Solar Wash

In a post last week, I was talking about the "comedic" lyric versions for some of our songs. I'd like to share another example of this. It's a song idea (well, really only a verse that's repeated) called Solar Wash.

Back in 1989, when I first moved to the Philadelphia area (Phoenixville, PA to be exact), I was taking a break from working in the studio to go and do some long overdue laundry. Why would I feel the need to tell anyone about this? Well, because it was the inspiration for the first Any Questions? song that I would ever sing. To some, I may be stretching it a bit to say that I'm "singing" but that's a debate for the comment log.

Up until this time, MC2P4 and I had been writing a lot of songs and he had handled most of the vocals duties for those early songs. We also had a few guest vocalists - Ken Chandler and Brian Black. However, my visit to the Solar Wash (now called the Phoenixville Laundry Center - pictured above) and the experience I had one day in the Fall of 1989 was to change all this.

On that fateful day, I trudged into the laundromat and looked for a washer to put my clothes in. As I walked down the first line of washers, I realized that they were all in use. This struck me as odd since I hadn't noticed anyone as I entered the laundromat. It was at this time, as I rounded the turn to check out the next row of washers, that I saw a couple who were sitting side by side at the end of the row of formed, plastic seating by the window. As I made eye contact with the "male", the "female" stood up and dropped the paper bag wrapped "40" that was in her hand. It shattered and spilled beer all over the floor. Unphased, she began muttering to herself and started to walk towards me. By this time, I had found an empty washer and started to load my clothes. As she staggered closer and closer, she began to gesture to me to move to another washer. I then looked over at the "male" who, before my eyes, fell off his seat and onto the floor.

As luck would have it, at that moment, another couple entered the laundromat and began laughing hysterically at the "male" who had fallen to the floor.  This laughter distracted the "female" from her zombie-like advance on me and she turned to go and aid her "male" companion.  She gathered him from the floor and they shambled outside into the night.

That would be the last I saw of them.  The whole first row of washers eventually finished running but no one ever came to claim their contents.  I endeavored to wash and then dry my clothes and then left the Solar Wash with the inspiration for this little idea (complete with laundry word play)...

Secret (aka Pocket of Sucrets)

This photo is taken from our first live performance in 1990.  It captures a rare event for Any Questions? - MC2P4 singing and Ttam Troll playing bass.  This would end up being the last time that electric bass was used in an AQ? song and this is one of the last songs that MC2P4 would sing for the band.  The only officially released song after this performance with MC2P4 singing would be Hardware from our 1991 Don't Ask release.  I ended up taking on all vocal duties after this.  

However, don't fret, there are plenty of early AQ? tracks in the vault that feature MC2P4 on vocals.  Many of which are classics and have long been requested by our fans.  Most of these songs have 2 sets of lyrics.  One version contains the "serious" lyrics and the other a more "comedic" take full of in-jokes and other P4 fun.  I'll post some of them here in the months to come but, for now, I'll leave you with a verse from the "comedic" version of lyrics for our song Secret.  This version is entitled Pocket of Sucrets and Ken Chandler and I wrote these...

I've got a pocket of Sucrets

Leaking out one by one

I'm got cherry and menthol

A sore throat is very unfun

Any Questions? - Munchkins Gong (Live)

On November 24, 1990, we (Any Questions?) burst onto the Industrial Music scene with our first live performance. We had formed in the Fall of 1989 and had written and recorded several songs in the time preceding this performance but this show gave us our first chance to showcase the new and innovative "Hypermedia Industrial Death" stage show that we had created.

Our stage show drew heavily from the same Horror, Sci-Fi, and Cold War propaganda movies that inspired our music. We were excited to finally add this visual element to our music and this synergy of audio and video would later help shape the music videos that we would produce.

Helping us to pull off this first live performance were Michael E Lightkep - House Mix, Kurt Smith - Light Operator, Steve Olsen - Follow Camera and Post Edit, and Matt Skirpan - Neo Nazi Cam.

Our 8 song Electronic set ran long on time so we never had a chance to perform the 3 song encore set that we had prepared with Tim Harrell - Drums. Luckily, we have some audio-only recordings of rehearsals for this 3 song set and I'll share those in later posts.

P.S. Oh, by the way, this performance took place in Valley Forge, PA at the Park Ridge Hotel at the wedding reception to celebrate the marriage of Scott and Jackey McConnell. I bet you never thought that Any Questions? would/could be a "wedding band". You wouldn't be alone with those thoughts. The wedding guests were unaware and unprepared for what we had in store for them that night!

Hard at work

Here's a shot of MC2P4 hard at work on cleaning up one of our Behringer MX8000s.  The new FFS is getting ever closer to completion.

First Transmission

Back in the early '90s, the internet wasn't used as a medium to promote music. There were no MP3s, no music sharing sites, and no iTunes. There wasn't even a good GUI web browser (Netscape Navigator) until the end of 1994. If you were in an "unsigned" band and wanted your music to be heard, you needed to go out and play live shows and/or try to get your music played on the radio. College radio was usually receptive to new music and would take chances on local or "unsigned" bands but getting any airplay on a commercial station was near impossible.

As luck would have it in August of 1993, a past co-worker of Scott's from Donnelley Directory was working at B-101 - a soft rock/adult contemporary radio station. He had a cassette of our latest release, Any Questions? - Prey For Death, and, knowing that our Industrial style music would never fit into the program format at B-101, he forwarded our cassette to his friends at 103.9 WDRE - Philadelphia's modern rock radio station.

They must have liked what they heard because I received a call from the station and they said that they planned to feature one of our songs during an upcoming Local Edge radio show - their weekly local music spotlight segment. I gave them some background info on the band and suggested that Limerick Lights (Radiation Mix) would be a good song to play.

I got a courtesy call about a week later from the station informing me that our song was scheduled to be played during the 08/15/93 Local Edge show. This would be our first mass exposure on the Philadelphia music scene and we were excited. We told everyone that we knew that we were going to be on the radio and that they should tune in. Not many people had e-mail at this point so we had to contact everyone by phone or word-of-mouth.

When the day of the broadcast arrived, we tried tuning in the radio station so we could listen to the show and record it. Normally, we never had a problem tuning in the station at either FFS I or FFS II but, on this day, the reception was full of static. We tried everything... We placed the antennas in every possible position, moved the radios all around the studios, etc. No matter what we tried, we couldn't get good reception.

Not to be deterred, we called our friend at Club Wojo and asked what his reception was like. He said that his reception was good and he invited us down. With time quickly running out, we jumped in the car and sped down to Club Wojo. With seconds to spare, we made it there and set up our recorder. This is what we heard...

P.S. I told them that Any Questions? were from Pottstown, not Doylestown as Mel Toxic says during the broadcast. "Not that there's anything wrong with Doylestown..."

Gil James and his Sounds of the Decades Part 2

Since I teased everyone in yesterday's post with my suit and bow tie look, I thought that I'd follow that up by sharing the full band picture. Here's the one sheet that the band used to get more gigs. This picture was taken in April of 1988 at the Chambersburg Area Senior High School auditorium.

"THE BIG BAND ERA IS BACK!" Now, pick up your phone and book Gil James and his Sounds of the Decades for your next event!

P.S. For those who think I'm serious, don't call the phone number. Paul J Giltinan and others from the band are now playing in the Big Band in the sky.

Gil James and his Sounds of the Decades

I landed my first "professional" music gig early in 1987 as the bass player for Gil James and his Sounds of the Decades, a popular Big Band dance music group. My teacher, mentor, and friend, Mr (Kurt) Hargleroad, had lined up the audition for me. I had been studying electric bass and double bass technique with him since my sophomore year in high school and he felt that I had "the chops" that would be needed to land the gig and, more importantly, he thought that the gig would challenge me to become a much better player.

Boy, was he right!

The band had a repertoire of 500+ songs. Songs ranged from classics like Glenn Miller's In The Mood, Count Basie's Jumpin' At The Woodside, Louis Armstrong's arrangement of On The Sunny Side of the Street to songs like Mr Sandman, Blue Moon, Theme From New York, New York, and anything in between. Every 4th of July, we also played all the patriotic standards like The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, and God Bless America.

During rehearsals and shows, any number from the 500+ song repertoire could be called to be played. Paul J Giltinan, the band leader, would yell out a number and you had about 10 seconds to pull the sheet music before he would count off the start of the song. As a 17yr old, 11th grader whose musical tastes included Electronic, Alternative, Metal, Progressive Rock, Experimental, and New Age, Big Band was not a genre that I was very familiar with. For me, I had to depend on my music sight reading skills to get through the charts. It was "trial by fire" and, thankfully, I had been well taught and prepared by Mr Hargleroad (and previously by Howard Bly).

I was with the band until I left for college (IUP) in the Fall of 1988. For the 1 1/2 years that I was part of Gil James and his Sounds of the Decades, I was challenged to learn new music and become a better bass player. I met those challenges and, along the way, I expanded my musical vocabulary, gained a greater appreciation for all music, and accumulated a lot of memorable stories from my road travels with the band. I have a lot of those stories to share and I'll do that in later blog posts.

P.S. Of course, I can't end this post without commenting on the picture above. This shot was taken for the band's 15th Anniversary Show program in April of 1988. What can I say? The suit that I'm wearing in the picture is the least embarrassing of the all of the "costumes" that I wore with the band. I'll post some of the less "formal" pictures in future posts. I still laugh every time I see my "cheesy" high school mustache!