PART II
1996 - 1997: pleasure is no fun

“You can’t hurt my feelings/ You can’t scratch my itch/Look now I’m bleeding/Ain’t life a BITCH BITCH BITCH”

- from “Give Yourself to the Devil”

Upon completion of the EP and back in NYC I realized that it would be necessary to form a band that could play the new songs live. I asked my friend John DeVries, the leader of the band Agitpop and at the time in a band called Cellophane, if he wanted to be the lead guitarist. The two of us had been introduced by mutual friends in Mercury Rev and became friends when we were playing together on the road with David Baker's short-lived Shady project. John even performed with St. Johnny on Lollapalooza 1995. I also recruited Thomas P. Goss, who had also been in that final incarnation of the band, on drums, and Phil Schuster on bass. We gigged around the city and I began writing more songs and before long we were back in Fredonia making another record for No.6.

Around this same time I was invited to play guitar on a recording session that would become the Lives of Charles Douglas, produced by Mo Tucker. She also played drums. It seems impossible to me that I actually played on a recording with Mo Tucker…and that I even shared a meal with her and got to ask her questions about VU. The one question that I remember asking her was:

“Is it true that Jimi Hendrix jammed with the Velvets?”

Her answer was “No”.

We opened for Helmet in Providence, RI around this time. Following the gig I remember puking on John Devries van in the middle of an unseasonable April snowstorm. This period was pretty much the low point of my life. I recoil in horror at some of the unmentionable memories. But there were more hijinks to come.

 

Continue to Grand Mal Mythology, Part 3 (1997 - 2000)
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