (usually white) with insanely oversized tongues or classic tan work boots covered pretty much every ones feet and the uniform was topped off with either a denim jacket covered with patches & pins of assorted metal bands or the super rare leather jackets which were generally only worn by the ‘leaders of the group’. We all longed to have a leather jacket, but it was much easier to convince mom to buy a denim jacket (usually black) that would wind up frayed & torn because it looked cooler that way, then it was to get her to buy a leather jacket. Christ you probably had to go all the way to Lincoln Mall to get a leather jacket! Don’t even get me started on the couple of guys that wore the leather jacket with the sleeveless denim over it… what a badge of honor that would have been to wear!

Most of the night was like standing in line for hours waiting for the Ticket-Tron booth at Sounds Abound to open so you could be one of the first to get tickets for whatever act Frank J. Russo was bringing into the Providence Civic Center the following month. Yeah, it was just lots of sitting and chatting about what the best video Riki Rachtman had played on Headbanger’s Ball the previous week. Repeatedly calling the newest person to the group a ‘poseur’, the one word that always got a rise out of a metal head! Discussing at length this thing we had all heard about and seen on Mtv called ‘slam dancing’. See, like I said, lots of waiting….

However the waiting was over the minute some ones ears perked up at the first few notes of the bass intro to ‘Peace Sells’ by Megadeth, the first bell peel at the beginning of ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ by Metallica or the holy grail, the opening guitar slide of ‘Toxic Waltz’ by Exodus. The moment one of these songs started there would be a mass exit of the snack-bar or arcade areas and 8-10 male teenagers ranging in age from 13-18 would literally run and leap over anything in their way to get to the first section of 12x12 coin operated gym lockers that lined the length of the skating surface, which was by no coincidence located directly under one of the giant p.a. speakers. Once every arrived a circle would form and everyone would ‘assume the position’.

One leg forward and one back like we were doing stretches for an upcoming Olympic hurdle event. Left arm bent upward at the elbow and right arm hanging down around the waist as we pretended to be playing some sort of pre-historic mammoth sized guitar. Every ones head pointed toward the center of the circle and bobbing up and down, hair swinging up & down, swaying side to side all in unison to the beat of the song, sometimes double time if it was a slower song.

That’s right ladies & gentlemen… we were not only metal heads, we were ‘head bangers’ and we took out titles very seriously! Immediately after a song ended people would scatter almost as fast as they had gathered. Some back to their pizza or video game, some to chat up the girls again and some made a B-line for the bathroom mirror where they would pull out a hairbrush that I have no idea how they fit in the pocket of jeans that tight so they could make sure their locks were flowing the proper way before they returned to their chosen waiting area for the next song to start .On a real good night if the DJ played 4-5 real metal songs you would wake up the next morning with a sore neck. It was a hell of a work out!

Ok…. Now I know that in hindsight what we were doing was ridiculous and we looked even more ridiculous doing it! What you have to keep in mind is that we were in Woonsocket and some of the guys came from Bellingham or Blackstone (there’s ONE stoplight in Blackstone… seriously!) so we didn’t know about seeing these bands. We didn’t know that 20 minutes up route 146 in the Mecca that is Providence there were bands like DRI, Kreator, Overkill & Nuclear Assault playing at places like The Living Room and Club Baby Head. Most of us didn’t get to see Metallica, Megadeth or Anthrax until they were playing arenas.

I don’t see many of the Roller Kingdom headbangers anymore and even when I do they are a shadow of their former selves. Much like Samson they have cut their hair and lost their strength. I do still smile when I’m in the car trying to sing the bridge part to ‘Liar’ by Megadeth, screeching along to anything John Connelly sang in a Nuclear Assault song or humming the bass line to the Metallica version of ‘Crash Course in Brain Surgery’.

I’m glad that there’s no video taped evidence of it, but I’m happy that I have the memories to laugh at myself about.

Stay Gold.... Pony League....

2010-01-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

In the spring of 1987 I was on the Christopher's Restaurant team in Woonsocket Pony League Baseball. I don't remember what number I was, but I do remember that the jerseys (t-shirts) were maroon with white print. It wasn't actually a silk screen print it more more like heat transfer letters, but of a higher quality then you could get done 'while you waited' at T-Shirt City in the Lincoln Mall. Probably because Christopher's Restaurant is located on North Main street across from Turfer which did embroidery, screen printing and all sorts of stuff!

I actually went to Turfer a few years later (around 1990) and had a custom made 'Howard Beach Batting Cages' hat made based on my love for the first Biohazard record and my desire to make light of a tragic event that involved a racially motivate beating and at least one death. (Yeah, I've always been an asshole, but I used to be worse... sorry!) Anyway, that's another story....

So its spring, 1987 and I'm on a baseball team. I had never played baseball before. I knew how to catch and throw and I had been to some batting cages before, but I never played on an actual team. At this point I was 13 years old which seems pretty young now, but at the time was actually pretty old to start playing an organized sport. Most of the other kids in the league had been on teams for 5+ years and knew each other as well as knowing a lot more than I did about baseball.

Being a fan of (mostly the bad guys from) Star Wars & G.I. Joe I thought that guys with masks were cool so obviously it was my dream to be a catcher (no gay jokes please) but with VERY limited baseball skills my dream was not to come true and I generally found myself in right or left field where I seldom, if ever, had to actually field the ball.

Now hitting was a slightly different story. Being 'new to the game' I showed up to games with my classic black WOOD Louisville Slugger! I didn't give it a second thought really. I mean baseball bats are wood right? Well, not in little league/pony league! Being the only player in the whole league with a wooden bat, in addition to being slightly large in stature (read as fat) and having long hair made me stand out a bit. So with the WWF being at one of its peeks, following Wrestlemania III and my appearance being as described as above I gained the unflattering nick name of "Hacksaw" (based on the wrestling character Jim 'Hacksaw' Duggan who would carry a 2x4 to the ring with him). It would be borderline chanted by the opposing teams as a taunt and I hated it, especially since I thought wooden bats were the standard and I didn't even totally get the joke until it was explained to me. This fueled me to find something in the game I was good at. Fielding was obviously out and I wasn't that much better at hitting, but I was aware of it and caught on to something that made me more valuable to the team. In my second or third game I got hit by a pitch and thought to myself.... "that didn't really hurt very bad!". From that point on I would crown the plate like no ones business and my 'on base percentage' went through the roof! I hardly ever got a hit, but I almost always ended up on base.

The Christopher's team didn't make the playoffs that year and I didn't continue playing. My baseball career started and ended in 1987. The only reminders of that time were some time spent in high school Spanish class with Joey Fugere (the first pitcher that hit me with the ball) and any time I drove by the DiPardo Funeral Home because Steven DiPardo was the catcher for the team and only player to make the pony league all-stars, and his parents owned the funeral home.

I guess I wasn't destined to be a baseball star because it was only about a year later that I discovered 'punk rock' and went to my first hardcore show at the Living Room (Murphy's Law, Low Meato & The Wurst) and the rest is history.