Posted
June 24, 2002
WANTON IN 50 STATES: THE SILLIES ARE
COMING TO A JAIL NEAR YOU
The Sillies first came to our attention in the Bar courtesy of Total
Energy's "Motor City's Burning" compilations. Their track, "Break
Loose", was a tasty sample of their off-the-wall, but very musical, anarchy.
We liked what we heard.
Formed
by vocalist Ben Waugh (pictured) in early 1977 as Detroit's first self-described
"punk rock" group, The Sillies debuted second-billed to Rob Tyner's
(new) MC 5 on August 10, 1977 at Detroit's Kramer Theatre to a crowd of more
than a thousand people. A Detroit News editorial the next day described them
as "an x-rated gong show for the young and desperate". Our sort of
band, even if we're not so young...
They went on to start their own nightclub, Bookie's Club 870. The Police, The
Damned, The Dead Boys, The Cramps, The Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, Ultravox,
and Iggy Pop all played Bookie's under the auspices of The Sillies, while The
Sillies themselves played the top clubs in Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland and Ann
Arbor, missing dates in New York and San Francisco because of personnel problems.
The December 1980 tour with Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers took
a heavy toll on the band emotionally. The winter was bitterly cold, holding
down attendance. Even John Lennon's recent death was blamed by local promoters
for mediocre crowds. The highlight of the tour came when Thunders stole Ben
Waugh's gloves in Hamilton, Ontario. After convincing Thunders to return them,
Waugh inadvertently lifted the ground on the amplifier he and Thunders were
sharing for the tour. This resulted in severe electrical shock for anyone who
was plugged into that amp and touching a mic stand, especially with their lips,
which Thunders was prone to do. The Sillies had been cheated out of their first
night's pay by the club owner, the reputed head of the Hamilton mafia. Thunders
convinced the owner that he, too, was Italian and made sure he was getting paid
while leaving the Sillies penniless and friendless in a foreign country. After
a particularly wild and energetic set by the Sillies, Waugh settled back into
the audience to enjoy what he knew would be Thundersâ most entertaining performance.
One song and five severe shocks later, Thunders left the stage screaming.
There were frequent line-up changes nut other problems too. A small altercation
at the Sillies show in Cleveland resulted in the bar being barricaded against
hostile locals until the police finally arrived. Once they did, they told the
band point-blank to leave Cleveland and never return under threat of immediate
arrest. A relatively innocent appearance at the University Of Detroit hosted
by TV personality "The Ghoul" concluded with the band being escorted
from the premises by campus security and being banned from university property-
for life. A show in Lansing, Michigan's capital, was stopped by local police
well before it was even held. It was moved beyond city limits to open farmland,
but the electrical generator went up in 20 feet of flames just prior to the
Silliesâ set and a fleet of huge fire engines came streaking across the field
while Sillies members fled to get out of their way. Even the first Chicago show
resulted in a bottle-throwing fest in the audience, the Sillies equipment van
being towed away with one band member inside just prior to performance, and
the Chicago police interrogating the band members while they were simply waiting
to go on stage to play their set. None of it stopped the club from booking the
band again while Chicagoâs "Gabba Gabba Gazette" gushed about their
new favorite band, The Sillies.
The band disbanded, only to reform in the early '90s. That was it until
a reunion show earlieron Good Friday 2002 with longtime member Kirsten Rogoff
joining Ben Waugh and other players at their old stamping ground of Bookies
in Detroit. Former Detroiter Jim Ransweiler contacted the band with the idea
of releasing all their live and unreleased studio recordings plus historic photos
and live concert footage on an enhanced CD.
"America's Most Wanton" hits U.S. stores on June 24. "The
Sillies Go West!" tour begins July 4 in LA and concludes July 11 at Los
Angeles Coliseum as part of Van's Warped Tour 2002. More dates are threatened
and the album itself is one of the most diverse, yet bracing, chunks of aluminium
likely to grace your CD player this year. THE
BARMAN spoke with Sillies founder/singer/guitarist and main songwriter BEN
WAUGH about the reunion, the album and the other hi-energy Michigan energy bands
they shared stages and backstage riders with.
Q Twenty years after winding up, what's the story with the Sillies CD and
run of live shows?
Jim Ransweiler e-mailed us after finding our website late last year. He had
seen a show of ours on April Fool's Day 1990 at a striptease club. Somehow,
he remembered a band was playing. We were just looking at the girls, except
for Kurse-Ten, who was actually paying attention to her playing. Jim wanted
to know if we had anything recorded besides the 1979 single. We had a huge backlog
of unreleased recordings. Jim suggested a CD and a tour to support it. You can
blame him for this whole thing. He gave Nashville Pussy their start and now
a Sillies reunion and CD. Hanging's too good for the likes of him.
Q Jim's from Scrooch Pooch?
Scooch Pooch. He used to be with a major label and quit to start his
own.
Q
How did the Good Friday reunion show in Detroit go?
It went well (Kurse-ten and guest vocalist Rachel pictured duetting)
and we took a live version of "Apparition" from that show and put
it on the CD, so there really is a span of 25 years of recordings on the CD.
Q What was it Wayne Kramer said about you guys getting together again?
He said to Kurse-Ten that he heard playing in The Sillies was now a felony.
I first met Wayne in '77 and he told me we needed to get outta town if we were
going to amount to something. He was right.
Q The band had a rep for outrageous behaviour. Let us in on a few instances
of your wilder nights.
Most of it was due to accidents, like my pants splitting onstage a couple of
time. I finally retired those as being untrustworthy. I also used to swing from
an overhanging ledge on the ceiling at Bookie's and swing back and forth like
a pendulum to the music. Other than that, we were just fairly energetic onstage
and had a lot of fun, as did the audience.
As far as the simulated anal intercourse and making out with a girl in the
audience after pulling her onstage, things just happened that didn't repeat
themselves. As far as the upcoming shows, I have no idea what, if anything,
will happen.
Q
Being of, um, relatively advanced age, how do you expect The Sillies to be received
on the final date, in front of a Warped Vans audience? They tend to be "kiddie
punk" and "skate punk" crowds here in Australia...
I've found that the younger the audience is, the better we're received. They
have fewer preconceptions of what is expected of them as an audience and are
generally there just to have a good time. Older audiences sometimes stare at
us in disbelief. I think they will have no trouble with an 81 year old punk
rock saxophonist, "Uncle Don" Weischmann, who will be playing "Sex
For The Handicapped" and "Lesbo Love" with us at the LA Coliseum."
Q Digressing for a second...do I dare ask what you think of the White Stripes?
I still haven't heard them. All I know is it's a guy and his ex-wife playing
as a duo. Keith and I used to do that when we couldn't get enough people to
show up for a gig. The sister of the girl in the White Stripes used to come
see us now and then. I don't know if they ever saw any of those guitar/drums
duos or not, but we only did it out of desperation. It always sounded better
to me with a full band. At least they don't have to keep looking for bass players
and the guy re-upholsters chairs, so he has something to fall back on when the
critics suddenly hate them for no reason.
We actually have a version of The Kinks' "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion"
that addresses that. We're supposed to do that on this tour, though the press
will hate us for it. It isn't about all music journalists, just the trendies
who chase every fad and know or care nothing about music.
Q Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson played on one of the CD tracks, "Punk
Rock Girl". Tell me how that came about.
Wayne did his tracks back in 1981 for Dan Lamar's release of the song. Dennis
came in a couple of months ago and did the drum track. He had tendonitis at
the time and injured himself doing the track, but he came back the next day
and did take after take until he was satisfied with the result. He REALLY suffered
for his music! I don't think people realize what a really good musician he is.
We've played a few shows together before and he really is a consumate professional.
He has some sort of recording project of his own that he's working on now; I
just don't know the particulars.
Q I heard it was called the Phantom Patriots, or something. Some sort of
collective...
Thanks! He didn't tell me it had a name or what it was. He was in plenty of
pain by the time he left.
Q
The disc is actually a collection of mostly older material. Can you walk us
through a few of your fave tracks?
'Fresh Flesh" was completed for the CD, so it's new, even to me, though
most of the tracks were done in '81. Niagra of Destroy All Monsters was originally
supposed to do the vocal on it back then, but she never got around to it and
when it was mentioned in Creem Magazine back then, she freaked because she thought
it was going to be a duo with just her and myself. That's what it would have
turned out to be, but we never got around to finishing it.
Everybody likes "Love You To Death" and "Sex For The Handicapped".
They were done decades ago, so I tend to take them for granted. I keep forgetting
very few people have ever gotten to hear these recordings other than a handful
of record company people and nightclub owners.
Q Let's wind back to the early live days...what had you been doing prior
to forming the Sillies?
I was working in an auto plant, sometimes 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
I met Sheila and Profane at a jam session in early 1977 and we talked about
conceptual art and forming a punk rock band with some depth to the material.
None of the bands at the time had girls in them and it was a macho thing to
make it a "guy" thing. One friend told me that we lost some people
just because there were girls in the band. I thought it made us more interesting
and helped us to stand out. I never wanted to be a Ramones or Sex Pistols clone.
The bands that eventually tried that are all long gone.
Q
The band formed in 1977. Tell me how and why the band came together and what
constituted the Michigan music scene back then. What was the state of Detroit
music in '77? Why had the scene withered on the vine?
The Detroit rock scene in '77 was almost exclusively bar bands doing fivesets
of cover material, typically FM Top 40. All the bands played the same set of
songs for the most part. Corporate takeovers of FM stations and record companies
adopting much stricter signing policies meant that you couldn't get an independent
record on local radio anymore no matter how popular the band was. The Eagles
and Stones had both done blatant disco singles by then and I remember a lot
of people saying at the time that rock was dead and disco was the wave of the
future. Radio really sucked, especially in Detroit.
Punk was a rejection of slick production, conformity, and the eagerness to
make a buck regardless of what it took. The punk bands had a great deal more
in common with mid-60's bands, which is where the term "punk rock"
came from. It referred to bands like the Shadows Of Knight and The Standells
plus the early Stones. After two years of running our own nightclub (Bookie's)
and booking bands like ourselves, the whole scene turned around here in Detroit.
Other clubs began to allow bands to play their original songs and to have two
or three bands on the bill and make it a club concert. You couldn't make as
much money as the bar bands did, but you got to make your own music. That's
why we started our own nightclub and band in the first place.
If I wanted to make real money, I would have stayed on the assembly line, punching
out door panels on a two ton press.
Q I suppose I have to ask whether there really was a "scene" as
such. Were the so-called "punk" bands friendly with each other or
was there the sort of rivalry that split other places?
We were friends with Destroy All Monsters and some of the bands I managed, like
the Denizens and R.U.R., which I named after the 1920's sci-fi play. Sonic's
Renezvous and The Romantics weren't really a prt of the scene, though we knew
each other. With few exceptions, the bands really worked together and helped
each other out. We really were friends in different bands, and we enjoyed each
other's music. I have a lot of tapes from back then. There were a lot of great
groups with great songs. I hope that stuff gets realeased someday. It was some
of the best rock and roll on Earth.
Q
Who were the original members of The Sillies and how many are still around?
Who's in this line-up?
Sheila left before the end of '77 by mutual consent. She ened up in The Screamers
in LA and God knows what after that. If she's alive, it would be a miracle.
Stev Sortor (Perry Noyd) rejoined The Mutants when they reformed in late '77.
He's in a nursing home now. He's something like 50 years old and he almost died
last year. He's really excited that this CD is coming out. Tom disappeared during
a TV taping five years ago and no one has seen or heard of him since. I hope
he's alright. Ed Mich quit in late 1977. We were talking recently and were going
to get together last year and he died suddenly.
Profane joined in late '77. I had to fire him after the Thunders tour because
he had become too unreliable, even by his standards. We remained friends and
I produced some recordings for him. He left town and eventually died in San
Francisco in January of '92. I found out by accident when a stranger called
to buy a Sillies tape. It was quite a shock.
Kurse-Ten joined in mid-79 and quit in mid-81, which was effectively the end
of the band until we did a reunion in '79. For the LA shows, Slade Bellum of
Tribe 8 will be playing drums and "J-Ho" Hogan will be on bass. Kurse-Ten
has been rehearsing with them a lot and says it's the best the band has ever
sounded. we were going to use Cory from Nashville Pussy on bass, but that didn't
work out. You never know until you try something.
Q Did you actually define what you were doing then as "punk"? I
sort of figured that was a term appropriated from Creem magazine by people
in the Bowery scene and de-valued by the industry moguls who came up with "new
wave" as a palatable alternative.
We formed specifically with the idea of being a punk rock band, or "progressive
punk" as we saw ourselves. The first albums by Roxy Music, Eno, and Ultravox
were all major influences for us. So were all the Detroit "high energy"
bands and bands like The Leaves and others from the "first wave" of
punk rock in '65 and '66. i was always surprised that DAM called itself "psychedelicized
hard rock' and flatly rejected the punk label. We were very similar, in my mind.
I would have asked Ron Asheton to play with us if he hadn't already had another
band.
Q Your first show was supporting Robin Tyner's "New MC5". Were you
guys the support band that ran so far over time the show had to be shut down
early?
We really didn't run over time! We even cut a song just to make it easier on
them! I had two friends in that band, Marshall and Gillespie, and all the other
bands ran late. The whole show ran late and it was the first concert I had ever
produced. It was also the first show I had ever played in my life, and there
was a huge sea of people in front of me. All I could think of was a girl who
had broken my heart and I expressed the rage and grief from that in my performance.
People who knew me were in shock afterward. they told me that they couldn't
believe that was me up there, acting the way I did. The early shows were far
more hardcore, though that didn't exist yet. It really was musical psychodrama.
Q What did you think of Rob billing his band as the "MC5"? Didn't
Wayne do something similar?
Rob
(pictured with Ben Waugh) was going to try to take his new MC5 national
and it was going to be his last hurrah. Wayne and fred had done a European tour
like that to make up dates they were committed on, and it went badly for them
with Rob backing out. I think he should have asked everybody in the old band
if they would do it and give them a chance to pass on it. That was his undoing.
It wasn't like The Byrds where there was a gradual change of personnel where
McGuinn was clearly the entire show. The new MC 5 had good songs, but it was
nothing like the old band and was much more commercial and mainstream, so anyone
who like the old MC5 would hate it. I wish those guys had the chance to have
the commercial success they missed on the first go-round, but it didn't happen
and now it never can. From what they told me, Dennis, Mike, and Wayne all would
have done it if Rob had asked them.
I think he wanted to be the absolute boss of the new band and most of the guys
had drug or alcohol problems and Rob wanted to avoid that. We had the same problems,
but were able to get along. I never liked drugs or alcohol, so it wasn't a problem
for me.
Q Reminisce about some of the people on the Detroit scene that you associated
with. Who did you regard as contemporaries? Who were influences?
Ron Asheton's guitar style was an infuence. I learned a lot from other members
of the band, namely Kilowatt and Profane. Teenage Head was from Toronto, but
we brought them to Detroit often and they were an influence on me. Most of the
bands we hung around with never got deals or got famous.
People like The Denizens, R.U.R., Destroy All Monsters, Nikki Corvette and others.
They were great bands with great songs, but the labels wanted something like
The Romantics, which seemed like another Raspberries or an oldies act. Those
guys were always nice, especially Rich, but I never really liked their music.
Too namby pamby, and I like the Moody Blues!
Q I hear the Romantics are still going around, with Clem Burke on drums.
Yes, like The Sillies. We plyed "Ride My See Saw" from their second album at
the Good Friday show at the Attic. Sort of "The Moody Sillies".
Q We have several theories around the I-94 Bar about Sonics Rendezvous Band
and their lack of success outside Michigan. What were they like and what's your
take on their story?
I'm friends with their manager, but they would have needed a big-time manager
with a lot of money and connections to get them a major label deal. Also Fred
had a huge drinking problem. I thought he was always high on drugs, but I was
told he was just drunk. Maybe he wasn't like that all the time, but that's the
way it looked to me. Nobody would have signed them under those circumstances.
All you needed was a reputation as a burnout and you were poison to the labels.
The Romantics were the only band signed from that period. That should tell you
what the labels wanted.
Q Another act of that vintage we've heard a little about is The Torpedoes.
Were they comprades?
I was friends with the singer Johnny Angelos. I booked them on a support slot
with us just before he died. It was weird seeing a friend like that lying in
his casket when I had just spoken with him a short time before. For a while,
The Torpedos and/or The Reputations had a good following and a good draw. Johnny
was supposed to be Ted Nugent's new singer when Ted fired Derek St Holmes, but
the record company stepped in and made Ted reconcile with Derek. Marshall and
Gillespie from The new MC5 were both in the Torps, and so was Ralph the drummer.
It was basically the same band with Johnny as the singer. i can't remember anyone
not liking Johnny.
There were a lot of people at his funeral. The scene really helped kill him.
It was 1984 and most of what we built up was gone. There was hardly anywhere
to play and audiences weren't coming out anymore. It killed Johnny as much as
any bullet could have.
Q Destroy All Monsters had a bit of an impact on Australian bands of the
early '80s, mostly through a couple of singles on Cherry Red and via the Radio
Birdman/MC5/Stooges supergroup, New Race, who toured here in '81 and covered
one of their songs ("November 22nd, 1963"). Did you play with DAM
much?
We did a lot of shows together. They were a great band with great songs and
were really easy to work with. I suppose I carried a torch for Niagra a little,
but she was Ron's girlfriend and that was that. Mike Davis did a couple songs
with us that are recorded, but I couldn't reach him to include them on this
CD. He wrote and sang them. Rob King was going to play with us in '94 but was
thrown in jail and obviously wasn't able to, though he phoned from jail to apologize.
That was a great band. They really should have done an album.
Q Ron and Niagra toured Australia in '91, as Dark Carnival. Greasy Carlisi
and Ron on guitars and they really cooked. No Rock Action on drums, though.
Greasy mentioned that tour. Ron and Scott never seem to play together, though
they just did in California, as you well know.
Q What's Niagra up to now? Did you catch Ron with Scott Morgan's Powertrane?
Niagra is doing paintings something like Roy Lichtenstein's work in the 60's
and she's getting thousands of dollars apiece. She really was a good front person.
I haven't seen Ron with Powertrane. He used to call occasionally. I last saw
him at Fred Smith's funeral. I saw a lot of old friends there. It made me feel
even worse.
Q You opening your own club, Bookies...in a way that's a parallel to one
of Australia's legendary bands, Radio Birdman, who had to do the same because
no-one asked them back. Tell us about your experiences with your own venue.
It allowed us to do a club on the premise of having bands we wanted to hear,
so the Monsters played there a lot and we brought in the bands we liked, like
the Dead Boys and Ultravox. I paid The Police $200 for their first Detroit show
and wondered why Sting only sang backups to the chorus of "Roxanne".
The other two guys were doing fine on the backing vocals; where was "Put
on the red light!"? I didn't ask; it was their act and they could do what
they wanted.
Q I love the story about Thunders and the live microphone. Did you play many
shows with Gang War? What sort of state were they in?
I booked shows for Gang War in Detroit and Toronto, but we didn't play any shows
together. We were at least as popular as they were, so there was no reason for
either of us to open for the other. They were a tight band, but they were basically
no-nonsense so it was just play the songs and go home.
There was one I booked where Thunders got a huge mallet from the basement of
the place I booked them into and bashed it into the stage like one of those
"ring-the-bell" amusements at carnivals. Wayne told me they almost
had a deal several times, but Thuders blew it by showing up drunk or high or
both. You really have to give Wayne credit for all the crap he's been through
and to keep on trying. This business kills people or they quit and become hermit
crabs like me.
Q I recall a story from Deniz Tek who caught them live after he moved back
to the States after completing his medical degree in Australia. The best thing
he remembered about the evening was the design of the linoleum on the club tabletops!
Ask him where it was. It might have been The Pretzel Bowl in Highland Park,
which is where Thunders took the mallet.
Q
So what are you doing other than this reunion tour? Any future musical plans?
We are supposed to do an East Coast tour as well, but the agent didn't follow
through and I'm going to have to do it myself. Kurse-Ten booked almost all the
dates in California and will keep playing with the same people under the name
One Bitch Too Many, which I believe refers to me, since I won't be with them.
Other than that, I'd just like to regain my sight, as I have a really debilitating
eye condition at the moment and just broke a rib last night.
Q Shit, what did you do?
I fell down in my basement and slammed into a support pillar with my chest.
I hit the same spot I landed on 5 years ago when I fell off the garage roof
and landed on the edge of a steel trash can. That one just about knocked me
out with pain. Seems like something like that never really heals totally. My
eyesight is coming back, though.
If I can make it through the tour, I'll be happy. As I told Jim Ransweiler,
now that this thing is coming out, I can die a happy man, especially if any
of the people we offend catch up with me.
Q Since we're in a Bar, what are you drinking?
Kafe mit milch and antibiotics for my eyes.
KIRSTEN TELLS HER STORY HERE
THE SILLIES GO WEST TOUR DATES: THURSDAY, FOURTH OF JULY- Private VIP reception,
Hollywood, CA; FRIDAY, JULY 5, 8 PM- Headline Records, 7708 Melrose Avenue,
LA, CA 90046; (323) 655-2125; SATURDAY, JULY 6- Mr. T's Bowl, 5621 Figueroa
Avenue, Highland Park, CA 90042; (323) 256-7561; SUNDAY, JULY 7- The Garage,
4519 Santa Monica Boulevard, LA, CA 90027; (323) 662-6166; MONDAY, JULY 8, 4:30
PM-6 PM-KXLU 88.9 FM, LA, CA, live broadcast; (310) 338-5958 (338-KXLU); TUESDAY,
JULY 9, 9 PM- Bottom Of The Hill, 1233 17th street (at Misouri St.), San Francisco,
CA (415) 621-4455; WEDNESDAY, JULY 10- Spaceland, 1717 Silver Lake Boulevard,
LA, CA 90026; (213) 833-2843; THURSDAY, JULY 11- Los Angeles Coliseum, 3911
South Figueroa Street, LA, CA; Van's Warped Tour 2002.
For more information, go to The Sillies label
web site, Kirsten's web site or
the Warped Vans page.
MP3s of The Sillies are available from http://www.mp3.com/sillies
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