It's Monday so I'm exceedingly lazy so if you want to find part one of this story - look in the February archives. Part two was posted just a few days ago so that should be easy to find. Okay, if you're caught up here is part three of my story about my second band: the almighty supercharged power rocking punk of Michael Landon's Ghost!
Michael Landon’s Ghost went on to play quite a few shows in Murfreesboro including one at legendary establishment, Mainstreet, which featured the first of our two former Dislocated members playing with us. We added the guitar talents of Mike Taylor before the Mainstreet gig. It was another good show with us pissing off the crowd. Punk rock was yet to really hit Murfreesboro, TN. Mike was going to be a permanent addition to the band, but his life was in a state of flux so it just didn’t happen. Sometime during this point we played the best show I’ve ever been a part of in a small Tennessee called Decherd.
There was a skate park there and they let bands play out back inside a small concrete block building. Toby or Wes got us the gig there and I don’t remember whether we played the show as MLG or under the name Pibebomb. I believe the name change was already in place – we just figured we would never go anywhere with a name like Michael Landon’s Ghost, plus I’m always big on change. We had rehearsed with a girl named Christie who wanted to play guitar in the band and she was supposed to play at this show, but it didn’t happen. It was a shame because she missed the greatness and glory only rock and roll can bring.
We pulled in just in time for sound check. One of the other bands on the bill, and there were several, was doing a cover of a Pegboy song and it sounded really good. We set our equipment up, did a run through of one song – probably “Paranoid” which were going to cover that night – and then we just hung out wondering if anybody would actually show up in the summer night heat. It’s amazing how my usually razor sharp memory has forgotten so many important details about this night. I don’t remember if we were the first band to play or the last. I don’t remember the names of the other groups and one of them liked us so much they gave me their card. What I do remember is the pandemonium of the show. The concrete block building was sweltering even though the sun had long gone down. There was a good sized crowd of around fifty kids in the audience when we played and they went nuts – slamming and moshing, stage diving from the lip of a stage that stood maybe four inches off the concrete floor, screaming along with the words of our originals by the time the second chorus came around, and jumping up on stage to dance. We had never gotten such a reception and I never would get such a one again. The kids down in Decherd were starved for punk music. They weren’t jaded like the kids in Nashville where you’d have been lucky at the time to get twenty kids to show up for a Sunday matinee hardcore punk rock show. The audience at Decherd swirled around and around in a mad frenzy of youthful rebellion, but one could see the absolute joy rising up from the madness. When we finished the set, it seemed like every kid in the place came up to us to tell us how great we had been. I was completely humbled by the experience – not too sound like a hippie, but there was a spiritual vibe in the air that night. After the gig, we even got paid cash money for the first time ever and then Toby and I promptly spent it on some skating items before taking a few turns around the park on our boards. Seeing that we were skaters too only cemented our status in the eyes of the kids. I wonder if anybody from Decherd or Winchester, TN still remembers that night.
Our next big gig was at the Cannery in Nashville. We were going to be one of many bands performing some all day and all night concert. We decided to enlist another former Dislocated band member, Mark Taylor, for this show figuring we could use another guitar to bolster our sound. We instantly clashed as Mark actually wanted to play “Sonic Reducer” the way it sounded on record. I just wanted to keep playing it the only way I knew how. In retrospect, he was totally right, but to his credit he let me have my way as band leader and he played it the way I asked. The show was rocking with a pretty big crowd in attendance – it wasn’t only punk bands on the bill. We got a big mention in local fanzine Sky Flying By and we were also written about in Nashville punk magazine House O’ Pain. That show had also seen what I believe was the debut performance of the Nashville punk rock band that made it out of Nashville: The Teen Idols. Things were starting to really look good, especially after a former strip club became a music club. The Pantheon soon became the place to be.
I saw Superchunk play there twice and I also saw L7 play a riotous gig there one night. I should have known Toby was getting tired of the music scene the night of L7 when he bailed with his girlfriend before the show began, but gave me twenty dollars to buy him a t-shirt before he left. We never got to play on bills like those, but we played several Sunday afternoon matinees; the two most notable were opening for Letch Patrol (here’s an article about the now homeless lead singer Harris Pankin)once and then what I believe was our final gig opening for Bedlam Hour.
Letch Patrol may have been dubbed “Scum Rock”, but they were a helluva bunch of nice guys. When they heard us do our cover of the Dead Boys “Sonic Reducer” during sound check, they told us they did the song too. When I asked them if they wanted us not to do the song, Harris Pankin quickly said, “No, no, you guys do the song too. It’s a great song.” Maybe a handful of people saw the show which really rocked. I believe our final show ever was when we opened for South Carolina punk legends, Bedlam Hour, who were also great guys. The bass player wore a cow suit and the band threw snacks to the sparse crowd. It was fun, but the small crowds at the Pantheon were wearing us down. Pipebomb was ready to fizzle out.
It was time to pay up for our rehearsal space and I decided to pull the plug. Wes White got to keep the space and Toby now had time to spend with his girlfriend. I actually had some free time for studying my college courses. Wes went on to play with rockabilly band Hellbilly before joining the Teen Idols where he spent a long time before heading back to rockabilly. Toby and I went on to form Dragula. MLG slash Pipebomb was an awesome experience. I'll leave you with some of the lyrics of one of our first songs, "What Can We Do" written about Germs lead singer Darby Crash.
"Darby lived as he died, a crash of glory, a suicide
nightmare dream of the modern eye, the television way to die,
a flashbulb burned out right, the sunset stripped American night,
a neon hell that never fades from sight, the drugs help you feel allright."
Note: Soulfish Stew does not condone or endorse the use of drugs. It's called dope for a reason.
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