THE DIZEAZOES MEET CHUCK BERRY (AN ADDENDUM)

Famous people are stupid. Weird and stupid. And crazy. They're all paranoid and arrogant, which is a dangerous combination. For instance, John Cale almost hit me in the face once. Granted, yes, I had been following him very closely for several blocks, and no, I probably shouldn't have touched him unexpectedly, but he shouldn't have tried to hit me. I don't care what that smart ass judge and his bullshit restraining order says.

Anyway, this isn't really a Dizeazoes story as it has nothing to do with the actual band and it's history or anything like that. I just like the story and thought that it might work well as an addendum to the series, help to sort of bow out on a lighthearted note. I hope that everyone has enjoyed reading these stories and if so I'll hope you'll indulge me a few quick notes. First, it was a project that Wheeler and I had been talking about for over a year and I really have to thank him for being patient with me while I worked on other stories, constantly telling him that "I'm going to get to the Dizeazoes story one day!". Honestly, I really didn't think that I ever would get to it, but one night I got drunk listening to the CD of Dizeazoes recordings he had sent me and I typed out the introduction. Very quickly I started to get the feeling that this was a story that could just go on forever and that's why I decided to divide it up and just hit the most interesting parts.

I'd also like to thank the other members of The Dizeazoes for doing everything they could to accommodate my annoying questions and insistence on a proper timeline and shit like that. I know that it was a long time ago and that it was all just for fun and I'm glad that they didn't just tell me that I was full of shit.

Anyway.... enough of my babbling. Here's the story of the time The Dizeazoes met Chuck Berry straight from Paul Wheeler's keyboard...


"This isn't really a Dizeazoes story, but it involves three of us from the early days of The Dizeazoes. This would have been Larry's first or second year in Columbia, MO, before I joined him there. I was working in a factory in St. Louis at the time. The chances are that The Dizeazoes had begun, but that it was just Larry Dardick and I at that point. We probably didn't even have the name yet, but we may have. I had heard from Mike Shelton that he was going to sing with a band at Chuck Berry's park, which was just outside of Wentzville, MO. Chuck Berry had set up a small club there where bands would play on weekends. I decided that would be a good time to visit Larry. The plan was for me to drive my car to Columbia, MO on Friday night. Saturday night we'd take Larry's car and drive to Wentzville to see Mike's performance, then we'd drive back to Columbia, MO, and on Sunday I'd return to St. Louis.

(Right: Berry Park in Wentzville, MO)

"We had no idea when the show was going to start, so we decided to arrive early in the evening. In actuality we arrived at Chuck Berry's farm in very early evening, or possibly late afternoon. We turned into a big parking lot, drove slowly up to where it looked like the club might be, and who should come out of the front building but Chuck Berry himself. He waved us to come forward and showed us exactly where and how he wanted us to park. He looked at Larry's parking job, gave a satisfied nod, and said, 'If you get the first one parked right, the others just fall in line.'

"We're here to see one of the bands tonight." we stated.

"That'll be in that building over there." Mr. Berry pointed.

"When will it start?" We asked, wondering how long we would have to wait. It looked like it might be quite a while.

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies," said Chuck and headed back inside.

So there we were, the only car in the parking lot, not a soul in sight, no idea how long we'd have to wait, or, in fact, if Mike was actually going to be singing that night. I hadn't received any confirmation from him. Neither of us had ever seen Mike Shelton perform. It was obviously something we were willing to go out of our way to see. The idea of having Mike sing for our band had probably never crossed our minds. Plus, the fact that Chuck Berry had just helped Larry park his car was quite the buzz. We headed over to the building that Chuck had pointed out. The door was open, so we walked inside and started investigating the small club. It was empty, so we began exploring, just to see what we could find. I had just come back out onto the stage after checking out the backstage area when Chuck Berry and a woman walked into the club.

"What are you doing in here?" asked Chuck with a certain amount of rebuke in his voice.

"You said the show would be in here. Is there somewhere else we should go?" we wondered, kind of pleased to be talking with the legend again, and maybe even toying in our minds with the idea of relaxing around his guitar shaped pool. Chuck seemed to see the sense in what we were saying, but wasn't completely satisfied.

"Well, if you're going to stay in here, you should pay for your tickets now." he decided.

"How much are tickets?" was our reasonable response.

"Five dollars, each." Chuck replied firmly.

If that's what he wanted, we were certainly willing to oblige, I pulled out a ten dollar bill and asked, "Do you have change?"

Apparently he didn't, so Mr. Berry said, "Later." and he and the woman turned and headed back toward the door. I pulled out my small pocket camera and took a picture of them as they headed away. They were about twenty feet away from me with their backs turned, but Chuck didn't like it, and demanded I hand over the camera. I refused to give it to him, telling him truthfully that it wasn't mine. I had borrowed it. He then demanded the film. I explained to him that it was a new roll and I had just started it. After all, if I gave him the film, I wouldn't be able to take pictures of Mike Shelton's performance. I don't know why my lame explanation worked, but he probably figured it just wasn't worth arguing with me, and he and the woman exited the building and left us to amuse ourselves in whatever fashion pleased us.

Eventually people started to arrive, and we set about trying to talk with the band to see if Mike was actually going to be singing that night. We did find someone who was playing in a band that night. He didn't know if Mike was singing, but promised to try to find out for us, and suggested that we should park in the back of the building because that's where the bands would be arriving and unloading their equipment. We moved Larry's car to the back parking lot, and it took a while longer before we tracked down someone in the band that Mike was supposedly going to sing for. That guy wasn't sure either, but he managed to find out that no, Mike wasn't going to be performing that night. We were walking back around the building to get to our car when we ran into Mr. Chuck Berry again.

"Where are you going?" He asked accusingly.

"We're going back to our car." we explained.

"But your car's over there!" he said, pointing back behind us where he had parked us initially.

"No." we explained, "We moved it. We're parked back around there now."

Chuck didn't seem pleased about that at all. In fact, he seemed unquestionably displeased with having to once again deal with these youngsters, who he hadn't actually caught doing anything wrong, but perhaps were not behaving within his acceptable parameters. He grudgingly said. "Well, OK, but if I see you two doing one more strange thing, you're out of here!"

We headed on back to our car chuckling, partially because without doing anything we had royally pissed off Mr. Chuck Berry, who we both very much respected. The Dizeazoes eventually worked up 'Come On', The Rolling Stones first single, which was written by this very man who had just threatened to boot us off his property. We were also amused because, since Mike wasn't going to play, we had been stopped and interrogated in the act of heading back to our car with the express purpose of getting out of there, exactly the thing Mr. Berry had threatened to make us do. We headed back to Columbia, and very possibly plugged in our guitars and ran through what at that time existed of The Dizeazoes repertoire.

Further reading on early St Louis underground music:

The Moldy Dogs
Akashic Records
Wolfgang and the Noble Oval
BDR Records

THE DIZEAZOES #13: THE BREAKUP

The Dizeazoes didn't so much break up as fragment. I guess. I don't know, it's weird. Even after thirty some years, it seems to remain a sensitive issue, and, in all honesty, I've been reluctant to write about why the band actually dissolved, partly because I know that it will require me to interpret the situation, which is something I really do not want to do for a variety of reasons. I mean, I don't want these guys to hate me, but when it comes down to it, the break up seems to be due to a clash of personalities, which, really everyone should have seen coming. The Dizeazoes were full of very strong personalities with very strong opinions about music (I mean, come on, it was a band made up of Stooges fans in the early 1970s), and for some bands that's a good thing, and for others it's a really bad thing. The Dizeazoes fall somewhere in the middle - it was good and bad and too much and not enough. I guess. Really,it was, at once, a great betrayal of everything the band stood for and the only logical direction the band could possibly move, and pretty much encapsulates the only great argument rock and roll has ever produced: is it just for fun or is it a business. Or is there a business to be made from having fun? Like I said, I don't know.

A quick side note. The reason I've been writing about early St Louis punk rock bands for so long is that I believe that these bands (The Moldy Dogs, The Dizeazoes, etc) developed an early punk rock aesthetic before any one else in the US. That's why I've been so interested in pinpointing The Dizeazoes as the first punk rock band in St Louis, because, really, in my opinion, they were one of the first punk rock bands in the states. We're talking about guys that heard The Stooges and started bands, not guys that heard The Ramones and started bands, or guys that heard the New York Dolls and started bands, or guys that heard Television and started bands, but guys that heard the very early rumblings of punk rock in the music of The Stooges, The MC5, etc, and started a band. From there a small scene developed which attracted like minded individuals that identified themselves as different from the rest of society and, at least in some way, aligned to this music. And this all happened independently of what was going on in New York or London or Philadelphia or wherever. The most important thing I've taken from my research into the early St Louis punk bands is the fact that none of them say "We were influenced by The Ramones!" or even "We were influenced by The Dolls!". And that's because they weren't influenced by them. They were, at the very least, contemporaries of these bands, and deserve some sort of consideration in that regard.

Really, as with every other band regarless of size or popularity or whatever, there is no clear story - it's always someone's fault and everyone's fault all at once. There's a short story and a long story. If you've read my stuff before you know that you're in for the long version.

"One summer Larry and I got back from Columbia, MO and found that Mike Shelton and Greg Carmack had gotten together and decided that some changes needed to be made in The Dizeazoes," says Paul Wheeler.

"They had decided that they didn't much like our choice of material. They didn't like the oldies that we were doing. Plus, Mike thought we should start doing some originals. Although he had some lyrical ideas, he didn't play an instrurment, and so hadn't actually written any songs himself. We did start playing one of my originals, and we started learning some songs chosen by Mike and Greg. As I remember there were a couple of John Cale songs, a solo Lou Reed song, a Brian Eno song that had been a B-side on an English single. It was all pretty obscure stuff, and seemed to me very somber. I didn't much like it, and I didn't see any reason anyone else should or would. In fact, if anybody did like it, I wouldn't want to have much to do with them."

Larry Dardick agrees that there was some internal strife.

"Paul is right about Greg and Mike advocating for artsier songs," says Dardick. "Mike was a real [David] Bowie devotee. I didn't mind trying different styles and did enjoy having some new material. However, this brought us nearer to 'taking ourselves too seriously' than Paul or I would want."

Paul Wheeler agrees that things with The Dizeazoes were getting out of hand.

"Larry and I had pretty much controlled the band up till then," Wheeler continues. "And nobody had really tried to wrest control from us. Larry announced that later that summer he and his girlfriend were going to go on a cross-country trip/vacation. We kept playing with Greg and Mike, and allowed them to choose the direction for the band, though we continued to rehearse in my basement, mostly with equipment that Larry and I had bought. I wasn't enjoying it much, but I was going along with it."

"I had planned an extended car trip to California with my girlfriend, who probably took herself a bit too seriously, during the last half of the summer," says Dardick. "In the weeks prior to the trip, my Dad developed coronary artery disease requiring bypass surgery. I was also working to earn some cash. So I didn't have inordinate amounts of free time."

And then there was the party. The Toler Brothers, who owned an influential record store in St Louis, had arranged a show at the apartment complex in which they lived. Dardick says that he "wasn't as intrigued or motivated" as some of the other members of the band.

"When it turned out that I didn't have to play, I was very comfortable attending the party and ultimately departing at a half reasonable hour," says Dardick.

Here's Wheeler's take, which includes his story about joining The Moldy Dogs.

"As I understood it, Mike had gotten Dennis Toler to throw a party that would feature this new version of The Dizeazoes... One night I went out with Jeff Rosen, who, as I remember, was no longer involved in the practices, because of the changes. We had heard about this duo called The Moldy Dogs who were doing some very cool songs, including a bunch of oldies and some Stooges songs, and who some friends of mine had recommended for us to check them out. They were playing a night at a local University City place called The Pastrami Joynt, and we went and checked it out. Besides Wolf and Paul (who was referred to as “Killer” at the time) there was a guy dressed up in an old brown, leather, pilot's cap, with a strap that went under his chin, and some kind of protective goggles. He was called 'The Human Wah-Wah”, and during Paul's leads on electric guitar, “The Human Wah-Wah” would jiggle the knobs on Paul's amplifier. One of the things that Wolf would do to entertain the crowd at The Pastrami Joynt was to ask the small crowd rock 'n' roll trivia questions. That night our table, mostly Jeff and myself, were able to answer almost all the trivia questions. After their set, Jeff and I went over to talk with them, and I asked them if they had ever considered putting together a band, and let them know that I played bass guitar and would be interested in playing with them. They invited me to come over and play with them in the next couple of days. We hit it off well, and I was added to their group.

"I first called up Larry and let him know. We agreed that we would continue rehearsing with The Dizeazoes and would play Dennis Toler's party, but shortly after that he was going to take off for his summer vacation, and I was going to quit The Dizeazoes and join The Moldy Dogs. Larry was fine with that, and completely understood why I was unhappy with the new direction of The Dizeazoes. I don't think he was terribly happy with it either. I certainly was not interested in continuing to rehearse with Mike and Greg without Larry there, and I'm sure that was a big reason I considered finding a new situation. After having informed Larry of my plans, and gotten his OK, I called up Mike Shelton and informed him that I was planning on leaving The Dizeazoes and joining The Moldy Dogs, but that Larry and I would still be willing to rehearse The Dizeazoes and play Dennis Toler's party as we had planned.

"As I stated previously, we were rehearsing in my parent's basement, with equipment that was almost completely owned by Larry and myself. For me to leave The Dizeazoes meant pretty much that I was disbanding The Dizeazoes. By the by, I believe that Garth Tyson was living and working in upstate New York at the time, and wasn't involved in the group at all at that point. I don't think we had a drummer at that point. I believe that Mike Shelton understood the effect that my leaving The Dizeazoes would have, and considered it a total betrayal. When he told Greg Carmack, he did not mention that Larry and I had offered to go ahead and play Dennis Toler's party. His response to me wanting to leave the band was to cut ties completely. I believe it was through Jon Ashline that The Moldy Dogs were invited to play Dennis Toler's party. When Mike found out he demanded that we not be allowed to play. In fact, as it turned out Mike Shelton sang some songs for The Moldy Dogs at that party, as did Jeff Rosen. I spent most of the party hanging out with Larry Dardick
and Mary Meyer. Oh yes, and it was at that party that I was asked by Bruce Cole to play bass on The Screamin' Mee-mees first EP (left). I said yes. I also talked with Greg Carmack at that party. He was pissed, until I explained to him that Larry and I had offered to continue to rehearse The Dizeazoes and play the party. The plan was for him and Mike to get up and do a performance, just the two of them, but Mike started singing and improvising with Jim Maresca's band, which was probably called Candy at the time, or became Candy shortly after that, and Greg Carmack grabbed his guitar and amplifier and left in disgust. I didn't want to inflame the situation, and I don't think I said a word to Mike Shelton that entire night. I don't think he said a word to me either. Several years later, though, in 1980, I hitchhiked to Chicago to see Iggy Pop perform a show in what he was calling his Nightclubbing Tour. Mike Shelton was living in Chicago at the time and we met through the mutual friend, Carolyn Horyn, who I was hitchhiking with. He told me that he now understood the choices in material that Larry and I had made in The Dizeazoes. In fact, many of the songs that The Dizeazoes had been playing were later covered by various punk bands. Possibly as an act of reconciliation he patted me on the back, and took an Iggy Pop button off his shirt and pinned it on mine. I was shocked and very much saddened to hear about the horrible traffic accident that tragically killed Mike and his family."

There are no more Dizeazoes stories. There are thousands of Dizeazoes stories.

THE DIZEAZOES #12: ON WHETHER OR NOT THE DIZEAZOES WERE, IN FACT, THE FIRST PUNK ROCK BAND IN ST LOUIS

Being first is good. From a historical perspective, the idea of "the first" is incredibly important. For example Neil Armstrong was the first to lie to the world about the fact that he walked on the moon and he's one of the most famous people alive. In music, especially, being first is of utmost importance. It connotates a certain degree of hipness, as if the members of whatever band were possessed with some prescient vision of what the rocking masses needed that no one else around could understand. Black Sabbath was the first heavy metal band, Chuck Berry was the first rock and roll guitarist, etc, as if it all matters at all. But for some reason it does seem to matter and for all intents and purposes, The Dizeazoes were the first punk rock band in St Louis.

I need to be clear about something here. The members of The Dizeazoes do not claim to be the first punk rock band in St Louis. That is my contention, and it is based on the eh, not exactly miniscule, but far from comprehensive, amount of research I've done. So anyone wishing to contest the fact that The Dizeazoes were the first punk rock band in St Louis should bitch to me, not The Dizeazoes. I contend that The Dizeazoes were the first punk rock band (which is different from the first punk band) in St Louis because of their attitude, the music that they played, and, more importantly, their attitude towards the music they played, which was that the music they played was important and they (the band) were not. Which is the way that rock music, regardless of what qualifier you place in front of the word "rock", is supposed to work, but is the exact opposite of how most rock bands work.

(Keep in mind, if you were a member of an unheard of rock band from the early 1970s and you send me an email that says something like "Hey, you're an idiot, we were the first punk rock band in St Louis!" I will respond with "Great! Let's do a story!", and, if you agree, you'll have to put up with me pestering you for months on end ((I've been bothering Paul Wheeler about this for over a year now, and, while he's been incredibly gracious and patient with me, I'm sure I have grated on his nerves a bit. Sorry 'bout that, Mr Wheeler.)

But all of this is just drunk talk, and really, it's not all that important. When I asked the members of The Dizeazoes about the idea that they were the first punk rock band in St Louis the answers were varied. And, really, all of them were more interested in talking about music than talking about the band. Wheeler said "I certainly don't mind that statement,", but qualified it by pointing out that Wolf Roxon and Jon Ashline's bedroom freakout project Wolfgang and the Noble Oval had possibly predated them. Dardick told me that it all depended on my definition of the word "punk". All of which sort of makes my point: even now the members of the band still see themselves as ultimately unimportant, even when confronted with the question that might stake their small place in history. Instead of saying "Yes, we were the first!" they tell me that "Perhaps is a meta-discursive term to use," and babble about bands that played "Kick Out the Jams" at high school dances, or seeing a band called Rush, which was, according to Dardick, "a fairly well known band influenced by the MC5 and Steppnwolf" play in the park on Sundays in Forest Park in St Louis.

It's all very confusing, especially to someone who wasn't there. By the time The Dizeazoes played their first show The Moldy Dogs had already started putting songs together on the campus of Webster College, and other bands like The Welders, were starting to emerge. Steve Scariano, who was an early fan of many of these bands, and today plays in The Jans Project, explains it all better than I can:

"When I first became aware of that little original scene back then, the small handful of bands were all already up and running, so I really have no idea who may have actually been first. Doesn't really matter all that much to me either. I'm just glad they were all there and doing it. I think all of those guys; Dirt Wheeler, Shelton, Norman Schoenfeld, Joey Schadler, the Moldy Dogs guys, Billy Love, Jim Maresca, Bruce Cole, and of course the Welders, all deserve statues in their honor for planting the flag and starting it all here."

I've babbled a lot in this series about how The Dizeazoes were a cover band and the fact that they were a cover band that played music that no one would like is really cool, but The Dizeazoes did dabble with the idea of doing original songs (and, in fact, the subject of original music would eventually be a factor in the bands' dissolution, which will be discussed later).

Wheeler, again:

"I had been writing lyrics since 1970... One day Norman Schoenfeld said to me, 'You have all these lyrics. You play bass. You can write music for your lyrics now.' I guess I was kind of like, 'Really?'. Norman instructed me to bring over my bass and some lyrics. Jeff Rosen came, too. I brought over lyrics I had written for a song called ‘Elevator Mind’. He sat me down and said, 'OK, sing the lyrics you've got.” I started singing, and he started working out some guitar chords to go along with my singing. I simplified them a bit so that I was happier with it, and that was it. Click! Norman had shown me how to put music to my songs. After that, when I wrote lyrics, I generally wrote out some music on my bass to go along with them. I wasn't very confident with my songwriting at that point, though. I did bounce my lyrics and songs off Larry regularly. The first song that we worked up was one called ‘Dead Fed’. It even had background vocals to it. We got Jeff Rosen down in the basement and tried to teach it to him, and it was like bouncing our heads against the wall. Jeff had never heard the song before, so he didn't have a clue how to sing it. Basically, we gave up. It was just easier to play 'real' songs. Admittedly, ‘Dead Fed’ was not one of my better songs. I have dug up other songs from those days and played them, but that was the last time I tried to do anything with ‘Dead Fed’. When Mike Shelton and Greg Carmack took over the direction of the band, one of the things that Mike, especially, wanted to do was original songs. He didn't have any. He may have had some lyrics, but he never showed them to me. I pulled out a song I had written recently, and we worked up and began playing ‘Outside On The Ground’. This was something Mike wanted to do, and it had an easy blues structure, so we started practicing it. Mike's contribution was to change the title (in his mind) to ‘Outside Observation’. As far as I remember there's no recorded version of The Dizeazoes doing ‘Outside On The Ground’.

"‘Dead Fed’ was a rock song about a cute girl who was new in town, and turned out to be a narc. ‘Outside On The Ground’ was a blues/rock song about a guy watching his ex-girlfriend through her window at night. There was also a recording of a riff I had come up with but not done anything with. I just started playing it during a very loose jam session, and the other people there began playing along, and a friend who was there (I believe his last name was something like Ronollo), just started making up lyrics and singing along. That's the one original thing that was actually recorded that The Dizeazoes did. I only had about twenty seconds of it on the tape I recorded the CD from. On the original tape, I remember it going on for several minutes, but it was just a jam, nothing we ever “worked up”.

THE DIZEAZOES #11: THE SECOND SHOW

The second Dizeazoes show was even more of a disaster than the first (above is a photo of that show). The Dizeazoes were asked to play at a party in the suburbs of St Louis and were asked to set up in the backyard near a swimming pool, an idea which didn't exactly excite Paul Wheeler.

“I immediately told them that we should not be setting up outside,” says Wheeler, who suggested that the band should set up in the basement.

But the band was forced to set up outside. They had planned on playing several songs, including “Question of Temperature” and “Great Balls of Fire” but never got to them.

“We started playing and got a very good reaction from the party-goers,” says Wheeler. “They were jumping around and seemed pretty excited.”

But almost immediately the band was asked to turn down due to complaints by neighbors.

"After our first song, our host told us their neighbors were complaining, every one played softer and I sang without using a mic," says Jeff Rosen, who attempted to sing that night.

“We had started as quietly as we could imagine playing,” says Wheeler. “After the second song we turned down again and couldn’t even hear each other by then. By the end of the the third song the told us the police were coming and that we had to stop playing. I remember that Lance Tyson, who I had given my camera to, had only taken one picture. He explained that he thought he would have a lot more time to take pictures!”

The Dizeazoes wouldn't perform live again. By 1976 the band would dissolve.

Oh, and if you have the time, you could go here and read my recently published, in-depth interview with New York punk rock legend Sonny Vincent. Mr Vincent talks about his early days in New York, his friendship with Bob Stinson of The Replacements, and other things you might be intersted in.

THE DIZEAZOES #10: BEER

In my discussions with the members of The Dizeazoes the subject of beer was popular. In fact, in preparation for the bands first show Larry Dardick said that the band didn't have a great deal of time to prepare, and as a result band approached the opportunity as a chance "to be ourselves, have a good time and drink a few beers". Their beer of choice was Blatz, the unofficial official beer of The Dizeazoes. Dardick preferred Blatz because it "was affordable and sounded cool". Jeff Rosen remembers being with Wheeler and Dardick at "either a liquor store or a super market, looking for beer", when Wheeler saw Blatz on the shelf and "was impressed by the name".

The allure of the name was the fact that it lacked any sort of ostentation.

"How pretentious can a beer named Blatz be?" asked Dardick, parenthetically, in an email.



The beer we know as Blatz today has an interesting history. The Valentin Blatz Brewing Company was founded in Milwaukee in 1850 and, after merging with the City Brewery, produced Milwaukee's first bottled beer in 1874, and thrived throughout the early parts of the 20th century. The Blatz brewery was one of the first to use freshness dates on their bottles, and helped to make Milwaukee a brewing capitol after prohibition. In later years Blatz was purchased by Pabst Brewing Company, then by G Heileman (Old Style), then Stroh's, before eventually ending up, once again, as a Pabst product. In addition to The Dizeazoes, at least one other band important to the history of punk rock were fans of Blatz, these guys, who actually named their band after the beer, of whom,I'm sure many of us have "fond" memories.

Paul Wheeler on the importance of Blatz:

"I had never heard of Blatz beer until I got to Columbia, MO. It was a discount brand, and I became rather obsessed with it. If the store had no Blatz beer, I would go somewhere else to get my beer. Why? I don't think the taste was anything special, though I quickly learned to enjoy it... I became obsessed with it because of the name. It tasted fine, too, but I loved the name which sounded a bit like the result of too much beer hitting the floor.

"We were in college at the time, and had not learned the art of responsible drinking. There was a good amount of drinking going on at rehearsals, though most of us had to limit the drinking to in between the songs. I don't think we ever drank enough to hurt the quality of our rehearsals... As I remember, rehearsals lasted over an hour and under three hours. It was just good fun. Sometimes we worked on a new song, sometimes we just played through songs we knew. Anyone could call out a song. I think it was usually the singers who picked what they wanted to sing. Sometimes they'd shuffle through the lyrics I'd written out and pick something, or we'd pick something, and they'd have to find the lyrics in the pile if they didn't already know them. It was mostly freeform, unless Larry was teaching us a new song. It was a fun way to relax, and we pretended we were being constructive. I'm actually not sure if Blatz was always available in St. Louis, but I love the idea of Blatz being the “official” Dizeazoes beer!"

THE DIZEAZOES #9: TWO VOCALISTS

Jeff Rosen (above, with The Curved Invaders) was one of two vocalists for The Dizeazoes, the other being Mike Shelton, also known as Cosmic Starfire, and The Iggy Guy, and one of the most important figures in the early St Louis punk scene), but, for all intents and purposes, Rosen was the main vocalist for the band. He was the only vocalist to appear at both Dizeazoes shows, or at least the only one who had a chance to sing, and appears on most of the recordings of the band.

Rosen was an old friend of both Wheeler and Dardick. He had known Dardick since elementary school.

"He lived around the corner from me in University City [a neighborhood in St Louis near Washington University]," says Rosen. "Larry and I were music fans, mostly 60s and early 70s rock/pop, and shared the same kind of humor."

Rosen and Wheeler met in high school but didn't become friends until a chance meeting.

"A friend and I met Jeff in Forest Park one lazy day," Wheeler remembers. "Jeff and I recognized each other from high school, knew each other by sight, but had never talked much. We started talking and found that we had a lot in common, our tastes in music, and our sense of humor."

Rosen remembers Wheeler as, first and foremost, a music fan.

"We were fans of the same type of music," says Rosen. "I was impressed by his record collection. He had a lot of obscure albums I'd never heard before. He also turned me on to the Bonzo Dog Band, which is still one of my favorite groups. We also shared an irreverent sense of humor, so we also hit it off pretty well."

At first Rosen was reluctant to join the band, but after attending several rehearsals became excited to participate.

"He just enjoyed spending time with us," says Wheeler. "We were friends, and we needed a lead singer. Plus Jeff was a bit of an exhibitionist. He was not afraid of playing the fool for some attention, and he appreciated an enthusiastic performance, and could be counted on to give one if he got the chance."

"I had fun singing for the Dizeazoes, but I knew that I didn't have a great voice," says Rosen. "So I hammed it up a bit just to have fun with it. They seemed to appreciate it."

As noted, Rosen shared vocal duties for The Dizeazoes with Mike Shelton (below), also known as Cosmic Starfire, and The Iggy Guy. He and Wheeler had met in 1973 when his girlfriend noticed Wheeler wandering around in a homemade Iggy Pop t-shirt.

"Mike's girlfriend spotted me at one point, asked me about it, and said, 'Oh, my boyfriend's going to want one!', recalls Wheeler. "She got my phone number. Mike called me up, and pretty quickly he and I became acquaintances if not friends. It wasn't too long before I had convinced him that he should come and sing with us, 'cause we did a bunch of Stooges songs."

Shelton had played in a few local bands, and had developed a reputation around town as an important figure in the underground music scene. Wheeler considers Shelton's involvement with The Dizeazoes "a major feather in the bands' cap".

Shelton and Rosen shared vocal duties in the band (a third vocalist Terry Henner would also help out, primarily for practices in Columbia, MO, but Henner was also present at the second, and final, Dizeazoes show). Rosen would sing the oldies and Shelton would sing The Stooges material. This would lead to some confusion as The Dizeazoes gained a reputation. Paul Wheeler recalls a funny incident:

"Larry and I were playing with Howard Levinson in Kid Sister and Jeff Rosen was visiting us in Columbia, MO," says Wheeler. "We brought Jeff with us to a Kid Sister rehearsal and introduced him to Howard as one of The Dizeazoes' lead singers. Howard's reaction? 'Oh, did you cut yourself? Did you roll on glass?' Jeff was a bit shocked at the thought of it, may not have even understood the Iggy reference, and vigorously shook his head at the thought of even doing such things. That was Jeff's introduction to Howard. Larry and I knew him by then, and just chuckled at his question."

Mike Shelton was one of the most important, if not the most important, figures of the early St Louis underground, and really, his life is worth an entire article. In my research, his name has constantly emerged as "the guy", the one that everything seemed to revolve around. Mr Shelton, unfortunately, perished in a tragic car accident in 2004. There is a nice tribute to him here.

THE DIZEAZOES #8: GREG CARMACK

Greg Carmack joined The Dizeazoes in 1975. He was, as Paul Wheeler says, "quite the wizard on guitar", but, as is usually the case with wizards, was also,"an odd chap".

Wheeler remembers that Carmack was a big fan of Barbara Streisand ("I'm not putting that down," says Wheeler. "I was a big fan of Nancy Sinatra at the time."), and The Velvet Underground, and was responsible for turning Wheeler on to White Light / White Heat. He was known around town for his confidence (arrogance?) and made a point to not play in St Louis rock bands. Wheeler was surprised when he agreed to join the band.

"This guy could play guitar, but was a bit hard to work with," recalls Wheeler. "He put up with us, I think, because we didn’t care that he never bothered to learn the material, we let him play whatever the hell he wanted for the leads, and in certain songs allowed him to go on for as long as he liked... He had been playing steel guitar when I ran into him, but made a point of not playing in St Louis rock bands. I asked him to play with us and he surprised me by agreeing."

Wheeler remembers that he often acted "like a spoiled brat" during practices, but that his work was always superb. On one occasion he asked Carmack to hang out after a rehearsal. Carmack's response was unusually usual.

"He told us, 'No. I'll play in the band, but we're not friends'," says Wheeler, who has since lost touch with Carmack.

"He was an amazing guitarist," continues Wheeler. "Sometimes in his leads his don't give a shit attitude was just brilliant. Check out his lead on 'Down On The Street', where he takes about half a minute to adjust his tone before starting the lead. Meanwhile, his guitar just roars. I loved it!"

THE DIZEAZOES #7: FORMATION AND EARLY DAYS

Paul Wheeler had been experimenting with music from a young age when he and some friends formed The Caterpillars, for which he played drums. The band "mostly did covers", Wheeler recalls, but also dabbled in the occasional original recording. One of those songs, a Wheeler written song called "Girls", debuted at a talent show.

"About the only lyrics from it that I remember were "Girls are made of a lot of mush / And when that mush is heated just right / It turns into a boy's delight!", Wheeler recalls.

Wheeler grew up a fan of The Beatles and worshiped the Fab Four, but he also loved The Doors and Jimi Hendrix and remembers seeing both bands in the same week. But The Stones became an obsession which eventually led him "over to the dark side", as he recalls, into the world of The Stooges and the underground music of the early 1970s. Before long Wheeler was grooving to the sounds of Amon Duul II and Can, and toying with the idea of starting another band.

“I heard The Stooges and just became fascinated with their music and their attitude," says Wheeler. "Eventually Larry and I decided that if The Stooges could make the most exciting music we were hearing with the primitive musical talent they seemed to have then so could we and we formed The Dizeazoes and went at it. At the time it felt like what I should be doing.”

Wheeler met Larry Dardick, who had been hanging around the progressive University City area of St Louis since his teenage years, through mutual friends in 1970. The two shared an interest in music and spent "countless hours discussing music and playing chess", says Dardick. The duo also attended concerts at places like The Rainy Day Club, where they witnessed early performances of bands like The MC5, The Stooges, and Alice Cooper. The two also began to jam in the basement of Wheeler's parents house in St Louis, and it is there that The Dizeazoes began to take form. Dardick would later go on to attend the University of Chicago, but would transfer to the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO after one year and become roommates with Wheeler at a place the bands' "merry band of knuckleheads", according to Wheeler, called the "FUN House" which would become the band's second practice space.

"In some respects it was kind of like The Monkees TV show," says Dardick. "The front room of the house was always set up for playing with amps, speakers, and the like. Most weekend evenings, when nothing else was going on we would play."

The band held weekly practices in the front room of the FUN House "to the displeasure of the people who had rented the basement of the house", Wheeler recalls. They were a cover band, but a cover band unlike any other. The band played songs by The Stooges, The Troggs, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other underground bands and would have found a hard time getting a gig anywhere with such a repertoire. Rehearsals were a spontaneous thing with the band going from song to song based on a "Let's do this one next!" sort of movement, though the band made an effort to focus on the first releases of popular bands like The Beatles and The Stones. Dardick had found a Gibson Eb-3 bass guitar for Wheeler in a pawn shop in St Louis and taught him to play "a couple of Stooges songs and a few oldies that normal people might know", says Wheeler.

The band would eventually fill out to include Lance Tyson, who had joined the band with no experience at playing drums ("But he wanted to be our drummer - that was good enough for us," recalls Wheeler), but the sticks were eventually handed over to his brother Garth. Lance would go on to play guitar.

The Dizeazoes would bounce around between rehearsal spots, but they eventually found a semi-permanent home in the basement of Wheeler's parents' house in St Louis.

"My parents were very cool about putting up with Dizeazoes practices in their basement," says Wheeler. "Of course, our practices were audible in the rest of the house. A couple of floors up our noise was more negligible, but on the first floor, where the kitchen was, it was certainly audible, and, of course, if you know anything about how the sound of bands carry, the bass tends to carry through walls and floors the best. I was told at some point that at least some of my family had decided that since it was my house the rest of the band allowed me to play the loudest. I was the one they could hear the most, so I must be playing the loudest."

Dizeazoes practices were far from private affairs. Any interested party was welcome to attend, which aided the band in their search for a vocalist.

"The singing spot was really up for grabs," says Wheeler. "If you were hanging around at a rehearsal and felt like singing a song, we were happy to let you have a go. If you sucked we might not encourage you to sing more, but we felt anyone deserved a shot."

But, of course, the practices were all about having fun and any sense of professionalism was an afterthought at best.

"It was almost always as much of a party as it was a rehearsal," says Wheeler.

And like any good party The Dizeazoes practice-parties were open to anyone with an interest in hanging out and having fun. One of those individuals was Norman Schoenfeld, who would go on to play in The Back Alley Boys and the Cigarette Butts, two early St Louis punk bands.

Paul Wheeler remembers one such instance when Schoenfeld crashed a Dizeazoes practice and attempted to add an impromptu woodwind section to the band.

"Norman called up and asked if he could come over," Wheeler recalls. "Mike Shelton yelled out that he could come over but he couldn't bring his guitar. Norman brought over his clarinet instead. The rest of us were rehearsing, probably playing Stooges songs, and Jeff Rosen ushered Norman into the basement, and set Norman up with a microphone over by the washing machine and dryer. I believe there were some sheets hanging up, drying, which obstructed our view of what was going on over there. Suddenly this high pitched squawking started up while we were playing. We kept playing, but we were all like, 'What the hell was that?'. Norman and Jeff unveiled that he was playing a cornet, or whatever it was. They pointed out to Mike that Norman had not brought over his guitar."

"We had lots laughs hanging around the basement and making noise," says Schoenfeld. "Just like any other basement/ garage band just kicking out the jams and acting out our 'rock star' fantasies."

THE DIZEAZOES #6: COVER BAND

The sloppy truth is that The Dizeazoes were a cover band. And in many ways they were like every other cover band that has ever formed in any garage - they were a bunch of guys fucking around in a basement with guitars and drums, playing songs they liked by bands they worshiped and thinking they were really cool. But the difference between The Dizeazoes and your dad's weekend hobby is The Dizeazoes were covering songs that weren't popular and that they knew no audience would appreciate. Their repertoire consisted of songs by The Stooges, The Troggs, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Balloon Farm, and other outfits weren't exactly topping the charts at the time. Which is why The Dizeazoes were, for lack of a better term, so punk rock.

I mean, at least when a band is creating original music there is the possibility that that band might stumble upon or tap into something a listener might be into. This is, essentially, how punk rock eventually found a way to live on beyond it's original explosion - it wasn't all just guys screaming and spitting, some great music was actually made by some of those spiky haired savants. But The Dizeazoes chose to play music that they knew in advance no one, or at least a very, very, select few, would appreciate, and they simply didn't give a fuck. Which is, well, punk rock.

"There were several routes into the repertoire," says Larry Dardick. "Mainly, we chose music which we appreciated by artists we appreciated. There were some mini trends such as the idea of doing the first released songs by a couple of well know artists like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Of course, they had to be relatively simple for us to attempt them - again, especially in the early days. One of the main ideas was that we were playing for the enjoyment of it. So, we continued to play songs that we had fun playing."

Says Paul Wheeler:

"If you thought our band sucked, well, we kind of assumed that you would think our band sucked. We didn't think our band sucked. We felt that we were making real rock music, and that it was the stuff on the radio that sucked. We didn't really expect the world to change, and for the music we were making to suddenly become a desirable product. We were just throwing the first stone (though really more like a snowball) against the crappy music industry that was turning out glossy, pop shit, or laid-back, groove music. When The New York Dolls came out, we were excited. They were playing rock music! They didn't mind playing the fool. They realized it was a positive thing to shock your audience, and that it was important to play real rock music. The smoothness of '70s popular music grated on my soul. It had to be challenged. We didn't expect to win this cultural war, but we wanted to do our part to start turning the tide... We were serious about playing rock music, but we didn't mind at all playing the fool. In fact, we thought it was kind of important, because we didn't expect the majority of people to even have a clue what we were doing. Maybe we could make them laugh."

THE DIZEAZOES #5: PRACTICE AND PARENTS

Says Paul Wheeler:

"When I first got excited about music, when The Beatles first broke in the states my parents, generally very cool people, put them down to the point where I was surprised by their negativity. They would say things like, 'You know Paul, in a year or two, nobody's going to remember The Beatles.' When my mom heard The Beatles' version of 'Money' she said, 'See? That's all The Beatles are interested in!'

"A few years ago my father started apologizing, mostly for being so wrong. Who would have thought? The Beatles are now very respected for all the great songs they wrote. Anyso, my parents were very cool about putting up with Dizeazoes practices in their basement. Of course, our practices were audible in the rest of the house. A couple of floors up our noise was more negligible, but on the first floor, where the kitchen was, it was certainly audible, and, of course, if you know anything about how the sound of bands carry, the bass tends to carry through walls and floors the best. I was told at some point that at least some of my family had decided that since it was my house the rest of the band allowed me to play the loudest. I was the one they could hear the most, so I must be playing the loudest.

"After a couple of years or so, my parents put in a request that we play in the other bandmembers' houses for a while. I believe that in the Dardick household we only lasted a couple of weeks. The Tyson and Carmack households may have actually put up with us for a couple of months, but after a while we were back in my mom and dad's basement, and as we were basically trying to play the most rebellious music we could come up with, my parents, who couldn't put up with The Beatles when they first came along, deserve some real points for putting up with our joyous noise!"

THE DIZEAZOES #4: THE FIRST SHOW

Though The Dizeazoes existed for three years, they played live on only two occasions, both house parties. The first was a graduation or birthday party for a girl named Jane, or possibly a birthday party for her sister Deb. No one remembers the exact circumstances, but the band was asked to play a few sets to celebrate something one of the Kahn sisters was doing or experiencing or something like that. At the time the band consisted of Wheeler on bass, Dardick on guitar, Garth and Lance Tyson (drums and guitar),and Rosen on vocals. They rehearsed four sets of music, and set up in the house in a room by the kitchen.

"We were ready and rehearsed. Well... rehearsed, anyway," laughs Wheeler. "A good crowd of people arrived and we were told to start playing. I forget how many songs we played, but I know that we carefully selected them and were ready to play four sets of about eight songs each."

A few songs in, however, one of the party goers made a fateful request: "Sweet Jane" by The Velvet Underground.

"We didn't know it, so we went on with our set," says Wheeler. "And not only did everybody at the party quickly move away from the band, all except a very few left the house and either went out on the front lawn or into the backyard.”

Message to young bands today: Know your Lou Reed.

“When we finished the set Garth shoved his drum set out into the middle of the room in a kind of unplanned finale,” continues Wheeler. “Bits and pieces of his drum set littered the floor. For an encore we helped him pick it all up. We were told that the other three sets we had planned would not be necessary.”

THE DIZEAZOES #3: THE NAME

A question that always comes up in any discussion about The Dizeazoes: "What kind of a name is The Dizeazoes?"

In the early days The Dizeazoes were a loosely formed fragment of a band with members drifting in and out for fun. After moving from Wheeler's parents' basement in St Louis, the band was practicing in Columbia, MO, where Larry Dardick was attending the University of Missouri. Eventually Paul Wheeler would move to Columbia and room with Dardick at a place known as The FUN House. While on a weekend trip to Columbia to test out a new guitarist a friend, Norbert Rosen, inspired the name of the band.

According to Wheeler:

"At this point The Dizeazoes were very much in the beginning stages. Larry played guitar, I had recently bought a bass, and Larry had taught me a few songs. We were trying to come up with band names, and we were trying to come up with more band members. An acquaintance had mentioned that he played some guitar, and I had immediately asked if he'd be interested in playing with Larry and I. So he, Dennis Rainey, Norbert Rosen, Jeff Rosen (no relation, who eventually became one of our lead singers), and I planned a trip up to Columbia, MO where Larry went to school. The idea was that Larry, Dennis and I would play together and see what happened. That didn't work out, but we did have a good time. Norbert Rosen had coined some phrases that had become popular amongst his friends, and one of them had been 'diseased'. If something was 'diseased', as I understood it, it was a reflection of the downward spin of modern society, but, on the other hand, it wasn't a completely negative comment, giving even the silliest pop trinket, or ridiculous action a certain cachet of cool. That's how I understood it. The wonderful thing about Norbert's use of phrases was that he rarely explained what he felt they meant. So, the five of us were hanging around together for this weekend and Larry and I had been bouncing possible names off each other, and hadn't come up with anything that we both liked. At one point, Norbert stated authoritatively that something was "diseased". I have no idea what it was, but, as I remember, I said, 'That's it, The Dizeazoes!', and Larry liked the name, too. It was the first name we were both excited about. The spelling came about partially through my inability to correctly spell 'disease', but I also felt, once I had looked up the proper spelling, that for our band name the 'Z's' would look better. So, Larry and I had the name before we actually had any other members in the band."

THE DIZEAZOES #2: GARTH TYSON ON PRACTICE

Garth Tyson played drums for The Dizeazoes for the majority of the bands' existence. What follows is his response to the question: "How much fun was it being in the Dizeazoes?"...

"I've got to admit the most fun wasn't the live shows," says Tyson. "It was mashin' the skins in somebody's basement with Jeff screamin into the mike, pullin his shirt off, dancing, sweating, the great look on his face with his neck veins poppin out. Paul workin his bass line. Larry playin his guitar, clickin his waa-waa on and off, workin his foot: waaaaa... workin his string strecher handle waaaaa... aaaa.... aaaa.... aaaa...! Drinkin beer, hangin out, tryin a new song, fuckin' it up! Laughing, trying it again... louder!!! Faster!!! Fuckin' up again!!! But keepin on playin as we look at each other grinning..... Then fuckin it up again but it sounds great!!!! Sweat pouring out of my head, arms shiny, feet & legs beating, arms pounding, playin through the noise and makin the NOISE! Yeah baby! Great stuff! We did get pretty tight on some numbers, but who cares about that. The neck veins poppin out are what it was about. Waaaaaaa..... Hell! Yeah!"

THE DIZEAZOES#1: THE INTRODUCTION

(Please indulge me... This is the rather long introduction part, written courtesy of copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon...)

I am not a historian of rock music but I think that a major part of being one of those people has to be the undying belief that, despite all of the work of the writers and critics that have worked to shape the official history of rock and roll, the great American rock and roll band has yet to be discovered. It seems to me that to be a historian of rock and roll you have to believe that instead of being illuminated by the glitter and glam of broken guitar strings, smeared lines of cocaine, wrecked cars, and discarded groupie undergarments that Rolling Stone and VH1 would have you believe is how rock and roll evolved, the true story of rock and roll has, in fact, been clouded by those stories, and that somewhere inside of that quagmire there is a band waiting to be found that out-Stoned the Stones, out-Stooged the Stooges, out-Clashed The Clash, and out-Gunned Guns and Roses without really trying. At some point everyone writing about music must believe that somewhere there was a group of careless kids in some basement or garage pounding out shitty songs on shitty instruments that was so great that it drowned out the screams of their shitty parents: “Get a job!” or “Get a haircut!” or "Military School!". Kids who plugged their amplifiers into rich veins of a rock and roll destiny that rose and fell with one 45 released by a regional label, one show opening for AC/DC or Alice Cooper before they were big, memories of playing that one party where the cops got called and everyone got arrested and everything got destroyed and some guy was breathing fire and the drummer finally lost his virginity and no one really remembers because they all got too drunk and stoned. Then it all disappears in the blink of the drummer’s girlfriend winking at the singer or the crash bang of “creative differeneces” and everyone moves on or gives up. Haircuts and jobs for most, out of the garage and into the cubicle. One guy or two, maybe, holding out the dream playing in band after band hoping to make it or just have some fun and growing his hair long sitting at coffee shops downtown making friends with everyone and telling stories of the old days. And later the story gets retold in a Nuggets collection or just never gets retold and just settles among the dust in the rafters of the once cool rock and roll club that now houses a Verizon store or some fucking bakery or something. And maybe we should put a plaque outside, people say, because it was cool way back but still there's no money in it so maybe one day. What could have been always languishes in what was and where things will go is always a point of discussion for closing time at the bar around the corner.

That may be rambling, but for your honest music writer - critic, historian, real "journalist", blogger, or whatever – that band is still out there somewhere. Like I said, I’m not a music historian, but, for me, that band is The Dizeazoes, the first punk rock band in St Louis.



"As far as I know there was no other band like The Dizeazoes in St. Louis," says Paul Wheeler, who founded The Dizeazoes with Larry Dardick in 1973. "It was the music we were playing. It was the attitude we had. We didn't really think there was a place for us in St Louis. There were no bars for local bands to play anything but the most popular music of the day. We weren't doing that. We didn't want to do that. We had no intention of doing that. We didn't really think that there was an audience out there for The Dizeazoes. We didn't expect people to actually like us. About the most we had to hope for was that they might think we were fun, or funny."

"The band made a concerted effort not to take itself too seriously, especially in the early years," says Larry Dardick. "One of the main ideas was that we were playing for the enjoyment of it."

The Dizeazoes existed from 1973-1976 in St Louis. During that time they practiced hundreds of times but played only two shows, both house parties, and very few recordings of their work exist. This is the first part of a multi-part series which will attempt to tell the story of the band.

GUILTY PLEASURES - JACK

I've been enjoying this "Guilty Pleasures Week" theme and just wanted to chime in with some of my own. I have kids so I listen to a lot of music about eating vegetables, looking both ways before crossing the street, marching ants, cows going moo and cats going meow and shit like that. It's all very catchy, very easy to listen to, and can get stuck in your head with alarming ease. As a result, I end up humming these songs while going about my day and eventually mixing them into the music I listen to at work. This, of course, results in increasingly strange looks from co-workers and customers who at first think I'm listening to normal adult music but quickly realize that I am listening to songs about talking donkeys and the yumminess of fruit salad. So in addition to my generally bad attitude, I also have very strange taste in music. Things seem awkward after that.

Here are two examples, both by this guy named Justin Roberts, who plays with the Not Ready for Naptime Players:





And, for the other parents out there, I've always liked this song by Fred Eaglesmith:



In reality I have several guilty pleasures, as I'm sure we all do. I've been "politely asked to leave" several adult drinking establishments for steadfastly refusing to lower my voice while singing along to this song. And I still have a poster with this chick on it somewhere (but, honestly, if you've seen someone six times in concert you need to keep some sort of memento, right?). And I've been lying to my best friend for ten years now about how much I like this song. If you're too lazy to click on the links they are: Bruce Springsteen, Tori Amos, and The Strokes, just so you know.

THE MIDNIGHT GHOST TRAIN

A few years ago, when I was still a "professional music writer", I actually got paid by a newspaper to talk to a band about their love of fishing. It wasn't a big paycheck, and it wasn't a big story, and today I can't find it anywhere online or even in my "personal archives" (which, of course, consists of clippings and copies scattered around my house that I'm always careful to place in "the perfect spot" when I'm drunk and then "can't fucking find it" the next time I'm drunk and want to look at it for reference). I do, however, remember the name of the band, The Midnight Ghost Train, an interesting blues metal thing that, to me at least, sounds like a cross between Tom Waits and Pentagram.
At the time The Midnight Ghost Train was touring the country out of Buffalo, NY. Steve Moss, the guitarist/vocalist for the band, kept talking about how the main benefit of touring the country was the ability to stop anytime the band stumbled upon a good looking fishing spot. It was like talking to a strange hybrid of Hank Hill and John Lee Hooker. So when I saw that The Mignight Ghost Train had relocated back to Kansas and was going to be on tour with Jucifer, I felt compelled to ask Steve whether or not he'd finally caught the big one. And then I asked some questions about music and stuff. Here's a clip of a Ghost Train show in Cleveland.




Me: Hey Steve! You guys still stopping on tour to fish?

The Midnight Ghost Train: Are you kidding me? The Midnight Ghost Train will never stop playing music and we will also never stop fishing. We bring our poles everywhere we go on tour, and we fish every chance we get. We even had poles and went fishing a bunch while we were in Europe.

Tell me about your time in Europe. Who were you playing with? How did the shows go? And, of course, how was the fishing?

TMGT: Europe was awesome. We had a blast. We played about 10 countries. The shows went amazing. People loved us out there. We were treated like kings. Every venue we played gave us big banquet meals, nice hotels to stay in, and great money. We had an amazing response from crowds and venues out there. All our shows were packed, and everyone really liked us and took to our music real well. We had so much success out there. Were going back to Europe this October for two months. The fishing was damn good in Norway and the Netherlands.

What is the band up to right now?

TMGT: Right now were on tour with a real big and amazing band called Jucifer. They been around for over 18 years and are pioneers of the sludgy kinda metal that they play. They are by far the loudest band on earth as well. There guitar amps are stacked to the ceiling and are about 20 feet wide. It is an epic performance. Were on tour with them for the next three months. We are real grateful to be on tour with them.
After the tour with Jucifer we are taking a month off of touring to finish up writing our new record. Then we will be back on tour in the states from June till when we leave for again for Europe.

This may seem like a stupid question, but can you describe the sound of The Midnight Ghost Train for people?

TMGT: Not a stupid question at all. I hate the term stoner rock but that is the genre we are thrown in. I dont really subscribe to all those sub genres though. So I just always say were heavy rock and roll. Were sludgy, groovy, riffy, heavy. Very much bass and low end driven. I'm a huge fan of gospel music and delta blues, so there is a lot of that influence in our music. Aside from the two gospel songs we always do, I incorporate alot of blues progressions and changes in our songs, as well with lyrics. On a few of our songs I pay homage to the old blues legends by using a phrase or word from one of there songs. Like our song "the swell" at one point I say "dark was the night cold was the ground" which is a title of a blind Willie Johnson song.

So what can people expect from a Midnight Ghost Train show these days?

TMGT: Our live show is our main focus for our band. We believe it is the most important part. So we guarantee that at our show we will give 1000% every time, no matter how big or how little the crowd is. We always put every bit of soul, sweat, and power that we have into our live show.
Also, you can always expect that we will open and close our show the same way as we always do. We always open every show with John The Revelator, in memory of our best friend John that died, his death was the inspiration that started this band. And We always close with another old gospel song called "Ain't It A Shame" in memory of my dad. I sang that song at his funeral so we always close with that now. I promise we got soul like you never seen before.

The Midnight Ghost Train (Myspace)

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART # - 1 (WITH RESPECT TO THE THING)

I don't want to step on the toes of The Thing that Should Not Be, but I really wanted to post a few of my favorite Beefheart related items here as well. I agree with Thing's sentiment about heroes dying, and while I'm not sure if I would call Mr van Vliet a hero of mine, I can't think of another artist I respect more than Captain Beefheart. In all honesty, I still haven't "figured out" Trout Mask Replica, and have been known to both dismiss it as total bullshit and absolute genius, sometimes in the same sentence, and I always expected that he would make another album at some point. Anyway, the world lost a great artist.

Here's one of van Vliet's paitings, Feather Times a Feather:

THE MOLDY DOGS AND IC ON THE WEB

The Moldy Dogs

I don't have time right now to do a proper introduction for this post, but if anyone out there in IC land is a fan of the Wolf Roxon stories I've posted you'll definitely want to read this. It's a link to a story about The Moldy Dogs, the band Mr Roxon started in St Louis in 1972. I hope you'll read it, and enjoy it, and tell everyone you know about it.

Perfect Sound Forever

RELATED NEWS - LOKO'S, DENTED HEADS AND WOLF ROXON

You're running out of time! If you haven't Loko'ed you haven't lived.

Oh, and just for the hell of it...

Here's something from Wolf Roxon of The Moldy Dogs to balance everything out:

"In the early 1970s, rock and roll was dead. Everyone pretty much agreed with this premise. Ok, Led Zeppelin still rocked some arenas, The Stooges were in full swing, there was a 1950s revivals and even Dave Edmunds had a hit. But, before the internet, satellite radio, and cable tv, we depended on radio for our exposure to music. And it was pretty much devoid of rock and roll. Especially after the rise of disco, record companies were only interested in music similar to that currently on the top of the charts and were cautious about sinking money into 'developing groups', or to market outside of the mainstream.

"When we lived in Los Angeles, I spent countless hours of literally every day taking our demo tapes to the big record labels, then, eventually the small. In the mid-1970's the record companies would, for the most part, listen to your demos, or at least a song. We were rejected by all. They simply could not imagine a market for our music and they realized we were about as far as one could be from disco or even the overproduced rock they promoted...

Early punks with no dorky hair, piercings, or tattoos.

"Record companies invest millions of dollars into groups and like to know that they are marketable. They tended to pigeonhole you, that is, defining your niche and determining your audience. If you area an unknown doing something that's undefinable, you are useless to them. And that was the Moldy Dogs in a nutshell.

"When we signed our management contract for The Tears I asked our manager how they planned on 'selling us'. The answer: 'We consider you the next Aerosmith.' We couldn't think of one rock band we resembled less than Aerosmith. So, the pros are seldom right when they pigeonhole, but they have the purse strings."

Oh, and for the record, that Yaphet Kotto post was awesome.

ALBERT AYLER AT JOHN COLTRANE'S FUNERAL - JULY, 1967

(Above: The cover of the program for John Coltrane's funeral.)

When John Coltrane (who is a saint, by the way) died of liver cancer on July 17, 1967 Albert Ayler was asked to play at his funeral, which was held four days later at St Peters Lutheran Church in New York City. Ayler's work had a profound influence on Coltrane's and Coltrane would emerge as the leading proponent of Ayler. He regularly spoke of Ayler as an otherworldly sort of musician, often relented to him on stage, and was responsible for Ayler's signing to Impulse! Records, the leading jazz label of the 1960s. He also reportedly supported Ayler and members of Ayler's band financially at times.

There is no video of The Albert Ayler Quartet performing at Coltrane's funeral (Ayler opened the proceedings and Ornette Coleman closed them), but audio did sufrace in the Holy Ghost set released by Revenant Records. The audio is imperfect, but the recording has an aura that is strangely appropriate.

(Below: The program from Coltrane's funeral.)

Since we're on the subject of death, I suppose I may as well get this out of the way. In the previous post about Ayler I made this comment about his death: "It was probably a suicide but more probably the mafia killed him or even more probably the FBI did it". A reader asked the question "What?", a question that is either in reference to my sentence structure or to the various theories surrounding Ayler's death. If it is in reference to my sentence I'm sorry - I drink a lot of adult beverages.

As I said in the previous post, Ayler's death remains a mystery (as does Coltrane's to many). Suicide seems likely. Ayler was broke, he never made any money off of his music. Also, his brother and band mate Don Ayler suffered a nervous breakdown in 1967 for which Ayler blamed himself. The story goes that he left his apartment on November 5, 1967 talking about avenging his brother and mother with blood and that he had often threatened suicide. And, of course, there was experimentation with illicit substances. But in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s rumors surrounding Ayler's death circulated. One of those was that Ayler and other prominent African American figures were assassinated by the FBI or CIA or whatever in a program designed to dishearten black communities across the United States.

The other idea, the Mafia one, is a bit more fantastic. Supposedly the mob had provided some sort of funding for Ayler's work at some point and when his output proved to be less than financially rewarding they killed him. As the story goes, when Ayler was pulled from the East River he was found chained to a jukebox, symbolizing his inability to appeal to a wider audience.

I should point out that some Ayler fans tend to get very upset at the very discussion of these alternate theories of Ayler's death and vehemently insist that they have been discredited.