Seattle Years Disclaimer: As I enter the Seattle years in this music blog, the above disclaimer goes double, because so much happened and there are so many details to cover in this 14 year period; so many shows, so many bands, so many friends and so much change in my life. As a result of this and the fact that the four of us who formed Treepeople found ourselves in the midst of a scene which blew up around us and attracted the eyes of the world just 2 years after our arrival, not to mention the 12 years I played music following that, I am bound to, hell, I will forget something.
This means two things: I will be coming back to entries and adding things to them over the months following publication, and, that the part of the above disclaimer where I ask for help from people in keeping me honest and in remembering things is crucial to them. I thank anyone ahead of time who was there, and, those who weren't there who have access to valid info, for helping me to correct errors in dates or chronology. Yes, I have the Internet, but many bands, scenes and things I will cover did not receive the attention I feel that they deserved and thus I will recall them mostly from memory, or rather, memories; mine and those of friends. Also, friends who were in bands which I do not happen to mention, please don't take it personally, just remind me. I have created a monster in undertaking this blog, one which I am determined to ride until the end!
Lastly, as mentioned, this scene gained national attention, and thus, needless to say and as we all know, many bands/people became famous, became rock stars, were/are admired by millions, etc and etc...This makes another part of my original disclaimer even more important. This memoir is intended to tell my story, from my perspective. I have no intention of creating a place where people can seek gossip about famous people, nor is it about 'name-dropping'. I write of my impressions of people, bands, and the Seattle scene from the '90s into the early 2000s. I protect those who are my friends fiercely because a symptom of being known is frequent intrusion into their lives beyond a level that I feel is acceptable. Thank you for indulging me this disclaimer.
A short disclaimer on the Seattle Punk entries: I am not a rock journalist (by any stretch of the imagination) and I know that others have covered the subject of Seattle Punk much more thoroughly. I am adding these sections as I thought it was important to add background to the overall history I am telling, and to give Seattle punk bands who existed during the 'grunge years' more attention. In the spirit of the rest of this blog, it is based mostly on my experiences within the Seattle scene. And before I need to change the title of this blog to 'Disclaimer'...Onward>>>
Early Seattle Punk Part II
From talking to and emailing back and forth with people who were involved in the early Seattle punk scene, I get the sense that it was composed of a pretty closely knit group, and was overall fairly friendly as scenes go, with not a lot of competition, at least not to the level it reached in the '90s. Based on my experience in not only the punk scene but the general music scene when I moved to Seattle in 1989, it seems that this general vibe continued. After the Sub Pop machine had cranked out a significant amount of hype about the Seattle scene, it was interesting to talk to people in other towns who bought this hype and assumed Seattle had tons of clubs to play and that there were bands vying to embody the 'World Domination' motto put forth by the label, but the truth was, in the '90s it was a pretty small scene, also closely knit, with a handful of clubs, and a pretty friendly and diverse range of bands (the term 'diverse' is used here in reference to the music, certainly not race, as the scene was, and still is, mostly white).
Bands like the U-Men were playing lots of shows and inspiring people to start bands of their own. Their music was high-energy punk based on garage rock. The singer, John Bigley, was an electric, enigmatic front man with a deep resonating voice. As Stephen Tow puts it in his Seattle music history, 'The Strangest Tribe', '...Bigley became the band’s shamanic leader. His growling vocals and intense stage presence often left audiences in a trancelike state...'
(See full article here: http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2011/9/16/seattle-bands-invent-grunge-october-2011)
The U-Men performing in Seattle
(image retrieved from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/U-Men_at_the_Bat_Cave_Seattle.jpg)
Above: U-Men Vocalist John Bigley, bassist Jim Tillman
Images (including below) retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_U-Men
Tom Price, the guitarist of U-Men, sent me an amazing personal history of the band, from which I will be quoting here and there, and which you can find in its entirety at the end of this entry, it is worth reading as a whole. My sincere gratitude to Tom for this, he is one of the good guys in the scene, and an important first contact when he worked at Fallout Records with my friend Paula Sen, and later playing shows with his excellent band Gas Huffer (check out his current band, Tom Price Desert Classic, they rock). Tom had this to say about the front man of the U-Men: "...One night we were all at a party at a house called Cleaveland [Cleveland?] and I heard a commotion upstairs, and John came flying down the stairs, I think he was drunk and tripped, and he smashed into a window at the foot of the staircase and knocked all the glass out, and he stood there kind of wavering, with this amazing look of innocence on his face, broken glass everywhere, just this brilliant tableaux, and I turned to Charlie and said 'That's him. That's our singer.' ...He was kind of an intimidating figure, and we didn't really know him, so we made Robbie tell him he was our singer..."
Tom Price playing with the U-Men
The U-Men came up with their name from the title of a bootleg recording by a band they were into, Pere Ubu. As Tom describes it, "...We started using the name U-Men, I think, before John joined us. Charlie and I thought up a variety of stupid names, but then we saw a Pere Ubu bootleg live album called "The U-Men", and about that same time I was reading a book about World War One that had a picture of these raggedy-looking German U-boat sailors, and the caption said "The U-men", and I thought that was quite a coincidence, so from then on we were the U-Men..." The U-Men's music indeed does show some influence by Pere Ubu, as well as the aforementioned Seattle garage rock band The Sonics (see entry #28, 'Seattle Punk Part I') [SIlly Past Wayne forgot one of the biggest influences, Gun Club - Yours, Present Wayne]. The term 'swamp-o-billy' is also used to describe their music, which is more apt than when people liken them to 'pre-grunge' or 'proto-grunge' music, in my opinion (and I am certain I am not alone in having it) as they have almost nothing to do with the music later known as grunge. As I recently stated in a Facebook status post: "...Dear rock journalists; Calling The U-Men a 'proto-grunge' band is like calling The Sonics 'proto-punk'. Grunge never existed when U-Men were around [in hindsight, I should have added that grunge sounded nothing like U-Men, as the 'proto' part of the label implies]. You should start referring to Seattle bands after U-Men as 'Post U-Men'..." I very well might start using this term in this blog. It is actually somewhat accurate in terms of their influence and being ahead of their time in the Seattle scene.
My experience with U-Men is limited (especially since they broke up before I moved to Seattle) but my friends in the Seattle music scene all held them in high regard. One day, when I still lived in Boise, just before moving to Seattle, Tad Doyle called me, and when I picked up the phone, not knowing who it was, he immediately began reciting U-Men lyrics to me in a gruff voice like John's; "...Dig it piper, dig it piper, dig it a hole..." from the U-Men song, 'Dig It A Hole'. I had no idea what he was talking about!
Hear the U-Men song 'Dig It A Hole' below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWxS48yOwfI
Seattle hardcore punk
U-Men existed in a punk scene that was dominated by hardcore bands (Tom Price mentioned that he and his bandmates wanted to do something different with U-Men than the standard hardcore fare). What is 'hardcore'? In the spirit of my Patron Saint of Laziness, I will use this pretty succinct and apt definition from Wikipedia: "...Hardcore punk (often referred to simply as hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. Hardcore punk music is generally faster, heavier, and more abrasive than regular punk rock..." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_punk). In addition to this, it can be said that hardcore was dominated by young white males and the themes that they were concerned with; anti-authority, expressions of masculinity, anti-corporate rock (even moreso than the proto-punk, new wave and punk bands/scenes). Musically, faster = better. If you have followed this blog, you know that my musical origin, at least as a musician, was in hardcore punk, singing for Dissident Militia and playing bass for State of Confusion (SOC) so I can picture bands like U-Men or The Enemy playing in this scene, and how they wouldn't really gel too much with it.
Some bands that fit in with the Seattle hardcore scene from the early '80s into the early '90s were:
10 Minute Warning
The Accüsed (also considered a metal band by some)
Aspirin Feast (in my view, under-rated)
Brotherhood
Chicken
Christ on a Crutch
The Dehumanizers
False Liberty
The Fartz
Jesters of Chaos
Last Gasp
Officer Down
North American Bison
Whipped
Whorehouse of Representatives
(Think this list sucks/is too short? Send me names & links!)
Since Treepeople had evolved from the hardcore punk band State of Confusion (SOC) there was a natural connection for the band to that particular scene. As mentioned in earlier entries in this blog, our friends from Tri-Cities, Washington who knew us from our days as SOC, were already established in the hardcore scene in Seattle by the time we moved there as Treepeople, and it took them some time to 'get' what exactly we were doing with this new, more pop-sounding band, and I think it is fair to say some of them were suspicious of it. This is true of other folks in the Seattle hardcore punk scene who were familiar with SOC. But they eventually got it, and we began to play shows with our friends Whipped and their friends in Christ on a Crutch, a band made up of two former members of the Tri-Cities band whom SOC played with fairly regularly, the infamous Diddly Squat, (Nate Mendel on bass & Eric Akre on drums) and two guys out of the Washington, DC scene (JB on guitar and Glen Essary on vocals, Glen dated Paula Sen at the time) where they originally formed Christ on a Crutch before moving to Seattle in the '80s.
(Read more about Christ on a Crutch here: http://10thingszine.blogspot.com/2007/07/christ-on-crutch.html )
One interesting connection I have to Christ on a Crutch was that I provided them a picture from a book I found at a thrift store called 'The Policeman Is Your Friend' that ended up being the cover and concept for their 1991 LP, 'Crime Pays When Pigs Die', which is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the finest hardcore albums from that time. (See cover below):
Christ On A Crutch's 1991 LP, 'Crime Pays When Pigs Die'
Above: Christ on a Crutch playing live: Nate Mendel, bass, Glen Essary, vocals, Eric Akre, drums and JB, guitar/vocals - Thanks to Eric Akre for these photos. Top three photos by George Morey, bottom photo by John Book
Treepeople became great friends with both Whipped and Christ On A Crutch, and we played some memorable shows with them, which I look back on fondly. It worked somehow; our music and theirs. Part of the reason for that was because the songwriting in Treepeople always had a bit of hardcore punk flavoring, especially in the songs written first for SOC that we carried over and adapted to the Treepeople 'sound', the most illustrative example of which of which being 'Stay', from the album 'Guilt, Regret, Embarrassment'. (Also listen to the song 'Transitional Devices' from the same LP).
Listen to Stay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p7sekAKQjc
Whipped was a band, as I have mentioned, with whom Treepeople had a close relationship. Their music was incredibly raw and fast, and even a bit scary due to its emotional and political intensity. They were fierce live, and their drummer, Drew Quinlan (RIP), a focused madman on the drums (and also, incidentally, the inspiration for the band name, due to his 'under-the-thumb' relationship with a girlfriend for many years) would end up playing drums in the folk/goth/punk band Violent Green with myself on bass and songwriter/guitarist/singer Jenny O'lay, in 1992. Paula Sen, the aforementioned bass player/songwriter/singer in Whipped, was an important, one-woman force in the Seattle punk scene: Working at the punk rock record store, Fallout Records (with non other than Tom Price) booking and promoting well-attended local punk shows and booking successful tours for Whipped and other bands. Her influence and presence in the scene can't be overstated. After Whipped, Paula would go on to play in some other excellent Seattle punk bands, most prominent among them being Shug.
Listen to Whipped here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvH78kLqPM
Above: Whipped playing live: Doug Pack, guitar/vocals, Drew Quinlan (RIP) drums, Paula Sen, bass/vocals - Many thanks to Doug Pack for getting me these photos (photographers unknown)
The Troubled All Ages Scene
As I have mentioned a few times in this blog, in the '80s and '90s, it was challenging to find venues that were willing to let punk rockers take over their establishments for an evening, especially for an all ages show. There was an incredible amount of prejudice among the city government and the general public against punk rock at the time in Seattle. Something called the 'Teen Dance Ordinance' was in place. The Teen Dance Ordinance regulated all ages 'dances'. It was passed on July 29th, 1985 by the Seattle City Council and included these main provisions:
- Age limits: Underage dances (allowing those under 18 to attend) may only admit patrons age 15-20 unsupervised. Anyone younger would require a parent or guardian chaperone and anyone older would need to be accompanying a youth under 18.
- Security requirement: Two off-duty police officers were required on premises, with one off-duty officer outside to patrol the area.
- Insurance: $1,000,000 in liability insurance was required;
- Exemptions: Non-profits and schools were exempt from these restrictions
You can read the Stranger article here: www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-return-of-the-demon/Content?oid=1895
The Monastery, Seattle, Washington
[A reader who hung out at The Monastery in the early '80s emailed me and offered their perspective and some corrections about the venue:
"...Although you're quite right that George Freeman's tussles with the city did create a backlash for all-ages clubs, The Monastery was never a punk club and I went there often from 1981-83.
The Monastery was fashioned after The Sanctuary, a famous gay club in NYC that closed in the mid-70s. It was THE premier gay club in Seattle after Shelly's Leg closed. The club featured laser lights, an incredible sound system and DJs who spun dance music thru the night. It was also a church, I mean, a real church. George Freeman helped LGBT youth find jobs, gave them food and shelter. He was a wonderful person.
But it was definitely not a punk club in the sense that the Metropolis, Grey Door or Gorilla Gardens were punk clubs and never featured live music to my knowledge....It was a gay club, though anyone was welcome.
I'm involved in a project on the punk & gay scenes in Seattle from 1979 - 1989. But unlike most "documentaries" about the period, we're focused on the little known names of the era, people we knew personally. And we're focused exclusively on the pre-grunge era, because that's when it all happened..."]
The Teen Dance Ordinance was essentially a ban on all ages shows, because no one who put on shows could afford the insurance (a classic tactic, the same move was pulled by Boise State University when the school administration figured out who the Dead Kennedys actually were when they were scheduled to play at the college). It shaped the punk venue scene in Seattle for many years. Later, well known Seattle bands like Nirvana, through an organization founded by the bass player, Krist Novoselic called JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Musicians Political Action Committee) fought against it, much to their credit. Per the wikipedia page on the Teen Dance Ordinance: "...A new ordinance proposed to replace the TDO was passed by the City Council in 2000, however it was quickly vetoed by Mayor Paul Schell. The veto caused JAMPAC to launch a suit against the City of Seattle, claiming that the TDO's virtual outlawing of dance infringed on the First Amendment right to free expression. A judge however ruled for the City on JAMPAC's suit in May 2002, claiming there was no infringement on the First Amendment and that the matter is a political one for the Council to decide, not the courts. Nevertheless, during the course of the suit, Schell was voted out of office (in the aftermath of the disastrous WTO meetings of 1999) and the new mayor Greg Nickels, a proponent of the bill, resubmitted the ordinance to the Council. The new All-ages Dance Ordinance, written by members of the Music and Youth Task Force, was passed on August 12, 2002, replacing the TDO..." All I can add is that this interaction between the mayor's office and its city's citizens, along with pretty much the whole troubled reign of his administration, proves that Paul Schell was a terrible mayor, and, quite a dick.
I couldn't resist. Older folks will get the reference. Younger folks, use your google brain and look up the plot! (I do not, however, recommend watching the film...UNLESS you want to embarrass your parents & watch it in their presence).
The Dehumanizers - Kill Lou Guzzo
The Dehumanizers' controversial 7 inch record, Kill Lou Guzzo
Image retrieved from:
http://cdn.discogs.com/pUqYR8lsfukIqgqb0cZ5Kpr9vHE=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc%28%29:format%28jpeg%29:mode_rgb%28%29/discogs-images/R-924384-11733743
The Dehumanizers were a hardcore punk band out of Seattle whom I have mentioned in earlier entries, as their path crossed with that of State of Confusion when we toured the western US in 1986 and played a few dates with them. They achieved notoriety when they took on a local TV and Radio art critic who was a former newspaper journalist and investigative reporter named Lou Guzzo. Guzzo earned their spite from his editorials on KIRO news, many of which were pro-Teen Dance Ordinance and anti punk kids (and one of which is sampled in the song itself). The Dehumanizers released a single called simply 'Kill Lou Guzzo'. It became a rallying cry for Seattle Punk teens. As mentioned in earlier entries, I later played in a band with their talented guitarist, Loni King, in the '90s (Loni also played in the incredible Seattle punk/funk/improv band, Imij).
Listen to the Dehumanizers' song, 'Kill Lou Guzzo' here:
Seattle Hardcore Punk, A Gallery
Whorehouse of Representatives
10 Minute Warning
Aspirin Feast
The Derelicts
The Accüsed
It is now apparent that the 'Seattle Punk' entries will have to be in 3 parts (but I am determined to keep it at only 3!). Next time I would like to cover some of the punk clubs, crusty punks, and talk about some memorable shows, other great bands (like, off the top of my large, babylike head, Whorehouse of Representatives, Fastbacks, Seven Year Bitch, Shug, Derelicts and oh, so many more, maybe a flier section...Fuck. What the hell have I gotten myself into here? A labor of love, I suppose...To quote Hunter S. Thompson, "OK for now."
Don't forget! See below for a personal history of U-Men by Tom Price of U-Men/Gas Huffer/Tom Price Desert Classic!
~Early U-Men~
..."John Bigley was more from the hardcore end of the scene, whereas Charlie Ryan and Robbie Buchan and I were a little more from the artier punk rock side of things. There was of course a lot of crossover between the two, but there was a fairly strong sub-tribal distinction, too. Charlie and I were the same age as the hardcore guys, but we'd been around a little longer. We'd sort of been on the periphery of Seattle's original late 70s punk scene. The hardcore guys were more hardcore than the 70s punks, more like a gang, kind of scary. Of course we saw all those guys around every day, and were good friends with some of them, but we were still sort of marginal.
We started seeing John around in the summer of 1980, I think. He was a big dude, and had kind of a cool look, not just your typical mohawk and leather thing. A bit of a horror rock look, I guess. Right away I thought he looked like a singer.
One night we were all at a party at a house called Cleaveland, and I heard a commotion upstairs, and John came flying down the stairs, I think he was drunk and tripped, and he smashed into a window at the foot of the staircase and knocked all the glass out, and he stood there kind of wavering, with this amazing look of innocence on his face, broken glass everywhere, just this brilliant tableaux, and I turned to Charlie and said "That's him. That's our singer."
He was kind of an intimidating figure, and we didn't really know him, so we made Robbie tell him he was our singer. She was the kind of person who could just walk up to anyone and start yakking.
At that time Charlie and Robbie and I were sort of playing as a trio, but we weren't a real band with a real set or anything. The first actual complete song we learned was a surf instrumental by the Pyramids called "Penetration", and we had a couple of partial songs, one I remember called "Think Big" and one called "Hang Up". We'd play "The Witch" and "Strychnine" by the Sonics, or at least as much of them as we could figure out, maybe "Pipeline" and "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog". We'd be at a party, and people would get up and play. Not really jamming, because hardly anybody knew how to solo. People would play "Sex Bomb" and "Ha Ha" by Flipper, or whatever, just go until all the amps and the drum kit crapped out.
It's absolutely impossible to pinpoint when or where the first actual U-Men performance took place. In some basement in the U-District, in the summer of 1981, we probably got up and played "Penetration", and then John probably howled away on "Strychnine" or one of our half-baked originals or something. The band took shape very gradually. We might've stood out a little bit in that we were actually trying to be a band. We had the name "U-Men", and we tried to practice semi-regularly, and were trying to write songs.
We started using the name U-Men, I think, before John joined us. Charlie and I thought up a variety of stupid names, but then we saw a Pere Ubu bootleg live album called "The U-Men", and about that same time I was reading a book about World War One that had a picture of these raggedy-looking German U-boat sailors, and the caption said "The U-men", and I thought that was quite a coincidence, so from then on we were the U-Men.
The first show we did that resembled a real show, as far as I can recall, was in the bar of a Chinese restaurant somewhere. We got up and played an actual set of eight or nine songs, got paid a few bucks. I remember Kurt Bloch was there, so it might've been with the Fastbacks.
Our original songs, back then, were pretty bad. Ridiculous time changes, too many parts. Definitely riff, rather than chord, oriented. We were consciously trying to do something different, because at that time punk rock was pretty played out. There was a lot of bad, generic hardcore. The most interesting stuff was Public Image, Gang of Four, Joy Division, the Contortions, and early blues punk like the Gun Club. We were trying to incorporate elements of that. I knew lots of jazz chords, and I'd change one or two notes to make them sound more jagged and atonal, then throw in little surf and rockabilly riffs, but it sounds more interesting than it really was, because the songs weren't focused enough, more like collections of parts.
To say John Bigley never sang a song the same way twice would be a supreme understatement, particularly in the first couple years of our existence. In fact, in those days, his completely unpredictable performances were probably our main point of interest; people would show up just to see what he would do this time.
At one show he would go hog wild, screaming, running around, attacking audience members. For example, at a show at St. Joseph's Hall, during the song "They!", he took off running stage right at the start of the guitar solo, orbited the dance floor, came running back on at stage left, grabbed the mic just in time to start singing the third verse, let out a mighty "We-ell…", slipped in a puddle of beer/sweat, and went shooting across the stage on his back, slammed into a wall, and knocked over a stack of stage rigging/scrim/whatever - a spectacular way to end a guitar solo.
At the next show he would freeze up completely, standing stock still while glaring at the audience and occasionally croaking out a word or two. This could be awkward. In February 1983 Larry Reid got us a slot opening for local gutter-punk icons the Refuzors and our heroes the Blackouts at a place downtown called Danceland. It was by far our biggest show up to that point. John was petrified, barely uttering a word throughout the entire set. The punks and Ave weirdos in attendance seemed to have fun taunting and trying to goad him into action, but I think people unfamiliar with his mercurial performance style were kind of wondering why he was even onstage.
At other shows he would disappear into a world of his own, swaying, howling, and rapping in a mysterious language only loosely tied to the actual songs being played.
Larry Reid and Tracy Rowland owned and operated the Roscoe Louie Gallery in downtown Seattle. They were the first grown-ups (they were in their mid-twenties) to take an interest in what we were doing. It would be awhile before they actually started managing us, but they showed up at the scary dumps we played, started helping us get better shows, and - this is key - never used the hated 'p' word; they didn't think we had 'potential', which we interpreted as "someday you might not suck." They seemed to find some value in what we were doing, as it was.
Charlie Ryan's drumming was really coming along. He'd taken it seriously from day one, practicing, closely watching drummers like Ben Ireland (of various local bands) and Bill Reiflin (of the Blackouts), absorbing tips and tricks, really putting a lot of effort into it. He took meticulous care of what equipment he had, teaching himself how to get maximum tone out of even cheap, cast-off drums. Bit by bit he pieced together a drum kit worthy of the name, and after only about a year of playing the drums, he was already putting together the unique 'circusy' style, ringing tone, and immaculate meter for which he is still known today.
Though hampered by the problems associated with cheap guitars and amps, I felt that I was also making progress with my playing and songwriting. I was moving away from herky-jerky tempo shifts, and - with a lot of help from Charlie - focusing on songs that had some groove and propulsion to them. We came up with "Head Burnt Off", a not-too-bad funk song, and songs that would later make it onto records, like "They!", "Blight", and "Flowers".
The latter song (originally called "Flowers Don't Grow In Hell" after a humorous comment by, I think, Charlie; shortened to "Flowers DGIH" on record; known to us just as "Flowers") was significant in that its dark, Doorsy lyrics were written by John - his first ever, and good ones. The song had sudden tempo and key changes at the end, but in this case they seemed to work fairy well.
My guitar playing improved somewhat after I began borrowing John's red 1966 Fender Mustang, a solid guitar with good tone, which, thirty-plus years later, is still sitting in my basement, awaiting return to its proper owner.
As our sound developed, Robbie's bass playing became a bit problematic. In some ways she was an amazing player, utterly confident and hard-hitting, with an innate sense of melody that had her reeling out spectacular riffs all over the neck. Her timing, however, was hit or miss, a problem exacerbated by her insistence on always playing at top volume. Often she drowned out the rest of the band (I called her the "bass howitzer"). Her problems with timing became more noticeable as Charlie's timing became ever more precise and consistent.
I'm sure we could've eventually worked out these problems, but after two years with the band her focus was changing. I think she was getting a lot of pressure from her parents, who perhaps thought that working as a stripper and playing bass in a noisy underground rock band might not be the best life-path for their teenaged daughter. In late '83 (or somewhere around there) she quit the band.
Despite our musical problems, by that time we had become a pretty tightly-knit little family of weirdos, and her loss was keenly felt.
One night while hanging out at Morningtown, an anarcho-communist pizza joint in the U-District, I met a young woman named Kim Stratton, who I began dating. She mentioned that her ex-boyfriend was a musician, and might be interested in taking over the bass slot.
When Jim Tillman showed up for his first session with us we were a little put off by his look - long blond hair and wire-rim glasses, not very 'punk'! - but he was a nice guy and a great bass player, and most important of all, he plainly got what we were trying to do and saw the value in it.
Right away he got a haircut, contacts, and some black clothing, and his precise work on the Fender Precision immediately opened up new possibilities. Here was someone with a real "ear", who almost effortlessly understood and augmented our somewhat unusual, self-schooled approach to timing, chording, and song structure. To me, his ability to hone in on what we were doing was almost magical, and a huge relief. For the first time I felt I could concentrate on playing the guitar, instead of worrying that the song would fall apart if I tried to play a solo or took off on a tangent.
The evolutionary dead ends began to fall away as we found our focus. For the first time we began thinking that there was some possibility of making records and playing real shows with real PA systems. We'd been together for more than two years, but this was the real beginning of the U-Men..."
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