A Blast From The Past

[ASpHole]

I stumbled across this on the web last night:

Slow Children at Play:
The one time we actually attempted to practice was in February. We drove into a seedy section of Portland to the apartment of Skull 69. I met Phil, who was to be our drummer, who greeted me with, "Do you have any money for food?" Chris of course had never thought to ask the leader of the group if we could practice at his place, and the guy was dead set against it as the landlord was ready to boot them. Skull 69 dude was not happy to see us, as he was on his way to the soup kitchen. His apartment was filled with all sorts of video and sound equipment and they had a mighty array of amplifiers, yet they couldn't afford to eat. They had one of the coolest punk rock band names ever, though.

I lived there, and I vaguely remember this happening.

Here's some more background info. I and another guy named Spot were the only people who lived in this apartment that had jobs. Skummy, (The guy referred to as 'Skull 69 dude') was wuite good at salvaging electronics, hence his gigantic stereo setup. His girfreind Sue collected disability, and augmented that income via the sale of herbal substances of dubious legality. Phil, the drummer had moved to Maine several months previously, and had been the drummer in a hardcore band in New Jersey called Lethal Agression.

Phil vacillated between severe binge drinking and sporadic bouts of employment. The person named Chris was the son of the Cape Elizabeth (Upscale Portland suburb) police chief who later got into a bit of trouble making fake State ID cards for underaged kids.

The apartment was not a seedy place at all, it was actually a nice building --until the punk rock hoardes descended upon it, and the apartment that we rented out. Aside from the above mentioned band that wanted to practice there, there were 3 bands that used the basement for practice, Skull 69, The Vampire Lezbos, and a side project called Defiance, plus various and sundry other hangers on.

The guy was quite right about the selection of amps to be found in the basement. There was my 80 watt Orange halfstack, Skummy's 120 watt Orange head and the Acoustic Control Corp. 4x12 cab that I had sold him, a big Marshall Combo belonging to Spot, and Spot's bass rig which consisted of a weird looking 1x15" cab, and his selection of either a Sunn Beta bass, or an Ampeg V-4, plus the drumset that Phil had liberated from the Brick Township, NJ highschool.

The thing with the apartment, is that it was a rather large apartment located in the back of the building, on the ground floor. A senior citizen lived in the front, and a guy in Grateful Dead cover band lived above us. In a tiny room, were two other hippies. The problem with the apartment was that there were always people coming over to party, and I didn't indulge in anything, so it was quite chaotic for pretty much myself, and the rest of the building. --I left shortly after the above quoted event happened.

[vodz]

Nice story. I love funny anecdotes of rock bands, there are some other good ones on that site:

Dave Rowe Trio:
For a year or two the Trio played at a place in Waterboro called Sully's run by our good friend Jane. Dave started playing the Jimmy Buffet song "Margaritaville" a song I have become intimately familiar with over the years. Dave occasionally liked to use different chord progressions and not tell me. He also had this habit of needing to be right. So there was a wrong note that was being hit and every time it happened Dave would yell at me "It's an A!" which was freaking me out and upsetting me because I was playing an A. I was getting to the point where I almost threw down my bass and walked off the stage when he finally looks at me and says, "Oh, my guitar was tuned down and I forgot. You were playing the right note."
 :lol: