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.

These are the Bands of My Life
A Rock 'N' Roll Confessional

Just for fun, I've decided to type my musical biography. Just what you wanted to hear? Doubt it. That's because every moron who's picked up a "rock 'n' roll" instrument has at some time been in a band with a bunch of other morons, who are all deluded enough to think that they can create something worth hearing. Now people can record music by themselves at home on their computer, which means there's even more crap music out there to sift through. Some people need to realise that they should stick to their day job. The same could probably be said for me, if you go by most of the crappy bands I've played with. I play the guitar, and what I've found out through the years is that every motherfucker on the planet also plays the guitar, and they want to "jam" with you. Jamming is fun for musicians if the other guy doesn't completely blow, which is usually the case. As evidenced by "Jam" bands, it's fun for the musicians to jam, but not so good for the audience. That's because it's fucking boring to listen to. So what's the point? Unless you're an allstar jazz musician, or maybe the Grateful Dead in their prime, nobody with a brain wants to hear you. Of course that kind of music draws huge crowds, but then again George Bush got elected twice (well, once legitimately), so the number of people who actually have a brain in their heads may be in the minority. My first "band" was named Dry Heave, and we played super amateur noisy crap which is in retrospect great. The band consisted of me on screaming and guitar, my friend Chris Clabbers on screaming and whatever drummer or guy who could bang on a loosely assembled drum kit was around. The "songs" sometimes consisted of "lyrics" which were written throughout the day during our long days at Neshaminy High School. The "music" was our version of punk rock, which we were into at the time. Basically, I just played spazz guitar and either Chris or I would yell some goofy lyrics. A couple of the songs which we actually had the capability to play more than once were "My Bathrobe" and "Chris Smokes Pot".
Just to give you an idea of the amount of thought which went into these brilliant compositions, here's some lyrics:

"My Bathrobe" (Clabbers/Michelfelder)

My Bathrobe
My Bathrobe
My Bathrobe
Will Live
Old Bathrobes
Never Die

Other Heave gems were mostly made up on the spot, some only a second or two long. A couple of notables are "Dick Vacuum Cleaner" and "Canker Sore". Frank Devlin wrote a controversial article about the band which appeared in the High School newspaper. (Frank later would become a professional journalist, local radio personality and amateur comedian.) Chris Clabbers incited rumours with his response to a question about whether the band was serious or not, which was "we're seriously gay". Though meant as a joke, a few idiots threw homophobic comments at us. Even more controversial was my admission that Pat Benatar drummer Myron Grombacher was a direct influence on the music. In the Heave's later years, we acquired a drummer, who actually "played" the drums, Brett R. Nielsen, who also (barely) attended Neshaminy High School. Philadelphia band the Dead Milkmen released a "best of" compilation called "Dry Heave - the Early Years", a one-sided cassette consisting of 42 songs in thirty minutes, all recorded on a boom box, or a Radio Shack "stereo" condenser mic plugged directly into a tape deck. Alas, the Milkmen got signed, and had to cease and desist selling tapes, so this classic only got into two people's hands. It's a rare gem worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the open market. Seriously, I don't even have a copy. And don't make the mistake of paying hundreds for one of those bootleg copies that have been listed on eBay recently, they're bogus. Alright, really, it's worthless, and really, I don't have a copy, but that bit about the Milkmen releasing it is actually true.

This marks the end of the first chapter of our journey. Sometime soon, I'll be back to present to you the history of my second band, the Mezmerons.

Old Shit I like that other people either don't or don't know about...

The Liquor Giants - Every Other Day at a Time CD
- Liquor Giants CD
The main dude from the Liquor Giants is singer/guitar player/songwriter Ward Dotson (hat, below). Ward was part of the early L.A. "punk/Americana" scene as a member of the original Gun Club. He played on the Gun Club's best stuff, namely Fire of Love and Miami (a good album that Blondie-man Chris Stein unfortunately shittily produced). Ward left the band because he was sick of the overly dramatic and humourless goth scene that the Gun Club ended up attracting. Of course, GC front man Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a pretty goth looking dude, and a heavy duty drunk to boot, so maybe that helped, but I've never read any quotes in regard to that.
The next move for Dotson was to play and write for the Pontiac Brothers, with Matt Simon on vocals. The Pontiac Brothers were a pretty cool band, who were, at times very derivative of the Stones and, at other times, the Replacements. I liked Doll Hut a lot at the time, which is the more Stones-ey side, but Fiesta en la Biblioteca had it's fair share of quality tunes. The Pontiac Bros. lasted from about 1984 to 1988, then they re-grouped for a little bit in 1991-1992 to record Fuzzy Little Piece of the World and tour in support. They re-grouped While the Liquor Giants had already been started, I believe.

The first couple Liquor Giants albums are kind of like a continuation of the Pontiac Brothers later material, in that they emulate the Replacements a lot. The Stones influence is not really present anymore, and Dotson seems way more interested in pop songs. There's some good tunes to be found, but the production's not so hot and the song writing's not quite there yet. Here, their third album, is where they start to show some real promise. Ward's definitely into 60's pop (there's a Kinks Cover), and his songs are starting to show their own identity.
Liquor Giants, their next album, and first for Matador Records, is where the band develops into a great, sloppy and enthusiastic pop-rock band. Oddly enough. the "band" on Liquor Giants is pretty much just Ward Dotson, who plays guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals, with Matt Simon on drums. Most pop bands are too mannered and mannered and 'nice' for my blood, but this stuff has goofy, funny lyrics and enough recklessness, (and distortion) to make for a great listen. This ain't like power pop, this kinda pop is closer to 60's rock like the Kinks/Stones, mixed with Raspberries, 60's Motown sound and Beach Boys influence (without the falsetto vox). That combo of influences may mislead you into thinking that the Liquor Giants are just an exercise in nostalgia, but that ain't the case. Their influences are a springboard wherein they launch into raunchy pop tunes, and inject 'em with their own imprint. This album and the following Every Other Day at A Time are amazingly little known, which is a shame, because they're both killer rock/pop albums loaded with catchy, inventive tunes. This band broke up, to the best of my knowledge, but I've never read so. There's no info available online that tells me squat about where Ward Dotson is now, but I'd most certainly like to hear what he's up to, if anything.



Death of Samantha - Where the Women Wear the Glory and the Men Wear the Pants LP

Death of Samantha were a band from Cleveland who put out a couple albums, an EP and a coupla singles in the late 80's. Some folks'll be familiar with the band that they changed their name to in the early 90's, which is Cobra Verde (named after a Werner Herzog movie). Cobra Verde actually toured backing up Robert Pollard, as Guided by Voices. Guitarist Doug Gillard left CV to stay with GBV after Bob Pollard canned the rest of the band in the midst of the tour. Anyway, the name Death of Samantha is taken from a Yoko Ono single of the same name.
Death of Samantha's first 12" EP, Laughing in the Face of a Dead Man, kinda blows. It's really sloppy and unfocused, and although it has some decent moments, it's best left forgotten. It was on a pretty cool label, Homestead Records (All DoS records were), run by Gerard Cosley, who went on to form Matador Records.
So that brings us to the headlined album. This is a goddamn great album in my book. What does it sound like, you ask? Well...it sounds like an aggressive version of Glam Rock from the 70's, with some weird lyrics, that are ambiguous and, at times, pretty funny. It's got songs with long, intertwining guitar leads, and riffs, which might remind you of Mick Ronson's work with bowie. Oh yeah, it's also got a cover of Cleveland legend Peter Laughner's "Silvia Plath". So it's pretty much old school hard rock, with punk aggression. John Petkovic's vocals are either love 'em or hate 'em. He's got a snide and intense that delivery which I think adds something different to the stew, but others might find a bit over the top. I'm not going to go into Where the Women Wear the Glory... track by track, but suffice it to say, if you see it, I'd recommend snapping it up. For those interested, Cobra Verde are still around, and although I don't think they've ever reached the heights scaled with this album, they keep putting interesting stuff out. Copycat Killers, an album of covers, both obscure and not ,is a fun album worth checking out. I don't think they've ever released anything that sucked, and that's saying something (although, for some reason, none of my friends seem to like this band). By the way, Where the Women... was released on CD, but it's very hard to come by, so vinyl is probably the easier way to go on this one.

Starving Weirdos - Eastern Light 2CDR
(Root Strata)

So this 2 CDR deal made the Wire magazine year end list for one of the best "Outer Limits" releases. I was always a Twilight Zone fan myself rather than the latter, but I actually ordered Eastern Light before I read said mag. Considering that this is a microscopic re-release of 150 after an equally minuscule first release, it seems odd to recommend it to the world at large, but, in this case, I agree with 'em. It is a surprisingly "professional" sounding release, and it stands out among probably any other low budget spacey drone outfit out there. As I said, it's droney, but there's some actual musicality to it, which'll keep you interested. I don't know exactly how to describe this, other than to say that there are obviously plenty of real and homemade instruments at work here. It was most likely improvised, and pieced together later, and, if that's the case, it's very nicely edited. If not, the joke's on me. I gotta admit, I was a little bit concerned because of the goofy name, but Eastern Light is the real deal. By the way, the CDR's are packaged in a nice hand-painted gatefold. If I gave stars, this'd be a shiny page indeed.

www.rootstrata.com

The Who - Endless Wire CD/DVD

I usually don't review big-time releases, but I thought I'd put a review up for this one. I've read a few reviews for Endless Wire and I've found that most of the time they are not fair and balanced. For instance, the annoying, trend sniffing Pitchfork said all kinds of nice things about this album, but the reviewer had to refer to the score repeatedly (I think the idiot gave it a 4.7 or something) to remind the indie kids that it's not cool to like music made by unhip old guys. He didn't really have anything bad to say about it, though. The other thing is that Pitchfork, along with most other reviewers had to remind us that this doesn't sound like the Who with John Entwistle and Keith Moon in the lineup. No shit? An album made by a band who's members are 60+ years old doesn't rock as hard as their classic albums from 30 years ago? What a fucking surprise.

Yes, this album is more subdued than the Who's classic albums (Who's Next, Quadrophenia, etc.), and though I was suprised myself, it's a solid album. It's definitely better than the last few Pete Townshend albums, and without question it's a hell of a lot better than the Who's last studio album It's Hard. It's split into two parts, a collection of 9 songs, and then a "mini-opera" called Wire and Glass, which takes up the second half of the album. I figured it was gonna suck because a mini opera sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially considering Townshend's overblown concepts of the past 10-15 years. It's good. It's got some catchy rock tunes ("We Got a Hit" and "It's Not Enough") and some nice introspective songwriting. I think it makes sense for old guys to mellow out a little bit, I mean how stupid does it look to see old guys trying to rock out like 20 year olds?

Some more reviews of shit I've been listening to lately:

The Bummer Road - Deep Space Circuit 2 CDR

Deep Space Circuit is the Bummer Road's tour CDR(s) for their recent European tour. I don't know how many copies are available, it's not really publicised (you can order one from Time-lag.com, in the link column). It's a compilation of live material. Most of the "songs" are previously released, but that doesn't matter a bit, because they're all reinterpreted and way different than the original versions. I generally expect live albums to be a step down from a band's studio material, but that ain't the case here. They actually rock out at times which comes as somewhat of a suprise to me, and, I guess because it's recorded live, the music is a bit more straightforward than their usual gauzy, reverb blown releases. They have released other live stuff before, but this release makes it evident that the Bummer Road are really hitting their stride.

The Butthole Surfers -

Surfin' a Brown Wave of Nostalgia

The Butthole Surfers are one of those bands that introduced me to acid weirdness as a teen. That first self titled E.P. (the actual name is Brown Reason to Live) came out in 1983 on Alternative Tentacles, the DK's label. At the time, I was generally into hardcore punk, so other than "the Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave", there was very little that resembled HC on this disc. Even so, that tune was more psychotic than practically anything I'd heard to that point. Add to that the completely tasteless cover, and songs with titles like "Bar-B-Q Pope", and "The Revenge of Anus Presley", and I was left wondering if this was just some "shock" band or something. So, like all music that has a lasting effect on me, I had no idea what to make of it at first. I ended up spinning that disc a lot at high volume, much to my parents chagrin. "There's a time to shit, and a time to die, I smoke Elvis Presley's toenails when I want to get high", and "I shot the Pope, I shot the Pope's ass" are just a couple of the lyrical gems from that disc that my parents failed to find an appreciation for. The surprise to me was, these dudes could actually play. Paul Leary was a monster on guitar, the rhythm section pummeled, and Gibby Haynes was a certified wackjob on vocals. Everything about this band seemed demented. Next they released another EP, a live one called PCPPEP. A good name, but not such a great record because they end up playing most of the first record. The insanity of the originals is not matched by the live versions.

A year later out comes Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac on Touch and Go Records, a label they would stay with for their best material. This album was even more demented than the first EP. This is the surfers at their creepiest. Everything comes together on this album; the two drummer sound, the megaphone, delay effect vocals, and more focused and bent guitar. There's a couple of fast songs ("Butthole Surfer" and "Mexican Caravan"), but for the most part this is an acid fueled journey, and not the sunshine and flowers variety. Around this time, the Surfers started touring everywhere, and I ended up catching them at City Gardens in Trenton. They played a good 1-1/2 hour set, then left the stage. Nothing too insane or over the top. Then they came out and played an encore, which consisted of a 20-25 psychedelic jam. There was less applause when they left the stage this time, and quite a few people had left. They came out again, same deal, 20 minute jam. They left the stage to even less applause, and maybe half of the original audience in attendance. At this point, the audience was not even calling for an encore, and of course, they came out again. They played four encores that night, and by the time they were done, there were very few people left in the crowd. It may not always be true, but in general any band that can clear a room is usually worth watching.

Around this time Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis, a four song EP, came out. It's one of my favorite Surfer's discs, though it's short. On "Moving to Florida" Gibby Haynes uses what a lot of people describe as "the old blues singer" voice (kind of like he did on "Lady Sniff" on Another Man's Sac...). To me he sounds like a character straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The song's got this staccato blues riff with weird sounds and the usual bizzarro lyrics ("they'll be making tadpoles the size of Mercurys in Florida"). "To Partner" is a great psych track with lyrics about selling quaaludes to monkeys, among other things.

A couple of months passed before my favorite Butthole Surfers album surfaced. Rembrandt Pussyhorse was different than anything they'd released to that point. There were programmed drums in spots, and the tunes were more sparse and focused. The production was clear, and, most importantly, the songs were surreal. "Creep in the Cellar" is a work of fucking genius.
There's a fiddle part in the song which fits right in with the eerie overtone. Weird thing is, the fiddle was actually on the tape before the band recorded the song. The Surfers bought a used tape to record over, and when they went to mix "Creep", they realized that there was a fiddle track from some bluegrass band that last used the tape. They were recording the tape in the opposite direction, so the track came up backwards. The cool thing was, the backwards fiddle track blended perfectly into the song. The rest of the album is definitely more subtle than their first. It's not over the top madness. It's more subtle, scary and psychedelic. Their version of "American Woman" is one of the greatest, most fucked up covers ever recorded, in my book. It's shrill female vocal and disjointed attack make for a much better tune than the original. Add to that songs with titles like "Strangers Die Everyday", "Waiting for Jimmy to Kick", and "Whirling Hall of Knives" and you've got a malevolent funfest that makes for a near perfect album. When the Surfers toured this album, they began their era of weird stage shows. I saw them in a few variations. The first included smoke machines, two very strange looking strippers, strobe lights, and Jacques Cousteau movies which were projected onto the stage. Later shows had other, much more disturbing movies, namely the notorious "penis surgery" film. Another thing they did was set up a fan facing the audience. They would drop hundreds of cut-out xeroxed roaches into the fan which would spray out all over the front of the club. The xeroxes had the top of a roach on one side, and the bottom on the other, so with the lights dimmed it looked like real roaches coming at you.

The Buttholes would release two more classic albums in the next couple of years, Locust Abortion Technician, and Hairway to Steven. The former includes two cool versions of "Graveyard", a tune that has one of the most wicked guitar riffs (literally wicked), and some seriously deranged vocals. It's also got a tune called "22 going on 23" that creates more mental discomfort than "the Hamburger Lady". Hairway to Steven was not quite as good as the albums that preceded it, but definitely had its moments. It's hard to describe in detail, because each track was signified on the sleeve by a cartoon drawing (hypodermic needle, rabbit shitting on a deer, etc.) I won't go too much into the Butthole Surfers career from this point on. They've had their ups and downs, with a couple of decent albums, some bad ones, but little of the insanity of the earlier stuff. It would've been impossible to keep that up. If you've never heard those first few albums, and you're into acid fueled insanity, you need to dig them up.