Gary Gerloff

Gary Gerloff was one of my telephone buddies back in ’93, ’94 when I first started the Richmond Music Journal. I don’t recall if we ever actually met in person and talked, and I’ve only seen him play a time or two.

He was delighted with the newspaper and would call and tell me stories about the Richmond music scene of years ago, most of which I could not use because they were racy and I didn’t know if they were even true. He knew all the wild women of the scene, the groupies, the local girls that went on to become regional and national groupies, all the stunts they used to get into the band buses parked outside the venues. He wanted me to do stories on them, but I declined since I think they had moved on and probably didn't want to be reminded.

He often told me the paper kept him connected to the music scene, the new local bands coming up that he would never have heard of otherwise. Our stories often tickled him and he would call to laugh and comment about them. And one time he took me to task quite sternly for being lovesick over a musician he did not think was worthy of my time. He called him Pie Face and that shook some reality back into me.

I had the feeling he wasn’t working because he would call me during the day and could talk for hours. Later I heard he was a Mr. Mom who kept the kids while his wife worked and then played music at night. I don't know if that was true although his obituary didn't list any job history. It seemed like a good arrangement, if true. The running joke about him was, obviously, how much he physically resembled Jerry Garcia.

He died this past weekend at age 58.

Morality in Chesterfield County

Many years ago, there was a man living on the Southside who decided the Richmond Music Journal was offensive to his children, although I think he was actually divorced and not living with his children at the time. He would go into places like Plan 9 on Midlothian Turnpike and the Barnes and Noble on Huguenot (both locations are gone now), and complain that the paper was obscene and needed to be removed. They ignored him at Plan 9 since they knew him and knew he was a complainer, and at Barnes and Noble, they removed the papers from the box in the front foyer, but then put them back after he left. After all, they were a book store and not about censorship.

It all boiled down to the word "cocksucker" used as an adjective on the front page and a photograph of a band that dressed up in fat, naked people costumes.

The guy went to the Chesterfield Commonwealth Attorney's Office. I think the attorney who was assigned the case thought I was a kid and scaring me would solve the problem. He would try to convince me I had to report to his office for a tongue lashing from him and a "Chesterfield County detective" (oooh, scary!), and then, terrified, I would behave after that. I knew he couldn't actually make me visit him legally.

I was already in a bad mood when he called due to other annoyances in my life. Back then I couldn't find a job, living on food stamps and temp jobs, and didn't care if a dozen Keystone Kops pulled up and put me in jail. When you've got nothing to lose, even this kind of notoriety is helpful. When you have family, a mortgage, and all that stability stuff to protect, being a renegade or a rebel isn't as easy. So I was ready to go. Bring on the handcuffs, Chesterfield County! The newspaper The State, a start-up that couldn't decide if it wanted to compete against Style Weekly or the Times-Dispatch, already had the ACLU on speed dial on my behalf.

The tape recorder attached to my phone to record band interviews was on autopilot to cut on whenever I answered the phone. It recorded the whole crazy conversation.

I’m an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Chesterfield county. I was wondering if you’d be willing to sit down and talk with me and a detective from the Chesterfield County police department, and I’ll tell you what this is about. You probably already know. We have received complaints involving the Music Journal, and I have been assigned to investigate it along with the Chesterfield County police department. And I have looked into it and I wanted to discuss it with you. It is not our intent at this time to bring any charges. But I would like to sit with you and discuss with you what the complaints are about and whether or not they can be resolved.

Are you aware of Rolling Stone?

Yes, ma’m.

Are you aware of the language in that publication?

Yes, ma’m.

Are you aware that publication is available in Chesterfield County?

I’m sure it is. Yes, ma’m.

Has this parent picked up a Rolling Stone?

Well, I don’t think they’re giving them away, are they?

I don’t give them to this man’s children.

I understand that. And believe me, if you sit down and talk with me, I think we can come to an understanding.

Are you aware of Redbook magazine? Cosmopolitan?

If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. You can tell me that and then we can do this the hard way.

I am perfectly willing to take this magazine completely out of Chesterfield County. It’s not to my advantage at all to have this man or his children reading it. 

Right.

All I need to know is where his children saw it and I will deal with that outlet and pull it out of there.

I don’t even know the person who made the complaint.

Well, that’s what we need to find out, where this parent found this magazine so I can remove it.

He is not your concern. He himself is not going to bring any action. None that I know of. All I can tell you is I have been assigned by the Commonwealth Attorney of Chesterfield County to look into this. I have done that. I’ve talked to police officers. If I can meet with you and tell you what the concern is, then it probably can be resolved that way.

You can tell me right now. What is the concern?

All right. Well, I’m not asking you to do that. I looked through a number of back articles. I don’t see anything at all wrong with a number of articles, but the complaints were based on the December and January magazines, and that was based on both language and some pictures that were published. I know you’re familiar with the areas I’m familiar with. The cocksucking article.

That article was not about cocksucking per se. It was used as a derisive expression for toadying to people.

I read the article and I agree with you.

He has more danger from Good Housekeeping as far as his children learning some procedure he doesn’t like than he does from my magazine.

I’m not arguing with you about that.

I can walk into your office with a load of magazines I’ll purchase at a 7-11 in Chesterfield County, magazines that the cover headlines are visible to children. If you’re buying candy at the counter of the 7-11, all the headlines are right there in front of you.

The point is this...

You don’t have to buy the magazines, they’re right there in front of you.

I think it is right on the borderline as far as the type of information. The type of magazines you’re referring to are basically magazines for sale. Yours is not for sale.

Since it’s not for sale, is the problem that children are seeing it?

They can pick up your magazine and take it home for nothing. And I don’t know what your opinion is, whether or not you would want your 12 or 13-year-old child to see it.

I can’t supervise every child in Chesterfield County. But if there is an outlet that children are rushing to so they can read this magazine and learn dirty words that aren’t already in any publications in their parents’ homes, I’ll be happy to remove it. Like I said, I don’t want people like this reading it, people who are going to go to all this trouble, to call detectives and commonwealth attorneys and report stuff that’s already out there. You know I’m not breaking any new ground here. I’m way behind.

I don’t think you are, either. The question is as to access for young people, whether or not certain portions of these two issues I’ve seen approach going over the line.

What’s the other complaint other than cocksucker that isn’t even used in a sexual context? What photograph are we talking about? The little band Donkey Balls who dressed up like naked fat people?

Right, that one.

They look like Cabbage Patch dolls.

That’s your opinion, but other people are going to look at it different. I agree that it’s close. My intent in calling you is saying this. We are getting a number of complaints on it. It can be toned down. I’m not telling you to change your magazine or change your style, but I think more discretion can be used as to what pictures are displayed.

My magazine, as you can see, is only about local music. It is very seldom that a band dresses up in naked fat people costumes. It's not a usual thing that happens. But you find out where the outlet is and I’ll be happy to withdraw this paper from that outlet. I don’t really care who reads it. It’s for musicians only. It’s not for children. I will be very happy to put on the front cover of every issue that this is not for children, that parents have a responsibility to make sure their children do not pick this up.

I think in reality we’re talking about 13 and 14-year-olds. They’re not by their mom’s and dad’s side every minute of every day.

They’re going to find stuff all over the place.

But you are responsible for distributing this magazine.

And I will be very happy to pull it from wherever I’m banned.

I’m not asking you to do that.

Well, you should be. You should be banning it, because I can’t change my editorial policy for one parent in one county. So what we need to do is keep it away from these people. This is a freedom of speech issue. I've already heard from the Times-Dispatch about doing a story on it.

I’ve learned a little about that in law school.

There’ll be stories, the parents who filed this claim will be ridiculed, just like the people trying to stop Howard Stern.

I don’t know about that. This isn’t New York City! This is Chesterfield County!

That’s right. It’s the same thing. How far are they getting with that? How about the parents who protested the XL-102 billboard?

I don’t recall that.

The XL-102 billboard that looks like a woman having an orgasm. 

Oh yeah.

Then you know how it goes. These things go nowhere. They create a lot of paperwork. It gets your name in the paper. It produces a lot of notoriety and publicity for the paper, it’s a big, ugly mess, but in the end, it goes down on First Amendment rights. You can’t keep something from publishing.

That’s not true. I can keep something I’ve seen from publishing!

So I won’t go into Chesterfield County! I don’t care about Chesterfield County! I’ll pull it out.

Well, that’s fine. If you tell me you’re going to remove it from Chesterfield County, then I don’t have any further business.

Just tell me which outlets are causing the problem. I’ll tell the owners of those businesses about people with unsupervised children coming in. You mind if I tape this conversation?

No, ma’m.

Where was the paper found?

The complaint lists Peaches and Digits. Those are the two listed on my complaint.

Okay, I’ll talk to the managers there and tell them, and when people come in asking for it, they can tell them to come in to the city or somewhere else.

Okay. That’s fine.

So it’s settled? So you can call that parent and tell them I’m not bringing it to Peaches. His kids can come to Peaches and buy music and don’t worry about anything.

All right, ma’m. I’m sorry it worked out like this.


****end of call

I don't think Peaches or Digits really cared that much about the cranky customer and I continued to leave the paper there after a month or so. Like I told the attorney, not too many bands performed in naked costumes.

Both Digits and Peaches are gone now, too. Napster and Wal-Mart had more to do with that than me. Eventually I found out who the complainer was because he started sending me threatening faxes, and I traced the telephone number back to him. He was surprised when I called him. We had a long rambling talk, almost two hours, and there was a lot more going on in his life than my newspaper, but complaining about the paper was one area where he felt like he could make a difference. After that phone call, the situation ended. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone.

And oddly enough, at the time, a Chesterfield County police detective was one of my music reviewers, writing under his real name.

Am I to blame now for all that's happened since, the sextexting in schools, the coaches and policeman who are making dates with underaged girls on the Internet and cell phone text messages? Did the Richmond Music Journal destroy the moral fabric of a generation of Chesterfield County children?

As far as bad language goes, Brick came along as a free distribution paper and did just as much. How come the commonwealth's attorney's office didn't summon Media General to sit down with a detective and "work things out"? This all seems so quaint now, as if from a time where I wore a hoopskirt and had the vapors.

A Few Thoughts at 9 p.m.

My theory, and a good one it is, had always been that the music scene catered to one core audience -- mall and restaurant workers. There was no other theory to account for why the crowd didn't arrive until nearly midnight. Think about it. If you work in suburban retail or at a restaurant, you were closing at 10 p.m., cleaning up by 11 p.m., and ready to socialize and have a few drinks at midnight. You didn't have to report for your next shift until late the next afternoon. How else were these people closing the bars down at 2 a.m., even on week nights?

So any band scheduled to start at 9 p.m., or even 10 p.m., was playing to crickets. The after-work happy hour crowd was clearing out; the mall and restaurant people were still at work. Nobody wanted to be the opening band in that dead slot, so the opening band would delay as long as possible before taking the stage. The drummer-is-missing ploy was a popular one. I used to hate these delays when I was on a tight schedule to try to see a half dozen bands in one night and every band was ditzing around, trying to get closer to an 11 p.m. start. That, of course, inevitably pushed the headliner back to 1 a.m., which I really hated.

Anyway, I don't know where the mall and restaurant workers go to chill out until last call these days. The action has progressively moved out to the far corners of the suburbs where people seem to keep more traditional hours. Out in the 'burbs, the situation is reversed. People are working, or tired, even on weekends, so the action is most intense around 9 p.m. It's the prime of the evening for suburban bars. The place is packed, and when a band takes their first break around 10:15, they come back at 10:45 to much less than before. By midnight, it's crickets and usually it's all over by 1 a.m. No need to turn up the lights at 2 and literally grab drinks out of people's hands (ah, the good old days of Last Call...after being attractively cloaked in bar darkness most of the night, when you are the most soused and scary looking, they turn up the lights and hover over you, desperately demanding you hand over your bottles and glasses as ABC agents lurk).

I thought about this as I ate a basket of tasty pig sliders at Grandpa Eddie's and watched the Harrison Deane Band play to a full, attentive room, clapping and cheering, and it was barely 10 p.m. But after their break, most of those people were gone. Including me. I slipped out a few songs into the second set because even on a Friday night, 11:30 is teddy bear time for my ancient, weary bones. My recommendation is if you're playing in suburbia and find yourself with a very good crowd at the very beginning don't assume they're there for the duration: Play as long as you can stand it before you take that first break. The bar might do another strong 30 minutes or so of business and love you for it, and the audience will probably hang in until you give them an excuse to duck out by putting your guitars down.

Suzanne Rathburn 1962-2008

When Suzanne called last August, she knew something most of us don't know, how much time she had left to live. Two months to a year. Fate compromised and gave her five months.

At the time I wanted to believe the doctors were wrong. "They're so often wrong."

"I know," she said, but I could tell she was resigned to it. This was her third encounter with cancer and she was choosing chemotherapy again to buy time, even though ultimately it would be painful, uncomfortable time. "I can't possibly get my affairs in order in two months."

I never saw Suzanne during the bad times. When she'd show up again, she always had her hair back and was in high spirits. She would come by to record a song in my husband's studio or swim in my pool. She was always happy. She laughed a lot, almost as a punctuation to every sentence. Even when she talked about her bad relationships -- some that were Lifetime movie of the week bad and some that just fizzed out quietly -- she did it in an offhand, casual way. Those bad relationships were 90 percent of what we talked about because we didn't have much else in common except a few mutual acquaintances. I hope that wasn't an all-consuming part of her life.

She considered everyone a good friend. We could and did go a year or more without seeing or talking to each other, and yet she considered me a good friend. My cell phone number was in the book of people to call at the end. How could that be? She was just that way. She embraced people. She was full of gratitude and appreciation for any little thing you did for her and she expressed it. I felt overpaid in appreciation, truly undeserving.

She was a people-person. If I sent her an email, I'd get a call back in seconds, not a return email. So when I heard the news back in August and sent her an email offering whatever I could do, I wasn't surprised when the phone rang the moment I hit "Send."

I listened, as usual. That was all I was ever able to do, listen. She was saying good-bye even though the battle was just beginning. She loved all her friends. She would miss them. She said it was hard to breathe, hard to speak, although except for one coughing spell, she sounded fine on the phone. I don't think she was religious, yet she conjured up a death where she still existed with human emotions.

"I'm going to miss you guys so much!"

As fall progressed and the holidays passed, no news was good news. Then right after the holidays, I got another call. She sounded great and was positive and upbeat. She had even gone back to work part-time. She alluded to being in crushing pain, and yet she was picking up her life again. The doctors were telling her there were fewer tumors. "I'm going to beat this, Mariane, I really think I'm going to beat this."

"Well, then, I'll see you in the summer when we open the pool."

"Oh, I can't go in the sun anymore because of the chemotherapy."

"Okay, we'll swim at night."

But it wasn't a turning point. It was the view from the top of the sliding board, because within a week, the slide began. In mid-January we heard she was in hospice care. I dutifully carried the phone number around in my purse, with all intentions to go by, but instantly a chain of minor problems consumed me for two weeks, and the moment I dispatched the last one, the cell phone rang in my pocket.

"We found your telephone number in a book Suzanne kept."

The summer she was recording her album, she paid for one session in flowers. She brought a carload of flowers over and planted them in the two giant pots on either side of my front steps. That summer the front of the house looked great, an explosion of color and beauty that multiplied throughout the season. Then winter came and they all died and didn't come back. They were flowers for a single season, a temporary burst of vibrant life, and then they were gone.

So Much Music in So Little Time

By spring of 1994, I was a curious bystander to the meteoric rise of The Ernies, based on their ska appeal and following in Boy O Boy’s big footsteps. They went from gigs at Crazy Charlie’s and Buffalo Joe’s to opening for the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies at the Flood Zone in just nine months, covering everything currently popular with an overtone of ska. I was doubly curious because the lead singer, Will Hummel, had been in my Cub Scout troop when he was a sprout. Would one of my former Cubs become a rock star? Could I sell my story to the National Enquirer?

Now they were back at the Zone, opening for their mentors, Boy O Boy, packing them in, much to the dismay of the FZ bouncers who warned me alcohol-fueled fights always broke out. (Boy O Boy, if you don’t know, became Fighting Gravity. As far as I can tell, only two of the guys have hung in and for some reason, I would always get anonymous hate mail whenever we wrote about them, usually directed at the lead singer, Schiavone McGee.)

On this night McGee, without the band, started the show singing one line. “All I need is a holiday,” and then went silent. The audience sang the rest back to him. They were good at taking directions. Hands in the air! Jump! Bounce! You could tell they were in college. I almost expected McGee to sing, “Close your bluebooks and pass them to the front.”

(2007 aside: Do colleges still give exams in bluebooks?) Anyway, The Ernies just seemed destined to make it. They were signed almost immediately, yet like Boy O Boy, the style that established them was a passing fad and they didn't sound like themselves once the record company finished with them.

We went to the 1708 Social Gallery in the Bottom, a club I described as looking like a stage set from “Brideshead Revisited.” We sat on white sofas and drank Dinosaurs: Long Island Iced Teas turned green by a dose of Midori. “They were so strong, we attracted Jurassic narcs.”

(“Jurassic Park” was big then. Was that clever or was I still high on Dinosaurs when I wrote it? In any case, the Social Gallery hosted bands like Lovesake which featured civilized instruments like upright basses and violins. Then it became something like a goth disco.)

On a Sunday night, we endured an unusual opening act at the Hole in the Wall, a poet whose poem consisted almost entirely of “Daddy’s going to take out the Harley. Want to go for a ride on the Harley?” The band was Gibbon Hick, with Marty McCavitt on keyboards and baritone sax, Pippin Barnett on drums, Paul Watson on cornet and guitar, and Steve Williams on bass and vocals. I sold an old telephone to Watson once and he seemed very glad to get it. He was in a lot of bands.

“Jazz audiences are attentive. No talking, no wandering around. They really listen as if their collective concentration is another instrument in the band. After the set, they literally passed a hat. ‘Feel free to contribute to the deconstruction of music,’ and the audience willingly did. It was jazz church of the holiest kind.”

At the Sunset Grill, we saw the band that all the other bands hated because they got all the gigs, The Fredds. They were the Sunday night house band at Mulligan’s in Innsbrook and always got the big money shows, the bachelor auctions and chili cook-offs.

“They play progressive dance music! They’re a cover band, but they cover, like, the new stuff on the radio, the stuff you can dance to,” I was told, as I tried to imagine people dancing to Beck’s’ Loser’ or Counting Crow’s ‘Mr. Jones.’”

One night, I saw five bands in five hours in five different places. We caught up with No Small Feet, another big cover band, at Lightfoot’s, a hotel lounge where “bank secretaries go to meet insurance salesmen.” Lee Covington was playing behind a rack of three keyboards and the band tried to resist the pleas from women who just wanted to dance to songs they knew.

“Guess what, we’re going to play another original song and you might not be able to dance to this one either,” Andy Edmunds chided them over the microphone.

It isn’t always easy being a dance band, although don’t tell that to Bio Ritmo. Even in ’94 at the Metro, they had everyone dancing, at the same time declaring the Metro had the worst PA in town. A block down Grace Street, we watched Rocket 69, “New York-style, ‘70’s punk a la The Heartbreakers” drown out their lead singer Dan-o; then we joined the preppy people packed into the Flood Zone for NRBQ. Across the street, BS&M were playing the outside patio at the Sunset Grill, but we opted to stay warm and go inside Scarlett’s for the last three songs in The Useless Playboys set. The stage was decorated in glittered moons and stars that vocalist Mike Geir had made from cardboard he salvaged from Marvin’s basement.

We finished the night at an after-hours downtown place called Casablanca’s and had pancakes smothered in peaches and cream. How did I do it? I didn't pay covers. I had a little press pass I made and laminated at Kinko's.

(I was startled when I arrived at the BS&M website. This band has sure changed, although it still seems to belong to Dave Barton, another hated guy in '94 because he got all the good gigs.)

A private Rites-o-Spring party at Peter Headley’s house on W. Cary was better attended than most club shows, and even advertised on the Rock Line. Headley wisely nailed his bedroom door shut for the duration. White Cross, with the reunited line up of Crispy Cramner, Mike Rodriguez, Joel Benson and Rob Mosby, opened for the Vapor Rhinos. Stuffed animals bounced all over the house until the stuffing was literally beat out of them.

My writer Kami Godbey was no slouch at descriptive prose. I could picture her night at the Metro with Sliang Laos and “a crowd as diverse as a family-sized pack of General Mills cereals. Grunge kids, goth chicks, skinheads, punks and freaks were all jammin’, or maybe all that motion was just everyone trying to unstick their shoes from the tacky gook that layers Metro’s floors. I kept getting stuck to the wall.”

Kami also discovered the Trip Thugs at the Metro and she was enthralled enough to seek them out at the “Thug house” on the 2400 block of West Main. They were Patrick Corregan, John Ekermeyer, Kelly Turner, and Mark Young. They even had a staff “manager and artist” Russell A. Duerr, and soundman, Mike Brady. They had been together five months and were already clocking in seven or eight gigs a month at places like the Metro and Crazy Charlie’s.

They were from Northern Virginia except Young, who was from Salem, and Turner, from Los Angeles. Inspired by Avail, they come to Richmond to seek their fortune, although it ultimately didn't help. Kami got creative with my recommended questions and asked things like when was the last time they were naked, could they tell the difference between different brands of toilet paper, and if they ever had that “not so fresh feeling.” Maybe that’s why the serious music writer guys in town hated the Journal and still do. All they blog about is how great Punchline used to be. Still, I give the girl props, and she took photos, too. After a year or so, she disappeared on me.

For reasons I can’t remember now, we had to Photoshop the band photo Kami took of the Trip Thugs, even though we didn’t have Photoshop. Photoshop may not have been invented then. We took two different photos and pasted them together into one, and it worked perfectly. It was Scissorshop.

The 1995 Musician Quiz

We ran a variation of this quiz in a 1995 issue. All the girls I met who had dated musicians had the same stories about how these guys lived, and a pattern developed.

You have seen every episode of “Ren & Stimpy.” +15
You have seen every episode of “Southpark.” +10
You can quote from memory the entire movie “Spinal Tap.” +5

You are in a committed relationship. +5
You were in a relationship, but she was committed. +10

You own a house. -5
You rent an apartment. +5
You rent a room in someone else’s apartment. +10
You never know whose sofa you’ll be sleeping on tonight. +15

You have gone to an all-night drug store to buy Kwell. +5

You are half deaf. +5

You have more than 500 records. +10
You play on half of them. +20

You have a futon mattress and you’ve been saving up for the frame for the past five years. +10

Your wardrobe is black, gray, black, and gray. +5
Your underwear is just gray. +10.
You don’t have any underwear. +15.

You play in another band. +5
You play in two other bands. +10
You’re John Leedes. +15. (The 1994 15 point answer was You’re Charlie Kilpatrick.)

You have lived in the Fan District. +5
You have lived in The Ritz. +10
You have lived in the Ellwood Sweat. +15
You have lived on the Spine. +20.

You never have a condom when you need one, but you always have a guitar pick. +5
You can make a girl come with a guitar pick. +10

The best time you ever had, you were drunk. +5
The best time you ever had, you were stoned. +5
The best time you ever had, you were drunk and stoned. +10
You don’t remember the best time you ever had, but people tell you it was great. +15

You have a full-time job that has nothing to do with music. -5
You have a part-time job that has nothing to do with music. +5
You work part-time as a bartender. +15
You work part-time as a restaurant cook. +20
You work part-time washing dishes. +25
Your girlfriend has a job. You play music. +30

You have more stereo equipment, amps and instruments than furniture +5
You have dishes, but you use them as ashtrays +10
You have an ashtray you use for a dish +15

You have never owned a car newer than 10 years old +5
You have never owned a car. +15
Your dream is to own a van. +5
You are living in a van. +20
You and your entire band are living in a van. +25

Your girlfriend has dated another guy in your band. +5
Your girlfriend has dated every guy in your band. +10
Your girlfriend is dating you only to get to another guy in your band. +15
You wouldn’t even have a girlfriend if you weren’t in a band. +20

To you, the major food groups are the Village, Joe’s, Third Street Diner, and Denny’s. +10

You can name every band you’ve played in and the set lists for each, but not the last five girls you dated. +5

Your wife/girlfriend has never been with you on New Year’s Eve because you’ve always been working. +10

Bonus points:

You have worked at more than 20 Richmond restaurants. +20
Your bar tab is more than you made playing. +15
Your girlfriend's bar tab is more than you made playing. +20

175-200 points: You are a real Richmond musician!
75-170 points: You’re a musician.
0-70 points: You’re not a musician. Why did you even take this test?

Christine Gibson

Here's the obit from the Times-Dispatch website. Since it is going to disappear from the site after Dec. 13, I've moved it here so it never disappears.

Christine Ann Gibson
GIBSON, Christine Ann, 55, of Richmond, Va., died on Dec. 9, 2007 due to complications after a courageous battle with breast cancer. She is survived by her awesome daughter, Maria Christine Gibson Applegate; her loving husband, Thomas William Applegate; sister, Susan Gibson of Mont Clair, N.J.; and aunt, Hazel Tipton of Fresno, Calif. She was born Sept. 12, 1952 in Newark, N.J. to Richard and Margret Gibson. She left New Jersey and came to Richmond to attend classes at VCU. Once in Richmond, Christine became a vocalist, visionary, and the attitude for Richmond's legendary punk rock band, BEEX. Under Christine's direction, BEEX enjoyed a 30-year run from its beginning as one of Richmond's first punk bands, established in 1977. At the same time, she became vice president of operations at Vatex America. After a career span of 24 years beginning as an embroiderer, rising through the company and ending as vice president, she was proclaimed Vatexian of the Year several times over. Christine was also the creator of the BARBIE GARDEN, an ongoing art installation featured in her yard on one of the Fan's many interesting streets. Christine was more than any of this and then some. Those who knew her are better for it and they know it. Donations may be made to OAR of Richmond Inc., 1 N. 3rd Street, Richmond, Va. 23219.

Hollywood Grill

I admit it. Oregon Hill scares me. I used to have a friend who lived on S. Pine Street, known as “the spine” among the ancient, formerly cool people. I liked going to see him in his dollhouse apartment. Over the years, I met other people who lived in the Hill in various states of bohemian poverty. Then I met people who were buying houses in Oregon Hill and getting these massive, funky spaces for hardly any money.

Still, it scares me. Especially at night. I think it has something to do with the necessity of knowing how to parallel park and the claustrophobic, narrow streets.

So it took much bundling up of my courage to go to the Hollywood Grill, former site of the notorious Chuck Wagon where you never knew what was going to happen and you had a 50/50 chance of ending the night at MCV. But that was the old days, before the demographics of Oregon Hill began to shift.

Hollywood Grill is not named after Hollywood, Calif. It is named after Hollywood Cemetery, which predates Tinsel Town. I was immediately surprised. Oregon Hill is on the cusp of a massive gentrification, with rehabs and new townhouses that look architecturally like the old townhouses, popping up everywhere. No parking skills were required. China Street had plenty of open spaces on this particular Tuesday night. To further acclimate you, the Grill is about two blocks south of Mamma Zu’s.

This is a small place with a wall of booths, a six-seater bar, and one overpowering pool table. The blackboard special on Tuesdays is 50 cent tacos, (also a great name for a band.) Monday night is free pool, Wednesday is someone called Uncle Bob on his guitar, Thursday is karaoke, and Friday and Saturday is live music. On this particular night, an experiment was in progress: do 50 cent tacos need a band to bring people in? That is the question.

The band serving as the lab rats in this experiment was the Harrison Deane Band, in which my husband plays bass, explaining why I made this trip in the first place.

The spotlights on the pool table kept the band well-lit, although it must be very distracting for them when people are lining up shots literally right under their noses. And if someone’s playing pool, you can’t really dance without bumping into them.

Hollywood’s menu is strictly school cafeteria style, serviceable and inexpensive. Sodas are served in the can with a plastic cup of ice, all the better for taste and fizz since Coke shot out of a bar spray nozzle is just nasty. There are no desserts on the menu, but at a workingman’s bar, dessert is a Marlboro Red anyway. Sunday brunch starts at the late hour of noon and there’s a choice of four things! Woo woo!

I thought I was in for a slow night at 8 p.m., with only six others in the place, but as the evening progressed, the crowd grew like an amoeba, doubling in size every hour. By 10 p.m., we had a shouting woman holding her cell phone up to the band and noodle dancers fueled by PBR moving the chairs back so they could undulate to anything that sounded remotely like a Grateful Dead song.

My bill for two tacos and a can of Dr. Pepper came to $3.75 (the soda was $1.75?!). I left a $2 tip because I am just that fabulous, and so is the band. With two guitars, bass, drums and keyboards, their layered, polished sound is worthy of a crowd of 200. But that would have required 400 tacos.

A Trip to Grandpa Eddie's

Anything with the name “grandpa” in it seems like it’s not going to be what’s happening now, but I kept hearing about bands getting gigs at Grandpa Eddie's , so off we went.

I thought we’d find it at the former location of the Three Chopt Sports Grill, a split room in a strip mall on Three Chopt near Cox Road that kept the band on one side and the drunks on the other. But it wasn’t there. It was on the west side of Cox in a brand new brick building. We arrived at 9 p.m. on a Friday, just in time for the band, but long after the dinner crowd had cleared out.

The restaurant, which moved to the Far West End from its original Goochland location, is positioning itself as the Tobacco Company of the West. Most of the places on the West End that host local music are not known for their food. Grandpa Eddie’s wants to be all things to all people, a place to eat as well as linger after dinner. Bands play Friday and Saturday nights from 9 to midnight. The restaurant’s great looking website has the line-up posted.

Jack Taggart, who books the music, says, “There’s nowhere in the West End to play that is totally geared around the music. We need to find those pockets of people. It’s a long way to go downtown for West Enders, so to get a place established out here would be great.”

I like clubs where you don’t have to stand, clutching your beer. At Grandpa Eddie’s, you can sit with a clear view of the band from just about every booth in the place, as well as the bar, which is behind large glass windows, and also serves to separate the smoking area from the non-smoking dining room. The room is a warm, cozy copper color and the acoustics are, in my sound tech husband’s estimation, “dry,” i.e., reverb isn’t bouncing off the walls. Grandpa Eddie’s politely turns off the wide screen TV above the band, always a nice touch. There’s no dance floor. If you get happy feet, you’ll have to dance by yourself next to your table.

Our food arrived before we could even settle into the booth or finish the baby cornbread muffins served as a free appetizer. That was fast! Everyone has their own opinion of barbecue, so we won’t argue that here. The menu is online. We had a sandwich, “Kansas City’s Famous Burnt Ends,” with slaw and fries, and a rack of ribs with collards and slaw. For dessert, we split the donut sundae, a glazed donut with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry. That was just odd. Doughnuts are not easy to negotiate with a fork or spoon, so it was a dessert that fought back. With soda and tea, our bill for two was $33.55. The house dessert is peanut butter pie.

Where does used restaurant ketchup go? Everywhere I eat, the bottle of ketchup at the table is always brand new, even at Arby’s. How can that be?

Back Alley Hoodoo was playing that evening. They also have a good website and if you Google them, you’ll find links to videos on YouTube, too. They are older, seasoned blues musicians, as are most of the bands currently on the schedule. No loud kid bands for Grandpa Eddie.

I’ve never understood how you can play the blues as a band. Something like “Red House,” which Back Alley Hoodoo covers, sounds more poignant when wailed by one solitary guy and his acoustic guitar. If you’ve got enough buddies for a band, you shouldn’t have the blues!

Tell Me Something New

This makes me sad because I don’t want to come off as sounding snarky, but we really need to control our enthusiasm, at least to reasonably normal levels, when writing about bands. During the newspaper days, when I sensed the reviews were coming from friends and family, I ran them in the letters column rather than in the reviews column.

Now everything goes onto the same web page, although no doubt the readers can detect a biased review. It depends on the size of the room, but normally, less than 20 people is not a crowd. Two couples dancing is not a crowd dancing. It’s four people dancing. Watch those adjectives or you’ll give yourself away as a publicist and it dilutes your message. The very fact that my paid reviewers were so hard to please gave them credibility when they were surprised by a good band. Don’t be so easy that you’re suspect.

And remember who your readers are. The audience on the Journal’s website is mostly musicians, and they don’t really care how good a band is because they’re probably not going to see you unless you’re opening for them. They’re interested in the room, the acoustics, the stage, whether there’s regulars who come to the club all the time or if the place will be rolling in tumbleweeds unless they bring their own friends. If you have insider information about how much the club owners pay, or if the doorman gets to keep half the money, whether the house PA barely works, or the TV is going to be blaring sports right over the vocalist’s head – share that.

Otherwise, we already know that every one of you is the greatest band that ever was and deserves to pack the house with standing room crowds every night. We already know you cover songs fantastically, yet with such originality you make them truly your own. Your originals are indeed No. 1 hits that everyone will be singing next week. We all know you “will not disappoint,” a favorite cliché used in all the hundreds of reviews I’ve published. Every bar is wonderful because they booked you and you want them to book you again, so their food is fantastic, the microwaved chicken fingers are where microwaved chicken fingers were born, the beer is the coldest ever in history, the bathrooms so clean and sparkly, and the manager and waitstaff are saints. They practically give foot rubs, they’re so accommodating. Your thousands of fans are the most fun people; so much fun that all the rest of us must go to your next show and rub elbows with them so the fun will spread. We will have a great time, maybe the greatest of our lives.

Yes, we know all that. Now tell me stuff I don’t know.

Heavy and Light

The Vapor Rhinos were a fun band that always put on a show, but because all their songs were comical and rudely off-color, other bands didn’t seem to appreciate them. Our lavish coverage of the Vapor Rhinos resulted in much jeering. They had elaborately painted stage sets at every show and often shredded a bunch of stuffed animals at the finale. They’d buy up all the stuffed animal stock at thrift stores for these ritual sacrifices.

The band was Tommy Rodriquez, the guy who actually builds guitars, on guitar, George Reuther on bass, Dean Owen on drums and Peter Headley on vocals. Not only did they play out a lot, they went to see other bands a lot, so you saw this gang, together or apart, everywhere all the time. They became part of stories that weren’t even about the Vapor Rhinos. George has disappeared, but the other guys are still in town.

One of the first places I went to see them was New Year’s Eve at the Red Light Inn on Grace Street, a topless bar. This bar was a loyal advertiser for many years and the easiest money I made. I’d walk in, find the guy who had the money and he’d hand me the $25 for a quarter page ad without any discussion as soon as he spotted me. Handing cash to women was just second nature in this club.

The band was never serious, so all the stories verged on crazy. I did the band interview in person at Marvin’s, with everyone around the table arguing with the waitresses about mayonnaise and complaining about morning hair, even though it was 11 p.m. It was like a scene from a Marx Brothers movie.

I used the same basic 20 questions for all my band interviews, one of which was “origin of the name.” Before this, I had never thought about the band names that were combinations of light and heavy images.

George and Tommy were sitting in the Village trying to think of a name, and Tommy wanted something heavy, and George wanted something light and airy. Like Iron and Butterfly. But it was taken.

Or Concrete and Blonde.

Or Led and Zeppelin.

Hence, Vapor and Rhinos.

Can you think of more?

Brushes with Greatness

In the first year of the paper, we covered some Brushes with Greatness. When David Letterman had the good late night show on NBC, not the one he has now on CBS, he would go into the studio audience soliciting stories of commonfolk encounters with celebrities.

Seeing Fishbone was in itself a brush with greatness. I described their show at the Flood Zone as “a happy version of Dante’s Inferno.” The lead singer was wearing baggy gray pants held up by suspenders, but not held up enough. His pubic hair was visible. The drummer wore only boxer shorts and played with his back to the audience, the better to show off the fish skeleton tattoo on his back.

Our technical brush with greatness was encountering Bruce Hornsby on the top level of the Zone, autographing women’s breasts. From there, we watched a female crowd surfer in white stockings, a lacy aqua bra and a flowered dress get passed repeatedly over the heads of the crowd on the floor. Each time she broke the surface and sailed over the crowd, she was missing more of her clothes.

The highlight of the show was a song called “Swim,” which seemed to consist entirely of the lyrics, “swim, muthafuka, swim muthafuka, swim, muthafuka, swim.” The singer climbed onto the amps, reached the rail of the balcony, climbed up and dangled himself over the crowd, which beseeched him to “Swim!” A stagehand kept feeding him more mic cord as he continued to climb along the balcony and finally made a dramatic leap into the crowd. He was cleanly caught and sailed as if sliding on ice from one end of the Flood Zone to the other, still holding the mic. It was totally awesome.

Then we had the pleasure of publishing Anthony Dowd’s story of playing piano for Frank Sinatra at the Jefferson Hotel before Sinatra played the Mosque and passed out from the heat. Dowd was offered twice his usual fee to extend the hours he played at the Lemaire Restaurant until Sinatra left.

Sinatra arrived at 10 p.m. surrounded by guys with walkie-talkies (remember, this is pre-cell phone days), an advance man with a clipboard, comic Tom Dreesen (Sinatra’s opening act), two beefy bodyguards who handled the money, and a coterie of friends. They stayed in a private dining room for an hour while Dowd played, then came out and sat around his piano. Sinatra sang along to “Autumn in New York,” even though he had just performed a show. Then he stumbled through “Everything Happens to Me,” forgetting the words.

Dowd’s hands were aching by this time, but saxophonist Skip Gailes came in to help, and the bodyguards slipped him a $200 tip. Various people kept whispering for him to play “Laura,” Sinatra’s favorite song. He did twice. Sinatra and his party stayed until after 1 a.m., then left. The next night, the singer collapsed at the Mosque and was taken to MCV.

The last brush belongs to the band Animal Farm, a group that moved to Richmond from North Adams State College in Massachusetts because they heard Richmond was “nice and cheap. We didn’t know the crowds were going to be so tough. In Boston, the crowds were just more. It was a bigger, more active scene.” Like it was really going to be easier to launch a band from Richmond. Ha!

I think they really moved down here because vocalist Mike Hsu got a job as a DJ on WVGO on the 2-7 p.m. weekday shift. The other guys, Wayne Driscoll, Steve Gullotti, Aaron Tunnell, manager Gary Engel and soundman Bill Crowell, had to make do in this foreign, backward land. Driscoll worked at Sign Graphics, Tunnell was a dispatcher at Dominion Service, Gullotti was a “food service manager.” They shared a practice space in Shockoe Bottom with Zag Man Zig, All Natural Band and Mirage. But the band’s best days were behind them, back in Boston. Richmond was the beginning of the end. There were rumors about this one getting extreme religion and that one putting a hand in the collective kitty. Either can break up a band.

But here’s their brush with greatness. They met Jon Stewart, then a show host on MTV, now the mega-star of the “Daily Show” on Comedy Central. He was doing stand-up at Shotz in Farmville and dropped in on their gig. “He said we were awesome.”

When Harry Met Sally

Women who aren’t married and want to be sometimes ask me how I met my husband. It was a long path through a chain of bands, which could have gone several different ways – and in that sense, it seemed like fate.

I could have met him right away if I had gone to a Stiff Richard show at the Metro. There was a blackboard above the downstairs bar that listed the bands for the week and I saw the name. The band was Guy Pettengell, guitar and songwriter, Billy Britt, drums, and Bobby Jorgenson, bass. In due time, I received their CD “Squeeze” in the mail and gave it to Peter Bell to review because he knew Pettengell from somewhere and was eager to review it. The review was okay but not glowing.

Time passed and Bell himself got into a band, October. Ironically, Jorgenson was playing guitar in that band, a holdover from the original line-up called Solid Ground. Bell urged me to see them because, he promised, Jorgenson looked like Frank Daniel, a guy from Single Bullet Theory and My Uncle’s Old Army Buddys who I had a futile crush on.

It was true. They could have been related. I saw October at Jimmy Ryan’s and Moondance. Before the Moondance show, the band Thelma Shook had decorated my front door in the dead of night with flyers and cardboard “Shook” eyeglasses, and left me a whole box of cassettes. I was passing out those cassettes to everyone at Moondance, encouraging people to submit reviews. One of the people who got a cassette was Jorgenson.

I still remind him that if he had only written a review and gotten in touch with me to submit it, we might have met a year sooner, but he didn’t. (Small World aside: He went on to play bass in Thelma Shook.)

Time passed. I had heard of the band Joe America. Frank used to go see them play, and never invited me, which made me very curious about this mysterious local music scene that hardly anyone knew about that didn’t start until 11 o’clock at night. We’d go to dinner and a movie, and then he’d leave and go on for part two of his evening without me. Where did he go? What did he do? Who did he meet? That curiosity birthed the Richmond Music Journal, so now I had a reason to see Joe America for myself, without a date. I was a reporter.

This band took me to venues I had never been to before, and never went to again, like the Bus Stop in Shockoe Slip and Cimarron Rose on Midlothian Turnpike, a steakhouse famous for its superdelicious cinnamon buns. There’s a Walgreen’s now on Buford and Midlothian where this place was. I loved their cassette, “What World?” and knew all the songs by the time I first saw them, so their originals were as familiar as covers to me.

The band was Chris Douthit, JJ Loehr, Keith MacPhee, Chip Farnsworth and Merewyn, a background vocalist. The other background vocalist, Chuck, had been promoted to “management” and their soundman, Flash, had gone on tour with Reba McEntire, so now they had Bill Murray on sound and lights. It was the first big operation outfit I encountered. (Small World aside: MacPhee had been in Single Bullet Theory, too. Loehr had traveled with Bell as an opening act when Bell was in Ten Ten and had been in a band with Frank.)

Even before 9/11, Joe America stood for patriotism. “We’re watching CNN, a lot of political debates, we’re thinking about racism, looking at both sides of things. We’ve got the best of everything in America and we should be praising that. That’s Joe America. We go after things harder. We can stand in the face of all kinds of things. America is still a place where if you try, and work hard, it’s going to come true for you.”

Their song “Bad Days” was a tribute to people who fought in Desert Storm.

They had talent, equipment, great songs, enough covers to placate the bookers, a great PA, lights, and touring truck, but there was mysterious “bad blood going around town with the clubs…if you get on the wrong side of people in this town, it really hurts, and we’ve made the mistake of trying to expose ourselves at some wrong times.”

What?

“Where we belong is having the Dave Matthews Band open for us. We have values, we’re straight with people; we’re upfront; we don’t tell lies. That’s the greatest thing about our band. We’re trying to work through the music scene in Richmond, but there’s a whole lot of schmucky people.”

Douthit was proud of the fact their songs varied. “You check the Beatles out. Every song doesn’t sound the same. But you go down to hear Fulflej, the Pleasure Astros, every song is the same, even the same lyrics. These kids have one good idea and they do it every time on every song. We do acoustic, electric, go over the edge, overdrive, but we keep it dynamic.”

The real reason their songs sounded different was they had three very distinct songwriters, MacPhee, Loehr and Douthit, bringing in material. I especially liked Loehr's "Think About a Song" and "Every Little Danger." I still have a version of the latter on my iTunes. "Guardian Angel" and "Lies" were my MacPhee favorites.

Soon enough, they dissolved. Time passed. When MacPhee formed a new band with Keith Clarke called Grumbledog, I got a call from Clarke to come out to see them at Twisters. It was MacPhee’s Joe America songs again, interspersed with Clarke’s excellent pop tunes which sounded like radio-ready ‘90s hits. It was a good show, so I was ready to go see them again next time they called. They were going to be at the Sunset Grill. But they weren't a three piece anymore. They had a new drummer, Farnsworth from Joe America. And oh….they added a second guitar, Bobby Jorgenson. By the end of their set on the Sunset Grill’s outdoor stage, I had made up my mind. It took a couple more shows to bag him.

And that’s how we met. It only took three years and four bands. No woman who has ever asked to hear this story has made it to the end. They want to know an easier way to meet a guy. Or at least a quicker one.

Letters, We Get Letters

Several months into the first year of the paper, the letters to the editor section was rocking, and it stayed rocking almost until the end of the paper’s run. We’d often have two full pages of them, and not made-up letters like Punchline or Brick, either.

This was accomplished by eliminating the biggest hurdle to writing letters to the editor: the writing part. This was before email became commonplace. You actually had to put a stamp on a letter back then. I got a second phone line and put an answering machine and a fax on it just for letters, comments, complaints, whatever, day or night, and that line often rang through the night. This was also more than a decade before the Richmond Times-Dispatch thought up the “Your 2 Cents” call-in line.

The fax line did okay, but the answering machine steadily produced pages of copy for the paper every issue. People called in from the clubs to shout their approval of whatever band they were watching…and this was also before cell phones were affordable, so they were calling from pay phones. Someone regularly called from the Village pay phone to complain about the local music scene. Guys called post-coitus from bed and put their husky-voice girlfriends on the line to comment. Mostly they called to complain about the paper, complain about the music scene, complain about local radio, and promote themselves.

“It’s weird to me that you guys are trying to promote local music, yet every issue is about what you guys did every night at a club. There’s more than three or four ways of looking at the scene here in town.”

But I only had three or four writers.

“The jazz scene in Richmond is tired. Jazz is an emotional thing, and all these white guys in Richmond are trying to make it a technically academic, non-emotional thing, headwise great jazz, but heart-wise, no…All the same guys are still all the same guys. The ones who were popular 10 years ago and running the show are still doing it.”

Guess what, still all the same guys.

“We want to read more about the new bands. You could be using the ‘Lyrics and Deep Thoughts’ page for more band interviews. Just do band interviews and record reviews.”

There is nothing duller than a band interview. It is essentially the same story over and over. Guys meet. Form a band. Think they have lightning in a bottle or a different sound. Want to get discovered. Gigging for dollars in crappy bars to small crowds of indifferent beer drinkers watching sports on the TV right over the band’s heads. Van keeps breaking down. Drummers keep quitting. Get money together to finally record debut album. Recording process is so acrimonious, band breaks up when the album is finished. The two guys most serious about the music, usually the ones who wrote the songs, form a new band. Process starts over.

Then for a few lucky ones, they actually do get signed by an offshoot of a major label, or even a major label. Record producer makes them change their sound to something more like what is currently popular. The songs that got them noticed are homogenized until they sound derivative and overproduced. The band is sent out on some grueling tours with little marketing support for the tour or the album. Label doesn’t pick up their option. They come home, sometimes broke and with nothing to fall back on, sometimes with just enough money to buy a house, start their wife in a business, or open a recording studio.

I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened to Fighting Gravity, Agents of Good Roots or The Ernies, but I do know their shows and their self-produced music sounded better than their label releases. I was especially disappointed in Agents. Their little cassette they sold at shows was terrific. Their label debut CD: barely recognizable as them.

“Nobody cares about bands like My Uncle’s Old Army Buddys and Useless Playboys. You should be writing about bands like King Sour, Kepone, Used Carlotta, Spike the Dog, Bucket and The Seymores. They’re all signing record contracts.”

Then there was Frog Legs, who found a way to do theater on my answering machine. With various members on different extension lines, they could record nonsensical improv in tandem.

“Well, I was riding the mechanical bull with the fly roper and the transcendental maggot when I was surprised to see the munificent cheerleader with the rose pink memorandum stapled to her forehead. Written in lipstick across that piece of paper was: ‘Pretty girls love Frog Legs.’”

This was before digital answering machines, when there was a tape I could remove and put into a tape player to transcribe. I couldn’t do that today. There’s email, but that isn’t as purely anonymous and impulsively liberating as voice messages left in the dead of night, and that anonymity gave birth to much creativity and safely vented the frustration from the local music community.

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.

Pump Down the Volume - 1994

“John and I were working in his office and there was a record on the turntable and it was turned up LOUD. The director of the film walked in and asked John to turn down the music. I think only people in our generation know what the phrase ‘turn down the music’ represents. I saw the look that shot across his face. He walked over and turned up the volume twice as loud. In my opinion, if God is the kind of fellow I think he is, this one act alone should grant John automatic admission into Heaven.”
— Don Novello’s obituary for John Belushi, 1982

“Every sound person in Richmond is almost deaf.”
— Scott Burger in “Throttle,” on why the music’s so loud

Dateline 1994 - John Belushi would think some of the Richmond clubs are heaven. Good, bad or indifferent, things are certainly loud, and we have to ask, if it’s so loud to the point of being indistinguishable, is this what the bands really want? Not be heard as anything but a consistent homogenized roar that all sounds alike?

Nik Turner of Hawkwind had a full-page ad in Swill magazine promoting his Space Ritual ‘94 tour “featuring an amazing light show,” and there Richmond was on the sked, squeezed in as usual between Chapel Hill and Baltimore.

Cleopatra records had sent me the CD and their repugnant catalog. We had dutifully listened and heard a lot of undescribable (as opposed to indescribable) music from guys who were pretending like they were on spaceships or something. We could a) not go and always wonder if we missed something “amazing” or b) go and see something “amazing” or c) go and know for sure we didn’t miss anything “amazing,” so we went, and it was pretty amazing, all right.

A little after 10 p.m., we’re debating whether it’s too early to go in. We want to avoid the opening bands, but Twisters shows are starting later and later. “Nobody comes until after 11 p.m.,” majordomo Steve Douglas says, but there’s a line forming at the door so in order just to secure a good standing spot for after midnight, we are being forced to set up camp on the bleachers and risk band burn-out long before the exalted Nik Turner shows up.

Whoa, band burn-out is instantaneous. They have white-guy dreadlocks, nasty devil goatees, gazillion tattoos, and they look like that Muppet band that has Animal as the drummer. They buckle down in some stance like they’re holding back hell and do something to the very bottom of the top guitar string that creates just a tremendous roar. The lead singer, who looks like an evil troll, is screaming. This goes on non-stop for an hour. Between songs, while sampled “War of the Worlds” type chatter plays on the PA, they turn their backs to the audience and light lots of cigarettes, pass them back and forth, and guzzle beer which is lined up on top of all the amps.

I don’t know who this is. They look like Sleep from San Francisco, rude, crude and multi-tattooed, but they don’t sound like the CD I have at home, so I turn to this blondie blonde guy on the bleachers next to me, and yell at him, “WHO’S THIS BAND?,” giving him a free ear blow in the process.

“THE FIRST ONE,” he says.

Aha ha ha. Wise ass.

Turns out it’s Buzzoven, or Buzzov•en as they prefer. Buzzov•en would have done a good job accompanying the Los Angeles earthquake. It sounded like the ground beneath Twisters was going to open up and suck us all down into a spiral of steaming lava. Equipment breakdowns did nothing to deter the roar. Douglas just swarmed around the rafters and over the amps like a monkey in a baseball cap, gluing, sticking, plugging, and screwing things back together. When the band finished, he swept up the broken glass.

The bill was attracting an almost exclusively male crowd, Richmond’s entire underground science fiction contingent, all these guys who spend their lives in their rooms reading comic books and look like Mr. Potato Head as rendered by Salvador Dali. It was a relief to see semi-normal Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee. We could send Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee on forays to the bar to get beer without losing our camp site on the top bleacher, although he was subsequently put on Twisters house arrest for drawing a picture of the United Nations logo on the men’s room wall.

The band Sleep came on next, and once again there is an hour’s worth of roaring from hell. Anne, who’s supposed to be covering this band for the Journal but has been rendered inoperative because she’s on a date, says, “this is better than a vibrator,” as a sonic buzz saw sound slams the air. We sit down on the bleachers to experience it properly. It is like a vibrator. Film from a moon landing plays on a screen behind them. The guitar player is wearing only red sweat pants and he has no shoulders, no chest, no hips, and the sweat pants are creeping lower and lower. There’s a tattoo on his tail bone.

“WHERE ARE THEY FROM?” Don’t Call Me Jimmeeee yells in my ear. I write on my pad, “San Francisco.” He yells back do I like them? I write back, “We’re waiting for his pants to fall down.” Kami has the camera ready to go for the moon shot but it doesn’t happen. The crowd on the floor is dense and bobbing. After Sleep comes off stage, Red Pants is standing right in front of us talking to somebody. Don’t Call me Jimmee is holding Kami’s camera looking for motor speed or F-stops or something and we go into a panic to get it back because suddenly WE HAVE CRACK! Red Pants’ drawers have now slipped to appliance repairman level right in front of our faces and we can’t get Don’t Call Me Jimmee’s attention to hand the camera back. We’re hysterical. Kami finally rips it out of his hands, but by this time Red Pants has wrapped a shirt around his mostly bare ass. No posterior is caught for posterity.

Now it’s finally time for Nik Turner and as if some walkee-talkee communication is going on, the last crew of sci-fi heads come in at exactly the right moment for the headliner, accompanied by the extraordinarily dapper looking Buzzy Lawler. We swoon. It’s 12:40 a.m. How he’d know exactly what time to come? How do you compute these things?

The “amazing light show” is floating green blobs on the wall. I’ve seen this done better in little psychedelic bars back in the Sixties where some hippie sat in a booth and dripped food coloring on glass slides and held them up in front of a projector. There’s a white strobe light flashing which is always a cool effect, and a fog machine, but where’s Nik Turner?

And who’s this guy trying to fight his way through the crowd wearing weird goggles and a bicycle racing helmet with flashing lights on it, shaking two phone-book sized maraca things? The crowd doesn’t let him through. Goofs dressed like this are so common on Grace Street, it takes awhile for people to realize this is the star of the show! Let him through!

The star is wearing black long winter underwear with electric blue lights imbedded in them. He has an old man’s body, skinny, narrow, emaciated shoulders, flaccid thighs, and a little, low hanging, poochy stomach. But his helmet and goggles and weird mechanical voice and hand movements have a certain erotic style and so we have a show.

Don’t Call Me Jimmee is howling, “They all expected Hawkwind playing with Motorhead and what they’re getting is Devo!” He thinks this is a hoot. We are fairly entertained, but it would have been better earlier without two hours of head-exploding opening acts. Kami says the lighting for a photo is hopeless and has gone; Anne has moved to another venue; Don’t Call Me Jimmee is now formally under Twister house arrest for graffiti crime; Buzzy has disappeared; I’ve had too many beers, too many Camels, and feel like my head’s been banged against the wall too many times. At 1:45 a.m., at a point I estimated was two-thirds through Turner’s set, I surrender, hoping whatever truly “amazing” thing about the light show didn’t happen after I left. (Later I hear Turner played until 3:45 a.m., another two hours! Is this possible?!)

Just as I’m pulling away, I see the delectable Dirtball drummer Peter Headley coming down the street. His timing is even better than the sci-fi heads. Come at the end of the last set, see the finale and pay no cover. Some people have got the knack of this down. Well, damn.

All the way home I hear crickets. Something has happened to my hearing. Inside my apartment I hear crickets. Even though I live in the city, crickets roar in my head all night. Fortunately crickets is not a bad noise to sleep to. Next morning I hear crickets. All day long I hear crickets. I call Anne that evening and Anne’s hearing crickets. Everyone who was at the show is hearing crickets. We now live in an invisible cricket-filled sci-fi environment. Maybe this is the amazing thing that happens on the Space Ritual ‘94 tour.

YOU WILL HEAR CRICKETS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Epilogue 2007: This was the beginning of why you have to yell at me now if you want me to hear you.

They Hated Us

From the very beginning, we were hated. Our slogan was, "Everybody hates us. Everybody reads us." In chronological order, the Hate Parade:

1. The first to hate us was the club managers in the Grace Street corridor. We started to go see bands playing in Shockoe Bottom. That pissed them off. One pulled his ad. The only real music was at Twisters, Hole in the Wall, and the Metro. The Bottom was cover bands and frat boys. I was a traitor. Right off the bat.

2. We gave the Richmond Music Cooperative CD so-so reviews, so they hated us. They were the "cool" people, too, so that was deadly. We were the only exclusively local music newspaper and didn't treat the RMC like the second coming.

3. We liked the Vapor Rhinos. So everyone who hated the Vapor Rhinos hated us. The Vapor Rhinos were bad because they weren't serious about the music. (But that's what we liked.) One guy, an acoustic folk musician, gave us fits about this. Then he had a sex change operation. Really.

4. The guys who took writing about music seriously hated us because my writers were mostly female and they wrote more about the social life of the scene and the desirability of the musicians, rather than the music -- the art of music! These serious writer guys venomously aired their hatred of us in the articles they wrote for other publications, often with very nasty and cruel comments about our physical unattractiveness. During the latter half of the RMJ’s print years, I had all male writers who strove to be serious, so the disdain subsided. I still think the paper was more amusing when it was a tongue-in-cheek Tiger Beat.

5. The waitresses at Marvin’s hated us. Marvin’s on Laurel Street across from the Hole in the Wall, was like the communal living room for Oregon Hill. The waitresses there were the lovers and mother-figures of choice for the musicians who sat in there all night every night. Marvin's waitresses brought them beer and food, and cleaned up after them. What more can you want in a woman? The waitresses didn’t like the girl reporters from the Journal invading their turf.

(The cool thing about Marvin’s was within minutes after someone famous died, photos of that person would be plastered all over the restaurant. Also, if someone well-known was in Playboy, they had a copy on the counter you could borrow so you could see the famous naked woman without having to buy the issue. Yes, I mean you, Tonya Harding.)

Anyway, I was an interloper and never received a warm welcome at Marvin’s. In fact, I suspect many of the middle-of-the-night anonymous hate calls came from Marvin’s waitresses accusing me of being sexually frustrated and desperate for a man. One of the more colorful attacks said I dressed in “Garanimals” clothes, a high-waisted style favored by toddlers. That was actually true.

6. Then the guys mismanaging the Flood Zone and whichever radio station was The Buzz hated us. I won't go into it in detail here. It was the whole GWAR nudity, ABC Board deal, which was more about the Flood Zone's ABC violations regarding signage and selling, but the publicity about GWAR was in the forefront in the media. Both GWAR and the RMJ spent big money on lawyers so we wouldn't have to testify against the Flood Zone, but the case was settled in the hallway, and the Flood Zone guys still couldn't make a financial go of it. The undeserved blame clung to us like skunk funk for years. The ABC enforcer tried to shake my hand when it was all over, after attempting to kick in my front door with her foot just weeks earlier, but I was having none of it. She cost me $500 for nothing. My lawyer didn't even get to speak.

7. Local radio hated us anyway because our readers were always writing in about how much they hated local radio. Getting an ad from a radio station was next to impossible.

8. People who hated Frog Legs hated us because we liked Frog Legs. It was another case of the men don't know, but the little girls understand. The guys did have to give props to Tom Illmensee's guitar skills, though. There was a respectful hush when he soloed.

9. Like the Richmond Music Cooperative before them, we gave so-so reviews to all the CDs of the Floating Folk Festival, so some members of that group hated us. One guy's hatred was so far-reaching and intense, I think I could have actually sued for malicious libel and won. But he also hated Wal-Mart.

10. The Metro hated us. After the Flood Zone/Gwar show incident, they didn't want to admit me to shows anymore. I was detained and sent packing every time by those Arabian brothers and their army of gigantic bald bouncers. Guest list? Your name is not on the guest list. That's your name? No, it's not. Not on guest list. No guest list for you. They thought I was a double agent for the ABC Board, or if any of my photos of Metro shows got published, they'd get shut down. Maybe so. There were holes in the floor upstairs big enough to see downstairs. You don't want to hear about the bathroom.

11. Cracker, David Lowery and Sound of Music hated us. I actually liked that band and bought two of their albums, but Lowery didn't like a review I wrote of a Flood Zone show. (I liked that show. What's better than Sweet Thistle Pie or Nothing to Believe In?) He was insulted because he thought we wrote he wasn't doing anything to help the local scene. What we actually wrote was none of the bands he championed were successful. It seemed at the time Dave Matthews' management team was doing more to launch Charlottesville musicians, but looking back now, all the ones he championed fizzled out, too. Remember those solo girl acts who were going to be the next big thing?

12. Then, surprise, Frog Legs got management and now they hated us. Frankly, I thought the CD they did was not good and the girls who worked at East Coast Entertainment told me the feedback from the frat houses was not good. They were not a frat band. They were getting bad career guidance. We said so and got hated for it. The Bone Anchor website remembers the tours as a good time, but then the next entry has the band dissolving. (We don't even get a mention for booking that weekly gig at Moondance for them in the first place. That wasn't easy. We had to chase Chuck Wrenn through the Farmers' Market when he was loopy to get him to give us Tuesday nights and then call everyone we knew and beg them to show up the first few Tuesdays until the word of mouth got going.)

13. People who hated Peter Bell (Ten Ten) hated us. We gave him a platform to express his views. Some of his music reviews may have been tainted by his disdain for the players, but they were colorful. Our gigantic interview with him, which ran over several issues, was very well-read and talked about, even by the people who insisted it was all lies.

14. One of Peter's pet targets was a large and financially lucrative cover band Spectrum. In fact, none of our writers liked that band much, so Spectrum hated us and we got a rep for being hostile to cover bands. (They're actually good. They just didn't appeal to my pierced-tongue writers.)

15. So cover bands hated us. The Fredds hated us. BS&M hated us. And they were the only ones who had money to buy ads! We're screwed! And the truth is, I'd actually rather hear a good cover band.

I forget who hated us towards the end. There's this one guy who sent some super vicious emails just recently (and the old, ugly and fat slams were there, and this guy isn't even a Serious Writer Guy!) because I didn't write something about him on the website, but I just never answered back. I don't care. I used to let everyone have a say. I printed all the hate mail. Now I don't. But I recently found a 2000 interview I did with Scott Mills about the first eight years of the Journal, and we talked about everyone who hated me. It brought back these fun memories I'm retelling here. Being hated is not so bad. At least people were talking about the paper!

(Overnight, a very small, grainy photo of a topless Tonya Harding mysteriously disappeared from this entry! Apparently there are people whose job it is to search and delete those things through the night. Where do I apply for that job? Anyway, I have substituted a more clothed photo. Then a week later, I noticed our famous cover photo of a Gwar phallus being patted by many hands also disappeared. I think you can still see it and other Gwar photos if you take the link, but this is very mysterious. Even the Frog Legs photo was censored. It was just a band photo. Everyone was wearing clothes. Why would it get flagged? Are frog's legs obscene?

Still, I guess it's a good thing that blogspot is not full of porn, even though my stuff was "art.")