The johnnies

Ok this is my "off the top of my head" story on The johnnies. We formed as a 4 piece in late 1991 as a late night drunk idea of mine and Dee's making calls to Scag (I always wanted to play with this great vocalist) and Brian. Me, Dee and Scag all passed the bass around while Brian banged out the rhythm. The name I came up with for us was "The Lobby Magnets" which I stole from Paul Westerberg as that is how he refered to his slow songs (get it? he plays a slow song and everybody get up and heads to the lobby) We played and drank a lot ..man did we drink! I rememeber Ramones cover and Stones cover and a couple Scag originals and then I remember more beer and well more beer. But something always seemed to "click" when we played so we contiunued. Now enters Sean ..we all knew Sean from some great metal bands of a few years back he saw us play (a party?) and literally came up to us and said "you need a bass player and I'm yer man" or something like that. We played out a lot and recorded to cassette releases of which I have not seen in years ..One was "Chemical Vacation" and the other was "Give 'em L" ..Then Sean decided to leave us..Now enters Graham Taylor a friend of Dee's he takes over the Bass duties. THIS is when we change the name to Johnny Bravo taken from the Brady Bunch episode when Greg becomes a "rock star".. Still not knowing what the hell we should do or how to do it on a whim I ask a long time friend of mine Eric Law if he would like to give us some advice in a "management" sort of way Eric having seen some of our sonic drunk train wreck shows (in a good way) said YES imediatly. At this point it was Eric that made a real "band" out of us. We owe him EVERYTHING as far as thats concerned. He got us a GREAT producer (Lee Harrington famed bass player for Boston punk/powerpo greats The Neighborhoods) and pushed us into te recording studio and BAMM! Out Comes or first 4 track ep "She's Been Around" man I was soooo proud of that! And then Eric got the fuckers sold! He just knew where to send it for reviews (and they liked it , they really liked it) and WHO to send it to that was connected in the underground punk scene ...Shit he even got world famous underground comic artist to do out cover! And what a cover it was..ouch (but thats another story all together) If memory serves me correct ( but remember there was a LOT of beer back then) we sold 2 (or was it 3) pressings of 500 copies of that record. The we drank some more beer ...Graham left bass duties and Sean rejoins ..with new vigore we enter the studio with Lee Harrington again and out comes our second 4 song ep "She's Walking Out" like the first ep this one also gets a very good response to the press and sells a couple pressings..Then things get sureal ..we find out though a friend of Eric Law that there is a band in NY that wants to record under the name "Johnny Bravo" seems its a project by Rick Okesek of "The Cars" fame after they found out we have been recording with the name they send there manager Jeff Kramer with a small handful of money to ask us nicley to drop the name..at that point almost 6 months of negotiations take place between me and Jef Kramer ( i may add Jeff is also manager of Bob Dylan , George Harrison among others thats right baby I'm talking with the bigtime!! Ha!) anyhoo we finally settle on the sum of 12,000 ..This is the money we used to record and release "12 Steps To Nowhere" with it's fancy foldout lryric booklet and cover art once again by King Velveeda..we also take a bunch of money and by ourselves a bit of new equipment and we commence drinking a LOT more beer (ok ok maybe not everybody in the band followed the beer drinking tradition but me , Dee and Scag sure did!) Now 12 Steps , due to Eric Law working is amazing action once again, gets AWESOME reviews man who woulda thunk a bunch of nobodys from the home of the Pilgrims would be the favs of so many punkers? I'm sure things would have been bigger if we had toured but, well theres another story for another time...The gigs got better I remember playing with The Groovie Ghoulies a couple times and The Donnas as well..Also we played with The ADZ (ex adolecents from Cali) and The Devil Dogs and Electric Frankenstein from NYC...Then just when the hype dies down we get approached by Daniel from Germany who decides he is starting a vinyl only record label and wants 12 steps to be his first release! Ok so as some of you know I am a vinyl junkie so NO PROBS HERE !! He does a fantastic job with poster insert and everything DAMN I am so proud of that VERY heavy slab of wax ...Damn proud. The Daniel sends out promos and whamo The eurpopean reviews come in and they are all great! So the question is can we do no wrong? The answer is YES see we just could not get it together to keep the ball rolling and I am sure some where very dissappointed (Right Eric??) There just seemed to be that "thing" that happens to bands shit just statrted happing. It's kinda like we never really "broke up" we just disolved in a sea of drugs / alcahol regets and frustrations ...we played a bit up until 2005 but really it was just playing the same old songs and the same old words ..Dee went on to form a couple of great projects "Dee Stro and the Defex" and Sugabomb and is now playing in the GREAT Mach 5 with famed vocalist Mach Bell ( thundertrain , joe perry project) he kills in that band and it really his the "sound" he works the best ...Me..? I formed a band out of the ashes on The johnnies with Scag and Brian called The New Frustrations. You can check us out here on myspace we are quite proud of it and expect to due more ..For some reason I just can't seem to put this thing called ROCK away ..I dunno I guess I like the punishment. To all the friends I made from this band thats you Daniel in Germany and YOU TOO Andrew in the UK along with many others that bought our records and came to our shows (who were thoses guys from upstate NY that drove soo far to see us?) I say thanks and I mean a real BIG thanks you all rock!Tim Downie The Johnnies