The Walkie Talkie

At some point in the late 90's, before cell phones offered up so many minutes at such a cheap price, Gino and I thought it would be a good idea to use walkie talkies for road trips to gigs. At that point I hadn't yet moved from the college town of Olympus to the big city of Terminus, so it was often that Gino would either ride together or we would at least convoy on a road trip.

Warno however would never want to convoy with us. Back in the earlier part of the 90's when we would almost always double up so one person could rest their car, He would get aggravated cause Gino would either ride his ass or he would pass him and then miss a turn cause he was following us in the first place. So eventually Warno got in this mode of insisting that we each get directions and we would just meet there. What a GREAT guy! Warno also thought that the Walkie Talkies were dumb.

Fast forward about 5 years. I was already living in Terminus at that point, but Gino and I would often meet up on the road once we were both on the same highway (Often was the case that Terminus was on the way to most gigs coming from Olympus). When we would meet up, we would break the radios and talk on our way to the gig.

One weekend we had a pretty big gig down in Mayport. Gino and I did the usual. We met up on the highway and we met Warno down at my parents house which is only about an hour from Mayport. Gino and I decided that we would put his drums in my car and ride together to Mayport. SO as we were leaving we tried to give Warno one of the walkie talkies. He said no. He thought they were silly and a waste of time. My mom grabbed one and made him take it. hahahaha.

So on the way down to Mayport, Gino and I figured that we would never even use the walkie talkies, but we kept it on just in case. Well, as always Warno's directions were awful. He always seemed to do a really bad job at getting directions. HE would always leave out a road and he would refuse to use mapquest. What An ass hat! So anyway, here we are going through Mayport and not finding any of the roads we needed. It turns out that we missed an entire interstate because Warno didn't write it down correctly. Next thing you know, Warno is on the wwalkie talke asking us to call the people and find out where we were. The funny part is that Warno also thought cell phones were silly and he constantly made fun of Gino and I talking on the phones. Even though the modern world realizes that using a cell phone is cheaper or just as cheap as a land line, like his wardrobe (subject for an upcoming post) Warno is about 10 years behind and thinks that cell phone usage is something like $100 a minute.

So Gino got on the phone with the peeps while I talked to Warno on the talkies. We ended up going way out of the way to get there, but we made. We almost didn't make it in time. Had we not had two technologies with us that Warno thought was "silly", we would have missed our start time at that gig.

Oh well, that still didn't convince Warno that cell phones are smart..................

The Rise & Fall of The S**tbreath Empire (mostly the fall)

The Original Ass
When the SUWG started out, we had a guy in the band called Daniel Shitbreath. Dan was a fairly unique fellow. This guy was very talented. He had a photographic musical memory. He could listen to a song once then be able to play all the parts (drums, bass, guitar, keys) and somehow remember most of the vocals. Pretty amazing player. He and Warno used to have an all request duo. HA! That's hilarious, the two biggest ass hats in the local music scene playing together every few nights of the week. In fact maybe we should refer to them as the "Two Assbreros". Ok, so as I said, DS was quite the musician. The bad side, when he drank or got stoned, the biggest ass you have ever seen. When he was drunk he would make rude remarks to everyone. Fellow bandmates, bar patrons, wedding guests, bar owners....it didn't matter. His demise happened in four parts, and here they are...........................

Passing Out
In the pre- Gino days, we were doing a wedding gig in the north part of the state. I rode with Warno and DS rode with Dabba Dabba (DD) our old drummer. The whole way there, DS and DD drank beer and other things to make them hungry, paranoid and shitty. The wedding party we were playing for provided us with a room for changing and sleeping if we like.

WE played the first set and DS looked like death. At one point he got DD's drum cases and sat down on them whilst playing his guitar. HAHAHAH! I was actually laughing at that point. Warno was not. He was scared shitless. (keep in mind at that time I hadn't quite seen Warno's bad side so in my eyes he was still a pretty cool guy.) When we went on break, DS high-tailed it to the room and started calling for Earl the God of Porcelain.

After the break was up, I went back to the room to get DS. As we were walking across the courtyard, he stopped hunched over and said as he was throwing up, "I can't do this" and he went back to the room. I had to go to the stage and tell DD and Warno that we were going 3 piece. The problem with that was that Warno didn't think he would need his cheat sheet book. (Lesson Learned: Always take your Cheat Sheet) We huddled and figured out how many songs the three of us knew together that Warno could sing. (In case I didn't mention it, DS did most of the singing back then.) We were able to get in a decent set, but once we were done the Bride's dad offered us more money to play another set and we had to turn them down. The whole way home that night, Warno and I started talking about our contingency plan if we got rid of that bastard. We even confronted him one night downtown about it. He practically cried and begged us not to fire him.

Pissing Off Mario
Fast forward about 6 months and a new drummer (Gino) later, we're playing at a large resort in a small beachtown on the Gulf Coast with a 9 piece band. We were playing a song I had never in my life played. Hell I don't even think I had ever heard it. We were in the middle of it and I hit a sour note while trying to follow the chord changes. DS gets on his mic and makes a comment about me missing the note. Totally disrespecting me in front of the whole audience. I was livid.

immediately after the gig I confronted him at the side of the stage. The whole time Warno is telling me I should punch him. I really wanted to but I refrained. After the gig, something possessed us to go to DS's and the fluglehorn player's room to have a drink or two. At some point DS was on the balcony and I made my way to him (I had a few in me by that point) and I thought maybe I would throw him off the balcony. Luckily for both of us, Gino intercepted me................

Pissing Off Warno & Gino
We were playing at a place in Athens. Gino had a few of his friends from work out to hear us that night. One of those friend was a drummer and Gino wanted to let him sit in on a song. SO Gino calls him up to play. I guess this pissed of DS so he hops off the stage and goes and looks at the line at the door then comes back to the stage and tells Gino's buddy to leave the stage and makes some comment about our duty to the bar and some shit like that. I had never seen Warno that pissed before................That night we decided that we would try a gig with just the three of us.

Spreading Three Wings
So were at a club in my hometown. First set was very awkward. The bar owner was even thinking, "oh my they need the asshole back". But for some reason after the first break and about 45 minutes of watching a slow white bronco on the interstate in LA, we seemed to click and we totally kicked ass. WE finally figured out that the 3 piece band was the way to go. At that point we never looked back.

The shitty part though is that Warno, never actually fired DS. He just stopped telling him about the gigs. That was just a forshadowing at how pussified and shitty a person Warno really is.

till next time
MP

Introducing Ginogiligan

As I mentioned in the "Cast of Characters" post I am also in an acoustic Trio/Quartet with Gino and Christobal "Critter" Henshine. We will refer to it as "Dam Atts How" (I bet Critter will put it all together and figure that one out. )

Originally I was playing upright bass, but due to the horrors of amplifying a Bull Fiddle and until my friend Gaylord and I build an electric upright, I am opting to play my fretless electric. Originally I didn't want to play anything that was electric in this group,(I still don't, but not much I can do there) but I will do whatever it takes until the EUB is ready.

In the beginning when I couldn't go (the new band is keeping me pretty damn busy) to the Dam Atts How gigs, we decided that we would get a fellow by the name of Ernesto Philipe to play bass to fill in for me. After a while Ernesto started coming to the Thursday gigs and playing a song here and there. At some point I was playing guitar on a song that Critter happened not to know. This led Gino and the guys to suggest that on some of the gigs, Ernest should play bass and I would play guitar along with Critter. I like it ok. I prefer playing bass, but playing guitar is fun and different. Having a second chord instrument ads a lot and it does open it up for Critter to play more solos. The only problem I see with it is that when Ernesto can't make a gig, there are songs that we learned that are electric bass oriented and don't really translate well into fretless/upright bass. Originally Gino and I agreed that they wouldn't add songs that couldn't translate, so I guess when I play bass the whole night we just won't do those. So anyway that why I call it a trio/quartet.

We tend to play in Athens at a local wingery just about every other Thursday night. We are currently working on a local wingery in Suwannee. That's a nice one because it is only about 8 miles from home. We could possibly get every other Thursday there as well. The only bad part of that is that I don't know that I am going to be able to play every Thursday night. That's ok though, they can easily play without me.

So tonight we actually played in the Suwannee Wingery. It was a pretty good gig. There were a handful of neck bones that wanted Skynryd but we played some David Allen Coe for them. I sang the Ride and Ernesto and Critter did a kick ass job following me on the changes. In fact we played a handful of songs we don't normally do once we went into request mode. I think that is the most fun part for me as far as playing guitar. I think the rehearsed stuff for the most part is boring for me on guitar and I don't really enjoy that like I like that bass, but playing the stuff we don't know or haven't ever played and leading the guys through the changes is pretty damn cool. Gino and I know a lot of songs from the SUWG days that we can pull out of a hat and it was good that we did some tonight. A few songs we did tonight I had never played and we kind of figured out the changes and just did the chorus. That was fun too. Overall, a good night. I thought we played well and Gino, as usually sang great.

Oh well, now you know about the acoustic group. This one should provide some good stories. NO worries I will still have stories about Warno as well. There are so many of them I have to write about then from time to time. I probably won't ever write about the other band here. I already have a blog for that. Any of you that know me and want to read that blog, let me know and I will send you the address. I can't post it here it will divulge my true identity, not that it is that big of a secret or anything.