Long Ago Around this Time Of Year A Child Was Born. His Name Is Bob

Tuesday Night December 22 it's the birthday bash of the year, and Bob Berberich's bringing it home with The Rosslyn Mountain Goats- a band which always draws a veritable who's who crew of our local rock 'n' roll world to The Quarry House in Silver Spring. Ottley! will also be appearing. (Perhaps they'll slip into the celebrity phone booth to change.)
Every show I've seen (and I'm not sure that I've missed one) has been different and marvelous thanks to the ever revolving gang of guest stars. Last time I saw Mark Noone (Slickee Boys) do a set that couldn't be beat until Joe Dolan (Beatnik Flies) got up and did something completely different, but equally crazy good. With all that talent in the room, it's all good.
The time is 8 sharp. No cover. Three jamming sets. It'll be over around 11 so the working man can drink a toast to Bob and still hit the hay at a reasonable hour. Any and all donations will go to benefit Jr Cline.

And The Answer Is...

(Dead Milkmen 1983)
So that common denominator of the bands playing The Velvet Lounge tomorrow night- the one I threw out as a challenge in the last posting that started with P ? Kind of a trick question because it's actually two words in my mind-Psychedelic and Punk. We've got Joe Talcum, once in The Dead Milkmen. Mark Noone of the Hula Monsters, once a Slickee Boy, and Haley Dolan of The Ex Invisible Husbands, daughter of Joe Dolan of The Beatnik Flies.
If that ain't a psychopunkic thread, I'll eat my hat. (Emphasis on thread- it ain't a rope that's for sure)
Free beer for everyone tomorrow night at The Velvet Lounge that submitted the right answer here in triplicate.


(Slickee Boys-mid 80s)

Part Two: How Slickees Meet Flies... OR.... Who Is This Martin Guy Anyway?

When we last left our heroes, (below in yesterday's posting) they were still operating out of various bedrooms scattered across the DC area, but Martin wanted to get their sound recorded. Marshall remembers:

He had this whole concept. He was changing his name to Kim Kane for the record, and the band would be called The Slickee Boys. Martin grew up on a base in Korea, and "slickee boys" were street punks that sold the GIs black market items. He played us a few obscure 1960s punk songs that we learned. He gave me chords to a song he was trying to write. I added a bunch of lead guitar to it. He gave Martha three times as many lyrics as were needed, and she chopped them down to fit. "Hands slide down snakes, a curling black-eyed sweetness, we're in a mandarin red-veiled dream." I had an instrumental version of "Exodus" I was working on. The record was called Hot and Cool. We went in a studio, and actually recorded it. He took care of all the art work and printing, and we actually put it out. I was shocked!

Getting the outfits for the cover photo started us all on a lifelong fascination with thrift stores. It matched the music. We were playing music that no one wanted anymore, just like the clothes in the Good Will. Recycling to the max.

Meanwhile, those three lost beatnik boys of Bethesda had moved into a group house in Wheaton. It was 1976, and something happened that changed everything according to Joe Dolan:
Somehow we came into possession of a "NY ROCKER" magazine which featured a pictorial of the NYC punk scene. Well, that was it. It was like a revelation from God above. Out came the real amps and drum kits. We were possessed, we were going to be punk rockers ( I couldn't play the electric guitar for shit, but I wasn't going to let that stop me). We spent the next few years playing the usual basement, garage, friend's party etc., but we never played at real rock clubs because we didn't think we were good enough. Then somehow by the grace of the rock gods, we were invited to play at DC Space.
We were playing with Black Market Baby. The place was packed; it seemed like anyone who was anyone in the DC music scene was there. When we got up to play our set, I had my shades on. After a few numbers I took them off and the audience started shouting " put the shades back on" ( that's how the shade thing got started). After we finished playing, Skip Groff came up to talk to us. He told us we would be perfect with The Slickee Boys, so we gave him our number. Lo and behold, a few days later Kim Kane called us and invited us to play with them at the Psychedelly in Bethesda. The rest is history, I've long since lost track of how many times we've played with them, but the excitement has never left.

Get over to the Surf Club tomorrow night and you can catch the excitement yourself in a rare reunion of both The Beatnik Flies and The Slickee Boys. Get there early and check out Prabir. The show starts at 9 p.m. Don't miss it.




P.S. And TONIGHT another legendary band comes back to life- The Rosslyn Mountain Boys
are at El Boqueron II in Rockville. (And I can't help using the word legend. It's not an exaggeration- this town has quite a few.)

Penny Dreadful Part One... or HoW The Slickee Boys and The Beatnik Flies Came to BE

In the early 1970s a lot of music was going on around here- on the radio, out in the clubs and in many a teenage boy's bedroom.
Marshall Keith remembers it this way:
I was hiding out in my room in Wheaton, MD in the 1970s playing guitar and making tapes. I didn't have a good guitar or amp, so I tried to make up for it by doubling, quadrupling, and octupling tracks of guitar (and whatever keyboards I could borrow from my friend, Charles). I liked to mess around with speeding up, slowing down, and reversing tracks- anything to make them sound unlike some guy... with a guitar... in his bedroom.

Meanwhile not so far away in Bethesda, Joe Dolan was in HIS room, listening to Beatles' records with his friends, Larry and Kenny. Joe says: Back then I used to write songs on a four string tenor guitar. In those days, Kenny and Larry would join in playing table tops, beer cans, you name it, anything we could get a sound out of. Kenny eventually found a used bass guitar, which he would play through the record player. Other rockers would never take us seriously, so we ended up performing at coffee houses. We even played at the Cellar Door's Hootenanny. We were rockers at heart, but we became known as folkies.

Then Marshall met Martin. A mutual friend thought Martin looked somewhat out of place hanging out at Montgomery Mall, and she sought him out. (Anyone who has ever seen The Slickee Boys can say amen here.)
Martin's room, Marshall recalls-was like somebody had packed a museum into a bedroom. Not only did he have thousands of oddities everywhere, he had a million records in nice neat stacks. There were some Dali-esque oil paintings he had done. He was very enthusiastic about showing us everything. "This is a Coca Cola from India. I don't want it opened, so whatever you do don't accidentally open it." I think he was nervous that we were even looking at it.

He was enthusiastic about his records too. He had all this stuff we had never heard of-I can't exactly remember what it was, but like: Mexican Mersey beat, Japanese 1960s punk, Indian movie soundtracks. It was so different than what we listened to, it was hard to even relate to it.
About a year after meeting Marshall, Martin wanted to make a record with Marshall. He asked Martha Hull to sing, Andy Von Brand to play bass, and Chris Rounds to play drums. Martin's brother, brother Thomas (who was 14) was going to play bass on one song, too.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting episode entitled "How The Boys Got Out of Their Rooms" or "When Slickees Fly" to find out what happened next.

And don't forget you can see these fine local musicians plus relative new comers Prabir and The Substitutes at the now ephemeral establishment Chick Hall's THIS FRIDAY.
The perfect antidote to cranberry overload.

Dead Beat Dead Beat

(They are....Dead Beat)

Joe Dolan (a venerable Beatnik Fly) wants an APB put out that his lovely daughter, Hayley Baptiste and the somewhat mysterious Mr Bucket will be down at the very Velvet Lounge again this Saturday night, October 20 as their band Dead Beat takes the stage.
Afterwards there will be a dance party with DJs- Pumpkin Jones, Fruit Reader and Mustafa Mustafa (Is that like Butros Butros?) playing Afro-beat, world, disco and dance hits.

(I just want to know if there's room on Joe's dance card.)

Don't forget- the big Beatnik Flies, Ottley and The Howling Mad show coming up next Thursday, Oct 25!


(NOT JO JO DOLAN)

Hey Kids It's 10:00. Do you Know Where Your Parents are?

(Bucket and Hayley of Deadbeat)

The NIRS affair took me back in time-back to when you showed up at at somebody's house, and their parents weren't home, and the basement was a party/band room, and a band was playing... no, four bands are playing, and in the case of Tru Fax and The Insaniacs, the DAD of the house is in the band, and in the case of Deadbeats, the daughter of the guy in the next band is in her own band. And so it went on until no one knew or cared what time it was. (Maybe it had something to do with the Ukranian hootch that was going around) Then and now were all mixed up and topping it off -The Beatnik Flies- Diana Quinn-Mark Noone finale extravaganza.

Oh And Josh Arnson (former Insect Surfer)


and Ruth Logsden of Ruthie and the Wranglers were there, too.

(Joe Dolan cracks up Ruth Logsden)


(Diana Quinn and Mark Noone just before they joined the band)

Maybe it was all a dream. Good party though.

GHZ-Underattended but Over The Top

Everybody who did not show up to the GHZ gig because it rained should just crawl under the covers with regret. You missed an amazing show Friday night. They rocked the joint like it was sold out until 1 a.m., and they were even better than I remembered if that's possible. Dan Hovey is one of the few people I know who can make his guitar sound like a human voice- and he played until his tendons were on fire. Scott Giambusso, an iron solid bass player, gave everyone a strong backbone to play off of, and John Zidar punctuated the air with exclamations points of drumming that you don't see coming, but are just perfect. All three astounded the crowd, and even each other sometimes, and it's a great thing to watch a band this tight- doing what a band needs to do-play together. (It's not as simple as it sounds.)
Anybody who doesn't come see them play in November should have a doctor's note. Make the effort. These guys sure do. I predict GHZ will sell out the Capitol Center one day. It's just a matter of time. Mark my words.


Joe Dolan and John Stone of The Beatnik Flies made it.
(Turn around, John)
So did Kim Kane of The Slickee Boys...
Where were you?

P. S . Here's JOHN ZIDAR"S 2 cents on what Scott wrote above:

"I whimsically beg my daughter Rachel to change her name to Ginger on a regular basis because my other two kids HAPPEN to be named Eric and Jackie. The point of all that should be obvious ….

A small technical correction, I only appear to have 3 rack toms if you’re very, very drunk (SCOTT!!). Before the Ginger Baker fans out there explode with “Ginger only has two rack toms and two floors”, I want to clarify that that is my precise setup. I have made the set more ergonomic by putting the largest drum on the left so I don’t wrench my back playing “Sunshine”….. hey, WAKE UP, I’m laying out some drum shop talk here!!"

Summertime In Washington

Is this It? The end of life as we know it?
Look around- The houses are empty. People are fleeing the city. The bugs are getting louder-preparing to take over. Go down town. There's parking.

Have you lost the will to live as I have?
At least the sun will go down again, and we can crawl out into the night, and look for signs of life
like at The Velvet Lounge where bands who changed their name from a couple of weeks ago persevere...See the Dead Husbands, no the Ex (or is it X?) Husbands- now Deadbeats -tonight, featuring Beatnik Fly, Joe Dolan's daughter, Hayley.

(Sorry. The heat has taken away any slim grasp I had on grammar)

Have You Seen These Bands?

can you name these bands?





You could see them THIS SUNDAY July 29th at the dc space reunion/benefit for Tom Terrell at the 9:30 club.


(They are: Ottley, Rustbuckit, The Beatnik Flies)

It's A Family Affair

See all that hair flying in front of Joe Dolan? That's his daughters rocking out to Daddy-o last Saturday night at the Beatnik Flies show in Takoma Park. The Ottleys opened with Martha Hull singing her heart out in an office chair- her broken ankle propped up in front of her, but that didn't slow her or the rest of the band down a bit. The only problem was the beer (and there was good beer, too) ran out early, but the bands played on. By the way, age before beauty is a beautiful thing when it adds up to musical talent like these guys have in spades. (Somebody stop me before I mix up a Molotov metaphor)

All I meant was- it was a great show, and all these cats still rock and how.

Ottley/Beatnik Fly Alert

Sangha on Westmoreland Avenue in Takoma Park is an unusual space- part store-part somebody's living room- and furthermore, it's a really fun place to see a band. Two blasts (and I don't use that word lightly) from our area past will be there this Saturday. Slickee boy legends, Marshall Keith and Martha Hull make up two out of three members of Ottley- a self described garage band. And Bob Berberich, the other member, was the original drummer for Grin and the Hangmen. The Beatnik Flies have been together, well, since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but they played Sangha a few months ago, and it was great. It's amazing what this town can cough up in the way of talent.
So here's the scoop from Joe Dolan, spokesman Fly:
"The doors open at 8:30. Ottley will go on about 9:30 for a one hour set. The Beatnik Flies will start at 10:50, and will play until we can't play no more. We are planning on about 20 songs.
THIS SHOW WILL ROCK.
We especially encourage young people to check us out, cause they
usually dig us once they do. Is it our girlish hairdos and dandyish cloths? We don't know.
People should try to get there early, 'cause I don't know how many people this place holds. Admission is
$10 or $6 with student ID. A portion of the proceeds
will be donated to "HUNGRY FOR MUSIC" a charity that
provides musical instruments to kids that cannot afford to buy them.
Also we will be celebrating two birthdays: Martha Hull
(legendary singer of Ottley) and Jennifer (the hard
working lady who runs Sangha Cafe/Sangha Peace
Project. So lets rock!"

Yep, let's go!