The story that follows will tell you a little about one of the finest rock bands never to be discovered and download a few samples along the way..You can get to the picture archive 'here'
It all started on Easter break in 1980 in the rumpus room at the 'Sutro Gardens' where I lived at the time. Myself, 'James Marshall Berry' on guitar, Fred 'Fast Freddy' Baldwin on lead, Erick 'Zimmerhoff' Zimmerman on bass and Santi 'Woody' Martorano on drums jammed together for the purpose of starting a band.. mainly to score and party but something just clicked... we knew we had something. As much as he tried to deny it, Woody was temporary.. pre-determined to be replaced by Paul 'Louie The Butcher' Caldarazzo as soon as summer vacation from Chico began. Besides.. Lou had come up with the name for a 'Killer Rock Band.. Marshall Law' We all played thru Marshall stacks at the time so the name suited us.
We started with a few originals but mainly did covers of our favorite bands at the time.. Priest, AC/DC, UFO. The band was perpetually 'between singers' so the music was the main focus and was polished to show it. That first summer we pretty much owned the local high school party circuit in Novato, getting to know the local men in blue on a first name basis.. Fast Freddy was usually even able to talk them into 'just 3 more then we'll be done'. We usually stuck to it and so the cops usually let it slide. Before long Freddy and Lou were back to Chico for another year.
During the Chico times, the band made many roadtrips to Chico. Known to many as 'Fred's Rocker Buddies from the Bay'. We opened for Fred's band 'Southbound' on more than one occasion at a variety of Tau Gamma Theta fucntions in Charlies backyard or just about anywhere they'd let us play.
In 1981 we somehow (I truly don't remember how..) hooked up with the first singer of the band. Ric Altizio was somewhat seasoned having toured with a church group 'The Wind Children' (altho judging from some of the stories he told, I'm not sure how much prayin' was going on..) and had been in a club act called 'Dirk Ivory'. We had never had a singer so actually hearing words was quite a change.. we had to learn to hold back to make room for the vocals. That was the year of 'The Tiny Hair Tour'. We did all the high schools in Novato (except Novato High.. Zimmerhoff was not allowed on school grounds). Our goal that summer was to do at least 1 real gig. The chance came when we were put on the bill with some other local bands to open at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco on Broadway. After the sound check, which went smooth, we changed all the tubes in our Marshalls (we had heard that's what Judas Priest does..) and come showtime our amps proceded to not work..(bad tubes..). After fixing the amps, trying not to fall into the hole on the stage and putting on a show that kicked ass, none of the headliners would ask us to open for them again (chickens..). Even the sound guy who capped on us before the show tried to steal Freddy for his band.. Mission Accomplished. Before long it was back to Chico for Fred and Lou.
1982 picked up where 1981 left off except the band decided to get serious.. well kinda. We left the warm confines of the cinder block studio at Fast Freddys house and rented Page One's studio at A Broun Soun in Terra Linda and proceded to practice almost every night for a month. We did a 3 song demo at Calypso Records in Novato.. we learned why there are no clocks in recording studios that summer..It was also where Fred laid down 'The Hundred Dollar Lead' The band was getting tight but with the snowstorm that was happening in Marin in the early '80's, tempers and atttudes clashed. When Ric saw the ad for a singer in the paper that was pretty much the end for that summer. We went back to the cinder block studio we called home with the musty couch, Jim Beam Bottles and Ravioli heater and proceded to wrap up the rest of the summer. It was then that Louie awoke to find the cube of butter in his jacket pocket.. but thats another story. We recorded all of our tunes without vocals that summer at 'A Brown Soun', hoping to use the tape to find a new singer. Listen to "Dinner Music" for a sample. It is an MP3 file and you can get a player for Windows at the bottom of the page.
1983 ushered in the Jeff Carr era. Jeff was the drummer for Fred's band in Chico 'Southbound' and was also Louies roommate there. Jeff decided he would make a run at being the singer and moved to Novato to live in my house. My real job at the time included me being a video game tech fixing the games that the company I worked for owned. Between Ernies Liquors, the pool table and several video machines at the house, (oh yeah..and the Brau) it was sometimes tough to get Jeff to practice. (at least we always had beef jerky..) Other than the closet sleepover incident, "Hey.. It was the coolest place in the house!!" and parking cars in front of neighbors driveways at 2:00 in the morning.. 1983 was pretty much a party time.. doing the party circuit.. keggers at Freddy's.. pissin' off Kip and Jody. We did a 3 song demo with Jeff on vocals and I recently discovered 1 song from it. Listen to "The Wizard of Sin".
1984-85 were the slow years. Fred had graduated and was working in Santa Rosa and Walnut Creek managing something, Lou was married and in Chico. The cinder block studio was no more. We'd do a jam here or there and every time we'd leave saying "Y'know.. we could still do this.." We decided then that it was time to try to find another singer. While lurking at Uncle Charlies nightclub in Corte Madera.. looking for singers to steal, I thought I'd found one. I talked to a mutual friend and was told "You don't want that guy.. I know who you need.." He introduced me to Mike 'Ninja' Gray. The first time we met him was at Hun Sound in San Rafael. He walked in and we thought he was the singers roadie or something. That soon changed.. This scrawny guy could SING!! We decided to re-write all the vocals using Ninj. (we weren't sure if we really had any vocals to start with anyway..) The time we went to Mikes apartment and Hoff squished the wicker table stands out as eventful, and so does the birthday party.. (Did I really do that??) Fred was pretty consumed with his management pursuit and it was tough to get a commitment from him. It was then that Hoff decided to move from bass to guitar and we brought in Ken 'McBass' McNulty to play bass. (what else.?.?). Louie had just moved back to Novato with his wife, and now family, but was hungry to play. Thats when it all started again.
In early 1986 I got a credit card from a local building supply store and charged up $600.00 worth of building materials (Hoping to get paid back when we got signed.. yeah right..) and with help from Rob Merrick (Fred's roommate from Chico who majored in Construction Management) we built the studio in Lou's garage. We tried every kind of sound absorbing material we could find..egg flats..cotton batts..moving blankets.. to try to make the sound stay in..no way..not with Marshalls..The day Mike and I spent hours gluing the egg flats to the walls only to eat dinner and come out to find them all on the ground was a particularly amusing moment. 8-6-86 was the first day we jammed in the studio. It was like heaven.. until the neighbors called saying we were the loudest thing they had ever heard..We worked out some compromises and did get quite a few good practices in there. It was in 1986-1987 that we were gigging Uncle Charlies pretty heavily.. headlining on Saturday nights. We brought Fast Freddy up on stage whenever we could get him there and had some really good shows. As usual, the band never had it's shit together when we needed it to be. We pretty much stayed at Uncle Charlies due to a lack of a slick promo package to help us get gigs at other venues. It was also during this time that we replaced Mc Bass with Jeff Baudin on bass and keyboards. The keyboards never clicked and slowly everyone lost interest. Lou had to move and on the day he had to be out, I disassembled the studio.
1987 found Mike and I as roommates and we decided that we'd stick together and try to put the band together with some new members. I moved to bass and we hooked up with some hot shot young lead players and had a new drummer. We had found a studio in the industrial section of Novato and were practicing hard.. sounding good.. and then the roommate situation fell apart and so did the band.. for the final time.
Mike and I hadn't completely burned bridges and in 1988 were approached by local producer Nathan Hazing about putting some of the old tunes on tape. He had really liked the tunes and I think he was trying to showcase Mikes vocals for something or other. I had no decent recordings from any of the years with the band and Mike thought it sounded like fun, so we took Nate up on it. I think we did 3 tunes but Incinerator was the only one I ended up with. The song was written by Freddy, Zimmerhoff and myself probably around 1981 or 82. It was originally called 'Shit on my Heel', named by Zimmerhoff after a fight with a bottle of Beam (Zimmerhoff won...). The words were written by Jeff Carr and refined by Mike Gray. On this track I did all the guitar tracks (I think there were 4) and the bass. Ninj did all the Vocals. Nate programmed the drums, recorded it, mixed it and produced it. It is copywritten, so if you steal it and make money, be prepared to write out a check. I bumped it up from a cassette that I had and encoded it to MP3.
You can get to the picture archive 'here'