Part III: M.O.E.
Chapter Sixteen
The story of M.O.E. began for me in April of 1993. At this time, I was still in my first band, which had undergone at least four name changes, and in the end was called "Explicit Form." The guitarist, Curtis told me that he had something to tell me, and that he hoped I wouldn't be mad. He then told me that he had tried out for another band. I wasn't mad. I was interested. I had been in this band for a few years, and it wasn't going anywhere. We had no really good songs, no really good guitarists, or bassists, what have you. At the time I was writing some pretty mediocre songs, mainly because I didn't have anyone to challenge my creativity.
Curtis also had a tape of this other band's drummer, Eric Wisman playing along with Metallica's "The Unforgiven". Pretty good. Not great, but enough to make me want to hear more. He then told me that the band also needed a bass guitarist. Before this, I had played both guitar and bass in the band I was in(at different times, of course...) so I was no stranger to the instrument. I had Curtis call Eric and tell him he was bringing a bass player along to the next practice.
Chapter Seventeen
Eric was the first member of M.O.E. that I met. Curtis showed me to the basement where the band practiced, and I was impressed by the dude's drum kit. Eight pieces and a double kick pedal. This guy meant business! And he was only thirteen or fourteen at the time. I got my bass hooked up, and we played around a bit, and were jamming on Metallica's "Enter Sandman" when Robert walked in. My life would never be the same again.
Chapter Eighteen
Long hair. A Tattoo. An Ozzy T-shirt. An electric guitar in one hand, a twelve pack in the other. Robert Wallace was my first encounter with a real musician. As soon as I saw him I knew that this was gonna be something new and different for me. The introductions were made, and we made small talk until Matt Mills, the singer showed up.
So, we all plugged in and tuned up. Robert told me that the first song they were going to show me was called "I Am Not Helping You" (which basically challenges people to choose their own destiny when it comes down to a choice of heaven or hell), and showed me the chord changes. Then Robert began to play the intro, with Eric creating a wash of cymbals behind the arpeggiated E minor chord. This was new, exciting, arousing. I was liberated. I was in love. They moved into the second half of the intro, and I began to follow along. Once Robert saw I had the progression down, he went into his solo. It was the best solo I had ever heard anyone play in person in my life! Then came the heavy part, with its stops and twists. Listening back to it now compared to what it became later, it was really sluggish, but at the time it was the coolest thing I had heard. Matt couldn't be heard too well, though, because they didn't have a real PA. A mic through an old stereo receiver, and out a pair of 15" home stereo speakers. The music more than made up for it though. Of course, we didn't go all the way through the song on the first run. I screwed up in a couple places, and Curtis didn't have it down yet either. So finally we decided to just go for it. During the chorus, while Matt sang "You choose alone, you lose alone..." along with the chords, I decided to try to impress them for a change, and bent the string on my bass in such a way as to create a counter-melody to the riff. Robert was pleased. I was ecstatic.
They then played another song called "Limbo Seas" which was just as cool, a story about being tied to the mast on a ghost ship afloat on the seas of limbo. Its slow, heavy descending chromatic riff just gave it this feeling...I don't know how to describe it, but it's a feeling. Then the middle section had this other slow riff which I applied string bending to, and to see the approval on their faces was a joy.
They also ran through a cover version of "Hair Of The Dog" by Nazareth, but in G instead of E. I had never played it before, though, so it wasn't like I was used to playing it in E. A funny thing happened during the breakdown part of it, though. I forgot to stop playing the main riff, and I didn't know this riff yet, so I kept playing, and it fit! Kinda gave it a different feel, and made you want to just get up and dance. So we kept it that way. The funny thing is, that when I hear the original now, it does not sound right to me.
The last song they showed me that evening was called "Your Cleavability", which, as Matt explained when he saw the confused look on my face, means "your ability to be cleaved, chopped up..." It was quite a bit faster than the other two songs, and had a funny moment before the bridge, where, in order to let me know what was next, they all screamed "FAST PART!!!" in the break between. It also stayed.
At some point earlier in the evening, they had told me of their "probationary period" where they would try you out for a while, and if it wasn't working, then you were out. Kinda like a real job, except you weren't paid anything! We all sat around for awhile after we finished playing, and just talked about ideas for the future of M.O.E. I asked what M.O.E. stood for, and was told by Matt and Eric that it meant "Means of Escape." Robert disagreed, saying it meant whatever you wanted it to. We just called it Moe for short. While we were carrying my equipment back up to my car, I asked them what they thought, hoping for a favorable response. They answered with the same question: "Well, what do you think of us?", and I told them I thought they were awesome. They asked me to join the band right there, on the spot. To hell with the probationary period. I was very happy.
Chapter Nineteen
We continued working on these songs, and they made me a tape of them playing to practice with. It had another song called "Alice's Newsstand" on it, which blew me away. It had this trippy kind of intro with a slide and echo, and then broke into this unstoppable groove which supported tongue-in-cheek lyrics about the effects of acid, and this "friend" named Alice D., which is a name that cloaks its actual meaning: LSD. I wrote a bass line for it during my solo practicing that I was sure they'd love, and the next time we played, we went through the song, and Robert told me "You've been practicing." It had paid off.
I had also taken it upon myself to learn the rhythm guitar parts to the songs too, for one thing because I can write a better bass line if I know the guitar part, and also so that I could sit down one-on-one with Curtis and teach him the songs. During this time, we had decided to do a cover of "Eye Of The Beholder" by Metallica, which I also taught Curtis. The problem was, by the end, he'd have it down pat, but the next time we'd practice, he had forgotten almost the entire song. This was not really new to me, since I had worked with him in the previous band, and it proved to be a problem later on, too, but they were willing to give him a shot. We also began writing our first group effort, called "The Snake." Regrettably, no recording exists of this song, but I remember parts of it to this day. There was a part where there was a four beat pause between chorus and verse, which I filled with a bending bass line to lead back into the mellow verses again.
The song was eventually axed, as was Curtis. I felt really guilty about being allowed to stay in a band that he essentially got me into in the first place, who then let him go. I got over it soon enough, though, as we kept working on material. We also dropped "Eye of the Beholder" and began looking for songs that would work better in a three piece with a singer format. We covered "Sad But True" by Metallica, "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, (and even "Hey Joe" for awhile) and "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, among others. We also recorded our first four-track demo of "I Am Not Helping You" at this time. We actually had about fifteen songs by this time that we could do. We were ready to invite people over to hear us.
I filled in for Matt on a few occasions when he had to work or just couldn't make it. His ideas were also becoming increasingly silly, likely due to his consumption of attitude altering chemicals. He had been known to lift lyrical ideas from cartoons as well. The middle section of "Limbo Seas" has a bit of dialogue from a Yosemite Sam cartoon. "Batten down the hatches!"/"The hatches are already battened down"/"Well, batten them down again!/We'll teach those hatches!!" While the first line seems promising, it then turns a pretty cool song into a silly pirate cartoon.
We played our first party on the Fourth of July weekend of 1993. It was a "Ball and Chain" party thrown by Robert and friend Terry for Robert's best friend David, who was to get married the following week. Terry's cabin was too small for a band, so we played outside. It was a fairly secluded area, on top of a hill surrounded by woods. Matt had to work, so I had to fill in on vocals again. By that time, I was being told I sounded better anyway, (which I took as a great compliment, because Matt wasn't...terrible...) We basically spent half the day setting up the stage and the canopy (wouldn't ya know it...it was calling for rain!!) and then finally got our equipment there and set up. We got tuned up, and got ready for a sound check. We played "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Metallica (we did a lot of Metallica!!) and the sound up on that hilltop was so goddamn incredible! I think Robert and I almost broke our faces smiling so wide. It NEVER sounded this good in the basement!! So we played the song, adjusted our levels, and waited for people to start showing up. All told there were maybe twenty people there, including David and....HIS WIFE! They had already gotten married! Good thing we didn't hire strippers!
We finally played our set, and the sound remained great for the rest of the evening...and the rain held off too. One mistake almost destroyed the end of Limbo Seas, luckily we all made the same mistake. I saw Robert with his eyes closed, waiting for it to become obvious, but I managed to save it with the vocals, basically ad-libbing over the newly ad-libbed song ending. I also dropped the "Batten down the hatches" line, which the other guys thanked me for later. We finished up our final set about an hour and a half later. It was time to celebrate and get drunk. Hell, it was a holiday after all!
Chapter Twenty
During this time I had also found myself unemployed for about a month. Of course, still living at home, I was still under the rule of my parents even though I was almost 19 years old. Ultimatums were given....find a job or quit the band. I had told the band about this, and it was becoming a worry and a strain on the whole outfit. I accepted a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken just so I could stay, but another job came up that paid better and was closer to home. Only problem was that it was second shift, six days a week. So I got the job and still had to leave the band. I also basically had to leave everything else, too because of the schedule. I never saw my friends, girlfriend or family except on Sundays. I lasted about three months there. I would get off from work at one in the morning, eat and watch Beavis and Butthead, then I'd got out to the garage behind the house and play my guitar until six in the morning, then I'd go to bed. This was my entire life from July until September.
My father owned a TV/VCR repair and sales store in town, which was pretty new. Business was getting a little better, so he offered to let me come and work for him. This was a blessing, because it meant I could rejoin the band if they'd have me back. So I called Robert, and of course I could come back! I was thrilled, because the real meaning of my life was back.
Upon my return, I learned that in frustration, Matt had quit the group. He didn't want to have to go through finding and training a new member, so he said, "Screw it" and left. That added vocals to my job permanently. They had also begun working on a new song called "Stupid Human" which totally kicked ass, and Robert had totally rewritten the lyrics to "Limbo Seas" into the song "Horrorstruck" which is how it remains. His lyrics were becoming more and more complex, as was the music itself. It took me the longest time to memorize all the new lyrics to these songs.
At this time I also suggested that the letters M.O.E. could stand for Method Of Execution. It stuck.
We brought in more and more cover songs, adding Slayer and Sepultura to the mix. We also dug up another song that Robert had written years earlier with his friend Terry, and I thought the riff was killer. Robert was kinda iffy about it, but I made a copy to take home anyway. I called him and asked if it had a title, and he said "Schizophrenia." I told him I'd call back in a little bit. I wrote the lyrics in about a half an hour, and it was basically my very first lyrical offering I made to the band. I had brought in lyrics for them to look at before, and they were pretty lame now that I think about them, but I didn't see it that way then. None of them were really considered. I called Robert back with the lyrics to Schizophrenia, read them to him and asked for his opinion. He said they were perfect. I died. We started working on the song with Eric, banging out parts and little things. When it all came together, it was awesome. There was even a little pause in there for a bass run or two. There was also "Shut Up And Drink Your Kool-Aid" which was a song I brought from my last band, and was the best I had to offer from that band. It was about Jim Jones and the Guyana massacre. It was simple and short, but when Robert took it home and came back, he had a new ending written that took all kinds of twists and turns. It became one of the jam songs to an extent. His riffs for that part were very complex, and were a perfect compliment to the riffs that I had written.
Chapter Twenty-One
Another aspect of M.O.E. that I have not yet gone into are the acoustic songs. There were about four. "Body Count" which is a mournful song about friends lost to the grip of death, "Brainshell" which is about the struggle to reclaim sanity, and "Another Thirsty Man" which is about regaining sobriety. A few days after Christmas of 1993, Robert introduced me to his newest acoustic composition, ominously titled "To Hell Like The Rest". He wrote it the day after Christmas. At first he had no intentions of bringing it to the electric format, but after I had learned it, we just started playing it for Eric one day at practice. The choruses that were once played clean were kicked in with distortion, and created a powerhouse to say the least. So, it is one of those songs that will work either way. Plus, the guitar solos he worked out for it were absolutely awesome.
It was around this time also, I believe, that we got into the full acoustic thing, putting drums to "Another Thirsty Man" and doing a cover of "Nothing Else Matters." We made four track recordings of these, and interestingly enough, there is no bass guitar in any of these recordings. I finally got to play guitar! We also recorded "Brainshell", and a couple of acoustic instrumentals that Robert had written, "Tricks" which was all him, and "D sharp Exigent" which I played a duet with him on, putting in little harmonies here and there.
The one nerve-wracking thing about these recordings is that my voice basically SUCKED! For whatever reason, I had a hard time keeping in key for awhile. We figured I was just trying too hard.
To add a bit of levity to this entire phase of M.O.E. we created "The Accident". It was originally titled "Who Loves You?" and was kind of a jazzy little tune with lyrics that said 'Go fuck yourself...' etc. etc. We wrote new lyrics, which changed the subject matter into a lament about loss of bowel control: "I can't believe I shit myself!" exclaimed on line. Robert sang on this one, with Eric and I standing behind him making rude noises into the mic. It is a hilarious recording, not only because of that, but also while mixing it down, Eric was messing with the pitch control on the four-track, slowing it down in places, and speeding it up in others. It was a nice laugh, and probably one of my favorites to record.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Another thing we had been working on was accuracy, tightness and just getting technically better. For example, Eric never really played that much double bass for an extended run. We decided that we wanted to do the song "Only" by Anthrax, which basically has several long stretches of double bass playing. When Eric said 'I can't play that!' we said 'Yes you can' and made him do it. He did it, and we couldn't stop him after that. The songs got heavier as a result, a little faster and there was one time he really blew us away. We were playing for some friends of Eric's, including a couple of girls he wanted to impress. We were playing "Stupid Human" and when it got to the chorus, which sped up anyway, he let loose with some double bass playing that probably would have run Lars Ulrich out of the room! It was so fast and so furious that Robert and I almost could not play. That's how blown away we were. We were ready to jam for real.
Chapter Twenty-Three
During late spring and early summer of 1994, we somehow got in contact with Scott Eton, who was the bass player from a Christian death metal group called Sabaoth. Scott was also the original bassist for M.O.E until he left to join Sabaoth. He invited us to come see Sabaoth at Joker's, a little (and I mean little!) rock/metal club in town. They were pretty good. The only words I could understand from the singer were Jesus, God and Salvation, which was I guess all they needed to get across.... Anyway, they then invited us to open up for them the next time they played there. Of course, we were excited! So we began practicing our first real set list for our first real show.
The show took place on August 24, 1994. We had a mix of about half covers and half originals. Scott came up first and introduced us. Then we started. We began with "Sad But True" by Metallica and followed up with "I Am Not Helping You". I was basically scared shitless until halfway through "...Not Helping..." when I calmed down and started enjoying myself. This was my first time on stage since I was in the school chorus years earlier. The other guys were nervous too, plus we only had about two feet to move. (I told ya this place was little!) We played "Purple Haze" and "Born To Be Wild", "Only" by Anthrax, and "Seasons In The Abyss" by Slayer, and watched Sabaoth's drummer play air drums along with it while sitting in the audience. We also played some of our originals too. "Horrorstruck", "Schizophrenia", which we almost messed up, and "To Hell Like The Rest". All in all it was a really good show. The crowd seemed to like us. In the crowd were my Dad and sister, Robert's wife and Eric's parents. I think we ended up making about three dollars each after the soundman and the beer guy and Sabaoth got their cut. We let them keep it. I didn't mind playing for free. It was fun. It was exposure. It was one hell of an experience.
Chapter Twenty-Four
At some point during the winter of 1994/’95, I decided that I wanted to concentrate on playing and let someone else sing. We tried out one guy who turned out to be a joke. Then we got a call from this dude named Jason. He came over and hung out, and seemed like a pretty cool guy. He had my vocal range, and while practicing, no one could tell us apart. He began learning all the songs, and we played one or two small parties. Another thing we did that was kinda cool was that for the songs with lower, more gravelly vocals, I would sing, and Jason would sing the rest. On “Schizophrenia”, he would sing the parts of the song’s main character, while I sang the more evil sounding ‘other personality’.
We never played Joker's again. It closed down sometime before Christmas, and we never got another free evening to play there. That was okay, because we had a bigger fish to fry. We were gonna record a demo. We had a new singer and were ready to go.
We wanted to record "I Am Not Helping You", "Horrorstruck", "To Hell Like The Rest", and "Schizophrenia". We began looking in January of 1995. After shopping around, we found out that the average price for recording them would be anywhere between $1200 and $1500. We decided it would be better if I bought a better four-track than the one I had, so we went and picked out a Tascam 464 for about $800. It was finally paid off and I picked it up in May. With this new toy we could record all the shit we wanted to. We recorded the demo in about a week, spending the most time on "To Hell..." because that's basically the only song that we didn't record like it was a three piece band playing it. The others all pretty much stuck true to form, in that what was on tape we could reproduce live. We called the demo "You Choose Alone", which was a line from "I Am Not Helping You". We never came up with a suitable cover for it though. We also made a few other recordings too, which didn't turn out too well and were scrapped.
We shopped our demo to a few people. An old friend of Robert's named Barry had a heavy metal band called Sedimentreous. I think he had heard the tape, and wanted us to open up for them at this place called The Olympia Restaurant, which served way too expensive Greek Food. It had this little hole in the back called the Apollo Lounge, which was where the bands played. Our first gig there was in June of 1995. I think in all there were maybe fifteen people there, including a few friends of ours. Sedimentreous was charging $5 per head, and about seventy-five percent of the audience was on the guest list. So we made less that we did at Joker's! The show itself was pretty good, I felt. The owner of the club (who charged the bands for their drinks! What a crock!) asked us to come back and bring an opening act. We were going to headline for the first time!
Jason knew some guys from a band called Bluebeard’s Closet, and they said they would open up for us. So we made the deal for sometime near the beginning of August. We learned a few days before the show that the other band might not show up, because one of them was going to be out of town that week. We ended up playing almost three hours that night! There were about six people at this show. My parents, a couple of other friends and a black couple who obviously loved Eric, because they wanted him to do a second drum solo! The show itself was terrible. We were nervous. We were bad. Eric messed up in the beginning of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath, playing the wrong beat, and it took Robert screaming his name to get him on track. Jason forgot the words to “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Metallica, a song which we had played six hundred times before, and when I tried to take over and save it, I forgot where we were in the song! Then, during “Dead Embryonic Cells” by Sepultura, I broke the low E string on my bass. How often does THAT happen?? So, while I tied a knot in the end of the string so it would hold, Robert had to play a ten-minute guitar solo so we wouldn’t just be waiting around for me to fix it. Luckily, we only had three songs to go. Then Eric was called upon to do his second drum solo by audience request, and was almost too tired to finish the set. We finished and walked away with our tails between our legs.
Although it had nothing to do with this particular show, it was the last time that M.O.E. played a show together.
Chapter Twenty-Five
During the summer, another force had been playing against our development. Our drummer, who was 16 or 17 by this time, had gone girl crazy. We knew it was going to happen, and were somehow hoping it would not. It began happening, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Eric started canceling practices, “calling in sick” if you will, to spend time with his girlfriend. She almost prevented that last show from happening, because she didn’t want him to leave and threatened to harm herself. Not only was she destroying us, Eric had also started jamming with two of the guys from Sabaoth, who had quit Sabaoth and were writing songs together and needed a drummer. We ended up being down to one practice a week, instead of the two or three we were used to. We began to get desperate. We had another show booked, opening up for Sedimentreous again at the Olympia. We weren’t getting all the practice we felt we needed, and Eric wasn’t helping matters any. We decided to try to wake him up and put an ad up for a drummer in a guitar shop. We knew one of his friends would see it and tell him and that possibly he would see that he was screwing up and snap to it. Well, it didn’t quite happen that way.
I got a call from him about a week before the show, which was at the end of August. He asked me if we were looking for another drummer, I said that we were, hoping he would beg us not to fire him.
Instead, he told me he’d just quit then.
We had a band meeting the next night, discussed the problems, and decided the only solution was to just let him go and try to move on.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Robert and I opened up for Sedimentreous at our last gig, but without electric instruments, and sans drummer. We informed the audience that this was probably going to be the last M.O.E. show ever. We played a thirty minute acoustic set, which included “To Hell Like The Rest”, “Brainshell”, “Another Thirsty Man”, and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. And there was a jam on twelve bar blues in which Robert and I traded off on solos, and just to give it vocals, I ripped off Janis Joplin’s “Turtle Blues.” Robert played a few pieces he had written, and I played a solo rendition of “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix. There were many more people there for that show, and everybody loved it. I think it was one of my favorite shows, too. The comments we received from audience members and the other band were touching, and made the show very special.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Robert and I decided to try and continue with our music. We were going to change the name. There was to be no more M.O.E. We were going to call ourselves “Vulture”. We auditioned one drummer, and made plans to try out another, but it never worked out. We continued to write some together, and collaborated on a song called “You Choose Alone”, which was to be part two of “I Am Not Helping You”. Its riffs are very complex, like most of the stuff we had been working on at the time. Other songs that we wrote were called “The Coroner”, “Constant Love”, “SOS” and the following spring, Robert wrote a deep acoustic number called “To Know Some Fools” which is one of my all-time favorites of his songs.
I have seen Eric a few times since the breakup. Robert and I continue to be friends to this day. We still talk, e-mail, and sometimes hang out and jam. His friendship and musical companionship is one that changed my life and the way I see music forever, and I know I will always cherish the memories that I have of M.O.E.
Robert wants you to come play with him for awhile now......
