THUNDERING LIZARDS, 1991-96

I first met Scott Prato in the spring of 1990, in the first weeks of my initial move from New Jersey to NYC. Some friends of mine were hosting an open mic event in the space next to CBGB and tapped me to judge the event, with the grand prize of a spot on a cable access TV show (which never actually made it past the pre-planning stage) going to the performer I thought was best. This young dude with dark curly hair, glasses and a beard came up and performed quirky folk songs with a Syd Barrett influence and outrageous titles like "I'm Not A Fucking Salamander, I'm A Man" and "There's An Elephant in My Soup But He Doesn't Care Cuz I Put Him There." That was Scott, and needless to say, he won my vote. Talking after the show, we became fast friends and vowed to keep in touch, and I played his first demo tape on a few late-night WFMU fill-in shows I was doing at the time, a favor for which he was quick and generous with his gratitude. We also became friends with another young eccentric antifolkie by the name of Jason Trachtenburg (who at the time hadn't even started the actual Trachtenburg Family yet, let alone the Slideshow Players) and the three of us began to do some jamming together.

Several months later, Scott came to the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn to record his second demo "Head First" in a studio just a few blocks from where I was living at the time. The studio was actually an apartment set-up and the engineer had the unique idea of using VHS videotape to record everything. Impressed with my guitar skills, Scott invited me to the sessions to lay down a solo on a song called "Sure You Do," which was to be the demo's big climax. Unfortunately, one of the female vocalists Scott had also asked to contribute to this demo tape took exception to the song's allegedly misogynist lyric, interpreted by one Evil Jim Friendly, and thus refused to appear on the tape unless the song was dropped. So "Sure You Do" never was released, but nonetheless the seed was officially planted for a future collaboration between me and Scott. And what a crazy union it would turn out to be.

In the summer of '91 I gave Scott a tape of some of my 4-track recordings, and he absolutely went wild over it, calling me up not long after to inform me he was listening to it on repeat. With a mutual admiration for each other's music now in effect, he asked if I would help him record his next tape. I agreed, and the next thing I knew I was bringing my 4-track over to his apartment for a wild Saturday session in his bedroom, with friends including myself and Jason contributing to the music. This was to become Scott's next demo, until he heard the results and decided his new songs needed something more... like a full, actual band. His first two tapes had been generally stripped-down acoustic affairs with just a bit of electric guitar and percussion here and there, but now it was time to rock.

I was asked to play bass in this new band, and told to show up at a practice session he'd booked at the famous (and now defunct) Coyote Studios on the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront. I arrived to find Scott waiting for me with a familiar figure in tow -- drummer Michael J. Zwicky. I'd been a fan of his free jazz-punk trio Demo Moe ever since I first encountered them back in '87 on my very first visit to ABC No Rio, so I was thrilled to get to work with him. The chemistry between the three of us proved so immediate that we were in Fly Ashtray's Toxic Shock studio on lower Broadway just a few weeks later recording "Magistrates on Pontilions," a tape I'm still proud of all our performances on. We played our first live shows around the same time, and thus officially began the Thundering Lizards of Love, the name eventually shortened to just Thundering Lizards. By now it was late September '91 and Evil Jim Friendly had joined the band as second vocalist, and soon EJ and Scott were my new roommates as well. Here's one of my favorite songs from the tape, with the amazing (if I do say so myself) rhythm section of myself and Zwicky, and very special guest keyboardist Jason Trachtenburg...

Early on, Scott had a penchant for being a bit unhinged onstage, and quite reckless with his equipment. The first time he and I played out together was at a rooftop party on the lower east side, and before we went on I had to talk him out of his plans to end our set by throwing his Danelectro guitar off the roof! "You'd better hope that thing hits solid ground and not someone's head or you're in BIG trouble!" I told him, then kept a close eye on him during our last song to make sure he got the message. Weeks later, at ABC No Rio (a show from which the shot below is taken -- I so wish I still had that X-Ray Spex t-shirt!), he took that same guitar and slammed it on the floor, which splintered the back of the fretboard to the point where he thought he'd broken it. I took the guitar and inspected it while he wasn't around a few days later, determined that it was still totally playable despite the minor neck injury, then gave it back to Scott claiming I had miraculously "fixed" it... when in truth I hadn't done a damn thing to it!

Eventually, in the spring of '92, three songs from the "Magistrates" tape were pressed to vinyl as our first of two singles (which you can hear in its entirety below!), and the leadoff track, "Do You Wanna (Get Some Marijuana)," became the Lizards' anthem. The artwork for the picture sleeve was done by our resident artist, Karl "KL" Lorenzen, a truly trippy fellow and a heck of a nice guy who also contributed his poetry and percussion to some of our tracks. We somehow managed to get the EP promoted in High Times magazine, thinking this would lead to a flurry of orders. Naturally, that never happened, but by that time we'd already built up a nice local following, packing places like the Spiral on Houston St. and the Ship's Mast in Williamsburg for some sizzling live shows featuring Evil Jim's occasional cross-dressing and my thrashing on the floor in fake seizures. And this first incarnation of the Lizards was short-lived, as this bunch of highly temperamental personalities was bound to clash on more than one occasion. I finally left for the first time in September of '92, serving Scott my resignation in the midst of Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park that Labor Day and citing my ever increasing tensions with Michael and Evil Jim as reasons.

Scott promptly replaced me with another bassist, Tom Gabel, and added the world's first and foremost punk rock accordion player, Malcolm Tent, and the Lizards soldiered on. Of course, I had no intention of rejoining, but within the space of just six months, both Michael and Tom were out of the band and Scott was begging me to come back. He finally got me to return in the spring of '93 with the promise of a tour of the midwest. But with Zwicky gone, we now had to find a new drummer. Malcolm tried to help out by bringing in the guy who had played drums on his recent tape "Angst For The Memories" (a truly unsung '90s tape-culture classic) for an audition, which he passed with flying colors. We voted unanimously to hire him and figured we were set. Then this drummer completely disappeared from our radar.

At this point, the saga of the Thundering Lizards becomes almost like a real-life Spinal Tap story. With no other drummers seemingly available or willing to go on tour with us, we finally had to settle for the late, great Billy Syndrome to fill the void. Now, Billy was a great musician in many regards, but his drumming (which he did eventually get good at) was very much a work in progress at that time!  To make matters worse, the reason Scott had put together this midwest tour in the first place was the colossal mistake he had just made of signing a one-shot deal with a subsidiary of Celluloid Records to put out a CD that was to be delivered just in time for the tour. This same label had tried to court another band who were very good friends of mine, only to have none other than Iggy Pop warn them against signing. If only if had been Scott who'd had that random encounter with Mr. Street Walkin' Cheetah.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, the master tape for the Lizards' Celluloid album either got lost or ruined, and it became quickly obvious the CD would not be ready for the tour. Desperate to have new product to sell on the tour come hell or high water, we rushed back into the studio with less than a month to go before departure time to make what I still regard to this day as one of the very worst records ever made -- our second single, "Looking For A Dolphin." This 45 was given a merciless review completely worthy of its sheer awfulness in a local music rag called Splatter Effect, and I hate to admit I agreed with every word of it. If you really want to hear how bad it is, you can buy it on Discogs (though even at three bucks it's way overpriced), because I sure as fuck ain't gonna stream it here! Perhaps it's fitting, though, that this record was a trainwreck, because the Lizards' Midwest Tour -- ten days in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio in November '93 -- followed suit accordingly.

Scott booked eight shows through contacts he'd found in some issue of Maximum Rock & Roll, and half of them got canceled while we were on the road. In Michigan, we were hosted by the "Flint Hemp Society" and still managed to clear the room in spite of our appropriate lyrical content (though, to be fair, our hosts were very nice people who graciously put up with us for two whole days afterward while we awaited a second gig in Detroit that, you guessed it, never happened). In Milwaukee, we actually had legendary psych-punks Plasticland open for us (great band, but what on earth???) and of course blow us off the stage, though someone actually bought the "Dolphin" single afterward and even made us autograph it -- don't ask me why. And in Indianapolis, when we contacted the promoters who had booked us to let them know we were in town, we found out we'd accidentally been put on a straight-edge hardcore show, only to have the other bands take offense to our weed-friendly lyrics and promptly boot us off the bill!

The mere thought of Indianapolis will also forever remind me of the absolute most vicious, brutal band argument I've ever witnessed in my entire life, between Scott and Malcolm. It began as some simple blowing off of some of the steam which had built up out of our not having any space apart from one another for an entire week, and could very well have ended quickly enough with the other three of us insisting they both just shut up and have another beer or two. But before we could suggest that, Malcolm decided it was a most opportune time to make a very unpleasant remark about Scott's wife. Oh my dear lord Jesus. I thank my lucky stars there was no gun in that van, because if there had been, one of us would have been dead and the rest of us would have spent the rest of the tour in jail in Indiana. It took all of our best efforts to curb our respective tempers long enough to play the last two dates, incurring the wrath of more straight-edgers in Muncie before finishing up at a pizza restaurant in Columbus, Ohio to an audience of the sound guy, the bartender, the promoter and the lame cock-rock hair metal band he'd billed us with.

(Even after all I've described here, though, I would be lying if I said the Lizards didn't have any fun at all on the road. We had a great time making friends and exploring the city of Flint with our aforementioned hosts there, I had fun driving everyone crazy filming a never-released "tour documentary" with my super-8 video camera, and two songs were directly inspired by the whole tour experience: I wrote one called "State Line In The Sky" (which you can hear on my Bandcamp site) that deals with some of the lighter, more tourist-like aspects of the trip, and Malcolm wrote "Midwest Tour" which took a humorous view of the darker side of it all. So there's that.)

After the tour, Scott fired Malcolm and Billy and hired some NYU student named Kirk to finally restore some order to the rhythm section. He played three more disastrous local shows with us before I finally quit the band for good, though not before playing on a few more 4-track demos which wound up as secret bonus tracks on the Celluloid disc. "Width of an Octopus" (recorded mostly during my six-month absence from the Lizards and much better than the "Dolphin" single for sure) did finally come out in the spring of '94 and the label promptly threw all its promotional energy behind an all-girl punk band called Gloo Girls while giving us the royal shaft. I still recall my frustration when I discovered that Tower Records on 4th and Broadway had tons of Gloo Girls CDs and not a single copy of ours. I guess we just weren't cute enough.

Scott kept reinventing the Lizards in various forms, first as a sort of Fugs-type beat thing with KL and Jim Fourniadis before expanding into a sort of stoner Zappa/Mothers-esque unit with up to seven or eight members. This lineup recorded the final Lizards release in late '95, "Eyeball Sandwich" (partially produced by Kramer and their most psychedelic album for sure), and took a second trip to the midwest which according to Scott was much better than the first one. Meanwhile, Malcolm and I had stayed in touch following our parting of ways with the Lizards, and at the end of '94 he tagged me to help him form his next project, Thai Raid. Thus began a whole new wild 3-year ride for me which included at least one "hit" record (our EP made #1 on Bill Kelly's Teenage Wasteland on WFMU two weeks in a row) and a lot of crazy times at the Right Bank on the Williamsburg waterfront.

The Lizards finally called it quits in '96, and when I left Thai Raid in '97, Malcolm brought in none other than Scott to replace me, which in light of the blowout in Indianapolis was a heartwarming and humbling thing to see indeed. Scott also joined up with Billy and Evil Jim in their space-rock project The JFK Jr. Royal Airforce for several albums before moving onto the Brian Wilson Shock Treatment, as well as World of Tomorrow and Big Plastic Finger with his wife Bonnie Kane, herself an occasional Lizard who'd lent her saxophone stylings to a few of the band's recordings.

In light of all the recent tragedies documented here on the Brazenblog, I'm happy to report that except for Billy Syndrome, all the ex-Lizards are still of this earth -- but not a single one still lives in NYC. Malcolm is now in Atlantic City and still going strong well into his sixties, Michael J. is in Appleton, WI and playing drums for a fine new band called Sharp Left Turn, I'm in Orlando and part of a great underground music scene there, and Evil Jim, well, he's in Jacksonville just three hours away from me! Scott and Bonnie now live in Holyoke, Massachusetts running their online vintage vinyl shop Starry Night Records. And wouldn't you know it, just a few weeks back, Bonnie came out to Florida to play some shows in conjunction with the International Noise Conference and she and I got to hang out together for the first time in well over a decade! If only Scott had come along for the ride...