NARTHEX

The punk revolution may not have been a commercial hit in the late 1970s, but it chipped out a narrow crack in the wall of a profitably well-controlled music scene. Before anyone knew it, a massive flowering of tiny bands and independent ideas sprouted from that crack, networking and thriving modestly for a decade or more to follow. Some people misinterpreted punk as only directionless anger, but many of us read it as a liberating and motivating Do-It-Yourself message:

To hell with corporate-annointed virtuoso hacks sprinkling their divine genius over arena receptacles. You only need a few basic skills and something of your own to say.

In this new world, the old model of rock god superstars servicing worshipful fans became bankrupt. The stage was chopped down to floor level, and we could all be fan and performer at the same time. It was a time when starting a band was both no big deal and at the same time, a grand adventure. A few bands hit it big, more not quite so big, but still releasing albums and touring. You already know their stories. Most bands only played in their own region and perhaps never managed any releases beyond homemade cassettes. You don't know many of their stories, though it was all of these small stories put together which made for a remarkable era in music. Which brings us to the story of our own band: Narthex.

Dean and I first got together in our high school days in Upper Bucks County, PA. During summer vacation of 1976, we both signed up for a video workshop series running at the little TV studio operated by the school and the local cable company to satisfy their public access requirement. We hit it off fine, being mutual fans of Monty Python and other British crazies. When school started up again in the fall, along with a couple of other troublemakers, we turned up in the same first period graphic arts class, where we threw around a lot of art/comedy/music ideas which mostly never carried through. I'd been dabbling with various cheap instruments for years, with a big interest in synthesizers -- in those good old days of analog equipment and weird noises (and unobtainably high prices). I finally got one of my own, later that term, building a low-cost kit synthesizer from PAiA. And I found that without a multi-track recording studio to go along with it, you couldn't really accomplish all that much (and this was a good ten years before multi-track gear would become anywhere near affordable). Dean had been drumming for years, with a quality kit. We got together to jam a couple of times, but I really didn't have any instruments to stand up to him.

Several years before, I'd been a hopeless progressive rock fan. British only, please. Hey, synths and weird noises... I was a happy little dupe. That and some heavy metal for the angry times -- and an occasional fit of good taste, like Mott The Hoople or T.Rex. Around 1975, I picked up Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets, which was an escape hatch from prog purgatory, leading to Roxy Music, John Cale and much more -- eventually the Velvet Underground. I also picked up on WXPN -- freeform FM radio out of Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania -- which exposed me to worlds of innovative music that I'd never have heard otherwise: free jazz, spaced out Krautrock, radical British art rock, avant garde classical, even some 60s garage-psych. On vinyl, I was digging into the likes of Zappa, Captain Beefheart and those overlooked British absurdists, the Bonzo Dog Band. And on another track, I was checking books out of the school library on the history of the Dada and Surrealist artists. It all seemed relevant, somehow. When punk emerged in '76, and burst wide open in '77, it felt like it bundled all of this stuff together into one fat spitball of free energy (and I didn't need Greil Marcus to point out the connections). WXPN was on top of this too, playing tracks ranging from Devo's original indie version of Mongoloid (ages before the first album) to the Sex Pistols' Anarchy In The UK single in early '77 (and it was an exciting afternoon when I heard that for the first time, lemme tell you).

By Summer 1978, I was out of school and in a job, finally with the money to buy a real instrument. I'd always been intimidated by the guitar. More than any instrument, it carried that old rock god aura. But with the rock gods kicked off their pedestals, what was my excuse? I jumped right in with an electric guitar -- no fooling around with a folk guitar for me. On only the fifth day, Dean and I got together for a jam, and I finally had enough firepower to keep up with him. It was fun, but you probably wouldn't have wanted to hear it (even if I do now wish there was a tape). I confess though, that I was still intimidated enough by the guitar that I bypassed standard tuning, using open tuning instead. I didn't want to spend ages learning those fiddly chord forms. I wanted to kick out the jams right now! My big justification was that a regular chord should be an easy, straight barre. If you want fancy chords, THEN you make fancy shapes. And as well, I wanted to play some slide guitar (the Captain Beefheart influence), which made open tuning the definite thing to do. My only instruction book at the time was Arlen Roth's Traditional, Country and Electric Slide Guitar. I'm sure he would have been in horror at the uses I put it to. I began cranking out loads of crappy songs, learning at the same time how to write them and how to play the guitar. I'd had music theory classes in school, so it wasn't like I was starting from scratch, but this was an altogether different kettle of smelly fish.

Dean, still in high school, joined up with a teen cover band. They had the usual revolving door lineup and ever-changing repertoire, mainly mainstream AOR rock.

By Spring 1980, the band name was Queue, and the repertoire had rolled around to covers of Blondie, The Pretenders, The Ramones and The Clash. I was drafted in, along with the latest girl singer.

The highlight with Queue was my first real show, when we were among several bands to play at a Super Sunday community festival in Norristown, PA. It went okay, but was rather odd... a large crowd filling the street, and us with our slightly off renditions of a barely commercial set list, set up on one of those truck-trailer stage enclosures. Odd. How on earth did we get that job? By the end of that summer, the band finally splintered for good, with various people leaving for various colleges. Dean said, "Well, we've still got our thing, right?" Yeah. No more covers, no more compromises. I pulled out the best of my old songs and got to work on new and better material. Dean began handing me lyrics of his own to set to music. My singing was rather dire, but I figured that Joe Strummer was almost as bad, and he was cool (and I'm sure there were a whole lot of us out there using Joe for that same rationalization, bless him). All we needed was a bass player, and that would be easy, right?

Wrong. We never planned to be a duo. We didn't intend to be the White Stripes' grandpappies. But the people we auditioned never quite worked out. Or we were too goofy for them. And then on December 13, 1980 we played our first show -- a local house party in a mobile home (what was it with us and trailers back then?). We did it despite our lack of a bass player, and what the hey -- the world didn't end. By Summer 1981, we stopped trying to find a bassist. We were tired of trying and just plain accustomed to not having one around to get in the way. Although I rarely used the slide anymore, my open guitar tuning turned out to be a very handy thing now, allowing me to slash out buckets of noise at ease, with big chords and phantom-player drone strings. The extra space also gave Dean the freedom to take his hyperactive drumming as far as he wanted to take it. It was more fun this way, and we could fit the whole band in Dean's VW Beetle.

Initially (way back in 1979, actually), we had named the band Zero, but by early '81, we gave up on that. We kept stumbling across more and more bands named Zero, or some near variation. By the Spring, after much sifting and head-scratching, we decided on Narthex -- which was found in an Edward Gorey illustration piece titled The Nursery Frieze. [definition: "Late Greek - narthex, box, giant fennel, plant with a hollow stalk, perhaps of Indic origin"] It could have been worse. It could have been better. It did seem to give people a lot of trouble over the years... "Nartrax?" "North Axe?" "Nortreks?"

1981 was a year of lots of practice, lots of song writing and lots of song scrapping... figuring out what worked best through trial and error. There were a few local DIY gigs, mainly house parties, and a November show at the Souderton American Legion Hall -- paired with local new wave combo, Hair Club For Men (including 14 year old Jonny Wurster on drums). On August 28, there was a run north to Allentown for a set at an arty, part-time storefront club called Egads (we met underground comix artist, Mark Beyer, there on another night when we were only spectators). Our first real public show, it went over pretty good, opening for noise/torture combo, Los Dominoes. Between these occasional shows and distribution of our basement cassettes, we built up a tiny local following. In the meantime, another schoolmate, David Reckner, had come on board as our manager. Then a student at Temple University in Philadelphia (while Dean attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia), Dave was a much better salesman and raconteur than either of us. He and Dean began leaving tapes around Philly with various DJs and bookers, hoping for a breakthrough. Dave began dragging some Temple RTF (Radio/Television/Film) classmates north to attend our occasional shows. An October 24 party in Dave's basement was the first time Joe Jack Talcum and Dan Mapp (future Dead Milkmen tour manager) caught our little routine.

In late 1981, while visiting a friend who was attending the Academy of Fine Arts in downtown Philadelphia, Dean happened to meet one of the housemates: Linda McGothigan. Linda was a bartender and a punk fan on a mission. Along with her partner, Louis Schiaro, Linda was promoting weekend shows at the Landmark Tavern -- a small neighborhood bar located on the corner of 20th and Fairmount. Going well beyond the usual cassette, Dave hauled Linda and Louis north to audition us in person at a practice session. They liked what they heard, and Linda booked us for a show at the Landmark on January 8, 1982, giving us our big break into Philly -- for which we'll always be grateful. A week beforehand, Dean and I spent a great day hanging fliers all over downtown Philly with Linda as our guide -- giving us pointers, mapping out the scene and introducing us to some people we ran into (and I got to pick up the just-released Stickmen album downstairs at Third Street Jazz). The show itself went well, although Dean's mini monitor melted down between our two sets.

Later that month, I received a phone call at suppertime from Bobby Startup, booker and DJ at the Eastside Club. In the early to mid-80s, the Eastside was the cornerstone of the Philly underground scene, so this was big stuff here. The Damned had canceled the following night's gig, and Bobby wondered if we could fill in. The Damned?!? Picture my jaw dropping. Okay, let's be realistic -- we weren't exactly filling in for The Damned. The originally scheduled opener, Physical Push, was getting that suicide assignment. We were filling the opening slot. But still... The Damned? Holy cats! Dave had probably given Bobby a tape and contact information at some earlier point, but apparently Bobby had heard good things about us from the Landmark show -- good enough to try us out on a Friday night slot. Of course we said yes, and after 24 hours of nervous anticipation, we sat in the alley behind 1229 Chestnut Street, waiting for someone to open the battered load-in door. We did pretty darned well, and it was very exciting to play to a larger, packed and hip crowd. And technically at least, we did indeed debut at the Eastside filling in for The Damned. A good story for the grandkids. We closed the night out with the usual late/early breakfast at the IHOP, meeting up with the Landmark gang.

Starting out like that, 1982 was a good year for us. With Bobby slotting us in at the Eastside roughly bi-monthly, and finding other shows here and there, clubs or DIY, we managed to have something going on every month.

It was around this period that we were also fooling around with a noisy alter ego, the Hunger Artists. For that story and web album, hop over to the Hunger Artists page.

Narthex played another show at the Landmark on March 19, which I recall as being one of our best ever -- the second set especially flowed with tremendous energy. This was the show which Joe dragged Rodney Anonymous out to see, where we supposedly inspired their vow to make the Dead Milkmen a real band ("If these jokers can get away with it..."). Also on hand was our schoolmate, Lee Woulfe -- home on leave from the Air Force and drafted into crewing for the night -- a future Dead Milkmen roadie. That's a twist of fate which we never realized until now: with Dan Mapp there as well, the entire future Dead Milkmen team was in the house, minus only Dave Blood. Rounding out our own crew was another old schoolmate, Stephen Wallis, who wound up being pressed into service as the doorman, checking for IDs, never mind that he was underage himself. A great night. Sadly, the Landmark didn't host shows much longer. Some knuckleheads decided to trash the toilets during a hardcore show, and the owner cut things off.

In May, we opened for Pretty Poison at the Eastside, back when they were proto-Goth rather than techno-dance. They seemed to like us as an opener and got us into a couple more venues with them. I suppose we were an ideal opening band -- minimal equipment to get in the way and probably not seen as much of a threat. National level bands we opened for were Human Switchboard in October and Polyrock in February, 1983. The show with Polyrock was another of our best ever sets. We would have opened for Scientific Americans one Thursday night in July at the Eastside, but they canceled at the last minute with the classic van breakdown, and we played both sets.

Sometime that summer, we knocked out one or two tunes in the Temple TV studio for a student-produced magazine show. It was so-so, with a bad microphone setup on the drums, no vocal monitor for Dean and me feeling uncomfortable with being on camera. We never did see the results. If there's a tape floating around out there somewhere, it certainly would be interesting (or horrible) to see.

On October 5, 1982 we busted our tiny band fund for a session at a local 8-track studio, DAK Audio. We did it like a regular gig -- loaded in early evening, set up and worked our way through a set of ten tunes. It was a totally live recording, with me in the control room to keep my vocals separated from Dean's drums out in the big room. Very close to all first takes, as I recall. We returned another evening to do the mixes. Now here's one of the major mistakes of our quasi-career: We should have put those tracks on vinyl and gotten them out into the world. I'm not saying it would have made much difference to our destiny. I'm sure it wouldn't have been a hit. But at least we would have gotten something out there into the historical record, both the object itself and reviews in the 'zines (of whatever opinion). Homemade cassettes for friends are one thing -- publicly released vinyl is another. But we were lazy, lacking in funds and frankly, intimidated by the bureaucracy of manufacture and distribution. I suppose our DIY enthusiasm ran out at the commerce and marketing stage. Then again, it may be just as well that we didn't put it out -- we really missed the boat on the mix. It turned out very dry and squeaky clean, with our basement grit totally absent (which is why this web-album is drawn from our home recordings -- it's a much truer picture of our sound). Still, we should do a remix someday. The performances were tight and punchy -- it just needs a grit restoration.

[Update: November 28, 2006 -- And now we have that remix, lovingly tended by Chris Unrath (of No Milk, Baby Flamehead, Gimme, Big Mess Orchestra, Helen Back & the Str8 Razors and many more) at his Eardrumland studio. And thanks to tireless Philly music booster, Skip Heller, the album is finally a commercial release on his Skyeways Records. Disc available via CD Baby, audio files via iTunes.]

So for good or ill, the studio session simply resulted in more low circulation cassettes -- another wave of demos for club bookers and DJs. WXPN now had a regular Sunday night punk/new wave show: Yesterday's Now Music Today. Dean talked to one of their DJs, Jazz Connor, and we wound up mailing a tape to her. She kindly played our song, Are You From England? one Sunday night, beaming us out on legendary WXPN -- a big moment indeed. Well, maybe, but I was too busy hearing everything that was wrong with it to enjoy the moment. Duh.

In early 1983 we did a bit of experimenting with playing to some mainstream audiences, stepping outside of the underground safety zone. It went predictably badly. The audiences generally hated us, we hated them, and we went into sonic punishment mode on them. Mind you, there were usually a few masochists out there who enjoyed that, so it wasn't a total loss.

Our schedule had never been especially full, but by Spring 1983 the pickings were getting mighty slim. We'd made plenty of tactical errors and misdirected efforts, failing to make good on the terrific breaks we had gotten. Probably not helping was that our music was following the natural trend toward complexity, and in this case, plain weirdness. It was pushing severely at the limits of my compositional and instrumental abilities of the time. And then there were my lyrics... nursery rhymes about magical animal spirits living in the ditch? Sheesh! The creative end of things was rapidly losing direction and control. Or to put it another way, I no longer knew what I was doing (and no, it wasn't booze or drugs -- I simply didn't have enough musical knowledge to pull off the things I was attempting, and was unable or unwilling to draw it back to a simpler approach). In June '83 I fired myself, and Dean checked out a few other bands. With amazing prescience, he picked the embryonic Dead Milkmen, and of course the rest is history. Though I've always suspected he picked them just so he could continue to be the tallest guy in the band.

That is the small story of our small band. If nothing else, we at least picked up the DIY inspiration and passed it along to a few more people, who have stories of their own to tell. We were all part of a unique episode in musical/cultural history. Rather than leaving it to the distortions of critics and corporations, those of us who participated should all be sharing our first-hand accounts. There's a million stories out there in the eternal city of vans and station wagons, soundchecks and set lists, beer puddles and all-night diners, tedious time-killing and those fleetingly fantastic moments onstage. Hopefully, everyone's story will be told and preserved somewhere out here in the digital stew.

And along with our stories, let's share our sounds.

Below is an album which never was -- a selection of tracks chronicling our musical history. Help yourself. Have a laugh or hold your ears. Imagine what life was like back in that world.

©2004 M.Ace

(Okay Dean, your turn... let's see that Baby Flamehead webpage.)

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