Bassman Andy Warren sent me a picture of our glorious punk band, “The Dead Pigs,” in action in Lynchburg, VA, 1982, twenty-five years ago. We were playing at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, where most of us then worked—although very few of us were going to be working there much longer. Thus the punk assault.
I was the singer, and that’s Andy behind me, and our townie ringer Tom MacMillan on the left (he could actually play the guitar), and Mike Morris on drums—he was even more of a troublemaker than I was back then. On the right, from the rear, Roland Girling on tambourine and chain-saw, Jack Schewel on trombone, and Mike Gambone and Georgia Grove playing saxophones.
We did a killer version of Duke of Earl.
“Daddy sent me to Randy-Mac.
He bought me a horse and a Cadillac.
I sold the car and bought me a brain.
Now I’m half grown up and I’m goin’ insane.
Duke duke duke, Duke of Earl
duke duke, Duke of Earl,
duke duke, Duke of Earl.”
I have a VHS tape; maybe one of these days I’ll MPG it and post it. By the way, in later years, Mike Morris started a second Dead Pigs band in Florida, but I never got down that way to hear them or jam with them, but Andy did. I see that I blogged on the Dead Pigs once before.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Rudy, some of my friends once invented a band called ‘Richard Christ and his Bleeding Martyrs’ in order to win a battle of the bands, which they did by playing a song entitled ‘Juan Corona’ to the tune of ‘My Sharona.’ They are hoping today that no video exists.
There’s actually a band called Jackyl who do a chainsaw solo for one of their songs. I saw them live once and the saw sounded extremely unmusical, also the guy had bandaids all over his fingers.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
If it’s anywhere near as good as that picture indicates, please *do* put up an MPG of it!
June 17th, 2007 at 4:38 am
It was like randomly (?) finding a re-issued “Master of Space and Time” at Borders here in Buffalo and while thumbing through it (the dedication to me and Mary Molineaux is the closest I’ll ever get to being published) I hear a shout “Gambone!” and it’s Dave, Mary’s husband all the way from Killville to do a photo assignment about a kimmelweck in our fair city. This father’s day I was thinking about my soon to be born second grand-child, taking a break from hostel duties, “looking around”, thinking architecture and physics and my fingers brought me here and damned if the Dead Pigs didn’t pop right up. There is no escaping. I did finally marry Georgia Grove’s good friend Donnie, if only to put some closure in the spiraling circularity of it all. We’ll meet again.
July 3rd, 2007 at 6:50 pm
WISH I could have seen this performance up close and personal. I think Andy on bass is quite the hunk.