|
Born
under the sign of Leo in 1971 to newlyweds Jack ( John the III ) and Linda, I came into the world and for the first few
months of my life lived in a beach house in Revere, Massachusetts. When I was just a few months old, my father,
who was a pulmonary technician, took a job at St. Vincent's Hospital in Worcester and we relocated to an apartment on Inverness
Ave up in Worcester. In November of 1972, my brother Matthew was born, my one and only sibling. Later on in the summer of
1973, we moved into what would be the family homestead for the next eighteen years, 97 Natural History Drive. Our home
was located in the rural tree filled region around Lake Quinsigamond and Wigwam Hill and since there weren't any children
who were my age in the neighborhood, I spent most of my time in nature with my imaginary playmates. Growing up, I was a shy
and quiet kid, tending to be "overly polite" and religious as well as having an overactive imagination. I loved to be creative
and did alot of drawing and such, one time when I was four, I even covered my parent's bedroom with the skyline view of an
imaginary city which wrapped around all of the walls of the room. (I can still remember scrubbing the walls clean).
At six years
old I enrolled at St. Stephen's Elementary school and began to recognize how different I was and how hard it was going to
be to fit in. Most of my youth was often spent keeping to myself since I was often the target of bullies and in my isolation
my imagination flourished. Steadily my grades, which started of as all A's, dropped sharply as I grew to hate school and the
kids who made every day hell for me there.
Luckily I found
a way out of the misery, by pursuing my interests in music and in 1981 I began my musical training as a member of the St.
Peter's Men & Boys Choir under the direction of Professor Louis Curran. Between 1980-1984, we performed in places like
St.Patrick's Cathedral in NYC and The National Shrine in Washington DC, St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal and I was even awarded
a medal from the Royal School Of Church Music of Oxford, England. I look back proudly at this beginning of my musical career,
after all, how many ten year olds get to perform Orrf's Carmina Burana or Handel's Messiah? Though my interest in music would
change as I got older and after I had moved on from the choir, I took many lessons from those years and I still apply it to
everything that I still do musically.
At around ten
or so (1982) I started listening to the radio but didn't like much of what I heard outside of a few bands like U2 and Prince,
which was pretty much the only stuff I listened to between 83-85. I also began to withdraw much more deeply into my own reality,
one that didn't include the torture that I endured at school and the problems that I was having at home as a result of my
younger brother's emotional problems. I spent much time focusing on drawing imaginary cartoon characters and writing short
stories about their adventures. I think alot about it now but those were the hardest days of my life, only having two really
bad places to go to and not knowing that there was a world outside of it all waiting for me.
As time went on I investigated different genres of music
which led to my cousin Sean turning me on to hardcore in 1985. He had made a tape for me in the Christmas of the following
year that had the Boston Not L.A. compilation on it, the rest they say is history. The Reagan years were a turbulent time
and I began to question much of what was around me and the institutions that had caused me so much suffering while growing
up. My main influence was my father who was a civil rights activist in the 60s and while he was not a radical in any way,
he was definitely committed to just causes throughout my youth and was very active in the community. Personally, my biggest
concerns centered around the possibility of a nuclear war and what that meant for my generation and that more than anything
really made me a part of the growing dissent. Soon after I began to declare myself as an anarchist and became fascinated with
social causes like the anti-apartheid movement and Irish Nationalism.
During my high school years
at Holy Name CCHS, even though I was alone and had no supporters whatsoever I became politically active by organizing boycotts
against companies who did business with South Africa, such as Coca Cola who had a vending machine in our cafeteria. I also
tried to organize 48 hour long fasts on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Both of these efforts were met with hostility and
I was often alone in my struggle.
In the summer of 1987 though I had a major life-change. I met some of the local punks and skaters who
used to hang out downtown and I became more actively interested in punk rock. We used to go check out shows over at the Quinsigamond
Village Community Center seeing bands like Patience, The Creeps and Raging Hope and soon after I began to experiment with
putting bands together of my own. I joined the band Candy Apple Abortions in the fall of 1987 after I had returned to Holy
Name for what would have been my junior year there. We played one show under the name Passive Resistance before I left the
band for whatever reason, I believe it was cause they were going "skinhead". Anyhow, back at school, I began to despise the
attention I was receiving at Holy Name. I had began to dress in torn clothing and suit coats ala Johnny Rotten and I was creating
a confrontation between myself, the students and then the faculty. I decided that going to a public school might be better
so I enrolled at North High but this only lasted for a week since the school was in such an uproar over my hair and clothing
that I was beginning to reconsider my choice of schools. For some reason or other Holy Name said that they would take me back,
even though I did get a phone call in the middle of the night telling me that if I went back to Holy Name that I was going
to be killed. Not taking the threat seriously I returned anyhow but the attention that I was already getting was about to
grow more menacing after my appearance in an article in the local newspaper about "punk rock".
In April of 1988, after
months of repeated harassment from the administration, I was suspended from Holy Name for having a mohawk. Technically they
told me to shave my head or to not come back, to which I replied "Well, I hope you miss me". It had been a long fight and
I no longer had the desire to carry on this battle with them. No other schools in the area would let me enroll so my scholastic
pursuits were put on hiatus and I felt that I would be better off without school anyhow. That very same night I took my first
toke and began to live my life the way I wanted to. On June 16, 1988 I was formally initiated into the psychedelic world and
have yet to come back. I spent a small number of years experimenting in Elm Park and other various locations and loved every
minute of it. I began to become more interested in things outside of the "punk rock spectrum" and fell in love with early
Pink Floyd , the Butthole Surfers and psychedelic art. Most of my free time was spent going to punk shows and trying to dress
as outlandish as possible and in the process drawing too much attention from the local police. There weren't any other punks
in Worcester at this time; you had alot of skins, metal heads and skaters but I was one of maybe two or three people who were
into punk and anarchy and it was a real pain in the ass at times. There were occasional all-ages shows that would occur at
the Worcester Artists Group or down at ' The Living Room ' in Providence, RI. Got to see some great shows at the Living Room
like Nina Hagen , Butthole Surfers , the Gun Club , Wendy O. Williams' band and of course my faves from Providence Neutral
Nation. Other than that we would hang out at people's houses, like Spike & Skullys over at 38 Dix Street, Judy and Brians
place on North Ashland or Jeff and Pages place over on Dayton Street. Other local hangouts back then included the Friendly's
over on Highland Street (r.i.p.), the Coffee Kingdom ( r.i.p. ), the Acapulco ( r.i.p. ) or over at Elm Park.
I would move into my first
apartment on Austin Street with my buddy Ted in June of 1989 but we would only live there for a few months before we all got
kicked out. Ted went back to his home in Michigan and he convinced me to visit him in the spring of 1990. During that visit
to Michigan we spent most of our time in Ann Arbor and after my week long stay I was convinced that I should move there.
But during the summer of
1990, I had a rude awakening. The U.S. was inching towards an inevitable conflict with Iraq and it shook me up to think that
there was a possibility that my friends and I would possibly be called up for the draft. During those cold winter months before
the first bombs were dropped on Iraq, I was extremely active in the protests that were gathering in Boston's streets. The
day before the bombing started I was arrested during a rally that was happening on Tremont Street in downtown Boston. When
I went in for arraignment I appeared alongside a large number of other protestors who had been nabbed the night before. My
belief is that the police would have had to answer to charges of pushing people through plate glass windows and shoving old
people down icy stairs at the Federal Building so they let all of the protesters go on the condition that we would not be
rearrested for our similar activities. One week after I was arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute,
and other assorted charges up in Worcester. I had been selling pot at the time because the economy was so bad that I couldn't
find a job and I had to eat somehow. I decided that the cards were stacked against me and made the choice to leave the state
rather than be locked up. (All charges were subsequently dropped when I attended court in 1997, the only charge that stuck
was the possession charge for which I was fined $100 plus costs.)
In February of 1991 I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and began to meet alot of the Ann Arbor locals who are still some
of my best friends to this day. I lived there for several months before moving to Chicago with my then girlfriend. There I
met a group of anarchists and became much more inspired to become active in social change. I returned to Ann Arbor in October
of 1991 and I became a part of a group known as the Homeless Action Committee, a housing rights group who used direct action
to bring awareness to the housing issues in Ann Arbor. I had also become acquainted with a number of anarchist punks from
the Cass Corridor in Detroit at the 404 Willis Gallery where bands like Social Outcast and Civil Disobedience were often playing
shows. This partially inspired me to organize an anarchist collective known as the Michigan Anarchists Network (M.@.N. ) and
it was decided that shows were a great way to educate people and to raise money for social causes. The first show I organized
was on June 14,1992 at the Thayer Anarchist Center for the H.A.C., this would be the first of many great shows that summer.
Bands like the Jaks , Undermind , Civil Disobedience and Bastard Squad would play to all ages crowds and many great times
came out of that summer.
During the
summer of 1992 I also began training to become a DJ at WCBN, the student run radio station at the University Of Michigan.
My run as a DJ would last for the next 11 years (on and off of course) and was a really great experience. At first I was just
hosting the All Out Attack but later on I was putting local bands on my radio show on a regular basis, either interviewing
them and playing tracks from their records or having them perform live in the studio.
Also
during that fateful summer of 1992, I met Rob Banks and not long after I became the vocalist for the now legendary punk-metal
group "Barbed Wire Play Pen". For several years we played all-ages shows all over Michigan and stirred up trouble wherever
we went. http://death_by_noise.tripod.com/barbedwireplaypen Between 1993 and 1995 I would organize and play a large number
of shows until I left BWPP in the fall of 1995.
A few months prior to my leaving BWPP, I moved into what would become "The
Red Light Lounge" at 1220 Prospect Street... http://death_by_noise.tripod.com/TheRedLightLounge/ which would have a steady run of underground shows including
an all-night ac%d test. After BWPP, I began experimenting with playing keyboards and trying to do new styles of music and
would form a number of freeform psychedelic bands. The first was the Breathing Selenas with ex BWPP drummer Steve Chesney
and ex Perplexa guitarist Steve Bradley, but the project was short lived and after we lost Chesney and gained another drummer
( and bassist Chris Box Taylor ) the project became The Wailing Wall. Out of this collaboration came one recorded song: The
Al Gore Version of The Macarena. The Red Light Lounge came to a close in August of 1997 and I also briefly was kicked off
of WCBN for a call-up prank on rival station WIQB, a suspension which would last roughly six months.
In October of that
year, I began to book concerts upstairs at the Heidelberg which would go on until April of 1998. http://death_by_noise.tripod.com/TheHeidelberg97_98/ The shows were really
great but werent very lucrative since the turn out was often small and it wasnt long before I grew too frustrated to continue.
After recovering
from the death of my father in December of 1998, I decided to return to Worcester, Massachusetts for a few months before relocating
to Los Angeles for a very brief stint as the keyboardist for the band Perplexa. Not liking Los Angeles, I returned to Ann
Arbor in March of 2000 and began to work at the All Music Guide for a number of years. Soon after my return to Ann Arbor,
I returned to WCBN and over the next three years I delivered some of my best broadcasts that included an interview with Noam
Chomsky. I also continued doing music, firstly being Liberation Beat Threat and the charismatic Tomb of the Unknowns both
of which had short but well received runs.
A year or so
after I returned I met the woman who I would end up marrying, Clara D. We met at the corner of State and Liberty one day and
a year later to the day, we were married. A few months after the wedding I made the decision to leave All Music Guide and
at the time became very active in the anti-war movement. Feeling disillusioned with the movement and eventually with Ann Arbor,
I felt that it was time to go home to Worcester and we moved there in the Fall of 2003. The move to Massachusetts would not
last long though. On the good side I was able to run into some old friends and I was able to spend alot of time around Lake
Quinsigamond but on the bad side there were no jobs and the overall scene in Worcester was pretty boring. After a few
moths of living in Worcester we returned to Michigan in mid-2004, living in Detroit for a year before moving back to Ann
Arbor.
2006 would be
a monumental year for me in two ways, and it would be the culmination of the period of growth that I had gone through
the two previous years. After a brief return to WCBN in the summer of that year, I would start classes at Washtenaw Community
College. Currently I am studying history and working towards a career in academia. JG 6/13/07
|
