"WHAT WAS LO-FI?" & OTHER DELIGHTS...

There's been a lot going on in the wonderful world of Brazen lately, and I have several big updates to provide, some with regards to recent posts on this blog, all of them bringing very exciting news. And I'm pleased to start things off with a MAJOR announcement: "What Was Lo-Fi," Adam Harper's long-awaited study on the history of lo-fi music and culture, has finally been published. 

I first reported on the production of this book early last year after Mr. Harper, a music professor at Oxford University of all places, contacted me to request a hi-res scan of the original flyer promoting "Lo-Fi Night" (the site of my very first live performance in NYC, and a night which changed many a life, including my own), which I gladly provided to him right off my original copy of it. Well, not only did he include it in the book as promised, but he used it as the starting point for his historical overview of Lo-Fi, even going as far as analyzing Terry Folger's flyer design and comparing it to the cover illustration of a 1985 issue of Sound Choice spotlighting the cassette revolution of the time! I only wish that Mr. Folger and the man who started the whole lo-fi scene, the late great William Berger, were alive today to see this -- alas, we can only imagine what they would have thought of their efforts now officially becoming a part of musical academia at Oxford! 

"What Was Lo-Fi?" is an interesting piece of work indeed, tracing the history of the term from its humble pre-WFMU origins and beyond, analyzing its various meanings and its application to recordings of many different styles, and questioning the current (mis)appropriation of the term as part of something new called "relaxing lo-fi hip-hop," hence the question being asked in past tense. Harper's book is an admirable effort to ensure that the true meaning of lo-fi doesn't wind up lost in the shuffle of this increasingly popular new subgenre... which has nothing at all to do with lo-fi as far as we're concerned! It namechecks many well-known artists including Daniel Johnston, Guided By Voices, and Pavement, and credits WFMU for not only bringing us lo-fi but "outsider music" as well. It's all worth reading and best of all, the entire book is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD right here! No costly shipping fees from the UK to read THIS one, no siree! My heartfelt thanks to Adam for his fine work acknowledging and (most importantly) respecting our history, and for making it so easily accessible for all to read.

Moving right along to a very exciting thing that's happened to me recently, I was floored when I received an invitation to be interviewed for my absolute favorite podcast! What's more, the invite to appear on Joel Gausten's show came courtesy of my oft-mentioned dear old high school friend Tommy Koprowski, who just so happens to do some of the bookings for this amazing show. Mr. Gausten is a New Jersey-born, New Hampshire-based writer and musician who is currently producing a series of podcasts devoted to the history of the New York and New Jersey punk scenes, and he's interviewing just about everyone he can track down who was involved. The results so far have been nothing short of astonishing. Mr. Gausten's show is an old-school punk's dream come true with one punk lifer after another sharing their stories, and with his easygoing late-night chat style leading them on, he comes off as nothing less than the Johnny Carson of punk, a noble (and truly unprecedented) thing to be. 

Now, I may sound biased calling Gausten's my fave podcast now that I've appeared on it, so let me state here that it was already number one on my personal podcast hit parade long before I received the invite. That said, Joel and I got along like a house on fire during the recording session, and we're already talking about collaborating further on future episodes, which I'll say more about in the future. For now, please lay back and enjoy almost 90 minutes of Joel and yours truly talking about NJ hardcore punk and WFMU in the 1980s, from the Misfits and Adrenalin OD to Pat Duncan and lo-fi and back again. And if you dig it, do check out other episodes of Joel's show (already over 150 as of this writing and still counting) which not only include the aforementioned NY/NJ punk history series but also some great episodes featuring many well-known punk (and even a few non-punk) legends as well. You'll be glad you did, for it's all chicken soup for the old punk rocker's soul! (We ARE the new old hippies after all... hell, some of us even LOOK like old hippies now, and I'll say no more about THAT!) 'Twas such an honor to be on this thing. A million thanks to Joel Gausten and Tommy Koprowski for this golden opportunity! 

Meanwhile, back in central Florida where I'm still presently based, my power duo Los Jarritos is still going strong, having released not one, but TWO new singles on Bandcamp so far in 2025. The first is a new version of a song originally written by Orlando's prime local legend Syd Zed called "Made in Taiwan," which we've turned into a tirade about broken 4-track machines and the sobering fact that most all of those old portastudios Tascam made back in the nineties turned out to be cheaply made and unsustainable pieces of crap in the long run. It's backed by a fiery instrumental called "Stop!" which is the latest in a long string of wordless Brazen compositions dating all the way back to the '80s, all reflecting my deep love of instrumental rock & roll. 

The second single, "Musicians > Politicians," is our simple but bold statement about the current fucked-up state of things in this world post-2024 election. The words are simple but say it all: it's musicians who should be running the world! This one is coupled with "Influencers," which makes some pointed observations about the continued wretched gentrification of our major cities in general and Orlando in particular, set to a stunning cumbia-styled beat. 

Musically, we've retained our basic garage-rock/punk edge, but we're getting more experimental as we progress, and my right-hand man Cesar Marquez is helping to make my quirky ideas a reality with his precise and versatile drumming. Please check out our new music here, and a whole truckload of other Brazen stuff at my Bandcamp site... and if you're ever in O-Town, come see us play at Uncle Lou's sometime.

When I last blogged, I wrote about my work producing a website for one of New Jersey's most unsung and underappreciated bands ever, TV Toy. Well, that long-lost 1982 Toy documentary I'd mentioned that was recently uncovered has since been fully remastered and uploaded to Vimeo and is now available for your viewing pleasure. This, too, is pretty amazing, presenting jaw-dropping live performance footage (in black and white!) of the band playing some of its greatest hits, interspersed with an interview with the band which stands as a real period piece of both the NJ music scene in the early '80s and the worldwide music scene in general. This important documentary is a must watch if you're an aficionado of the 1980s New Jersey underground scene, just as relevant and vital as Joel Gausten's podcasts in that respect. 

Last, but certainly far from least, the Brazenblog is turning all of ten years old this July, and soon afterwards your humble blogger will turn... well, if you don't know how old already, I'll just sit back and let you do the math as I've dropped more than enough clues to my age here over this past decade. Just know that a big celebration is on the way, and that I deeply appreciate all of you who have read any or all of this blog so far, particularly those of you who have posted comments and who have either praised my work or cited it in their own writings. Stay tuned, folks, for there's always more to come...

THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART 6: THE TV TOY CHANNEL

I really miss the early days of the Internet. I really miss how primitive it was when it first started. Lately I find myself longing for a return to the time before Facebook and Twitter and all that other horseshit came along. When I first started online back in '97, I had to literally feel my way around the damn thing with no clear guidance other than a few rudimentary search engines, which in retrospect was part of its initial charm. I was learning how to build a website and at first it seemed like a joke for an obscure Mexican rock band to have one. Would anyone even care? And where the hell was I to promote it? Message boards and online email groups were the era's social media. I joined two groups which discussed garage and psych music, Bomp Digest and U-Spaces, and built an early audience there (and finally heard "Smog" in the process). 

Really, it should've been a huge struggle to get my online efforts off the ground all those years ago. But miraculously, my work found the right people at an incredibly fast rate, and the best of them were coming not from these little message groups, but right out there in the wild. Folks who, like me, were feeling their way around the web using little more than basic instinct, who found me and others just by seeking us out. It was all a matter of fate placing the right people at the right web pages at the right times. It all seems so pure and simple now, looking back at it in this complex, mentally challenged social media world. 

Before I started, all of the other people I knew who liked Los Dug Dug's had been folks I'd turned on to them myself, but now I was meeting people who'd discovered my all-time fave Mexican rock band without my involvement. And by far the most colorful gringos my site ultimately attracted were a group of insane obscure music fanatics from right in my home state of New Jersey, people so deeply into crate digging that they themselves had found Los Dug Dug's in much the same way I had (minus the trip to Mexico, of course). My initial contact from this bunch, just weeks before 1999 gave way to 2000, came from a man who identified himself as The Mickster. He had a radio show on Saturday evenings called "The Dangerous Rock & Roll Show" on WNTI-FM, broadcasting from Centenary College near the NJ/PA border. He invited me to tune in that weekend and when I did so, much to my pleasant surprise, I heard him spin Los DD's and then give a heartfelt plug for my website! 

Sounds like a pretty simple story so far, but it was about to take a major, unexpected twist. The Mickster's co-host was a man identified only as Rob the Foil. Well, when I called in to the show to express my sincere appreciation for their free publicity, Mick and I ended up talking for a good few minutes and somehow we got to talking about the fact that we were both musicians. That was when he revealed the Foil's big secret to me: Rob was once the frontman for TV Toy.

TV TOY! It had been quite awhile since I'd last thought of them, but oh what a memory jog. They formed about half an hour's drive away from me in the city of Dover in the mid-'70s, and started off playing pure progressive rock. But seeing the Ramones and Talking Heads at CBGB changed their lives, and soon they were forging their own very unique and masterfully crafted blend of prog and punk, at a time when such musical hybrids were unheard of. 

Back in the Channel 68 heyday of the Uncle Floyd Show, around 1979, they'd appeared on an episode which Tommy Koprowski (there's that man again) and I had happened to catch. We'd sent away for their EP and were knocked out cold by its A-side, "(Don't Blame It On The) Weekend." I, in particular, loved this song so much that I actually made it into a weekly ritual: every Friday afternoon, as soon as I got home from school, the very first thing I did was fire up my stereo and blast "Weekend" as loud as the neighbors could withstand. The lyrics said it all: "I know the weekend goes too fast... but this time the weekend's gonna last!" It was a truly inspiring and uplifting song, and the ritual was a beautiful reward for making it through another shitty school week. Furthermore, the song's significance went that much deeper by virtue of the fact that it came from a band on my home turf, a fact none other than the late, great John Peel once noted accordingly: "A Jersey band who doesn't sound like Springsteen? That's a measure of their courage, I think!" 

Never in my wildest dreams did I think my love for Los Dug Dug's and TV Toy would intersect in such a way, but lo and behold, I now had a line on Toy's fearless leader, Rob Barth, and the story was about to become gloriously complicated from there. Soon after, I was invited to bring my love of all things Dug Dug's to the Dangerous Rock & Roll Show for a two-hour special focused exclusively on the band. I was so thrilled by the opportunity, I had Armando Nava himself do a promotional ID for the show, which we recorded long-distance over the phone from Mexico City to New Jersey. The show aired over WNTI on February 5, 2000, and while it generally went well, I frankly admit to cringing a bit when I play back the aircheck now. 

Mick and Rob were nice enough guys but they insisted on sprinkling their slapstick on-air humor throughout the program, and there were times when I honestly wanted to slap them both. But I did succeed in blasting the Jersey airwaves with roughly two hours worth of Los Dug Dug's, and I'm still proud of the accomplishment itself, especially since we were able to present it as a worldwide broadcast over the net on WNTI's web stream. Indeed, the night's biggest thrill for me, even more so than meeting the man who sang "Don't Blame It On The Weekend," was receiving an email from a fan of my site in Mexico whom I'd befriended, saying he was listening to the show down there and totally loving it. How fucking cool is that, folks?

But the story of my relations with Mick and Rob had only just begun. The very next week, they called me and said, "You're such a big TV Toy fan, how would you feel about creating a website for them?" To say I was startled by this request is an understatement. "I'd love to," I replied, "but shouldn't that be Rob's task?" After Toy broke up in '84, he'd left the music scene for a career as a renowned graphic designer, and I told him honestly that I thought he could do a much better job than I, given his designing skills and the fact that he could just write the whole story himself. No, he insisted, that would not do: "We want a site with the same fan perspective as your other sites." Fair enough, I reckoned. I thought about it for a day or two, then agreed to do it.

Just as with Los Dug Dug's before them, my role as TV Toy's webmaster gave me access to a fanboy's dream lot of very cool and personal stuff. Rare and unissued recordings, cassettes and vinyl and CD-Rs, original press kits and posters and stickers, news clippings, even a few authentic Max's Kansas City handbills. I interviewed Rob over the phone and weaved it all into an overview of Toy's history. Word of the project quickly spread to all the other former Toys and all pledged their full support. 

Meanwhile, I was becoming the toast of the Dangerous Rock & Roll Show. Every week Mickster would plug my websites, often playing our favorite Mexican band and eventually hyping up the TV Toy site as it neared completion. The show's biggest fan by far was a man named Bill Kopp, who religiously taped the show each and every week and had a huge archive of DR&R Show airchecks. He became probably the second biggest Jersey-based Dug Dug's fan after myself out of all of them, completely in agreement with me that "Smog" was an all-time rock masterpiece. He also designed the famous "I Dig Dug Dug's" button, which started as our own little exclusive thing and has since been spotted on leather jackets in Mexico City! (Bilko, if you're reading this, please hit me up sometime. It's been ages, my friend.)

Work on the TV Toy site progressed very quickly, and creating the content was no problem, but the matter of designing the site worried me greatly, and for good reason. I'm good at writing, of course, but I am not a graphic designer by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. I know nothing about creating logos or any of that stuff -- hell, I can't even draw a straight line! Right from the start I'd been designing my sites from the seat of my pants with no idea at all what the fuck I was doing. I was just experimenting with the various design programs I was learning and just going with whatever looked stylish to me. And now I was expected to create a web layout which would please a pro designer who had Netflix and AT&T among his clients. This, in fact, was the main reason I wanted him to do it. Oh lord, help me, what have I gotten myself into? 

I did my best. I was determined not to admit defeat. I messed around with some graphics I'd found online and by some miracle came up with a neat Javascript rollover design, a staticky TV which "switched channels" to band photos with a move of the mouse, and a big scan of the band's TV Guide-spoofing logo placed next to it. (As big as the original designs looked on the ancient desktops on which they were produced, they look shockingly miniature on the laptops of today.) I put up a test version online at a secret link, sent it to Rob Barth... then held my breath.

The verdict came quickly. And guess what... he loved it. And not only did he think the design suited TV Toy perfectly, but he even praised the fancy rollover effects! I took it as a huge compliment and breathed just as huge a sigh of relief. And so on May 5, 2000, exactly three months to the day of the Dug Dug's radio special, The TV Toy Channel officially launched to everyone's delight and satisfaction. Over time we eventually expanded it to include a history of Morris County's "Moco Scene" of the '70s and '80s which spawned Toy, complimenting its complete history of the band. It's unfortunately been relegated to the web archives by now, but I'm still trying to find all my original master files for the whole site, and perhaps I'll get it back out there someday, though for sure it would need some serious editing and updating first. In the meantime, there's this only partially functional "bootleg" of rather poor quality to go by, accessible via this blog's menu. View it at your own risk, folks.

I still think it was a great site, and one very close to my heart, and in a more perfect world it would've sparked the same sort of revival for TV Toy as my Dug Dug's site ultimately did for them. It did, however, reconnect various band members to old friends they hadn't heard from in ages, and attract a British fan who'd taped a TV Toy track off John Peel's show on the BBC and was thrilled to finally track down the band over 20 years later. In the wake of all this, Toy's ex-drummer Steve Peer compiled a superb collection of their music spanning the years '76-'84, called "Shards." It's a truly stunning document of some very original and courageous sounding high-energy Jersey rock that doesn't sound like Bruce. You should also grab any and all original Toy 7-inchers you find in your crate digging travels -- there's not a bad one in the bunch. 

(As I wrap up this latest chapter in my online saga, word has reached me that a 35-minute TV Toy documentary once thought to have been lost forever has just been discovered in someone's garage, and that said film will soon be available for all to see. This is the absolute Jersey music find of the century as far as I'm concerned, and I can't wait to see it! I'll post more about it here when it drops. Plugs are also in order here for ex-Toy drummer Steve Peer's awesome Steve's Theme Park project, a rollicking yet poignant reflection on old age as seen through the eyes of a bunch of old punks -- if you are one, it'll getcha right there for sure. And if you're ever in Ellsworth, Maine, check out the new pub Steve just opened there, Black Moon Public House, and his current band the Crown Vics. Tell 'em Brazen said hi!)

BRAZEN, BOBBY & CESAR: FROM SODA POPS TO LOS JARRITOS

It's time once again to tell you all about what's been going on in my world in the here and now, because Brazen has a new musical thing going and I think it's about time to tell you the amazing story behind it, and also to pay tribute to the man who started the ball rolling on it, then tragically left this world before I could finally make it happen.

Perhaps the story begins one fateful day in Orlando in late 2017, when a wonderful and eccentric young guitarist and songwriter named Bobby Clock was just taking a leisurely evening walk 'round his 'hood after work one day. Suddenly, he heard some very live drumming blasting out of someone's garage. Naturally, the musician in him just had to investigate, so Bobby hopped the fence in front of the house and almost scared the drummer walking in. He was from Mexico, his name was Cesar Marquez, and he had been living in O-Town for about a decade but hadn't played in any bands since he'd left Veracruz -- in fact, he was just starting to get back into playing drums. Bobby told Cesar he was looking to get his band going again and invited him to audition. In the process he found a very unique migrant with a mind of his own and a taste for musical adventure no one would have suspected. 

 Or maybe the story begins a few months earlier than that, when yours truly was invited to share a bill with Danny Feedback and Dr. Faux & the Right Angles at the infamous Copper Rocket Pub and Bobby was in the audience supporting Danny, his very best friend since high school. I remember him complimenting me quite enthusiastically afterward, and you can hear him roaring out his approval from the crowd on my recording of the show for sure. I, of course, had known of Danny pretty much since I first came to Orlando and was (and still am) in total awe of his eccentric and ever-changing all-around creative genius. Little did I know that he and Bobby were both about to become a big part of my O-Town rock & roll family.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the real story here starts sometime in the spring of 2018 when I first saw Bobby Clock and the Soda Pops play at a show at Uncle Lou's, backed by the outrageous visual effects of my longtime collaborator and friend Joshua Rogers. It seemed strange to me that the name was plural, seeing as how Cesar was the only Soda Pop at the time. But this time I complimented Bobby afterward and then, without thinking, suggested we make some sounds together. Mind you, it wasn't like I was looking to play with anyone then; I hadn't been in a band in 20 years and felt contented to just keep on truckin' as a solo act. So I surprised even myself when that suggestion came out of my mouth so suddenly. 

Eventually Bobby and I did get together and jam at his place, just making a lot of neat improvised noise with me doing some cool shit on the bass, which caught his ear most noticeably. The following week, on the fifth of July, I went back for another jam and Cesar was there with him. "Ray, we've got a proposition for you," he began, before praising my bass skills to the heavens and inviting me to officially make the Soda Pops a full power trio. And that was the start of a whole new musical journey for me that I'm still on to this day.

Bobby Clock and the Soda Pops, with me on bass and Cesar on drums, played a string of shows in the Orlando area that wonderful summer of 2018, and brought anarchy and mayhem everywhere we went. My unannounced debut with the Pops had friends walking in off the street and looking on goggle-eyed as we blew the roof off Uncle Lou's. A couple weeks later, kicking off a bill at the Haven (now known as the Conduit), we reportedly made the next band nervous about following us, and were later called "magic" by the show's promoter. And I almost killed Bobby after the last show we played when he borrowed my guitar and proceeded to stupidly duct-tape his broken strap to it and break a string on top of it! Folks loved us, hated us, feared us, but we triumphed with our sludgy, heavy sounds. It was a great summer, one of the most memorable of my life, and it was topped off with Bobby and Cesar throwing a lovely surprise party for me on my birthday. 

Unfortunately, my time as a Soda Pop was fleeting, and I'd only wanted to stick around for a short while anyway, so Bobby replaced me with none other than Danny Feedback, who brought a very different bass style and vibe to the band. (The two had previously collaborated on other projects, most notably Hippy Gone Wrong's "Analog Wildflower," perhaps the hardest, heaviest album I've ever heard come out of Orlando, Florida.) But tragically, these changes coincided with the rapid downward spiral of Bobby. After years of struggle with heroin addiction, he overdosed at the far-too-young age of 32 the very next summer. Bobby was both brilliant and troubled, a truly complex and overwhelming figure who was impossible to pin down. There was so much going on in him that just one summer spent as the Soda Pops seemed like half a lifetime's worth of rock & roll band experience to us. The adventures we had in just that short a time are way too much to go into here. But he would leave us to carry on as loud and proud as ever. 

The times became rough, very very rough. Bobby's demise marked the beginning of the darkest period of my entire life, as my dad passed away just a few months later and then the pandemic hit, which fueled my inevitable descent into a very deep depression. But in a strange twist of fate, Cesar and I wound up quarantining together, and this situation would save my life. In all honesty, if he hadn't been there for me during this time, I don't know what the fuck I would've done with myself. Cesar deserves all your praise as well as mine for this alone. 

We turned out to be perfect lockdown partners, and spent countless hours together just sitting in the shitty apartment he shared with his cousin at the time and talking about food, music, food, Bobby, food, and Mexican culture (especially the food). We went over his video archives from our days as the Soda Pops and from these resources we created a Youtube channel to preserve Bobby's memory. Somewhere along the way I introduced Cesar to my beloved Dug Dugs, whom he hadn't heard of back in Mexico, and as always happens when I play "Smog" for new friends, he became another huge fan! Our times hanging out together during Covid really helped us cope with all we were going through in the wake of Bobby's death, and a close friendship quickly grew out of it. 

Cesar and I had made a vow to make music together again in honor of Bobby -- in fact, the deal I'd made to join the Soda Pops was that they were eventually going to be MY backing band -- but we had no place to play at the time. The apartment complex Cesar lived in was just horrible, with neighbors living directly under him, and you couldn't even attempt to use it as a practice space. So instead we just sat on his balcony and stared into the sky, week after agonizing week of quarantine, just as bored shitless as everyone else with no shows to play or go to. One day we plugged his Korg Kaossilator synth (which he'd used many times to create spacey effects with the Soda Pops) into a practice amp and blasted it on the balcony just to watch the reactions from folks on the street, taking it just about as far as we could -- that's how bored we were. But when the police locked down that decrepit project one Saturday looking for an active shooter, we knew we had to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. 

So as our wretched 2020 came to a close, Cesar finally moved to a little shack not far away in a much better area in Apopka, and at last the seeds were planted for a new beginning. We now had a place we could make noise in, and I remembered the deal I'd made with him and Bobby to make them my backing band as well. By this time Cesar was keeping his drumming chops up playing in Danny Feedback's band, and when they shared the bill with me at the Subgenius Church-sponsored X-Day Fest over the July 4th weekend of '21, they devoted half their set to Pops covers while I played songs which would soon feature in our next phase. The lockdown was over, my depression was lifting, and finally, on Labor Day weekend, Cesar and I blew the lid off that boring holiday and had the jam session which officially started it all anew. On the spot I suggested we rename ourselves Los Jarritos, after our favorite Mexican... wait for it... soda pop! The perfect new name, one which alluded somewhat to the past while firmly establishing a new beginning. 

Los Jarritos began with a few cover tunes and some of my classic songs, but soon our renewed partnership inspired new original material in a tighter and more garage-y style than the Soda Pops. Taking inspiration from our scene and our surroundings, I came up with numbers like "Agua Fresca" and "Take Me Back To June" and "Chili Candy," songs reflective of our cultures, our environment and those weekly practices in Cesar's neighborhood in Apopka, a little mini-Mexico just on the outer tip of Orlando which has some of the most amazing Mexican food I've ever eaten in my life. I also wrote a very personal song called "Lifers" inspired by my own long rock & roll history and all the other old friends I know out there who are still playing it. We quickly got good enough to start playing out again, and where else could we have started doing shows but at the place we first and last played together, Uncle Lou's. Since then we've made one nice, raw, live Bandcamp release with my trusty pocket recorder which longtime Brazen & Bobby supporters Orlando Weekly wrote a great review of (thanks, Bao), and have even more musical surprises in store for the very near future! (Listen to "Lifers" below!)

When Los Jarritos performed at Uncle Lou's on the fifth anniversary of Bobby Clock's passing, it was just for a few very close friends and family members including Bobby's mother and younger brother (who already looks a lot like him!), and we all got something very positive out of it. We continuously referenced Bobby throughout the set before becoming the Soda Pops all over again for an extended jam on Bobby's "See & Look" as our last number. That was a moment which truly brought the whole thing full circle, and drove home the fact that Los Jarritos formed not only to respect Bobby, but to heal ourselves from perhaps the most untimely losses we've yet witnessed, not just of Bobby but of ALL THREE band members' fathers as well. (Fate can be very cruel sometimes, what the fuck can I say?)

And that's the story of two of the best bands I've ever had the pleasure of being part of. Just as Nirvana became the Foo Fighters, the Soda Pops have become Los Jarritos. Indeed it is a story with all the classic elements involved. One has to wonder if any of this would've happened had Bobby not heard that drumming coming from that garage down his street, or liked what he'd seen and heard of me weeks before. Would we ever have known what we would've missed? 

A zillion thanks to Jim Leatherman, legendary photographer and big Brazen fan, for his awesome photos of us playing live at Uncle Lou's!

THE BRAZENBLOG MUSEUM, PART 3: RELICS OF A BRAZEN CHILDHOOD

"PAUL STANLEY," PATERSON NEWS, JULY 5, 1978 -- Here I am at age 13 at the face-painting booth at Elmwood Park NJ's Fourth of July Hometown Fair. This was the second of three times I masqueraded as a member of Kiss; I got made up as all of them except Peter Criss at various times in my youth, I now (somewhat) shamelessly confess. Applying my makeup this time was the wife of my hometown's mayor, who held that position for 50 damn years until he finally died in office, and whose daughters I shared classes with in high school. (You'll notice she put the star on the wrong eye!) A local news photographer wandered by the booth as I was being made up and boom, I was front page news the next day. My first brush with fame!

UNCLE FLOYD SHOW MEMORABILIA, 1979 -- On the left is The 1979 Uncle Floyd Convention Official Souvenier (sic) Photo Book. It's a xeroxed collection of tons of screen shots of Floyd and his cast from what I consider his classic era (WTVG/WWHT Channel 68, 1978-80), captioned with dialogue and tons of jokes. There's also a cast guide with comprehensive lists of all the characters each one played. This thing would be pure solid gold to an old hardcore Floyd fan for sure, but I sure ain't giving up mine. Meanwhile, on the right, we have the July 1979 issue of New Jersey Monthly magazine and a big feature-length article on Floyd that makes some rather unflattering personal revelations about him, which led to some controversy within his fan base. In all fairness to Floyd (who is currently recovering from a stroke), I won't go into the grisly details here, but I will say the whole mess cost him some fans...

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, FEBRUARY 3, 1979 -- Pretty surprised I still have this one! The article on Sid's OD goes into QUITE a bit of detail, but the coverage of Rockefeller's funeral doesn't say one word about the fact that he died in the midst of a sexual encounter with an intern young enough to be his granddaughter... 

ELMWOOD PARK HIGH SCHOOL PUNK CREW, JUNE 16, 1980 -- This photo is a MAJOR snapshot of my teenage years frozen in time. It was the last day of the school year and my crew decided to show up in our most outrageous punk outfits to say goodbye to the teachers for another summer. That's me at bottom right, wearing my imported Elvis Costello t-shirt I paid far more than I should've for at Trash & Vaudeville, and my vest covered with punk badges. All of the Executives (EP's first punk band) are also in the shot as well as future members of Adrenalin OD and Mourning Noise (I'll let you figure out which ones), and after we posed for John Allen's camera, we all went to Tommy Koprowski's house (thanks for the HQ scan, Mr. K!) to celebrate the start of summer recess. His folks were out of town and in their absence he'd transformed the living room into a temporary practice space for the Executives. We blasted loud live punk rock music from that house all afternoon long. It was glorious. 

As an added bonus, here's a page or two from my teenage diary with more details on the afternoon's festivities. We'll get back to this diary in a bit, but first...

HENRY WINKLER AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO, 1977 -- When I was 11 years old I absolutely fucking worshipped Fonzie. I never missed an episode of "Happy Days," and I sure didn't miss a single piece of Fonz-related merch either. I bought the books, the t-shirts, the posters and yes, unfortunately, the cash-in records (the Heyettes and Laverne & Shirley albums are truly two of the worst records ever made). So when it was announced one week in the Daily News that the man who played The Fonz would be doing a special Saturday morning live Q&A session at Radio City Music Hall, with free admission, I managed to successfully talk my mother into taking me to see him. 

We set out before sunrise fully expecting the place to be mobbed, but surprisingly, given his popularity at the time, only a small crowd turned out for this thing. Henry was soft spoken and full of good humor throughout. I don't remember much about the session except for one part where he humorously answered some 3-year-old's query, "How do you put on your pants?" ("I zip first and buckle second!" was Henry's reply.) After about 45 minutes or so he sent us on our way saying "I don't have time to sign autographs right now, but I didn't want to disappoint you so I signed a bunch of photos earlier and you can get 'em in the lobby." I got mine as you can see. I was so big a Fonzie fan it wasn't funny. And I still think Henry Winkler's cool to this day. (Does anyone else out there remember this event? Mine could very well be the first ever online mention of it.)

BRAZEN DIARY ENTRY, MAY 5, 1979 -- The staff of Sam Goody's at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus, NJ deserve very special recognition here. Shortly after I turned 13, two record saleswomen named Diane Walsh and Carol Tatarian began taking me on field trips to Greenwich Village, which of course was where all the punk record shops were at. These two ladies, along with many others at Goody's, treated me like a brother and offered friendship, understanding, and respect at a time when I needed those things most in my lonely misunderstood life. I'd been dropping in on them several times a week up to then, especially on Saturday afternoons, and the fact that we shared such similar interests in music despite the obvious age gap just blew their minds. 

To a suburban kid being bullied and laughed at daily for his punk ways, these weekend outings were trips to heaven and back for me, guided by the saints themselves. I cannot express in words how deeply my first visit impacted me. It absolutely blew my mind to see so many punks walking around like they owned the place, and taking kindly to this little "mini-punk." This diary account of what I did with all of fifty bucks of my hard-saved allowance on my second of many trips to Greenwich Village one beautiful spring Saturday in '79 is a true punk/new wave shopping list and field trip report of its time. Oh, to go back to those Village field trips and the pure, raw NYC I used to... some of the best times of my life. Carol, and Diane, and all the Sam Goody guys (wherever you are), Brazen will ALWAYS love you all. Seriously, you cats saved my fucking LIFE. 

(This, by the way, is one of a number of such old entries, and you dear readers may get to read other juicy parts of a 13-year-old punk's diaries in a future post...)