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April 2, 2008

The Heathens

I’ve been in several bands in my life. My favorite, The Heathens, were together off and on for ten years. I always had incredible, almost paralyzing stage fright when I played onstage but never with The Heathens because I knew we were great. I joined the band on bass guitar after their singer and bass player left, fairly early in the band’s history. We played a set at WXPN studios during Michel Polizzi’s jazz show, of all places, in 1983. We did 13 songs in ten and a half minutes! Three of them are posted here:

We still sound pretty hair-raising but don’t worry, it’s only about a minute and a half total. I have no idea what the titles are. They had lyrics but we never did find anyone to sing them.

The Heathens also had two tracks on “GET OFF MY BACK” the Philly hardcore compilation from 1982. We also played a loft party that included the much-anticipated debut of Ruin who were never less than spectacular live.

So, it was me on Fender Mustang bass, the extremely glamorous B.A.L. Stack on guitar and Sky Kishlo on drums. B.A.L. was also in The Stick Men at the time, maybe the best band ever from Philly, and the amazing Wild Women of Wongo. (As you can see from the poster above, she had a busy night! That’s her in the center.) Sky is one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard. He’s currently playing with long-time Philly band King of Siam (They’re great! Check their myspace page for dates.) and was in Strapping Fieldhands. We also played together for a short time in Size Queen.

I’m so glad Sky gave me a copy of this stuff. I thought it was lost forever.

The picture in the poster above is from Wild Women of Wongo’s debut performance at a Performing Arts Festival in, get this, the Broad Street Subway concourse! (It smelled better then.) That’s the Spruce Street terminus of the concourse behind them. Wild Women of Wongo consisted of guys in loincloths drumming on whatever was available and women in Wilma Flintstone-like costumes doing fake “Jazz Dance.” They were incredible! The crowd loved them. SEPTA did not. They were the last to play and, had there been a plug to pull, SEPTA would have pulled it. Luckily for everyone they were unamplified—but still deafeningly loud—so the powers that be had no choice but to let them continue until they were done.

Good times.

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Posted by HighStrungLoner in Music at 11:13 PM

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