It was twenty years ago today...
posted on 29 Feb 2012 under category History
It’s really only the big, important days in your life that you can say “I remember exactly where I was (10, 20, 30, whatever) years ago today.” Well, today that number is 20 years, and I can safely say that Rampage and Death Beast would not exist, certainly not as they are, without the experience I had 20 years ago today, on February 28, 1992. On that day, late at night, I sat in the little broadcast studio of WREK studios in Atlanta GA and watched as Disjecta Membra rewrote everything I thought I knew about metal.
I’ve mentioned before in an interview some time ago how that came to pass. But I don’t think what I describe there really set the stage for what that night meant to me. Let’s put it into context. At 16 I got my first bass. I bought tab magazines and books, figured stuff out by ear, and could pretty much play my way through a good deal of Metallica’s first four albums. I spent hours in my room trying to figure things out, trying to cop those bass lead licks from Anesthesia, even goofing with friends trying to write and record stuff. Those recordings became the artistic and inspirational genesis of Rampage, but at the time I was indulging in fantasy as well. I didn’t just want to play, I wanted to play live, in front of people, with songs that I wrote, watching them go ‘wow’ the way I did when I threw on Leprosy or Ride the Lightning.
For two years I was a bedroom rock star, and so when I finally got to college I started searching for other people to try to make it happen. A few months of searching put together the embryonic version of Early Warning, who played exactly one gig for a bar crowd before we took an extended break. It was a taste, but it wasn’t enough - it was a bunch of guys who knew each other playing a shitload of covers and a couple of songs that Frank wrote. It wasn’t the kind of thing that would set the world on fire.
But by the end of the summer of 1991 we finally got the full lineup together. We had two writers. We had drive. We had time and space to practice. We had some gig connections. It looked like it could really happen.
But, they were still the other guys’ songs.
Now, don’t get me wrong - I loved what we were doing, and I had a hand in arranging my own parts, but it’s different when it’s YOUR song idea running down the spine of what you’re playing, and I wanted to wow people with what I could do. And while I liked the proggish touches to our music, I wanted something faster, meaner, heavier - something that make me feel like I did three years before when I was blasting thrash and death metal nonstop.
And that’s where Disjecta Membra came in. As I described in the interview above, we met them before our first gig on Feb. 9, 1992, at a short radio interview at WREK. But seeing them didn’t prepare me for what I heard that night when they played after us. It was so fucking loud and heavy that it blew my mind. These guys should have been huge. They had the sound and the style and the talent. And, what was the kicker - I could see it happening in front of me. It wasn’t sounds on some CD or tape that was blowing me away - it was the guys with guitars standing three feet in front of me, flooring me with “Earth and Stone” and “RYMOT”. That was the first time I realized that all this music I loved comes from real people, and if that’s the case then it’s possible for ME to make that, too. I don’t have to be a superstar - I just have to be good, and true to what I liked, and the sounds would come.
And so, of course, through the good luck of my friend Selbie at the radio station telling me about their gig on “Live at WREK”, I got in. I remember helping them set up, and I was flattered that they remembered me from the gig almost 3 weeks before. They even said they liked our stuff, which was cool.
The lights went down, and then they blew my mind again. Without having the whole jostling crowd to contend with, I just got to focus on watching them and hearing them, and it floored me. Imagine being a Sabbath fan who got to see them at the Star Club in Hamburg during that month-long stint they did there - that’s about what it felt like.
Again, I’ve told before how the tape I had of that night was stolen, and then how a few years later I managed to get myself another copy from the same sound engineer when my own band (Skiptoe, at that time) did a “Live at WREK” gig. It was the best stroke of luck I’ve ever had, and so I put it out through UHR for a while, then just started giving dubs away free. Everyone I’ve given it to loved it. It just goes to show it’s who you know, because they blow away most of the shit I’ve heard in the 20 years since that night. It was just so honest and raw, but so polished and, for lack of a better word, BIG. It was big songs about big ideas, and they were good at tapping into their love for the style and making it come out as something mean, ferocious, and heavy. They weren’t thrash, or death, or black, and they were far more than just power or heavy metal. They really had their own sound, and THAT inspiration, while it took a lot longer to realize, is what I’ve been chasing with my own music. Not making something that sounds like X, or Y, or Z. Making something that sounds like me.
I’ve rocked “Electric Satan” and “Neptune’s Realm” hundreds of times in my life, but it never gets old. My only wish is that something I’ve written (or will write) touches someone even half this deeply. Because when it comes to art, if you’re not changing hearts and minds you’re just wasting your time.
And Disjecta Membra was most certainly not a waste of time.
(I only hope that some day someone does for Rampage or Death Beast or Festering Sore something like what I’ve done here with Disjecta Membra. Other than that, I have nothing to add.)