HR008
Skoptzies - Working My Hand Thru The Wheel
C60
Skoptzies - Working My Hand Thru The Wheel
C60
Side A
Uptight White Right Tonite Tell Me Why Be My Friend Voodoo Samba (2nd version) 3:32 AM Rain Elvis Was My Friend Side B Bill Morris Song Nightly Stroll Pay To Play I Need Someone All material recorded live November 4, 1984 Antenna Club, Memphis, Tennessee Skoptzies are: Dave Grave - Bass, Guitar, Backing Voice K. Kruger - Guitar, Bass, Keys C. Phinney - Synth, Keys, Voice, Percussion J. Mallory - Drums, Percussion R. Rice - Drums, Percussion, Keys, Bass, and Voice on "Someone" |
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
Working My Hand Thru The Wheel documents a live Skoptzies performance, recorded at the Antenna Club in Memphis on November 4, 1984. ‘Uptight White Right Tonite’ opens the set and showcases the thrashier side of Skoptzies. Classic punk-thrash. Phinney tells me that this song was always the opener for live gigs. ‘Tell Me Why’ rocks but has a spacey metallic buzzsaw vibe and wailing keys. ‘Be My Friend’ features chunky grooving rock with swirly keys. ‘Voodoo Samba (2nd Version)’ is a cool rockin' spaced out tune with lush keys. ‘3:32 AM Rain’ cranks out some trippy funky space rock with tasty guitar leads. ‘Elvis Was My Friend’ is a space rocker with a metallic hip-hop feel. The ‘Bill Morris Song’ is different... it’s doomy yet is melodic industrial, like a Chrome brand of space rock with electronics and symphonic keys. ‘Nightly Stroll’ is has a similar industrial space rock feel with an aggressive yet dreamy vibe. ‘Pay To Play’ is a fun dancey funky industrial rock tune with searing guitar and cool freaky electronics. Phinney explains that this song was written to piss off club owner Steve McGehee, as they had to pay $75 for the soundman. ‘I Need Someone’ sounds like Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’, but this is totally freaked out! We’ll call this Skoptzies' shot at MTV!
Working My Hand Thru The Wheel documents a live Skoptzies performance, recorded at the Antenna Club in Memphis on November 4, 1984. ‘Uptight White Right Tonite’ opens the set and showcases the thrashier side of Skoptzies. Classic punk-thrash. Phinney tells me that this song was always the opener for live gigs. ‘Tell Me Why’ rocks but has a spacey metallic buzzsaw vibe and wailing keys. ‘Be My Friend’ features chunky grooving rock with swirly keys. ‘Voodoo Samba (2nd Version)’ is a cool rockin' spaced out tune with lush keys. ‘3:32 AM Rain’ cranks out some trippy funky space rock with tasty guitar leads. ‘Elvis Was My Friend’ is a space rocker with a metallic hip-hop feel. The ‘Bill Morris Song’ is different... it’s doomy yet is melodic industrial, like a Chrome brand of space rock with electronics and symphonic keys. ‘Nightly Stroll’ is has a similar industrial space rock feel with an aggressive yet dreamy vibe. ‘Pay To Play’ is a fun dancey funky industrial rock tune with searing guitar and cool freaky electronics. Phinney explains that this song was written to piss off club owner Steve McGehee, as they had to pay $75 for the soundman. ‘I Need Someone’ sounds like Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’, but this is totally freaked out! We’ll call this Skoptzies' shot at MTV!
Chris Phinney interviewed by Jerry Kranitz
JK: On Skoptzies and tapes where I hear what I describe as the ranting street poet… that’s you?
CP: 99.9% of it. There’s a few songs where Dave sings. Kim sings ‘White Rabbit’. And Ross sings ‘I Need Someone’. He actually wrote the song. But yeah, pretty much me behind the podium that I built that had decoupage skeletons all over it. When we first started out with our first live gigs, we couldn’t afford smoke screens. We had dry ice and buckets of water. We did our own Skoptzies logo, spray painted and everything. And everybody dressed weird. Everyone had on a mask. And I had on a cape, and a hood, and a skull mask. So it’s funny as hell when I read your comments about the street preacher, I thought you got it down pat! He didn’t even see the cape! We stopped doing that probably after three or four gigs, and just started wearing whatever.
CP: 99.9% of it. There’s a few songs where Dave sings. Kim sings ‘White Rabbit’. And Ross sings ‘I Need Someone’. He actually wrote the song. But yeah, pretty much me behind the podium that I built that had decoupage skeletons all over it. When we first started out with our first live gigs, we couldn’t afford smoke screens. We had dry ice and buckets of water. We did our own Skoptzies logo, spray painted and everything. And everybody dressed weird. Everyone had on a mask. And I had on a cape, and a hood, and a skull mask. So it’s funny as hell when I read your comments about the street preacher, I thought you got it down pat! He didn’t even see the cape! We stopped doing that probably after three or four gigs, and just started wearing whatever.
JK: Are there any photos of these shows?
CP: I’ve got some photos of that and I’ve got some other weird photos of Skoptzies live where my brother, when he was alive, we both had on a lot of makeup and he was lying down. We shot it in black & white. And he’s lying down and we took pig guts and put ‘em all over me and he acted like he was eating them and all that stuff.
CP: I’ve got some photos of that and I’ve got some other weird photos of Skoptzies live where my brother, when he was alive, we both had on a lot of makeup and he was lying down. We shot it in black & white. And he’s lying down and we took pig guts and put ‘em all over me and he acted like he was eating them and all that stuff.
JK: Was Skoptzies hot on the heels of Pungent Odor?
CP: Skoptzies was recorded right after that. It was in Kim’s house using an Akai open 4-track reel-to-reel. Jim Duckworth, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, he played with Trigger & the Thrill Kings. He’s a damn good guitarist. But he didn’t fit in with what we were doing. He did a decent job but it just wasn’t what we wanted. And Honeycutt couldn’t do it the way we wanted to do it because at the time, some of the songs that became original songs later on, with HR008, these were the beginnings, like "Voodoo Samba #2" and so forth, they were so long, we did long ass versions of those songs… we ended up shortening all those down later. We practiced all the time before we went live. We had to get musicians that we wanted in the band. It was gonna be us three. But we had to have others and we tried them out on a live thing. Some of it was improv, and some of it was songs that I’d written. And Dave knew the damn things and Kim knew the damn things, but nobody else did.
JK: The one thing that stands out relative to the earlier tapes is you’ve got a whole bunch of “songs”. There’s jamming. But also a lot of shorter tracks. And ones that are repeated… they come up again later when you play live.
CP: They come up again all the way to the end of the thing. On Bearers Of The Imperial Seal, the songs that you see later on were shortened, and of course new musicians, and they learned what we wanted, and we shortened the songs for crowds, because they were too long. We’re not going to sit there and play an 18 minute song. We’re going to do a 3-5 minute song tops. Because people’s attention span is pathetic.
CP: Skoptzies was recorded right after that. It was in Kim’s house using an Akai open 4-track reel-to-reel. Jim Duckworth, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, he played with Trigger & the Thrill Kings. He’s a damn good guitarist. But he didn’t fit in with what we were doing. He did a decent job but it just wasn’t what we wanted. And Honeycutt couldn’t do it the way we wanted to do it because at the time, some of the songs that became original songs later on, with HR008, these were the beginnings, like "Voodoo Samba #2" and so forth, they were so long, we did long ass versions of those songs… we ended up shortening all those down later. We practiced all the time before we went live. We had to get musicians that we wanted in the band. It was gonna be us three. But we had to have others and we tried them out on a live thing. Some of it was improv, and some of it was songs that I’d written. And Dave knew the damn things and Kim knew the damn things, but nobody else did.
JK: The one thing that stands out relative to the earlier tapes is you’ve got a whole bunch of “songs”. There’s jamming. But also a lot of shorter tracks. And ones that are repeated… they come up again later when you play live.
CP: They come up again all the way to the end of the thing. On Bearers Of The Imperial Seal, the songs that you see later on were shortened, and of course new musicians, and they learned what we wanted, and we shortened the songs for crowds, because they were too long. We’re not going to sit there and play an 18 minute song. We’re going to do a 3-5 minute song tops. Because people’s attention span is pathetic.
JK: Do you remember the first show you ever did?
CP: The first show was on Working My Hand Thru The Wheel. No no, I’m sorry, it’s not. If you listen you’ll hear people screaming for the "Bill Morris Song". Still using the podium, still using the mask, still using the smoke. It’s tough to say. I would say it’s probably the third show we did live. I said thanks for coming out all five of you, because there were 75 people outside that couldn’t get in.
JK: Was that the Antenna Club?
CP: Yeah, it was the Antenna Club. It was Steve McGehee. He wouldn’t let the kids in. The kids wanted in. The kids had mohawks, shaved their heads, pissed their parents off, did whatever the hell. And they were friends of mine. If they could have gotten in there would have been a lot bigger audience and a lot more people having fun, which is what it was really all about anyways. We weren’t actually trying to make a lot of money.
CP: The first show was on Working My Hand Thru The Wheel. No no, I’m sorry, it’s not. If you listen you’ll hear people screaming for the "Bill Morris Song". Still using the podium, still using the mask, still using the smoke. It’s tough to say. I would say it’s probably the third show we did live. I said thanks for coming out all five of you, because there were 75 people outside that couldn’t get in.
JK: Was that the Antenna Club?
CP: Yeah, it was the Antenna Club. It was Steve McGehee. He wouldn’t let the kids in. The kids wanted in. The kids had mohawks, shaved their heads, pissed their parents off, did whatever the hell. And they were friends of mine. If they could have gotten in there would have been a lot bigger audience and a lot more people having fun, which is what it was really all about anyways. We weren’t actually trying to make a lot of money.
JK: So was the Antenna and this other club you mentioned… were they funded by people who were sympathetic to the kind of music you were doing?
CP: Me and Mike Honeycutt booked R.E.M. with their first 7” single at the Antenna Club.
JK: You were booking bands there?
CP: That’s what we were doing with Malice. We booked R.E.M., their first tour ever with their first 7”. We booked R.E.M. at the Antenna Club. I think there were probably 35 people there. But they were still outside the door, another 75 punks, skating up and down the street, wanting in. But they could hear all the music outside.
JK: I was living in Atlanta at this time, in the early 80s. And it was like a revelation having come from Buffalo to Atlanta. Music like I had never heard or seen before. Amazing radio stations.
CP: Atlanta was happenin’ man. In one of the Malices there’s an article and review of a live show in Atlanta at the Agora. Public Image came there and played. But we did The Method Actors. We did Pylon.
JK: These are bands you booked in Memphis?
CP: Yup. We were trying to have a ‘scene’ here. Because we had no scene here, except for the local pop-rock, rockabilly, country & western… we had a few punk bands. Dave Grave played in The Modifiers. Who ended up going out to L.A. I was supposed to go with them. And some of those guys were on one of those Skoptzies tapes that we’re gonna get into next. They were playing with John Densmore. They ended up hooking up with Densmore on drums. And Derf Scratch from Fear on bass.
JK: Who owned the Antenna Club?
CP: Steve McGehee.
JK: How did you get into booking shows there?
CP: I was telling him, look man, I’ve got these people who want to play here, can we do a deal? This is how much money they want. I’d give him a tape, because the tape was sent to me. And he would listen to it and say yay or nay.
JK: So you were the one networking with these bands or their management or whoever was booking their tours…
CP: It was either me or Honeycutt.
JK: Did it follow from these activities that you got more local punk and experimental bands like Skoptzies booked there?
CP: He let us play there just cause he knew who we were. He didn’t like me anyways. He didn’t like Honeycutt. He didn’t like any of us really.
JK: But he let you book shows and play there! Did he like the music or was it just bringing in crowds and that’s all he cared about?
CP: All he cared about was the crowds and beer. He liked some of it. We’re gonna get off subject we’re quick here. But Yo Gotti, the rapper, about seven years ago, bought this BBQ joint on Winchester here in Memphis. And turned it into a club that never did anything. We painted the whole thing. We painted the roof silver. Did all the outside. He would never come around. They cut off all the power. They were pissed off. They had a stripper pole in the corner. They didn’t want anybody to know what the hell the place was. We had to run an extension cord out the door because they had cut the juice to the inside. And we had to spray a lot of stuff. There was no way to do this metal roofing any other way. Anyway, Steve McGehee hung the wallpaper cause he had sold it all. He hung the wallpaper in there and he told the guy I had contracted with that I was the greatest motherfucker in the whole world. And I’m like… what? This dude hated my guts. When people came and paid to see Pylon, and to see Method Actors, to see REM, to see Danzig, to see Black Flag, to see Circle Jerks… one $5 bill went into Steve McGehee’s till, and one $5 bill went into my pocket or Honeycutt’s pocket. Once it was all over, Steve McGehee paid them $40-$50, which was nothing, and they probably got $100 or $150 out of our pocket. Because we knew he was ripping them off.
JK: So he was just a businessman and not somebody who was into the music or wanted to support a local scene.
CP: No, he was just a businessman.
JK: But it sounds like it worked for a while.
CP: That club was The Well before that. It was a Rockabilly club. Panther Burns played there all the time. Tav Falco used to live at my house almost. Him and Alex Chilton. They were always over there. I didn’t get any credit on the first few Cramps records. But those were recorded at Alex’s house in Alex’s shitty studio. And Alex was teaching me… this was while we were doing Malice… this was before we were recording… Alex was teaching me how to do some mixing and recording at the same time. I was just learning. I wasn’t there to get any credit. But I had the Cramps over at my house. All four of them. Bryan Gregory who was the original guitarist, he was the best guitarist they ever had. And they were all laying on top of my Z28 Camaro. 1980.
JK: So did you get to know these bands from doing Malice?
CP: That’s how I got to know those bands. And I got to know Panther Burns from The Well because we were there all the time anyway. Chilton, I think he was bipolar.
JK: Ok, we need to talk more about the Malice days. It must have gotten some good distribution.
CP: Malice got around everywhere. Malice was very well known.
JK: Mike told me he had gotten into the Rough Trade distribution. Was that a big part of it?
CP: I don’t know. Not in Memphis per se, but over the country, yes. I had people sending me stamps and IRCs wanting copies of it. Cause we were pretty much giving it away, we weren’t trying to make a lot of money. We were making the money just to print the thing and have a scene. And we were making the money to print the thing off of local ads. Or… Andy Szava-Kovats had an ad in there one time. Data-Bank-A.
JK: It’s interesting. I read two books this year, one about the 80s Milwaukee scene and one about Minneapolis, and it all boils down to the same thing – individuals like yourself who make the effort to get shows going, and they find sympathetic clubs… or in your case whether or not they’re sympathetic or just trying to make money. But they get clubs who are willing to book these bands, and it just boils down to the efforts of really enthusiastic people.
CP: McGehee was sympathetic to a point. Otherwise he wouldn’t have let us do it at all.
JK: So from Pungent Odor to Skoptzies. Pungent Odor: ‘Why Should We Play Their Game?’ has long tracks. And then when we get to Skoptzies: ‘Bearers Of The Imperial Seal’ there’s a whole bunch of shorter songs.
CP: Because we’re working on a band. We’ve got this name – Pungent Odor – the name sucks, we’ve got to change the name of this band. So we changed it to Skoptzies. That was more my doing than anything else. I got it out of the dictionary. More of a shock appeal type of thing. Nobody even knew what the hell it meant. But we were trying to get something to gel, to play live. We wanted to be the first Industrial band to play in Memphis. Local Industrial band.
JK: Did you record the tape first and then play live?
CP: No. After Bearers Of The Imperial Seal we didn’t do anything live. We threw out the few numbers with Honeycutt and Duckworth. And then we did Riders Of The White Horse.
JK: Did you get more reviews and notice with these?
CP: Yeah, we got a lot more reviews. They were in Sporadic Droolings. And Factsheet Five still. We were still ignored by Option. I think I maybe had one tape reviewed in Option. I wasn’t a big fan of that magazine. It was a wonderful read. And you would find people you wanted to network with. But in regard to sending them material for review, that was like flogging a dead horse.
JK: It sounds like your releases were still at this point a very local thing.
CP: Exactly. But we’re still fleshing out tunes. You’ll see some of the same tunes on there. On Bearers Of The Imperial Seal that you’re gonna see later on. They’re just being refined, and we’re trying to get the right musicians.
JK: By the time of Riders Of The White Horse I just see Chris and Dave, and Kim on just the first 4 and last 3 tracks.
CP: The rest of them had Milfred Thompson, who was The Modifiers singer, and Bob Ohm, who was the Modifiers guitar player. And they played on the rest of it. They did "The Alabama Song", which is a piece of crap.
JK: But it was fun to listen to.
CP: We did a few covers and some crazy stuff. But they did a fairly decent job on the songs that we were trying to do. The first 4 and the last 3. But Milford wasn’t on anything but the others. He appears as the singer. If you don’t hear him then all you hear is Bob Ohm playing guitar and Milford’s sitting around drinking beer or whatever.
JK: It’s funny you think "The Alabama Song" is a piece of crap. My notes describe it as a ‘lyserically messed up punk-carnival vibe on this fun demolition of the Doors song’.
CP: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it was. And as I mentioned in my notes, we’re gonna get into something with Viktimized Karcass, when we would play live we were always asked to play "Freebird". But we didn’t. We refused. You wanna know what we played when we were asked that? "American Mama". When we were asked to play "Freebird" we took The Guess Who’s "American Woman" and called it "American Mama". And we fucked it up.
JK: So Riders Of The White Horse was the second Skoptzies tape. Were you guys playing regular live shows during this period?
CP: No. We were still working on the band. We’re still needing a band that can play live and isn’t going to fuck up everything. We wanted a band that’s tight. We wanted to come out with something that nobody’s ever seen before. Nobody’s ever heard before. We didn’t do anything but the recordings. I put it out. Sent it out. Pretty much the same thing. Factsheet Five. Sporadic Droolings. A guy named Shane Williams who use to do a bunch of reviews. He was in jail, he used to write a bunch of reviews. He appreciated having the stuff to listen to while he was in jail. And we’d send them to the usual places. And we didn’t get many reviews for that either. We didn’t start getting many reviews at all until HR008, with Working My Hand Thru The Wheel. When we finally…. FINALLY… had a band and did about three live shows, and we said this is it, we’ve got the band.
JK: Working My Hand Thru The Wheel was recorded live November 4, 1984 at the Antenna Club.
CP: The whole thing's live.
JK: It’s got Dave Grave, you, Kim Kruger, J. Mallory, and R. Rice.
CP: That’s the drummer. He was a good friend of mine, I knew him since third grade. He’d sit in his parents' storage room and play Led Zeppelin, and the dude could play Bonham every lick and not miss a stinkin’ thing. He (Jim Mallory) had left and moved to California. He got married and had two kids. His wife divorced him. He came back here, union electrician. He painted a little bit for a little while. He was terrible on the inside. But I also got him to play the drums for us. Which is what he wanted to do. But we practiced practiced practiced. And we played 2 or 3 shows. And the third show is what you’ve got with Working My Hand Thru The Wheel.
CP: Me and Mike Honeycutt booked R.E.M. with their first 7” single at the Antenna Club.
JK: You were booking bands there?
CP: That’s what we were doing with Malice. We booked R.E.M., their first tour ever with their first 7”. We booked R.E.M. at the Antenna Club. I think there were probably 35 people there. But they were still outside the door, another 75 punks, skating up and down the street, wanting in. But they could hear all the music outside.
JK: I was living in Atlanta at this time, in the early 80s. And it was like a revelation having come from Buffalo to Atlanta. Music like I had never heard or seen before. Amazing radio stations.
CP: Atlanta was happenin’ man. In one of the Malices there’s an article and review of a live show in Atlanta at the Agora. Public Image came there and played. But we did The Method Actors. We did Pylon.
JK: These are bands you booked in Memphis?
CP: Yup. We were trying to have a ‘scene’ here. Because we had no scene here, except for the local pop-rock, rockabilly, country & western… we had a few punk bands. Dave Grave played in The Modifiers. Who ended up going out to L.A. I was supposed to go with them. And some of those guys were on one of those Skoptzies tapes that we’re gonna get into next. They were playing with John Densmore. They ended up hooking up with Densmore on drums. And Derf Scratch from Fear on bass.
JK: Who owned the Antenna Club?
CP: Steve McGehee.
JK: How did you get into booking shows there?
CP: I was telling him, look man, I’ve got these people who want to play here, can we do a deal? This is how much money they want. I’d give him a tape, because the tape was sent to me. And he would listen to it and say yay or nay.
JK: So you were the one networking with these bands or their management or whoever was booking their tours…
CP: It was either me or Honeycutt.
JK: Did it follow from these activities that you got more local punk and experimental bands like Skoptzies booked there?
CP: He let us play there just cause he knew who we were. He didn’t like me anyways. He didn’t like Honeycutt. He didn’t like any of us really.
JK: But he let you book shows and play there! Did he like the music or was it just bringing in crowds and that’s all he cared about?
CP: All he cared about was the crowds and beer. He liked some of it. We’re gonna get off subject we’re quick here. But Yo Gotti, the rapper, about seven years ago, bought this BBQ joint on Winchester here in Memphis. And turned it into a club that never did anything. We painted the whole thing. We painted the roof silver. Did all the outside. He would never come around. They cut off all the power. They were pissed off. They had a stripper pole in the corner. They didn’t want anybody to know what the hell the place was. We had to run an extension cord out the door because they had cut the juice to the inside. And we had to spray a lot of stuff. There was no way to do this metal roofing any other way. Anyway, Steve McGehee hung the wallpaper cause he had sold it all. He hung the wallpaper in there and he told the guy I had contracted with that I was the greatest motherfucker in the whole world. And I’m like… what? This dude hated my guts. When people came and paid to see Pylon, and to see Method Actors, to see REM, to see Danzig, to see Black Flag, to see Circle Jerks… one $5 bill went into Steve McGehee’s till, and one $5 bill went into my pocket or Honeycutt’s pocket. Once it was all over, Steve McGehee paid them $40-$50, which was nothing, and they probably got $100 or $150 out of our pocket. Because we knew he was ripping them off.
JK: So he was just a businessman and not somebody who was into the music or wanted to support a local scene.
CP: No, he was just a businessman.
JK: But it sounds like it worked for a while.
CP: That club was The Well before that. It was a Rockabilly club. Panther Burns played there all the time. Tav Falco used to live at my house almost. Him and Alex Chilton. They were always over there. I didn’t get any credit on the first few Cramps records. But those were recorded at Alex’s house in Alex’s shitty studio. And Alex was teaching me… this was while we were doing Malice… this was before we were recording… Alex was teaching me how to do some mixing and recording at the same time. I was just learning. I wasn’t there to get any credit. But I had the Cramps over at my house. All four of them. Bryan Gregory who was the original guitarist, he was the best guitarist they ever had. And they were all laying on top of my Z28 Camaro. 1980.
JK: So did you get to know these bands from doing Malice?
CP: That’s how I got to know those bands. And I got to know Panther Burns from The Well because we were there all the time anyway. Chilton, I think he was bipolar.
JK: Ok, we need to talk more about the Malice days. It must have gotten some good distribution.
CP: Malice got around everywhere. Malice was very well known.
JK: Mike told me he had gotten into the Rough Trade distribution. Was that a big part of it?
CP: I don’t know. Not in Memphis per se, but over the country, yes. I had people sending me stamps and IRCs wanting copies of it. Cause we were pretty much giving it away, we weren’t trying to make a lot of money. We were making the money just to print the thing and have a scene. And we were making the money to print the thing off of local ads. Or… Andy Szava-Kovats had an ad in there one time. Data-Bank-A.
JK: It’s interesting. I read two books this year, one about the 80s Milwaukee scene and one about Minneapolis, and it all boils down to the same thing – individuals like yourself who make the effort to get shows going, and they find sympathetic clubs… or in your case whether or not they’re sympathetic or just trying to make money. But they get clubs who are willing to book these bands, and it just boils down to the efforts of really enthusiastic people.
CP: McGehee was sympathetic to a point. Otherwise he wouldn’t have let us do it at all.
JK: So from Pungent Odor to Skoptzies. Pungent Odor: ‘Why Should We Play Their Game?’ has long tracks. And then when we get to Skoptzies: ‘Bearers Of The Imperial Seal’ there’s a whole bunch of shorter songs.
CP: Because we’re working on a band. We’ve got this name – Pungent Odor – the name sucks, we’ve got to change the name of this band. So we changed it to Skoptzies. That was more my doing than anything else. I got it out of the dictionary. More of a shock appeal type of thing. Nobody even knew what the hell it meant. But we were trying to get something to gel, to play live. We wanted to be the first Industrial band to play in Memphis. Local Industrial band.
JK: Did you record the tape first and then play live?
CP: No. After Bearers Of The Imperial Seal we didn’t do anything live. We threw out the few numbers with Honeycutt and Duckworth. And then we did Riders Of The White Horse.
JK: Did you get more reviews and notice with these?
CP: Yeah, we got a lot more reviews. They were in Sporadic Droolings. And Factsheet Five still. We were still ignored by Option. I think I maybe had one tape reviewed in Option. I wasn’t a big fan of that magazine. It was a wonderful read. And you would find people you wanted to network with. But in regard to sending them material for review, that was like flogging a dead horse.
JK: It sounds like your releases were still at this point a very local thing.
CP: Exactly. But we’re still fleshing out tunes. You’ll see some of the same tunes on there. On Bearers Of The Imperial Seal that you’re gonna see later on. They’re just being refined, and we’re trying to get the right musicians.
JK: By the time of Riders Of The White Horse I just see Chris and Dave, and Kim on just the first 4 and last 3 tracks.
CP: The rest of them had Milfred Thompson, who was The Modifiers singer, and Bob Ohm, who was the Modifiers guitar player. And they played on the rest of it. They did "The Alabama Song", which is a piece of crap.
JK: But it was fun to listen to.
CP: We did a few covers and some crazy stuff. But they did a fairly decent job on the songs that we were trying to do. The first 4 and the last 3. But Milford wasn’t on anything but the others. He appears as the singer. If you don’t hear him then all you hear is Bob Ohm playing guitar and Milford’s sitting around drinking beer or whatever.
JK: It’s funny you think "The Alabama Song" is a piece of crap. My notes describe it as a ‘lyserically messed up punk-carnival vibe on this fun demolition of the Doors song’.
CP: Yeah, that’s pretty much what it was. And as I mentioned in my notes, we’re gonna get into something with Viktimized Karcass, when we would play live we were always asked to play "Freebird". But we didn’t. We refused. You wanna know what we played when we were asked that? "American Mama". When we were asked to play "Freebird" we took The Guess Who’s "American Woman" and called it "American Mama". And we fucked it up.
JK: So Riders Of The White Horse was the second Skoptzies tape. Were you guys playing regular live shows during this period?
CP: No. We were still working on the band. We’re still needing a band that can play live and isn’t going to fuck up everything. We wanted a band that’s tight. We wanted to come out with something that nobody’s ever seen before. Nobody’s ever heard before. We didn’t do anything but the recordings. I put it out. Sent it out. Pretty much the same thing. Factsheet Five. Sporadic Droolings. A guy named Shane Williams who use to do a bunch of reviews. He was in jail, he used to write a bunch of reviews. He appreciated having the stuff to listen to while he was in jail. And we’d send them to the usual places. And we didn’t get many reviews for that either. We didn’t start getting many reviews at all until HR008, with Working My Hand Thru The Wheel. When we finally…. FINALLY… had a band and did about three live shows, and we said this is it, we’ve got the band.
JK: Working My Hand Thru The Wheel was recorded live November 4, 1984 at the Antenna Club.
CP: The whole thing's live.
JK: It’s got Dave Grave, you, Kim Kruger, J. Mallory, and R. Rice.
CP: That’s the drummer. He was a good friend of mine, I knew him since third grade. He’d sit in his parents' storage room and play Led Zeppelin, and the dude could play Bonham every lick and not miss a stinkin’ thing. He (Jim Mallory) had left and moved to California. He got married and had two kids. His wife divorced him. He came back here, union electrician. He painted a little bit for a little while. He was terrible on the inside. But I also got him to play the drums for us. Which is what he wanted to do. But we practiced practiced practiced. And we played 2 or 3 shows. And the third show is what you’ve got with Working My Hand Thru The Wheel.
JK: I described the opening song, "Uptight White Right Tonite", as ‘This is a THRASHIER side of Skoptzies! Classic punk-thrash’. When we were exchanging emails you said this was always your opening song during live shows, and you ‘got the skate punks moshing & the industrial, rock crowd’.
CP: The rock crowd would even try to get in there and mosh. A lot of times they’d get hurt and have to go sit down. These kids, they’ll smack the shit out of you. They’re doing the mosh thing, and we’ve also got the Marine base here that’s gonna be there as well. That’s a whole other thing… when booking bands, the Marines, the jarheads… John Crawford did a comic for Malice fanzine called "Better Dead Than Jarhead". And it was all about the jarheads. They came from Millington or whatever. And they would come there and basically… they were from New Jersey, from all over the country, stationed here in Memphis. And they would basically want to get out there and thrash and mosh, but they would want to HURT somebody on purpose. But that went on in L.A. That went on in all your big cities. There were always these assholes who wanted to mosh and hurt somebody. That’s just part of what the damn scene was about I suppose. I always thought it was bogus as hell. And the kids, you had to watch out for them, because the Industrial crowd, even though they wanted to get out there and dance, they had to watch out for the kids, because these kids are just flying all over the place. They don’t mean to hit you. They’re just gonna hit you.
JK: Looking at my notes about the live tape, there’s a lot of spaced out stuff, I made a couple of Chrome references…
CP: Yeah, we were listening to Chrome.
JK: You said that "Pay To Play" was written to piss the club owner Steve McGehee off.
CP: Yes it was. Because of the $75 charge we had to pay for the soundman.
JK: And you made a reference to the skate punk kids at your house, who couldn’t get in but loved your stuff, and were big Malice fans. So Malice was known locally?
CP: Right. They knew the magazine around town and they knew it internationally. Hal’s got all the shit but it’s hard to read because the print is so damned small. But Barry Henssler, his grandmother used to live here. He was the singer of the Necros, from Maumee, Ohio. I don’t know if you ever heard of the Necros. Touch and Go Records. He came down here, and during the second time he came down here he stayed at my house. And during the interview he said Malice is all this down has going for it. And that is why it is the way it is. We did all our own shit. It was all DIY.
JK: So Malice’s coverage was Memphis local, national and international.
CP: Right. Malice fanzine was probably 75-80% international, vs. 20% Memphis.
JK: But if 20% was Memphis I’d say that was pretty significant. It seems that for a magazine that’s international in scope, dedicating a full fifth or more to your local scene… that sounds like a pretty good chunk.
CP: Yeah, it’s pretty good. We did it basically to try to create a scene here. That’s what it was all about. To try to get something going besides the same old crap that had been going on here forever. Can we change it?
CP: The rock crowd would even try to get in there and mosh. A lot of times they’d get hurt and have to go sit down. These kids, they’ll smack the shit out of you. They’re doing the mosh thing, and we’ve also got the Marine base here that’s gonna be there as well. That’s a whole other thing… when booking bands, the Marines, the jarheads… John Crawford did a comic for Malice fanzine called "Better Dead Than Jarhead". And it was all about the jarheads. They came from Millington or whatever. And they would come there and basically… they were from New Jersey, from all over the country, stationed here in Memphis. And they would basically want to get out there and thrash and mosh, but they would want to HURT somebody on purpose. But that went on in L.A. That went on in all your big cities. There were always these assholes who wanted to mosh and hurt somebody. That’s just part of what the damn scene was about I suppose. I always thought it was bogus as hell. And the kids, you had to watch out for them, because the Industrial crowd, even though they wanted to get out there and dance, they had to watch out for the kids, because these kids are just flying all over the place. They don’t mean to hit you. They’re just gonna hit you.
JK: Looking at my notes about the live tape, there’s a lot of spaced out stuff, I made a couple of Chrome references…
CP: Yeah, we were listening to Chrome.
JK: You said that "Pay To Play" was written to piss the club owner Steve McGehee off.
CP: Yes it was. Because of the $75 charge we had to pay for the soundman.
JK: And you made a reference to the skate punk kids at your house, who couldn’t get in but loved your stuff, and were big Malice fans. So Malice was known locally?
CP: Right. They knew the magazine around town and they knew it internationally. Hal’s got all the shit but it’s hard to read because the print is so damned small. But Barry Henssler, his grandmother used to live here. He was the singer of the Necros, from Maumee, Ohio. I don’t know if you ever heard of the Necros. Touch and Go Records. He came down here, and during the second time he came down here he stayed at my house. And during the interview he said Malice is all this down has going for it. And that is why it is the way it is. We did all our own shit. It was all DIY.
JK: So Malice’s coverage was Memphis local, national and international.
CP: Right. Malice fanzine was probably 75-80% international, vs. 20% Memphis.
JK: But if 20% was Memphis I’d say that was pretty significant. It seems that for a magazine that’s international in scope, dedicating a full fifth or more to your local scene… that sounds like a pretty good chunk.
CP: Yeah, it’s pretty good. We did it basically to try to create a scene here. That’s what it was all about. To try to get something going besides the same old crap that had been going on here forever. Can we change it?