Bands We Shall Not Name

Most of the bands we interviewed the first winter of the paper in ‘94 turned out to be problematic.

There was the band that won the Yamaha TicketMaster Flood Zone contest in 1993, but I doubt that meant anything, even at the time. I can’t think of many bands that benefited greatly from winning a battle of the bands type competition, which is why I disdain contests. Song contests, too. It’s just a mechanism for collecting entry fees.

Anyway, they came from Hampton Roads to play “aggressive alternative rock,” with one band member in Newport News, one in Colonial Heights, one in Chesterfield, and the practice space an abandoned house in Church Hill where they kept three cats. Poor cats are probably long dead now.

I had a writer who was into bondage sex, and apparently a guy in this band must have been, too, and there was an incident when he caught her being tied up by someone else and people were climbing up the sides of buildings like Spiderman, and breaking windows, and I received tearful phone calls in the middle of the night (from him, not her!) asking why, why, why. Hearts were breaking along with the windows. It was all very sad.

Then there was this other band that I thought was very good and I went to many of their shows. But they turned out not to be particularly nice guys. They got to the point where they couldn’t keep the electricity on in their Fan rental, so they lived in the dark and cold. The drummer borrowed money from my too trusting boyfriend (for drugs, not electricity!) and never paid it back, so I felt robbed. I have since tossed their cassette. I still see one of their most loyal fans downtown from time to time. He must work nearby. Every time I see him I want to kick him, even though he probably didn’t have much to do with the nastiness. I don’t think he recognizes me, thank goodness.

Then there was this folksy trio, who were mediocre music makers, but a few years later, the lone female in the trio wanted to write for the paper. She did a few things, but she wasn’t a particularly good writer, so I had to fix her articles, and she took offense at that because, it turned out, she considered herself a professional writer. She wrote porn on the Internet for money. She did not look the type.

So, during the winter of 1994, we interviewed two bands I can mention by name, Blotto Diablo and Useless Playboys, neither of which caused me trouble. One of the guys in Blotto Diablo actually made crowns and other dental work for a living, and he left for a better job in another state. I wasn’t a fan of their style of music, so I didn’t see them often. Useless Playboys was the house band at Scarlett’s, now Main Street Station, and did a big swing type show in the bar, which is now the entrance foyer to the train station. They were very entertaining, but I never felt comfortable in the room because it was a scene. Their fans liked to dress up in vintage swing era styles and it was like walking through a time tunnel. I, unfortunately, tended to dress more on the goth side, so I stuck out. Jonny Cecka was in Useless Playboys. He played an upright bass and sometimes would jump on the side of it. Always made a good photo.