Around here, Thompson’s mother told me about some kid her brother went to school with who had heard the aggression demos and was dabbling in electronic music and wanted to work with us. Obviously just by his interest in us, you knew he was fucked in the head from the start, but he was tall (this comes in handy much later in the story), had a sampler, knew how to play notes, and didn’t argue (yet). He looked like Ashley Hamilton (who had just married the real life counterpart of Marks’ fictional love Brenda Walsh, no relation to sue, but brother of Brandon), and thus we had no choice but to call him Ash. He came to Toad’s basement and played some sweet synths and suddenly we were a trio. For about 10 minutes…
I honestly cannot recall how Tom became part of the aggression. I simply recall him being there at a certain point with a guitar, and that was it. Which is odd, because I have a decent memory for this shit. I think Ash had something to do with it cause they were in a band together, though I think Ash had been fired. But suddenly, Tom was there, bringing the enthusiasm Mark didn’t display (externally), and bringing skills none of us had. And for the first time, it was a proper band…with a drum machine. As planned.
With this unit, the aggression really took off. We played shows, we wrote songs, and were often focused. But what was more interesting was that we transcended the band. Our close friends like G and Matt became essential parts of the crew. This was a traveling gang. It wasn’t unusual for Kruger and Link to come back and make cameos onstage or on tape (some day, I’ll do a retrospective piece on MOG supergroup The Albrecht Go’s ) I loved each and every one of these guys and if it was something as complicated as traveling to play a gig or just going to the Wendy’s there was no better group of people to spend time with. These were the early days of the MOGpac.
5 comments:
I am almost positive Tom was originally brought in for live shows to play the 2nd guitar parts Mark wrote and occasional bass when Frank would just rather showboat. After the first few gigs Tom displayed his talent for effortlessly writing guitar hooks, and then we started writing together.
I'm suprised you didn't mention my talent that also first surfaced around this point - my penchant for throwing fits on stage when gear malfunctioned or when soundmen pissed me off.
OH, then there was my talent for dressing like EMF...
"I knew you guys were good, but you guys are FRIGGIN' AWESOME!"
There are two people responsible for most significantly shaping my then-developing taste in indie/alt/electronic music - Matt Gentile and FJ. Earlier, Matt gave me The Cure, Mode, Nitzer Ebb, Moz, Ministry, etc., and upon meeting FJ he immediately filled in the holes - Skinny Puppy and their numerous side projects (which are definitely responsible for our love of never-ending side projects of our own), Chemlab, Virus 23 (how have they not been mentioned yet????)...
1. You were right about Tom, but I still don't recall the actual conversation, moment etc where we were like "hey come play". I do remember the first writing session in Ash's basement where we wrote JCC which led to Disposable Memories. That I believe was the first time the 4 of us wrote together and the "musical chairs" writing style was introduced.
2. Said by Sandy back in the day after the first Pyramid show. Also famous for danny arriving in a suit and being told by a homeless guy "LOTTO LOTTO LOOK WHO WON THE LOTTO"
3. I was saving v23 to lead into the Vikki intro, so hang on. I'll be going back through a lot of this and filling in the blanks
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