Pat Leonard 1966-2008

Friday, October 31, 2008
Pat Leonard 1966-2008

Pat Leonard was like my brother. We met when we were kids, growing up in Ipswich, Ma. we quickly formed a bond of friendship and musical camaraderie that would spread over thirty years. The connection we shared in our two bands, "Iron Cross & Moving Targets", was a true musical chemistry. Like many brothers, there were times of tension and disagreement, but underneath, always a reliable trust. Aside from my own father, he was the first guy to whom I ever said, "I love you man". We never had trouble letting each other know that we really cared about each other.

Playing music with Pat was always exciting, often explosive, and constantly an inspiration. He was a star in the best sense of the word. Playing live, he embodied the definition of stage presence, moving like a flamenco dancer with a knife held between his teeth instead of a rose. He played with such power and aggression that he became well known for breaking strings on his bass guitar (which is a pretty difficult thing to do). His handsome dark looks ensured that the targets had some sex appeal, and that Lenny would have some girls trying to get his attention while we blasted through our set. He was a force to be reckoned with on all counts.

Pat didn't have a mean bone in his body. He would do anything for a friend and never looked for thanks. Lenny never held a grudge in his life that I was aware of, and I always knew that he would be there for me if I needed him. There was a pure honesty that guided his personality that was rare and touching. I remember being on tour with him in 1994, and going to a party after a gig. Our host had a couple of guitars lying around and we traded songs in the living room, recalling our early days jamming in his basement. We played, "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix, and got teary eyed on the last verse because it's such a sad fucking song. That's what music meant to the two of us.

In later years after we no longer played in bands together, I would often (but not often enough) visit Pat at his home in Jamaica Plain. He continued to play music and started writing songs of his own, eventually building a home recording studio to capture his music, as well as making records for other bands. He just kept getting better at it, and would give me a call to come visit and hear his latest compositions. His songs had the intensity of The Targets, and the deep straight forward emotion of what was inside of him. I couldn't help but be proud of his accomplishments as a songwriter. It continued to be an important part of his life, and he put together some great bands along the way.

Through out the post Targets years I lost count of the number of times that fans and fellow musicians came to me to sing the praises of his talent as a player. He really was someone they all looked up to.

In the last year I moved to Los Angeles and spoke with Pat on the phone a handful of times. Three nights before I got a call from Pat Brady telling me that he had passed away, I had a vivid dream that the three of us were together again, playing music. Like many dreams, I couldn't make much sense of the meaning of it, but it was the second time in a week that he had come to me like that. I had been trying to contact Pat recently, but his phone was disconnected. I could only guess that these dreams were his way of trying to reach me. It still hasn't sunk in that he is gone. I'll never forget my friend and brother. I am grateful for the time we spent together and the music we made. Rest in Peace. I love you.

Alfa Romeo

My mother owned a red, 1967 Alfa Romeo in the early 70's, purchased by her boyfriend Jimmy Peters. He was a mysterious guy from New York who worked in the television industry. I think he was married at the time he and my mother were together. My mom was what would be considered "hot stuff" in those days. She had a friend from L.A. named Kathy who was connected to show biz, and she hooked my mom up on dates with Soupy Sales, Frank Gorshin (the Riddler on the Batman t.v.show), and maybe Frankie Avalon (she had a picture of them together in an Italian restaurant). I met Soupy once in Miami, and he gave me a stuffed animal with a radio inside. I think my mom dated some mobsters as well .

The Alfa Romeo was her pride, and joy and it became mine as well, once I discovered the extra set of keys she hid in her jewelry box. Whenever she would leave the house for a while with her friends and leave the little red sports car behind, I would grab the keys and give myself a driving lesson. I would grind the gears trying to figure out how to command a stick-shift properly. It's a miracle I didn't kill anyone or have an accident. She could never figure out why the clutch always needed work or replacement over the few years she owned it. I used to hear her bitch about it, but she never suspected that I was driving the thing around when she wasn't looking.

One fine Friday evening I was informed that she was going out on a booze cruise with a bunch of her friends. They would be out until 2:00am. She was getting picked up and would be gone for around six hours. I could finally get some real use out of the Alfa Romeo. Shortly after she left, I jumped in the car and made my way towards Griffith park, a place nearby, where all the older kids went to meet up and party. I pulled up and invited this jerk I knew and a couple of girls to take a ride with me. We bought some quaaludes and some beer, and headed for the beach. The 'ludes took effect pretty quickly with the beer I was drinking, and I started bumping cars ahead of me whenever I came up to a stop light. The jerk (who's name I forget), suggested that he drive for a while. I climbed into the backseat with the other girl and passed out a short time later.

I remember being woken up violently by my mother, on the front lawn of our house , with one of the girls passed out next to me. There was no sign of the Alfa Romeo. As she went inside to call the police, the jerk pulled into our driveway with the battered remains of the car. It looked like it had been in at least two or three collisions. My mother lunged at the kid driving it and started to beat the living shit out of him. The girl on the lawn awoke from her spot with vomit on her face and wondered what the heck was going on. The kid ran off and the cops caught up with him shortly after. After my mom filed the report and pressed charges, I was grounded for the rest of the year. The poor Alfa was junked. Its a wonder my mother didn't sell me to the Gypsy's.

KISS; Part 2

Two hours to go til they opened the front gates for the KISS concert. I was selling ten dollar packs of PCP to my left and right, and smoking doobies in the middle. I started to blow an occasional cloud of smoke towards the rental cops positioned in front of the box office. I was a twelve year old punk on drugs. This was going to be a great night.

At 7:00pm the gates opened and I rushed in, right into the waiting arms of those rent-a-cops I had been teasing for the last hour. They pulled me into a makeshift booking station located behind the box office and started going through my pockets, relieving me of a special-roll, pre-encore spliff. I still had a few packs of angel dust in a plastic baggie tucked in my underwear. Thankfully, my Mom still outfitted me in tighty-whities, a safe storage spot for contraband. I was processed, had my picture taken, and walked out to a school bus with wired-up windows for safe keeping. As I heard the muffled sounds of the band onstage, I wondered if this would constitute grounds for discharge from the KISS army.

After the concert had been over for a little while, state police cars began taking the detainees out for the ride to the station in groups of two. In the back seat were my possesions in a plastic bag, including my Polaroid camera. The trooper was pretty easy going and let me document the journey with a few pictures. I still have them in an old photo album. The kid in the car with me was kind enough to snap a couple of pictures of me to show my friends in school. After being booked, I was given a phone call home. My Mother let them keep me in juvenile detention for the weekend to try and "scare me straight".

KISS

We bought our KISS tickets at record town in north Miami. It was 1976, and the band was on the verge of what became worldwide rock n' roll domination for the greasepaint foursome. David Linhart and myself listened to KISS Alive all Saturday morning and decided to get an early start towards the Hollywood Sportatorium, a pretty good sized arena located in the middle of nowheresville. I'd seen the Greatful Dead, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Foghat, and countless other groups play there, but seeing KISS, was something different. These guys had a dangerous edge that the others lacked. I was always a tag-along for the other shows, and this baby was all ours. I was a charter member of the KISS army, and I had one whole wall of my bedroom dedicated to their exploits. I had my Mother sew my KISS army patch onto the arm of my dungree jacket, just in case there was any speculation on the matter. Arriving early to the concert served two purposes; a better shot at a front row seat (the tickets were general admission), and a chance to practice my new sideline as a drug dealer.

I had befriended Ernie, a surfer/burnout dude about a month earlier. when I was invited to hang out at his apartment through a mutual pal. He was in his late 20s, and always had a group of teenage kids around at his place doing drugs and trying to act cool. He lived below his Dads office in a place that was adorned with black light posters, lava lamps, and a surfboard that had been dry-docked for quite some time. He was like a large version of Sean Penn's character from "Fast times at Ridgemont High". I started messing around with PCP at Ernies and jumped at the chance to be a junior distributer for him. It would mean free drugs for me and add a little cache to my resume. It might also pay for my KISS ticket. I got a batch from him the night before, and he showed me how to divide it into ten dollar portions. I figured there was great sales potential at the next evenings show.

David and I took the bus out to the Sportatorium and arrived after 1:00pm to an empty parking lot. In my previous visits, I'd never seen the place so desolate and uninviting. We were basically the first ones there. We found a trail in back of the building and smoked a little pot and snorted some PCP. That familiar buzzing sound echoed through our heads as we wandered back to the front section. There were now a few cars starting to pull up, and kids were getting dropped off by their parents, with faces painted like their favorite band members. I'm not sure we were ready for the experience of being fucked up on this drug and looking at people with their skulls made up in grotesque masks of evil. We decided to head to the front gate of the venue to ensure a head start on the rush for seating and try to generate some sales.

To be continued...

School

When I returned to Miami Shores Elementary for the beginning of 5th grade, I had really long hair like my idols the Rolling Stones (circa 1968). My Mom let me skip the barber shop that summer, and I was eclipsed only by my friend Brett Miller, who's hair was at least two or three inches longer than mine. I was another year from picking up the guitar, but I was totally focused on the rock n' roll look. I used to even carry a brush in my back pocket. It was 1975, so the idea of long hair on a male wasn't that big of a deal to most people. An exception to that rule was coach Gusman. He took serious offense to the look. He ran P.E. class like boot camp for kids and would often put longhairs in the girls line, or feminize our names. Gusman was a detestable character to be sure, but he was truly hated by the so called "hippies". He took great pleasure in singling out Brett and myself since we were actually liked some sports and he had to deal with us on that level. I was a pretty good runner, so he nick-named me "chicken legs". The guy was determined to make me suffer for 55 minutes every week. I would try and excell at certain activities just to piss him off.

1975 was the first year that I commited myself to completely ignoring school work and being a smart-ass towards most of the teachers. Looking back, I was just seeking attention of some sort. Maybe it was a cry for help. I started hanging around the wrong crowd and would do just about anything to prove I didn't care about the consequences. I broke my wrist playing football and got my very first cast. I had all my loser buddys sign it with the most disrespectful, disturbing things they could write. G.G. Allin would have been proud. I got sent to the principals office to explain the dirty words on my cast. When she saw what had been written about her on my arm, she closed the door, and actually made me pull down my pants, spanking me with an oversized, ping pong paddle. I laughed at first, so she put some muscle into it. She tried calling my Mother afterwards, but she was at work. My ass was pretty sore. I paid her back a few nights later by taking a dump through the mail-slot of the front door to the main office. Not very classy, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

The cast on my arm (with a new coat of yellow paint to cover up the grafitti) was starting to get pretty itchy. I always tried to move my arm around somehow to relieve the discomfort. I scraped a small opening on the underside of my elbow with the knife I always carried with me. The hole looked a little bit like a mouth, so I drew a face around it to make it complete. When I went to lunch that afternoon, I decided to spoon some jello into the hole to cool my arm down a bit. After the soothing effects of the jello, I followed it with a pour of milk. Finally, I was getting the relief I had been looking for. A circle of kids were watching me feed my arm with amusement. One of the lunch guards came over to see what the fuss was about. They grabbed my good arm to escort me for another trip to the office and for some reason I reacted by hitting them in the head with my cast arm. I ran out of the cafeteria and left the school grounds. This would be the first time I ever had the police called on my behalf. I hid out under a railroad bridge near my house until dark, and snuck through my bedroom window and tried to pretend I was asleep. My Mom came home a short time later. Boy was she pissed. The next morning I had my cast removed and replaced with a fiberglass one. I was allowed back in school a week later after a counseling session between the principal, the lunch guard, and my Mother (and myself). I was surprised they even let me come back.

Clam Shucker

I became a clam shucker in the mid 1980s. Sofron Brothers Clam Company sat on the outskirts of downtown Ipswich. A looming, whitewash factory that had been in business for over 40 years, the structure had the odor of a beached whale that had been sitting in the sun for a couple of days. They employed around 100 workers, about 20 whom were shuckers. My Dad got me in (there was a waiting time of at least a year) through his childhood friend, Stanley Hetnar. The reason folks wanted to get up on the bench had to do with the pay. It was piece-work, and you could make 20.00 to 30.00 dollars and hour depending on your shucking-speed. Stanley was the foreman of the joint, an imposing figure who ran the floor with an iron fist. Depending on his mood, he would entertain us with his golden singing voice, or yell at everyone and throw punches at the steel beams that held the place up You could actually feel the building shake when he did this. The shucking bench was inhabited with a motley crew of locals, many who had been working there for a decade or more. The shift would start at 4:00 or 5:00am and last until the final clam was out of it's shell.

We shucked sea clams dredged from the oceans of Cape Cod and New Jersey. The Cape's were called "footballs" due to their size. If you had a truck coming in from Cape Cod, you could make over 100 dollars for as little as 4 hours of labor. You could be in by 5:00am, out , in a few hours, and have a beer and a pool stick in your hands by ten o'clock in the morning. Such was the shuckers life.

I used to work alongside my good friend from Ipswich Kevin Jean, a charming, funny , talented guy. Kevin and I would take turns singing songs while we did our thing, and he was by far the fastest shucker on the bench. When he wanted to pump himself up for speed, he would sing "Tangled up in blue" by Bob Dylan, picking up the pace on each verse until it was blur of poetry and flying seafood. Like Stanley, Kevin could sing like a motherfucker and had a endless well of material lodged in his memory bank. He was also a hell of a pool player. Kevin also had a reputation with the women of Ipswich for being the most well-endowed bachelor in town. The guy had class, but he wasn't above whipping his shlong out in the back dressing room of Sofrons when he was in a particularly good mood. Maybe he was a distant relative of Iggy Pop. When he did this, the women who worked there would get pretty excited. I've gotta admit, it was a sight to see.

Stan Hetnar was a interesting individual as well. He wore the same outfit every day of his life that I saw him, and drove around in a beat up Ford truck with a cassette of himself singing and strumming the guitar, constantly playing in the deck. The guy had an incredible voice, right up there with Elvis and Roy Orbison. Every once and a while he would invite me to his house for a jam session and a beer. He had a Gretch Country Gentleman guitar from 1958, covered in an ancient layer of dust, and sporting strings that hadn't been changed in 20 years. He could mimic all the greats from the fifties, with a particular fondness for the man in black, Johnny Cash. I even pushed him into doing his one and only live performance in 1988, at the Middle East restaurant in Cambridge, MA., Where he was very well recieved. It's the only time I ever saw him nervous.

I was employed by Sofron's on and off for over eight years. When I started Touring with the Moving Targets and/or Bullet LaVolta, they would give me all the time off that I needed, which was very nice of them. Around 1994 the owner, Peter Sofron, who actually lived on the second floor of the business, died of a massive heart attack after an all-night cocaine binge. He was a sweet guy, and it was a terrible loss. The place was taken over by his son (himself a wonderful guy), but the business slowly went downhill, closing up shop around 1998. During my infrequent visits to my hometown afterwards, I would always drive by the darkened building for a whiff of the old days.

Bullet LaVolta

Lucky for me, Bullet LaVolta, a fairly new band playing around Boston was losing their guitar wiz, Corey Loog Brennan. The Targets were on another hiatus and Dredd Foole and the Din were winding down. I always tried to be in at least two bands at once and I was facing the prospect of being a free agent. Corey was Harvard grad and he had a chance to study in Italy for two years. Word on the street was, the were looking for a replacement. I went to check them out at a downtown bar that was way overcwowded. All I could see was guitarists Clay Tarver's cherokee hair spinning in the air and the occasional sighting of lead singer Yukki Gipe whenever he climbed atop a table. I thought they sounded great, a mix of punk and hard rock with some serious attitude. I asked for a shot at the soon to be vacant slot, and they gave me a seven song cassette they were selling at the show.

Corey was quite a guitar player, kind of a cross between Captain Sensible form the Damned and Randy Rhodes with a finger missing from each hand. Not my style exactly, but I thought I could adapt. I learned the songs, passed the audition, and asked to join the band. They were about to enter the stdio with Tom Hamilton to record more material for a forthcoming E.P. I showed them "Get it together" from my first band Iron Cross. Yukki wrote some new lyrics and renamed it "Dead wrong". Clay and I had an almost telepathic way of playing together, like a punk/metal version of Ron Wood and Keith Richards. The rhythm section of drummer Chris "Cougar" Guttmacher and bassist Bill Whelan were like an amplified rhino smashing through a liquor store, with a hint of melody. Chris was the engine of the band, unleashing a stream of 16th notes on his ride cymbal like a proffesional boxer. The thing should have taken a restraining order out on him. Bill hadn't been playing bass very long, but he was a natural, getting better with every rehearsal.

Bullet LaVolta was such a great band to be in. I really looked up to Yukki (real name: Kurt Davis). He was a phenomenal frontman, and a real down-to -earth nice guy. While I was partying and whoring it up at every opportunity, he was hanging out with the fans and fending off the advances of cute girls. The band grew in in stature from gig to gig until it was time to record our first full length L.P. We were also offered the chance to go to Europe in a few months with the Lemonheads. During the mixing of the record, Chris told us he would be leaving the group and heading to the west coast to live. He gave us fair warning, and played a handful of shows while we started looking for a replacement. Since we were gaining a bit of local buzz, we had a few suspicious characters show up. Full on Rock dudes, classic Rock aficionados, and assorted bozos. What is it with drummers? I called Todd Phillips from the fake Moving Targets and invited him down for a shot. It came down to Todd, and this guy named John. John was a great drummer, but he and his girlfriend were expecting their first child. We didn't want to have any part of his first words being "where's Daddy", so we went with Todd. It eneded up being the right decision. I applied for my first passport.

Moving Targets break up/Fake Moving Targets

When the Moving Targets returned from our very first U.S. tour we were broke, tired, and homesick. Everyone except me, I thought it was the greatest experience ever, a realization of my dreams, finally come true. Traveling around the states, playing music, meeting people, and smoking tons of pot. So what if we had to skip a few showers and eat at taco bell every day. Chuck, the homebody that he was, held up pretty well. He may have been taken aback by my rock n' roll lifestyle, but he was always there to offer sound tips on staying out of trouble, and he was a solid bass guitarist. Pat had a hell of a time playing music, but he had started his own carpet installing business back in Boston, and had alot of bills and responsibility waiting for him when we returned. We did a show at the Rat and had ourselves a good nights sleep in our own beds.

That fateful afternoon we set our shit up, tossed around some riffs, and took a break. Pat then explained that he wouldn't have much time for the band over the next two months, as he had to concentrate on work and debts. Chuck and I wanted to learn some new material and play the 2 shows we had coming up in the next few weeks. obviously, it wasn't good news to our ears. Pat was a prime canidate for a rich girl friend, as they say. Trouble in Targetland indeed! We realized we had to try and carry on and look for a "Pat Brady" type drummer to keep the band going. We might as well have asked John Bonham to crawl out of his grave and catch the next flight to Boston.

After trying out a couple of guys (including soundman Carl Plaster, who gave it a good shot), Chuck threw his hands in the air and gave up the idea of finding someone to fill Mr. Bradys size 12 shoes. Problem was, we still had a couple of dates booked for the band. Like a true musician, I insisted that the show must go on. I now introduce, fake Moving Targets 1. The following day after enjoying a Kilslug set at T T the bears, I stoped by Burger King to have it my way. While in line I was somehow recognized by a young lad named Todd Phillips. He was getting a shake, I was getting some fries. I discovered he was a drummer and a fan of the Targets. I got his number, and he said he would love to give it a try. Later that evening , I ran into Jeff Weigan from the Volcano Suns, and convinced him to throw his chip in the pot. The next day we met up at the 'Suns fithy excuse for a rehearsal room, and kicked out the Jams. Todd had some chops, and Jeff created a wall of crunch with his Rickenbacker bass. All was not lost.

We practiced a "Targets set" 7 or 8 times over the next two weeks, and borrowed the Volcano Suns van for a Saturday all-ages show in Conneticut. That morning as we loaded our gear out onto the sidewalk, we saw a dark figure approaching from the distance. We realized it was none other than Johnny Cash, who happened to be performing with the Boston Pops that night. He came right over to us (thinking we were musicians), and said: "Hi, I'm Johnny Cash" (swear to God) just like he does in concert. He shook hands all around and asked if we knew where he could find some guitar strings, at that early hour of the morning. Jeff walked over with him to Wulitzer music. If only I'd known how big of a fan I would become years later, I would have joined them as well. We made our way to the show, and played a fairly unremarkable set, as I remember. The gig later immortalized with a picture of my wearing my favorite Led Zeppelin shirt onstage, used for TAANG's second pressing of "Burning inwater".

We ended up doing a couple more shows in Boston and Portland, ME. (where Todd and Jeff shared our hotel elevator with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons from KISS, who happened to be playing in town that same night, swear to God!), but it was the end of the road for us. In our own way, we had become a pretty decent little band, in an instant coffee kinda way, but it wasn't the Moving Targets. I learned alot from Jeff on how to abuse the audience between songs, and it opened the door to Todd Joining Bullet LaVolta down the line. It was also, a hell of alot of fun.

Note: Sometimes the recollections can be a bit incomplete. I want to thank the Roast for correction asto the homecoming gig, as well as adding his two-cents about devil-woman.

The original post listed Manray as the homecoming show. I appoligize to anyone who may have been offended.....

Thanks once again to everyone who takes a minute to read the blogs!

Early Music/First Band; Part 2

My Grandmother woke me up the day of Iron Cross's next gig at 6:00 in the morning. There were reports of a house fire in Ipswich and we recognized the address as belonging to the Norris family. My Grandfather agreed to drive me there to see what was going on. The whole area was blocked off with police and fire engines, I saw Mrs. Norris and with her sons George, Bill and Josh surrounded by dozens of people. They were all crying. The firemen were still spraying the remains of their smoldering home. Josh saw me and came over and put his arms around me and told me that Mr. Norris, John, and Mark had died in the fire. I started shaking in disbelief, going over to the rest of the family to tell them how sorry I was. I had never been shocked with so much pain and anger so suddenly. How could something so senseless be really happening? Mr. Norris discovered the fire and tried to get everyone out of bed. He went back in to get Mark and John and they never made it out. It was a loss beyond words.

As the sun rose, more and more people came to the scene to share the grief. Classmates of the Norris brothers started showing up, Everyone was numb with sadness. After a couple of hours, a group of us went to Lori Corbin's house to hold on to each other and try and make some sense of what had happened. We gathered to combat the misery with pot and alcohol, and deal with the shock. I don't think any of us had experienced such a horrific loss in our young lives. How was the family going to accept this tragedy? It was cruel beyond anything we could imagine.

The funeral was a few days later. It seemed like the whole town of Ipswich was there to pay their respects. I helped carry Marks coffin out of the church. I don't remember any of it. I still have a clipping from the Ipswich Cronicle with a picture of us carrying the casket, the only proof that I was really there.

The town rallied around the Norris family. Every laborer, electrician, carpenter, and painter in Ipswich offered their services to help build a new home for the family. It was raised on the same plot of land where their old home had once stood. I couldn't believe how strong they were. They had lost so much. Mrs. Norris insisted on buying a new guitar and amp with a portion of the insurance money, although I felt like it was going to be a long time before I had the desire to play.

Early Music/First Band

By the end of 1978, I started to buy Punk Rock records every weekend. There was a small bookstore in downtown Ipswich that had a record section tucked in the corner. I eagerly thumbed through them every Saturday, hoping my fingers would find some great new release. In weeks past I'd found "Rocket to Russia" by the Ramones, "Black and White" by the Stranglers, and "Give "em enough rope" by the Clash. I started to get all scientific about the process like an old man betting on the horses. I would pick up Trouser Press at the newspaper store and examine the record review section, weighing my next purchase. The kind woman at the counter would take a piece of paper with one or two L.P.s scribbled down, to see if she could order them from some mysterious source in the big city. By early summer, I would mow some extra lawns in orded to increase my buying power. I think I was still the only Punk Rock fan in Ipswich. Inspired by the music I was listening to ( I must have played the Dead Boys "We have come for your children" at least 4 times a day that summer), i decided to start writing some more songs. I had hatched a few tunes the previous year while in Miami, but they were pretty lame ("Friday night at CBGBs" for instance). I had a guitar and knew a few more chords, so I gave it a another shot.

This was the summer that, reeling from my first real heartbreak, I decided to stay in my room, smoke alot of pot, and become a real Punk. Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer were my guitar heroes, and I thought with some practice, I could play as well as them. That July, my Grandparents bought me an early birthday present, a Marlboro amp. I turned up the overdrive to 10, and wrote my first new song "Get it together" (a decade later, it would get new lyrics and title courtesy of Yukki Gipe and become "Dead Wrong", a Bullet LaVolta song). I kept at it and tried to make an album's worth of material. Eventually, I had a set of songs:

The beat / School daze / Get it together / Love or lust / Don't hang on too long / Follow daddy's footsteps (recorded and released on a c.d. by French band the Real Cool Killers 15 years later!) / Younger point of view / Teenage lament / you never come through /

Now I needed to start a band.

I had "jammed" with the Norris brothers last winter. We set up some gear in the art class room at Ipswich Jr. High, and screwed around for a couple of hours. Mark played drums pretty well, and his brother John was learning how to play guitar. The two of us plugged into his amp and played a few cover songs that we knew in common. I showed them "Born to lose" by Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers and "I'm in love with your Mom" by Vom. They'd never heard music like this and didn't know what to make of it at first. One thing for sure, it was easier to do this stuff than try to figure out a Led Zeppelin song. We had some fun, but didn't get together again for the rest of the year. I decided to give Mark a call and see what he and John were up to. I told him I had a guitar amp and had written some songs of my own. He spoke to his brother and we made plans to get together the next day.

I got over there the next afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they had their own practice space in the back of their house. Their Mother was a artist and had an addition built to the back of the home. Mark and John had taken a room upstairs and been playing music on and off all summer long. It was just a bare space with a couple of posters hanging on the wall. We messed around with a few more covers and I noticed that they had gotten alot better on their respective instruments. We took a break and then I started showing them some of my originals. The first up was "The beat", which was an instrumental, kind of a shabby, under-developed "Moby Dick" rip-off. An inauspicious start for a Punk Rock band. We played it a few times, but Mark wasn't too keen on playing the drum solo everytime around. We put that aside, and I showed them "Get it together". This one they liked. Mrs. Norris made us some sandwiches and we took another break. After lunch I suggested that we sneak out back to the woods and smoke a "little herb". It was Johns first time and he got results right away. We headed back to rock out, and played "Get it together" a half dozen more times, until it sounded like a real band playing a badass song. Now we needed a name to go along with it. We started writing shit down, mostly pathetic, un-original stuff. Two names stood out: "Clockwork Orange" and "Iron Cross". We took a vote and sided with "Iron Cross".

We proceeded to learn a 40 minute set that fall. I hadn't come up with anymore originals, so we peppered the set with a few cover songs ( "Clock strikes twelve", "Born to lose"), and decided to find ourselves a gig. We asked Mrs. Norris if she could arrange a teen dance at the church the Norris family attended, and surprisingly enough, they said yes. I made up a flyer with skulls and a pot leaf, and we plastered them around town. I showed up at their house the day of the gig in my stage clothes ( a cub scout shirt and Levi's covered with red paint) while Mark and John wore matching polyester suits. About 50 kids showed up and we plowed through our set. I thanked the audience after every song with vocal inflections I picked up from "Kiss Alive II". We were scrappy and out of tune half the time, but we had lost our virginity. After the gig, some girl on the high school steering committee told us she wanted to set up a "concert" at Ipswich High school.

I floated around a few rehearsal tapes through the school the next couple of weeks to build a buzz. We didn't have a cassette duplication deck, so each tape was individually recorded. I made another poster, this time with a drawing of the Fabulous furry Freak Brothers on it. We made some adjustments to our stage clothes, this time going for a "biker" look. John had a fake animal skin vest, and I painted my guitar camouflage. We wore these outfits while we practiced. A couple weeks before the gig, we met Pat Leonard, when he approached us and asked if we needed some lights. Like Macgyver, he built a complete light show out of practically nothing, scoring some industrial-size spaghetti sauce cans from the school cafeteria to hold the bulbs, and making the control panel out of wood. He had a real talent with his hands.

To be continued.... 5-12-2008

My Friend Pat Leonard

A few weeks after the fire, Pat Leonard came over. We went to different schools, so I hadn't seen him in during that time. He asked how I was doing, and told me that he had just bought a Guild electric guitar. Pat wanted me to show him how to play some stuff. It seemed like a nice way to wash away some of the pain of losing my bandmates. Pat said Mark and John would want me to keep going with the music, and he wanted to be part of it. A few days later, I brought a bunch of LPs over to his place and I played him the stuff that had gotten me so excited to play music myself. Pat absolutely loved the Clash from first listen, so I know right then that teaching him to play guitar was going to be a labor of love. We also became such great friends, practically brothers. For the next two months, we got together nearly every day to hang out after school, listen to punk rock and make plans to start another band. Pat picked up his instrument so quickly, it blew my mind. He had a natural ability to play things moments after I would show them to him. After a while, he he went out and bought a no name bass guitar, and started learning how to rock the fuck out of the four string. I couldn't have asked for a better friend or musical comrade.

We put up some flyers around town looking for a drummer. A guy named Phil Gordon answered the ad, and invited us over to his garage to kick around some tunes. It was late winter when we met up with him, and we could see clouds of steam leaving our mouths as we plowed through a few songs. Phil wasn't too hip to the punk rock scene, but we convinced him to try London Calling and Brand New Cadillac by The Clash. His kit was a hoot. Every piece from a different drum set, different colors, and way too much stuff. Phil had at least seven tom toms, and about a dozen cymbals, all cracked from being hit in 30 degree weather. He wore glasses and would push the frames back up on the bridge of his nose in the middle of a drum fill, before they fell off his face completely. He was also a super sweet guy, full of jokes, good cheer, and a pocket full of grass. Our prodigious marijauna consumption was the inspiration for our future local hit song, "Light up a spliff. Pat and I asked Phil to join our band and we decided to once again call it Iron Cross, in tribute to what had begun with Mark and John Norris.

We moved some electric heaters into Phil's garage and started learning as many songs as we could. We revisited all of the originals done with the Norris brothers and added a selection of cover songs. Phil had decent taste in music, but Pat and I had to find ways to sneak punk tunes into our repertoire. We usually did this by saying it was some new song I had written. That way, it would be considered a personal affront to me if he didn't want to learn the tune. We rehearsed 3 or 4 times a week, and always had a gang of our peers there to cheer us on. The place was one of those homes where all the friends of the Gordon kids (Phil, and his three brothers), would congregate. His Mother and Father welcomed everyone with snacks and a place to hang out. Having everyone around while we practiced helped us hone our stage moves as well. I started to realize that Pat and I had a special musical bond that we would never lose from that moment on. It really was magical.

To be continued........

My Dad; Part 2

I always looked up to my father. He was handsome as a fox, built like a tank, and had a personality somewhere between Charles Bukowski and Clint Eastwood. Every summer while staying with my grandparents in Ipswich MA., he would pull into their driveway on Friday afternoon to pick me up for our weekend together. I'd jump in the passenger side of his Lincoln Continental with my overnight bag, and we'd be off. Sometimes there would be a girl or two in the car with him, usually closer to my age than his. There was always a beer between his legs when he was driving. We'd head to Seabrook , NH,  listening to the radio and passing every car that stayed in front of us for more than 15 seconds.

My Dad was a bouncer at the time and he would bring me along with him while he worked on Friday and Saturday nights. The place was called EJ's and it catered to a somewhat ruffian clientele, mostly bikers and  rock n' roll animals. They  had  bands 4 nights a week playing top 40 of the time (Aerosmith, Stones, Deep Purple, etc.). Before we'd leave for EJ's my Father would paint his toenails pink, throw on his sandals, and put on his pink tank top that had "cock city" emblazoned on the front. This was his way of fucking with people. No one ever made a comment while I was within earshot, other to say how great he looked. His job was to hang at his spot next to the bar drinking rum and cokes and making sure everybody behaved themselves. My Father was also what they called a "chick magnet" I watched in awe as he was constantly surrounded by women.

I decided that summer that I wanted to live with my Father and go to school in Seabrook that fall. At first it was hard getting to know kids at the school. The place didn't take too quickly to "outsiders", and the curiosity shown towards me by the girls just made the boys want to pick fights with me. A few weeks into the school year my homeroom/english teacher told our class that next Friday was career day, and we could invite our Fathers or Mothers into the classroom to talk about what they did for a living. I asked my Dad if he was interested and surprisingly, he said yes.

The following Friday arrived 7th and 8th grade classes gathered in the cafeteria for lunch which would be followed by the career day program. The parents included a  truckdriver, librarian, nurse,  a husband and wife animal-control officer / veterinarian, and my  Dad. The Presentation started and all the parents got up on stage and talked about their jobs. When Pop went up to the podium he introduced himself as a professional body builder and wrestler and started flexing and doing bodybuilding poses on stage. He answered questions about wrestling and ended his segment by lifting 6 kids (3 on each arm) a few  feet into the air. My Father signed some autographs afterwards and slipped his phone number to my science teacher. The following Monday All the kids in school  were nice to me, I got a B- in science (when I should have gotten a D-) after a few "dates" between  Dad and my teacher, and the girls were a little more interested in me ( interested in me and uh, my Dad). Funny little hick town.

Early Criminal Activity

There was a kid I became friends with at Miami Shores Elementary at the beginning of 5th grade. His name was Cody Alexander. My Mom used to let me spend the night over his house after she met his Mother Nell, and gave me her seal of approval.

Nell was a single Mother, raising Cody and and his 5 brothers on her own in a 1930's style Mansion off of Biscayne Blvd. The clan, Roy, Boyd, Glen, Perry, and An older brother who's name I forget, were all tall, long haired six-foot, skateboarder types. They all sold pot, had cute girls around them constantly, and seemed  cool  to me, kinda like a home-grown gang. If they played instruments, they could have had one of those bands where everybodys related and called it "The Alexander Family".

When I first started hanging out at Cody's place, various combinations of the brothers would locate us and torture the fuck out of us. We suffered random "flash beatings" where a couple of them would burst into Cody's room while we were staging battles with clay soldiers we had created after school. They would hold us back while a third would walk through the door (usually Roy) and torment us with slow destructions of the clay men. Roy would always take on the vocal mannerism's of a  high ranking German commandant, and decapitate the soldiers before crushing them under his bare foot. The Alexanders always ran around without footwear. One time Roy and his buddy Derell, strung us up twenty feet over the basketball court in their backyard, and left us hanging there while they went to 7-11 to buy some rolling papers. 

When I would spend the night at the Alexander mansion, Cody and I would pretend to go to sleep at around 10:00pm and wait for Nell to retire for the evening. At around eleven or so, we would sneak out and roam the streets of North Miami. One night we came up with the idea of wearing all black, putting stockings over our heads, and climbing up on the roof of the nearby strip-mall to throw rocks at cars. We geared up, grabbed a couple of paper bags, and picked-up every servicable stone we could find along the way. Loaded up with ammo, we climbed up the five and dime store roof and took position. We tossed rocks at every car we could for the next half hour. Bravely throwing, then ducking like cowards until the next lob. After 30 minutes of this we grew bored, and decided to go across the street to the 24 hour Howard Johnsons for some ice cream. We came out to the parking lot, cones in hand, and were immediately surrounded by 4 cruisers with their lights flashing. The cops exited the cars with guns drawn, and made us hit the ground as we threw down our cones. It turns out the bank on the corner of the strip-mall was installing a new safe "after hours", and they were alarmed by the two figures with stocking masks up on the roof of the building. They cuffed us and jammed us into two separate cars. We were on our way to the station.

After a small amount of grilling, they saw that we were just a couple of punk kids playing bad guys after our bedtime. They called Nell up and she came down to the station to get us. I was ratted out by her to my own Mother, and grounded for the rest of the month.  It sucked being punished, but it saved me a few beatings at the hands of the Alexander boys.

Halloween

The four of us sat around Victor Horst's bedroom listening to the Donovan record. He mentioned that his Mother was going away for the Halloween weekend, leaving him alone with the house. We were getting a bit too old for trick or treating, but wanted to do something to celebrate anyway. We listened to Donovan's song "Intergalactic Laxative"

"Oh the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to there / relieve you and believe me, without a worry or care /  if shitting is a problem when you're out there in the stars / oh the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to mars" 

We chuckled at the dirty word and wondered what to do next. Why not turn Victor's place into a haunted house for Halloween? There was enough junk in his back yard to make it happen. His Mom knocked on the door and walked in dressed up in some ridiculous tennis outfit and told us to behave ourselves while she was gone. Five minutes later she hit the road and we started moving furniture around, getting ready for the transformation.

We worked on the haunted house that evening and met up the next morning for the final touch. Every cinder block, every piece of wood and plastic was used in the creation of the "trail of terror", a pathway  leading from the front door to the back.There wasn't a sheet or blanket left in the house (except for Victor's bed), everything draped here or there to maximize the claustraphobic effect. We went through the neighborhood that night, snatching up every decoration we could carry back form other peoples yards. The place was pretty fuckin' scary. The four of us (Victor, Fernendo Durand, Fred Schwartz,, and myself) scrounged up some old Halloween masks. I contributed a scary sound effects l.p. to set the mood. We even got Victor's dog Star into the mix. He became the "hound of horror", dressed in rags smeared with Vampire Blood (remember that?) and a pair of polkadot panties we took from Mrs. Horst's drawer, duct taped around his ass. We waited for the light to fade.......

At 6:45pm the doorbell rang. Fernando opened the door with the rope we'd attatched and in walked Superman, the Wolfman, and a soldier. Fernando dropped the needle on track 6, "Chinese water tourture"and we got the shit started. The first scare tactic was "Bucket of Gore" a mixture of spoiled food from Victor's fridge (his Mom was a lousy homemaker) with barbecue sauce added. Fernando tossed it at their feet half-heartedly as they walked towards "Chambers of Horrors" which was me suddenly thrusting my arms through some holes we'd cut in the sheets we'd hung up. Star the dog job was to wander freely thru the mahem, but he ran over to the gore on the floor and started snacking on it. It was an unexpected "Horror bonus". Victor, dressed as Frankenstein chased the kids through the rest of the route to the back door where Fred was waiting for one last scare with a skull mask and to make sure the customers didn't loiter around Victors backyard. The whole thing took 30 seconds, tops.

When the kids were gone we resumed our positions and waited for the next batch. After 20 minutes of no one coming up to the door, we took a break at Mrs Horst's liquor stash next to her bed. Feeling a little buzzed, we went back to our posts and waited for the bell. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Fernando did his rope trick. In walked five or six punks in costume as he played the track "Screams in the dark". Fernando then started covering them in the gore mixture, throwing it with his bare hands. The screams from the record inspired me to start randomly slapping and grabbing at them as they ran past me, looking for the exit. Suddenly, Frankenstein came out of nowhere and cranked it up a notch. As the revelers made their way out the back door, tearing the structure down in the process, they were greeted by Fred relieving himself along the wall. Our haunted house in ruins, we decided to shut the operation down for the rest of the night. The doorbell rang a few more times that evening. Thinking that it might be the police, we didn't answer.

Fernando and Fred went home and I spent the night, promising Victor I would help him clean up the mess in the morning. His Mom came home a little earlier than we expected before the clean up was complete. Star the dog came out to greet her, still in his costume. When she saw the panties still taped to his lower half, she started screaming at us. Victor pulled  the briefs off and a pancake-shaped turd fell from his ass to the shag rug below. As she continued screaming, I thought of Donovan.....

Early Music

I used to go through my Mothers record collection when I was young. Her taste ran from Barbara Streisand to Frank Sinatra to Herb Albert. There was one l.p. that I will never forget though, and that was "Have a Marijuana" by David Peel and the Lower East Side. I used to play it on the sly before my Mother came home from work, songs like; "I like Marijuana", "Show me the way to get stoned", and the greatest song ever, "Up against the wall Motherfucker". Up 'til that point, I'd never heard a song with the word "Fuck" in it. I made a plan to sneak the album out of the house and share it with my friends.

I took the record to school in a brown paper bag and showed it around during recess and then brought it over to my friend Cody Alexander's house for a listening party. A group of us ran up to his room and started blasting the l.p.. When we got to "Up against the wall Motherfucker", we began dancing and singing along as loud as we could get and threw each other against the wall as a sort of "tribute dance". What we didn't notice was Cody's Mom Nell, knocking at the door ,asking what all the fuss was about. The door opened and she saw us running around screaming out the final chorus. She snatched the record from the player and threw the disc at the wall, smashing it into 140 pieces. I kicked the album jacket under Cody's bed before she could see it and stood there with the others as she tore us all a new asshole.

I wondered what I would do. Of course my Mother would be looking for the record after I went to bed that night to give it a listen. The next day I went back to Cody's house and looked for the sleeve under his bed. It was gone. His older brother Roy had gotten ahold of it and hung it up in his room with 4 huge tacks. After some negotiation, I was able to buy it back for 2 dollars and change. I snuck it into my place and slipped in a Bette Midler record into the sleeve, buying me some time and hiding my crime. Years later when I confessed to her about what happened, she laughed and told me it was a joke birthday present from one of her girlfriends and she'd never put it on since then. Up against the wall Motherfucker indeed!

First Moving Targets Gig

The Moving Targets first gig was  on Christmas eve 1983 with the Bad Brains and Scream at legendary CBGBs in New York City.

We were big fans of the Bad Brains and went to see them at the Living Room in Providence, RI. We got backstage before their set, offered them a huge doobie, and handed their manager a cassette of an early rehearsal we'd made. He handed us his business card through a mystical cloud of  Ganga and told us to call him in a week.

A week later we gave him a call and asked him what he thought of the tape. He mentioned that he had misplaced it and urged us to mail him another one. Just then Pat Leonard (who was at my side during this conversation) punched me in the arm and suggested that we race over to Pat Brady's place and play for him over the phone. He told me that was an interesting idea, and to call back when we were ready to rock. We called Brady and jumped in my Dodge Dart. We ran through a couple of  quick tunes at Pat's While his Mom held the phone in the air while simultaneously trying to plug both ears, and passed the audition. Micheal told us we could open for the 'Brains in to weeks at CBGBs. We would also get $100.00 for our trouble.

The day of the show we took Pat Brady's van with a u-haul attached (costing half of our pay before we even left the driveway), and headed towards New York with our pals Kevin Cordima doing lights and George Norris who would be handling "security".None of us had been to NYC before, so there was excitement in the air mixed with a little fear. We pulled up to the Bowery at about 4:00pm to a locked door, a sidewalk full of winos, and nowhere to park. We dumped our shit in front of the club door while Brady found a parking garage. That took care of the rest of our gig money.

Trying to fit in, we took turns asking George to run across the street for beer while we made friends with everybody in fornt of the joint. Finally someone opened up the club and let us in. The place was a real dump, smelling of stale beer (maybe that could have been us), vomit, and cigarettes. Sill, we were honored to be playing our first show in such a famous venue. We did our soundcheck, move our gear and saddled up to the bar. We got a round of drinks and the barmaid told us we would be getting a case of beer before our set. At this point it was 7:00pm and we weren't going onstage until 11:00pm. We ordered a few more drinks, tipped the barmaid well, and convinced her to give us the case a little earlier.

Around an hour later, people started coming through the door. Joey Ramone elbowed up to the bar along with a few other folks I swore I'd seen in the pages of N.Y. Rock Scene magazine. I saw Johnny Thunders go into the mens room. This was going to be our finest moment, playing in front of our heroes. Little did we know that they would soon be long gone when the 8:00 to 10:00 Happy Hour was over. Drunk as skunks, we took the stage and raced through the set, jumping around and breaking a few strings. We got some scattered applause (mostly for Brady's skills on the drums, no doubt), and wheeled our stuff off the stage.

Our good friend Kevin, who had his fair share of alcohol as well, suggested we smoke a "Celebration joint" with the Bad Brains, who were now in the dressing room behind ours. We requested an audience with the kings of Rasta Punk and sparked up the Victory bud. Although it was the middle of winter in NYC, a couple of the band members, as well as their roadies, were barefootin' it. Kevin took an extra-huge draw from the spliff, turned blue, and exploded in a multi-colored projectile of watery goo, covering the floor and toes of the group. They screamed like banshees at the first rays of dawn and scattered out of the way like mice with the lights suddenly turned .. our appologies, a deckhand appeared with an old mop that only made their dressing room smell worse.

The Bad Brains hit the stage at around 3:00am and they were all wearing sneakers. They played a phenomenal, blistering show, and still thanked us from the stage for playing with them. The night ended with Hilly tossing us some crumpled $5s and $10s that smelled like vomit. We made our way back home with our first show under our belt.

On Tour

My first time on tour was with the Moving Targets in the late winter of 1987. Pat, Chuck, and I, along with Carl Plaster doing sound, had our first gig scheduled for Baltimore, MD. Chomping at the bit to get a move on, we left a day early with the idea  of staying at a motel that night and heading to our first gig fresh and energized the next morning. Overpacking our personal belongings to the nth degree, we were taken aback on seeing how little room was left for us. None the less, we got on our way. An unexpected snow storm forced us to stop in New Jersey towards the end of the day, and Carl and Chuck went into the office of the Motel 6 and booked a room. Pat and I snuck ourselves in a few minutes later.

After a night of chips and beer, we we awoke the next morning and were hardly able to get Pat's van out of the parking lot with all the snow. I may have even used my trusty Telecaster to dig ourselves out, I can't remember. Back out on the great highway we noticed a horrible metalic sound after about 30 minutes on the road. The fuckin' van started smokin', and we took the next exit, happy to see a gas station/garage at the end of the ramp. After the kind mechanic popped the hood he told us the motor was blown and the engine block cracked. It was going to cost around 1600 bucks to fix the thing and since it was a holiday weekend (I forget which), the parts wouldn't be there until Tuesday. Carl, being the guy with the credit card (totally saving our ass, I might add), started calling around for a rental van to get to the next few gigs. Because of the holiday situation (national rent every van in the vacinity day?), he was only able to come up with a REALLY small Ford compact. Chuck suggested that we purchase one of those big plastic containers that you can strap on top of your vehicle so we could bring as much shit as possible. We did have some cheap-ass 50/50 Targets shirts to sell that TAANG was so kindly fronted us for the tour. Without yet playing a note we were going to be almost two grand in the hole. I suggested that Chuck and I flip a coin to see who got to bring their amp and I lost. To add insult to injury, I got stuck in the back seat, getting crushed by Chuck's Peavey combo. I hardly had enough elbow room to smoke a rollie.

Arriving at the venue a few hours later, we were happy to see our musical brothers the Volcano Suns, who were also on the bill. We stretched our legs and entered a rented hall full teenagers waitng to hear some punk rock. Jon Williams from the 'Suns let me use his Marshall 50w combo and Peter Prescott let Pat use his kit for our gig. We played a hurried, unremarkable show, then sat back to watch the "Suns rip through a killer set and mock the young punks at the same time. We ended the night staying with super-cool Targets fan Gary Hichens, eating apartment-cooked vittles and watching videos of a band called the "Toy Dolls".

The next morning we said goodbye to Gary and his wife and made our way to the next gig. I should mention that it was in Miami Florida (my home town) and it was almost 1500 miles or so away. Curtis from TAANG booked the show for us after Gang Green's wildly sucessful show there a few weeks before. They were paid well and sold about 500 t-sirts to boot! That's mainly why we had a shitload of shirts with us in the plastic bubble. We took turns driving strait through and hit the state line the next morning. Eight hours later we pulled up to the place, our name emblazened across the marquee. I recognized it as the same theater I used to take the 11 bus to in order to catch the occasional zombie flick. We loaded in the back and were amused to see that the stage was about 12 feet above the bolted-in theater seats. There was still probably a piece of gum stuck under one of  them from when I was last there. 

We did our soundcheck, and went backstage to drink some beer and eat some sandwiches. After a while the promoter showed up and brought us up to his office where he pulled out a giant bag of cocaine. Chuck and Carl stepped back in horror, but Pat and I stepped up to the plate. The promoter was a crazy Spanish dude who was paying for his operation with  drug sales. I was now starting to see why Gang Green sent back such good reports of the venue. Unlike their triumph, we ended up playing to the top of 17 peoples scalps from the way-too-high stage. Because of the drugs, thankfully, we still got paid and sold ended up selling a half-dozen shirts as well. The rental was driven back to New Jersey without me, the band allowing me to stay back in Miami with the gear for a visit with my Mom and a few old pals (a classy move on their part as well as freeing up some space in the Ford). They picked up Pat's van and then came all the way back to Miami to get me and the gear for our next show in Clearwater, FL.

8 days on road, 3 cancelled shows, 3400.00  in rentals, gas, and repairs and we were back in business. Rock n' Roll is so awesome.

My Father, The Wrestler

My Father was a professional wrestler. His ring-name was "Pat McGuinness" and he worked the east coast circut during the mid-seventies. He was usually featured in one of the opening matches of the day or night. In real life he never lost a fight that I'd heard about, but the contests were always set up with a pre-determined winner. To my Dad, professional wrestling was more or a glorified hobby, a way to show off, make some extra cash, and travel in "show-biz" circles.

I went to a few of his matches, and though it was hard to watch him occasionaly sucumb to lesser men, I became facinated by the subculture of it all. Arena Rats (groupies), fake blood, and a chance to meet some wrestling greats. Chief Jay Strongbow, Andre the Giant, Superstar Billy Graham, Ivan Koloff the Russian Bear, and others, the list goes on. This was before professional wrestling exploded upon the mainstreem, so there was still an old-time, circus sideshow vibe to the whole thing. Regardless of the outward rivalry, most of the guys seemed to be friends. I remember meeting Andre the Giant for the first time. He spoke beyond-broken english and stunk up the dressing room like an old, wet horse. He held out his hand to shake mine, and it was bigger than my head. Billy Graham and Ivan Koloff were good friends of my fathers, and Ivan often stayed with him when he was in town. Contrary to his persona (grunting animal wrapped in chains and furs), he was a soft-spoken, intelligent, funny guy. Somewhere exists a photo of me wearing his stage outfit, dwarfed by all the gear.

The arena Rats were kinda scary to me, a different breed than a Three Dog Night fan, a little bit skanky and always in the front rows screaming at the opponents and blowing kisses to their favorites. When I raised an eyebrow to my Dad he said "fuck 'em all son, you might miss a good one".

My Fathers career in the ring lasted about 2 years. One Saturday afternoon in Miami, flipping through the channels looking for "Creature Feature Double Feature " I happened to come upon my Dad wrestling on t.v. I yelled out to my Mother that Dad was on television and she promptly called the Jai Alai center to see if she could have him picked-up for some late child-support payments. Unfortunately for her, he was long gone, having filmed the bout a few days earlier. My Father grew tired of the whole scene and retired his name shortly afterwards. He went back to being a bad-ass bouncer at tough-guy bars, after all, he was  an outlaw.

Jimi Hendrix on the Water

I was eleven years old when I bought "Are you Experienced"?, my first Hendrix l.p.

I found it at a Woolworth's store in Miami where the tiny selection or records was right next to the guns and ammo section. I went there to buy a b.b. gun but I didn't have enough money, so the $3.98 sticker price was in my budget. I had my Father's turntable and speakers that I brought home that September from my summer in Ipwich ,Massachusetts. For the next 5 years I would bring that stereo system back and forth on the plane with me, leaving my LPs back in Florida (adding new records every summer at my Grandparents' house from my Dad's collection that I inherited).

Although I must have heard a song or two during the long drives I took in my Father's Cadillac as a youngster, nothing prepared me for my first experience (no pun intended!) of Jimi alone in my room with the speakers on the floor and my head planted in between. I'd never really listened to what he did with the guitar and vocals and totally out-of-fucking -space music that he created. After repeated listenings that afternoon I replaced my head with a cassette recorder (stolen or given to me by a 5th grade teacher) and made a bootleg copy that I would carry around for the next month in the top pocket of my dungaree jacket.

There was a canal in back of my house and for the next couple of days I would launch my canoe and paddle down the muddy waters playing that tape as load as I could before it started  to distort. The music seemed sinister, beautiful and ghostly echoing on the water. One day I invited Manny Rodriguez to find a joint and join me on an excursion with Hendrix. After school, we got to my house and took a cruise on the canal. This was probably my 4th or 5th time getting stoned, but mixing it with "Are You Experienced"? brought it to a significantly new level. I'll never forget the fuzzy warmth of the Marijuana as I listened to "3rd Stone from the Sun" and "Foxy Lady" bouncing for eternity atop the dark brown water.I ran that cassette into the ground and made another one afterwards that got me through a few more months. It would be a while before I fell in love with Punk rock and left Jimi behind for a while, but I'll never forget our early days together...

Moving Targets Biography

Moving Targets formed in the summer of 1982 with Pat Brady on drums, Pat Leonard on bass and Kenny Chambers on guitar . With a repertoire pushing through the Punk Rock Songbook, they dragged their gear from there to here. They Rocked right next to the keg. They played "The Greatest Song".

That Fall, two things happened that would forever change the group. The dealer grew his first indoor batch of super-skunk hydro, and the Bad Brains released the R.O.I.R. cassette. Band rehersals now began with a ritual errand through the wooded back streets of Topsfield Ma, followed by a detailed study of the Rastfarian's songcraft. They dreamed of their first real gig. They wrote their first original song, the long-forgotten "Phase out'.

Early December bought a phone call from Anthony from N.Y.C., manager of the Bad Brains, whom the lads had met a couple of weeks before at an all-ages show at the Living Room. They played for him over the phone, and got a gig with the Brains at C.B.G.B.s for that coming Christmas eve. The place was a real dump. full of weirdos, but they got a free case of beer and were treated well. They opened up for D.C. band Scream and the Bad brains.

1983 brought them their first Boston shows and friendships with bands like "Sorry", "Busted Statues", and "Dredd Foole and the din". Bands like "Christmas and "D.Y.S." remained distant. They also met Gerard Cosloy and Lou Giordano, Executive producer and producer of the "Bands that could be God" l.p. That summer the trio recorded 8 songs with Lou at the legendary Radio-Beat studio. That fall, the Dealer moved to Ohio, the Bad Brains switched to an all-reggae set, and the Target's dis-banded amid the noise and confusion.

The summer of 1984 saw the long-awaited release of Gerard's compilation, featuring 3 songs by the band. The group re-formed and started working on a new live show and dressing a bit differently. After a low-interest loan from their good friend/one-time manager Kim Brookes, they made plans to enter Whitedog studios with Lou once again at the helm. They layed down 15 tracks between December and January of 1986/87. The band once again broke up at it's completion.
August 1987 saw the bands first l.p. "Burning in water" released to near universal critical praise. Sensing a quick buck, Emily Kaplan (Salem 66) booked a tour post haste.

Taking to the road with new bass player Chuck "roast" Freeman (Smash Pattern) in early 1987, the Targets made it as far as New Jersey before the Transmission blew in Pat Brady's van. Live sound/producer/all around good guy Carl Plaster sprung for a rental on his mastercard, and the band made it to the next two gigs. After the van was repaired, the boys broke in the new transmission with a 1200 mile ride strait to Miami, where their name was up in lights. The tour ended quitely with a show in a North Carolina bicycle shop where the band was asked to play obscure country songs at half volume. Canceling the next show, they sped home with a re-newed vigor, only to break up the next day .

Kenny jumped ship to join 1 punk band Bullet LaVolta, who on their first European tour, was occasionally asked about "The Mooving Tahgets". Sensing a quick buck, TAANG! records threw the band some money to enter the studio once again with Lou Giordano to record all the left-overs. Pat Leonard was brought in to play bass on the songs Chuck deemed "not up to snuff" and they even played 2 gigs as a 4-piece with Roaster on guitar. Kenny continiued with LaVolta, Rocking throughout the land and opening for bands like the Butthole Surfers and Soundgarden. He bought a pair of black stretch jeans in Baltimore, but he still missed the Targets.

Late 1989 saw the release of their next record "Brave noise"on TAANG! records. A Targets tour was soon booked by the Paperclip agency in Holland and once again, Chuck was on bass. The tour was awesome, just great fun. Lots of free food and drink. People really came out and showed their love. They broke a lot of hearts in the process. Wolfy, Dino and Robert, you are not forgotten. German drum store guy, it was a gas. The reality of life in the states hit the band upon their return home. No more free food. After a final gig at Manray with Buffalo Tom and Jones very, the Targets took another break.

In 1991 "Fall" The last recordings featuring Pat Brady, were released. Kenny went to Berlin to record his first "solo" record. Upon it's release there was a European tour with Jeff Goddard on bass, Jamie Vanbremer on drums and Ben Segal on guitar. They called it "Kenny Chambers and the Moving Targets" and although they sounded great and played some memorable shows, it wasn't the real deal. There was a final Targets release "Take this ride" featuring original bass player Pat Leonard and J' Arcari on drums, but it wasn't the same. They toured Europe and the states to support the record, and called it quits soon after returning home.