We Are the Dying World

Next week, de Schmog plays the Axiom Reunion Party which will actually be held at Fitzgerald's. We're playing Friday with Sprawl.

de Schmog has reunited in one form or another several times since we first went our separate ways. Sprawl never has. That's odd since the Sprawl guys live in pretty close proximity to one another. Just more evidence that we can maintain distance sometimes by staying close.

What's not odd though is the venue. Sprawl was not only the King of Parking at one time, they were also the Kings of Fitzgerald's.

A Fitzgerald's anyway, not the one I knew. In the 80's, I watched Fitzgerald's change and then Fitzgerald's may or may not have changed me but at the very least what happened there influenced my decision to change myself.

(thanks alot Justin, that's really hard to get out now)

My first Fitz shows were the Blues - the Leroi Brothers then John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers - - stuff like that. I saw Reverend Horton Heat play the downstairs bar. That was before he went metal-billy. His bassist was a tiny guy with one of those upright jobs. He climbed on top of his bass and during his solo he took it upstairs where George Clinton was playing. I can't remember why I wasn't up there but anyway that was different for Fitz. Soon more shows like PFunk started creeping in.

Fitz opened its doors for the kids and once under age, the kids did indeed come out. Where else were they to go anyway? Yeah you've got an answer for that I know, but where else could they go that the parents trusted to drop them off?

The cool thing was that kids came out for local groups and treated us like stars. Sprawl was king and when they played, Fitzgerald's was packed, maybe a thousand kids. de Schmog got some too.

The experience had its good and its bad.



On the good side we didn't have to sacrifice so much to know what it feels like to have hundreds of kids at our show, buy all our merch, and crowd the stage like we were Mtv stars. And wow, they were out there singing back to us, every single lyric and getting mad if we didn't sound like the record. And. They moshed. What the fuck?

Yeah I know what moshing is. I did a lot of it before I was twenty. But we called it slam dancing and the music was raging. What the kids at Fitz were doing was the same and different all at once. But it came to me as the first little reality smack that what I was doing on stage was kind of worthless. I didn't want my music to be for slam dancing. I was over slam dancing. When I was slam dancing there would be maybe thirty boys at the show. Unlike my slam dancing days, girls were coming out for the sounds at Fitz. Girls liked de Schmog, they didn't like getting slammed into the stage by a drunk jock. But they weren't about to stop slamming even if the band requested it.

My songs were about divorce, separation and how to come to terms with a world without love; certainly not unusual stuff for kids to get in to. And looking back perhaps fitting for only one style of dancing. But I didn't feel like a role model. I wanted to take drugs. Not that these kids wanted a role model. They wanted to know that it was cool to take drugs. In any event, it wasn't that I thought my message was wrong for them.

Meanwhile back at Rudz, de Schmog built a different crowd. A crowd that could get into Rudz. This was different than other early 90's Fitzgerald's bands. They didn't care to play Rudz or they had some kind of moral hang up against playing bars or something like that. We wanted a retreat. We got it too. de Schmog built a great Rudz following. Rudz was home and we had our greatest moment there.

We also held the record for the largest bar sales. That doesn't say much for our playing so I'll tell you about our playing. We were the best. Better than all the rest. Hopefully we didn't act like it (to our credit). Certainly we didn't always play like it (to Rudyard's generous bartenders' credit). Absolutely we desired it.

The funny thing is we got some pretty zealous fans at Rudz too because old people can relate to separation pretty darn good.

In the end we killed Fitzgeralds-deSchmog. We did an album at Scott Ayer's place called Kiddie Wonderland. It was a genuine ode to Houston. We held the CD Release Party at Fitzgerald's with a cotton candy machine and other carny stuff.

We also asked Rusted Shut to play with us. They liked to kill things.

I was sometimes an energetic guy back then. Always on the phone with some other band or booking agent or something like that. The band would practice more than twice a week, hard to fathom now. I wouldn't want to practice more than once a week now. I was writing songs left and right, mostly songs that I later felt were unfinished. Meanwhile, the questionable thing that we were working towards was falling apart - from within perhaps, but because of what we saw without.

In the end I think the fans at Fitz were pretty great. I've met a lot of former fans in their adult life and found that many have gone on to do great things, artistically or career-wise. I find it hard not to appreciate being a part of their youth, even if the words "you were my favorite high school band" sting.

Brandon told me one fan moved to Florida and started a short lived band called Kilian Sweeney Lives. Apparently he just thought it was a cool name. I can't say I wasn't somewhat flattered, but really how would you like that?

I don't know. Sometimes your best laid plans don't go anywhere but awry. You know what I mean? Change comes to you from all sorts of places. You're doing your thing in one city and your mom gets an aneurysm in another and suddenly you're back home helping your pop. You get a job; and they move you to Fishkill; and then the company keels over; and you're out on the street hustling again. I'd like to think I actually have more control over it all than I do. Most of us are sheep in this world. I'd like to think I'm not. I've always been a band leader just maybe not a good one. Sometimes what they call people like me isn't a leader at all but rather someone who just can't handle authority.

Life is sad, brothers and sisters.
And it's a bust.
All I can do is do what I must.
So I try to do it well.
Not like "better than all the rest."
Because I do it for you and you do it for me.

Maybe that's how I've changed. I don't know, you tell me.

Song
de Schmog - Water to Wine