Chronicles III
Enter the Taz, Fall 1987
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"Many Prophets will rise, and shall deceive many." ST. Matthew 24:11"
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So the previous chapter chronicled the naming of the band and how we started, with a little Lost Cross history in there as well. I would also like to mention at the time of this writing is now on its way to being 24 years old.
Congratulations and Kick ASS!
Here’s to all that kept the spirit alive and the punk rock rolling….
So anyways, we start out the fall of 1987 without a drummer, and once again Steve Sickness was trying to steal my musicians. Just kidding…. So Mark hooks up with Steve and they form White Trash with James B. Ricks III on guitar, Mark on bass, Lillian Heron on drums and Steve doing vocals. They did a couple of shows at the newly formed House o Voodew™, where Steve lived at the time on the east side of Carbondale. This was also to become the practice place of Diet Christ and where we recorded all our four track recordings…The highlight of White Trash was playing Two Hearts opening for the Didjits, a great band from Mattoon Illinois.
Later on in the semester I was hanging out at a party with RJ and he once again indicates that he found another drummer to play for us, déjà vu, I know. So RJ and I were both were hungry to play again and Mark was willing to play in both bands, so all we had to do was ask. RJ starts by asking me if I wanted to do DC, again, which of course I did, so he turns around and taps the shoulder of a guy standing behind him. We are in the kitchen and RJ introduces me to Mike Kartje. I should state, reintroduced me to Mike Kartje because, Mike and I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago in a town called Brookfield. We both went to the same high school, we were on the same little league team, we won first place, got a cool trophy and now I learn that we both went to the same university.
Small world, and now we are going to be in the same hardcore punk band, in southern Illinois.
Mike, enthusiastically states yes. I think RJ asked if he wanted to be in a “Punk Rock band”.
I am not sure when or where our first practice was, but Mike, who at the time was using the stage name Taz, a nickname he got in highs school, brought over his drum set and we started DC again, in fall the of 1987. RJ slipped him a tape of our practices with Shelli, and I remember after a few practices, we all just took off like a jet plane.
Taz, was and still is the shit on drums. His love and passion for all styles of music brought DC to new levels and we started writing songs right off the bat. So now the lineup was RJ on guitar, Mark on Bass, Taz on drums and yours truly on vocals.
Taz came to one of the practices with rhythms and words to a new song, one of the first few we had since most of our time was polishing the ones we had already. The tune was called “Fuck is Love”, which was funny, because the first practice with Taz, RJ and Mark were bitching that I did not have lyrics for the instrumental song yet. The instrumental song had no vocals and I would just go out and dance around like a moron when Shelli was in the band. The song was inspired by my girlfriend with a comment of, “I am not going out there with the Freshly Fucked look”, and I was like, “Freshly Fucked” that is it!
Bam! Another new song for DC.
So now we had two new songs, both about getting laid. So we were developing a running theme here… so the next song we added was a Desperately Sedate Bakeheads (BSD) song called “Cindstone is a Whore”. It was about an old girlfriend that Marks buddy wrote about his ex girlfriend. Now I didn’t know her at the time, so I would not feel comfortable singing about her in that way so I made the song about all whores everywhere, male or female. We titled it the “The Horror” on our 7” Band in the Bible Belt, but at the time we hardly called it “the Whore”.
The original verses went something like, “Cindstone, you dirty cunt or dirty whore”, or something foul like that. So I shit canned the DSB lyrics and kept the same theme of “whoring” and the verses just flew off my tongue so to speak.
I remember when we first broke into this song at a show the House of Voodew™ show. RJ broke out the rhythm to “The Whore”, it was a pounding thumping song, so the crowd went wild. So of course I went wild feeding off the energy and fell into a stack of amps on the side of the stage, it was totally rowdy show.
This was it, after the show, I remember hanging out in back and talking about recording and studio blah, blah, blahhhhh drunk talk, but it was not to last, once again….
Chronicles I The Early
years 1986-1987
Chronicles II Naming the Band, Fall 1986
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