Listen to Syd Sartre at www.mp3.com/Syd_Sartre.

Syd Sartre were:

Gary Childress – guitars, vocals, bass at times
Chris Maruzzelli – drums, vocals, saxophone at times
Gregg Childress – bass and vocals on "Awkwords" and Creepy Crawly Grab
Steve Maruzzelli – guitars and vocals here and there on Sartreday and Clique
Dave Kuffa – bass on the song “Sartreday”

The story of Syd Sartre is, unfortunately, a brief one. Born out of intensive 4-track recording sessions in Tunkhannock, PA, in the mid 80’s, it begins with two guys, me (Gary Childress) and Dave Kuffa, each trying to perfect our own style of songwriting. As competition and differences of opinion and style often dissolve partnerships, we soon would see an end to ours, but the beginning of what would be Syd Sartre.

It was during the end of the sessions that Dave and I were conducting that Chris Maruzzelli came wandering into Dave’s Westgate home. Chris was anxious to get involved in the creation of original music, and amazingly enough, still experiences the same excitement when it comes to creating good original music. On this day, he hadn’t brought his drums along, and laid down some vocal tracks on one of Dave’s songs, “Watching the Shadows.”

My first impression of Chris’ performance was that he sounded too much like Billy Ocean for what we were doing. It was just that I wasn’t used to hearing quality vocals at the time. Dave had a very distinct, low voice, and my voice hadn’t become fully developed yet. It might have also had something to do with Chris’ DJ position at Shadow Brook’s night club, the Brook. It seemed like they always started the night off with a Billy Ocean hit.

About a month later, we went over to Chris’ and recorded a set of 3 or 4 songs, with Chris on drums. Chris didn’t really have a chance to familiarize himself with the songs, so he didn’t do too many fills, just a straightforward drum track. A prime example of this can be heard on the title track of our first cassette, Sartreday. We would later come up with a system of familiarization before recording that would lead to some extraordinary drumming.

I don’t seem to remember Dave ever coming back to record with us after that first session. It’s all a bit foggy now, but Chris and I probably connived a way to continue recording without letting Dave in on it. I’m a bit of a control freak, and here was my opportunity to take the position of sole songwriter. I know that sounds a bit nasty, but on our second tape, Clique, I let Chris get a couple of songs in (“Red VU” and “The Other Eye”), and when my brother Gregg joined for Creepy Crawly Grab, we were all writing.

Chris and I were both so driven by this project in those days. It was like not a moment was to be wasted. I would show up at Chris’ almost the exact moment that he got home from work. He hadn’t even had a chance to change out of his pizza-making outfit. In mere moments we’d be at it, and we pumped out a lot of tunes in that time. There were about 24 tunes in a matter of a couple of months.

Before we knew it, we had enough songs to throw a mock cassette together. That was Sartreday. I threw a quick cover together with a picture I’d found in the local newspaper, the New Age Examiner, of Ronald McDonald with hand on heart, pledging allegiance at the opening ceremonies of our hometown McDonald’s. It was a bizarre photo, and years later I found out that a girlfriend of mine was standing in the background saluting as well.

Steve Maruzzelli would be in town every once in a while, home from college. It was on these occasions that he would become a part time member, adding some great guitar and bass licks to many a song. During the recording of the second cassette, he would become an ex-patriot and head for foggy England. It was really exciting to hear how much he and Jim O’Brien were enjoying what we were doing all the way across the Atlantic.

There was a vibe in town around that time. An artistic community had been developing at the high school, and we became linked with them. Photographer Brian Thomas was part of that clique, and in one of his art classes he put together a Sartreday t-shirt. We still have them, all stretched out and aged by the hazards of the dryer.

It was maybe six weeks after we’d completed Sartreday that Clique was completed. Again, we threw another mock cassette cover together, this time using a still from Tod Browning’s Freaks. Chris got in on the design this time, adding some colored marker to give it a little more life. That same still later appeared on a shirt Robert Smith was wearing in the video for “Friday I’m in Love.” I remember either bumping into Chris or talking to him on the phone at that time, and we were both really excited about seeing the cover of one of our tapes on Robert Smith’s shirt. We were really big on the Cure while recording the Syd Sartre stuff.

At Christmas time in ’87 we put together a Syd Sartre Xmas mini-cassette, a copy of which I never received actually. And that was sad, too, because I never had the masters for those songs. There were a couple of originals, like “Snow Queen” and a reworking of an old Void tune that became “What’s For Christmas” that I have the masters to, and those will definitely appear on the upcoming compilation, Playland. But there were some other wacked-out reworkings like “Skanking Around the Christmas Tree,” and I think we did the “Snow Miser” song from The Year Without a Santa Claus.

Shortly after that, Gregg returned home from college, and work began on Creepy Crawly Grab. We were actually becoming a band that could play as a whole as well as record. There were absolutely no opportunities for original bands in the area in those days, so our dreams didn’t seem to be able to go any further than the basement. But we kept cracking away, and soon we had another cassette under our belts.

Steve sent a copy of the Sunday Sport from England, and there was this story about a guy who ate worms. The British phrasing for worms in the headline was “creepy crawly grab,” so we decided to use that as the title, translating “grab” as Halloween goodies and using a picture from the New Age of a creepy father and son team trick or treating as zombies as the cover.

It was late spring when the idea came to us that if no one would let us play, why not rent out a venue where kids of all ages could come and see us. Chris did his DJ thing at Shadow Brook, so we had a connection there that we could take advantage of. So Shadow Brook it was. I think they gave us a special rate because of Chris, too. Chris put together a flyer and hung it up around Kingston, which is where his brother-in-law’s pizza parlor was, and he would talk to kids that came into the shop and hand out cassettes. He must have generated some interest, because we had a really good turnout.

Now that we had a job lined up, we were thinking that maybe we needed to add another guitar or keyboards or something. Chris suggested Chris Mincarelli, a friend of his from the Kingston area. He played guitar and keyboards, and was, himself, recording his own original stuff. So we brought him in one day, and it seemed to click. Chris was in.

By the time the gig rolled around, I had become disillusioned with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. My friend Dave Klug was enjoying success with his band, Hector in Paris, in Pittsburgh, so I decided that I was going to move out there. Since I was leaving, Gregg didn’t seem to have any reason to stick around, so he made plans to get back together with his college band, Vertigo in Children, and move from Dayton, Ohio, to Chicago. Gregg’s experiences in the Dayton area with Vertigo in Children bring the story of Guided by Voices even closer to heart.

And so it came, the night to end all nights. We weren’t expecting much, but when it came time to play, we had all these kids sitting in front of us, watching us play. It wasn’t a real big crowd at first, because Vespers was being held at the high school, so any seniors from the artistic community showed up later. They only seemed to dance when we played covers, so we went from everybody on their feet to everybody on their asses, back and forth for most of the night. By the end I think they finally got the nerve to dance to unfamiliar beats. I seem to remember some girls dancing Charlie Brown Christmas style to one of Gregg’s tunes, “Just Like Daddy,” from the video tape we recorded of that night.

It was a great night. We sold some tapes, even made a small profit from the door. A great night indeed, and what better way to close the story of Syd Sartre than with a great night. No hostilities, no long, drawn out break-up, just a good night. Speaking of long and drawn out, I seem to have said that the story of Syd Sartre was a short one. I take that back.