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Part I: The Virginia Years—Humble Beginnings (really, really humble). It was the summer after our senior year of high school. One of my graduation presents was an electric bass (I had been coveting one for a while, but didn’t have the bucks). A mutual friend linked Stevo & I up. “You got bass notes under my guitar” – “You got guitar notes on top of my bass”…Hey! 2 great sounds that sound great together! If we had both been bass players, none of this would have happened (Either that or I would have stayed as a guitar player the whole time). The first session or two was a little awkward—there was Cheap Trick, Neil Diamond (?), “A Day in the Life” from the Beatles, and a few other things that escape me. Over that next year, we both found electric guitars and amps to play, and jammed a little more often…expanding the repertoire to “Day Tripper”, more Cheap Trick, Pat Benetar, Bruuuuce (okay, maybe not!), the Cars, etc. The easier the better. I started playing ‘lead’, but could not string more than 3 notes together without a flub of some kind. Plus I started playing with friends here and there…Joe Hoffmaster had a guitar, my brother Chris had a guitar, too…(Actually, he was RICH! He bought his before I bought mine!!), and John Manderfield was a keyboard player we all knew that I had jammed with as well. But, I think we did more planning on album covers, publicity pictures, logo designs, etc. than we actually PLAYED! We had it all mapped out for our media blitz, all we needed was some talent! Then…OUR FIRST GIG!!!! Kevin Kurtz’s birthday party. After much debate, the name “Prelude” emerged as the best choice. We recruited almost every musician we knew, (see the above list) then add Stevo’s brother Gary on drums, and B.J. on female vocals…It’s a seven person band!! Stevo has said “Safety in numbers”, and that was true that night. So we practiced a lot, and then worked like heck the week before the gig, and that night we were, ummm… mediocre at best, sloppy at our worst…and I had genuine stage fright, so that when things started to go south, I got more nervous, then I played WORSE! Oh, well. Hi-lights included: “Whip It”—we all put on our de riguer new wave sunglasses and red mixing bowl hats, and Joe turns calmly and says, “I can’t see a goddamned thing” in his ever so low-key way. Maybe you had to be there. We played “Another One Rides the Bus”…that one was easy, just me on bass and some drums. BUT, best of all, somebody called the cops on us! We succeeded in annoying the neighbors! Anyway, Joe & John went back to school, and we evolved into *Batteries Not Included a short time after that. It was just like Stevo said with the name…Lums late-night and key lime pie. After a little searching, we found a real drummer…Steve Parks. Chris ended up playing bass full-time, and I ‘earned’ the lead guitar spot through default. We learned some more Cheap Trick, Willie Nile, Beatles, Bruce; we even added a Rolling Stones song (!). By this point, I was also “cheating” on the band—Chris & I were playing in another band at the same time, learning some oldies…more Stones stuff, some Eagles, CCR, etc. The extra playing helped us, but because the other players in the 2nd band were ‘better’, we progressed more quickly into a decent ensemble. This started the idea that would ultimately lead to the downfall of *BNI…(well, okay, that, and some ideas from my girlfriend at the time, Becky Slade; more on that later). We did manage one paying gig thru, who else? a friend of ours. We played the Mormon Young Adults Dance Party. It was odd. Thirty dollars for 2 hours of music…and we had to submit a song list before we could play. And, a la Spinal Tap, things went wrong. Here we were, this little band with our Radio Shack PA playing in the gym/multi-purpose room. Around the corner from the gym was a ‘Parenting Conference’ (on a Saturday night!) with 9- and 10 year olds, and their parents. We were asked to turn it down, then asked again, (after we had already complied), then at about 10:30, asked us to stop. I was miffed, but felt like I wasn’t going to play where I wasn’t welcome…(we still made all of our money—which we promptly spent at Pizza Hut!!) A little time went by, and there started to be a little dissension about the direction of the band. We had written a couple originals by this point, and Stevo wanted to stay that course, and play in the basement, writing more songs and becoming the next 4 Out Of 5 Doctors. (History lesson: 4 Out Of 5 Doctors were a DC-based ‘new wave’ band that broke onto the scene fairly quickly, and were reasonably big in Washington, but unknown just about everywhere else. They were on Nemporer Records, along with the Romantics. We thought they were cool, and were the right band in the right place…but it just didn’t work out for them. We saw what they had done, and wanted to do that…well, okay, we wanted to be famous, at the very least.) However, DC was still just a little town as far as the music biz went, and the bars were filled with the usual assortment of 3 types of bands: Oldies, Top 40, and Country. You could make REAL MONEY if you managed to fit into one of those categories, and were reasonably decent. (In retrospect, we were a mediocre band, and if I had known then what I know now, I would have just stayed in the basement for a REALLY LONG time. If I was a club owner, I would NOT have hired the original *BNI for anything, except maybe washing dishes or making pizzas). But I digress. The “other” band that Chris & I were in, had actually played a couple parties, and done OK at it, and fresh off that success, we wanted to try to learn some things that would put us into the clubs. Chris, Steve Parks and I were trying to change up the set list so that we were playing things that the average Joe would recognize. (And despite all of my previous joking, I don’t think ‘Rocky Top’ was on the list...but ‘Stairway to Heaven’ might have been!) We had been playing records, trying to figure out if we could do a Billy Squire song, and if you know Stevo even a little bit, the idea was, umm… tough to swallow, to say the least. Then the argument ensued, with him saying, “Well, I want this to be fun, and playing music I don’t like is not my idea of fun.” Which we countered with arguments that playing for money and for people was worth more than just “fun.” Of course, what we all failed to realize at the time was that Stevo just plain DIDN’T LIKE any of the music we were picking. So he packed up and said, “If I can’t play the music that I like, then I quit!” which we said “ok” to. I think he was upset that we didn’t change our minds on the spot and say, “Wait…you were right, let’s keep doing it this way.” He was choosing not to go where the rest of the band thought we needed to go. He may have thought that it was a personal thing, but it was about the music more than anything. My line of thinking was that what 3⁄4’s of the band wanted to do, I was going to do, because it never mattered to me what I was playing…it was the act of playing that made me feel good. Stevo would probably accuse me of having a ‘herd mentality”, but hey, I am a Taurus, after all…? We still hung out together, then 2 months later played a party that was the *BNI ‘farewell’ show (or so we thought). The other band never quite worked out for the 3 remaining members, and died from a lack of interest, and I think Stevo’s other musical ventures suffered from a lack of time and commitment. He & I jammed together here and there, and wrote a couple more songs to go with ‘Noise’, and ‘Camera Lies’, thanks to a drum machine. We even played a party at GW University with drums pre-recorded on tape. Still, life goes on, and through quirks of fate, (and boredom with Virginia on my part) we found ourselves victims of “Fear & Loathing in New Jersey” *Batteries—The Glory Days (sorry, Bruce) 1984… The Police, the ‘Footloose’ soundtrack, Prince’s Purple Rain, ‘Thriller’, and of course, ‘Born in the USA’. Music from a wild, wacky summer in New Jersey. Moving to New Jersey was a means to an end. Stevo was going to a ‘real’ art school, and I was going to go back to school and get my life together (not that there was much that was wrong, I just had “the lazies”). A year after moving to Rutgers, and finding other musicians, we decided to make a go of it with the band again. Stevo had jammed with a few folks, and we had a house to rehearse in (I never asked the other roommates what they thought of us—I guess I didn’t want to know!). So we found Laurie on keyboards and a female drummer, and started rehearsing/jamming. Laurie was okay…but the drummer, Siobhan, was kinda lame. (Not to throw glass rocks at people, I was still finding my way as a bass player as well). But then we found Karthik on guitar, and he had a drummer friend (Steve Beste) who really ROCKED! So Stevo (as the de facto leader) had to kick Siobhan out of the band. If we’d had a manager, that would have been HIS job (like the Beatles, or Metallica did: “You’re our manager? Good. Fire this guy!”). We played, and worked out some different arrangements for Stevo’s other originals…and he wrote a couple new songs: “Headphones” rolled along about this time (I think). 2 months (or so) of practice, and we were ready to play out. We had agreed that the name should stay, since it was the 2 of us, and we were working on the same originals that had been played in Virginia. And it was a catchy name to boot. Plus, by now, Stevo had been hanging around WRSU—Rutgers University radio, and had successfully schmoozed his way into being friends with a few bands so that we could open for them. We even had a demo tape this time around. We finally had a sound, and a cool name, and a built-in core audience (so we thought). We at least had 40 minutes of fun music that we could play fairly well. Our first gig!! Well, okay…our first gig with an asterisk. The Demerest Hall Talent Show: Every year the Demarest residence hall put on probably the best small talent show at Rutgers. It was our first live gig, and we played pretty well…the flubs that were prevalent in my past had disappeared as my confidence grew. We got people to dance, and they asked for an encore (not out of politeness, I don’t think). We played 3 or 4 songs, and we were a hit! Every year the fraternities at Rutgers would hold a dance marathon for MS featuring live bands. They needed a spare band or 2, so we signed up, but because it was on a Friday and Saturday night, I had to work! So we got the cool day gig: playing on the back of a flatbed truck that rolled to 4 different spots on campus, while the fraternity gang pleaded for donations…It was a nice April day, the sun was shining, and it was great! We even got our picture on the front page of the school paper the next day! But someone gave us the wrong name: “No Batteries Included”?? What kind of a memorable name is that? About this time, we decided to get rid of Laurie—the music was becoming more guitar driven, and we sorta took a vote that she needed to go...Steve Beste had the task of telling her. Lucky him… A very short time later, the bass player in Stating the Obvious gave us our first “real”gig…Opening for them at the Roxy in New Brunswick. It was a teeny place that has been described as “a bowling alley with a roof.” To get to the bathroom, you had to walk THRU the band, dodging mike stands and guitar headstocks. We played for 40 minutes, and things were great. The other band liked us so much, we played for them 2 or 3 more times over the next month. The Rathskeller in Bound Brook, (this was the day hurricane Gloria blew thru town) then again 3 weeks later, back at the Roxy. I believe the second Roxy gig was our first moneymaker…Twenty bucks! Cool. Pizza money! We played a couple
other gigs here and there, and over the summer, we decided: So with another friend, we found a house, and put the drums in a corner of the living room, and practiced (usually on the weekends due to everybody’s school schedule). When the new school year started, we landed a couple Rutgers gigs…opening for Maximum America at the Rutgers Student center, (and another picture in the student newspaper!), another Roxy gig, then a lunchtime show in the Busch Student center. This was a good show if only because of the controversy it developed… We played our basic set, then the very last song was always the punk song that Stevo and a friend wrote, “Beat Me to a Bloody Pulp”. It was all tongue-in-cheek, but the music was your basic 120 beats per minute hardcore classic: 2 chords, and a noisy, thrashy, “band heading towards annihilation” ending. Problem: the Busch Student Center and its adjoining food court was in an open air building that also housed some administrative folks for the University. One friend who wandered through said later, “The secretaries were digging you guys.” At least, until we played “Beat Me”. The person from the concert committee who booked us said, “You guys were great! I hope I don’t get killed!” I guess lunch time was reserved for acou-sticky folk singers. A week or so later, we were supposed to do the Halloween party at the tavern inside the Rutgers Student center, but since the Busch incident, we were “asked not to be included on the program”…4 teeny guys versus one large, immovable university—who’s going to win that battle? Not us. The worst part was, we didn’t even get a lot of negative press from being banned! Then…<sob!> another breakup! We had been going along just fine, but Steve B. and Karthik were feeling their oats, and getting a little antsy over our “new wave light” sound. Karthik wanted to sing, and we allowed him to do that [on his songs]. They were HIS songs, after all. The animosity started to build… The final straw came when there was an argument over, what else? Money. Stevo was the band manager, and financial guy, and graphic artiste…so that when he did the band posters for the next gig, he would roll into Kinko’s, and pay them, then write it down. Now granted, we made some money, but when Steve Beste asked about it, it turned into a big row about “How could we spend $200 on COPIES!” I guess we were all poor starving students, and even a $50 share of that would buy a lot of pizza (or ramen noodles, for that matter). And Steve Beste just quit. Karthik went along for the ride, since Steve was HIS friend. I guess if the roles had reversed, I might have quit if Stevo had been the one who walked. We patched things up long enough to perform at the WRSU benefit show (farewell show #2), but that was about it. Then a few months later, we had 2 new roommates! And 2 new bandmates!! The ‘Joisey’ Years-Part Deux ‘86-88 Life in the house turned, ummm, interesting. Steve & Karthik eventually moved out, and we got a new smaller group of roommates. Plus, until they moved, they were rehearsing with their band in the attic once a week, while Stevo & I laid low for a little while. Stevo put up some posters for a drummer and guitar player, and (dare I say it?) Paul Bergen & Jeff Ganis were the ONLY people we jammed with. We played the originals and a couple Beatles/Stones songs. It seemed like a good fit. They got the job. Or should I say WE got THEIR job? Jeff & Paul were really GOOD, so we wanted them in the band, even if we were, well, passable at best. But they said they liked the original songs, and thought there were “possibilities.” I knew it would work when, at the end of the tryout, I handed them a copy of Cheap Trick’s Heaven Tonight album, and asked them to work out “California Man”. They said they already knew it!! It quickly became a favorite, at least for me. We rehearsed, and learned a few new covers. They learned the originals, and we worked out some slightly different arrangements for a couple of them. Shortly after joining, Jeff & Paul got their own rented house out in Somerset, so we could rehearse there twice a week. We re-did the demo in Jeff & Paul’s basement, and it sounded really good!! The demo sounded a little more ‘professional’, and we had some actual press coverage thru friends in the college press. Jeff was also a good salesman, and got us into a few places we might not have otherwise landed. We played our first real gig with them at umm…the “Court Tavern?” I think? (Stevo—help me out…you still have all the posters). We started playing for real in November of ’86. Jeff had us some really good gigs lined up. We played in all sorts of places so that by Feb. of ’87, we were playing out almost twice a week! We added John Kuzel on keyboards right around March, and his first gig was the “Energizer Student Band Contest” at Rutgers. If there was a gig where everything ‘clicked’, this was it. I still remember getting to the end of the last song, hearing the applause, and raising my bass high above my head in mock glory. It was a feeling that I don’t think has ever been duplicated. Granted, whenever you play in a big room that is PACKED, the likelihood of applause increases exponentially, but we were (dare I say it? Yes, I dare.) the best band that night. We think we took the popular vote, but we didn’t win the contest—we were disqualified for not having at least half the band be full/part-time students. Our lone student was Stevo. But we’re not bitter about it. No sir. Not us. Gigs. Lots of them. We wowed ‘em from the Brighton Bar in Long Branch, to the Waiting Room in Rahway, to Foxes Lair in Hackensack. And every other little club in between. Anybody remember The Dirt Club in Bloomfield? Two words…yuck. Oh, that’s one word? Yuck-yuck. That pretty well describes it! Personal highlights for me…CBGB’s in NYC. This was the well-chronicled birthplace of the New York Punk scene in 1976 or so…Blondie, Talking Heads, Patty Smith, the Ramones, etc had all played on the stage at this bar that could also be described as a “bowling alley with a roof over it”. The graffiti backstage was great! Cinder-block walls that were just covered in spray-painted words, phrases, whatever. The backstage area was fairly barren: wooden floors, no place to sit; it makes me wonder what the place looks like when somebody reasonably famous plays there. We played a great set, but never got asked back. “If you can make it there…” I guess we didn’t, Frankie-baby. Besides, I never like to play gigs where the chances of my car getting broken into are really high. Then…The Stone Pony. Okay, fine, so we played to about 1/100th the size of the crowd that Bruce Springsteen usually played to…it didn’t matter. It was still a huge stage compared to what we were used to. And a great sound system! Plus, we played our usual set, and the guy who booked the “Tuesday Showcase” (as it was called) thought we were the coolest thing, too! So we DID get asked back a few times. Bruce never showed up for the Tuesday night showcases, so I never got to meet him. Sigh. After trying to crack the club circuit playing originals, it became harder and harder to drag our friends out to far-flung clubs, especially on a Tuesday night an hour away from home. The saving grace for us was the Corner Tavern. It was in New Brunswick, and they only had bands on Saturday night, so we could get everybody out (with no excuses). Plus they paid in real money, rather than the “dollar for every person who comes and mentions your name” crap that permeated a lot of the local clubs. We had one memorable gig called the “Rock and Roll Circus”. 3 hours of playing (so we repeated a song or 2, shoot us). We had Jeff’s girlfriend in a fake go-go cage (“Mean Jean the dancing machine”), and a fake trapeze, and then all of our friends got to play a little. Evan Hansen sang “I Saw her Standing There”, Jim Feld sang a song, Stevo’s friend Ben played a short acoustic set. It was great fun, and probably a watershed gig in that we packed the place all on our own. However, real life starts to impede on even the most ardent dreams of rock & roll stardom. John the keyboard player departed somewhere along the way (I think we were just a LITTLE stifling for somebody who was as talented as he was—after all, how many times can you have somebody say “Give us a little string sound”, or “Maybe some horns” before you start to get edgy? But I digress.) Stevo had gotten married, and moved out of the little “group house” we had. The gigs got fewer and fewer, and we seemed to stick to the same 4 or 5 places over and over…Stevo ran out of time to write new originals, so it became the same 30 songs every gig. By ’88, we realized that the record companies were not banging down Jeff & Paul’s basement door to sign us, and we never had enough money to put out our own CD’s/45’s/whatever. Lots of homemade copies of our demo, but we never quite marketed them properly. Then Paul got married, and his priorities changed from ‘rock star’ to ‘pop to be’…he decided in the summer of ’88 to call it quits. We had just played what I thought was a ‘kickass’ show at the Corner Tavern the week before, but it would be our swan song. We played a farewell gig (#3) at the Corner Tavern, and went our separate ways. We did get together at the request of the guy from the Corner Tavern that next summer(#4), and rehearsed at my old house in South Plainfield. Stevo’s ‘new’ band opened for us. It was okay, but not nearly as good as the previous Corner Tavern gig… Stevo keeps saying “You know, it’d sure be nice to get together one more time…” maybe the same guy owns the Corner Tavern and could let us use the place for a night. It might be fun. If only we could get our 12 fans to show up!! [Editor's Note: This was written before the reunion show on August 28, 2005 was even considered.] Ego-surfers delight!! Here’s a list of some people who showed up, helped out, pitched in, or otherwise supported our little musical escapade (In no particular order): Brian Case The Band
members: I leave you with
the most memorable quote, courtesy of Jeff Ganis, at the diner before
a gig (perusing the kid’s menu): -Marc [Editor's Last Note: Dang, I can't remember 3/4 of what he wrote. I'll wager he's made most of this up. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, yessir...] |
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