Ramona Confidential Interview

New Interview of Me as I head out to Osaka Japan to be a Wizard in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Come by and visit!
Ramona Confidential Interview of John Jughead Pierson

Interview about the term Pop Punk conducted by Jonas Cannon

The following is from an interview I did conducted by Jonas Cannon for his zine Live Punk. I enjoyed how it came out, so I am posting it here. Somehow in a short article his questions and my responses did a good job of expressing my mixed feelings about the label "Pop Punk." In this same zine there is an interview with Henry Rollins, and you can tell he REALLY didn't want to be talking about the philosophy of pop punk. I on the other hand love melodic music so it only seems fitting that my feelings about it may be a bit more sympathetic to the label of "pop."

Interview With Jughead By Jonas 
 John “Jughead” Pierson is a really cool, really chill guy. We met a few years ago through mutual friends. He was one of the founding members of Screeching Weasel, but he’s also been in several other bands, like The Mopes. Now, he sometimes does theater, sometimes travels around the world to perform with old pals. He’s written a novel. He makes a podcast called ‘Jughead’s Basement,” where he’s interviewed The Queers, Operation Ivy, The Lillingtons and Aaron Cometbus—just to name a few. Occasionally, he’ll throw together a show in his basement; he’ll invite over several people, barbecue up hotdogs in his backyard, buy a keg, maybe sell a few T-shirts along the way. I think he’s punk as fuck, but if you asked him, he would say no, he’s not punk & hasn’t been for quite some time. To him, it’s a label; one that might be necessary within the industry, but ultimately too restrictive to hold as an identity. 

 Jonas: So I guess I'd ask, starting out, what does the term "pop punk" mean to you? 

Jughead: whoa Well... there was a time when there was a Chicago magazine called Illinois Entertainer. They had a section about new bands, requesting all local bands to send in a detailed description. One category asked you to choose what type of band it was, they had things like: Rock. Country. Alternative. Soft Rock.... Anyway. I didn't think they had a good one to describe us so I wrote: 50's Punk.
 This was before the label Pop Punk came to be. I actually have no idea when it surfaced, but I don't think we were considered that until we reformed for Bark Like A Dog. Earlier than that, we were trying to emulate The Circle Jerks and Angry Samoans... Goof Core. The Ramones came in later. So to try to shorten the answer: Pop Punk to me is basically taking the energetic power chord driven music of earlier punk, simplifying it, and making it more infectiously melodic. The Ramones just call it Rock N Roll. I don't really consider Screeching Weasel a Pop Punk Band. Riverdales, yes, but SW was much more.

 Jonas: Yes. That's part of what fascinates me about the term. When I got into punk, I never heard the term pop punk. But then later on, it seemed like a lot of those bands that served as my introduction to punk were considered pop punk. 


Jughead: Pop Punk doesn't usually go beyond 3 basic two finger chords; any more intricacy and it just becomes power pop.

 Jonas: Ah. But people used the term later on? Back then, no one was really saying "We are a pop punk band!" Is that accurate? Because I'm pretty sure I didn't hear the term in the 90s at all.

 Jughead: Yeah, that's what I was saying. Ramones were just a bare bones Rock N Roll band. I keep bringing up the Ramones because they are obviously the forefathers of pop punk. But to answer your question, No, I don't remember ever being called a pop punk band until around 96 or 97 And then a lot of bands were being Grandfather-claused in, like Mr. T and SW

 Jonas: What was the response like? Was it more "whatever, we're just doing our thing..." or kind of "What the hell? We're PUNK--where is this 'pop' word coming from." ?

 Jughead: It never really bothered me. It's a label, like any other. It bothered me more that after The Riverdales, when SW got back together, to the public we lost all our other influences and we were just being considered a derivative of The Ramones. I love the Ramones, but I never wanted a band that was doing what the Ramones was doing. So the label Pop punk didn't bother me, but the limited view and vision of what that meant to the average listener... did bother me.

 Jonas: That's really interesting, because I would've never lumped you guys with The Ramones. Ever. A lot of the stuff from Fat Wreck--Screeching Weasel, Propaghandi, Tilt, Anti-Flag--that was my introduction to punk. To my ears, all of that stuff was world's away from the Ramones.

 Jughead: Yeah, [but] I'm pretty sure it's two affiliations. The Ramones and being on the same label as Green Day. But I must state, I don't have a problem with a label of Pop Punk, I have more of a problem with the audience and derivative bands who think that means they have to wear leather jackets, jeans, and only listen to The Ramones influenced bands. Punk and Pop has always been the other side of the spectrum from Prog Rock or Metal and to me, as a style that is what they are doing, but as a philosophy for life, it gets a little restrictive.

 Jonas: How so?

 Jughead: When you start infusing a single musical styling with Philosophy you begin to shrink the scope of what music and life can be. I constantly think the pop punk scene is one step away from stoning other musical styles. If they had the balls.

 Jonas: YES. That's exactly what I'd been thinking. Which totally bleeds into another question I had, which was what your thoughts are on pop punk as it is now...

 Jughead: Jonas, I really don't have much of an opinion. I don't really come in contact with it much. I still run into people that I am surprised by being so cut off from other music, but then I'll meet someone that loves Cat Stevens, Bach, System Of A Down, and The Lillingtons, as much as I do. SW had a song called Slogans, And I think that song hit a chord. It was in a response to the skinheads and their limited musical likings and violent tendencies. But I think it stretches much farther. Even Outcasts want to fit in--and they can be the most dangerous.

 Jonas: Definitely. That's something that it took me a while to come to terms with. I think I felt a little alienated for a while, because the range was wide in terms of the music I liked, but I felt like in some punk scenes it felt very, well, restrictive. like it wasn't punk to like certain stuff...

 Jughead: The world wants to think in black and white... 0's and 1's, but it's really just a spectrum of grays. I'll end with one more thing. Years and years ago, I saw an interview with Bob Mould from Husker Du, where he had said that his musical tastes had changed, and whether he sounded negative about his punk influences or if that is what I wanted to feel back then... I have made an effort to be critical of my punk scene and to be honest with myself and others that it is just another one of my musical passions out of many others, but it is hard to get that openness of styles across without sounding like you have forsaken the movement that has helped to make you what you are. That is often my dilemma.

Tangent Starting with Jim DeRogatis: GO!

Jim Derogatis, this man keeps showing up in my life! (I even played with him for a single 7inch record under a fake hardcore band named: The Shotdowns.)  Jim and Greg Kot helped Screeching Weasel quite a bit in the early days.  Greg Kot wrote an important article about us in the Tribune many years ago, (I can't seem to find that specific one online.  But, Vapid, Panic, Ben and I had to drive downtown for a proper photo shoot, and the article has a classic picture of the band in leather jackets and Jeans but me, of course, in a colorful suit jacket and baggy pants with tucked in socks climbing bricks behind the rest of the band, looking more new wave than punk.  Here are two other articles that he wrote, keeping our name in the papers: It's Harvest Time, and Cynics From The Suburbs.  Jim Derogatis besides writing about us quite often in the Sun Times also wrote an equally influential yet severely past our prime article about us in Spin Magazine (Screeching Halt).  Jim has always been attracted to the idea of "anti-hero" which is evident in his book Let It Blurt.  I had always thought that Jim was infatuated with Ben as a punk anti-hero (an artistic crush), often letting other interesting things about the band fall to the wayside.  But there is no denying the help he has given to me freely over the years, and quite honestly it has taken me a long time to realize that we have a mutual respect for our places in music and art.  He even was kind enough to write about my other music pride and joy which I keep hoping some day will be appreciated on a grander scale, (We can all dream.) even though I don't think he ever really cared much for our music, Even In Blackouts.   Punk Goes Acoustic.  Here's a major tangent: I was thinking of my writing in Even In Blackouts the other day, which was later accompanied by the incomparable Gub Scot Conway.  Our writing seemed to work so well together.  We are both slightly warped.  Our drummer and bassist, Bice and Phil Hill, often talked about how they had to take our strange musical structures and try to make sense of them in order to create a palpable backing rhythm section.  I felt proud that Gub and I caused such wonderful headaches in such amazing musicians.  Anyway the point I was going to make here is I still believe in the idea of An Album, and even the idea of a Concept Record.  This can manifest in many different ways.  The type I've been interested in is similar to the concept record that Ben Weasel was into with a record like Anthem For a New Tomorrow, it wasn't telling a linear story, it was a grouping of songs sharing attitude, themes, and images.  I carried this into EVERY Even in Blackouts record. (Often this happens, in subtle ways on most records anyhow. Records in varying degrees chronicle what a band is going through during a particular time.  They are little slices of history.)  The step I feel I took farther, more consistently, is the title of a record had to be wholly original whereas Ben most often enjoyed capturing phrases from sub cultures and even the mainstream that struck his fancy, like My Brain Hurts, (Monty Python) Thank You Very Little (Chevy Chase in Caddyshack), Bark Like a Dog (Bill Murray in Caddyshack). (Some I assume are entirely original)  My titles for neither better nor worse HAD to be completely fabricated and meticulously tied to the themes of the songs on the inside, even if unintelligible to the listener.  For instance: Myths & Imaginary Magicians was playing on some references to Screeching Weasel's The Science of Myth, which was originally borrowed from Joseph Campbell.  Myths are the standards we try to live up to, the morals that are embedded in our culture, they help us face a world that can be callous and chaotic, but the use of the word Myth has also come to mean, trying to live up to an unreachable conception of the self which has much more to do with personal identity than social norms.  It's usage on Myths & Imaginary Magicians refers to friends of mine like Ben Foster, Steve Walker, Matt Nelson and Peter Flynn (A radio play I wrote about Peter Flynn), and even myself, we are all too hyper aware of the divide between social personae, caricatures of ourselves, and the less perfect, less awesome, less dramatic, flawed, reality of the actual self.  This rocky balance between self loathing, self aggrandizing, and just being oneself is apparent in a goodly percentage of the tracks from that album. The last part of that album title: "Imaginary Magicians" - a magician that isn't a magician, that isn't there, so that even the tricks are twice removed from being real magic.  That is the metaphor for types like myself. The reality is that "we" are not performing real magic, that we are mere humans, hiding behind illusions, twice removed.  Our intents are often selfish or caught up in justifying ones capricious nature when we think we are being mysterious or intriguingly contradictory.  (Because sadly this makes us interesting.)  All the titles in the Even In Blackouts' catalog have a certain amount of complexity, and they most definitely painstakingly mirror the songs on each particular record.  Like Heidegger in philosophy my goal is to cultivate my own language, my own points of reference, like music itself, to create my own individual path which ironically takes steps towards universality the more honest and truthful it becomes.  I search for the write groupings of words to express the inexpressible moods and emotions that stir in all of us.  That is my grand goal, and even though it might sound absurd, pompous, or just plain ridiculous, it is how I have always felt about creativity.  I don't expect anybody to get that, but it has become an important element in my writing and creative pursuits.



Anyway back to Jim!  He has written a blog post about the Jughead's Basement Podcast.  And I think that is swell.  (I could talk more about Jim, but really you should just go over to his web page, and see all the marvelous things this man has done for the upholding of everything rebellious and beautiful about music.  Jim DeRogatis) And even though going off on the titles of records may have seemed a tangent, even to myself, it really wasn't.  I mean to hold sacred those who still think in terms of a record as an art form.  It was funny when I first started saying each of my podcasts is a piece of art, but truly I mean it.  And to say such a thing isn't implying that it is great, (even though I think they are.)  It just means they are constructed to be something wholly (and even holy) unto themselves, the structure matching its interior, making it it's own THING.

Jughead's Basement Episode 8: Naked Raygun's Throb Throb
NAKED RAYGUN - THROB THROB

In this episode of Jughead's Basement, Naked Raygun's 1985 release, Throb Throb, is examined. This episode features special guest co-host, Dan Vapid.

Interviews with Naked Raygun:

Jeff Pezzati 

Camilo Gonzalez 

Jim Colao 

John Haggerty

Eric Spicer

Interviews with Steve Albini

 (Producer & Engineer of Jawbreaker and Nirvana. Musician in Big Black and Shelac.)

Guest Contributors:

Steve Walker on "Metastasis" 

Eric T. Roth on "On/I Don't Know" 

Jim DeRogatis on "Managua"

Closing song: "Rat Patrol" covered by Cheaper By The Case in 1997 by my friends: Mark Montgomery, Fritz Doreza, and Eric Mahle.

IN THE SHADOW OF JOHN BRAUN - THE TRUE TORTURER

JOHN BRAUN RIPPING IT UP

This is a late night post based on my friend Graham Rae asking me about a band "I was in" that I must have talked about in an early Screeching Weasel interview called TORTURER.  This is my grammatically unchecked response:

I have been working on a new Jughead's Basement podcast this month with Dan Vapid.  The band he recommended working on was Naked Raygun, then both of us said Throb Throb.  But this post is not about Throb Throb, or Naked Raygun, or Dan Vapid.  It's about John Braun and a band that was but never was called TORTURER.

The Naked Raygun members are about a half decade older than me and Vapid, but both Vapid and I have slightly older brothers so there is a common ground when talking about influences.  Vapid was fascinated with asking the Naked Raygun members if the music genre that made "you" pick up an instrument was the same as the genre that propelled "you" to be in the band.  It was mostly unanimous that the two were not the same.  In most cases the members of Naked Raygun were raised listening to Led Zeppelin, The Who, Van Halen, and my favorite UFO.  But these bands, even though causing one to pick up an instrument, mostly frustrated more than inspired.  It was just two damn difficult to play for a novice.  What lead most of them to playing in a band was the arrival of punk music with The Ramones, The Stooges, and one of my favorites The Stranglers.  These bands gave hope that a novice could play like them.  This did not mean you would be able to write songs as melodically interesting but that did not matter at the time one was to be propelled.  Just to know that I could put two fingers on the fret board and it would create a power chord was inspiration enough to continue.

But this was not the case for my best friend since shortly after my birth John Braun.  Technically he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, even though his father was a well respected cop who got free fireworks, records, and concert tickets for his son (he has an older sister Lora, also into music, damn she was physically, emotionally, full bodily in love with Aerosmith), John Braun was more or less born with a silver gibson flying V in his hands.  My brother, because of his highly fire conducive room full of posters and pages out of cream magazine dried out from pot smoke and cigarettes, from floor to ceiling, he was the one that gave me the vision to see what rock could be.  For a time I could put down my Mary Poppins record and gaze at his walls when he was gone, the freaky early look of The Tubes, a old school 3d poster of Pink Floyd, concert tickets from the tiny venues called Haymakers and Beginnings that attracted such new acts as The Scorpions, Judas Priest, and UfO.  He took photos from the crotch of his pants and became a master at snapping shots of bands worthy of framing. 

Anyway, I was talking about John Braun.  Damn that boy could play, even when we only had brooms for guitars, or just plain old air, he was leagues ahead of me, in style, and in actually understanding rhythm and melody.  Really at times he was so damn good and deserving of my admiration that I became more of a voyeur of our own playtime, our imagining of ourselves as Alice Cooper or Brian May from Queen.  I did not improve in my imagination or even when we got instruments.  This was about the time my family was falling apart, my dad had left my mom with 5 kids, she never having worked as an adult now had to take care of all of us and pay for food.  There was no time to even entertain the idea of getting me my own guitar.  For the longest time I had to play air guitar along side John playing his actual first guitar which I think was not a flying V but an Ibanez Destroyer.  I eventually got a job at a movie theater, under age, with permission from my mother, and earned enough money to buy a cheap copy brand called a Hondo Stratocaster.  (I got a stratocaster because I thought it would allow me to play like Ritchie Blackmore.)  I would bring it over to John's house at the other end of our neighborhood and we would listen to cassettes called "Guitar Licks" which you could purchase from Circus Magazine.  The first one we had was Hot Licks by Randy Rhoads.  Randy Rhoads was our hero, way more than Eddie Van Halen.  Now that I think of it Randy had some kind of punk aesthetic going, metal yet super melodic, fast yet simple at times.  God damn he walked into those Ozzy auditions an unknown with a tiny peavy decade amp and blew the minds of all listening.  Then of course he had to die in a plane crash, but I got to see him live, YOU BET I DID.  One of the best damn days of my life!

So… where was I?  Yes John Braun.  Fuck, he was good!  So we started a band!  The band was just like our underground fort we never built.  Our bass player and drummer was as non existent as the stove and bunk bed that were to be built 100 feet under the grass in my backyard.  We weren't a garage band, we were a basement band.  But he LEARNED, and I stumbled, I tripped, My fingers wandered the fret board like an elephant in a quadra-pair of skates for the first time on ice as thin as a strawberry fruit roll-up.  But do you know what?  I fucking named that band.  I fucking read a book called The Shadow of The Torturer and declared that our nonexistent band was to be called TORTURER.  And by fucking god, it was!  Without me there would have been no Weasel, without me their would have been no Torturer… well actually there was no Torturer, but while it lasted not existing I was in a glorious spacious friendly and inspiring metal hell with the most awesome air-guitar jammed dreams of Rosemont Horizon Stadium proportions.  

And yes, to this day that fucking John Braun friend of mine is thousands of times better than I'll ever be, and that's as it should be.  He's one of my unsung heroes.

He is the one that accidentally taught me one of the most important lessons.  And that's how I'll end this:  While I was air-guitaring and he was actually playing to a video featuring Alice Cooper's live concert of Welcome to My Nightmare, with blood, spiders, tight spandex, long hair, and plenty of sweaty wanking, wanking.  I stopped, put down my air guitar and stared at the television screen.  "God damn that guitarist sure can rip it up."  Then John said, "Yeah, he's great.  He also plays guitar for Elton John."  And I said, "Wow he most love this so much more!"  And then John stopped, put down his real guitar and asked, "Why would he love it more?"  And I had no answer.  Why would he love playing with Alice Cooper more than Elton John?  Why was my sister's boyfriend hit in the face with a brick outside a Disco Club (that was later set fire and burned to the ground) by a  Rocker just because in the disco they liked to dance instead of thrash their heads?

Here is one thing I learned about music theory, with 1,4,5 you can write a Ramones' song, a Lead Belly blues, an Iron Maiden metal lambast, a Bach sonata, a disco Donna Summers ballad, a Roger Whitaker soft sound, or even a non-existent wank for a band called TORTURER!

WRESTLING WITH WEASELS

            Ben and I met for the first time in Junior high.  I was in 8th grade and Ben was in 7th Grade. We were both on the Wrestling team for secondary reasons.  Meaning neither of us said, "Wrestling!  YES!"  My older brother had wrestled and did very well, so my teachers used comparative coercion to get me to join.  I didn't really care about being better than my brother, but Junior high had been tough on me, and I thought maybe this would help give me a little guidance.  (In retrospect it actually DID help.)  Ben on the other hand was not given much choice.  I'm pretty sure the coach, Mr. Chase, and Ben's father forced him onto the team, to keep a watch on him after school, to keep him out of trouble.

            For years River Trails had had an All Star wrestling team.  This year would be different.  This year our team was the closest one could get to the status of The Bad News Bears... only in wrestling leotards.  We only had one or two people on the team that were actually "good" wrestlers, Mario Marotti and Eddie Bryant.  Some others were OK but the badness of the rest of us, equaled out the good.  Our horribleness was overwhelming sometimes but we always had fun.

            In those days in school I was called Spaz or Wildman Pierson.  I had an incredible amount of unbridled energy.  I wouldn't say I was always out of control and unfocused, because I was often the most calm child. I could sit for hours and hours making latch hooks out of yarn.  It was just when I got excited I couldn't quite figure out how to channel that spasm of energy.  For instance I was an incredibly fast runner so I tried to play football, but whenever I would get the ball I would get so excited I couldn’t think straight.  At my first practice I ran a touchdown for the opposing team.  My own teammates tried to tackle me.  The coach wasn’t a very good teacher.  He yelled at me.  Everyone laughed.  I quit that day.  Supposedly Mr. Chase thought he could guide that crazy energy into some good on the wrestling team.  So…that was a prequel to how Ben and I fit together in this story. 

            I wouldn't say we became friends during this time.  Quite frankly to this day I don't know if we were ever really technically friends, or if we even thought of ourselves in that way.  We might have gone straight from acquaintances to business partners to dysfunctional brothers.  I had to meet Ben two more times over a period of 6 years before we even began considering picking up guitars and starting a band.  So our history together had begun being horrible at something we were forced to do, but somehow we managed to have fun doing it.   So perhaps we didn’t mind if we would be considered a bad band, perhaps that would make it fun, and make us subconsciously strive to be Good on our own terms.

            The idea behind the movie The Bad News Bears has a lasting affect on Ben and me. (And also Vapid) Scenes and dialogue from the Bad News Bears had become a part of Ben’s everyday vocabulary.  The Bad News Bears and Caddy Shack were the inspiration for much of his punk infused slang.  I think even on that wrestling team Ben enjoyed the fact that we were bad!  And quite frankly so did I.  After junior high, in high school when the gym teacher would ask for volunteer team captains to pick teams.  I would immediately raise my hand.  I would then proceed to put together the most motley crew of disinterested, geeky, outcastes.  My teams would never win, but FUCK did we have a great time losing.  This may have come from my experiences on that wrestling team with Ben.

            The other strong memory and what most people from that team, probably still to this day, remember about me, is that fact that I would throw up randomly during wrestling matches.  I would literally throw up, puke up all my guts onto the wrestling mats, but only during public matches.  I was in the 90 pound wrestling class.  At our first match I wrestled in my bout at top intensity, apparently without breathing.  At the end of the three positions I had won by a single point.  When the referee brought me and my opponent together to shake hands, I started to sweat, I couldn't breathe.  And like when a fire hydrant is pried open during the summer months to soak the kids in bathing suits and t-shirts, my throat released a continuous gush of gallon upon gallon of clear puke, onto the mat, onto my opponent and onto the referee.   For that entire year of wrestling, every time I threw up, I won.  If I didn't throw up, I didn't win.  And I can remember that when I got that feeling, I would look up to my team, and Ben's beady eyes and Cheshire grin would be facing me, his body in position to run and grab the nearest garbage can.  My malady became heroic, and Ben was always there to run to get the nearest can for my puke.  I wouldn't say his intentions were driven by compassion, sympathy, team spirit, or even for cleanliness, I think mostly he helped because my puking during matches was theatrical, weird, subversive, gross, chaotic and gut wrenchingly hysterical to him.  And to be quite honest, that’s how I see it in retrospect.  I am the fool, we were the fools, and we continue to be the fools who don’t give a fuck.  These are my earliest memories of the seeds that would become the core of Screeching Weasel.

(A few years earlier, KISS played at this same Junior High.  At the time I was in elementary school at Feehanville, right across the playground.  during recess I watched the whole band load in!  This is an article my friend wrote about this strange KISS appearance.  When KISS Rocked...)

A Small List of Early SW Experiences

A small list of early experiences highlighting the difficulties of sustaining Screeching Weasel

One of my favorite SW photos

1. To raise money for our first trip to Berkeley California, (No shows in between. Our first appearance at Gilman was a one show tour from Chicago to California) I worked three jobs.  My schedule 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Gloria Jeans Coffee Bean.  6 p.m. to Midnight Randhurst Cinemas. Midnight to 6 a.m. Cleaned Movie theaters and pulled up carpeting.  (After a couple of weeks of doing this I had a bit of a momentary breakdown.  I was pulling staples out of a piece of carpeting that rolls down the aisle of a theater.  My head started tingling, I looked across the carpeting and it began to grow longer and longer into the distance, like for miles, like past infinity.  I stood up and fell back down, dizzy.  I quit my third job the next day.)  Ben worked the night shift at a gas station and also made bird feeders, or bird food, some strange job with my other friend Glen (This may have been a bit later.  But he was working a lot too.)  When the two of us pooled our money together we still didn't have enough to get all four of us to California.  So Ben and I painted his Parent's house to pay for Steve's ticket.  Steve did not help.  That was a sore spot for awhile.  Warren paid for his own ticket.  Ben and I drove across the country in his Chevy Malibu.

2. To help pay for the recording of Boogada Boogada Boogada Ben and I worked at a job my brother got us.  Ben's parents had moved away, and the two of us were living in my mom's basement.  For most of that time he worked nights at the Gas Station and I worked at The Coffee Shop and at a Record Store.  We hardly saw each other except for rehearsals.  I would get home from work just as he was going to work.  I would visit him at the gas station for band meetings.  Anyway.  We added another job into the mix.  He and I would head to a factory before the sun had risen and shave aluminum shards off of long pipes.  The pipes would roll out of a machine.  We would grab them, one of us on each end.  The ends of the pipes were all rough with sharp points sticking out.  We would proceed to shave off all the extra aluminum to make the ends smooth.  We had gloves and masks, but after 8 hours of that, we would go home sweaty and there would be slivers of metal stuck in my fingers and in my face.  Sometimes I'd forget and I'd rub my face with my hand and a shard of metal would cut across my skin.  That sucked.

3. Ben and I took some classes at Harper Community College.  The idea was to see if the intellectual stimulation would help us write music.  We took 1 Poetry Class and 1 Music Theory Class.  I don't remember a single thing from the Theory class, but from the poetry class I remember:

so much depends

upon 

a red wheel

barrow 

glazed with rain

water 

beside the white

chickens.

Every day we would listen to Steve Dahl in Ben's car, go to class, and then eat burgers at Dairy Queen.  I think this was also during the Shards of Metal days.

4.  Once Boogada came out Ben went to live with a man named Dave Best, who ran Roadkill Records with us.  Ben slept on his floor.  I eventually moved there for a little while too and the two of us slept on Dave's living room floor without mattresses.  I think we each had sleeping bags and that's it. The memory Ben and I used to share about this is Dave would wear these boxer shorts with bananas on them.  They were torn in spots.  Sometimes one of us would wake up and he'd be standing above us sucking on a piece of fruit, and sadly we'd get an unwanted peak at his ball sacks and penis.

5.  Five years during the early band days I also attended Columbia College.  I don't know how the fuck I managed the time for that.  I didn't sleep much.  I worked at Crown Books, rehearsed with the band in my basement downtown where Panic lived below me, and we would tour whenever we could afford it.  I do remember that I would buy a pack of peanuts from the vending machine, and that would be my food for the day.  I would slowly eat one peanut at a time to make it last the day.  I think I saved myself 12 bucks a week for food.