I think I got closer to Johnny Favorite than anyone else in San Antonio. I met him at his club and we hit it off immediately. He's a hard guy to get to know but he's pretty okay. I have some musical background and he turned me on to a lot of the old stuff he had. We've had our differences, but he asked me to write something for this website and I agreed.
I'll just say I don't understand why they let the derogatory comments appear on this page. I don't think they could've been that unsavory and got to where they did. I think it's just part of his death wish. I'm going to be as objective as possible. Whatever becomes of him, maybe this will give him credit where it's due.
"Mondo Acido" should have been picked up and refined by someone, somewhere. Cazucci the guitarist was a musician, and there were chord changes, bridges, leads, lots of good things that could have been commercially developed. A studio could have changed everything. I hope that he can do something with this somewhere down the line.I saw a lot of potential and it was a pretty good tape.
"Piledriver" was the Spoiler opus. Zyklon the guitarist has probably gone on to money. Great talent. I think the most obvious thing about it was Turk's potential. If they would have worked on the vocal projection, it could have started something big. He told me they just dropped that whole song list, and I think they were probably the best of all the ones I heard. It was a practice tape, piss-poor quality, but someone could have stepped in there and made something happen. "Slow Death" is pure Turk, one of the ugliest songs I ever had to hear. But I rewound it a few times. I guess that's what they were about. Zyklon sounded a lot like Cher, but he had that commercial quality that they never had or ever got back. "Ducky Boys" was their best tape. "Satan" was as good as any Black Sabbath song I ever heard. The lyrics were intelligent and the guitar work was very good. "Coal Black Eyes" had a very good guitar riff and it was the most commercial song I've heardof them all. "Ducky Boys" was their second best. I would compare it to "Mercenary" as far as being close to a spontaneous recording, like a live performance. There was an intimate quality in the recording and you could feel the band playing, like being there. I would've put this out rather than "Mercenary", but he has all these drawn-out explanations for everything. He has a tendency to try to mentally overrun you. I think you see that in the "Mercenary" EP.
"Mercenary" was their last-ditch attempt. I would have stuck with "Ducky Boys" and made that work, and it would have. The vocals were much weaker and the mix was not was it was on "Ducky Boys". He said they were under pressure and you can hear the results. "Mercenary" was my favorite song. The special effects showed their advancement, and so did the guitar work. Catraz the guitarist was coming into his own. "Loving Tonight" could have been better but it was badly sung. "Hooked on Junk" was just wild. It was dead in the water but it told you more about them than any other song. Knowing Turk, it was like something that plopped out of his head. I think if anything ever happens to him, that song will be the one I remember him by. He knew people who died from that stuff, and it came out in the mix.
I think he's too old to do it again. It will probably kill him. The wrestling, the karate, I don't think he can take any more. It's the attention he loves, and that will be what gets him back up there. And it will be nice to have known him, for better or worse.