Cheater Slicks started in 1987 in Boston. Original members Tom Shannon, David Shannon and Dana Hatch met through a mutual friend and from the first cacophonous practice knew that this was something special. None of us knew the least bit what we were doing musically, we just felt that we had to raise hell some how. Boston was a very conservative musical scene and we didn't want any part of that! The music that we loved was primitive, emotional and extreme. Volume was essential. 60's punk was a common starting point, so we got lumped in with "garage" bands, a label that has stuck with us ever since. I have no problem being considered a garage band, but I've always thought our music has something more than that to it. We played garage covers because they were easy and we could relate to the frustration and futility of that type of music. We auditioned many people over the course of the next year or so. Our first bass player was a girl named Dina Perleman. She was replaced by Alan Paulino formerly of the Real Kids. Alan taught us a lot about how to play, but his personal problems at the time lead us to find another bass player and that is when Merle Allin, G.G.'s brother, joined. He is on our first LP entitled On You Knees. Merle decided to move to NYC and we did not want to follow, so at that point we decided to become a three piece, without a bass. It was a practical decision, not an artistic one. During our initial year we had a violin player and a female lead singer also. Our first show was at Hampshire College opening for Jad Fair, thanks to a gig procured by our good friend and long time supporter Phil Milstein. I remember being quite terrified and had some stage fright for years to come because we really didn't know what we were doing. Gawdawful was the first label that put out our music back in 1989. The label was run by a couple who broke up the week the record came out. I recall the record went straight to the cut out warehouses nearly the first months it was out. Such was our luck. But the Lp did help us by getting us a review in Spin by Byron Coley who praised it rather highly. This lead to Larry Hardy seeking out the LP and keeping us in mind for his yet unstarted label. In the meantime,1990, we were approached by Dave Laing at Dogmeat records in Melbourne Australia. He became aware of us through Alan Paulino, because Dave was a huge Real Kids fan and was doing a solo LP by Alpo. He contacted us to do a couple singles, one of Australian 60's garage covers. The 60's cover idea got expanded and our second LP, Destination Lonely, was the result. We recorded everything very crudely although we never tried for a lo-fi sound. Again the Lp was doomed to obscurity by many different unfortunate factors and hardly anyone even knows of its existence. Dan Clowes did the excellent cover art, and we are quite proud of that. Boston continued to ignore us and we were very unpopular there. We did get some good shows, one of which was Boss Hog which allowed us to meet Jon Spencer who helped us out greatly in our early years. We were completely unknown and he brought us to New York to play shows. We played some of the first Blues Explosion shows ever in NYC and did many shows with them through the early 90's. In 1991, Larry Hardy called us from out of the blue and said he had been at Long Gone John's house when we sent him a demo of some songs. He told Long Gone to put a single out and that is how we did our Sympathy 7". We were very suprised that Sympathy wanted to do it. Larry explained that he was starting a label and would we be interested in doing a single. We were excited to have anotheer chance and readily agreed. He had just done a Gories 7", so we knew we were in good company. It was obvious Larry had excellent taste and we were a perfect fit for his label. We've been there ever since. Our third LP Whiskey was the first In The Red LP and that's a real honor. It has a 28 minute song on one side. We did it by drinking a bottle of whiskey. We started playing. When we stopped the reel of tape had just ended. Whiskey was the inspiration, thus Whiskey became the title. Needless to say it was our homage to our heroes the Velvet Underground. We practiced that song for months, much to the dismay of our fellow practice space inhabitants. They went as far as leaving nasty messages on our answering machine at home saying we were second rate Sonic Youth wannabes. I had never listened to Sonic Youth. And so life in Boston continued and it was not easy. We all worked at Rounder Records in Cambridge. It was not a great place to work, but you could learn a lot about music there. Eventually we all left Rounder and did very menial jobs around Boston. Times were tough and tensions were high and at one point with all of us living in one house under trying circumstances Dana left the band. We had already done demos for what was to become Don't Like You. We knew Jon Spencer wanted to produce one of our records, yet we had lost Dana for the time being. We worked with another drummer for some months, but the original vibe was greatly diminished. So eventually Dana came back and we ventured down to NYC to record Don't Like You. Don't Like You was recorded at Jerry Teels sudio in lower Manhattan in the summer of 1994. We actually stayed in the studio itself and in our van in the sweltering heat during the days spent recording. We did it all live with vocals being live through the PA. This accounts for a lot of the lo fi quality of that release. We didn't have the ability to "clean" anything up. But that was the way we wanted it. And Jon Spencer wanted the record to sound more like his vision of us live. We did all the songs in two days, and then waited months for Jon to send back mixes of the songs. He did all the mixing of that record. Don't Like You is our best selling record and stills seems to be the one everyone who knows about us owns. It was a departure for us, being much noisier than our previous releases. We toured the U.S. and Europe in 1995, and that was probably the highest profile year for the band. Life in Boston seemed pointless and expensive. People even resented the fact that Jon Spencer produced our record, so we decided enough was enough. It was time to leave. Ohio had always been in the back of our minds, because Tom and David had family th from there and also went to school in Ohio. When we were touring in 95 we stayed in Columbus for a week and really enjoyed it. We decided it would be a comfortable place to live. We left Boston in the summer of 96 and never looked back. It marked a new stage in the life of our band. Through the chaos of touring and moving, we weren't able to record for a few years. We had a back-log of material. David Katznelson wanted to come out to help us do our next record and so we started our Diamond Mine studio phase beginning with the two CD release of Forgive Thee. We didn't want to return to the sound of Don't Like You because doing that once was enough. Instead we focused on trying to get the most out of the songs we had written. The sessions were trouble free and a lot was recorded so we just decided to put it all out as one session. Mick Collins came down and Don Howland as well as lots of other people popping in and out of the studio. It was a festive time. Maybe we released too much material on Forgive Thee, but to us it was a document of where we were at that time. Dana met Wendy Carney and got married and had a daughter, Violet, so life settled down considerably for him in Columbus. It is true that he worked at White Castle for a few years. Hey you've got to make a living in the lucrative world of rock n roll. David got into furniture refinishing and other art related jobs. Tom worked and still works at Used Kids record store. We toured Europe again in '98, but in general became much more reclusive just working on songs and not worrying about touring and playing lots of shows. We've never been gung ho about self promotion. David Katznelson came out again to help us with Refried Dreams. This was our most polished record to date. The third record of that trilogy was Yer last Record, recorded in 2001, which was much more somber in tone than the other two. Unfortunately it seems that people failed to notice this record. It was much more grandiose in scale because the songs demanded it. It was recorded in a fancy new digital studio but sounds like it was recorded in a dream underwater. We have tried to maintain the signature elements of our sound on all of our records. That's very important to us. Guitar tones and melody and those types of things are given high priority. We are currently wrapping up a new record and I think it's a good one. We've taken nine months off and on to record it. It was done at home in our basement and at our friend Will Foster's house who is engineering the sessions. It will be out in mid-March 2007 on Dead Canary Records. Vinyl only, but it will have a bar code for a free digital download included with the record.For live WFMU broadcast and interview go to http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/12060
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