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...