LUNKHEADED

Part 16

The next logical step with the band was to record.  Mike from Beer City had showed up at a Milwaukee show we played and said he was starting a record label division of Beer City Skateboards and that he wanted us to be Beer City Records number one!  We were super amped and decided to get on it.  Mike wanted to do a four song seven inch with the first hundred on clear vinyl, and he said he'd even pay for the recording time.  Chuck Uchida from NO EMPATHY had a new studio he was doing stuff at that was called Attica-because it was in an attic.  We didn't know anyone else in town who did recording and he had the date we needed available, so Chuck became our producer-even if only by default. 

Working with Chuck was a great experience for us. He was the real thing, man!  He knew what all the little knobs on your amp did and how to tune drums (you can TUNE drums! Who knew??), politely correcting our musical foibles as fast as we could make them.

Johnny did an amazing drawing for the back cover and I found a great photo of this little girl smoking a giant cigar for the front cover from this great, warped, photography book I like called Children

Of Many Lands.  We decided to title it Polly Wolly Crappy and decided on Inspiration Point, Candy, Truth, and Sausage Party as the four songs and headed off to the studio.

The recording went way better than we thought it would.  We had been practicing the four songs like madmen and nailed all the instrumental tracks pretty quick.  I went in and did my vocals pretty quick as well.  We'd been doing these songs for some time and I'd sung them a thousand times each, so I knew where I was going.  This would be a far cry from a couple incidents later where I'd be sitting in one room writing lyrics while the guys were in the other laying down the tracks.  

Actually, the only real difficulty we ran into was trying to get a good sound out of the bong we'd brought to put on the beginning of Sausage Party (because nothing says 'Wildwood dirtballs' like bongs and sausage parties).  That song kind of embarrasses me now and even then it got old pretty quick, but it worked. People liked it and seemed to know the words, and it had kinda become the unofficial Wildwood party anthem. 

But-recording a bong is hard.  Chuck stared at us like we were special needs children as we bickered back and forth about the best way to get good bong tone.  We tried different amounts of water, different lengths of draw, with weed, without weed-finally after about thirty takes it sounded right and Chuck's head drooped in relief. 

That day I learned of something called a "mixdown".  A "mixdown" is the excruciating process of listening to every song, in ten second increments, with minute knob turning, over and over and over, for about eight hours.  It's the musical version of the Bataan Death March.  By the time we walked outta there that evening, I wanted to sleep for a week. 

Mike came down from Milwaukee towards the end and was stoked on the final project, even joining Arnold, Tom, Rob and some other friends for the gang backing vocals on Inspiration Point.  We lingered outside for a while as we loaded out of the studio that night, basking in the crisp air and sense of accomplishment. Our first record.  It was a heady feeling, man-that something tangible was about to come out of all this insanity.  Mike took the master tapes and the artwork and headed back to Milwaukee, Beer City Records number one was in the can.  We went home to wait...

LUNKHEADED

Part 15 A couple days later school started. That was a fun period. It was my first real time in college. I'd done a semester or two of community college, but found it pretty high-schooley and lost interest quickly. And now, I was going to a real college downtown, AND-thanks to bookstore unemployment, I didn't have to work! 

My car finally crapped out and I'd become reliant on public transportation and my skateboard, which helped me learn the city. I'd spend days lurking around the art hallways looking at projects or I'd bring my board and go skate the train station nearby, sometimes I just wandered the streets. 

 GREEN DAY was rumored to be coming through and that was DEFINETLY gonna be THE bill if the winter to be on. I'd called Matt at MacGregors a few times to pester him, but it was more of a formality. We knew we didn't suck anymore, but the last time he'd seen us was the trainwreck the previous summer and I didn't blame him for politely brushing us off. To my great surprise though, one day there Matt was, on our answering machine, offering Lunkhead the first slot on the four slot Green Day bill! Fuck yeah! Naturally, Green Day were one of my favorite bands-they were one if EVERBODY'S favorite bands! You'd have to have been a fucking retard not to notice they were NBT. And by NBT, I mean the Next Big Thing, which is a rad term I picked up from Sassy magazine. But Nirvana were getting played out, punk rock was the obvious next step for the corporate culture vultures, and they were circling above Green Day. 

 Every single person we knew was going to the show, and not necessarily because of us, but we did convince them to get there early enough to see us play. We flyered like mad, knowing full well it didn't matter one bit. This show was gonna be huge. 

 Show morning arrived snowy. Really snowy. Fuck. The ONE thing that could fuck up our show. Those dudes are from California. How are they gonna deal with a fucking blizzard? The rumor was that they were touring in an old bookmobile. Who'd wanna drive THAT thing in a fucking blizzard? Shit. We told ourselves that people would go anyway because it's Green Day, yet spent all day fielding phone calls asking if the show was still going on. Not a good sign. We'd all grown up here and we were questioning driving half an hour in this shit. They'd be driving all day in it. I called Matt at the club and he said he'd heard nothing from them so he was assuming they'd show. We loaded up the cars, filled our gas tanks for extra weight, and headed out slowly through the snow towards Elmhurst. 

 It took a couple hours but we still got there an hour early, and found the parking lot already half full, but no Green Day yet. We loaded in and went right on stage, setting up for sound check. The guys tuned up while I went looking for Matt. When I found him, there was still no word, but we gotta be optimistic, right? he said. Optimistic, schmoptomistic. By the time we were supposed to play, any sting of a possible Green Day no-show was greatly diminished by the fact that the place was fucking PACKED! Rumor was that there was 500 paid before we even started. So, Lunkhead squeezed it's way to the stage, all fully aware of what happened last time we were on it, and were absolutely determined to erase that aberration. 

 And we did. We howled through the set like our hair was on fire, were on it both musically and banter-wise (which is equally important). I've have more than one person tell me we were the best band that night. While I appreciate the compliment (the other bands were SMOKING POPES, BOLLWEEVILS, and APOCALYPSE HOBOKEN, all heavy hitters) and politely disagree, I mention it because I think it proves Ruvolo's theory about there always being ONE person in every crowd... 

 So, Green Day did eventually show up and played a great set to a way, WAAAAAYYYY oversold room. Noone could believe the turnout considering the snow, but it made us wonder who many people woulda showed up if it was 45 and sunny. 

 I remember standing with Pete watching Green Day and overhearing these two yuppie-types (there'd been more and more of them around lately) talking about Green Day, saying "this is the last time you'll see them in a place like this.". Prophetic words, indeed...