‘Tis
the season for nostalgia. I don’t know about you but, every Christmas, I can’t
help but think about all Christmases past and all the cool toys Santa Clause
used to bring me. Here is a list of a few of my favorite gifts of all time:
Rambo Action Figure
When
I was young, I was obsessed with Rambo. Particularly Rambo: First Blood
Part 2. Back in the late 80s, you would occasionally get a free promotional
weekend of HBO with your cable package and, one weekend, I was able to record
the movie on a VHS tape. I watched this VHS tape in an obsessive manner and
fantasized that I was Rambo most of the time.
When Rambo 3 came out, I became equally obsessed with that
movie and I have vivid memories of pretending I was Rambo on the schoolyard in
1st grade. I'm not kidding. All the other kids were on the jungle gym and
what-not while I was off by myself, lost in my Rambo world. I remember the
teachers had to speak to my parents about how I didn't play well with others.
This was because I preferred to be in a fantasy world of anything and
everything Rambo 3.
The
cartoon version of Rambo aired in 1986 and a ton of action figures subsequently
appeared in toy stores. Santa Claus brought me a few of the action figures, but
my most favorite was the special operations green beret himself: John Rambo. As
seen in the photo, he came with a bazooka weapon that shot with a string.
Music Major
This
was a cool keyboard/toy. When you turned it on, a nasally voice would say
"Please...choose...an...activity." I didn't know how to play the
piano, but I was more interested in pressing the buttons that made animal
sounds (the coyote was my favorite). You could also play the piano in a special
mode where each key would say, Do, Re, Mi, Fa etc. If you hit the ‘Fa’ key
really quick over and over again, it sounded like a dirty word.
It's
important to note that I think I only wanted this toy because I saw it in the
big, fat, annual Sears holiday catalogue and it looked super cool. Back in
those pre-Internet days, the annual Sears Christmas catalogue was the best way
to assess what toys you would like for Christmas.
GI Joe Tiger Force
"Tiger
Force" was a special operations unit of GI Joe action figures and
vehicles. Santa Claus brought me a Tiger Force airplane (Tiger Rat), helicopter
(Tiger Fly) and boat (Tiger Shark). The plane was my favorite and I randomly reenacted
a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with this
plane (the scene where an airplane swoops down and shoots at Dr. Jones and his
dad while they’re driving in a car).
The
Tiger Force vehicles had guns and red, detachable plastic missiles. I played
with these toys all the time and I was the best at making gun noises with my
mouth, mainly because I could roll my tongue at a very young age. This, by the
way, helped me out significantly when it came time to roll my R's in Spanish
class.
Thundertank
This
was the vehicle that the Thunder Cats rode in. ThunderCats, if you don’t know,
was a kids cartoon from the mid-1980s featuring a group of cat-like humanoid
aliens who team up to fight evil on their planet. I was in pre-school at the
time I first started watching ThunderCats and I absolutely idolized them. In
fact, I have vivid memories of being in pre-school and fantasizing that I would
turn into the leader of the Thunder Cats -- Lion-O -- whom I adored the most,
and all the kids would love me because I was him.
Sadly,
my parents somehow discarded my ThunderTank when I was apparently not looking,
though I still do have a Lion-O action figure to this day. There is a switch in
the back of him to make his arm swing into a punch. Also, there was a special
battery-operated key you could plug into a circular socket on his back and make
his eyes light up.
By the way, I
have to admit I thought Lion-O’s name was Lionel up to...well up
until when I just looked him up a second ago. I'm not sure why I was mistaken,
but I definitely thought he was Lionel. I'm kind of ashamed of this.
Sega
Game Gear
Nintendo’s
Game Boy had already been out for a couple or maybe even a few years. I had
gotten a Game Boy with my fifth-grade paper route money, but it was so hard to
see the black and green screen and the graphics weren't that great either.
But then came Sega Game Gear.
At
the time, Sega Game Gear seemed like the eighth wonder of the world. A video
game consul that was portable? And (unlike Game Boy) it was in color? With
8-bit graphics? Whhhaaaaaa?Whhhaaaaaa?
It
was in sixth grade that Santa Claus gifted me with a Game Gear, complete with
the Sonic the Hedgehog game and also Terminator 2: the Arcade Game. Sonic was a
great game, but I played T2 the most because it was an 8-bit version of the T2
game that was at the local Dream Machine video arcade, which I loved. And when
I say I loved it, I REALLY loved it. It was my favorite game at the arcade and,
when I found out I could play this game whenever I wanted on my Game Gear, I
just about flipped.
Sadly
(and stupidly) I sold my Game Gear in the mid-2000's to a used video game store
called "Play it Again" or something like that. When I’m asked whether
I have any regrets in life so far, I usually say, 'no' but, when I do, I'm
lying my ass off, because my biggest regret for sure is selling my Game Gear.
Donkey Kong Country
Stop
it right now. Stop it. Stop making me talk about Donkey Kong Country. It
excites me so much I can't type.
Ok, I'm calmer now.
Donkey Kong Country is up there as being one of my favorite video games of all
time (GoldenEye , aka “Bond”, for N64 and Mario Kart are close contenders...oh,
and also Zelda: Ocarina of Time). DK Country was a revolutionary game for the
Super Nintendo System. Made by RareWare, it had graphics that were waaay ahead
of their time (the graphics were technically known as 3d sprites). Playing the
game was so fun and I literally spent my entire Christmas vacation playing it
with the exception of when I had a CYO basketball game or was eating lasagna
left over for Christmas parties. Maybe one of the reasons why I played the game
so much (and liked it so much) was because it was pretty easy and one of the
few games I could actually beat.
I still own DK Country to this day and have played it here and there.
Fortunately, I've been able to introduce the game to my nephews, whom have
enjoyed playing it.
Super Nintendo
Super
Nintendo ranks as my number one favorite Christmas gift of all time...by far. I
was in the fifth grade, 1992. The home video game consul was the number one
item on my Christmas list and all December I was so excited knowing that, in
just a few weeks, my life could change in a radical manner. In fact, when I
think of Super Nintendo, an image of a pink candle comes into my mind. This is
because it's the pink candle that is lit at Church on the third week of Advent and seeing that pink candle lit meant that it wouldn't be much longer until
Christmas and Super Nintendo would (potentially) be in my possession.
Sure enough, Christmas came and there was a big present with just enough weight
to it. I knew what it could be. With one rip of the wrapping paper, I saw a
Super Nintendo logo and I was so happy that my dream was now a reality in
present time. Included with the game was Super Mario World and -- what's
this??? -- Santa Claus left two more games along with it: a new game called
Mario Kart and another game called Final Fight.
Mario Kart was revolutionary at the time because of "Mode 7"
technology that was a geeky way of saying it had really good graphics that
created the illusion of 3D because you drove deep into the screen, thus
creating the illusion of depth. Racing against a Player 2 was fun (usually my
brother), battle mode was even more fun (in my opinion, the SNES Mario Kart
battle mode was much better than N64 battle mode or any of the later Mario Kart
versions). I also obsessively played in "time trial" mode, which
tested to see how fast you could drive a course on your own, and, to this day,
I probably hold the world record for the ghost valley course.
As
for Final Fight, this was a side-scrolling fighting game with graphics that, at
the time, I thought were mind-blowing. It reminded me a lot of an actual arcade
game, which makes sense because I later discovered that Final Fight was originally
a 1989 arcade game. The gameplay basically consisted of you punching and
kicking a bunch of bad guys with street punk names like AXL and Slash (hmmm…I
wonder what creative mind came up with such unique names that definitely didn’t
sound like members of a popular rock band).
And then, of course, there was Super Mario World, one of the few games (along
with Donkey Kong Country) that I ever beat. The game had such fun colors and
music and all this combined with a loveable character named Yoshi made me so
happy when I played.
As of
right now, my SNES is fragile but still functional and I have been known to
play it on occasion.
It was the year 2000. Spring. My senior year
in high school.
“Hi, Burns.”
“Oh, hey, Brian.”
“Wanna play the post-prom party with my band?”
“Sure.”
“Cool. Oh, and a friendly reminder that salad
bar’s today.”
“Ah, damn, it’s Tuesday. Wish it was deli
bar.”
“Me too. Oh well. See you soon.”
This is exactly how the conversation went
down when I was recruited to play the post-prom party with my high school
classmates Brian (guitarist), Steve (singer) and Steve’s cousin (bassist). I
would be on drums.
We began practicing right away, for two or
three months, and developed an eclectic set-list of songs. We would open with
Korn’s “Blind” and then go right into Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give it Away
Now”. Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” would be in there, too. P.O.D.’s
“Southtown”. Pink Floyd’s “We Don’t Need no Education”. And many, many more.
But one song was a tune I admittedly had
never heard before up until that point in my life:
“Halloween”.
By the Misfits.
Whoa.
Indeed, this was my introduction to the band the
Misfits and what I didn’t realize at the time was that it would mark the
beginning of my metamorphosis into an all-out Misfit fiend. In other words,
this was the beginning of a Misfits obsession that would last for several years.
The more I played “Halloween” with my band,
the more I fell in love with the song. There was a strange familiarity to it,
like my soul already recognized the music somehow and like it was inevitable
that I would eventually stumble upon it. There was no avoiding this. It was
meant to be.
I was immediately inspired to make an
emergency trip to the local Newbury Comics and purchase a Misfits CD. Clawing
through the CD bins in a fiendish frenzy, I saw one Misfits album after another,
but I was a Misfits ignoramus at that point in my life, so I had no idea which
CD I should purchase.
I soon stumbled upon two “best of” CDs named
Collection I. and Collection II. The first collection had a bunch of songs I
never heard of before while the second collection had “Halloween” and…well, also
a bunch of songs I never heard of before. I liked “Halloween” and I didn’t own
the song. I thought I better go with Collection II.
I popped my new Misfits CD into my car stereo
and by “car stereo” I mean my battery-powered boombox I kept on the passenger
seat of the 1986 Toyota Camry I drove at the time. I pressed play and
immediately skipped over to track nine to get my “Halloween” fix. I listened to
“Halloween” about five or six times in a row before I was ready to expand my
horizons and discover the rest of the songs on the CD. I started right at the
beginning and immediately fell in love with “We Are 138”, “Last Caress”,
“Children in Heat, “Hatebreeders” and what-would-eventually become one of my
top-five favorite Misfits songs: “Devil’s Whorehouse”.
Damn, I
thought to myself. Misfits front man Glenn Danzig’s voice sounded so unique: a
mixture of 1930s crooner and 1950s-era carhop rock, sprinkled with a dash of
Jim Morrison, and haunted with a sound of doom and horror. This sound was technically
known as “horror punk”, mainly because all the songs were either inspired by or
outright named after old horror movies—particularly B-horror movies—but I
didn’t care what the sound was known as. I just wanted more of it. I wanted A
LOT MORE.
I returned to Newbury Comics a few days later
and got myself a copy of Collection I. I popped this CD into my “car stereo” and
I instantly fell ghouls over ghosts in love with songs like “She”, “Bullet”,
“Horror Business”, “Where Eagle’s Dare”, “Ghouls Night Out”, “Astro Zombies” and,
of course, “I Turned into a Martian”.
The metamorphosis from Matt to Misfit was in
full effect. All I needed now was a Misfits T-shirt to officially pledge my
allegiance to the Misfit Fiend Club.
Back to Newbury Comics I went and purchased a
classic black Misfits T-shirt with the signature white “Crimson Ghost” logo on
it. Damn, that Crimson Ghost logo was so badass. I may go out on a limb and say
65% of why I liked the Misfits was because of that one damn logo. So simple. So
cool-looking. Talk about branding, man. Posers buy merch with that logo
on it all the time and they don’t even know who the fregging Misfits even are.
I wonder how much money that one simple logo has made for the Misfits over the
years. I bet it’s something insane.
This is a photo of a photo of me
in my Crimson Ghost T-shirt. The logo is based on a character from a 1940s crime
film The Crimson Ghost. P.S. I no longer have an afro.
Anyway, the post-prom party was a hit, high
school ended and the summer of 2000 began. I had two jobs, one at CVS Pharmacy
and one at Stop & Shop supermarket, so I had, like, a billion dollars of
disposable income to spend on anything and everything Misfits. I figured, hmmm,
why not get another Misfits CD? Yes, another trip to Newbury Comics was clearly
in order.
Back to the CD store I went, rummaged through
the bins and found myself a super-sick looking Misfits album called “Famous
Monsters”. The album title sounded horrid (in a good way), so I purchased it,
popped it into my car stereo and…
“What the f*** is this shit?”
It did not sound like the Misfits…at least,
not quite. I grabbed the CD case from off the passenger seat and double-checked
the cover art. Keeping one eye on the road to the best of my ability, I did a
double-take when I saw the Misfits front man wasn’t…Glenn Danzig. It was
somebody else! An imposter!
I thought I had gotten fleeced. Big-time.
When I got home, I took the CD insert out of
the case and saw that Danzig was nowhere to be seen and in his place was a dude
named “Michale Graves”. What I would later learn was that Danzig left the
Misfits quite some time ago and he had been replaced with a new front man
(Graves). I did not like this. I did not like this one bit.
A few weeks went by and I refused to listen
to the Famous Monsters album. Nope, I was a Danzig guy. I wanted nothing to do
with Graves. No way.
But the album kept calling my name. Not
literally, of course (I wasn’t going schizo), but what I mean is that I would
browse through my bookshelf full of CDs and my eyes were always tantalized by
the purple, green and yellow colors of the Famous Monsters cover art. There was
a seductive vibe about it. And then there was a (non-schizo) voice in my head
that said, “Give it a try, Matt. Come on, Matt, give it a try, YOU FIEND!”
Eventually, I caved and I popped Famous
Monsters into my new (but used) Aiwa Discman that a friend had recently sold to
me. The instrumental intro-song “Kong at the Gates” played and then went right
into a song called “Forbidden Zone”. Hmmm…now that I was a little more
open-minded about this whole no-Danzig thing, the song sounded better than it
did when I first heard it. Maybe this shit was better than I thought.
As time went by, the appreciation of Famous
Monsters spread throughout me like an infection from a zombie bite. “Forbidden
Zone” became a favorite of mine, but so didn’t “Lost in Space”, “Dust to Dust”,
“Saturday Night”, “Hunting Humans”, “Helena” and especially “Pumpkin Head” and,
oh my lord, I can’t forget “Descending Angel”—sooo good, my fiends.
Now, what I’m about to say may be
controversial, but I think it’s possible that, over time, I grew to like Michale-Graves-era
Misfits over Glenn-Danzig-era Misfits. Eeeeeeeeek. I don’t know. It may be a
close tie, but sometimes I find myself leaning more towards Michale Graves.
Sorry, fiends. But I have to be honest here. Eeeeeeeek.
What I do know is that, for most of the
summer of 2000, I was pretty much blasting Famous Monsters in my car at a very
high volume, mostly while driving to and from Stop & Shop and/or hanging
out with fiends…I mean, friends. I was full-blown Misfit at this point
and my friends were, at the same time, becoming full-blown Misfit as well.
One of these fiends was a friend named Jesse.
He and a guy he worked with in the kitchen of a restaurant loved the Misfits.
They were interested in starting a Misfits cover band. They wanted to know if I
was interested as well.
I was.
Plan 9—a Misfits cover band—was officially
formed in the middle of the summer. Plan 9, if you don’t know, was the name of
the Misfits’ record label, which they had named after the classic Ed Wood movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space. The movie is known as the “best worst movie” of
all time. If you haven’t seen Plan 9, you should. It’s very entertaining.
(As I write this, you can watch Plan 9 on Amazon Prime, complete with
hilarious commentary from the same guys who brought you Mystery Science
Theater 3000.)
Our first rehearsal was really a loose jam
session at Jay’s house in Norton, MA. He had a large shed separate from his
house that housed all his musical equipment, including a really siiiick set of
drums that were waaaaaay better than my own. This was nice because I didn’t
have to lug my set of drums (cool kids call it a ‘kit’ but I’ve always called
it a ‘set’) back and forth when we practiced.
Since we were such big Misfits fans already,
we hardly even needed to learn any songs; we basically already knew them by
heart (at least, I did). I’m not sure about this so I wouldn’t want it written
on my tombstone, but I think the first song we ever played together was either
a song called “Some Kinda Hate” or “Hybrid Moments”. These are two…well,
beautiful songs, the kind that you would want to play during a romantic evening
with your girlfriend while parked on a hill overlooking American suburbia. Jay
nailed the vocals. If Danzig and Michale Graves ever coupled and had a son, Jay
would be that son. That’s how good his voice was.
The stars had aligned.
Plan 9 practiced for the
rest of the summer and we played pretty much everything, both Danzig-era
Misfits and Michale-Graves-era Misfits. Notable songs I remember playing were “Hatebreeders”,
“One Last Caress”, “American Psycho” (from the not-yet-mentioned Michale-Graves-era
album American Psycho), “Static Age”, “Hunting Humans”, “Astro Zombies”, “Where
Eagles Dare”, “I Turned into a Martian” and so many more.
By the time September came
around, we were eager to lay some of these songs down on tracks. Now, this was
right before the time that Pro Tools and easy, DIY digital music production became
prevalent. We also didn’t have a 4-track, nor did we know how to use one
anyway. We decided, instead, to go to a “professional” studio and pay a couple
hundred bucks to record like pros.
The studio was in
Mansfield and was run by a handful of twenty-something-year-olds. They all had
pitched in their life savings to build the place and we were their very first
clients. We recorded on a Thursday night, I believe, and I only remember this
because I know I had an 8:30am class the next morning in Boston (at BU) where I
felt like I had literally become an Astro Zombie, lol haha (see what I did
there?). The recording engineers were very excited about having their first
band in studio and they drank many beers throughout the night, almost like they
wanted to be all sex, drugs and rock & roll, but it turns out maybe they
would’ve done a better job if they hadn’t done this. Not that they did a
terrible job. But, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
The engineers had us record
separately. I believe Jay and Jesse laid down their bass and guitar tracks first,
then I wore headphones and recorded my drums. Or maybe Jesse and I played
together but in separate rooms? Don’t remember. What I do, remember, however, is
that, at the end of recording “I Turned into a Martian”, I thought I screwed up
and I was so pissed at myself because I’d been flawless up until that point. I
screamed out of frustration but what I didn’t realize at the time is that the
scream actually sounded like how one would scream if they were, indeed, turning
into a Martian. So we kept the scream in. As for me screwing up? It was all in
my head, apparently. Turns out I didn’t really screw up at all, at least
nothing noticeable, so what I thought was a screw-up ended up creating a happy
accident in the form of me screaming like a man turning into a Martian.
Overall, the recording
went well and the end product was a Plan 9 EP with four professionally-recorded
tracks: “Astro Zombies”, “I Turned into a Martian”, “Kong at the Gates/Forbidden
Zone” and “Hunting Humans” (ok, that’s five tracks but “Kong” doesn’t really
count as a whole song). Like I said before, the engineers did a good job, but
on the last couple of tracks there are some weird snaps and crackles—worse than
what you would hear in a bowl of Rice Krispies—and they may not have been there
had those rambunctious engineers not been drinking all their beers.
Here is the full Plan 9
EP, if you’d like to hear:
Needless to say, we, the
members of Plan 9, were excited to finally have an EP under our belt. Yep, life
was going really good for the band by the time October rolled around…but things
got even better when word on the street was that the Misfits would be playing a
Halloween show in Worcester at a popular music venue called the Palladium. Me
and the members of Plan 9 were very excited to hear this. Not only did we want
to see our favorite band live, but we also thought this show would be a good
opportunity to boost band morale or perhaps it would be a good “team building”
event, though that sounds like corporate-office mumbo-jumbo, so forget I ever
said it.
It was October 21, 2000.
Jay, Jesse, myself and also our friend Tim piled into Jesse’s Dodge Shadow and
drove to the Worcester Palladium. The band GWAR was opening for the Misfits and
Jay saw GWAR’s drummer (sans costume) outside the Palladium before the show. The
drummer acted all normal and like a human being, not like a mutant warrior from
outer space. We also saw the singer from the band Tree and he was absolutely
shit-faced off his gourd. I think I even saw Misfits bassist Jerry Only sitting
on a curb in the shadows, but it’s possible my memory is just making that up. I
think I have to put it on the record that I didn’t see Jerry outside the
Palladium.
We entered the venue and
all we could see was devil locks…everywhere. Leather jackets. Crimson Ghost
shirts. People had white face paint and/or dark makeup around the eyes (a la
Jerry Only). It was a bit spooky but insanely awesome at the same time. I felt
very at home with all these fiends from all over Massachusetts and probably
many of the surrounding states as well.
At the time, I wasn’t
familiar with GWAR at all, but, let me tell you, my fiends, that was one
performance I’ll never forget. They were absolutely incredible. Their music was
good, but it was their onstage theatrics that made them so next-level. Each
band member wore foamy space mutant costumes, sprayed hoses of fake blood into
the crowd and had a dominatrix-like mutant named Slymenstra Hymen come out
onstage wearing a metal thong and she swung chains around and/or danced with
sticks of fire during one of GWAR’S more well-known songs “Sick of You”. At one
point they even had two life-sized puppets of George W. Bush and Al Gore (this
was right before the 2000 election) come out onstage and battle each other with
swords, cut off each other’s arms and powerful hoses of blood would spray out
of the wounds with pressure so strong it probably sprayed about 30 feet into
the crowd.
I had never quite seen
anything like it.
GWAR ended their set after
40-60 minutes and then there was 30 minutes of a build-up waiting for the
Misfits. About every ten minutes, Jerry Only would appear in a little balcony
window above the stage, make a ghoulish pose and then run away. The crowd would
go wild whenever this happened. Including myself. I screamed in Beatlemania
fashion.
Soon, the house lights
went out, very large custom-made amplifiers appeared onstage that had big white
Crimson Ghosts on the cabinets, fog floated up from the floor and a silhouette
of a ghoul walked onto the stage. Wait, not just any ghoul…a spotlight came on
and revealed that it was the Crimson Ghost! Yes, a man dressed as the Crimson Ghost—with
makeup and all—menacingly walked onstage, wearing a hood on his head and he
carried a lantern in his hand. The crowd went ballistic when they saw him.
The presence of the
Crimson Ghost officially conjured the Misfits from the dead and, soon, the
silhouettes of the band members appeared behind their respective instruments. Dr.
Chud, the drummer, sat behind his enormous drum set that had spikes growing out
of the drums. He slammed his drumsticks into his gargantuan Floor Toms...BOOM…BOOM-BOOM…BOOM…BOOM-BOOM.
It was the beginning of “Kong at the Gates”, which the band played in its entirety
all while the crowd screamed like banshees. Then, from Kong, they went right
into “Forbidden Zone”, at which point Michale Graves came stumbling onto the
stage, partially because he was likely drunk (he had a bit of an alcohol issue)
but also to create the illusion that he had just been summoned from his grave. He
had make-up on his face that made him look like a full-blown skeleton.
From “Forbidden Zone”,
they went right into “Witch Hunt”, “Lost in Space”, “Crawling Eye”, “Dig Up her
Bones”…
As he wailed on his warlock-looking
bass guitar, Jerry Only’s devil-lock hung down to about his lips area. He was
friggin’ jacked, too, almost like he was a wrestler in the WWF. Guitarist Doyle
Wolfgang Von Frankenstein’s devil-lock hung down even further than Jerry’s,
probably down to the lower neck area. He, too, was jacked…SUPER jacked, not to
mention tall…SUPER tall. In fact, Doyle was so enormous he looked like he was
literally a different species of human being altogether, like from some sort of
Land of the Giants. He slapped the crap out of his guitar, not in a Flea kind
of way, but in a monstrous kind of way, almost like he was punching it from the
top down.
Now, during GWAR, I had
kind of hung back from the crowd, because I didn’t know GWAR that well, but
also (admittedly) I didn’t want to get fake blood sprayed onto my cherished
Misfits T-shirt. However, as soon as the Misfits took the stage, I went insane,
ran right up to the edge of (but not into) the pit and practically screamed the
lyrics at Michale Graves. I was a fiend out of control. I think I just about
lost my voice during “Scream”.
Overall, that Misfits show
at the Worcester Palladium was legendary and, when you combine it with GWAR’S Broadway
musical from hell or whatever you’d call what they did on stage, you basically
had one of the most memorable concert experiences of a lifetime. That show was definitely
in my top-three concert experiences of all time, mixed in somewhere with
Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and maybe Stone Temple Pilots or Guns N’
Roses.
Newly energized from
seeing the Misfits—our heroes—live, in their undead flesh, Plan 9 was
determined to become the biggest Misfits cover band in the world.
This didn’t happen.
We, did, however, play a
couple gigs, both of which took place at Wheaton College in Norton. Why
Wheaton? Honestly, I’m not sure. I believe Jay had some connections there. We
thought it would be a good opportunity to test out our shit.
The first gig was at a pub
on campus called The Loft. We opened for a band from Watertown called Dr. Frog.
Ah, wait, that’s why we played Wheaton—because Jay knew the lead singer of Dr.
Frog and many members of that band either had gone to or still went to Wheaton.
Mystery solved. Anyway, yes, we were psyched about our first gig, we put on
Misfits makeup and, if my memory serves me well, we played one hell of a show.
The only problem was that nobody was there to see us. Ok, maybe a couple
friends were there, but what I remember is looking out to the “crowd”, seeing
some preppy-looking college students eating burgers and fries, maybe sipping on
a beer if they were old enough, and overall looking annoyed by our presence.
Lack of an audience
notwithstanding, I do think we played very well and I still, to this day, kick
myself because I failed to videotape our performance. I was a film major, after
all, and I practically videotaped everything. How could I not have videotaped
it! So stupid! In fact, I had my friggin’ video camera with me at the time. I
know this because I ended up taping Dr. Frog after us. Ah, so dumb! I’m not
worthy of existence!
Fortunately, I remembered
my camera for our second (and last) gig. This show took place in Wheaton’s
dining hall during regular dining hall hours. I’m not sure how this all
happened but we somehow ended up opening for Wheaton’s jazz band. So, picture a
brightly-lit dining hall. Students are there eating their dinner, some in
groups, others alone. And then you got Plan 9 – a Misfits cover band – blasting
power-chord-fueled tunes on a one-foot drum riser, and when I say blast, I mean
we played at an energy of fucking 11 (to make a Spinal Tap reference).
We held absolutely nothing back. With the exception of a couple fiends we
invited, there was absolutely nobody there to see us and nobody who wanted us
there, either.
We did, however, win us at
least ONE new fan. I remember, after the performance, there was this dude
five-o-clock-shadowing me while I packed up the drums. The jazz band was
already playing at this point and this dude kept telling me that he didn’t want
to hear “this pahn music,” referring to the jazz, which did kind of sound like
porn music. “I wanna hear some Staiiiiiiiiiind,” he said, meaning the band
Staind, who was popular at the time. I hurried to pack up the drums, wished
this guy luck getting his Staind fix and never saw him again.
But, yes, I did
fortunately bring along my video camera to that gig and, with the help of my
friend Tim who manned the cam, I did capture much of our performance, though I don’t
think it did Plan 9 justice. For one, the audio of the recording was distorted
and for two, Jay had laryngitis that evening. I don’t think that performance
was quite as good as our first gig or perhaps our first gig was the same or
even worse and it was better that it wasn’t videotaped—who knows.
Here is us closing with
“One Last Caress”.
By the time the summer of
2001 came about, Plan 9 had officially fizzled out, not for any concrete
reason, but we all simply moved on to other things. As for me, I joined a
female-fronted punk band called Death in Arms and we played all originals, no
covers. My days being in a Misfits cover band were in the past…
But my days being a fiend
were FAR from over.
As the years went by, I
listened to the Misfits with diabolical dedication—mainly around Halloween—but
also during other parts of the year when I was in the mood for doom and horror,
which was often. I also procured myself a full-wardrobe’s-worth of Misfits
attire: T-shirts, sweatshirts, even baseball jerseys. Furthermore, I bought a
slew of Misfits patches and sewed them onto hoodies and/or blue-collar-like
mechanics’ shirts that I bought cheaply at either Walmart or Savers. I wore one
patch in particular—my Misfits “fiend club” patch—wherever I went and there is
photographic evidence to support this claim (see below). I considered this
shirt my party shirt. If you saw me with this shirt on, then—lookout—you know I
was down to party.
If this
guy’s not ready to party, who is?
In 2004, I made a fun short
movie with my friends called Wendel’s Revenge and basically the whole
soundtrack, with some exceptions, is Misfits music, mainly music I found on
“Cuts from the Crypt,” which was an album the Misfits released in 2001. It was
a compilation of tunes from 1996-2001 that had, I guess, been cut from previous
albums, which I find to be crazy because they’re excellent songs. In addition
to “Fiend without a Face” and “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (the two songs I used in
Wendels’ Revenge, despite egregious copyright infringement), you’ll find
such greats as “I Wanna be a New York Ranger”, “1,000,000 Years B.C.” and a
cover of “Monster Mash”, not to mention demo versions of “Scream” and “Dead
Kings Rise”.
Flash forward all the way
to 2010. It had been nearly a decade since I metamorphosized into a Misfit.
Word on the street was that the Misfits were coming to town again and they’d be
playing at Patriot Place’s new music venue Showcase Live that was adjacent to
Gillette Stadium (where the Patriots play). This was exciting news, but there
was a slight catch because the Misfits didn’t quite exist anymore. The only
original Misfit who remained in the band at this point was Jerry Only, so it
would basically only be Only. Only be Only? Sounds like an Abbott and Costello
bit hahahaha. But what I mean is that it would only be the Jerry Only show. Nevertheless,
it was still worth checking it out. Tickets were a humble 30 bucks. Showcase
Live was right down the road, 7-10 minutes away. It was a no-brainer.
So me, my friend Matt and
my other friend Matt got a 12-pack of Natty Ice, guzzled them quickly in the
basement of Matt #2’s house, tied on a nice, menacing buzz and then went to see
the Misfits. It had been about 12 years since I had last seen them and I was
very excited about seeing them rise from the dead again.
This time around was a slightly
different experience, mainly because I was buzzed, if not drunk, on the Natty Ice.
I had much more liquid courage than the last time and had no problem getting
right up in the pit, almost to the stage, and screaming at Jerry the whole time
as he played with Dez Cadena from Black Flag and the drummer, who was
supposedly Robo from Black Flag but he actually turned out to be a Robo
lookalike. His name was Eric
"Chupacabra" Arce who had previously been in Murphy’s Law.
Jerry sang many of the
older, Danzig-era tunes for this show, probably since Michale Graves was gonzo.
Songs like “Vampira”, “London Dungeon”, “Die! Die! My Darling!”, “Devil Lock”
and maybe even “Skulls” come to mind. I also remember that they played the
songs very fast, which was fine with me, but the songs were a LOT thrashier
than the original album versions, let me tells ya. I guess Jerry liked to play
them hard and fast. Danzig probably liked the opposite. In fact, now that I
think of it, I think that was one of the reasons why Danzig left the band. Or
maybe Danzig was the one who wanted to play harder and faster. I can’t
remember.
Anyway, I was having a
great time in the crowd and, at some point, I got kicked or punched in the face
by some dude who was moshing a little too hard (he eventually got kicked out by
the bouncer). It didn’t hurt at the time, but the next day I woke up and
realized I had a black eye. No biggie. At least I didn’t have no brain damage
or nothin’ and I figured the shiner was a sign I rocked as hard as I possibly
could. Only a true Misfit fiend would rock that hard and I considered myself a
true Misfit fiend, so there you go.
After the show, I saw the aforementioned
drummer—Eric "Chupacabra" Arce—sitting
at the bar, so I went up to him and told him how much I enjoyed the performance.
“Oh, I saw you out there,” he said to me, meaning he had noticed me in the
crowd while he was wailing on the drums. He must have noticed I was a true
fiend who knew all the lyrics and was screaming them in the center of the pit.
Then I had my picture taken with him and I asked if I could consider him a
friend and he said not friend, but a fiend. Ok, that latter part never
happened but I did get a picture with him.
Here is me with the
drummer:
From the bar, I joined the
end of a line in the Showcase Live lobby where Jerry Only was doing a meet and
greet. Normally, I would have been nervous about this kind of thing, but the Natty
Ice was still running hard through my veins, so I went up to Mr. Only acting
like we were old buds from back in the day. I said, “Jeeeeeerrrrrrry” all
buddy-like and then I put my arm around his shoulders, we both got into an undead-like
pose and my friend took a picture of the two of us. Then, Jerry signed my
ticket and said in a gravely voice, full of menacing horror, “Happy Halloweeeeeeeen”.
To this day, I wonder if that’s how he talks all the time or if he was still
kind of in character.
Here is me with Jerry:
Here is my signed ticket:
What a fun show, though,
especially seeing that I got to meet Jerry afterwards; that was certainly a
highlight of my life. The show, of course, would have been even better with
more original Misfits members, but it was still very fun.
In 2016, the Misfits
resolved their differences and both Doyle and (to everybody’s shock) Danzig rejoined
the band for two shows at Riot Fest in Chicago. Since then, they’ve been
playing sporadic shows here and there, mostly in Las Vegas, but also one in
California and even, just recently (October 2019), at Madison Square Garden in
NYC. I haven’t been blessed to see “The Original Misfits” (what they call
themselves now), but maybe someday I will. There’s still time. Until then, I
will keep listening to Misfits music until my skull explodes, I will proudly
wear my Crimson Ghost shirts in public so everybody knows I’m a fiend, I will brag
to everybody that I was once in a Misfits cover band, I will die a happy man
knowing I saw the Misfits live TWICE, and most importantly, I will never forget
that fateful day when I first heard “Halloween”, fell under a Misfits spell
and, before I knew it, came to and realized, oh my God…
