The Wacky Savages!

Back in college I was like a heck of a lot of students in that I was in a band and I've linked to a couple of MP3s near the end of this post to prove it.

Yes, we were the Wacky Savages. Where did we get our name? The bassist -- Cree Swaim -- and I saw one of those cheap supermarket tabloids and it featured a story about "The Elvis Tribe." That alleged tribe was full of people who were just crazy about The King and featured a photo of a bunch of natives wearing grass skirts and Elvis wigs.

The caption on the photo said, "Wacky savages sing and dance like The King." Since I've long nurtured a bit of an Elvis obsession, that pretty well did it for us.

We typically played around campus and even knocked out the power at a dorm party -- that featured a lot of bands -- because we insisted on turning up our amplifiers all the way for the sheer hell of it. We played an off-campus party once and got an offer to play at some kind of festival held at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Since we we attended Hendrix College in Conway, a trip all the way to northwest Arkansas to play at an outdoors show where a lot of people were present sounded like a hell of a deal. Sadly, that all fell apart because a couple of band members quit on us.

We drafted some more folks and wound up at Crystal Studios in Bryant, Ark. in January 1991. Our lineup at the time was Cree (bass), my brother Zack on drums (he was 15-years-old at the time), a lead guitarist who was so cool that we just called him The Jay and me on vocals and fairly basic rhythm guitar (my beautiful Fender Telecaster running through a Fender Twin Reverb amp that I borrowed from a friend of mine).

Yesterday, Cree sent me the tracks we recorded. I've had them on tape for years, but he went and converted them to MP3s and I've included them here. So, click here to hear "My Friend Rashid" and here to listen to "Nazi Girl." I really doubt I could coax my 39-year-old voice into doing that anymore.

Those two songs are a lot of fun because we didn't take a damned thing seriously -- I wrote the lyrics, Cree composed all the music and we just had fun.

I appreciated getting these yesterday because, earlier in the day, a friend of mine said, "You know, it's ridiculous that we're this old." Both of us are pushing 40-years-old, so I enjoyed hearing something that I took part in when I was a mere 21-years-old, less cynical and very excited about the future.

By the way, some folks at my office heard this and said I sounded like Fred Schneider of the B-52s. Phooey. Actually, I was trying to sound like John Lydon (Johnny Rotten when he was with the Sex Pistols).

To prove my point, I've included a video of Lydon singing "Public Image" with the band he formed after the Sex Pistols deteriorated, Public Image Limited. The influence seems pretty clear to me.



The Hawg is sick as a dawg?

I haven't been as active around Entrecard or anything lately as I've taken ill and spend most of my time either at work or sleeping. I've got ulcerative colitis that flared up a couple of months ago and, as such, my colon pretty well bleeds constantly right now.

It sucks and leaves me tired. If I've not been returning Entrecard drops as much, it's because everything has been well nigh intolerable over the past couple of days. I'll be getting some tests run next week, so I hope to be back to normal before long. My doctor is confident he can get the colitis in remission, so I'll trust he's right.

Meanwhile, I'm certainly not trying to slight anyone by visiting blogs as often as I'd like. When you're sleeping about 10 hours a day, working eight hours and spending about an hour in a car while commuting, that tends to cut into time to do things you'd like. So, please be patient. I hope to be back up to speed soon.