After the Dislocated played our first couple of shows at Jabbs and at Riverdale High we went back to Tim Baird’s den and started working on material to unveil at a battle of the bands. Mike wrote some music and I added some lyrics and we had two new original songs; “Complications” and “Perfect Girl”. “Complications” was a good three chord hardcore punk song, while “Perfect Girl” was tuneful pop punk of the kind that would later propel acts like Green Day and Blink-182 into the stratosphere. We were just ahead of the curve back in 1989. We played a couple more shows at Jabbs in the meantime, including one where I ceremoniously smashed my first guitar – an old acoustic child’s model with a busted tuning key. The battle of the bands featured us, the Red Jelly Mambo’s, Gotham City, and Cruel Blue. Cruel Blue was an awesome alternative band with all original material. The Red Jelly Mambo’s band was made up all high school kids playing original low key indie rock. Gotham City was an incredibly tight cover band with professional chops. We weren’t the best act, but maybe wearing a t-shirt by local Nashville rock legends The White Animals brought us some luck. The battle was judged solely on audience response and the audience was ours. We made sure the ZUD crew was out in force slam dancing through the night. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the audience members was a guy from Riverdale’s rival high school, Oakland, who would soon become the Dislocated’s bass player. This person was the legendary skate punk with the deep bass voice and long hippie hair; Greg “Shrub” Rountree who now runs www.goblinhaus.com back in Texas. He’s seen briefly in the video we made of the show. After the show we spent the rest of the night doing power slides on our boards at an abandoned shopping center mixing it up with a local wino named Tommy and the local Murfreesboro police who came by to check up on him. They didn’t care about us skating at all.
Jabbs announced they were going to close for good so an event was arranged called Jabbstock and we were lucky to be included in the all star line up of bands that played that show. We didn’t even have to close the show, but somehow we did manage to play the last complete set ever performed there. Jack was scheduled the close the chapter on Jabbs, but just a few songs into their set the owner of Jabbs pulled the plug. I’m probably the one to blame as an offhand comment I made about really wanting the St. Paulie Girl beer light got taken seriously by one of our overzealous fans. I was hanging around by the open side door watching jack play when the fan brought the light to me. Once he did that, the dam had burst as patrons everywhere were yanking stuff off the walls. The whole club might have been cleaned out if the owner hadn’t finally realized what was going on and kicked everyone out. I truly am sorry for me and my big mouth.
We knew we needed a full time bassist as it was just silly for Mark and Mike to keep switching off between bass and guitar like they had been doing. I don’t recall how Shrub joined up with us. We were probably out skating and asked him to join – it’s all so hazy now. But he quickly signed up and we were on our way. We added more new songs: “3 Groovy Chix”, “Whatcha’ Thinkin’”, “Same Circumstance”, “What Do You Want From Me” and an acoustic track titled “Hippie Bus”. Our days of doing cover songs would soon be a thing of the past at the rate we were going. A dark cloud named Darlene was coming along to wreck our rock and roll dreams. She was Tim’s girlfriend and she didn’t like him spending time practicing. He missed some practices. Keep in mind the practices were held at his house so things were getting uncomfortable. Finally we decided to sack him. It seems incredibly stupid now and I wish it never happened but we gave him the pink slip. I think he even heard about it second hand. Now we needed a new drummer and a new practice space. Practice space was easy; we just set up shop in the Taylor’s carport when the weather was nice and the laundry room when the weather was bad. Finding a drummer though was not an easy task. We’d placed fliers up at MTSU and had tryouts. but so many people were just weak. We had been truly lucky to have Tim playing with us. There surely wasn’t a better drummer in Murfreesboro at the time. Finally we landed a guy named Rob Marble who was a veteran of some cover bands and we were ready to enter the final stage of The Dislocated.
The fifth and final part will chronicle the decline and massive fall of Murfreesboro’s first pop punk act.
2 comments:
I knew Mike from middle school. We were the same age and had classes together in the seventh grade. I met you at the battle I think, and probably got to know you just from being skate rats together around town. That and from when you worked at the skate shop (was that before or after I joined?). I sat in on a practice one night at Tim’s and I think you asked me to join on the spot. I don’t even think you ran it by the other guys first. That’s what I remember. –Shrub
That sounds about right for me. I think the band was kaput before I worked at the skate shop. I do remember that when I heard that you played bass I wanted to give you a chance. You had a great image, of course the big question was if you could actually play. It didn't take long to find that out as we probably made you learn Black Sabbath's "After Forever" right off the bat.
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