The Mezmerons Story
An Abridged Biography

Let's start this chapter of my band biography in the most generic way possible:

Out of the ashes of Dry Heave rose the legendary Mezmerons. The core unit of Chris Clabbers on vocals, Erwin Michelfelder on guitar and Brett R. Nielsen on drums persevered through rigorous touring, stints in rehab and bidding wars between all of the major record companies...

Seriously, the Mezmerons were the result of me actually practicing and learning to play guitar. We started off as, oddly enough, a jam band of sorts, if by jam band you mean a few lazy, mildly talented (at best) individuals who would just fuck around for hours playing music of wildly varying quality at ground quaking volumes. Somewhere along the line I actually began to come up with music which had, at the bare minimum, a beginning and end, and could in an abstract way be referred to as "songs". The first Mezmerons line-up included Brett R. Nielsen on drums, Chris Nickey on guitar or bass, and me on guitar. We had no real songs, but Chris Clabbers would occasionally guest on free-form vocals. We jammed in demented fashion, and Chris' words, when you could understand them dealt with such topics as "running in circles in a small square room" and other such tales of anxiety. This loose lineup lasted for about the summer between High School and the start of our one and a half semester stay at Bucks County Community College, a bastion of culture if ever there was one. Chris Clabbers and I were DJ's at the BCCC radio station, which broadcast only to the cafeteria at the school. I had the lunchtime shift, making it a mission of mine to offend as many people as possible, while exposing them to good music, whether they knew it or not. Requests were never refused, although invariably I played them either backward, at the wrong speed, or for about twenty seconds or so. In the meantime, our "band" had progressed to the point where the quotations could be removed, because we actually had some real songs, not to mention a practice space. Chris Nickey, who had really only loosely been a member of the band, had since bailed, and continued to pursue other venues, particularly his band, Spare Tire, (now known as the Spare Tire Band, at the advice of their press agent and legal team) which has been in existence since 1983. They are currently conducting an extensive tour of the Balkan region, to be followed quickly by dates in Honduras and southern Chile.

Brett R. Nielsen, who was also a charter member of Spare Tire, handled duties for the Mezmerons as well, often to the point where he'd be literally falling asleep behind the kit. Going from memory, I can't remember exactly the order of the bass players who played with the Mezmerons, but we went through several in a fairly condensed time period. Jim Grace, the man perpetually stuck in the 70's in fashion, grooming and musical preference was one. He played guitar for Besalem barflies Katweizel (the spelling is a guess. Regardless, it's definitely one of the worst names for a band in the history of rock music). The band had a small gaggle of fans, most notably a colorful character who went by the acronym B.S.A. This is second hand information, but I was told by a good friend of his that B.S.A. stood for "Bill Smith arsonist", because at one time, he'd gotten pissed off at some guy, so he lit a tree next to the guy's house on fire. He also wrote "Ted Rules" on the side of the guy's house ("Ted" meaning Ted Nugent). B.S.A. was big, loud and intimidating, but as long as you didn't cross him, you were safe.

Darren Finizio tried out on bass as well, a bizarre and memorable experience. Darren went on to perform as Hoppy the Frog, where he performed children's music dressed up in a frog costume. He also formed several conceptual bands; a couple examples are Paraplegic, where he came on stage in a wheelchair and Stan and the Ass Bandits, a backing band consisting of porno store employees. His highest profile act is Muscle Factory, who recently performed again after a long absence. Muscle Factory's music is intended to be music to inspire a hard workout, and the live show includes members of the band lifting weights. Chris Clabbers benched some weights at a Muscle Factory show a few years back. But I digress; Darren's Mezmerons audition was interesting in that he didn't seem to have any intention to actually learn the songs, or adhere to any melody. He also decided to do some free-form wordless vocals, which was totally bizarre.

I honestly don't remember any other bass players who "tried out" for the band, but there are a couple who would go on to play with us long enough to be considered "a member". Craig was the first such person. I have no idea how we hooked up with him. Probably a friend of a friend, I guess. Craig was from Philadlephia, and he was a top notch bass player who could play better than any of us. He'd played in bands before, notably Philly punk band Autistic Behavior. He could pretty much reproduce anything he'd heard by ear, which made me quite sick. We learned a lot from Craig. The problem was Craig was a perfectionist, and the Mezmerons had a rough time attaining even a moderate level of perfection. I don't think he cared too much for my songs either. Understandable, considering that when he joined the band, we only had a few sketch-like tunes. What also blew was the fact that Craig didn't drive. He lived in South Philly, and we would have to drive downtown to pick him up, then take him to our practice space in the suburban wasteland of Penndel, Pa., about 20 miles away. (We practiced in Chris Clabbers' Dads' Glass shop, as in glass for buildings, located in a small industrial complex.) Obviously, after rehearsal (or fucking around) was over, we'd have to drive him back. I don't remember if we played any shows with Craig, but we did have some fun. Somewhere along the line Craig bailed, for all of the reasons previously discussed.

The Mezmerons final bassist, and longest enduring was Mike McLaughlin. We knew Mike from High School, and honestly I thought he wouldn't dig our music because it was fairly aggressive and more concerned with twists and turns than melody. But despite his power-pop and more traditional rock leanings (of course there's nothing wrong with that), he not only hung in there, he did a damn good job. Mike had been in a super New Wave named band called Parallel, who I'd never heard, with power pop enthusiast and eternal optimist/sentimentalist Ken Hinchey. (Since posting this ridiculous blog, I have found out that Ken was not in this band. The other members of Parallel were actually Chris Nickey and notorious charlatans the Szweck brothers.) Ken hosted a fairly well known local radio show called Spaghetti in a Box, and became a photographer of famous and not so famous musicians, among other things. He even photographed Tonewreck, a band that I would become involved with, following the demise of the Mezmerons (lurid details to follow). Anyway, his photos do not blow.

Mike's contribution to the band seemed to be the spark that we needed at the time. He was really into learning these ridiculous, sometimes ludicrously complicated songs that I was throwing together. As a result of a steady practice schedule, we were, after a while, a tight, weird band. I've gotten this far in describing everything except the Mezmerons music, because it's hard to put across; Our music involved fairly high speeds, lots of riffs, multiple time changes and the occassional pop hook. We covered the Flamin' Groovies, Mission of Burma (before it was cool) and the Guess Who. I was hell bent on creating music that others weren't doing, but more than that, I was just coming up with music spur of the moment. A big influence on my music was cutting my Grandmother's lawn. It took me two or three hours to cut the grass, and in the midst of the mindless task, I would think up entire songs in my head. I'd mentally revise them until they sounded decent to me. Afterward, I'd go home and pick up my guitar, and try to replicate what I'd thought. Some were so complicated sometimes that it would take me hours, even days to figure it out. Obviously, I had a lot of free time. The one aspect of songwriting that I ignored in the later period of the Mezmerons was vocal melody. I left all of that to Chris Clabbers, which was mightly presumptuous of me. I can't imagine trying to come up with vocals to those songs. Of course, since Chris had no musical training, the results were varied. But Chris had a creative streak, and he managed to come up with some interesting stuff.

Brett had his good and bad days as well, and sometimes when I think back on it, he took quite a beating from the rest of the band. The music, because it was so spastic and precise, was not very forgiving. If you missed a note or a beat, you were pretty much screwed. When that happened live, which it almost always did, it made for a long thirty minute set. We played a handful of shows over the course of (I think it was) four years in existence. We should have played a lot more, but we were really, really bad self-promoters. We appeared on the radio twice, once live from the studio of WTSR (we played in what can only be called a glorified closet), which was a mess, and once live on WTSR's Radiothon, which was half decent. We recorded two EP's worth of material which were never released. We recorded the music for the both sessions in one day each, I'm pretty sure. Chris's vocals for the second session were recorded over a period of several months, and involved a complicated series of overdubs. It was on the way to the studio for the original recording session that we realized that Chris didn't have any actual lyrics to the tunes, because he was writing them enroute. We broke up because we weren't going anywhere, and because it was enough already. We did have a shitload of fun along the way though. That's probably all you need to know; sure there's other crap that happened along the way, but since my memory has as many holes in it as swiss cheese (possibly as a result of my involvement in the "music business", if you catch my drift) I think I've said enough.