The Twerps

Twerps Bio:In 1992, I was trying to put together a band after failing to put together or join several other projects: Toy Automatic, The Commercials, Thoral Ravenscroft's Swing Time Band, Smash Oblivion, The New Mary Janes, The Best Buy/Sissies (Drums), The Sound Crocodiles or the Family Plot which in essence were proto-Slobs; switching Andy Slob from bicycle to bass and moving me to audience member. I had no idea how this band was going to form. I was willing to play whatever instrument the other band members wouldn't. I just knew a bad muscian like myself needed to be incharge of the project lest be kicked to the curb. The one thing that I could actually do more poorly than play an instrument was to be my nitche, sing. At least it wasn't tamborine or an unplugged bass. The Benz brothers (BPA) and Matt from the Mortals had the pulse of the scene, all worked at the then- best record store in the city, Everybody's Records. Knowing this, I pestered them about guys that might be willing to join a punk or post-punk band.Most candidates were very scary, thus their availability. They said that Bob was a very talented guitar player who had played with Matt in the Boondocks, which read to me like he was someone's ugly cousin from Omaha. Turned out Bob was an eclectic character who would change topics in mid sentence, laugh instead of answering questions, and would see apparitions. He was 6'2", used to wear a leather jacket in the summer, and had long curly blond Metal God locks, a Husker Du T-shirt, and a Salem ballcap. My favorite thing about Bob's performance was how he'd grimace at his guitar, as if he was communing with, confused by, or mad at it. It wasn't like I was unfamiliar with Bob, as he was ever present at shows since the Jockey Club days, and I had had many unusual conversations with him over the years. So, I was interested, as was Bob.I realized inexperience could be a key recruitment tool. So with virtuosity in mind Bob and I pursued our next pieces. When Billy was found, I was doing a live radio show called Sunday Night Live. We knew each other through a mutual friend, Bill's college roommate Socrates (no he wasn't a philosophy major). I had met Bill at 4 am at a preppie party where he and Socrates had just rolled in from some show in Columbus, 90 miles up I-71. A month later the dynamic duo shows up at the radio station to see Brainiac. Billy and I got to talking about his guitar playing in a band called One Legged Neighbor. I expressed our interest in a bass player or possible rhythm guitar player, and I think he wanted to be the guitar player. Billy was pumped to do something, and we never found a bass player, so Billy became the guy.Again through the radio show I had met Don, who was a pushy 16 yr old flim flam man who knew a lot of high school punk bands and wanted to get them on the air. A couple of years later Bob, Bill, and I asked Don if he knew any available young kid drummer types, oddly he didn't, but said come to BCD's (a bank turned copy shop, café, and punk club) and we might find someone. We did and asked everyone in the club if they could play drums, no takers. So we got drunk and pressured the always sober Don into learning how to play drums, usually that process works in reverse. Don was a terrible drummer, Bill a crappy bass player who didn’t own a bass, I already told you about me, and Bob was the seasoned veteran we all looked up to in the talent pool. Don and Bill got better!It was 1993 and with this line-up we put out the Will Play for Food demo tape (much better than the 7", not as stiff and we were having more fun), Will Play for Food 7" on 702 Recs, and The Small Town Records Juvenile Delinquent split 7" with Cherub Scourge. Don wrote the devilishly understated tune "Fuck You." Bob pulled out an old Boondocks song which he wrote called "Why". Bill brought a couple of One Legged Neighbor songs one of which we retooled by adding a verse, which was "Just Say No". I thought we should cover a Best Buy/Troy Turner (of Midwestern Hellride fame) song called "Plane Ride to Hell" (Andy Slob and I came up with background Ahhs, which we both swore the other was singing but neither was...spooky). And on the rest of the songs that were not covers…I wrote the guitar parts and lyrics. On the demo we covered the Queers' "Ursula Finally has Tits", showing the Queers how their power pop could sound off key. I think the shock of someone covering their song led to us playing with them on a few occasions, and me singing Ursula with them once. It was like the Washington Generals playing the Globetrotters.Adam was a later addition because Bill and I felt we needed a fuller right handed sound, and because Bob could be brilliant one moment and couldn't be bothered to remember a riff the next. The idea being we could get someone who could play power chords and solidify the rhythm, cover up Bob's wobbles and make him more of a lead guitarist. Adam wasn't the first guy we tried in this role; we also tried Tom Khoeney another future Long Gone. Tom didn't show up to practices or would show up a few hours late. Tom did play one show with us, at Brookwood Hall in Dayton with Anus the Menace. So we scrapped the Tom idea until Adam. Tom was a good guy who died a few years ago from cancer, and one of my regrets was how much it hurt him when we let him go.The main problem wasn't Bob's playing it was our lack of practice. By this time 1994-98, Bill lived in Cleveland or LA, I was in Dayton or Saipan, Don and Bob were in Cincy, and later Bob moved to 'some ass-backward suburb south of Dayton. It was getting hard to arrange practices; we were borrowing people's apartments, practice spaces, equipment, etc. I think we used Billy's apartment once until the Cleveland cops were heard knocking at the door, it took a couple of songs for us to notice them pounding. Drinking was sometimes a performance and behavioral problem for me, Billy, and occasionally Bob...and, well, Don being a non drinker made it an oil and vinegar thing? So, adding Adam (another non-drinking pre-teen) just mixed another ingredient to the chaos.Adam had an old Sears Silvertone guitar that had a great thin sound which refused to stay in tune. You get through one stanza and-poof--an F was an E. Adam recently sent me an e-mail saying it was a Danelectro guitar made by Silvertone, which confused me because I thought Silvertones were made by Danelectro. Maybe someone could enlighten us on this point. Regardless, Adam was playing in the only band that was more dysfunctional than us, that being Snot Boy 77. So, I think he was more than willing to leave for us. Not that we were asking him to have an exclusive relationship, we were willing to share. Come to think of it we were sharing Don, as he was playing guitar for Snot Boy.The Genetically Superior 8" was a fiasco--originally we were going to put out an LP comp with Scared of Chaka, FYP, and the Showcase Showdown. The concept was to put our best efforts in a kind of showdown. Interest waned where Scared of Chaka was releasing too much stuff to put out a quality batch, Pete from 702 was talking to FYP and I think something similar happened there. So it was Showcase and us, and we decided we wanted something off kilter which became an 8" record. We couldn't find dust covers, and the ink on the vinyl stickers bonded with the vinyl records. The recording session was forced as we didn't know the songs, and had to record them in a weekend before I moved away to teach at a catholic school on the island of Saipan. (Saipan is part of the Northern Mariana Islands situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.). While in Saipan it took three months to get a copy of our test pressing because it was curried by ship from Reno through NY via the Atlantic Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope across the Indian Ocean, through Philippine Sea, and finally the Pacific Ocean. With time constraints we deemed it not worthwhile to remaster our side lest wait another three months. We are pretty sure the tech mastered the Showcase side and left the settings the same for us. We tried to put too many songs on this platter, where the last song starts to distort in the grooves. The pressing is so bad I still won't listen to the vinyl record version of these songs. The artwork was being done on a computer in The Kiyu Library in Saipan. Some guy started deleting the public files which the librarian was trying to preserve. Back then there was no format to save files that large, so I was at the mercy of the unwashed masses. Since I didn’t have a car, every day for several months I walked a mile to and from the library -dodging monsoons- to work on the artwork. Earlier that day, by chance, the librarian wanted to check out his new Epson photo printer, so he printed out a low res copy of the cover art on plain paper. That's the version of artwork on the cover. Pete from 702 did the type setting, where the Genetically Superior type slipped down acutely to the right. I wasn't pleased, but in retrospect the juxtaposition of an askew Genetically Superior type is a better idea than straight horizontal type. The title came out of an east coast tour where Bill found this trucker's hat when we were on tour traveling through KKK country West Virginia. It was a blue hat with a florescent orange “Genetically” and florescent green “Superior”. We wanted to keep the color scheme but we couldn’t get it to print using the CMYK process.Bob wrote "Queerbait," along with some other songs that the band felt were too far away from what we were doing. Bob had a paranoid, real-life fear of being hit on by guys. While we thought that the lyrics--in which Bob is ill-equipped to fend off gay passes-were humorous. Practically we were a bit put off to associate ourselves with this song. The decision to do this song was based on the aesthetic importance and truthfulness of Bob's paranoia and naiveté, and that the music was a rock and roll juggernaut. In retrospect we shouldn't have put this out as a group because it's a personal portrait, and would be a better song without us watering it down. Doing it as group makes it seem like an anthem, some sort of screwed up Sham 69 sing along. I felt like my contribution to the song came off as scoffing at Bob, which subconsciously I think I was doing. I know Bill being a researcher in HIV-AIDS and I being a teacher both feel personal and professional discomfort with this song. Bob said he was refusing to be politically correct on this matter.Speaking of collaborations! Bill and I did something new; we collaborated on the music to "Happy Little Tykes." I got to play an instrument! On that track I used a small toy keyboard called a Casio Sk 1. We were trying to take the Twerps in a vaguely more creative direction, Don kicking and screaming along the way. This was before the (increasingly cheesy) neo no wave thing happened, and it was hard for us to articulate exactly what we wanted to do--like the Electric Eels, Pussy Galore, the Contortions early Devo, but much faster? In the end, since we Twerps lived far apart from each other and rarely practiced, we never gave ourselves the chance to develop the kind of music we (Billy and I) wanted to play.On all of our recordings Andy Slob recorded us in his basement on an Adat. At first Andy asked only for beer, but after putting up with us he asked for a nominal cash consideration. If you pick up an old Neus Subjex, you might see where Andy refers to us as the most difficult band to record, or be around. Not surprising and after the fact, I ended up doing a recording session only band with Andy called Mang.When we moved across the world it was a good excuse not to deal with one another for awhile. We did do a U.S. tour in 1998 with the original line up, until Montana where Steve from Showcase Showdown filled in for Billy. I think that tour was the most fun we had, as we played well, had no expectations, and sought out adventures. As well we did a few shows in Cincy, sans Bill, moving Adam over to bass. When I moved back to Cincy Adam was immersed in the Long Gones and we tried to get John Ring from Spodie to play bass. We practiced several times, but Don wasn’t interested in a line up deviating from the core of the group. There have been off and on flirtations of doing a reunion show, but the further away one gets from a place and time the harder it is to don the yolk of the past. Plus I don’t think I could physically conjure up Timmy.-Timmy................................................ ............................................................ Websites related to our stuff: http://www.stickerguy.com/ryland/TWERPS.HTM www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/1936/twerps.htm http://www.grunnenrocks.nl/bands/t/twerps.htm............... ............................................................ .I used to teach these guys in Saipan. They started a band called Skatonic. I recorded their demo and sang on a couple of songs for them. This looks like a site from back in the day: http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/bigband/488/project1/aboutme.h tml