Bass! How Low Can You Go....

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...

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...

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....

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.