Jazz is the first music that I heard on the day I was brought home from the hospital when I was born. One of my father's favorite stories was how he plugged my ears with cotton so I wouldn't hear any music until he got me home, took out the cotton and played "Jazz Me Blues" by Bix Biederbeck. My father loved and played Dixieland and Big Band jazz all the his life. Because of him music, especially jazz was infused into me practically from birth.

   At age two I packed my grocery bag with my stuffed animals, my toy guitar and drum sticks and headed out the door for my first tour. I only made it to the backyard. At Christmas time my grandfather used to play the song "Little Drummer Boy" and sing it to me with his rich German accent which first made me think about playing the drums.

In 1972 when I was twelve years old, my parents started the Central Florida Hot Jazz Society. They brought in acts like Count Basie, Glenn Miller's band and many more. I went to every show and met all the musicians. I had to because my parents put on the shows. It was way cool and I liked being there for the music. We also traveled to New Orleans for jazz festivals where I heard and met Kid Ory, Wild Bill Davidson, Bobby Hackett , Speigal Wilcox, Pete Fountain and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. I also met Woody Allen and Louise Lasser when they were playing clarinet and wash board respectively at the Jazz Heritage Museum with a dixieland band there. I heard a lot of jazz and watched the musicians intensely every where we went. The rhythms, the melodies became embedded within me. There was quite often a Dixieland Jazz band in my livingroom till the wee hours of the morning. I am sure that these experiences have had a major influence on the music I make.

   By age six I was tinkering on the piano, picking out the theme from Exodus on the piano my mother bought for me. She thought I should have piano lessons and I went along with her idea. After a summer of torturous piano lessons, which despite the crabby old teacher I did excellently, I quit and began playing the coronet in the band at my middle school in 7th grade. I also began playing Dixieland at home with my dad at night when he played. I played 1st chair trumpet, baritone and coronet throughout middle school, 10th and 11th grade of high school. The new band director in my 12th grade year said that it was required that I play in the marching band if I wanted to play in the stage/jazz/rock band. I hated marching band so I quit band altogether. So I surfed all summer instead of marching in the 120 degree parking lot for 5 hours a day 5 days a week in the hot Florida summer sun.

   As I turned 16, I formed my first band with my childhood friend Johnny Lemke. It was called "Radio Flyer". We both played guitar and sang, but in Radio Flyer I played electric piano. Johnny taught me a lot of Beatles songs on guitar which I transposed to piano. I studied my Mel Bay Guitar chord encyclopedia and began to write songs with the new chords I was learning. Johnny and I hung out and jammed everyday after school and at night around camp fires out in the woods on posted radio tower property occasionally being chased off by stick wielding rednecks in pick up trucks and police helicopters. Radio Flyer played our first show at the battle of the bands in Orlando, Florida. We didn't win that day but I knew then that I wanted more then ever to do it again win or loose.

By the time I was 18 my friend Chip Cooper turned me on to The Clash. I went crazy for the revolution in their music, the energy of their sound, and discovered a whole world of new music, punk rock. The Clash were a huge influence on me and quickly became my favorite band. Johnny loved The Beatles and when I said, "The Beatles are dead, The Clash Live he became really upset with me. Because of this we ended up going our separate musical ways but still remain friends after all these years.

   In the following eight years I was in these three bands; The Fallout, The Rockers, and The X Dreams.

   I was the singer, song writer, guitarist, and manager for The Fallout between 1980-1982. The Fallout played punk originals and few Clash songs as well. We emulated The Clash with our political ideas, music, and the way we dressed, hence the nickname we were given,"Joey Clash and the Clash Boys". Orlando hadn't seen much punk rock at this point and we scared most of club owners. It was hard to get a show. I booked the Bad Brains on their first tour in 1981. We opened up the show of course. When we arrived at the club to set up for the show the club owner saw us he locked the doors, turned off the lights and put up the closed sign. So we went to a much smaller club, ( The Park Ave. Pub in Winter Park, FL ) and played for donations placed into a hat that was passed around. We barely made enough money to get my PA amp. out of hock. The money I got for hocking the PA went to pay the Bad Brains their $200 guarantee. People in Orlando now who were there at the show then still remember it as a legendary. The place was so packed people were sitting on top of the vending machines to squeeze in. The Fallout also played the "Battle of the Bands" in Orlando. We were the only band to get a standing ovation with the crowd screaming for more, but in the end we didn't win. The winner was the local radio station's favorite big hair metal band. The Fallout stayed together for a couple of years playing with not only the Bad Brains, but also Minor Threat both on their first US tour and also with other bands that were beginning to emerge in the early 80's.

   After the break up of The Fallout, I joined a reggae band called "The Rockers" as the guitarist. I played with them for about a year. We played around Orlando's reggae club scene and once did a show down in Key West at a little place called "Emery's Front Porch Tavern". It was the dive across the side street next to the famous "Sloppy Joe's". One day the leaders of the band decided that they wanted to do dance / disco / rap style music. That not being my thing I moved on.

   Tom Holyz, the sax player who played in The Fallout had become a really good drummer. He and I with Joe Fenwick on bass started a new band called The XDREAMS. The Music scene had grown in Orlando but was still dominated by heavy metal and classic rockers. Punk was still underground and pure. I wrote songs combining punk and a modern psychedelic rock sound creating what I called "Cosmic-Psyc-Punk-Rock'n Roll". The lyrics were metaphysical in nature and the music had a spacey yet punk edge to it as well. We played lots of shows around Central Florida. The XDREAMS were the house band on a public access cable tv show called "Where it's at in Orlando" which I wrote the theme song of the same name. We played all original music, mostly the "Cosmic-Psyc-Punk-Rock'n Roll" stuff and some punk. The show was recorded live on tape in strip mall parking lots and at Fuddrucker's restaurants and aired in the wee hours of the morning. I never saw a single show. The XDREAMS also did a couple of music videos and a 30 minute mini movie called "Random Factors". These were produced by us for Joe Fenwick's college class projects.

About this time I had an epiphany. So I went out to my truck and sat there writing a song called "Time to move along". My band mates who were also my roomies all came out to the truck and asked me what I was doing sitting out there for an hour. I told them it was time for me to leave Orlando and go to California and I was writing a song to tell them. In the fall of 1986 I sold most everything I owned, loaded the rest of it in my Toyota pick-up truck, and drove to San Francisco to become part of the music scene and make a new life.

   In Oct. of 1986 I arrived in San Francisco, CA with no job, hardly any money and nowhere to live. A very nice young women Jane ( "Ten Tall Men" and "Yeastie Girls" fame ) offered the basement of the Maximum Rock n Roll magazine's house. I stayed there for two weeks while I found work and a place to live. While I was there I had access to the vast collection of the Maximum Rock n Roll magazine record collection. There were hundreds if not thousands of records to choose from and mostly all punk rock. I listened to as many as I could while I was there and discovered all kinds of bands that I had never heard of. I used what little money I could spare to buy cassette tapes and recorded as much of this new music as I could with the permission of MRR.This was very exciting and inspiring to discover this treasure trove of new music hidden in the basement. While I was there at the MRR magazine house I met Tim Yohanan the founder of MRR magazine. Tim Yohanan had an idea for an all age club for everyone, including kids who could come and see bands and have their bands play too. No drugs, violence, alcohol, racism, or discrimination was to be allowed. Tim Yohanan, Martin and I went to Berkeley, CA one night and checked out the club for the first time. It was just an empty warehouse then but was soon converted into the "Gilman Street Project". This new underground punk club was where many of today's well known bands cut their teeth, bands such as Green Day, Rancid, Dance Hall Crashers, Operation Ivy, Schlong, AFI, Agent Orange, MDC, RKL, Corrupted Morals, Fang, The Dwarves SF, Sticky, SBJ, Poltry Magic, Crimpshrine, Offspring and tons more.This is where I found the music scene I had been searching for. On the first night the club opened I placed an ad for musicians on the bulletin board and within a week I received calls.

   The first people I jammed with were Tim Romain (bass) and Joel Scherzer (drums). Later they introduced me to Dave Mello and his brother Pat Mello. In the future these four musicians would play a big part in my life as friends and fellow band mates. Dave Mello and I jammed a couple of times in his garage and once Pat Mello came down with his bass and joined in. One day Jesse Michaels, Tim Armstrong (known as "LINT" back then) and Matt Freeman came and asked Dave to be the drummer in their new band "Operation Ivy" and Dave accepted. At this time I had moved from Oakland, CA to Albany, CA which is the same small town which all of these people I have mentioned grew up and lived. We all hung out together at my house 1053 Kains St. quite often jamming, recording and doing art. When a room became available Matt and Tim moved in and shared it. This was during the peak of the OpIvy period. Our house quickly became OpIvy headquarters. Lots of bands stayed with us as they passed through town playing at the Gilman St. Project. It was a fun time. Some of it is a little hard to remember. During this time I did a lot of multi-track recording of songs I was writing and also began to write songs with Tim Armstrong as a duet we called "The LJ's". As "The LJ's" Tim and I recorded 14 songs. This collection of songs I later named "Along The Tracks Of Time". Click here to order The LJ's CD

Living at Operation Ivy headquarters: It was an exciting time being part of the original Gilman Street Project scene and feeling the energy that OpIvy generated in our house. I roadied quite often for OpIvy and my band The Two O'Clock Tour shared a practice studio with OpIvy I was often at their practices. As a roadie OpIvy treated me like one of the band. I would have done it for free but they always insisted on paying me an equal share of what the band made. With OpIvy it wasn't about the money, it was about equality and fairness.

Dave and his brother Pat "skin" hung out a lot with me at the house doing art and music. Jesse Michaels came over with Aaron Elliot and Jake (singer of Filth) every now and then. We drank coffee and did drawings, made stupid recordings, listened to KALX radio in Berkeley. We never watched tv since we didn't have one. Being creative was always more entertaining anyway.

Tim worked part time at Blondies Pizza in Berkeley and I got Matt a job where I worked at a small restaurant in Oakland called "Fatz". Tim and Matt and I didn't make a lot of money in the food service business. Tim cooked up a lot of rice for dinner back in those days with nothing to put on top. I think Matt ate better than Tim since he worked at Fatz and was a bit more thirfty. Working at Fatz, Matt and I could eat and drink all we wanted for $2.00 a day. Ben Chu, the cook at Fatz would always make us extra food to take home. A favorite of mine was the double breast of chicken sandwich with a fist full of cheddar and this awesome sweet and sour sauce.The owners of Fatz sold it in 1990. By then I had left Fatz and taken a seasonal job up in the mountains of Humbolt county. Matt moved on to work at a truck rental place prior to making music his full time career. Tim continued doing odd jobs painting houses and construction. Back then the little money we made went to living expenses which included lots of beer of course.

At home Tim and I would sip 40's and play guitars, sing and eventually go on to record our music as The LJ's. My dog Simon was everyone's friend especially if you had food, beer or a short skirt. You better believe that whatever hit the floor was his within seconds even if he had to knock it over first. Any opportunity for Simon to jump up on the couch such he would take. Simon even went to the Gilman Street Project for an OpIvy show. He didn't seem to mind the loud music or being in the pit. Simon rocked! One day just after Christmas I returned from visiting my mother in Florida. It was unbelievably cold especially for California. Upon entering the house I found Tim lying on the couch under four or five blanket, he had on as many pairs of socks, an empty 40 on the table, and Simon laying on his feet. It was so cold I could see my breath standing inside the house. I asked Tim why he didn't have the heater on? He said he couldn't afford it. I turned it on right then and told him not to worry that I would pay whatever extra it cost but I wasn't going to freeze in my own house, besides Tim had every blanket in the house and the dog laying on him.

I used to buy lots of wierd stuff at garage sales and bring it home, like the hotdog shaped telephone. Matt hated it and refused to use it and Tim just ignored it. It still makes me laugh remembering that stupid phone. I used to annoy Matt quite often in those days, never the less he was always good to me but perhaps not always nice. The hotdog phone was one of those annoying, stupid things I'd come up with from time to time. I knew I could get a reaction, their expressions were priceless. I think that's why Dave Mello and I got along so well cause we both liked stupid silly things.

When OpIvy went on tour, they did it in this huge boat of a car. If I remember correctly Matt's uncle sold it to them cheap to help them out. Matt and I drove out to pick it up and I drove it back to our house. I think it was Matt's dad who built this giant wooden box that they mounted on the roof to hold all of there equipment. I honestly have never seen anything like it before. It was crazy looking but it worked. Off they went to make their way across the country, Matt, Tim, Jesse, Dave Mello and David Hayes co-founder of Lookout Records.

For 17 years I have been sitting on a version of the OpIvy album, "Energy" which I recorded at the OpIvy practice studio in 1988, the day before they went into the studio to record the real album. I offered to sell it to Lookout Records so that OpIvy would get the 60% of the sales as they do with all their other music and merchandise. The owner came to my house and had a listen and a cup of tea. He offered me $50.00. I counter-offered him another cup of tea and a serious belly laugh. He said that he picked up recordings like this all the time for that much or less. Whatever dude, not this time you don't.

The real reason it hasn't come out is because Matt and Tim do not want it to. Matt and Tim's reason for saying no is that they do not want to change the history of the way the band has been seen and heard. Dave and Jesse said to go ahead and release it if Matt and Tim agreed. I told them all that I would respect their wishes and not release it unless the entire band said it was okay. Since then there has been a positive consensus After all it's their music. I only recorded and mixed it and own the original master tape. They are still my friends even if I don't see them all as much as I used to.

My opinion is that the 4 track version has more energy, no pun intended. Admittedly being a live, 4 track recording the production quality is not as good as a big studio recording, but their performance that day at "The Pad" captured their sound while they were relaxed and in their familiar environment. As far as I know I have the only copy and of course the original 4 track tape. When this was recorded I used five microphones mixed into three tracks. One for each instrument and three for the drums. The vocals were added separately on the 4th track. Operation Ivy gave a soulful performance which really comes across as pure and at ease.

ASIS was a short lived band which played one show at The Gilman Street Project, currently known as 924 Gilman. We played with MDC that night. The crowd loved ASIS. Immediately after we played, while still on stage people came up and offered us shows and a radio interview / live performance. The response was really incredible and unexpected. Despite the rave reviews, offers, and inquires about our next performance the other band members called it quits. They wanted to pursue being a jazz band, which they never did and ended up in a downward spiral of heroin addiction never to be heard from again.

The Unannounced another very short lived band who's members were Dave Mello on drums, Joe Fenwick on bass and vocals, and Joey Schaaf guitar and vocals. We only played one short set at Gilman Street thanks to Christ On Parade who let us have part of their spot. The songs we played were, "I Don't Trust You Mr.Yuppie Businessman", "Something Going Down", and "You don't Care About Me".

Around the end of the Operation Ivy period Dave Mello, Pat Mello and I created a band called Hunde Scheibe which was based metaphorically on the life of "Simon" my dog. We dressed up in costumes according to our characters. Dave Mello was the lead singer as"The Priest", Pat Mello was bassist as"Ski", I was guitarist as "Gas" and later we added a real drummer Rakesh as "The Duck". We kept or tried to keep our identities a secret. This was before the fall of the "Iron Curtain" in eastern block communist Europe. It was said that we had escaped from the communists and they were after us, hence the disguises and secrecy about our identities. We played two shows altogether. One show at Dave and Pat's house in there garage with OpIvy and another at Cloin Court, a frat house party which was our final show. Hunde Scheibe was opening for OpIvy that day and no one had ever heard of us. On my trusty 4 track recorder I recorded Dave Mello playing drums for each song using a four count stick click in between for timing This was our drummer. We played it the recorded drum track through the sound system on a Sony Walkman. As we walked into the garage through the crowd parted and young girls screamed with fright at the sudden appearance of us in our costumes. After the show we split really fast. People were guessing who we were but we completely denied it. At the Cloin show a drunken frat boy was getting violent with Dave as he was singing. I was just about to clock the guy with my guitar when Dave folded his hands into a prayer position and on bended knee began to wail some kind of crazy chant. This scared the crap out of the drunken frat boy and he ran away screaming. Hunde Scheibe recorded a demo tape at Rakesh's house and did a photo shoot in his basement. Pat Mello created a comic book story which describes how Hunde Scheibe came to be and why. There may be a rare copy of it floating around out there still. I still have mine and plan on posting it soon.

ASIS was a short lived band which played one show at The Gilman Street Project, currently known as 924 Gilman. We played with MDC that night. The crowd loved ASIS. Immediately after we played while still on stage people came up and offered us shows and a radio interview / live performance. The response was really incredible and unexpected. Despite the rave reviews, offers, and inquires about our next performance the other band members called it quits so that they could pursue being a jazz band, which they never did and ended up in a downward spiral of heroin addiction never to be heard from again.

Around the end of the Operation Ivy period Dave Mello, Pat Mello and I created a band called Hunde Scheibe. We dressed up in costumes according to our characters. Dave Mello was the lead singer as"The Priest", Pat Mello was bassist as"Ski", I was guitarist as "Gas" and later we added a real drummer Rakesh as "The Duck". We kept or tried to keep our identities a secret. This was before the fall of the "Iron Curtain" in eastern block communist Europe. It was said that we had escaped from the communists and they were after us, hence the disguises and secrecy about our identities. We played two shows altogether. One show at Dave and Pat's house in there garage with OpIvy and another at Cloin Court, a frat house party which was our final show. At the Cloin show a drunken frat boy was getting violent with Dave as he was singing. I was just about to clock the guy with my guitar when Dave folded his hands into a prayer position and on bended knee began to wail some kind of crazy chant. This scared the crap out of the drunken frat boy and he ran away screaming. Hunde Scheibe recorded a demo tape at Rakesh's house and did a photo shoot as well. Pat Mello created a comic book story which describes how Hunde Scheibe came to be and why. All of this is available on loudrockmusic.com.

Soon after Hunde Scheibe called it quits came the band Fat Elvis which was, Dave Mello on guitar, Pat Mello on guitar, Tim Romain on bass, Joel Scherzer on drums, Dave Ferrin on guitar, a sax player who I can not remember his name,(was it Damon?), and me on keyboards all got together and recorded eight songs or so. Fat Elvis never played a show and only made one 4 track demo tape. This is also available on loudrockmusic.com.

  One day at our house Tim Armstrong told me that Operation Ivy had broken up. Matt and Tim seemed bummed out for a while but that soon changed. Tim always wanted to start a Ska band so he and Matt decided to do it. Since I was right there and a decent keyboardist, they asked me to join the new group. Others soon joined until there were 12 of us altogether. We didn't have a name yet. Tim came to practice one day and said he had named the band "Dance Hall Crashers".

   DHC played shows in and around the San Francisco Bay area. One of my favorite shows was at The Gilman Street Project in Berkeley, California. It was like home for me. Most everyone there was a friend, fan, or acquaintance. At this point Tim and Matt were about to drop out of DHC and start their new band Rancid. This was their last show with the group. DHC later played shows with The Business from England, Skank'n Pickle and other local bands. Soon after the Gilman Street Project show Matt and Tim left and other members also began to leave. The five piece horn section was next to go, then the guitars, bass and drummer. I was the last to leave the band of the original members. DHC went on to record the "Old Songs" that the original band played. One of those songs was my song "Keep On Running".

   I would like to clear something up about the song " Keep On Running". I wrote "Keep On Running" just before DHC practice one day and showed it to Tim Armstrong at our house. We played it at our home and I thought it was going to be a LJs song. Tim played guitar and we sang it in the truck on the way to our practice pad studio. When we arrived at the studio I went to the bathroom. When I got to the practice room the band was already playing the song. Tim liked it and had showed it to the band, no problem. But in my absence the band assumed Tim had written it since he showed it to them. Tim may have forgotten to tell them I wrote it. I'm not saying that Tim claimed that it was his song. I don't think he would do that. He doesn't need to. I told the band that I wrote the song that day but I suppose that was forgotten by the time the "Old Songs" album was being recorded. By the time the record was about to be pressed Tim, Matt, and I had long departed DHC and the band members were now completely different. I didn't play on the album and by not being there to say different the band assumed it was Tim's song as far as they remembered. An ex-DHC member called me to tell me that "Keep On Running" was going to be on the album and that Tim Armstrong was getting credit for writing it. I called Elise the singer / manager and told her the true story. She said that they were going to keep Tim's name on the song credit and add mine to it. I was to receive half credit. It was better then nothing so I agreed. When we played live I did a keyboard solo in this song which was replaced by a drum solo on the record.

I recently discovered while looking through a collection of all the songs I have written throughout the years another DHC song which I co-wrote with Tim Armstrong called,"Part Of The Mob" which I received no credit at all for writing nor a penny of royalities. On the back of the paper that it's written on is another hand written copy of "Keep On Running" which is signed, dated and copyrighted 1989 by Joey Schaaf.

Further early history of the original Dance Hall Crashers.

It was nearly 1990 and Operation Ivy had been broken up for quite a while. Matt Freeman, Tim Armstrong and I all lived together in a small 2 bedroom house in Albany, California. Albany, Ca is 2.5 square mile town where they grew up and where all of the OpIvy members came from. Tim and I had been writing songs and playing as an acoustic guitar duet we called "The LJ's". ( Lint and Joey ) As "The LJ's" Tim and I wrote and recorded 14 songs. This has never been released. It had always been a dream of Tim's to start a ska band. So Tim talked to Matt and he agreed to play guitar and Tim would be the singer. Tim and Matt asked me to play keyboards. I had a piano at our house which they heard me play all the time. They liked my playing so they thought that I would be a good choice. Matt and Tim asked Joel Wing from Corrupted Morals to play bass, Grant and Jamie on guitars, a 5 piece horn section, Leland and Ingrid on vocals and later Andrew Champion moved in to take Tim's place as vocalist once he stepped out. Eric Larson was on drums. This was the original line up for DHC. We played quite a few shows. DHC played with Skank'n Pickle, The Business, Let's Go Bowling and many others. By the end of 1991 band members began to drop out to join other bands. DHC had not recorded an album yet and the original members were leaving fast. The band was just not the same anymore. By now the horn section had only two horns, Matt and Tim went off to form Rancid, and both guitarists and bassist were now gone. Jason joined DHC as the newest member on guitar, and two new female singers Katrina and Elise. All of the original singers, all four of them were now gone. As the keyboardist I was the last original member left in the band by this time. It was late 1991 by now. The original drummer, Eric Larson left the band as well. Jason's younger brother came in as the new drummer. I was not happy with the way the singers sounded and said so. The whole band had changed so much by now it had lost it's original sound, energy, and feeling. At this point I decided it wasn't for me anymore. So I left DHC and started a new band of my own which was The 2:00 Tour. Jason the new guitarist, took over the band musically along with the new singers elise and Katrina. Technically speaking Jason is the last original member of DHC who is still in the band having been in the band for a few months before the complete band member turn over.

The new DHC band went on to record some the original "Old Songs" on the first album. They gathered up some of the old members for this but they neglected to call me to play keyboards on the album. At the time I had already resigned from DHC. Because I had already left the band I was not part of the recording of the first album. I suppose the manner in which I resigned from the band gave DHC the impression that I was no longer interested in playing with them. I understand and wish them all well. Since then I think that the singing has really improved quite a bit.

   After I left DHC I took some time off from bands and began to get back into song writing, playing guitar and singing. Tim Armstrong and I played music together at our house and began to write songs and record them. Tim and I eventually wrote and recorded 14 songs and called ourselves "The LJ's". Later when Rancid quickly became Tim's musical focus the LJ's faded out. The LJ's never did a live performance although we talked about it. Only few people beyond Tim and I have heard our recordings.

   One day while walking down the side walk in front of the Oakland museum I found a sticker laying on the ground. On it was written " Two O'Clock Tour". I suppose there had been a tour group at 2:00pm that day. I knew right then that this was going to be the name of my next band. I had some songs ,a name, and all I needed now was a bassist and drummer. Tim Romain and Joel Scherzer, the first two guys I jammed with got together with me and formed the group " Two O'Clock Tour". The 2:00 Tour played shows all over the Bay Area. We once opened for an unknown group at a pizza joint. The then unknown band was called "Green Day". I told them that night that they were going to be the "Beatles of punk rock". They were young and energetic, and had a great power pop sound. I really liked them they were nice kids too.

   At this time the Rosiere' cafe was a new coffee / sandwich shop near the border of Berkeley and Albany, California. The Owner was a cool guy from the islands in the Caribbean. He began having live music at his place and The 2:00 Tour played there often. The place had a comfortable atmosphere with deep leather chairs, big coffee tables all around in front of the stage, and a rich smell of exotic coffee floating in the air. Unfortunately a few of the neighbors complained about the music being too loud and the city found a legal snare to economically force it out of business. Typical actions for city and homeowner associations. The 2:00 Tour was once booked to play at the Laney Jr. College in Oakland, California. When we arrived we found out we were supposed to play in the library. There was a slight conflict with the librarian about playing loud rock music in a library. As things turned out we ended up playing outside on the cement courtyard at the center of the campus. Everything was cool until the sound guys came up one special power cable short for the sound system. I had to go to our studio and get our PA system, bring it back, and set it up so the show would go on. After all the confusion and difficulties I was quite frustrated. While unloading the last PA cabinet it fell and bashed my leg very painfully. Now I was angry, frustrated and in pain. We weren't much into our set when I released all the energy of my frustration and anger with a sweeping swing of my guitar over my head and onto the cement. The guitar smashed into many pieces. It was a real hit with the crowd. Later some fans brought me pieces of my guitar to autograph. It was a good show after all and I felt much better.

   Dave Ferrin later joined the group as a guitarist and we began to record our songs in the basement of his house. A very interesting thing happened during our recording session there. Somewhere in the middle of recording the song " The Big Tree" I saw a burst of light through my closed eye lids. I opened my eyes, still singing and playing, to see a ball of bright bluish white light, 3 feet in diameter, hovering in the center of the circle of the band. The ball of light suddenly swept around in a circle moving through all of us as it did and out the window which was closed. Since the tape was still recording I kept on singing and playing until the song was over. Afterwards I asked the guys if they had seen the ball of light. Tim and David said they had not seen it. Joel said he had and began to describe it exactly as I had seen it. He said he had seen the energy ball grow from a point in the center of the band until it exploded in a flash (that's when I noticed what was happening). No one can explain what happened the day.It was suggested that it was "ball lightning", but why would only two out of four people see it?

   The 2:00 Tour released one cassette demo tape of 7 songs.The song "The Big Tree" which was recorded when the phenomena mentioned above occurred is on this demo. After many more shows the band eventually broke up in 1993 due to a medical problem of one of the members.

   I continued writing songs and recording at home. One afternoon as I was walking to a friend's house and saw a metal clothes hanger lying on the sidewalk. I figured that if I kicked it just right I would get some spring out of it and it would go far. So I kicked it. The hanger did just as I expected skipping down the sidewalk. To my surprise it opened up on one end and hooked around the steel pole of a parking sign making a nice ringing sound. A ringer I said to myself. An epiphany struck me at once. It was time to start a new band and it would be called "Ringer".

   "Ringer" played their first show in a small underground club in Oakland, CA called "Pirate's Cove". This place was actually a house turned into a club and was probably not really legally operating. The place was small, dark, cold, smoky, and in a dangerous part of town. Ringer play a hand full of shows there. Tim Romain from The 2:00 Tour was playing bass for the first couple of shows but joined another band shortly afterward. Along came Kenny Zaak, an Catholic ex-priest. Kenny loved our sound and was ready to walk on the wild side. Kenny Zaak on bass along with Chad Norris on drums and Joey Schaaf Guitar and Vocals was to be the Ringer line up for the next year and a half. Ringer recorded an eight song demo at Shark Bite Recording Studios in Emeryville, California. In Ringer I was the song writer / singer / manager / ect... Kenny played bass and kept us feed with great vegetarian food, Chad played drums and kept the band in a less then serious mood most of the time and I mean this in a good way for the most part. Later after Chad left the band we added Sean McFadden on drums did a few more shows and then after two years we disbanded. The "Ringer" demo is available here on loudrockmusic.com.

I had been working off and on at Access Video Productions in Berkeley, CA. One day a new guy came to work there. When I first met him I noticed that he was wearing a Bad Brains t-shirt. I told him that I liked the Bad Brains and that back in the late 1980's I had booked a couple of shows with them, the latter of which they did not show up for. He told me his name was Kenny Dread and during the late 1980's he lived in DC with HR / Joseph and the Bad Brains. Wow! This was the Kenny Dread which I had extensive phone conversations with when booking the Bad Brains shows 10 years prior. What a small world it is sometimes. I was begriming to learn to play the drums and was just good enough to jam with at this point. Kenny and I got together and started a band called "Saw Dust". We ended up recording a 10 song demo tape and a live performance of the same on video. Saw Dust played one show in Lake Tahoe. There was some problems with one of the band members and heroin which helped dissolve the band. Kenny Dread moved to Chicago, IL and I haven't heard or seen him since.

System Schit was to be my next band. A hard core punk band with a singer named Kaarin Hannah, me on drums and vocals, Cliff on guitar and Rob Ayers on bass. System Schit played many shows in the Bay Area with bands such as "Your Mother, Schlong, False Sacrament, and others. System Schit also recorded song "The Duckie Dinger Jamboree" for the Bun Length Records "Sesame Street" compilation. After nearly 2 years drug and relationship related problems caused the eventual break up of the band. There is a demo tape available here on LRM and the Sesame Street Comp is out there in stores if you can still find it.

Hinderbone was a band I tried out for as the lead singer and was picked by them that very night. They had some songs already written but no lyrics. The night of my audition I made up melodies and lyrics on the spot. They seemed very interested in me but needed to talk about it in private so I went out side and waited for their decision. I poked my head back in the room for a second to tell them I hadn't left but would be in the restroom when they asked me what I thought of them? I said you guys suck and closed the door. I opened it back up a second later and told them that I was just kidding and that they had pass the audition. We practiced in San Francisco for a month but when I found a bigger, cheaper studio at the Practice Pad in Oakland, CA so we moved there. I have had many rooms there at The Practice Pad and have seen many now famous bands come out of this place. Bands like Operation Ivy, AFI, Rancid, DHC had played there for years before the got big and moved to an upscale place that their record label paid for. We developed our songs and practiced two or three times a week. We played one show and then we lost our drummer. We searched for a full time drummer for the remainder of the existence of the band but never found one. We did have a really good drummer for a while but he ended up committing suicide. Then there was another drummer who was too into selling drugs to come to practice. We did end up in the recording studio with the suicidal drummer, prior to his suicide of course, but we didn't finish the project before the band completely broke up. The band wanted me to play drums and sing which may or may not have worked, but it didn't work for me. So after all that I ended up with a stack of of lyrics for songs that no one will ever play again. It was n't the first time nor would it be the last.

I kept the practice studio and continued to play there with the other bands that I was in. I guess four bands was really too many. I was there day and night that people mistook me for the manager and sometimes asked me if I was living in my practice room. I did eat and sleep there in between bands. Five days a week with three to four bands a night with me playing drums, guitar and singing according to which band was practicing that day / night.

I remember one night telling Tim and Lars of Rancid that the cow bone I had in my hand was a "cell bone" and that I would give them a call later. As they drove away in their taxi they looked over to see me sitting on a postal drop box outside the studio chatting away on my "cell bone" as if I was actually talking to someone. I wish I could have taken a picture of their faces as I waved to them as they passed by Lars was smiling but Tim had a worried frown on his face. I laughed so hard I fell off the mail box.

Brett of Rancid was really nice to me one day while I was putting a new head on my snare. I hadn't been playing drums very long at this point. I asked him to show me how it's done. To this day I remember how he said to change the head and tighten up the lugs. I have lots of stories of my experiences at the Practice Pad and the bands that played there. I will tell these stories later on in there own section.

The Snake Lady Worshipers and The National Enquirer photo shoot / story.

The Snake Lady Worshippers was a literally a one night band with one song created for the explicit purpose of doing a photo shoot for the story of Kenny Zaak, an ex-Catholic priest turned rocker who had been the head of a large church in San Francisco, California. The band name came from a velvet wall hanging I had bought at a garage sale for a dollar which had a bunch of "Ladies" with human tops and snake bottoms, the latter being coiled together. They were in a room with fire all around them. Later on I ended up giving it away to someone who loved it. It was a great prop for the shoot at the time.The Nation Enquirer photographer took 4 hours to shoot us and must have taken fifty pictures of which only two were actually used in the article. Dave Ferrin who played guitar for in the band was cropped out of the photos used in the article and wasn't even quoted. He was not happy about that at all. The story was actually about Kenny and how he gave up the priesthood to join my band "Ringer" and become a rocker. I was quoted in the story saying, "Kenny has been a good influence on us". What I was really saying was, "We have been a bad influence on Kenny". So after it was published I picked up a couple of copies and called my mother to tell here that I was in the National Enquirer. Her reply was,"What have you done this time". I still have a copy of this issue of the National Enquirer somewhere. I'll find it and post it here soon, I swear. Cross my snake ladies and hope to fry.

Next...

My roadie experience with "Screw 32" and Schlong, becoming the new drummer for the hardcore trash band "FuckFace" and the 60 day / 60 show, sixteen thousand mile tour across America, The Brain Transplants, XENA, Zebu, Splatt, The Three Little Fishies and the rock opera: "Izzy The Fish", The Boiler Room Boys , In The Streets, and The HO.

To be continued...