Part Deu
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Shit Hits
The Fan
May 1990 - I souped up my work by trying to finish the Wild
album, which I played all the instruments on. It was
different, in a new direction, and without the hassles of
other band members in some ways I felt more at ease. I
would use cassette tapes as the backing music and play
guitar and sing the songs live. During May and the first of
June I also wrote an album dedicated to my son called
Symphony For Raven, or as it was initially called,
Symphonic Raven.
Summer 1990 - My girlfriend and I decided we needed to present the
bands and possibly some of the indie labels we were making
contact with to larger labels and distributors, agents and
promoters, and see if we could possibly get some interest
in hopes of getting a paying development contract. Spec
deals were common during this time for people who brought
bands to labels, allowing the original agent (us) to get a
finders fee, some points on future sales and publishing,
and retain the band in order to book bigger and better
shows. We decided the best way would be a one day
showcase, possibly a large event like an open air, or in a
large venue, and invite industry in as VIP's. Rockfest was
born, and after checking carefully, we found no one at the
time owned the rights to the name. We began to formulate
our plans.
As the summer progressed we honed our plans for
Rockfest. First, we thought about an open-air festival,
and we both agreed thats what it would become in years to
come. First though we decided to shun corporate sponsors
and concentrate on promoting the bands and getting the word
out to labels and media. Philbro and I also worked on new
songs and attempted to put a band together, but could not
find capable people to fill it out. Finally, Philbro went
to play with Anthony Abbott in No Control.
I booked a small regional tour for Obsessive Compulsive.
We hit the road in a really worn out van, blew all four
tires, got asked to leave one club, didn't get paid at one,
got shorted at another. Basically the tour was a complete
disaster and I spent my last four dollars on fuel to get
the band and the van home. We had fun though
Fall 1990 - My girlfriend and I purchase a house near Hiram
Georgia. I begin booking more shows for other bands in
Atlanta trying to earn some money, and also start booking
more touring bands coming through town. I'm out way too
much at night, using way too much gasoline traveling and
making way too little money. Stress becomes a major
factor.
Towards the end of 1990. We finalize plans to
hold Rockfest in the biggest inside venue we can find in
Atlanta. We go to check out a new place called the
International Ballroom.
January 1991 - We sign the agreement to host Rockfest in
May at the International Ballroom. We start lining up
bands, most of whom I was either booking shows for or
trying to get signed. For the first half of 1991, I did
practically no work on my own music, which in hindsight was
not a good thing, at all. I was concentrating on putting
together the Rockfest showcase and getting my contacts at
labels and media in place.
February/March 1991 - First press kits for Rockfest go out
to the media. My girlfriend has designed a great logo for the
event and we've put together a very nice portfolio for
labels that includes posters, business cards, lineup
one-sheets and information on the event. We're spending
alot of time, money, and effort on promoting the event.
Mailing expenses are going through the roof!
April 1991 - Lineup is finalized for Rockfest 1991. We do the final round of
sending out demo tapes to record labels, some 100+ in all,
inviting them all to the concert. Bands on the bill
include Kim Philips, Chu-Chu, The Painkillers, Violent Sky,
No Control, Cryin' Shame, The Sewer Ratz and The Plague.
May 1991 - On the 3rd we host the first Rockfest. The show
draws close to 700 of the public and over 300 entertainment
industry VIP's. The show goes well until Cryin' Shame
plays 15 minutes over their allotted time and I have to cut
them off. My friend Andy Webster played guitar in the band
and he was thoroughly pissed. I hated to do it but I felt
it wasn't fair to the other bands. Today, I'd let it roll.
All the other bands had great sets, and a few label people
chatted me up. After it was all over, and I estimate
my girlfriend and I spent well over 400 hours putting the thing
together, after expenses for the venue, VIP room and ticket
giveaways, we made $98.
Summer 1991 - I sign the Sewer Ratz and The Plague to
management deals in hopes of setting up a tour with those
two bands. It never gets off the ground. I book The
Plague in a recording studio and we never finish the
recordings.
Fall 1991 - I book The Painkillers into Avondale Studios to
do an album for them to release on the Underground Records
label. It quickly becomes a fiasco as I cannot even afford
the gas to get to the studio to oversee the project. The
recordings are never completed.
As 1991 ends, we are completely broke and in
danger of losing our house. I am racing all over town
going to concerts I've booked and trying to collect
commissions. One night in December I go to six different
clubs and collect a total of $24 for my efforts. The next
night after a Painkillers show I get a DUI without being
drunk for refusing to take a sobriety test and go to
jail. 1991 does not end well.
February / spring 1992 - I'm sentenced to 72 days in jail
in Cobb County for my DUI. My girlfriend has had enough, packs up
and her and Raven leave. After my sentence is over in
April. I've got the house all to myself. This sets off a
period of self-abuse which is to produce several life
threatening events, and I get thrown out of every nightclub
I enter in Atlanta. One night I end up sleeping in the
woods behind Magruders, lose my shoes and decide I need to
quit drinking. I go back to the club the next night, the
bouncer Ziggy throws me out, which over the next few months
he would do often.
May 1992 - For the better part of 10 years now I had had
terrible acid reflux. So bad that at times I could not
sleep. The stress and drinking had caught up with me when
one night in May I managed to get some of the stomach acid
out by spitting it up. The next morning it had ate a hole
in the porcelain of the sink down to the metal. I put my
guitar in hock to get the money to go to the doctor. He
told me I had intensive erosion of my esophagus which
signified a precancerous condition. He also said the acid
had ate a small hole in the top of my stomach and it was in
danger of rupturing. He advised me to go to a surgeon and
wrote me a script for Zantac. I decided stomach cancer was
not a very rock n roll way to die and took the last of my
money and bought a fifth of Jack Daniels. I woke up the
next morning in Jacksonville Florida with two women I did
not know. Don't ask me how I got there, I don't know. The
girls lent me the money for a bus ticket back to Atlanta.
June 1992 - Philbro and I put together a great band with
bass prodigy Mark Spellman. I decided to concentrate on my
own music while throttling back on managing other bands. I
was at this time however, attempting to get the bands
Electric Skin and Ritual signed to other labels, I also
secured the International Ballroom for Rockfest 1992.
July 1992 - Nikki (sticky) Kitchens and Sonja Chester
became talent agents for me and started helping me book and
promote bands. They also helped me to coordinate locally
for Rockfest 1992.
August 22nd - Rockfest 1992 would feature
Electric Skin, Gangster, Vagrant Justice, Skin Disciple,
Freak Magnet, Ritual and myself, playing under my own name,
since I was trying to get signed myself. Without anyone's
help I didn't do half the solicitations as for Rockfest
1991. I also had to have the bands sell tickets this time
to cover the expenses of putting on the event. A couple of
the bands told me they sold all their tickets but at pony-up
time right before the concert one of the bands sold none and
the other one ticket. I lost over $300 on the event. The
VIP room was backstage this time and was rollicking, more
label A&R people showed up for Rockfest '92 than did for
'91. I ended the concert with probably one of the worst
shows I've ever done in my life and completely cleared out
the building.
Throughout the rest of the summer and into October Philbro,
Mark and I played gigs around Atlanta and threw house
parties. I lucked up and got a call to come to New York to
interview for a job with Atlantic Records. While there,
my girlfriend went to our house and threw everyone out and changed
the locks on the doors. She answered the phone when I
called to check on things and told me she had the police
there and was throwing my band and all these groupies out
of "her" house. The mortgage was in her name so basically
I was getting evicted. When I came back from New York she
had the police show up and I had one day to get my stuff
out, which I put in storage. Since we no longer had a
place to practice, my band broke up and most of the files I
had concerning the bands I was booking and managing ended up
missing so that business went out the window. I was also
homeless, so I lived for a few days at the time with
friends throughout Atlanta.
Late October 1992 - While bumming on the streets, I meet up
with three other no-place-to-live-nothing-to-lose dudes and
we decide to form a band. We also decide Atlanta sucks for
rock and roll and after my tales of the big apple, we buy a
used toyota van for $500 and head for NYC.
Things start off good in New York when we luck up on day
one and find a garage in Korea town where the band can both
live and practice. The owner has a small grocery next door
and tells us no loud music until after he closes in the
evenings. Within a week, everyone in my band disappears and
this shady dope-dealing character starts coming around
asking me where the other guys are and saying we owe him
money.
The third week in town I can't afford the rent on the
garage and the owner kicks me out. While sitting in a
local pub drinking my last dollars, a fellow patron
mentions he and his "family" run a trucking business near
the bowery, and that there is an abandoned warehouse next
door that has a door on the roof that I can probably get
into. The warehouse, with no electricity and no heat
becomes my home. I run an extension cord from the loading
dock of the trucking firm next door and have enough juice
to run a light and a radio.
3rd week November 1992 - New York Housing Authority gives
me a notice to vacant the premises. There was some kind of
squatting law that stated I actually had time to do this,
but I don't wait around for the hearing. I sell the van
(which now has only reverse gear) to the same guy who owns
the garage we first stayed at when we got to town, pawn my
amplifier, and buy a bus ticket for myself and my guitar
(my only possession left) back to Atlanta. The whole
experience took a little more than six weeks and I am
almost froze to death
I arrive back in Atlanta and am told by my dad not to even
think of coming home, that I've completely messed my entire
life up and that I need to get a job and some
responsibility. I move in with Jeff (juke-box) Jordan, an
old friend from WEA who still works in the promo cage
there. So begins the worst period of drinking in my life
and for six months that's about all I do. I spend my
nights at a dance club called Berlin, where finally they
ask me not to come back when I snag the bartender's water
pitcher and start guzzling.
Winter 1993 - I started distributing products for indie
labels and bands out of Jeff and I's house. Quickly the
catalog rises to over 300 titles, most of which I stock at
Jeff's, which quickly come to resemble and out-of-control
record warehouse. I start looking for a place to move my
business. Before this happens though, I quickly notice
that if the stuff don't sell, I have to foot the bill to
send it back, and this becomes a serious problem.
Spring 1993 - While in the process of getting thrown out of
Kings Head Pub at a Still Rain show,
I spot an old girlfriend (Hound Dog) who rescues me from the melee. Her
and I discuss future projects and she agrees to help me
fund Rockfest 2003, which I plan on holding in a bigger and
better place than the International Ballroom.
I secured the Center Stage Theatre for $1200, half-down,
nonrefundable, for use of the place and the house PA. I
round up seven bands and begin to promote the show. The day
before the show, two tickets have been sold and the booking
agent says the rest of the money must be paid or no show.
I have no money because basically no tickets have been sold so the
first attempt at Rockfest 1993 does not happen. Some of
the bands had already left from out-of-state to come and
play the show. My ride down to the venue does not show on
the day of the cancelled concert so I am not there to tell
the bands the show will not go on. My answering machine is
rife with death threats. I am officially the most hated man
in rock n roll.
Summer 1993 - I hatch the plan to open my own club so that
the aforesaid debacle does not happen again. I rent a
former nuclear fall-out shelter at the corner of Marietta
Street and Northside Drive in Atlanta. Hound Dog, Big
Daddy, and Rockin' Rodney pitch in to help me get the club
started. I call it Gothic and set to building a huge stage,
lighting rig, bar, and warehouse area for the Underground
Records catalog. The fall-out shelter is 30,000 square feet
and underground with 60 foot high ceilings, all made out of
concrete. Rodney and I build living quarters in the back
of the place and promptly move in every street urchin and
punk it seems in downtown Atlanta. I begin doing shows and
raves at the place, without a license, and realize I need
to tone it down after Yvonne Monet announced one of the
raves on her dance show The Beat Factory on 99X FM radio and
over 600 people show up. I start plans for dual Rockfest
showcases, one at Gothic and one at The Masquarade, another
downtown Atlanta music club.
I go to the Georgia Jam at Lakewood Amplitheatre to hand
out flyers for Rockfest '93. After managing to get thrown
out twice before finding my seat, I go back to Gothic to
find Rockin' Rodney on a massive drunk, totally trashing
the place. This goes on for a couple of days until after we
have a show at the club, Rodney hits me up for $200 for
suppplies. I say no and he REALLY trashes the place. So
much I fear for my equipment and stock that I have to call
the APD. They come and tell Rodney either he goes inside
and goes to bed or he goes to jail. I come back the next
day to find Rodney has used the 10 gallons of black paint I
had to paint the area behind the bar with to paint
heiroglyphics on the floor and walls. Rodney moves out.
Late summer 1993 - An old school chum of mine, Scary Jerry,
moves in to help run the club. I had hired a promotions
manager named Lynn Buffkin to help do radio and show
promotions for the labels and bands I was marketing and
distributing. There are now over 500 labels and indie
artists in the catalog and it's way beyond my means to
manage. I'm getting ripped off left and right by stores
and other distros who take the products on consignment but
never pay me. I've begun booking shows down the street at
a new place called The Somber Reptile. For a very short
span of a few months, you could walk between the clubs of
Gothic, The Somber Reptile, The Wreck Room and PJ's, all
within three blocks of one another, for a night of high
energy rock n roll. I notice the temperature on the
thermometer I have shows 128 degrees with no air flow in
Gothic during the day. Sweat box from hell is putting it
lightly.
Fall 1993 / Winter 1994 - To take advantage of the giant
stage and decent lighting at Gothic, I try to put a band
together to be the house band. This quickly ends up in
shambles and I am forced to honor the gigs I have booked at
Gothic and around Atlanta by performing by myself onstage
behind backing tapes. It wasn't the first time I'd done
this, wouldn't be the last. Rockfest falls apart and I
cannot pay the rent on the club space. I get evicted.
Spring 1994 - I had taken a job at Kinkos to try and pay
back Hound Dog and Big Daddy for their investment in the
club the year before, and to get up money to send back the
thousands of pieces of product that did not sell to the
bands and labels which had consigned them to me. More
problems began to arise after I hired a couple of people to
help promote and sell the music products. People started
complaining about not getting stuff they'd ordered and
inventories did not add up. By this time I had the stuff
stored all over the place and it was hell even figuring out
where everything was. It would take me the better part of
the next decade plus to pay back people who never got stuff
they ordered. I was becoming disillusioned with the whole
music business.
Summer 1994 - One bright spot though was Rockfest 1994. I
set up a club showcase at The Somber Reptile and worked out
a deal with a farmer out on Highway 61 near where my girlfriend and
I used to live (which is now a sports complex of some kind)
to use his pasture for a day in exchange for 50% of the
gate proceeds. I did not have anyone to help me PR or otherwise besides
IOU's the day of the shows for flyering and taking me to shows to promote, but
I was glad for the opportunity to continue the event.
The gigs went off with Shrunken Head and Attixs
playing the Somber date August 12th, while Dime and Halo
headlined the open air August 13th. Both shows went very
well, and thanks to massive flyering at major concerts for
two months prior to the show, the outdoor event drew close
to 5,000 people. I divided my part with the production crew and
bands evenly. After it was all said and done I made enough to
pay my child support for a few months. The costs of the paper for
the flyers and paying someone to help me put them out, some security
for the open air, had to be paid with my part of the proceeeds. There
wasn't any profit really. After the 1993 disaster though, it was a relief
to finally have a pair of good events for Rockfest 1994.
Fall 1994 - Distribution wise things had become a complete
mess. Stores were ordering a good bit of stuff, but my
main suppliers, both Caroline and RED, required me to buy
hundreds of dollars of stuff just to get a shipment. With
no money and people ordering $20 or $30 dollars of stuff at
the time, back orders were becoming a major problem. On top
of this I was still accepting new products from bands and
labels and it was taking me forever just to stock and
catalog the stuff. By this time my email list for my
newsletter, The Underground Sound, was in the hundreds of
thousands. So instead of doing print catalogs, which for
the most part I could no longer afford, I was sending
catalogs via email. I had also noticed something called The
World Wide Web through the Netscape browser and began to design
the first Underground Records website using html, which
would go up on America Online, my ISP at the time, by
year's end.
In late 1994, I hooked up with Phil Calvin and Anthony
Abbott to form the group Powercock. We wrote enough
material for one EP which never got fully recorded. In
retrospect, we were a great band, with original jams that
just seemed to gel into massive walls of sound. I booked us
two shows to start, one at the Masquerade, which went over
very well. Though it was a small audience, it seemed
everyone there came up to us and said it was one of the
best shows they'd ever seen. I felt the band would go
somewhere. I set up studio time, but it seemed the other
guys were too busy with other projects. Finally, at what
was supposed to be our second gig, neither Philbro or
Anthony showed, I was able to rouse a bass player friend
called Wild Bill and paid him to do the gig, plus my
roomate at the time, Jeff "Jukebox" Jordan talked his
brother into playing the show. The last two songs Philbro
and Anthony did show up, and Philbro took the stage to
play the closing songs.
Winter 1995 - Over the winter I had moved all my stuff to
Adairsville, where I could mess up the house cutting holes
in the walls and stuff for a recording studio. I set up
some shelves and finally got all the distribution stuff
halfway organized. I was resorting to picking up aluminum
cans to try and get the money to do returns to bands and
labels. People and labels were disappearing left and
right, stuff costing alot to ship was coming back and I
couldn't find the owners (to this day I am still trying to
track down people and return stuff from this time
period). There was minus cash flow. So I decided to work
on some music.
I stretched out and did some improvision and
experimentation for an album which I didn't release, called
Ezine, named for what was taking up most of my time around
then. I spent the rest of the winter and early spring
trying to find players for a group, but nothing around here
was easy, I was out in a rural area with no driver's
license, so people had to come to me and that wasn't
working too well.
On Valentine's Day 1995 I would get a small break.
Internet service and content provider Compuserve offered me
a section in the Recording Industry Forum. There I had a
file library where I put The Underground Sound ezines,
audio files, band interviews, album materials, marketing
campaigns for new catalog products, posters and flyers, and
other entertainment related materials. It also had a live
chat room, where I would do live interviews and converse
with people networking with me on promoting new music
through the Agents Of The Underground program. For a few
years the forum would be a popular destination for
Compuserve, and then after AOL bought Compuserve,
the world wide web was coming on so for a while people coming
in off the internet could use and see the forum. In the mid-late 90's, I was able to meet thousands of people and promote countless bands,
abels, and their music through the forum.
Spring 1995 - Still trying to either get paid for or get
back the product I had sent out to record stores throughout
the US on consignment, which amounts were way up in the
thousands. Increasingly, I was having trouble finding
people who had sent me stuff so I could return it. Around
this time I also ran out of any money to print the
Underground Sound printzine, which I had been using as a
promotional vehicle to stores and media. A copier I had
bought to print out the zine was burning out, so in early
May, one of the last big runs of the printzine was sent
out, mainly to record stores and indie bookstores. I still
had a sizeable list of subscribers, but money ran out to buy
the paper and pay for postage. The last change I had I did
a flyer and sent it to record labels, other zines and bands to
see if anyone wanted to take out ads in the printzine. No
responses from the mailer, printed or email.
Summer 1995 - I tried in any way I could to put together a
reliable band in the summer of 1995. Nothing else was
working out, I was having serious problems paying my
telephone and power bill. For new material I wrote what I
still consider one of my favorite albums, reworked
materials I had been playing with for a while, plus a few
brand new compositions which ended up being Marathon Sex Machine. A few demo
sessions I put on cassette and along with live practice
session of Powercock I sent out around Atlanta trying to
find an agent. Philbro and Anthony said they were still in
it for Powercock, but when I set up practice sessions for
Rockfest on July 1st at the Somber Reptile, neither
showed.
July 1st, 1995 was the date for Rockfest 1995 at the Somber
Reptile in downtown Atlanta. I had gotten some serious
bites for a band I had been shopping around to labels the
past couple of months called Slip. In June they had
actually played a showcase, along with Electrolux, for the
VP of A&R at Virgin Records at the Wreck Room on Marietta
Street in Atlanta. When Rockfest came around, a decent
amount of major and indie label personnel made it to the
show, along with a good showing of media people, to see
Burt, Slip, Dice and Shrunken Head. It seemed things were
looking up. Yet the next week, no one would take my
calls. By this time Underground Records had no money in
the bank and I had very little income to do anything but
pay rent (most of the time) and buy a little food. My
record company basically had ceased to exist as a business
entity. If I had been prone to depression, I'd been deep.
During the late summer of 1995, I decided it was time to seek a
better place to be. I thought about what to do and I knew I
needed to go somewhere where there were people to jam with
and the music industry had some kind of presence better
than metro Atlanta (downtown Atlanta was OK, but I was over
an hours away from there with no way to get there).
I had already froze my ass off in New York City and lost everything.
So I decided to go somewhere where it wasn't so damn cold and damp.
I decided to go to Los Angeles.
Fall 1995 - I scrapped up enough money for a round trip to
Los Angeles via Greyhound Bus. In 1995 it was around
$100. I went out and for about three days I looked for a
place to live and sized things up, and met my first batch
of Hollywood rejects. I made contact with an apartment
building owner on Sunset Blvd. who had been in bands back
in the 50's and 60's. I could get a decent pad there for
$600 a month, last month and first month plus current month
would be what I needed, and he had about a dozen empty
pads. I said it'd be after the first of the year, and he
said if they were available he'd work with me. I felt like
I needed to be in LA as I rode the big dog back to GA and
began to scrap up some cashola.
Winter 1996 - I had written quite a few albums worth of
material I had planned to demo and take with me to LA in
late winter to try and put a band together. I tried in
vain to get someone from Georgia who had a car to ride out
to LA with me so I could take the majority of my equipment,
but it was a lost cause. Then and now, I find it hard to
believe someone who wanted to give the West Coast a shot
didn't stand up and make the break. I was advertising to
put together a new band called Pit Boss and head out to the
coast. Got a few inquiries, but mostly weirdos who seemed
to have alternate motives. I couldn't believe this shit!
While preparing to move, work came calling in the form of
THE
WORD, that ancient Book Of Prophecy, which was my duty
as a being to deliver. It was put on me that it was time.
Knowing it was to come from the west, for some time, I
placed it online and quietly began to promote it through
bulletin boards, irc and usenet. Looking back, and forward,
it is The Word which gets me though.
So, March comes around and I have a bus ticket and money to
rent my apartment in Los Angeles. I sold my PA and my
amplifiers to
Rootdog (Anthony Abbott), who promised to
never sell them and come out to LA soon (neither happened)
and in March had
Roach Pealor drop me off at the Big Dog
station, where I had my axe, some effects, some clothes and
some cash, and headed out to LA.
March 1996 - First night in LA I stayed in Hollywood and
went out to see if I could make some connections on the
scene. I had a meeting the next day with the guy at the
apartments. I took my money with me in a suit wallet
because I didn't trust the hotels there in Hollywood. I
met a street urchin who knew every club bouncer, promoter
and stripper in Hollywood. I bought him a pint of vodka
and he took me on the rounds. I felt good and was ready to
get my apartment the next day. I left dude at the Rainbow
after buying him a few rounds and went out, got me a bite
to eat and went back to the hotel. When I got back, I
realized my wallet was gone, as was all my cash. I had
about $200 left in travelers's checks I stashed in my
luggage. All I can think of is on Sunset I bent down to
tie my shoe right before my hotel and my knee must have
pushed the wallet up out of the inner suit pocket, and when
I stood up it slipped out of my jacket. It was not a good
scene.
I had enough money for the hotel for a couple of days. My
friends who lived out in the southern California area
offered no help, seemed like I was trying to get over on
them when I told them what happened and asked if I could
crash a night or two at their pad. All rejected my
pleas. I asked the apartment owner if he'd hold my place
for a few days, and he said no. I guess he'd heard that
stuff enough from people who had no plan on getting real.
Day three in Hollywood, I had $39 bucks and had to pawn my
equipment for a couple more days at the hotel. That came
and went. Within a week, I was homeless on the streets of
Hollywood, with my stuff in a shopping cart. I suppose if
I'd been thinking right, I'd used the pawn money for a
ticket back home, but it was too early to give up.
This began a really strange week, where I spent the night
in a cave under a parking lot off Santa Monica with
prostitutes, junkies and winos. I walked the streets of
Hollywood during the day looking for work and some place to
crash. Around day 10, after I had passed out mid-day and
was close to complete dehydration, I asked if I could rest
under an awning at a hotel in old Hollywood called The
Windsor. Mariam was the desk clerk there, and I had enough
money left for a room that night, well, she actually gave me
about half of what I needed. She said they'd throw me out
the next day, but they were looking for desk clerks and
she'd speak to the guy and see if they still had the
opening.
It came back they didn't have any positions at that hotel,
but they owned a few more across old Hollywood, and I
could train with the night clerk there, for the first
night, and then transfer to a place called The Vine Lodge
if all worked out, the next night. First night there, the
Crips and the Bloods had a shootout. With the Bloods
showing up in a mercedes and opening fire on the whole
place it seemed, trying to get a pimp, who they said had
stolen some of their girls. Matt, the clerk, and I hid
under the desk while the bullets flew down the lobby. When
the LAPD came, neither Matt nor I had seen anything, and
didn't know anyone by the name they gave staying in the
building. When the law dogs left, the pimp came down and
gave us some cash and said whenever he was there, we could
come to his room. The next day I took my stuff in my
shopping cart, over to the Vine Lodge, right under Capital
Records. At least I felt "closer" to the music industry.
Spring 1996 - Achieving some kind of stability, working at
the Vine Lodge and doing some pr and booking work for a few
local bands, I start looking around for musicians for the
band. Find lots of potential in Los Angeles, hundreds of
times more than back in Atlanta. I tried out for a few
bands, either playing or doing vocals. Lack of equipment
causes some problems. Finally managed to find the right
players, got some 2nd and 3rd hand gear, and System X was
off!
We jammed on songs I had originally written for the albums
Tweak and Hardcore over the past few months in town. Joe
Diaz, the bass player had a fairly new van and by early
summer after a few local gigs I booked us a tour using
rehearsal demos that would take us from Southern California
up the coast and into Vancouver Canada, then back down
again. I hooked up with fellow Southern Cal band Defrokked,
Massachusetts namesakers Big Dig, Chicago's Hell Patrol and
my own band System X to do the first Underground Tour 1996.
From late June till mid-August we played over 30 club gigs
up and down the coast and actually managed to break even.
I was looking forward to going into the studio to cut the
first System X album. We also had over 10 hours of live
stuff we cut on the road which we planned to do as a promo
EP to book gigs for the tour behind the first album, to
save time and have shows ready while still recording and
immediately afterwards, even before the discs had been
pressed.
Fall 1996 - While trying to sort out the songs to record,
the other guitarist and vocalist for System X decided he
doesn't have enough songs in the set that will go on the
album. So while we wait for him to write some songs the
band fragments. After about six weeks I told the rest of
band we either go into the studio, play some gigs, or call
it quits. Everyone has their own problems, so it's finally
decided we call it quits, which totally sucks. Mark Rice,
the drummer, owns the gear we recorded the live stuff on.
I ask him for a copy of the stuff, and never get it. I
immediately begin to put together a new band, Pit Boss. We
do two gigs and split up. I try to reform System X with Joe,
and it basically goes nowhere. I've got alot of new music,
but no band. I pawn my equipment to keep my apartment, and
still lose it and my place to stay. I move into a
girlfriend's closet. She's an escort. It makes life
interesting, at least.
After a few weeks of the closet, I run across some
missionaries recruiting people to help them work on an old
hospital called The Queen Of Angels they'd bought to turn
into their church. A free room in exchange for remodeling
and upkeep duties. Feeling grateful at this point just to
be alive, I thought to give back a little and in the
process start The Word entering into more of the mainstream
spiritual population. So I take a room, start helping out,
and spreading The Word. Since it doesn't match with
their religion's idea of what's proper, I am ridiculed, yet
I gain respect from a few, a few who really knew.
December 1996 - Finally get another place of my own in
downtown LA. Get a decent job doing computer consulting,
and buy a new Marshall stack plus a rack full of outboard
gear. Decided to reform Pit Boss and begin to put out ads
for players. Solo wise I write Electro Punk, bridging the
worlds of LA and Atlanta. 1996 ends without a new band.
Winter 1997 - I move into a one room flat above Al's Bar in
downtown Los Angeles. It gives me an opportunity to connect
with bands who played the club, and I begin solo recording
some of the stuff I'd been working on over the past year.
It goes slow, and over all never gets finished. I used
some of the demos to score players for my new band, Pit
Boss, and has spring comes on we play a few dates around
Southern California. Around this time I give up my room at
the Queen Of Angels since I'm not there hardly anymore to
help out.
February 1997 - I also put together the first
Rockfest 1997
as a label showcase at
Al's which had the great bands Capsule and Lucy's Crush for a few months away.
When it went down, suprisingly turnout on both ends, public and industry, was
light. Probably due to the fact I had to send invites via
email because I didn't have postage for press kits, had
very little money for flyers, no vehicle to take them out
to the metro areas (it took forever on the bus and subway),
and the usual not making ends meet (a girlfriend at the
time, who was studying psychiatry, told me I was the poster
child for ADD, I laughed about it but years later she'd
probably be proved right).
Spring/Summer 1997 - I had met Robert "Rooster" Rampley, a
member of an independent industrial project out in the
Valley. He had the know-how to do e-commerce carts for the
internet. He and I started Uground.Net, which had the
Underground Records Catalog available for purchasing
online. We weren't the first with a large music catalog
online (but we were close), yet overall we received good marks for
the catalog and service. I found it hard to concentrate on
keeping the catalog updated, and after a few years Robert
got tired of having to deal with that and the fact I was
always behind on paying him his commissions. Overall though
I have to really thank Robert for his efforts, if things had
been different, we might have been some of those dot-com
millionaires down the not-so-far-away road.
By late spring, once again using rehearsal tapes, I had
booked Pit Boss for the second Underground Tour; this time
out we'd be playing with San Francisco's Stoners, a band I
had worked with some in the past called The Feds, and
another band I had been booking shows for called Hi-Jinx.
I had booked over 50 gigs for this tour, and it would take
us into Arizona and Nevada, along with retracing and
replaying some of the venues from the 1996 tour, plus a few
more in the same circuit. By mid June I had the lineup finally
complete, we did a couple of rehearsals, then Pit Boss rented a van
and hit the road.
Things went well until the second week. Our bass player
had a bad habit of stealing people's drinks after our set
when the clubs usually had a DJ and the people were either
on the dance floor, or a bigger band was playing and while
they'd be watching the band, he'd be slamming their drinks.
By the seventh gig we had already been dismissed from one
club and gotten into a rile at another. While playing a
place called The Horseshoe Inn near Sacramento, we were
confronted by an irate patron claiming we had stolen his
pitcher of beer. A melee insued and a table went through a
window. We got away, but didn't get our pay for the gig,
plus the owner had our itenerary, and he called ahead to
all the clubs, three out of the next five cancelled us,
probably fearing we'd trash their clubs too. Things
settled down until we played our first gig in Nevada, when
the stealing drinks thing happened again and we once again
got into a fight. I fired the bass player (who amazingly
left without much said) and the band did the next week's
worth of gigs without a bassist.
The rest of the band wanted to veto the rest of the tour,
but we had a few guarantees and it didn't sound that bad
without a bass player. The bassist for Hi-Jinx said he'd
cover the job, but he never jelled with our more punk band, he
was more into prog rock. We managed to do 16 additional
gigs of the tour before Hi-Jinx left the tour for
other commitments back east. Without a bass player the rest of the band
quit and demanded I use the van to take them back to
California. I told them to go to hell. I played two more
dates using players from the other bands, who didn't know
the songs and we sounded like shit. Depressed and
thoroughly pissed I drove back to Los Angeles by myself in
late July. Immediately I started putting together a new
version of System X.
Suprisingly, things went pretty well. I used the demos from
the previous lineup's rehearsal and got a few gigs quick.
In early August we got an offer to open some shows for
national acts. I thought we were on our way. There was a
problem in that the drummer of the band had a pregnant
girlfriend who said she'd disown him if he went out on the
road with a band, and her expecting. I figured we could
get a drummer easily, even a paid one, since we had
national gigs coming up, paying gigs. There were arguments
about money, I wanted everything equal, but our keyboardist
wanted extra money for "arrangements" since we were using
midi triggered stuff. We had one more gig so it was
decided we'd do that and then use another drummer who was
interested in jamming for the opening gigs.
Well, our last gig with that our drummer before the switch
ended in disaster. We made $56, and while I was collecting
our pay, our drummer was supposed to be watching my gear,
which I'd loaded out into the van. I came out and, not only
was my gear gone, my Marshall and my effects rack, about 3
grand worth of stuff, but the drummer was in a car accross
the parking lot getting head from some girl who was not his
fiance, who had caused us enough grief. I ended up getting arrested for whipping my
drummer's ass.
I had a friend in another band offer to loan me his
equipment for the road until I could replace mine. I held
drummer tryouts, but with less than 11 days left until our
date to open some shows, nothing jelled. I had to cancel
the first set of gigs and try to get it together to join
the tour in the third week. The rest of my band quit,
unless I could come up with a drummer on my own, and I was
left with nothing really. I had to cancel the rest of the
gigs, and lose all face. It was bad.
I had to sell my hair, which was down to my waist, a rich
deep brown, almost all one length, to a wig maker, because
I was broke and needed money for survival. As it started
to grow back it was all grey! I guess the last few years
were starting to show. It was also ratty and thin. I said
to hell with it, and kept it shaved. I tossed around the
idea of starting Underground Records back up in Los Angeles
as a distro and booking form, but without juice (money) it
was hard to get that battery firing. I was down to
slumming at TK Nagamo's condo in Little Tokyo. I was
pissed.
Late Summer 1997 - Having lost almost all my gear and my band
falling apart. I asked myself what the hell I was doing
putting up with all this, making myself go through with
this. Raven was now seven years old and I hadn't seen him
in 2 years. It was a critical time in my career, I
was in the right place, finally after 18 years I had some
interest in me as a songwriter and live performer; yet the
loss of the opening gigs, my gear being stolen and my band
falling apart was really tough.
I decided to take a break from Los Angeles and go home for
a while and spend time with Raven. In hindsight, maybe I
should have toughed it out and got a fresh group of players
(or at least a drummer) and made some things happen for real
before I left for a vacation. It absolutely was a critical
time to be leaving LA and putting on hold what the better
part of my life I had spent trying to accomplish.
Yet, today, I do not regret it at all. I had a seven year
old son who loved me very much. While some people are so
driven, and self-centered, they would not have moved back
to Georgia, I felt it was my responsibility as a parent to
get to know my son and be there for him as he moved into
the tough years of adolescence and teenager.
Once he and I both knew one another, I'd be back to kick ass and take names.
So I managed to score a 1982 Tercel from a buddy of mine
who lived in the American Hotel above Al's Bar on my floor
for $300. I went to get my California drivers license
renewed since it would expire while I was gone and then,
the redneck curse came home.
HISTORY PART 1 Underground Home |
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