Before our joint history Began                   

1985 was a landmark year for a number of reasons. Depending on your age you might remember it for “He-Man” cartoons or “The Breakfast Club” “Real Genius””Commando” “Pale Rider” “Weird Science” “Back to the Future” “Cocoon” and “Goonies” movies. Music too took another direction. The Cure released “Head on the Door” probably their most commercially accessible album with 'In between Days' getting a lot of club play. It had great songs like “She sells sanctuary' and “How soon is now” as competition. Of course mainstream radio was playing “Shout” almost non-stop or The Talking Heads “An she was” but we were too busy listening to New Order's new album “Low Life” and Gene Loves Jezebel's “Immigrant” after maybe Siouxsie and the Banshees' “Tinderbox”. Sorry, I became carried away thinking about how great everything was then compared with now in entertainment.
My intent was to write a couple of paragraphs as a tribute to guitarist Dennis Kapoyos and how he has affected the lives of so many people. Writing a simple statement hasn't worked out so well.

 One bit of warning; I've found a few broken links and incorrect links and am doing my best to repair them so be sure to hit your refresh button from time to time to allow these corrections to show up on your screen. Somethings do not line up correctly too due to my hand coding the page on top of using a 2003 design program. I am setting the page up for best viewing on a computer and not a phone, so some things will look screwy. I am also adding a few more files as I transfer them. If I seem to jump around a bit rather than Keeping to a linear timeline forgive me because this has been a work from the heart spanning almost 4 weeks.... so far.

 A few photos before it all began; Mike and Dennis  Elizabeth 1984 Ed and Paul 1977

I will always remember a good friend of mine turning to me at some point in the mid-1980's and stating concerning the zeitgeist “What a great time to be alive, young and into music”. My friend was very into music and the 80's culture in general but he confessed to me that he was envious of my being married and with a young son, owning my house along side a career with skill where I need never worry about not being able to find a job. I thought maybe he had the better life by being young and single with a loving family and a job where he made so much money he didn't need he simply had to find ways to invest it. He'd go off to Jackson Hole on ski trips and buy a new car every couple of years. He had the best stereo equipment of anyone I knew and was constantly going to see concerts. He was a responsible person with few responsibilities. A kind and intelligent person who supported our band from the start with encouragement and by attending our shows when he could. He died at the young age of 52 from an aneurysm alone in his house. It was a huge shock to me but it also made me think a little about the people in our lives that we never really express our feelings to, never let them know how much we value them. I suppose too often it isn't until someone dies and at their funeral or wake that people talk about the one they knew who is now gone. Of course the deceased receive no benefit from kind words or touching stories and we are left to ask “ why did you never tell them when they were still here?”
As I said this began as a would be short tribute but as I wrote it became something much bigger and those unfamiliar with our band and the people in it would glean very little from this other than a few nice words about a band mate. Like the butterfly flapping its wings the affect touches so many other things one can not possibly ever know. I doubt Dennis has ever pondered the affect he has had on other people, so I chose to expatiate on that idea and go further by bringing up our early history is is also a part of his early history and it all goes to focus upon a center point that is today, one day in 2025. A long road trip from 1985.

                                                            This year the month of May is the anniversary of when Dennis Kapoyos joined the Misfit Toys and changed our lives. Elizabeth refused to add any additional commentary but since we were together for 20 years I feel qualified to speak for both of us regarding the band in its infancy and the place filled by Dennis. This article has become in part about the beginning of our band and in part a tribute to a magnificent guitarist and musician.
   In 1984 after voicing her frustration that life had passed her by and she would never have a chance to know if she was actually good enough a singer to have been successful. I decided to put together a band for my wife. We had married in 1979 and our son came along in 1981. We had a starter house and I was making reasonable money as an auto mechanic. I made enough money she didn't need to work. This left her mind and body free to do more than just housework and taking care of the baby. My love for her ran very deep and I would have done anything for her happiness so I proposed that I would put together a band for her. It would be her backing band and she would call all the moves. She would determine the band image and the songs we played. I ran ads and the guitarists came to audition along with a few drummers. We settled on a nice guy who played his drums well and then went through a long list of potential guitarists.
  It was worthy of a segment of “Spinal Tap” because we had some strange ones. We had one guy who came in with his guitar, amp and a 1.75 bottle of Vodka that was half empty. We had him play what he wanted to show what he can do and he ended up laying on the floor playing and almost looking like Curly from the Three Stooges as he played while spinning in a circle. Next.
Our drummer asked for a leave of absence so he could have a section of his intestine removed. It seemed to collapse without warning so it had to be operated on. He asked if he could leave his kit at our house and we said sure. I contacted a very good drummer I had played with in a band in 1977 and he was available and happy to come by and play anything.
We had a guitar and keyboard team come by and audition. If you wanted one you got them both. Either way they were good. The keyboard player had been a guitarist until an incorrectly treated venomous snake bite cause half of a finger to be amputated. So he switched to keyboards. We worked on the Tubes song “Talk to you later” and the Blondie song “Danceway”. It was coming along until the guitarist decided he needed to talk to us. In short he told us how great he was and how he was destined to be famous but it wouldn't be with us. He insulted my bass skills and our equipment. He was willing to work with Elizabeth but she had never been in a band and felt she needed me. Another ad.
On occasion I had a guitarist friend come over from quite a distance to jam on all kinds of things Elizabeth could sing. We were both big fans of 'The Who' and often went into long sessions on 'Tommy 'and 'Quadrophenia'. This became her only experience prior to our band.
                   Enter 1985
A guy I knew who had been a hanger on from a band I was in back in 1977 had learned to play guitar and came by to play several classic rock and garage band songs. Nice guy but not what we needed. We had a guy named Steve who came by with his Rickenbacker 360. He had just finished a European tour with his band after which they broke up. He replied 'Groovy” to a lot of what we said so we referred to him as “Groovy Steve”. He could play anything we asked. I had him play “Good Lovin' “ so Elizabeth could sing and he sounded fantastic. He did lack motivation like he was burned out on performing but we kept him on our list while we auditioned other guitarists.
We had a number of people that it was obvious would not be happy being in a band where a chick vocalist called all the plays. We finally settled on a guy terribly hen pecked by his insecure wife. It wasn't uncommon for her to phone him three times while we were trying to practice. He wasn't very good but he was anxious to play. I hired a 19 year old girl who played keyboards had little experience and no stands for her keys but did have a large van. So I used some scrap wood and built her a multi-tier stand for her three sets of keys and gave her some songs to learn. To say the early rehearsals were bad and discouraging would be an understatement. Finally I gave up on him much to his wife's delight. Later that month: May 1985 a person who sounded good on the phone came by to audition.

I had no way of knowing then that this thin Asian looking teen with a bleached area of his hair in the front, struggling to carry his guitar and amp down the basement stairs would forever change my life and that of my wife. The drummer and I looked at each other but purposely did not betray what we were thinking. I never asked his age on the phone. In fact I mostly talked about what or whom we were looking for and what our plans were. His voice was rather deep so I made the assumption he was older than 15. As usual we began with small talk before getting into the task of trying to find songs we all knew. I wasn't worried about the drummer. He was really good and when jamming on some songs from Quadrophenia that he had never heard before he played that pretty darn close to how Keith Moon had drummed them. It was natural and instinctive.
So back and forth we went with song names. He'd name a song or band that neither of us had ever heard of and then we would do the same. I didn't want to just improvise jam because I didn't believe I could fairly evaluate his playing. Finally after what seemed an eternity but was likely 15 minutes we settled on 'Honky Tonk Woman'. He had said, 'yeah, I think I can play that'. He bent down to twist some knobs on his EFX pedals, checked his tuning then the drummer ticked us in on his hi-hat.
   I'd swear what came out of his amp sounded like someone was playing the record. He had the exact tone as well as the notes and phrasing as Keith Richards had recorded so long ago. The drummer and I looked at each other with looks of amazement on our faces. I believe he lipped 'He's great' and I lipped back ' I know' with my eyes wide. Now suddenly I worried whether I was good enough to play with him in the same band.
Elizabeth was embarrassingly shy at the wrong times and she had chosen to stay upstairs and listen to applicants unless I called her down. So unfortunately I didn't get to see her expression but I believe she was as impressed as we were. We packed up and stood talking while waiting for his father to come and pick him up. I got him to tell me which bands he listened to and he read of a roster of bands I mostly had never heard of let alone was familiar with. One of the first was “Echo and the Bunnymen” and I almost laughed at the name. I quickly became aware that he was 'hip' or a 'hipster' as they would say. Well alright old people say, but he was on top of the latest bands to invade America as a part of the “New Wave” of bands in the early 80's. Until six month earlier Elizabeth was stuck in mainstream, mostly 1970's music. It was difficult to get her to stop listening to Hall and Oats and Steely Dan long enough to hear modern music but once she heard the Thompson Twins and a few other bands that was all it took. She began going to record stores again anxious to buy music she heard on MTV when they weren't playing Phil Collins, Madonna or Aerosmith. She liked 'pop' but not 'pop stars'. Much to our delight Dennis agreed to play for us with few conditions. Attending rehearsals would have to be coordinated with his father's availability to drive him and occasionally I drove him home. A ride was easy to work out.
  We rehearsed 3-4 times a week every week and I usually recorded each practice to listen to later and judge whether we were improving and if there were specific places we needed to correct. We began adding more cover songs gradually adding more songs by Blondie in addition to a song by the Go-Go's, The Ramones, Squeeze, Berlin and even Modern English. I knew I was a weak spot in the band as far as musicianship. I'd never had a bass lesson and my elementary school band teacher did a poor job of teaching us theory. By contrast Dennis and Terri, our keyboard player had many years of lessons and theory. I played by ear and would have my fingers memorize patterns for each song. I wanted to be better and I knew the only way to improve was practice. On the nights we didn't rehearse as a band I was in the basement after dinner practicing my bass parts.
  One night I had an idea for a song. At that point we hadn't discussed doing or writing originals. It seemed premature since we had never played together for an audience but I kept toying with a bass run. Apparently Elizabeth had been listening from upstairs because she came down just when I had my 'ah ha' moment and thought of a hook to follow the bass run. I told her ' listen to this and tell me what you think'. She did and proceeded to tell me that a good next part would be exactly what I had thought of before she came in the room. So I suppose it was meant to be. I roughed out the song and recorded it for her to listen to on the morrow, which she did and wrote lyrics to my tune. And thus our first original song was born. Her chorus repeated “Promise Me” so that became the title. I was amazed that Dennis seemed to instinctively know what to play and Terri followed both him and me, ah, he and I... the both of us. By the next practice Dennis had a beautiful, soaring solo worked out and the song came easily together. It went so easy I immediately began working on another song idea. This was a rocker we named “Heart of Sand”. We did it once and it was easy so why not come up with more song ideas?
We continued working on our covers while incorporating our originals into a set. We practiced so often it felt as if we'd been together longer than 2 months when I began looking at finding us a gig. I could tell Paul in particular was getting bored with playing the same few songs over and over a few times each week. He lived for audience adulation. I contacted a club in Georgetown, Washington DC. And we were given a date to play an audition. The owner said we would open for a known DC band and if the audience likes us he will give us our own date and $200 to play four sets. First we had to prove ourselves with a 45 minute set.
  Now we had something to work towards. Terri submitted several songs for Elizabeth to write lyrics to but most were either very obviously derivative of other well known songs or lacking any melodic shape. Still, Elizabeth tried writing to several because she was too timid to outright reject any of the songs. I stepped in and removed a lot of songs for consideration and then modified; essentially re-writing several. Naturally I still have the original recordings of the demos and of the rehearsal attempts on the songs. I wouldn't want our fans to hear them lest they get nightmares and cease to follow us. I do have many recording of our practices both before and after our first gig and I plan on putting a few on our web site. I find it interesting to listen to the songs develop.
   That first gig would have been too soon for most beginning bands but for us it came at the perfect time. The band risked becoming stale playing the same songs over and over. We would show up at the same time, usually everyone walking through the door at 5 minutes before our planned practice. Everyone would unpack, plug in and tune. The clock hit 6 or seven depending on the plan and I'd call out the first song if there was no band news or things to report. I really wanted our songs to almost run together with as little time as possible between them but it usually wasn't possible. Dennis had to change his EFX pedal settings and sometimes tune a string or two. I should have confured with him and arranged the song oder based more upon his pedal settings. Years later there might be four beats between the last note of the previous song and the first note of the next one. All in an effort to make us appear tight and professional. We weren't there yet. The frequency of the rehearsals was getting me slowly in good shape, Dennis often seemed bored and would immediately react when he heard a sour note. I still hit a lot of them. After the last song things were unplugged, put away and carried out the door. Everyone split within minutes. Some nights Elizabeth would run upstairs to fix my dinner. In four months time we still hadn't developed any friendships. I had to work out some things with Terri both on songs and on the makeshift keyboard stand I was making for her so she and I spoke more frequently than any of the others. Paul was accustomed to getting high before and after practice so since we didn't he simply went home. Elizabeth still retained her nervous laugh when put on the spot - like someone speaking directly to her. I was all too often the target of her insults or tricks and they brought laughter from the others. That was her way of becoming one of the band. I came to see the band as Dennis being surrounded by three people more than ten years his senior and a strange 19 year old girl being the only remaining person to speak with, and there was not much there. When you are 19 tghe distance to 15 is vast. I did my best to make things work. I never forgot my promise to take the band as far as it would go and to record Elizabeth in the studio. I saw her one night early on practicing what to do with the microphone. That was not something I ever gave a thought but the band was her fantasy. She stood all of 5 feet tall in front of her microphone stand with her mic raised to forehead level but aimed down towards her mouth making her sing up to it. We had been to see the Ramones and I was glad she didn't try Johnny Ramone's technique of over extending the mic stand and leaning it towards her from 8 feet away. There were others who pulled the mic stand apart and held the upper portion with the mic while moving about the stage. It was all a matter of finding her own persona rather than copying someone else. Eventually it came. What I was watching was a lifetime of her being a fan of the adoration a vocalist got in a rock band. It was based in reality because she had seen it but in our reality at the bottom of a career it was absurd. I looked at us and we were obviously green and completely inexperienced, but every band begins at the bottom. Just a few months earlier we were cetainly on the bottom. We were sounding so much better after a short time of being Dennis joining.  In part I believe this came from our listening closely to each other too. We took our cues and if something were off a little we could rebound, often without someone being able to notice. Ready or not, the next step was taken.
   Personally my great love is playing bass and is seconded by photography. I never got any self satisfaction from my career as an auto technician. I believe Elizabeth was always embarrassed when someone found out what I did for a living no matter how much money I was being paid. Mechanics can be uncouth, rude and lacking basic social skills. I have hundreds of stories I could tell about on the job experiences with my fellow mechanics that would likely both amuse and horrify. I came from a line of photographers who enjoyed their cameras whenever not working. My grandfather seemed to have always had a camera with him and continually documented his family's life in America. He was from Southern Italy and came to America to find a future that did not involve olives, for his family had owned  'a large olive farm' plantation for a long time. After WW2 the plantation ownership went to him and he was happy with his life in America so he donated it all to the Catholic church there in Montella.
Some families only took photos while on vacations and holidays. My family never took a vacation and my father was paid triple pay if he worked a holiday so he always did. He had learned photography skills from his father and much like him, my father was continually documenting life on film. So our family's history in photos was pretty easy. I grew up with that love of being behind the lens documenting life as it went on around me.
  When I first met Elizabeth there wasn't much to look at. She was rather plain and unimpressive as a 16 year old. Her personality and intelligence impressed and attracted me so with my camera ever present I documented the growth of the girl into a woman and a very attractive woman at that. I could write a special presentation on her alone but the person I thought I knew for 20 years was not her at all. Her inferiority complex was maddening! At the time I was in love and deeply devoted to her so I took hundreds of photos of her. When my son came along he was exposed to constant photographing too. When he grew up and had a child of his own, like me he took hundreds of photos. The digital camera made getting great results very easy. Elisabeth was rebellious about allowing me to photograph her at first but in a short time she matured and learned how to best groom herself. She became adept at matching clothes and styles as well as colors and patterns. Before long she was turning heads everywhere. She was small at 5 feet in height and about 90 pounds but she had lung power when needed. When it came to publicity photos of the band I thought it only made sense for me to take the photos.
  Paul had no taste in clothes and was completely unaware of what was going on in the world of style. I don't remember now if we asked him or he asked us but one day without practice we took Paul to a store that sold almost exclusively jeans and accessories. He really didn't like to spend money but that day Elizabeth convinced him to join 1985 and put 1975 behind him. Along with clothing we attempted to introduce him to modern bands so he could stop wearing out his Beatles and Rush albums. So Paul joined the rest of the band and dressed for gigs. In his case an inch wide tie. I was in casual slacks and sports coat, my hair was short then but like everyone I wore a variety of earrings in my left ear. I don't remember ever seeing Dennis with an earring but he surprised us by wearing a large string of pearls for our photo shoot .

  
For our promotional photo we wanted a background that spoke through imagery what we were supposedly about. In 1985 we had never used the word “Gothic” before in a sentence but somehow our self description began to include the word “Dark” a lot. We really weren't. We were considered a cover band and our set included three songs by “Blondie”, a song by “Squeeze” , Modern English, “The Records”, “Nena, Berlin” “ Icicle Works” and other bands who had hits and got a lot of club play. There was no rebellion or effort to change the direction of music. They all simply played great music. Away from the stage Elizabeth looked like any other petite sized mother of a 4 year old. In fact she later became a 'room mother' and organized the best parties the elementary school ever saw. In stage attire and made up along with teasing and moussing her hair she looked wildly hip and a part of the whole 'New Wave' scene. No one paid attention to bassists so on the street I suppose I looked like an auto mechanic on his day off. On stage I was often a shadow off to one side. Terri attempted to have an attitude of 'cool' around her but it fell flat. Black leather and teased out hair didn't say enough and she was too insecure to do much more. She looked more like someone from a 'hair-metal band'. Paul loved attention and over played at any opportunity or would extend a song by adding more drumming if he hadn't already forced a drum solo into the song. Dennis seemed to play dazzling guitar all the while trying to not draw attention to his physical self. Yeah, we were a bunch of Misfits.
  I'd seen dozens of band promo photos and to me they all looked about the same. When photographing Blondie they wisely dressed her in white while the rest were in black. That way she was noticed for certain. I believed that when 4 or more people are in a photo you generally don't remember any of them. If you place one in front of three others they will be missed and the one in front will get all the attention. Another complaint of mine with band promo photos is they appear often as if the same photographer posed and photographed all of them. There will always be at least one who tries to look hard and tough. Another will attempt to be as hip as possible. There seems to frequently be one band member who will do the sneer look. Of course one guy will be the' cute' one use the photo shoot for selling himself to the girls of the world. Meanwhile the money spent on the shoot was a waste because no one is memorable let alone the entire group.
  One afternoon I stopped by a radio station to chat with a friend who was one of their most popular Djs. He was also music director and as such it was his duty to go through all the records that were sent to the station to 'check out' and hopefully play. I sat and watched as he went through about 30 or more albums and in less than 15 minutes he had gone through them all and decided which the station's manager would want to check out for play and which would go into a near by trash can. There were many records by bands who were not on a major label and were unknown along side big name bands with a long history. He flipped through them and knew that their station wouldn't be playing the new Stones album or Michael Jackson. Both went into the trash. Something that made a deep impression on me was when he came to a new release by a solo artist named Nanci Griffith and he remarked he didn't like the cover photo of her. Into the trash it went without anyone giving the album a listen. The cover photo was enough to prevent her from getting a chance on that station. I was appalled but also impressed with the importance of the covers and band photos. They should speak volumes and open doors for the band, not shut them.
   I had taken Elizabeth to the Rockville Civic Center once when we were dating just to take photos of her there. A short distance away was a humble cemetery with very old headstones and it was rumored that F. Scott Fitzgerald was buried there among the Civil War victims and veterans. We didn't have time to look then because of in-climate weather but we did see a lot of the grounds and I thought we should take some photos there and maybe at the cemetery. When we arrived that day the weather was beautiful and sunny. Not ideal for a dark image but we were not there yet. The Yashica camera I had wasn't top of the line. The built in light meter didn't work and it was a camera that did not have multiple lenses. I'd been using it to photograph Elizabeth for months and usually was very happy with the photos. I set the group up in a long row with a stone wall to one side and a stone garden doorway in the rear. I set the aperture an shutter speed and then set the timer to 10 seconds so I could run and get in place. I shot several that way and then had them fill the stone entrance to the garden. We barely discussed the set up. It was as if each of us knew who we would be in the generic band photo and took our place and set our expression. I tried to be creative and break away from the stereo type band and photo. I even had them all get into a large tree. Everyone did as instructed so I suppose I had my moment of respect from everyone. They even got to do a little clowning around. I was happy with the results. Those were the days before Photoshop and easy alterations and corrections. I also took Elizabeth into Bethesda for some publicity photos to use in ads. Most looked a bit to erotic for me, knowing other people would be leering at but the idea was to get attention - and they did.

The day of our first gig came almost too fast once it was on the books. The Washington Post and the City Paper came out and we saw our name in print. Thus began our band scrapbook.
We had prepared a 45 minute set and had practiced it to where we knew it well and played it like we lived it. It also included our original song “Promise Me”. Our music was set but everything else about the night was in the dark. The club owner had told me the headliner would supply the PA system but for some reason I decided to bring our own practice PA. We also loaded into the van my very homemade looking keyboard stand. Dennis had brought two guitars; a BC Rich and a Gibson ES 335. As we were setting up I watched as he ran a strip of masking tape down his mic stand and attached about 20 guitar pics to it. It was very strange to me because I have never seen him drop a pick. Paul, the drummer had brought his 12 piece kit and it actually took up the entire stage so Elizabeth stood in front of the stage on the floor and I stood to her left with my bass cabinet on the stage behind me. Dennis stood on the floor to her right at an uncomfortably close distance to the closest table and patrons. Off to one side behind me Terri was nearly hidden by the wooden tree fort masquerading as a keyboard stand. We were ready to set up but the other band was nowhere in sight. Our start time was fast approaching and the owner kept looking at his watch. Fifteen minutes before our scheduled start time I told him we had our own PA out in the van and could use it. He asked it we could set it up fast enough to begin on time and I assured him we could. We set our mixer midway in the audience and to one side. Unfortunately we had no one to run it. So we did our sound check as a few groups of patrons made there way into the room, starring at us as the went. They were there to see the headliner and not us. As we made the final adjustments to the mix and set the monitors they were already making snide remarks at us. Actually not at me, mostly toward Dennis. I remember one guy in particular with a snotty tone to his voice ask " Is that a real BC Rich ?” Paul and I exchanged glances. We knew we were facing a challenge tonight. We were ready to begin and then in walked the first of the members of the other band. The owner questioned him out of my hearing and he assured the man that the rest of the band was on its way and they had the PA. The club owner looked at his watch, asked it we were ready to begin. I pressed the record button on my cassette recorder and took my place at stage left.
  Elizabeth looked at me and I gave her a nod. She turned to the drummer and said “The pie pan approach Paul” and he tapped us in ( way too fast ) on his hi-hat and the first notes to the introduction of Blondie's “11:59” began. Just like practice everything came together as Elizabeth nervously clutched the mic with both hands. We received an enthusiastic applause and even a few hoots. The audience was quickly won over and it was a momentous first ever performance. Dennis was on the other side of Elizabeth from me so I had difficulty hearing or even seeing him.
I recorded the performance with one line through our mixer's 'Monitor” output and the other through a microphone that sat on a table top near the mixer. Since a guitar and the drums are loud in a small club they were not mic'd to the soundboard, nor was my bass. We sound checked the PA but not my recorder so this moment in history would be a toss of the dice whether we got a decent recording or not. Later I decided it was enough that we had a copy of the first ever live performance by Elizabeth and the first club performance by Dennis. I made no attempt to mix or balance the two channels. There were certainly issues that flawed the recording. Elizabeth's voice comes through loud and clear, a little too loud a few times but it is great document of our start as a band and the beginning of the music career of our members. The keyboards are clear and mostly clean and best of all at the proper level in the mix to the vocals - until she changed settings and turned her volume up. Paul's drums and my bass were picked up both by the room mic and by Elizabeth's mic. where they just by chance are not too terribly loud.

   Click here to listen to the original recordings from that night. The recording is unbalanced with one channel a mic open to the room and the other channel from the soundboard. And I'll warm you, the keyboards turned up at times without regards to how loud she was in the room, only how well she could hear herself. The guitar is only through the room mic but the drums and bass were picked dup by the vocal mic. Yes, it's a mess. But it's historic.

 1. 11:59  2. Is that Love  3. Whisper to a Scream  4. Danceway  5. You don't come close  6. Head over Heels  7. Promise Me  8. Picture This

  9. Just a Dream  10. Starry Eyes  11. No more Words  12. I melt with You   Encore: Pointless

 
We had rehearsed these songs so many times – and seriously each time that it might have been difficult for us to make an error. In retrospect the only person to make mistakes was the person with the single most experience on stage – Paul. Since I played my bass by ear and always have I relied upon remembering the finger position for my first two note. From there my hands simply remembered the pattern I played in each song. Elizabeth had studied the lyrics so much there was little danger of her forgetting words or mixing up verses. Plus she said since she was the lyricist she had the freedom to change lyrics in the middle of a song. I had the utmost trust that Dennis would play flawlessly during the audition that began our 5 years of paying our dues. I couldn't really hear him while we played until he hit his overdrive pedal or volume boost. Later after listening to the recording in my car and in our basement I changed the balance of the channels and played the tape. I had to reduce the channel with the board recording on it to match the primary volume of the channel with the ' through the air ' recording. If someone were really interested in a better recording of our performance I could put in the effort and make a decent recording to listen to. I never felt the need. From what I heard Dennis was in top form and played without errors. Those neanderthals who had insulted and chided Dennis before the show were some of the loudest applauding after each song. Elizabeth was so emotionally committed to what she was doing when she sang her song “Promise Me” I saw tears welling in her eyes. It could be dismissed as a number of things but I have my own theory since she wrote the lyrics and I believe she wrote heart felt words but certainly not about me.
   I'm not too prejudice and I believe we played with our hearts that night, We wanted the crowd and the club owner to love us. Understanding the animosity we faced before our first note, receiving a loud enthusiastic response after each and every song did wonders for our band self-esteem. A woman not more than 8 or 10 feet from Elizabeth made a point of telling her how good she is and encouraging her to go on and do another. She called her “Honey” much to my amusement. Before we had begun I had looked out the window of our “dressing room “ and saw a small gathering of what looked like high school aged kids just standing on the side walk in front of the club. Later I was informed that among the people out there was a number of friends and fans from Dennis' high school who were turned away from the door for being under 21. Our set went on splendidly as we ran through many excellent songs not often heard covered by a local band, especially an unknown band. When we looked at the clock and saw our 45 minutes had just ended and we began to turn and break the equipment down all the while the audience was still clapping, whistling and cheering wildly. Several began to call out for an encore. We were amused and flattered but actually had not practiced an encore. I looked to the club owner and he appeared to be very pleased and nodded his head for us to do another song. A quick consultation and we agreed on a song named “Pointless” by the Canadian band “Reflex” who were known for their dance song “The politics of Dancing”. We had practiced the song and it normally would have been incorporated in a 60 minute or longer set. After the raucous jam ending drawn out for almost 3 minutes on our last planned song “I melt with You” by Modern English “Pointless' would be a way of calming down the room and leaving then satiated for the headlining band who were nervously watching us from the audience with friends. Paul was always ready to show off his playing , hamming it up and hitting every drum in his 12 piece kit. Terri knew it well enough to play the song and unfortunately turned up her volume to where it almost overpowered Elizabeth's voice in the speakers. But the encouragement of an encore after an audition was all we needed to believe the Misfit Toys had arrived.
   Paul 'ticked' us in four beats and my bass thundered the introduction off and away we went. It could have been better and I can excuse the quality of the performance by our having not planned on playing it at the show but any sloppiness was quickly excused by the crowd and the club owner. We quickly cleared the stage, broke down the equipment and began transporting everything back into the van. The club owner,a man with only one eye called me to see him once everything was packed or at least off stage so the headliner could load in and set up. He told me that he thought we were very good, very professional except the home made keyboard stand. He never wants to see it again. He told me that he wants to give us a residency, playing weekends all month. He pays $200 per night to the entire band. I thought that wasn't much but again we were starting out and new bands don't get paid the same as older, popular bands. I learned that in 1985 a $200 guarantee was very good for a band.
   The other band had shown themselves to be real jerks so we had no motivation to stay and watch them. We met at the back of Terri's van and I told them what the club owner had told me. Terri chimed in that she believed she could get her father to buy her a keyboard stand now that we had a job and her playing was contingent upon having a stand. Dennis told me that he had driven the family's Oldsmobile to the club and now his gear was in the trunk. He and a few friends were going to stay in Georgetown awhile. We said our 'See ya's and Terri, Elizabeth, Paul and I jumped into the van and headed for home. We unloaded the gear to our basement said our goodbyes and everyone went home. Having worked almost all day, rushed home to load the PA in the van and then help Paul load his drum kit, clean up and change in time to drive the band into Washington DC. Once we managed to find a place to park and unload I was moving equipment again. So one AM came and found me in bed. Then too soon after, the phone rang …....
                              Many of you reading this will have no idea what I am about to explain but bear with me.
Earlier in the day Dennis had driven by the shop I worked in to have me look at his car. His Delta 88 Oldsmobile was a beautiful, roomy family car with a powerful engine but it had developed starting issues. He told me the symptoms, I asked a few questions and determined it was a issue with his choke. This was 1985 and cars still had carburetors and carbs have chokes. A choke is designed to close off all the air going into the engine through the carb. As the engine warms up the chokes slowly opens to allow more air. While the air is blocked a small amount still goes around the choke plate ( also called a Butterfly ) and strategically passes by a small hole where it siphons out gasoline into the intake manifold. All this is necessary to start and run a cold engine. Once the engine is warmed up, the choke opens all the way and is not needed. To prevent the complete close off of all air going into the engine there is a device called a 'choke pull-off ' that when the engine starts after cranking pulls the choke butterfly plates open roughly 3/16 of an inch. Now, with old automotive theory behind us back to Dennis and his car. The problem he was having was his choke was working almost too well. When his engine wasn't completely cold the choke was closing all the way. To maker a correct adjustment required a car to be adjusted after it sat all night and he wasn't able to leave his car at the shop. If for no other reason because that night was our first gig. So I made a rough guess adjustment. Although it looked good as he attempted to start his car it didn't comply. I attempted to explain things to him but could tell it was going right on by so I told him to look at the closed plate. If his car wouldn't start to simply place something there to hold the plate open a little and then the engine would start. I took the pen from my pocket, stuck it in the opening to hold the plate open and it started right up with no problem. Issue temporarily resolved he left to go prepare for our big night while I finished my work day.
   I left off it was after 1AM and I had just slid my exhausted body into bed. It was Dennis. He was still in Georgetown. He and his friends attempted to go home and his car wouldn't start. Remembering the gist of what I had told him he looked for something to hold the choke plate open. He said all he could find was a penny. It worked. He placed the penny where I had showed him, the engine started – and the penny fell inside the engine. Against the odds the penny went past the throttle plates into the intake manifold and into one of the engine's cylinders. He asked if it was okay to drive because it was running very rough. I made an assumption as to where the penny went and since pennies then were made from copper I told him it should be alright but to bring it to me to check out at home in the afternoon. It was easy to figure out which cylinder the penny ended up in and I removed the spark plug, re-gapped the flattened electrode and when it started it ran fine and smooth. The penny no doubt had either passed into the exhaust system or was now one with the head of the piston. That wouldn't happen with your Honda or KIA now days. You'd be looking at replacing broken valves and looking at a major repair.
   We had no photographs of that very first gig, plus it was an audition however Paul's very sweet girlfriend brought a 110 camera ( very small negatives) and took photographs at our next and truly first gig in Alexandria Virginia. Below are a few. She very kindly had double prints made when they were developed. There is no accounting for her taste in men but we all liked her.

  Our first ever live performance was behind us and it proved to be the start of many. We eventually played up and down the East Coast from “The Fallout Shelter” in Raleigh to CBGBs in NYC. Through them all I always knew I could count on Dennis no matter what happened. His best friend Mike Adams came to some of our shows and helped us out by working the mixer. He was a drummer highly recommended by Dennis but he was busy with school activities such as wrestling.
  Dennis got a gig for us playing a party at a person from his high school's birthday celebration. It paid well, better than club dates and all we had to do was play our usual only at someone's house. We had to set up outside since that is where everyone was congregated. All the food was inside – lucky for them because we could have done some damage. Out first set went great. We performed well and we well received but then the unforeseen; the sun went down and so did the temperature. It didn't just get cold, it got cold fast. I had on sport coat so I was the only one with a chance of being warm. Along with shivers as the temperature dropped our instruments went out of tune and not just once or twice. The temperature dropped so fast we couldn't complete a song in tune. Terri's keyboard began to show frost on the parts with no electronics. Elizabeth was shivering so much she could hardly sing and all of the kids at the party went inside the house and stood watching and listening at the sliding glass doors. Paul's drum heads contracted continually and he hadn't thought to bring a drum key. We were re-tuning after each song and then finally Paul's snare head shattered. He played another song without a snare but just shook his head looking over at me. In fact they all looked at me to do something. Finally that cup was taken from me when the girl's mother came outside and told us we didn't have to play any longer and that she would ( regretfully ) pay us the full agreed upon price. If we had a snare we would have been willing to complete the night playing inside but she never suggested it. I asked Dennis if there was any talk about the party the following week at school and he said all they had to say was that we were really good. That was the only time we played a private party.
  The premier club in Washington DC to watch music videos and dance in the 80's was without a doubt a club called “Poseurs”, located in Georgetown next to Georgetown University and in close proximity to the famous “Exorcist steps”. Elizabeth and I were regulars there for a long time every weekend thanks to a VIP pass that let us skip the line and the cover charge. Poseurs always had a line outside on weekends no matter if freezing rain was pelting them or if it we 20 degrees out. They didn't need to lure people to come with live acts. In the history of the club that had only had one live performance and that was the local Baltimore band “Here Today” who were signed to a major label in 1984 and changed their name to “Vigil” only to disappear. Misfit Toys changed that by becoming the second in December 1985 when were were asked to play a hour long set. We were still fairly green but played a good set of mixed covers and originals that did not impress anyone but did preserve the first incarnation of the band on video. One of the covers we played was the song by The Records “Starry Eyes” and Dennis played a particularly difficult fingering for the primary riff and did it well. Our last song was “I melt with you” and it turned into a long drawn out guitar adventure. I was a bit embarrassed immediately afterward because of the reaction or lack there of by the audience and watched the video one time before filing it in a box for decades. I may one day digitize it and put the full concert on our web site but only if there is interest.
At the end of 1985 I asked Paul to leave the band for reason best not discussed. We went through several prospective drummers from a minimalist pseudo-Punk drummer to those who were time keepers who occasionally added the same drum fill each time in every song.
We had the opportunity to perform at Dennis and Mike's high school, headlining after two other bands made from students. Our drummer did the unthinkable and decided to take his high school girlfriend to her Homecoming Dance the same night. I argued he was obligated to us and our prior commitment to perform that night and that came before his girlfriend who was several years younger than him. ( Jail bait ) He whined and complained but finally said he would do the gig but he would leave immediately after. The night of the show he was continually pacing and saying we need to go on first so he could get to his date. I argued 'We're the headliner. Headliners don't go on first.'
  We loaded in and set up. Mike was basically in charge along with running the PA. We sound checked and then moved aside so the other bands could set up and sound check. The mostly student audience arrived gradually and stood at the sides talking. There was a degree of excitement at finally being able to see 'Dennis' band'. The students were all too young to get into any of the clubs we played. Our drummer squirms and whined at me. All he cared about was making his date with his High School honey. I finally conceded to his pleas and agreed we would go on second instead of last. Time went on and there were a few delays. The ticking clock was driving him mad. He threatened to leave and not do the show. After conferring with Elizabeth we decided to go on first. It was the only way we knew we would have a drummer. The school auditorium was huge to us. We spread out so far we could hardly see each other let alone hear. Thanks to Mike for a good monitor mix. We played our set and the audience loved us but with the last beat of our last song our drummer left. Not a word. No idea what he expected us to do with his drum kit. I was livid and the audience wanted more. I had Elizabeth ask Mike from the stage if he would come up and play “I melt with you” with us. It put him on the spot but it was his big chance to show his friends. So he set his levels and ran on stage to sit at a very unfamiliar drum kit. With very little delay he counted us in and we played the song with an extra long drawn out guitar solo. The night ended and so did that drummer's time with us.
  I seriously wanted to leave his kit behind or even outside on the side walk but Elizabeth wouldn't hear of it. So we packed it up and took it home. He should have known he was gone.
Mike had been put on the spot that night but did well. He still had obligations for awhile and was unable to join the band but we had decided we needed him. It was May 16th when we learned our drummer had to go but we had several concerts on our schedule and on May 24 we revisited our club of origin, where it all began. Then on May 30 we had a date at a popular club that had recently changed owners. That is always a bad sign. A band likes to perform at a club that already has regulars and not the ones where you must essentially bring your own crowd. We always did our part and heavily advertised and promoted our shows every way we could think of. One sneaky thing we did to promote a show was to run an ad in a paper and then go around to the paper dispensers and insert an 8 ½ by 11 inch flyer with eye catching graphics. I'd go into record stores and insert a flyer into the top ten copies. When we played Baltimore – and we were house band for a few months at a club there I did the same the week of the show, stuffing fliers into newspaper dispensers of both free and the ones for sale. I figured it was worth a quarter to pay to open the box so I could stuff fliers. It is always important to promote a show. Also important not getting caught doing what we did.
Our first paying gig was set up by a guy in another band who worked their sound system. He was great and I kept telling his he was like a brother from another mother. When we met the joke was on be because he was black. I learned quite a few things from him and we got our second gig, which turned into a residency at a club in Virginia.
So what about Dennis during all of this time? Dennis was there for every practice and on time. We didn't really talk before beginning because I was usually the last to arrive. We set up, turned on, tuned and were ready for the first song. Every time Elizabeth decided to add a new cover song Dennis amazingly had it down completely. Not just the notes but the exact tone and use of EFX on it. I think the first time I saw Dennis the thing I noticed most was his hair, He always went to great lengths to make his hair look great. Of course seeing a 'kid' walking through my door with Gibson ES 335 and a nice Roland amp told me he had money. Many of the people who came to audition talked a lot and asked questions or tried to impress me with musician talk. Dennis didn't say much. After he was a Misfit Toys he still didn't say much. It may have been the ten year age difference, that we were married and that my hair had begun to fall out when I was 23. I believe not to many bands owned a house and worked a profession. We were also privileged to have a Klipsch PA system with LaScallas and Heresy speakers when most bands didn't have one or had an inexpensive set up with minimal quality. We recorded our rehearsals with studio quality results if we bothered. If we believed we needed something to help the band along we bought it.
Everywhere we played we were different. We still were not great and had a lot of dues to pay along with the education that comes from the road and studios. From the start Dennis cared about his appearance. At his audition and again at practice and our first shows. He obviously spent a lot of effort making his hair look good but on top of that he made the effort to dress well. I'd say dress the part of a rock star but most of those, especially on their way up are slobs. At a time when bands were starting to not dress for shows we stood out. Plenty of bands took the stage dressed in the same clothes they had worn all day – and maybe the the day before. Elizabeth dressed for sex appeal, there was no denying that. She had no breasts but wore outfits that disguised that fact and teased the audience that they might get a peak as she moved around or bent to pick up a percussion instrument. It was debatable whether she knew he was teasing the guys or was so naive she didn't know they were drooling. Our first promotional photos ended up too R rated to use after considering them. ( See a few examples below ) We'd gone to a garage in Bethesda Maryland to shoot in what was about as close to an urban setting as we could fake.
  She had learned how to do makeup very well and had her ways for work, for stage and for home and the store. Terri chose to usually dress in black leather. I honestly never found her attractive so I can't judge what the audiences thought. I do know know that in all of our concerts neither was hit upon. I tried to stare away anyone who might approach Elizabeth. It seemed only right since she was my wife and her past history. I knew how to look threatening. Sometime in 1986 I believe I decided that my sport coat didn't convey the image we wanted for our band and so one Saturday afternoon we went to Georgetown shopping the used clothing stores where in an attic area I saw several long coats – frocks actually and thought 'that was perfect for me'. I took one out that seemed close to my size. The tag said it was an actual 'Priests frock from the turn of the century'. I looked at the blue and white pin stripe lining and the long row of closely spaced round buttons and flashed to a scene in a movie with Pat O'Brien or Bing Crosby playing priests in old movies. It would have to be tailored but the $40.00 price tag was high for our tiny budget but my wife okayed it without even looking at it much. A week or two later I took it to a tailor to be altered to fit me. They did a wonderful job and charged very little. I wore that coat at every performance for the next five years. I never forgot that the band was Elizabeth's band and On stage I kept a low profile and stayed in the background when I could and tried to not draw attention to myself. Many times in the first two years Elizabeth would look to stage right where I always was for a reassuring look from me. I thought she looked great and had her stage persona worked out. That is always a problem for vocalist – what to do during the long guitar solos. She usually just danced.
  On stage Dennis had 'the look' but he never did anything to draw attention to himself. We might wonder how he might be dressed when he arrived to pack up for a concert but it was always a question of how he would have his hair . He usually is looking down in the photos of the band and sometimes while playing a solo he might sneak a quick glance to any of us to see if we noticed his moment of brilliance. Once Mike joined us they would exchange glances often like he finally had a counterpart in the band. They could talk and even ride to practice together. Things did not go well between Terri and the rest of us and we decided she had to go. At the time I asked Paul to leave the band he had expressed designs on Terri. I'd known him when we played together in 1977 and he hadn't changed by 1985 when it came to girls. He told us unashamedly that he had paid for a lot of abortions and one girl had 7. We asked if the 12th one was free like the sandwich shops used to do. He laughed with us at first and then stopped and said “that's not funny''. We knew no good could come from his dating Terri. He would use her an dump her like the rest. It would be impossible for them to break up and still be in the same band. If he got her pregnant it would be even worse. So out he went but they dated. They decided to go on vacation together for a month during which I had several gigs scheduled. Instead of canceling the shows we thought it best to do them any way without her. We went through our material and dropped songs where her keys played a prominent part and changed the arrangements on others to fill them out. Mike officially joined us in June 1986 and Terri's last show with us was August 16th, the one year anniversary of four first public performance. While she was away we added several new originals I'd written and one Dennis wrote.
  I'd never attempted to corner the songwriting in Misfit Toys and soon after we introduced “Promise Me” I let it be known we were open to anyone writing and submitting a song to the band. The conditions were that Elizabeth would write the lyrics. She said if she had to sing them then they would be her words. What was amazing was she suddenly had a great talent for lyrics and song arraignments that she'd never known. When we first dated she was 16 and showed me some songs she had written for a sort of Rock Opera where all the songs had a continual theme tying them together. Frankly it stunk. She knew how bad it was too and later destroyed all the written lyrics and anything that had to do with it. Now her lyrics impressed the heck out of me every song. One night Dennis stayed after practice and recorded two song ideas to present to Elizabeth. She had a difficult time with what he wrote and was just going to turn them down when I had her wait. Since I'd over heard what he recorded and was naturally insecure he would play bass better than me on his demo I listened to both songs and she pointed out and said 'see, I don;t know what to do there'. I proposed taking the two songs and making one song out of them. “Where this part ends use that part from the second song and it will come back to the first song here”. She understood and the next day she had the lyrics to “Your Lies” and explained the changes and morphing of the two songs into one. Dennis seemed to like it. We had our first copyrighted song that was Dennis and Elizabeth. It became a staple in all of our concerts usually the third song and it appears on our “Closure “ album released in 2023 with Victoria on vocals. I also want to mention that Dennis has never played with a notion to draw attention to his talent or dominate a song over our vocalist either on stage or in the studio. As my friend at the radio station pointed out 'he understands how important and powerful it is when he doesn't play it is as when he plays something dazzling. I too sought to play a bass line that is what a song needs rather than what I might want to play that shows my skills.
  Mike too recorded a song idea and submitted it to Elizabeth for lyrics but it was too abstract for her as if inspired by the Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd. He said he understood and didn't feel insulted but he never submitted another song nor did Dennis. While Terri was with us she constantly brought us song ideas. She didn't has a means of recording them so she and I would work on recording her keys with my bass to fill them out. Her excitement to get a song in the roster got ahead of her and she usually submitted rough ideas that hadn't been worked out. Elizabeth would give up and reject them. There were several I worked on with her that Elizabeth worked her magic on and the songs went onto our roster but they were far removed from the original idea which all to often wasn't an original idea but a plagiarized song she liked and assumed we hadn't heard.
When working on a new song the important thing is to get the melody idea across. The bass and drums can change drastically later and not matter but the guitar was central for the song to work. After writing lyrics to a song Elizabeth would give it to me to help with the arrangement and to demo a version for the band to hear. Dennis was always an excellent guitarist and I would never have dreamed to write his guitar part. Only he could do that and he did it amazingly well and fast. When we first presented Promise me” to the band it was just voice and bass. Paul picked up the rhythm of the song easily enough and added fills. Dennis made mental notes and at practice two days later walked in with a completed song with a beautiful solo that soared through the emotions and gently carried you back to your feet again. They only way you will hear this is from our live recordings or rehearsals at the time because when we recorded it in the studio he surprised me with an entirely different solo. Yes it was still good but it took me a long time to stop expecting the notes of the first version. Look for the recording from the studio of our first take on it down below.

  Promise Me First Recording

  A few more photos of our star guitarist in our beginning years. First Jan. 1987 7-85

I've gone this far without really delving into who Dennis is. The reason is because I don't know. It is that simple. The way Misfit Toys worked we really weren't friend. We weren't able to make mindless chatter because the friendship between Dennis and Mike felt exclusive and there on the other side was myself with my wife Elizabeth. It wasn't of course but there was a gap between us, and I don't believe it was age. When Dennis joined the band the Misfit Toys really began. His talent allowed us to cover anything we wanted to but all the while his demeanor was very aloof. I never saw a sign of ego in all the time I knew him and recorded and toured with him. I'd managed a band in 1976 before I graduated high school and ran the Misfit Toys much like a business. Actually it was. Legally we provided a service to the community was the way an attorney explained things to us when we wanted to Copyright our band name. He explained that a band is not a product that can be copyrighted it in fact should be thought of as expending energy and people pay to tap into that energy. Dennis often appeared stoic and almost apathetic concerning things around him. I have seen him get excited and it was a beautiful thing. Of course no one knows what goes on inside of a person. I wore and still wear too many hats for one person especially when he is also a member of the band. I used to have a tendency to stress out, a lot. I bore all the weight except for the actual performance of each individual. I can say in retrospect they did not let me down especially when it comes to writing. Mike and Dennis have played together for so long anticipating where each other will go in a song became second nature. Of course as I said while Mike was doing this with Dennis he was also listening to my irregular bass lines. I used to fantasize what it would be like again to just show up to practice, plug in and play and leave without a worry about what happens tonight or tomorrow. As manager and leader and promoter and financier van driver and agent and everything I left out I stretched myself out pretty far. Still, I believed in the band and I believed in our music. I still do. I believe we have not only musical and writing talent but we have an identity unlike other bands. The key to our identity is Dennis' guitar work. The band was formed for Elizabeth's sake but she moved on to other fantasies. In 2022 we recorded without her and the magic was there. It was still her words so the songs were all dark even when the melody was bright. I believe her true talent was in writing the songs and not in her voice. She picked up percussion and played cow bell, wood block, claves, a cabassa and castanets and she learned to play two finger keyboards.
  We found in the mid-80's that Gothic music touched us inside where other music doesn't. It never made me want to paint my nails black, shave my eyebrows and ring my eyes with shadow and mascara, but I loved it. I listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees painting the world they saw with vivid yet dark colors, and again early Cure with somber words melting across my shoulders as if the weight I felt had a physical; manifestation. When I was a teen I discovered the angst I felt, the absolute frustration and anger expressed to perfection by "The Who" in 'Quadrophenia'. The music expressed what I felt but could not convey on my own. They said it. The drums the trashing guitar crescendos and operatic drama of unrequited love, an empty future and no direction. Best of all a bass guitar that raced maddeningly up and down the neck, driving the song while holding it together. The music went beyond rock and roll or just rock or any other easy description. It was the music and words that expressed my unspoken emotions and when the song ended I felt released from what I had inside eating at me. In 1984 I discovered that feeling again in the alternative music I heard only on a progressive radio station or occasionally on the new MTV midnight show “120 minutes” or  "Night flight”. It was almost a secret that these bands were making such great non-mainstream music. In 1985 thanks mostly to Dennis' ability on guitar to read what my songs needed I felt that feeling coming from us, from me. The few people I played recordings to listened to me and stood back, trying to form the words to express what they were thinking. They had been prepared to say a generic compliment to be polite but were taken by surprise at what they heard. I only let a few people I trusted to be honest to hear our rehearsal and render an opinion. A friend who was a manager at a “Circuit City' audio shop took my tape into the soundproof room where speakers could be cranked and compared played the tape in the finest deck and ran it through the most expensive speakers for the full affect of being in the room while the band played it. He loved it and wouldn't let anyone interrupt the 20 minutes he spent in that room listening. When we played the “Bayou” in Washington DC   (Pt. 2 )  he showed up with a fine Video camcorder and recorded the entire set for us.
  A good friend I traded Bootleg tapes with for years liked new music but of a different cut. He listened to dance music along with bands such as OMD, Ice House, Talk Talk, Simple Minds and the like. He was more than impressed and even drove to Baltimore to see us live. Why? Why were we different from other 'local bands' in the DC area? I believe our approach was perfectly in line with the bands who were signed and in every record store. Yes, Elizabeth had a powerful voice and a very real talent for writing lyrics and arranging songs. But I think what really made us what we were and are is Dennis on guitar. He listened to a lot of music and his mind calculated how they got a specific sound and what efx they used and how they used them. You don't simply plug a guitar into a small box and get the ideal amount of distortion. Many guitarists don't even use pedals for their distortion they have their way to over drive the amp until it provides the distortion. There is an almost divine intelligence behind replicating a specific sound from one guitar to another. I've never heard of a professional guitarist who will take new guitar out the the box and play after tuning. They send it to their luthier and have him set things up the way the guitarist likes. Many major bands have a luthier tour with them so he can keep all the instruments in peak performance.
  Early on Dennis played a Gibson ES 335 through a Roland amplifier. Honestly. Until he came in to audition I had not heard of Roland amplifiers and though I'd seen guitars like his on TV concerts I had no idea which model it it was or what its characteristics are. One of the first songs we learned as a band was a song that was on the newest “Go-Go's' album and named “ Head over Heels”. Elizabeth had also selected “Blondie's” song “Danceway” from their latest album. We gave a tape to everyone to take home and listen to so they would know the songs well in order to work on them. Paul played drums from his heart and intuitively played almost any song the way it had been recorded only with a lot more fills. Elisabeth had her days free to learn the songs since she was a mother and home maker. As an auto mechanic I listened to what I wanted to all day long in the shop and eventually everyone in the shop knew our songs as well as I did. Terri was a student in Virginia and I never asked her schedule. I knew she kept horses and had duties where they were liveried. Having been a piano student for a long time she learned they way she had been taught so did best with structure. The mystery was Dennis. We gave him a song he had never heard on Monday night and when he returned on Wednesday he sounded exactly like the recording. He not only knew his part but he understood everyone's part and could correct any of us who were wrong. Usually he refrained from embarrassing the person. He also had the where with all to learn the additional guitar parts on the record that were over dubbed and was able to incorporate those into what he played of the primary guitar. So early on Elizabeth, Paul and I were more than impressed with his talent and instinctively worried that he would become wise and go play in another band but of his equal. When we introduced new songs Elizabeth and I wrote, Dennis knew what to play even though his musical influences growing up were much different than ours. One of his little secrets though was that he liked to play hard rock on occasion and loved to just whale on an improvised solo. His ability to play into the abstract still amazes me and on the new album you will hear his take on a song named 'Thinking of You” where he interpreted what the song needed on guitar like almost no one else would have. What he writes and plays is what is right for the song and never just to draw attention to himself or his guitar.
  At the time of our beginning I was good friends with a local radio personality whom I respected for among other things his knowledge and understanding of music. I told him about our initial ideas while attempting to form a band and then, once we had recorded a decent mix of our original material in our practice studio I brought him a copy so I might get his honest opinion. I knew he would be completely honest but he was also very helpful. He not only played records all day or night on his shift but he listened and understood their mechanics of music that had completely passed over my head. If I heard a song and loved it I never really stopped to analyze why. He did.
I began of course with our first song “Promise Me”. He squinted a little a he listened and then the tape went on to the next song “Heart of Sand”. It was more of a basic rock song so I wasn't sure he would like that aspect of it since Rock wasn't his main interest. Next came “Fade to Black” another rock song only with a sweeping synth throughout and driving bass and drums. Dennis' guitar surprisingly took off on a wild, explosive solo that broke away from the three chord monotony that every beginning band tends to write as their first song. In fact it was only our second song to write together but I was amazed and more than pleased. The initial song was three chords played as synth strings pretty much over and over. Paul added tight fills to bring us from one verse to another an it inspired me to write a fast bass run that pushed the song along and Paul picked up on and added to. By next practice Dennis had picked up my bass run and turned it into a guitar riff to connect his power chords. Suddenly we had a song fun to play with room for Dennis to experiment in the solo portion. I really didn't think my friend would like the song but to my great surprise he sat and thought a moment and then nodded his head; he liked it.
  He did explain how weak our intro to “Promise Me” was since it was comprised of only the bass. He went on to explain how song writing usually is based upon four. So our 8 measure intro should be cut to four measures. For someone who had never written a song as far as I knew he had keen insight. He liked our song “Heart of Sand” but thought we were riding a line as far as the sound. He liked the rocking guitar bass and drums but felt the break with the strings was too soft and said “ You need to decide if you want to sound like The Who or the Moody Blues but you can't do both in one song “. Again a wise observation. I took notes on all he had to say and brought them back to the band where everyone listened with sincere interest in order to improve our music.
  I really felt that as a band we all had a degree of dedication to success on some level though we never discussed any exact goals. Everyone seemed to work hard and take the music serious. Even Paul who was a bit jaded by having been in a lot of bands over the years sensed we were different. For the rest of us it was new and exciting.
The day came to record our demos in a real studio and after visiting a number around the DC area we settled on Black Pond Studio in Rockville. It was the ground floor of a house remodeled into separate booths and rooms to record isolated behind glass. He was set up with a 24 channel sound board and both a 2 inch and a half inch recorders. The owner/engineer Chris was accustomed to working with novice bands who entered his building wide eyed and excited. We were little different except Paul had recorded in a studio previously. The general set up and procedure was explained to us. We would play the song through after setting up our individual monitor mixes in the head phones wired into the ceiling. Once we were happy with the drums each individual instrument and vocal would be recorded and the initial 'scratch' recording would be eliminated. Due to our budget we were recording on 8 tracks so that meant the drums had to be mixed correct at the beginning because there could be no changes once recorded. They were simply split between the right and left channels. It wasn't like in the movies where they save every take. If there was an error or someone thought they could do it better another time, the previous take was recorded over.We had practiced so often and so intensely things went very smoothly and there were few multiple takes. Dennis surprised us with the new version of the solo in “Promise Me” and in “Fade To Black”. His solo track had to be inserted into an empty section of probably the vocal track since it was unused there. His rhythm guitar track carried on through the song. We made a mix with the help if the engineer, attempting to balance the instruments and then listened to the mix in our car to hear how it might sound if it were played on the radio. Everyone got a copy and we all went home satisfied we were on our way. I now had something professional sounding I could use to get us work and to send in to the local radio station that had ' Local Music ' shows and would select the best recordings to feature on their Sunday night broadcasts.

               The original over the air broadcasts from 1987 can be heard here in three clicks: Spring (2 Songs)    Summer (Shadows Played)     Fall   '87 End Only
  I sent in a very professional promotional package with bio, photos and the usual slightly inflated description of the band's popularity. At the time the radio stations dealt with records, tapes and cassettes and our music went by way of a cassette with a printed ' J-card ' and a self adhesive tape label. It wasn't as nice as the ones made by a company who manufactures them but it looked good. I can say it worked well because we were featured up front when the show broadcast 2 weeks later. I have a strong belief that the photo of Elizabeth caught the lusty attention of the two Djs who ran the program and they made a point of saying how 'hot' she was. That is a part of marketing: you must first get their attention.
  Elizabeth bought a book on doing professional make up and became very adept at constructing just the right colors and shades for each outfit and occasion. She had no restrictions upon shopping for stage clothing – items she would never wear anywhere else. She figured out to dress not by copying stars she liked but by learning what looked and fit best her figure and personality. I'd met her when she was 16 and very shy and insecure. I suppose I watched her change and become something so much more but it was gradual. It took no time at all before she was self assured when on stage. Terri was always hidden behind her trio of keyboards and Paul was behind his kit trying to draw attention to himself. I tried to be a shadow on stage right and hold up my end of each song while simultaneously working the stage light control box with my foot. The music and the band wasn't about me. People are dazzled by a good guitarist and love to watch whether they play or not. A vocalist physically is the instrument and especially when physically attractive the audience's eyes are glued to them as they sing. They also tend to express what they are singing through gestures and poses. I admit she learned her craft well and in the early years she interacted with the audience since they were almost within arms reach. They loved her!
  Dennis did not compete with her for attention, it was not even sharing the stage. He never did the usual poses while playing or made exaggerated moves like a wanna be rock star. The two of them sometimes were a joint entity. She criticized me years later for never complimenting the band members on their performance or anything else. It never occurred to me and would have felt awkward as well as distanced myself from them. There were times at practice when Dennis would look at me after trying something new to get my reaction. I learned far too late that my face isn't as expressive as I thought and when I believed I was showing approval I may have actually presented a black slate. Irregardless I believe we each knew when we did something well or innovative. Elizabeth's attitude toward me was quite cold at times and were I to compliment her on anything she would brush it off and say ' You have to say that, we're married'. Sometimes Dennis would pull off something difficult and dazzling and couldn't help but smile almost into a laugh with self satisfaction. Our band relationship changed once we began making road trips to perform. We played a number of out of town shows prior to Mike joining us but once he had settled in things really began to take off as far as bookings. As stated I wore almost all of the hats and was spread thin but I never had to worry about my band mates. They were never late, they always knew the material or could bluff their way through it and best of all they were interested in seeing that we were continually progressing.

  We played several shows that ended almost in disaster. One in Richmond was a two night engagement where we were to get the money collected at the door. Only the club owner never mentioned that we had to supply a doorman to collect. So it ended up a packed house because it was a free concert. We returned the following night prepared to collect a few dollars each from the people who had already heard and liked us. Elizabeth was suffering from signs of what appeared to be bronchitis but never considered not doing the show. Her breathing was very labored but she assured me that if we cut a few of the more vocally taxing songs she would be alright. Then the club owner had a somewhat violent argument with a girl who worked for him and with whom he obviously had been carrying on with after hours. At one point as we stood mid-way through setting up the stage to watch what was going on in front of us the girl picked up a heavy glass ashtray and hurled it across the room at the man. We didn't know what to do so we stood and watched in disbelief at the drama acting out in front of us. Finally the man angry and embarrassed told us to get out, there would be no show that night. He made some imbecilic comment about 'my girlfriend OD'ing in the back room'. He had seen Elizabeth slip into a small room out of sight to try to breathe out of sight while she wheezed and used her inhaler. I was quick to inform him that she wasn't my girlfriend she was my wife and that she wasn't overdosing she was sick. He didn't care and chased us out with our equipment everywhere. We had to actually pack up on the sidewalk. Meanwhile a crowd began to assemble. Most had been there the night before and returned with friends that had told how good we were. So for two night we drove the 140 miles to Richmond and had nothing to show for it. It wouldn't be the last time. One of the people who had returned to see us again told me we should play “The Paragon” a pub in another section of Richmond next to the University. I contacted them, sent our promo package and were invited to play. We were liked so much we returned several more times to perform in the small two room club. There was very little money made but they were enthusiastic in their applause. The owner told me he wished he could afford to pay us more like what we were worth and suggested we speak with a booking agent at Richmond's larger venue. Again I did and they were happy to book us as the opening act for a 'signed' touring band named “Thin White Rope”. They were on Frontier Records who were considered a major independent label at the time. Their sound to me was garage band rock but they were classified at the time as being a part of the ” Cow PUNK” or “ Desert Rock ”. Once more we drove the familiar 140 mile trek to Richmond, arriving very early so we could set up and sound check. We were excited because this was exposure to a whole new group of people a level up from the usual bar flies. As usual Dennis and Elizabeth were already dressed and made up for the stage. Unfortunately the other band's manager looked at them and our equipment t that we had begun to unload and had a fit. He called over the club's manager and told him that his band would not perform if we did. The club manager came over and apologized and explained the situation. The band manager hadn't even heard us but based on our appearance assumed Thin White Rope would pale by comparison. It is highly likely he was correct. We were tight and well rehearsed and we were completely sober. Bands like his had a tendency to be full of themselves and usually took the stage high and simply played they way they wanted without regard to making an impression of the audience – whom they would assume were already fans. The club manager was sincerely sorry for the situation but obviously it was out of his hands. He invited us to stay to watch the show as guests but I declined and we turned around and drove the 140 miles back home. Meanwhile he was told to call a local cover band who was at a garage level to do the opening.
We had other incidences at clubs that could have caused multiple incidences with the band but no one ever complained. We played a show at a PUNK club in Baltimore and were paid a grand total of $20.00 I explained things to the band and gave the twenty to Terri for gas money since it was her van and her gas.
I never heard a single complaint from anyone about the lack of money from our performances. After the departure of Paul I became the only member of the band with a job. The guys were still in high school but still managed to have their parents allow them to stay out late performing or traveling. It had to be their parents trusted them because although I had met Dennis's parents they didn't really know me or Elizabeth. Maybe they were fortunate that their sons had fallen in with us instead of any of the many bands that would have been grateful to have them. It would have been very easy for the guys or any of us to get into substances and then problems but it never happened. In fact a band we opened for in our first year offered us some of their favorite substance and we thanked them but turned it down. The only substance used was by me in an effort to stay awake while driving back home from gigs. I generally worked the days we had a show at night so I began by being fatigued and then loaded the van, many times by myself then drove to our destination, unloaded and helped set up the stage and PA, performed, tore the stage down, loaded the van and faced the long dark highway in the early hours of the morning while everyone else in the van slept. It wasn't unusual for me to nod off and begin to drive off of the highway to be awakened by the noise of the tires passing over the ridges at the edge of the road, placed there for just that purpose. To say we were lucky is really an understatement by a long margin. We could have been in a collision any number of times in any number of states. Many times Elisabeth would doze in the other front seat and periodically call over to me “Ed, wake up” and half asleep I'd reply “I'm awake”. I tried everything. I drank a quart of coffee and when it was gone - right to sleep. I tried "No Doze" the caffeine pills and same result. I bought some "White Cross" speed, that was actually ephedrine and legal. As long as I was doing something, eating drinking or talking I was fine. I got to where I would fall asleep and dream with my eyes open. At the beginning we often took separate vehicles to local shows and then as we played further away we would all pile into Terri's van, which was a one tone van with an extended body so there was enough room. After Terri left I bought a 1973 Ford Econoline 100 van. A pretty small van actually. It had a straight 6 cylinder engine and a three speed manual transmission with the shifter on the column. As a result I was the only one who could drive it. I began one afternoon to teach Elizabeth how but things never went beyond that afternoon. The van was unusual by today's standards too because it was considered a “Mid-body engine” meaning the actual engine was located between the front seats and not forward of the windshield. The large hump engine cover ( usually referred to as the Dog House ) sat between the front seats and sat low. Removing that engine cover and moving the seats back gave full access to the entire engine if needed. Fortunately it was never needed. That van had several hundred thousand miles on it but never let us down. At high speeds it rattled quite a bit. Since there was no actual overdrive when driving down long steep hills I used to pop it out of gear and into neutral to save gas and wear on the engine. It came with a bench seat for the back but I removed t to ,make room for the equipment and when the guys rode with us they had to sit between or on the gear. It was less than ideal but I've read band biographies where other bands had things far worse and were subject to frequent breakdowns.  "Swept Away" with slide ending 
  In January 1987 I decided to book us on our first series of 8 tour dates that were related. We began unofficially in December at our old starting place in Georgetown and I rented a video camcorder and video taped the entire night. From there we next played “The Electric Banana” in Pittsburgh followed by the 'Underground Railroad' in Morgantown West Virginia the following night. I arranged a radio interview with the band in Pittsburgh at the WPIT university station for the afternoon of the 9th, the same day as our performance. I also arranged for an interview at WWVU the university station in Morgantown the following afternoon. I reserved two rooms at an Interstate motel roughly in between the two cities to cut back on some driving fatigue. It was just the four of us on this trip with no crew of any sort and no sound engineer but being full time clubs and not restaurants with a stage both venues had a house PA and a house engineer so we would be bringing anything our basic equipment. We took off allowing plenty of time to get there and find our way around. Being January it was cold but they guys dressed light. Elizabeth who was perpetually cold wore her Christmas present, a ankle length stadium coat with its thick down filling. I had a long Swedish wool military coat, not trusting to the weather in another state hours away from home.
Since this was long before GPS we relied upon my paper map to guide us from the Turnpike to the university. We all packed into their small broadcast booth and I gave the DJ a tape reel to cue up so they could play our studio tracks when appropriate. This tape included the most recent session which included Mike on drums recorded on 24 tracks. We were very proud of our recordings including “The Ordinary” and the much improved versions of “Promise me “ and Heart of Sand” and our nearly electronic dance version of “Tell Me”. Apparently the club was well known and loved by most of Pittsburgh and the station promoted the upcoming show several times during the course of the interview. When finished that the university we headed to the club. It seemed simple enough. It club was on Bigalow street so I simply looked up the street and charted our way there. We drove across the city and … no club. It was then I learned there are three Bigalow streets in Pittsburgh. So we went to the next closest one and and … that one wasn't it either. Okay only one choice left and we only lost an hour and now the sun was beginning to go down. We approached the road that turned North toward Bigalow street but became stuck in a lane that went across the three rivers bridge into Ohio. I signaled and slowed but no one would let me in and was forced to go across the river to Ohio and turn around to come back. This time we were stuck headed off to the East and unable to get into the lane headed in the general direction toward the club. Okay. I made a U turn at the first opportunity and ended up on a familiar road, the first one that we had become stuck on. At least we had been on it before and as we headed toward where we needed to turn there was no sign and no warning and we became stuck once more in the lane headed to three rivers Stadium - :Again?" came the cheer from the van. A midst the jeers and yelling of mixed directions from the van I finally decided I'd get into the correct lane come hell or high water and forced my way over as cars honked and people flashed half of the peace sign at us. But I made it and we were on our way to Bigalow Street NE.
I wasn't sure what to expect before we arrived. I thought possibly the “Electric Banana” was a holdover from the 60's and might have once been a go-go club or something similar. I certainly had little understanding of Pittsburgh and its people. The club actually began as a PUNK club and had hosted many famous PUNK bands over the years along with alternative acts of a diverse nature. The club owners couldn't have been nicer, more down to Earth people who made us feel sincerely welcome and as if they were delighted that we would consider performing there. It wasn't a large club and it was dry, so all ages were welcome to enjoy live music. If you wanted something more then there was another larger club a block away that offered dancing and drinks along with cover bands. Unfortunately they had no dressing room or even a back room for privacy. The one large restroom serviced everyone. We were far from rock stars and happy just to be there to perform our songs. We set up and sound checked and then a local band set up in front of us and sound checked. We relaxed and waited for the clock to come around to our time to play. We stood at the back and politely watched the opening act, a young band wide eyed and excited to be performing at the club. They began a song and the opening chords sounded far too familiar. We each turned to each other almost laughing because it was the same progression as Terri's original version of “Fade to Black”. They finished and we took the stage opening with “Heart of Sand” and going right into The Cure's song “Primary”. Our set was a mix of covers and originals but mostly originals. The covers were songs such as Siouxsie and the Banshees “Paradise Place” and Nena's “Just a Dream” with Elizabeth playing keyboards. When Terri left we had stopped playing several songs that relied upon keyboards but we found that Elizabeth had little difficulty in playing a two finger keyboard part on several songs and that was enough for us to keep them in our repertoire. We finished our set to sincere applause and while packing the club owners thanked us for playing there and told us how much they enjoyed our music. They hoped we would come back again. I don't believe we ever encountered anyone anywhere so cordial and friendly. There is currently a fan initiated web site  http://www.electricbananaclub.net bringing together the list of the bands who played there over the years and the set lists of many of those along with photos and even some memories of the night they played along with the band's memories of that night recorded for those who attended to reminisce about the evening when they played. In our case, our concert has a soundboard recording made available for download. We left Pittsburgh and drove on to the Motel feeling good about ourselves and the start of a new year. 
  We arrived very early in Morgantown, found the club with little effort and then made our way to the university radio station for our interview. It was now familiar ground and all went effortlessly. The air was frosty and over cast but not uncomfortably cold and we had time to kill so we went exploring Morgantown. We garnered a lot of stares but no comments to ruin our mood. I believe in our half hour of 'shopping' we saw all that Morgantown had to offer and so headed to the club to load in. The club had a very convenient back of the building that was secure and private and from which we could directly load in from the van. As we closed the door behind us a few snow flakes had begun to flitter their way Earthward. Our opening act turned out to be more of a split bill with a local favorite and to keep things peaceful it was decided we would alternate and we would play the first and last set while they played the intermediate one. We had the feeling they didn't quite like us before they ever heard the first note. There was just something about them that brought out the competitive edge in us and inspired us to play even better than we usually did. The club was packed and the kids danced to everything song even if it was un-dancible. We played the first set and the other band played the next and when we took the stage again we were inspired to really show them what we do and our first song really grabbed everyone in the club. It was a live arrangement of a B-52s song “Give me back my Man” with a very long into driven by the drums and bass and no one could resist dancing. It was followed quickly by the Nena Song “Just a Dream” with Elizabeth's keys hitting the spot perfect so the layers of keys in the original version were never missed. Dennis was right on top of every note and looked the part of a rock veteran. Mike too was in top form and glad he had brought his gong. For a change we were playing while well rested and after a good night the day before and everything just fell in place. The crowd was great and seemed to have grown as the night went on and everyone was dancing. I had brought a blank video tape so that the club's VCR could be used to record our show and was glad many times after that I did. It is a fixed position recording from the ceiling above the bar but it recorded the entire stage and picked up a decent audio too. We finished our last song and I looked across the room as a lot of exhausted kids who had danced their feet off all night. I was envious I had never had such an experience. Elizabeth had said ' Misfit Toys thank you and Goodnight' her usual closing and we turned to begin packing but people in the audience still wanted more. One guy can be heard on the tape offering her twenty dollars if we will play three more songs. She replied with a nervous laugh and looked to me. I looked at the guys and asked if they wanted to give them one more and they said sure but which? I said “In between Days”. So Dennis turned and prepared his pedals and when Mike played the drum intro a slight cheer went up and all the dead soldiers came back to life to dance to one more song – a song they all knew. We were done and it felt great to be us. This was what we wished every performance was like. We played well and the audience loved us. The sound engineer had liked us too and did a great job of mixing the show and in addition added some special audio efx that we adopted later in our shows. We might have thought 'how could anything sour the memory of the first two nights of this tour?' The answer came waling in the door. Someone's ride came to pick them up and came inside to get them. When he walked through the door his immediate action was to stamp his feet to knock the snow off. Yes snow, it has snowed continually since we entered the building that afternoon and we were completely unaware. In fact there was over a foot accumulated and it was coming down in sheets of thick fluffy flakes. We huddled to discuss it and wondered what we should do. It was early Sunday morning and no one had to be home on Sunday but three of us had to be back at our normal life on Monday. The club owner offered a floor if we wanted to stay there. She didn't have any bedding but it would be warm and dry as well as safe. She asked which way we intended on driving back and I told her through the mountains in Western Maryland. She said it would be easier and safer if we were to go back the way we had come through the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It would more than likely be plowed because of the high traffic from the truckers. Showing my usual hard hardheadedness and willingness to go through extra effort ( or danger ) to show I was right about something I decided we should leave and make the drive through the shorter path through the mountains. So with the van loaded up and the guys in the back we pulled slowly from our snow covered parking spot and out onto a nearly invisible highway. Dennis was wearing a light jacket more for style than for warmth and Mike too was wearing medium weight jacket with only a shirt underneath. None of us had thought to check ahead to see what the weather was forecast to be. The only additional preparation I had made other than the usual for a long drive was to wire in an electric windshield defroster so that the windshield could be kept clear. As we drove down the highway and the lights of Morgantown disappeared into the night I could hear Dennis' teeth chattering from the cold. I had nothing to offer them in the back. Not a blanket or even a rag. The heater in the van was under strength to begin with and was not designed to heat the entire van, only the two front seats. The wires were long enough so Elizabeth passed the electric defroster back to the guy who took turns placing it under their jackets to warm up until I needed it to clear the windshield to see. Back and forth it went until fatigue finally got the best of them and they settled into cold but needed sleep. The Elizabeth took to holding the heater under her coat and inflating it like a Macy's balloon. Occasionally she would show some mercy and pass it to me for a few minutes while my coat inflated with warm air. Eventually she too fell asleep and it was up to me to navigate and keep us on the road. I managed to see each of the necessary exit signs as they took us further and further into what might be called the 'backwoods' if there were any woods to be seen during a blizzard. Yes, it was a full on blizzard and roads were closed and the truckers had all pulled their rigs off the highways until the snow tapered off and the plows could get through. I had only a vague general idea where we were and where we wanted to go. I knew that somewhere off in these mountains lay a campus belonging to the University of Maryland. With that in mind it only made sense that the state would keep the roads in good order because of the students and their families constantly using them. I was very tired and the light breathing I could hear in the silence of the van took its toll on me and I found myself relaxing and snuggling down into my coat. With the realization that I was going to be asleep in just a few minutes I sat upright and attempted to wake myself up by the usual means, most of which that do nothing. At last I found myself slowing chugging up a steep grade on a mountain. The van did its best but I worried that if for some reason we stopped moving forward we would be unable to get moving again. It also occurred to me that as we climbed in elevation the van's heater grew less warm. It never had felt hot but it was getting to where it was almost no warmer than the air was already. I was becoming seriously worried that fear alone was keeping me awake while the others were all soundly asleep. I completely lost all track of time and didn't wear a watch. Elizabeth was sleeping far too comfortably for me to consider waking her just for the time. At some point that could have been hours I finally could tell in the darkness that we reached the top of the mountain and we began our descent. There was no moon but the mounds of snow everywhere gave the impression of there being light outside. As we could get little traction of the snow covered road I was being very careful and gearing down to help control my speed. I did my best to keep us in the center of the road since there was not a single car since we left the city. I concluded that since I was sliding all over the center of the highway was the safest place to at least attempt top drive. As the van cornered at once section of the trail I became aware for the first time that there were no guard rails. None. Were I to loose control we might plummet unrestricted over the side of the mountain and end up in a ravine somewhere in which we might not have our bodies discovered until Spring. There had been one long curve in which I had seen a 18 wheeler jackknifed with all lights off apparently abandoned.
  I drove on occasionally trying to read my map for an idea of our location but couldn't really figure out where we were with out risking more than I was willing to if I took my eyes off the road. Anxiety began to warm me as the descent was causing the van to move downhill faster than what was desirable. It is not a good idea to ride the brakes going down a mountain especially with drum brakes. Of course the proper way is to lightly 'tap' the brake pedal but when doing so it cause the van to slide on the snow as the front wheels locked up. So while the band slept the van slid along rail-less curves over hidden valleys. It was getting to be very frightening as I was finding it very difficult to control the van's speed and keep it on the road. Then as an answered prayer just up ahead I saw a dimly lit parking lot on the other side of the road. Stopping to turn would have been impossible so I guided the van much too fast across the road and into the parking lot and up its slopping width. I couldn't see where oncoming traffic would have approached but I simply hoped no one was on the road early in the morning after a blizzard. Like a railroad turn off for run away trains the incline of the lot slowed the vehicle without my brakes, bringing us to a stop safely at the far end. The wheels were half buried in snow but I was confident I could turn the vehicle and use gravity to exit the lot when ready. I remember looking up at where we were and the motel's sign and being thankful that we had safely stopped and I laid my exhausted head down on the steering wheel and finally went to sleep. When I awoke and began to move Mike asked where we were but I had no idea. The sun was up a short distance but hidden behind the thick clouds. The others awoke from the sound of our voices and we were soon back on the road and before long driving on plowed roads and then on completely clear roads that had received no snow the previous night closer to home in Maryland.
  I believed I was the only one who knew how very close we had come to death that night. It would have taken so very little for us to slide off a mountain road and plunge over the side and be buried in a deep bluff. Anyone old enough to remember driving with drum brakes in the front of their vehicle will remember their tendency to pull to one side or the other especially when wet. I had no way to determine the actual temperature at any time on our drive but at least is is warmer when it snows than before or after.

  You can watch the entire four sets at the "Grog and Tankard" in Georgetown in December 1986 By clicking "Watch"

  You can watch the entire Underground Railroad Show from the original video recorded from a motionless camera mounted above the bar by simply clicking here, Underground Railroad Jan. 1987
  Our van    had once been a telephone company work truck before being retired from age when it was bought and became a plumber's work truck. It was made at a time when trucks were built tough and to last with little maintenance or expected repairs. I had no way of knowing how many hundreds of thousands of miles were on it, only that it exceeded 100,000. In all the time we had the van it never gave me a problem really. When first purchased I replaced a number of tune-up related parts so I wouldn't have an issue later. The fuel filter had been over looked for a long time and one day when I drove the van home at lunch time I had difficulty climbing a steep hill so I removed the engine cover and pulled out the gas filter to find it pretty clogged up. I re-attached the hose directly to the carburetor with no filter and drove it back to work where I replaced it. The only thing I didn't necessarily like was that it had windows all around and that would make it easy for someone to see items they might want to steal. We finished our series of shows without incident though the guys preferred to ride with some friends who went to our concerts. After Morgantown our tour took us to Baltimore a few days later and then on to Richmond. That was followed by a date in Philadelphia and then Washington DC, Towson and finally a different club in Baltimore. I counted the tour a success even though we didn't make money from it. We showed portions of the East Coast that we were good and a band to pay attention to. I gave us a break to recover from all the touring and personally took the time to write songs in earnest with the goal of eliminating all of our cover material. The band was disappointed to hear that because we all enjoyed playing several of our covers but I wanted us to be taken seriously. I began handing demos for Elizabeth to consider at a rate of sometimes two every week. To my surprise she approved of most of them and wrote lyrics the same day she received the tape. The guys seemed to like the songs too and easily developed their parts to each one. We did take the time to play an outdoor concert at the Fort Reno summer concert series in Washington DC. It became much like the airport scene in “Spinal Tap” when our guitar cords and amps picked up microwave radio transmissions from the towers right above the stage. It was our second year to perform there and we were given a priority choice of dates to play as headliner. The night went very well for us and was the first time we performed about seven new songs. They were well received even though we blew a circuit breaker during our song “Domino”, a particularly intense song. We then went back to our writing break until September 23 when we played Washington's “Roxy” theater where once more the competitive spirit took over us and we played a magnificent concert. It was our first all original concert and the first time to publicly perform several of our songs. The club was rather full and in a bit of good fortune for us a person in the audience video taped the show. After while we were packing he offered to sell the tape to us. I didn't have a VHS tape machine or the ten dollars he asked for it but Mike stepped up and bought it. Some footage from that tape is now on YouTube as music videos. For at least one song Mike skillfully blended the audio recording from the soundboard with the through the air camera mic to create a very good audio to match the video. A few days later we were off to Raleigh North Carolina to perform at a club named “The Fallout Shelter”, which used to be a real fallout shelter. For that show I rented a camcorder and had a member of the audience ( who unfortunately was rather drunk ) video tape the show. The camera was not auto-focus and though things may have seemed in focus to the inebriated taper much was unusable because it was so blurred.

  If you would like to watch the bootleg recording of our set at The Roxy in Sept. 1987 Click the club name.

  A week later we performed at Washington DC's “The Bayou” for the first time. We were very tight from continually touring and rehearsing or working on new material and made quite a good impression on the club's agent and the audience. During the set one of us noticed Paul and Terri in the back of the room and I'm sure they too were impressed by how good we were.

    If you would like to see a transfer of the video simply click Watch "The Bayou in Georgetown 1987"  Part 1   Part 2   Divided up so you   can watch in segments.

  I contacted and booked a performance for us at CBGBs in New York City. I felt like we had finally arrived to a point where we were somebody and not just another band out playing covers for beer money. CBGBs was a PUNK icon and the starting place for a number of bands who became huge. It was nothing to me to make the drive from Maryland to New York, perform and then turn around and drive back home. Since it was to be in December I brought the van into where I worked and one day while off the clock took several measure to make the van more secure against theft. Night clubs are often located in the worst part of a city where noise and crowds can not disturb anyone. Those places usually do not attract the police patrols unless there is a problem so a band from out of town is always an easy target no matter which city. I had no intention of becoming a victim of crime in NYC. I added several wheel locks to the studs holding on my wheels. I secured the van's side doors with a very heavy chain and padlocks. I welded brackets to the rear doors to enable them to be padlocked together too. I also built an auxiliary heater. I did not want a repeat of our West Virginia near-death experience so I took a heater core that was taken from a customer's car leaking and soldered it. I then built what looked like an old fashioned bread box and mounted the core inside with a blower motor and “hamster wheel” fan. I ran two long sections of heater hose from the engine and factory heater to this box so that the engine coolant would normally circulate through the heater as the engine ran. If we desired heat it was simply a matter of turning on the fan. My heater not only worked well but too well. While en route to new York we could have baked bread inside the van it was so warm in there!
  By this time I had had hired a full time sound engineer in a hope that our mix live would always be good. I had always recorded our live performances but usually had to rely upon a total stranger to turn on the recording deck and to feed it a proper mix. I have a lot of recordings with a terribly unbalanced mix but unfortunately that issue was to continue. Our engineer was named Kathy and she became an equal member of the band since her role as engineer was equally important as a band member on stage. I paid her an equal 1/5 of what we were paid gross. Everyone got an equal share although I often spent more on advertising than the band made in total for a show. Add in the cost of gas that I ate and I operated at a loss every time. I wasn't in this to make money I was in it with an eye on the future and Elizabeth and her band becoming a nationwide act and recording group for a major label. Kathy quickly became friends with Dennis and Mike while I was regarded more as 'the boss'. I had suggested to her to approach Mike if she needed any assistance with anything regarding the PA since he was very familiar with it.
The five of us were quiet toasty in the van on the ride to new York. After loading in I was instructed to park the van well away from the club or it might not be there when we left the stage. The stage manager told me to drive the van until we didn't see any more street people and then park it there. I drove it so far I was within sight of 'The Roxy' but we had no problems with theft.
The club wasn't as bad as I was led to believe it would be and it had a 16 track recorder set up so for a small fee a band performing there could easily record a live album. We left Kathy at the board along with my tape deck and we set up for our set to be played later. We were one of five bands that night and one 'band' was actually a spoken act in a sort of throw back to the days of Beatniks reading poetry from the stage. The stage was wide and spacious and the back stage formed one large dressing room that was in a state of being remodeled. There was one toilet and it had no door for privacy. We didn't care. We were sitting backstage waiting to go on at CBGBs. The same stage where only where 8 years earlier it was Blondie, The Ramones, The talking Heads and B-52s, Television and so many other pioneering bands. It was rock history all around us.
  We played our set, packed up and slipped silently out of New York as if a secret. Kathy forget to turn on the recorder until we were nearly finished so it is a short set of only a few songs on our tape but we know we played there and she did take several excellent photos of us on stage so that sort of makes up for the recording issue. Her forgetting to turn on the record was repeated to the point of ridiculousness. I have many concert tapes where the first son on the tape begins after the intro of the song. Dennis broke a string on the fourth song on the recording. It wasn't unusual and more than likely due to the gauge string he used. He normally kept a second guitar at the ready for a quick change over when such a thing happened and his change over time was always very fast and almost unnoticeable. We were so tightly rehearsed there was nothing that could have thrown us off track. Mike never dropped a drum stick. He may have been in more danger of breaking one than dropping since he had a powerful style. Elizabeth never forgot her lyrics. She did however change a few on the spot but since she wrote them she felt it was her prerogative to change them however she chose. I had an internal ground wire become dislodged in my bass at a show our first year. I quickly figured out what was wrong and made a quick temporary repair that got me through the rest of the night. That was a memorable night in Vienna Virginia when we were booked into a club that called itself a “Lounge” - not a good sign. A stereotype county waitress like you'd find at a truck stop diner held a side door open for us to load in. She watched as Dennis with his hair mousse high and a string of pearls hung from his neck carried in his guitar and amp. He was followed by Terri wearing leather pants and vest with her blond hair teased high carried in her keyboards and stands. Elizabeth walked in with a wild art deco hair cut in her bleached locks and nearly black eye brows carrying her personal microphone and purse with makeup. Paul went in fumbling with his drums, his wannabe porn star mustache out of place with our more 'new wave' appearance. As I walked past her with my bass she asked “Do y'all play country?” Without missing a beat I replied “Yes, but not this country”. The remark went straight over her head but I thought it was a good line and have waited for a chance to use it again.

If you would like to watch our return performance to the club where we first got our start click the club named"Grog and Tankard" for our concert there in October 2, 1987

  No matter which line up of the band I refer to we were just different. Fortunately we were able to trim off Paul and Terri along with a few drummers best not mentioned and settle with Mike to make a near perfect four piece band. We had a mutual respect I always believed but never felt the need to bring into words. When one of us would do something new and innovative that worked well the others would give a nod to acknowledge it. Sometimes we would simply hear how a section came together perfectly and simply half smile. I told everyone but Dennis and Mike how great I believed their talent was. It made me work all the harder in an effort to match them. It took a few years but by 1988 I felt I had arrived. I'd listen to playback from a concert and amaze myself at how well I played. I never needed to hear it from someone else but it sure would have been nice. We simply did not compliment each other. I was always amazed that the things Dennis could do on a guitar – any guitar and Mike could hold his own against any drummer without over playing. I believe I gave him an idea what I wanted for drums in a total of two songs. All the rest it was simply a matter of listening to what I played and how Dennis played over it to determine what was needed. There was only one song that I know of where Dennis played the guitar part I wrote for the song's demo. I actually felt flattered that he liked what I had played. Elizabeth was sometimes her worst enemy because she liked to put her voice to the test and see if she could sing a difficult part when a simpler one would have worked. That is fine for the studio but when you are performing for 90 minutes and each song is a trial, taxing your vocal cords runs a risk of falling short. Sometime she amazed me with what she drew out of my original demo recordings. Here is a sample. The song is "Dark House" and will be on our next album. The final written version is on YouTube but if you Click Here you can hear it the way Elizabeth first heard it and wrote lyrics to it.
  Practicing three and four times a week plus performing live up and down the coast brought us close together musically. We learned what each other did and how they did it. We learned to rely upon each other always and to never be let down. The guys found it easier to talk to my son about Ninja Turtles than to me about non-music topics. As I tried to explain the four of us ( or five ) were not friends. We didn't socialize. I had no idea if either of them were dating or whom. I didn't know how many brothers and sisters they each had or where they might have lived previously. We didn't listen to the same bands but there was overlap. I felt as if it must have been the ten year age difference even though we were all apart of something new and different. They never directed jokes at me maybe in fear I would take offense. Elizabeth didn't hesitate to belittle or mock me and they joined in the laughter. I offered to help them out anytime they needed something on their cars but other than the day of our first show it didn't happen. They did take advantage of my offer to copy any of my bootleg concert tapes and I made a point of trading for bands I knew they liked. I was glad when either of them wanted a copy of a show we did because I seriously worried that they might loose interest in what we were doing and quit. The way I looked at it I was asking a lot of the tow of them. They worked very heard at practice and at shows yet we made very little money so there were few tangible rewards. It seemed I was constantly asking them to wait. Wait for that moment when we would be discovered and life would change. It seemed as if other bands were seeing more real results than we were yet I heard other bands remark that they believed we were constantly playing everywhere. People who heard us were impressed by the quality of our material and our musicianship. Club owners generally liked us but some still attempted to take advantage of us.
  In 1988 we got a headliner date at the Bayou in Washington DC and we had a terrific turnout on a weeknight. It is a lot to ask of people to go out on a weeknight to see us knowing we wouldn't take the stage before eleven or eleven thirty and then play for 90 minutes. But they came. A continual line of people came to see us after their day at work. To our delight some came wearing their Misfit Toys tee shirts. When we took the stage there was a pleasant cheer and applause and it wasn't the 'just being polite' variety. During the delays between songs several people called out the names of several of our songs, hoping we would play them. We played very well that night, feeding off of the admiration and excitement we were fed by the audience. It is difficult to tell from the stage but I don't believe anyone left before our last song. They cheered and applauded, believing they might be witnessing a great band just before it is 'discovered' and goes big time. The room cleared out fast by people who needed to get home and catch a couple of hours sleep before getting up and going to work again. Some people made their way over to where Elizabeth was greeting people she knew who had come to see us. They told her how much they enjoyed the show, asked where we were playing next and if wee had a fan club or list to sign onto and be notified of upcoming performances. It was a rare and momentous evening. One we like to fondly remember. Unfortunately the mix is terrible on the recording and on the video. I hope it sounded good enough for the audience or we would have looked foolish. The concert we all remember with pride almost didn't happen.
  The Bayou was handled by “Cellar Door Productions” an agency that booked bands great and small from Florida to Boston in small clubs and stadiums. The week before our Bayou show I received a call from a representative of Cellar Door Productions and he informed me that they had been keeping an eye on our rise in the music scene. They knew how often we performed out and where as well as the turn out. He informed me that they were very interested in signing Misfit Toys to an exclusive booking agreement. A contract. I had done my utmost to learn all I could about the legal side of running a band and about the pitfalls that had tripped up some of the best bands in rock's past. I listened to his pitch about all of the benefits to signing with them and how they could give us opener gigs at stadiums opening for bands such as 'Heart'. He went on with tales of the wonderful things Cellar Door could do for us and assist us in getting that elusive record deal. I said it all sounds wonderful but at what price? He casually stated that we would sign over our publishing rights to Cellar Door and that they would have controlling rights over where and when we played anywhere and as he went on I stopped listening. I'd heard enough. Those were our songs. We wrote them and worked out the arraignments and practiced them until we could play them in our sleep flawlessly. I told him thanks but speaking for the band we are not interested in giving up our publishing rights to our songs past and future. Then his tone changed a little as he informed me that they were responsible for booking a lot of venues that most people were unaware of. For example I knew they booked the Bayou but I was unaware they also booked the clubs across the street. By not signing wit them not only would we no longer get booked at the Bayou but we also would be ineligible to be booked most of the clubs in Washington DC and Northern Virginia as well as several universities in the area. They could make things go easy for us or very difficult. I didn't like what I was hearing. I also don't like being forced to do something and this man was pushing. At this time not hard, but all the same a push whether or not I wanted pushed. I began to dig my heels in and he made it clear they could make thing not only difficult for us but very difficult as sin blacklisted. I was stunned. Where did all this come from all of a sudden? They must really believe we are on the cusp of breaking out big to go to these lengths to get a piece of us. I spoke to my advertising executive at a local entertainment news paper to tell him about it. He was surprised when I told him we were booked at the Bayou the following Tuesday. He said he wondered what was going on because the Bayou did not list any show on Tuesday but they did double the ad for a club across the street they also book. So they intentionally omitted advertising our gig even though it would hurt their club, although not much. So since my exec had file on us with photos and anything he might need for an ad I asked him if he could throw together an ad for our Bayou show and get it in by submission time at 5:00 that day. He sad no problem so I said make it a quarter page so no one can miss it. The club didn't do a quarter page for the entire week so our ad with a seductive and hard to miss photo of Elizabeth would be sure to be seen by everyone. I explained it all to Elizabeth when I got home and then to the guys at the next practice. It was just a temporary patch on the problem and we'd have to figure out what to do later. As I already related the night was a success and as I guessed the cost of the ad even discounted by my friend cost us $40.00 more than our gross payment from the concert. We all agreed that we did not want to give away our songs.
  I worked hard to get us bookings and a short time later we played our first 'live on TV' performance. Elizabeth and I went to various locations for her to be interviewed on the radio and for university newspapers. She could be really charming when she wanted to. The release of our 12 inch “Maxi-single” did wonders for us and opened a lot of doors for us to book. The record charted all across America and thanks to our information being right on the record label I received phone calls from places such as Minneapolis and Clemson University wanting to book us or asking when we would be passing near by. The record was targeted at College radio but also ended up on several commercial stations where their audiences overwhelmed the station with requests for more information on the band and the album. They phoned me at home at night and I was happy to tell them all they needed to know. I then sent a reel to reel recording of several songs that would eventually be on the “Too Short” album. They called me back a few weeks later and said their audiences were going crazy trying to find our album. I had a good laugh at that and enjoyed the prospects of everyone in the country lusting our album release with equal fervor. The station in Minneapolis asked if Elizabeth would mind recording a station ID for them. I said told them no problem. We went into the practice studio and I played an instrumental out take of 'Tell Me' and she did a voice over identifying herself and Misfit Toys and then the station WZLP FM. They loved it and I was sure that as soon as we released our album we could count on that one commercial station at least to put out all the stops to promote it and us.
  It ended up that before each practice I spent a few minutes letting the guys know what was going on with the record and with our submissions to record labels. TVT records was a minor Independent label in 1988 and they loved our song “Tell me” and wrote to say that if we could send them five more songs like Tell Me we could put pen to paper and have a mutually serving contract. Only I didn't like 'Tell Me' much and didn't want to be saddled into being a band stuck playing music we didn't like just for a chance to play music we did like.  For an alternate version of "Swept Away" from a practice session featuring Dennis playing slide guitar on it click HERE   Elizabeth had to go upstairs to answer a phone call after her vocals had ended during a rehearsal of "Tell Me" but we kept on playing. Very unusual for us and I liked the result and was glad the recorder was running. The improvisation is a testament to our continual playing together for so long that anticipating what Dennis might do next came easy for both Mike and myself and was true for Dennis to listen to us and hear what was going on behind him.  Click Here to hear a spacy Jam on 'Tell Me"   For another early version with Terri playing keyboards Click Here
We were there. After almost five years of hard work and dedication we were on the cusp of attaining what we had set out to achieve. We had terrific original music and we were a band of talented musicians all working hard every chance we got to perform or record. We had learned our craft beyond just making music. We were known well beyond our 'home town' both through radio airplay and the reviews and interviews. I'd done my homework and read books on the legal aspect of being in a successful band, what it meant as far as responsibilities and the common pitfalls that had ruined many bands. I tried to insure that we would be different. We wouldn't sign away rights or money because the bright lights glaring in our eyes blinded us to dangers unrealized. I read all about “Bad Finger” and the manager that usurped their money without them knowing for years. A band who had several top singles and albums yet lived in small apartments and drove second hand cars. I learned what to look for in shady contracts. A label could promise you the world and even put it on a contract in front of you yet you might never see a dime of it. I thought I had prepared well for this moment when our futures would lay in the balance. This entire situation was one that had run through my head many times, first as a fantasy, a dream with only a small chance of realization. Then from the stage of a show with people we didn't know calling out the names of our songs. People applauding wildly with excitement while listening to us play a favorite song. People were trading recordings of our songs broadcast along with interviews and our live shows both in America and in Europe. We had developed a fan base unknown to us. While I worked on one there was another growing of its own accord. I learned how to write ad copy that built us up beyond fact but assumed it was expected. Some newspapers copied it word for word in their articles about us and apparently many people believed it. Across our many radio interviews Elizabeth charmed the interviewers and the audiences. Her disarming laugh and apparent humility won over more fans who believe her down to Earth and just like them. People new what she looked like from our ads and then added that to what they heard in interviews and had a completely different idea about the woman who during the day might be washing laundry and bathing her 5 ferrets while watching Yogi Bear and "The odd couple" re-runs. We were at a mall in Columbia Maryland and several people recognized her from having been at our concerts in Baltimore. They nervously approached and asked for an autograph while telling her how great she is. She looked nice in casual clothes but nothing like her stage outfits and make up. It didn't matter. That moment should have lifted her self esteem .I think she was more embarrassed to be with me pushing a stroller with our son in it. Not a rock star image but a regular human couple.
We sat doing a late night interview at a radio station in Annapolis, Maryland with a DJ who was supposed to educate the listening audience in the three city area but instead jumped from one topic to another and spoke almost as much about herself as the band. We brought new recordings on reel to reel and while one song was playing on air the DJ heard a loud noise from outside of the studio room someplace in the station. She got up to go explore and a young man appeared at the studio door wanting to come in. The DJ asked if we knew him and we replied in the negative, we had no idea who he was. She cautioned him that he was trespassing and breaking the law so he tried to explain his presence. He told us that he had heard Misfit Toys being interviewed several years earlier at the Towson University radio station and he recorded it all. Ever since he had been listening to those same 5 songs of ours hoping to one day see us perform live. He was driving that night and heard us on air so he raced from quite a distance to get to the station in order to meet Elizabeth. The DJ was in total disbelief and figured we had concocted this little scenario to impress her or the listening audience or someone. But no, we were innocent and he was just a fan overcome by the desire to meet someone he had been listening to repeatedly for several years. Once back on air the DJ tried to give a quick explanation while Elizabeth stepped aside to sign the guy up on our band mailing list and to give him information how to buy a tee shirt and record. WHFS Interview Pt. 1   Pt. 2  Pt.3
  We returned to the interview somewhat elated if not amused at the entire situation but the DJ returned to her mostly useless babble about local music. It seemed like an isolated incident and simply one fan who had devoted himself to a few songs and a pleasant voice. Then, in 2020 close to 40 years later I was contacted by a person in Brazil who wanted to get the correct lyrics to a couple of our songs. I was greatly amused that someone in Brazil wanted to check our actual against what they thought they heard. He told me in another email that he and 5 friends had a tape of our music that they shared and had for a long time. I wondered if they might be a band and covered some of our songs but then he told me the tape was of a radio interview with studio music on it. Deja Vu. We never expect some of the strange things that pick up our spirits. A girl in Riga, Latvia saw our YouTube videos and wanted a copy of the 12 single with "The Ordinary" on it. She asked how much to but it and I told her to give me her address and I'd send it for free. In fact I sent her two copies even though they are quite rare nowadays. I happened to find an unopened box of 50 of them in a closet and have then available to those who ask.
Bands had long been recorded making short films to go with their music and of course MTV changed the 'some' bands to every band that wanted to get promotion. MTV had a late night Weekend show that centered upon the alternative music scene and played videos by independent labels and even offered to play videos by unsigned bands. What better way for Misfit Toys to expand their audience than to have a music video that gained airplay on MTV? I'd set up plenty of photo shoots but video was a new format to me. I tried to come up with a story line an audience could follow, something familiar only with our twist. All of Elizabeth's life she had been small and now at 28 she was full grown and had given birth. After she became a workout fiend, refusing to become fat because of having been pregnant. She would never grow taller than her 4 foot 11 and a half inch frame. 90 lbs to her was normal while other people might be hospitalized but I could work with her diminutive size in a story. I selected an Alice in Wonderland theme and thought we might shoot some scenes 'secretly' at a small children's theme park outside of Baltimore. It had an elaborate Alice walk through of parts of her story with permanent full sized sets well illuminated. I ended up speaking with a man who ran the park and explained what we were up to. He very graciously offered to allow us to film on the premises when the park closed for the season and before everything was put away and secured against the Winter months. We took photos of the sets so we could improvise costumes to look like the Queen's card soldiers and Elizabeth planned out what she would wear as a Gothic Alice. The tree of us would be card soldiers but I hadn't thought any further ahead into what we would do or even a plot to the video. We did settle on “The Ordinary” as the song because it seemed to have widespread appeal. I rented the best camera the store had and bought a professional grade blank tape and we simply piled into the van one day and drove off to Baltimore to film a video. I had no experience and no idea what I was doing. I never thought to make a story board or to sketch out some sort of scenario we would act out. No one asked what we would be doing or if there was an order to what we had to accomplish. I naively thought that somehow the video would just sort of appear in front of the camera and would be editable into a story line later. I began with Elizabeth passing through a gate leading to the other sets. In her nervousness she wasn't taking things terribly serious and spent too much time trying to make the guys laugh while I looked around and tried to imagine a scene we could film there. We then entered a tunnel with stripes across the walls as if in a dream, traveling somewhere unreal. I had brought strobe lights to add to the dreamlike impression of the hall. We then went to the set where Alice is on trial in front of the Queen. We picked up the figure of Alice and moved her out of sight and replaced her with Elizabeth on the stand, pleading with the immobile figure on a tier above her. The three of us in passable card costumes acted as guards. Our son was dressed as the “White Rabbit” character and points an accusing finger at Alice and says 'She did it' but the moment of drama was quickly lost as we all laughed at how cute the 5 year old was in his best serious character. We shot the cover photo for our album on that set and then moved to the huge 'Cinderella's Castle' to film more. I was a blank slate, I couldn't think of anything to film other than Elizabeth walking into the castle and then her on the ramparts and upper walkways. I somehow thought I would simply be able to add video later to make a story. We finished and left while I wondered what could be done with what I'd filmed. I had no idea what it might cost me to have someone edit the raw video into something resembling a music video. We really had no money to spare. I made just enough to live on and pay our bills and the prospect of paying out thousands to get the video edited was really not reasonable, and we had never had the band members pay for anything. All of our studio time was paid for by me along with the blank recording tape and the mix down tape. I'd bought the PA, the van and I'd paid for the gas and all of the ads I ran in newspapers. Whatever we were paid I divided up the gross evenly among everyone. Then a few weeks later my mind was made up for me. Tom Petty released a video with him as the 'Mad Hatter' character from “Alice' and though we were far from his level it just seemed wrong and as if we were following him with an Alice themed video. So the tape was packed away.

So there we were on the very edge of getting signed. Of attaining everything we had said we wanted and we had been working and sacrificing for. I was sending demo tapes and promotional packages designed to impress A&R agents at record companies both majors and independents and I was getting letters from them in return. After five years of heard work we had a product, we had a service and we had a future for a label to consider investing in. We had proved ourselves on stage and in the studio. We were told by my friend the radio station music producer that our song “Someday” was a near perfect pop song. It had all the elements a record company looks for in a pop hit. I was told that song will sell our writing and the rest was up to me to sell. The record companies look for a band they believe they can make money off of for a long time. We had what they want and I simply had to convince them.
I sat one afternoon at my day job considering how close we were to getting signed and contemplated how my wife and I would deal with things like our mortgage and our son's elementary school. We had a normal life unlike most people in bands. We owned our house and had a child in public school. We would be facing recording our first album and then going on the road extensively to support it. That weighed on my mind but again we were not the first band to be signed under such circumstances. The rejection letters were a disappointment and of course we each had favorite labels we would have liked to be signed to but the letters were not as cold and impersonal as they might have been. I could tell when an agent had actually listened to our tape. I had been forewarned that A&R agents get dozens of tapes to listen to every day and as a rule they never listened to an entire song. It is vitally important to grab their interest before they even put your cassette in a deck. That is where my photographic skills and linguistic abilities came into play. I made certain the photos were of Elizabeth primarily. I had to make her image memorable and not offensive by appearing too 'slutty' or with an apparent cockiness undo by an unsigned band. My introductory paragraph had to quickly get to the point and the point had to be substantial. I was selling a service the agent had to believe was an untapped 'cash-cow'. They had to look at her photo and think $$. Money to be made because we wrote excellent professional quality music and on the road we drew and audience. Along with that I had to walk a tightrope whereby we sold copies of our material but not enough to prevent a label from releasing the same songs on a National level. Many bands made the fatal mistake of releasing their best material that they had been playing for years and had all the bugs worked out as their first album and it would do well with the label's support and promotions. Then the band would be urged to quickly release a second album while the first one was still hot and the band would use the leftover tracks that were weak or still under construction. The second album flops and the band is warned that the third album will either make or brake them. If it too flops they loose their record deal and have a lot of studio expenses to pay back. If it does well then they have postponed the end of their life on that label.
  In the era of vinyl record albums and singles a band was signed and given an advance on the profit they were projected to earn from album sales. The label would put the band in a nice studio, often owned by the label and hire and engineer and assistants along with a producer and instruct them to 'go record a hit record'. I listened intently to Tommy Kean on a local radio station being interviewed and he went sort of off topic and discussed how a record label's contract with a band actually worked. In his case the label flew him and his band to an island where George martin, the famous man behind The Beatles records owned a state of the art studio along with rooms to rent and other accommodations. George Martin wasn't there, the studio had merely rented his studio. They supplied an engineer and crew to record them and create a Master recording tape. The band was in heaven. Thrilled to be at Martin's studio where many famous musicians had recorded. They worked their way around to recording some after initially relaxing at the pool, biking the grounds or going into town for souvenirs and rum. Little by little they recorded the tracks they mighty have recorded in one or two days because they were well rehearsed but they felt no pressure. They placed some long distance phone calls just to ask a person on the other end “Guess where I am?” Days turned into weeks and they finally completed the album and told their agent they were ready to turn it in to be pressed. It isn't that simple. The band is under contract to make an album with the intent on being a big hit so they can make money. Very full of themselves they were ready to go on tour as soon as the album was released and the label promoted it. The label wasn't satisfied that the album was the best they could do and that it would chart no matter how much promotion was made. By this point I had stopped what I was doing and was standing in front of the radio intently listening.
  Like many bands Tommy Kean and his band did not understand the terms of their contract. They saw the dollar amount and the words 'payable to.” and read no further. It was not as if the label was intentionally trying to screw the band. They are a business and there to make money. The gross amount of money payable to the band was being charged against the bills they were running up on the Island and in the studio. The state of the art studio was rented to them at several hundred dollars an hour – whether they were in the studio or by the pool the meter was running and in no time their studio bill was very high. Each time they elected to stop work and take a break at the poolside the studio meter didn't stop for a break. The engineer and crew were still on the clock and charging the band for their time even if the band decided to leave the room. When they sat in the deck chair and pulled the ring on a can of Coke an accountant somewhere added another $5.00 charge for the can of soda. Yes, in the early to mid-80's $5.00 was a lot for a can of Coke but the Island had no 'bottling company' and Coke along with all the other sodas and beverages had to be “imported” to the Island. They ate well at every meal and their final bill reflected that and other choices they made while living the fantasy of recording their album. By the time the band was back in Maryland they were pretty freaked out and depressed, wondering how in the world they could pay back several hundred thousand dollars to the label. Again, following the well trodden path made by so many other bands they signed away all profits from the album until the recording debt was satisfied. The band sat and faced each other remembering every time they skipped recording to go snorkeling or when they ordered another 3lb lobster. The liquor was all top shelf quality and they paid handsomely per bottle. Staying out late, sleeping in instead of going in the studio, everything they did was documented in exact detail. The total they ran up could have bought a very nice house and still had enough left to record the album in two days at their regular studio. Tommy had sold singles and EPs previously and believed the album would be commercial if promoted well. Just how they were to be paid for the sales and at what rate was right there in the contract. They were to be paid a certain specific amount on every CD or record sold. They thought 'Great !, “CDs sell for $12.95 and record albums for $9.99 so if the initially sold 40,00 units that would reduce their debt – right?” In 1987 Michael Jackson, the self proclaimed 'King of Pop” was the highest paid musician in the world as far as his commission on album sales and he was paid at a rate of 13.8 cents per unit sold. Yes, CENTS. Record stores are routinely given free promotional copies of albums as are radio stations, magazines and anyone else who might listen to it or play it and give a review. No payment was made on those units. There were 'record clubs' back then and the records sold to them were also not included, nor were the records provided to public libraries and a list of other places and people who get records for free. The band had a lot of sales to make up. I do not know the actual amount the band was paid but a generous amount would have been 8 cents from each $12.95 sale. One immediately thinks 'wow, the record companies really make a killing on unit sales.' No really. If they have someone who sells a million copies then they profit some but most bands fall very short of that number. From the unit sales the company has to attempt to pay its bills. The payroll alone is substantial from the executives down to the errand boys and secretaries. They have a legals department with a staff of full time attorneys. They have a graphics department composing magazine ads and billboards as well as album art. They have departments to compose text for articles, liner notes and so much more. Of course they have a department that is responsible for merchandise to sell to fans. These are just a few of the many departments and people who feed from the album sales.
  Like the recording studio expenses there are other debts to be paid from album sales before the first plastic wrap is ever torn from a cover. The team that designs the album cover, the full art department supplying graphics and choosing fonts and the editors who approve the design and the final product. So many things the band members never consider. In the late 60's the Jefferson Airplane fought for control of their album cover and won – to a certain extent. The original title for the album “After bathing at Baxters” which was inside language to say after dropping acid was going to be “Squat on my Grunt” just to show their freedom of titling. Wisely they were dissuaded and Baxter's is one of my favorite albums. I can't imagine my mother seeing that record in my collection and not reacting violently at the proposed title. Of course my mother had no idea what I ever listened to or what our band did. In high school I'd come home stoned out of my gourd and then lay on the floor with headphones on listening to Led Zeppeling's first album and other period favorites. She disapproved of everything I did but it was the early 70's and I was still a pretty good kid.
  The financial aspect of a record deal was something that only I had studied straight from an entertainment attorneys book and I was convinced we would need one in order to not be taken advantage of. Musicians were normally so thrilled to get signed they didn't read and understand what they were signing and usually lost not only money but the rights to their own songs and sometimes the right to perform them if they left the band. As we seemed to be getting closer to someone offering us a contract these things were on my mind along with taking care of our house and paying the mortgage and other bills while on tour. Quitting my day job and loosing our source of income to rely only upon what the band made. I had a strong sense of security the way things were and had been for awhile. We had our routine and it was safe and comfortable. We didn't make any money and we weren't playing thousand seat rooms but I figured it would come in time. I looked around the room at practice and knew I could always count on my band mates. Mike could play anything in any time signature I threw at him and would always play tasteful fills and never go overboard. Dennis always nailed the melodic aspect of the songs we gave at him and would write beautiful solos and fills. His personal sound embodied the spirit of the times and never sounded as if following a trend or a specific guitarist. He paved his own road. Elizabeth had surprised me by growing from the nervous giggling girl following a teens dream to a woman who wrote excellent lyrics and was able to play percussion and keyboards live. My own skills on bass amazed me sometimes when I listened to playback and heard how well I played. It was like a completely different bassist from our first year, but then again we all worked hard towards a common goal.  I always believed we had a common goal and disciplined ourselves to work toward it with no selfishness or ego issues other bands had. We were of one mind and one purpose in doing what we did. Then of course I wrote a song specifically with a great Bass line. I figured I was allowed once or twice. On the "Closure" album I had a cool bass run on "Swept Away" our rock anthem. On our new album I get to play some Rock bass on "Break it in Two". Here is a sneak peek with Elizabeth on vocals. Click Here Dennis could have gone for some showy guitar and played his best rock licks but he let me have the light and played a really melodic guitar part.
  Before each practice I continued to update everyone on what was going on behind the scenes. I'd always told them about gigs I scheduled rather than ask everyone beforehand. That was something I learned in leadership training at work. You don't ask subordinates you tell them. No one ever said they couldn't do a show except the one drummer. Now I sometimes had letters from record labels to read and them post on a wall. I never saw a rejection letter as a bad thing if it stated why. That gave us a chance to change things if we wanted to. We discussed the label TVT's offer of sending them 5 songs like “Tell Me” in order to get a deal. Half of us voices the approval of doing so in order to get a contract with an eye on doing what we wanted later after we had established a name. I was opposed and argued that many bands had gone down that road and never did ultimately do the music they began with and loved. I encourage them to stick to doing what we wanted and get signed for that and not something other.
It appeared they trusted my judgment or chose to not challenge it. As I became continually more encouraged from the record label replies I put out the statement before practice on one day that it is very possible that in the Fall they might not be returning to college, we might be on the road somewhere supporting our new album. I was convinced we could record the entire album in less than a week and avoid the financial burden of taking longer and doing unnecessary things in the studio to delay completion. I was speaking honestly about our future prospects and I could see by their faces that it was almost as if I slapped them to wake them to a real possibility of our future. Elizabeth simply looked at me trusting my guidance. For a long time I had been able to BS her into believing I knew all about some things when I knew very little or nothing. Dennis and Mike looked to me as the band leader and had generally trusted my judgment with few questions. This was a little different because it involved our future for many years to come. I honestly believed it frightened them to face the reality of actually doing what we had long said we wanted to do. At age 20 they certainly faced a crossroad and would have to convince their parents that going on the road as a full time working band was a valid and viable choice. It was a gamble but I believe I was taking the biggest risk. If the album failed and we lost our deal they could simply go back home and then to school and join another band. For me there was no choice. I had promised I would do everything possible to fulfill Elizabeth's dream of becoming a music star. She was almost there. For all I knew she might sign her own contract and leave me far behind but I was going to do as I said. I felt certain that whatever came in the near future I could count on Dennis and Mike. The three of us were the backing band for Elizabeth just as it had been planned 4 ½ years earlier. I felt they believed in me as the manager but I would have gladly handed over the responsibilities to someone else who was experienced in this situation. I had always had pressure on me to run the band. To tighten us up so we sounded professional. I had to lead the way in writing new material, in finding places to hire us, to continually place our name in newspapers and on local music radio shows. I was constantly researching my job in order to do it better and to avoid the pitfalls that trapped other bands. Every time I took a chance and 'put us out there' the band held their own or exceeded expectations. I had no fear we would perform any less in front of a record label representative in New York than any place else. No one had ever shown stage fright and drugs or drink were not a problem that might affect a live performance. All I kept thinking was that a clock was ticking. Our time to 'make it' was just out of reach but so close.
  Just after the beginning of the year I suffered an injury to the back of my hand and in between my fingers that tore the skin in several places. It was an annoying, stinging pain rather than a more serious one but I knew it would take time to heal. There was nothing on the schedule so I gave myself another 4-5 weeks to heal completely before another gig. I even told the guys to take some time off from practice. We didn't need to rehearse so bad that I would force myself to play injured. On a Saturday afternoon Elizabeth was out shopping and I was cutting our lawn when Mike and Dennis pulled up. I was happy to see them, There was really almost no times when we saw each other away from a rehearsal or going to a gig. They acted a little nervous but I thought the sight of me cutting my lawn with cigar in my mouth might have thrown them off a little. Dennis said he was picking up his stuff because he was doing some things and recording and needed them. His words were less than precise but it didn't matter. They were his things. Then Mike said he would be recording and needed his kit. Again, they were his drums and we had no practice that week or next. He was free to do as he pleased. Once they had their things loaded they came to me to say they were leaving the band. I immediately went into a type of shock. It was as though I was suddenly under water and things became surreal. I tried to keep my head and not show how freaked out I was. Dennis tried to say his reasons and I'm sure he had practiced what to say in his head on the long drive over to my house. He said he had been finding it increasingly difficult to come up with guitar parts to our new songs. It wasn't true as far as I knew. He had written some brilliant guitar parts for the newest songs including one that was rather abstract and few people would have been able to write what he had. Mike was almost apologetic while Dennis squirmed nervously and clearly wanted to leave. I had the forethought to get the forms signed by them that took away any rights or claims to the songs we'd written together and recorded and also prohibited their using the band band “Misfit Toys” or even citing that they were former members of the band. They didn't care what they were signing and clearly wanted to leave an uncomfortable situation. I tried to plead that we were ready to record our album and they new their parts inside and out but Dennis said we could easily find someone to play his parts that "they were not difficult". Mike said he would be happy to record with us. They left and we were still cordial. We'd been through too much together to not be friendly. I walked around dazed after they left. When Elizabeth return home and I told her, the reaction she gave was to be immediately angry with me. I heard “ What did you say to them?” and “What did you do, you had to do something?” “What exactly did they say?” Her finger was pointed squarely at me. 'You should have complimented them more'. She was looking for a reason they would have been angry enough to quit but they weren't angry. Their parting was uncomfortable but still friendly. The bigger question was 'what do we do now?'
We had been all ready to record our latest songs as soon as my hand healed. I phoned Dennis to convince him, asking but not begging him to record them. We'd spent months rehearsing them and knew the songs inside and out but he said 'no'. I went further and offered him $200 to record them. It would be easy money for him but again his answer was 'no'. He wanted a clean break from us. Mike had volunteered to record for us but without Dennis' distinctive guitar there could be no session. I did the only thing I could do, I placed an ad for a guitarist.
  The search stretched across many months and involved 160 guitarists that answered my ad. We auditioned some of them but none had the sound we needed to distinguish us from everyone else. A drummer came first and a man answered our ad who was excellent and loved our music. He helped audition the guitarists while learning our songs. In the Fall we finally settled on a young guitarist and returned to our three practice a week routine. Progress was slow and it was difficult to hear another guitarist play our songs his way. The guitarist had a lot to learn and we pushed him to learn 5 songs at once so we had a variety to practice together. I felt as though a giant clock somewhere was ticking.
Meanwhile the letters from record labels came back to us. They asked when we might be playing in New York so they could attend a concert. Then the real heart breaker waited for me when I came home from work one day. A major independent label liked our demo tape and would like to arrange for us to play in a showcase in NYC so they can evaluate whether we can reproduce live the magic from the studio. I'd stopped sending out letters and tapes and this invite to prove we could play live was like a hard slap in my face.

Around the change over of the century I began taking college courses at night with an eye on a degree in Graphic Design. The graphic classes would prove to be very helpful in time but I had no idea when I took them. They covered most aspects of graphics and text for publication as well as Internet posting and both 2D and 3D modeling. I became an advanced user of the fairly new 'Photo shop” program and opened a photography business. I found it much easier to learn at middle age than I had in high school and continued to learn more programs.
In 2019 I dug out that old video tape from our day at the amusement park and transferred it to digital format. After so many years I was finally going to edit it. I looked through the footage again and again and knew there was not enough to make a 4 minute video, I would need more. I had several concerts recorded from back in our prime and so digitized them and proceeded to look at footage of “The Ordinary” being performed. I found excellent quality footage to edit from and simply assembled the mix of concert with the staged footage. I began a YouTube channel to post it and a new phase of my life began as well as a re-birth of the Misfit Toys. I had all of those concert tapes digitized so I decided to make videos of the individual songs. Going through the review and editing process I became aware of many things I'd overlooked at the time. Admittedly I was kind of busy.
Thanks to Face Book I'd reacquainted myself with Mike and we'd caught up the years. I'd asked for his help in synchronizing the soundboard audio recording of a show to the video tape. There was several speed variations and it was driving me crazy trying to fix things. I sent him the files and he did a great job on it and soon after I posted it as another video on our growing channel. The channel attracted an entire new audience to our music. I was hoping some of our old fans would discover us but we appeared to be forgotten but a new generation began to follow us.
Then out of the blue I decided to create a short film based upon a song we had played off and on for several years named “The Haunt”. I wrote a background story and then a screenplay. I became obsessed with making this film. I hired a model and actress to play the part of a woman who decides to cheat on her husband while he is at work. She chooses to turn her back on her wedding vows and the Biblical teachings but in doing so she attracts an entity that observes her from her mirror and eventually enters this plain of reality to follow the woman and retrieve her 'home'. I bought costumes and built sets and over the course of several weeks filmed the various scenes to be edited later. I began thinking about entering the completed project in amateur film contests and even applied for grants to first time film makers. Then as luck would have it, America was struck with COVID madness and things came to a halt. The models and actresses were generally afraid to go on assignments for fear of catching the disease and an empty restaurant I had planned on renting for a big scene became unavailable to anyone. Kate Lyn Moore, the actress who had already completed most of the scenes with me had obligations for photo shoots across several states but would be returning in January for a re-shoot of our opening. That gave me four months to make an edit of a shorter version of the film to be used as an extended music video. I was planning on roughly ten minutes run time and the song “The Haunt” would be stretched to last the full ten minutes. This was certainly not something I could do on my own with my limited musicianship and I preferred to not bring other musicians into this project since Mike offered his time and effort. I hadn't heard him play guitar other than once at a practice in 1987 when he picked up Dennis' guitar and played a very good representation of The Cure's song “M”. That was a long time ago and he had spent several years playing covers on guitar at an amusement park along with playing at his church and both for and with other musicians. Mike hadn't exactly settled back into a routine 9-5 job with evenings in front of bad television. He and Dennis both accumulated a long list of musical accomplishments during our decades apart. I am the one who had resigned himself to be a slave to heartless and downright cruel shop owners as I did my best to learn and excel at being an auto mechanic. I had no time for bands though I did on occasion attempt to start or join one. I really missed performing and writing. Dennis had settled in Seattle and Mike near Atlanta so they were too far apart to be in a band together but told me they tried to get together once a year and it would include playing with another high school friend who is a bassist. Mike said that Dennis was still his best friend after all these years. He currently was enjoying playing in an 80's cover band and had a good job at a large corporation.
The Misfit Toys was the first real band they had each been in and I was curious if my way of running things had influenced them in other undertakings. Other bands were not as impersonal but they assured me that they were conditioned to not waste time at rehearsals. While many bands chose to get drunk or high and then jam away their practice time they guys told me they were conditioned to work rather than play. We sometimes listen to old recordings to reference how we played songs at an early stage and it is usually evident and how 'tight' we almost always were. Even at live performances with poor attendance we still put our all into the show and played as if there were a full room. I'd had a number of musicians cross my path who said the same thing about writing as a band. When it came to writing they just 'jammed' on the basic riff or idea until everyone came up with their part. We never did that before or after the classic lineup of the band. The band is a business and our part is that of a job. We had a business plan and everyone knew and understood their part. I believed we were all of one mind and wanted to succeed in music though it may have meant different things to each of us. My stated goal in 1984 was to put together a band and take it as far as I could to fulfilling Elizabeth's dream. Maybe I succeeded. Her real dream was to 'show everybody'. What exactly she wanted to show them was nestled deep in her mind. She managed to show her family that she was capable of writing and recording music that got played on the radio and actually charted. Furthermore her name and her band was booked into mid-level prestigious concert venues and her name and photo appeared in major newspapers in several states. The skinny, asthmatic girl no one took very seriously was taken seriously as a musician. Journalists came to watch her perform and write articles about her and her band. Ultimately record labels were interested in signing her so her dream, her fantasy and my goal could be marked 'fulfilled'.
   And Dennis? Our band could never have been what it was without him. We had no doubt at any stage that he was vital to us. We never had to worry about him not playing well or not writing an outstanding part for his guitar. We always knew he would look and act professional no matter where we played. We never asked what his goal in music was. His mother told me he had played 'guitar' on a tennis racket miming to Kiss songs as a kid. Maybe music was his way of proving to the world he was more than they judged him to be at first glance. Now he was married and had two young children and few would venture to guess that he was capable of playing almost anything any of his favorite band's guitarists had on classic albums. It didn't matter if it was “the Edge', 'Robert Smith', 'John McGeoch ' or 'Prince ' he could play their music indiscernible from them. He had to decide a long time ago whether to pursue a career in music, possibly one of thousands of studio musicians playing namelessly behind pop stars everyone knew. I'm certain he was well aware that the chances of becoming a major recording and touring act were slim no matter how good his skills. He wisely chose to leave Misfit Toys and stay in college, get his degree and play in bands during his off time. While looking at her own ambitions crashing around her Elizabeth never gave a thought to how Dennis came to this decision and how it affected him personally. I had worked hard for five years toward the end Elizabeth desired and simply assumed Dennis wanted the same thing she did. Mike has so many interests I never thought whether he had ambition to be a music star or if this was simply an amusement for him to spend his time on while planning for something else. Possibly he was just rolling with the flow and would be happy any direction things took him. The band was very passive and always let me make decisions that affected us all without a single challenge. The drummer that had immediately replace Mike was polar opposite. He was anxious to 'make it' in music before he was too old. He loved our music and my style of bass. In his words he had been waiting his life to play with us and to make it big in music with us. His wife agreed with him and he was ready to give up a great job making good money with room for advancements and to move wherever necessary for the sake of the band. His willingness and eagerness to follow his dream was almost frightening with its distance from reality. The guitarist too had an attitude that we were good, had good material and had paved the path part way to where we all wanted to go. He was happy to ride along. Dennis' immediate plan did not involve playing guitar at all when he left the band. He was with several guys who programmed sequencers and electronic devices that were not really musical instruments but he felt he could find satisfaction in making music with them.
  Long ago I put my thoughts to paper ( or on my computer screen ) in a lengthy composition I titled “I never wanted to be a Rock and Roll star” and over several weeks I put my thoughts down about my entire experience in making music and the fulfillment I sought but never really found. I decided I missed it because it wasn't my dream. My dream was 'hearth and home' the traditional wife and children in a comfortable house where Norman Rockwell would feel comfortable. I was never cut out for the life of indiscriminate sex in dirty back rooms that served as dressing room for transient bands or taking large amounts of drugs to break the monotony of touring endlessly. Bands never seemed to know how much money they earned or where it was to be found. They never knew whom to trust and I most certainly had trust issues. I absolutely hated liars and a person who would lie to you would most certainly steal from you. No, there was a certain type of character who could become a rock musician and enjoy the life and that wasn't me.
I do love writing music and recording with others to bring my song ideas to life. In 2019 I continued to create music videos from our old music and then I reached a little further way and made a video of a song we had worked on but never recorded or performed. It was a good song an I really liked it as far as we had gotten with it – and there were others. For“The Haunt” film and music video Dennis happily joined Mike and me to re-record the music and improve upon the song as it had been the three years or so we performed it. Dennis had added a keyboard part that really added color to the music and the completed song once we added a vocalist sounded amazing. Elizabeth was out of the picture and I didn't even know if she still sang but I had Mike contact her and ask. She declined. After spending months the usual way to find a new vocalist for a band that didn't really exist and certainly wouldn't be touring or even playing a single live date I went to an online company where individual musicians, producers, engineers and more can be hired by the song or by the project. I settled upon a young girl whose voice seemed to match what we needed. We planned to record most of the songs we used to play live but had not recorded in the studio when things went belly up. We made an agreement where she would sing on as many as 14 songs we had ready for her to sing. She would be the band's vocalist and her name and face would appear as the lead vocalist for Misfit Toys and she would be the one to do interviews along with my guidance for radio, Internet or print publications. She would be free to record on her own or for someone else. I agreed to pay her per song through the company I found her through and would pay her an additional amount as a gratuity after the completion of each individual song. The additional money was a private arrangement between the two of us and the company was unaware and so could not ask for their cut. I had said she would record where she lived so it didn't matter where she lived. I also said I was ten years older than the guys and age didn't matter. Only her vocal ability mattered. I was wrong. She lived in Kiev, Ukraine and was 16 years old. She sang well, had a good sense of pitch and a decent vocal range but had a poor sense of rhythm. I also learned 6 month later that our agreement had no value because although she was now 17 she was still too young to make a legal contract and even if she were old enough there were no arrangements between America and Ukraine whereby the courts recognized them as binding. Just a few weeks after she agreed to sing for us Putin bombed her neighborhood. It seems that her house was between the International airport and the central railroad station. We urged her to leave Kiev immediately but she and her mother hesitated. She managed to record the first two songs we sent her at a recording studio not far from her house. They were good so we sent her the next two. We recorded a track with no vocals and minimal instrumentation to distract her that she was to record to or on. It would be a separate channel and easy to import onto our final recording to be mixed. Along with that we sent a decent recording of the full band playing the song with Elizabeth's vocals very clear and clean so she could learn how to enunciate and pronounce the words. English was her second language – maybe her third. As things became worse and more dangerous each of us emailed her to urge her to leave Kiev and go to a city less in danger of the Russians bombing or overrunning. Finally she made her way to a border city and then into Poland proper. They stayed there for weeks, struggling with the language and money issues. I sent her money as an advance against what I would be paying her after she resumed recording to help her out. She managed to find a recording studio in Warsaw after she and her mother relocated there and she resumed recording for us. We had several serious interruptions as Summer arrived but by the end of Summer we were faced with only one; she was reneging on her contract with us.
  I had to renegotiate a deal with her even though we had no real choices. If we stopped using her we would need to find another vocalist and begin again, loosing both time and money. Under our new deal we would not be permitted to use her image for the band. We would only be able to use video of her she provided – and we bought from her. She would not be doing any interviews. I typed it all out and sent it to our attorney to review before sending two copies to Kiev where she had returned to. Her mother signed it with a witness and returned it so we could get back to work on the album. Recording used to be such a simple process!
When we had received most of her recordings we then discussed which were usable. We knew at the time several were not good but for the sake of getting as many good ones as we could we kept on sending them to her with an eye on having her re-do the ones we couldn't use. She was becoming more cocky, almost arrogant with a Prima Donna complex. I hadn't realized that when I sent her a song to learn and gave her 3 weeks to return it she wasn't even listening to it for 2 and a half weeks needlessly wasting our time. In that time of delay she was recording for other people the result was a lack of quality and completely missing key points to the vocals. When I told her a recording was not acceptable she became upset because she would have to pay the studio again to record again and it came straight from her profit. It happened several times and all I could say was she needed to prepare better before recording. I stopped paying her bonuses too because she didn't deserve one. By the time she recorded what would be the last two tracks for us they were completely unusable. I told her before I would send her any money she had to record the tracks correctly. It was impossible for me to produce a recording session but it hadn't been necessary with the first tracks she recorded so it shouldn't be necessary now except there had been a big change in her attitude. We decided to use Elizabeth's vocal track from our original studio tape. I'd paid quite a lot to have them transferred to digital multi-track so here was a chance for my expense to go toward something tangible. In the end there are twelve songs on the album and Elizabeth is on four of them. Our Ukrainian songstress is on eight and I admit she sang several songs much better than Elizabeth ever had. Mike's drum track was necessary to be completed before any other track could be added to it so he had ample opportunity to play almost whatever he chose without our being in a position to critique it until it came to record our parts.
That is almost dangerous for drummer to have that much control over a song or twelve. Dennis on the other hand was in the enviable position of being free to experiment on each song. He could add guitars or keyboard parts and experiment until he ran out of ideas and then wait until we heard what he had recorded and had a chance to react. We never had restricted Dennis in any way when it came to live or studio work. I believe he could hear if something didn't work and simply wouldn't use it so we didn't get to hear those. Elizabeth surprised us in the studio too like when she recorded a back vocal to “Someday” that we were unprepared for. I read a lot of books by musicians where they told some of the tricks and techniques they used in the studio and on occasion I tried to adapt that same idea to some of our songs. It seems that 'double tracking' is an old technique for 'fattening up' a vocal but how would an average music fan ever hear about such a thing? I insisted on using it instead of electronically 'doubling' Elizabeth's voice and was very pleased with the way it turned out. Dennis' guitar sound was as important as his technique so when I read how Jimmy Page had placed a studio microphone at his speaker, in front of it by several feet and behind it by ten feet the engineer fought me on it. I had to pull rank and remind him who was paying the bill. Each mic had it's own track for that one guitar part and that is how it went into the final mix. Did it make a major difference? Probably not. It was the engineer who added his own experiment to my idea on another song. In that one the vocals sang a line then answered, sang another line and answered again. I told him I wanted all of the first lines on one channel and the answering lines on the other with a short over lap. So they would be recorded individually. He added that he would place an effect on the vocal but instead of it being on top of the voice singing it would be on the opposite channel which was other wise empty. It worked out well and we did a similar thing with my bass part on a song alternating the efx with the clean bass line. It is great if an engineer has training and experience but it can't always be that way. Sometimes it takes ideas that might sound strange but turn out to be innovative. Dennis, Mike Elizabeth and I all had ideas and things to try in the studio. We didn't always get the opportunity to try them but when we did and they worked well it was a beautiful thing.
  We completed the album and much of it was up to Mike to mix. There was a learning curve we didn't have a choice but to play to. I really wanted Dennis to mix the album because I trusted his ear and his experience that Mike lacked. When a song's mix just didn't come together I hoped Dennis would jump in and take over but he was pretty busy between his job, his family and the band(s) he played in or with on occasion. For one song it was suggested that we send it to our attorney's ex-husband whom she was still on great terms with. He had a studio in high demand in Houston and played with a band at his club there as well. As a favor to our attorney he put the song we sent him in front of the other work he had lined up and began to mix it. His career went back to the “Wrecking Crew” in LA in the late 60's so he had a lot of mixes in his history. I wasn't involved but he dealt directly with Dennis and Mike to get all the stems he needed and for answers to questions. When we actually began to talk cost he asked what I had planned on spending? I told him I'd budgeted for $350. In a voice unintentionally expressing shock he asked 'for how many songs?' I hesitated. I was hoping to mix them all for $350 and he told me that wasn't close to what he charges for one song. Studio time is by the clock and I imagine he had a lot of time invested in that one song but he told me that was all he would charge for the song now completed. He sounded angry but didn't unload on me. Maybe he assumed I was ignorant of professional prices and professional quality. He never answered any phone calls or emails I sent him after that. Personally I wasn't impressed with his mix on the song but the guys told me how great it was so I paid the bill and kept quiet. I paid all the bills and always had. I looked at it as if we signed with a independent label they would pay for the things I did. I was the label and our albums and record had been released on our label “Rising Moon Records”. The pressing and postage expenses had all been on me. Now in 2022 all the expenses were on me and I didn't have any money but I did have excellent credit. I used my American Express for band expenses and nothing else. It didn't take long for the total on that card to amount to a frightening amount. I used my home equity line of credit to borrow more money to cover some of what the promoter and the distributor were charging me per month. We officially released the new album "Closure" in February 2023 and our distributor sent it out to an extensive list of collage radio stations as well as non-profits stations and non-commercial stations all across America and Canada. We had already shown that college radio embraced out music when we released our 12 inch single with the extended mix on one side. I wanted more. I wanted to extend our audience to points around the world. Once more I encountered lazy people who didn't want to work to get our music heard. I did my homework and looked into the popularity of our type of music across Europe and South America. There was what appeared to be an untapped market that remained overlooked because people are lazy when it doesn't affect the money they get for doing their job. I pushed and prodded and even paid more to get them to do their jobs. In the end our album charted in some areas and simply attained high numbers of streams and downloads in others. In this modern age of music with no record labels or music stores it is difficult to follow the success of a self released album. Add to that the number of people who don't own a CD player and simply listen to music on their phone through ear buds or blue toothed through their car stereo it is almost impossible.
  I received monthly reports from Spotify on the success of our album that included all the demographics so we knew who was listening to us where and how old they were, which gender and even what time of day. After just under 60 days we had been streamed 20,000 times on Spotify. I thought that was a remarkable start considering how long it had been since our last release. As the month went on and I read the details I was surprised to read that we were a minor sensation in Brazil and Spain! I couldn't help but wonder why? In the following months our numbers grew dramatically in Argentina, Portugal, Mexico, Western Europe, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. I had expected to get air play and streams in the UK and was happy to hear we were doing well in Scotland. I actually didn't pay much attention to America and Canada since they were pretty much a 'given'.
As the month went on I had no reason to complain about our numbers. By June my contract with the distributor and the promoter had ended and I was on my own. I sent the guys the stats as I received them but they really didn't comment. They had plenty of reason to be proud – even to brag but they didn't. I had tried to contact the vocalist to let her know how well our album was doing and she didn't care. I had offered to send her a copy of the CD or multiple copies and she declined. I asked her to autograph a few copies of the CD and she refused. Her attitude was beyond me. I don't think it had to do with her being Ukrainian it was more a brainwashing by her mother and uncle telling her how great she is and her believing it. An ego being fed like that at such a young age is a dangerous thing.
It only makes sense to “strike while the fire is hot “ as they say. We were being played live on air in some countries and on Internet radio in others. It is a difficult situation when a country has some stations that still rely upon turn tables while others are strictly digital and can't even play a CD. Most American stations are owned by large corporations that dictate which songs are played on air and how often. Stations who were free to play music based upon popularity and requests are a thing of the distant past.
After nearly forty years we finally succeeded in getting our music played and heard around much of the world, We were not in it for the money and no money came, only debt. Thanks to the Internet we received request for copies of our music from people in Poland, Latvia, Portugal and Scotland. I collected over a hundred positive reviews from dozens of countries. We still were not known to everyone into music alternative or mainstream. No one knew the individual band member's names but that wasn't the goal. I had charts plotting the progress of our music across 53 countries and that was part of the long term plan. We hadn't planned on being in demand at clubs across the country we looked to airplay or streams as our sign of success.
Mike continues to play whenever someone asks and Dennis continues to be a well kept secret in his adopted city, known to only a select few. Elizabeth disappeared into oblivion and I continue writing songs hoping the guys will want to record them with our new vocalist. I've always maintained that as long as someone remembers your name you are immortal. Misfit Toys continues as long as Dennis chooses to play guitar with us. It is his sound combined with my bass and Mike's drums that was and remains our unique sound. As I write our newest vocalist is learning our material for a new album. We had delays preventing our follow up album while our last one was still fresh in people's minds and for months we had posted that the new album was under way. We want it to be not only good but memorable and with longevity. On our last album “Closure” it really didn't matter who performed vocals and this attitude continues. It has been delayed but we still expect to release our next album later this year.

I began this article to commemorate the occasion when Dennis auditioned for our band and changed everything. I found it wasn't so easy to just say 'thank you for changing our lives and enabling us to experience life in a band in the 1980's'. Obviously I told the story from behind the scenes of our first time as the Misfit Toys and I touched upon our resuscitated corpses once more working together to create great music and the degree of International success we are having. As I stated elsewhere I have never seen any sign of an ego from Dennis. He has always treated me with a degree of respect I'm not sure I was due and he has always been honest with me. I doubt he has ever sat back and mused over the idea that the band would be nothing without his talent. I believe he and Mike both treated their parents with love and never gave them any serious problems their entire lives. I believe their intelligence and the respectful way they were both raised gave them a common thread upon which to base a lifelong friendship. Hopefully both gentlemen will now understand the high regard I hold them in and always have. I don't know if I am like them but I can hope I emulate similar traits of character. They have done much on their own and I am glad we have been working together again these past six years. They are ten years my junior so they are not getting close yet to the end of their musical career. This article has been a bit more personal than I had intended but fortunately it didn't get emotional. I don't remember ever even shaking hands with either of them.
  I hope I achieved what I set out to do even though I took some 35 pages to express it. My band mates are worth both my admiration and yours. I assume you are a fan to some degree and have an interest in our lead character. In this era of social media people can easily write fan mail to Dennis or Mike through our Face Book page or our band web site www.TheMisfit-Toys.com Maybe if you express your feeling when you first feel them it is easier than waiting forty years to spread them across dozens of pages.
  I am attaching photos that may interest our fans and links to both audio and video clips for your entertainment and edification. As soon as things are worked out with our latest applicant for the position of vocalist we hopefully will make this recording and get it released before we are forgotten again. You can follow us on Face Book to keep abreast of what is going on and visit our web site periodically for new articles and features including alternate mixes and maybe even some demos of the songs you know. We are not finished yet so stay tuned!

       If you have any kind words you would like to express about Dennis - or any of us feel; free to post them on our Face Book page "The Original Misfit Toys