Welcome to Mini Music Monday, the supplement episode to the Raw Impressions podcast. This week, the Deep Wound edition, part two. Hi. Hi.
I'm back. Extra wound. Oh, who's that talking? I don't know.
This is about my band Deep Wound, my first band in high school. Another perfect episode about Deep Wound. I hope so. That last one.
The way you became so interested in Deep Wound, in the course of that episode, was great. Well, I became not only interested in Deep Wound, but my husband and your past. This is my past. Yeah.
That was a nice little surprise for me. I was just sitting here looking at you, listening to you talk, and then I'm like, oh, I want to know more. What else do you want to know? Well, I was kind of thinking about why things changed.
Why were you not just deep, like why are you not Deep Wound today? I don't want to. Exactly. What happened?
I'm not just everyone. It might not have been the best decision, because any band from the early 80s that actually still around the hardcore band, they sell enough T-shirts to put themselves in mansions. Thank you. I know.
Especially ones from California. Yeah. But we made the decision to follow our musical dreams. You know, we became more textured.
The music we decided that we needed to make more textured music. And J, in particular, picked up the guitar. He was actually playing guitar, writing songs on guitar anyway. So I started out as a drummer, and then did he teach himself how to play guitar?
I assume so. You've never asked? You just didn't know? I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. Well, it's a mystery to you and to me. I fear asking J that question because he might not answer it.
Well, did he take drum lessons? Yes. Okay. He did take drum lessons.
Okay. So that you do know. All right. Okay.
Well, I saw this interview with Dave Grohl where he said that, so he was a drummer, or he is a drummer. I mean, obviously. So when he changed to guitar, he said that he was looking at his guitar kind of like a drum set and he sort of played his guitar like a drum set. And I thought that was really interesting.
He really plays his guitar like a drum. J, he used all the pedals to recreate the visceral attack of a drum set because it's really, I mean, drums are a very satisfying physical instrument. But you know. And they create lots of different sounds.
Okay. But before J gave up on the drums, before he wanted to move from the drums to the front of the stage. Right. Because he's never really given up on drums.
He's just his primary instrument is guitar. So deep wound, we're still together. Okay. Moving through high school.
Moving through high school. I think we released a seven inch vinyl record in 1984. Oh, as deep wound. Gosh, that's so cool.
The official title of the seven inch was reconstructing the border of crumbs, which is something that I had come up with. What does that mean? It was part of a very elaborate prank phone call that I was doing. I made a very, this chorus of like, re-construction the border of crumbs and I would call people and just start, and I would play a tape of that.
And then I would say, would you like to join me in reconstructing the border of crumbs? Ah, the good old days of crink calls. I love it. You know, it seemed it was like it wasn't too scary, you know, because before that I would call people and pretend I was a police officer and that would really freak people out.
So this was much more innocuous construction. And Jason did think that was funny. But the title doesn't show up anywhere on the record. Just there enough.
Okay. Because you would send records away to be made back and then you had no idea what you would get back. Some scramble of the graphics. Gosh, it must have been what a leap of faith, huh?
Like here we are. I hope this looks okay. No one's like emailing you. There's no proof.
There's no proof. Hey, sign off on this proof. Oh, wait, you cut off my name. Wait a minute.
We actually have it for some reason. Like, our names appeared on the front cover. Like what we just made no sense. Yeah.
You got what you got. And the front cover picture was a very crisp black and white picture of an ice cream cone full of snails. That was also my idea. Where did you find that picture?
Was it from like a magazine? No, I said we were going to, I mean, I told Jay and company of my idea of the ice cream cone full of slugs. And they said, well, where can you get the slugs? And I know where I can get the slugs.
And right in front of my house across our busy street in sort of near the parking lot of the hospital that was directly across the street from my house in Westfield, Massachusetts. There was sort of this ravine, this gully. And I would just go down there and just overturn like old barrels and things and see these absolutely four to five inch long slugs. Oh my gosh.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. But they were like three to four inches long. And so I ran in there and I just grabbed all the slugs with my hands and then I got a picture of me holding one of the slugs. Oh my gosh.
You guys actually did. This is a picture that you guys took with a camera. Right? You had to develop the film.
I mean, I'm not sure who you did. I just mean there's no phone then to do it. You know, it's like, yeah, just like take some pictures with your little camera and then hope for the best again. So the record came out and there was one song on the record I'm going to play.
But it's kind of the last song that we, it's not the last song. We did do a session for one song and it was lost to time. If the whole session got lost, it was a cool song. It's called Anatomy's Destiny.
That was the last Deep One song. That was great. But before that, the last song that we kind of wrote together was called Dead Babies. Okay.
I feel like I kind of wrote the riff instead. I don't know. I don't get caught up in the origins. All I know is that I wrote the lyrics for sure.
Okay. So this is it. Sometimes it seems so clear, then the logic disappears. I'm all alone and I'm done again.
I find it and forget again. So much fucking futility, emptiness in the world that I see. The life I lead is the life I make. Not another cheap escape.
Never said. Break out of this self-destruction path. And it cannot disappear. Fade away with passing gears.
I like that song. You said it sounded like a Sabado song. Yeah. It sounds like you're future self.
I think you were writing unknowingly for your future self. You knew somehow and somehow inside of your body. The song sounded more like what we were listening to at the time that we recorded the record. Because by the time we recorded the record, I think our musical tastes were changing so quickly.
And we really loved a band called Mission of Burma from Boston. It's amazing guitar band. They're almost like a new wave dance band, but sort of experimental post-punk. It was called They Were Really Great.
And they did play with hardcore bands. They were hardcore accessible, I would say. So you guys were kind of grown up a little bit and kind of making your way, expanding your way past just strictly hardcore. You're putting your little musical feelers out there and trying new stuff.
That definitely has a different feel than the other songs from last week where those were really traditional. This is like sing-songy. It's all on the same record. We combined the hardcore and this was obviously stepping out a little bit.
There was also a song called Video Prick. It was kind of slow. And Jay played lead on that one. It was the first appearance of Jay Maske's playing lead guitar on a recording.
So there's all these little hints on that record of your future selves. Yeah, I was still shocked when Jay wanted me to play his next band. It shocked me a little bit. So it was like, hey, do you want to like move on from deep-blown to...
Exactly, he was a freshman at UMass at that point. UMass Amherst. And you were a senior in high school. I was a senior in high school.
Yeah, he said he wanted me to play bass in the next band. Which surprised me because I thought Scott Helen might be a better bass player. Or I thought Jay would want Scott to play bass. But the reality was that Scott had a band with his older brother Eric called The Outpatients, who were the best band locally.
And so they were... So Scott had the Outpatients. So I think that's the reason that Jay did not tap Scott for the bass playing. Although maybe Jay also...
I think he did actually think and expect that I would be a songwriter on his level moving on to the next band, which wasn't quite the case. So then what happened to Charlie? Charlie was going to be the singer of what became Donasor Jr. And we had the first incarnation of Donasorook, like Murph playing drums on myself playing bass and Jay playing guitar Charlie Sang.
So Murph was an in deep wound? No. Murph was in a band called All White Jury with the lead singer of All White Jury, went to UMass, and he had the biggest Mohawk. Murph did?
No, no. Simon, the lead singer. The band that Murph played in All White Jury. Oh, okay.
Simon had a prodigious Mohawk. So Murph was already like a musician too, and doing his thing, and he was a drummer. Jay really liked Murph's drumming. So they go way back too.
They do. They were all kids. You guys were kids. Murph wasn't quite a lot.
He wasn't really a punk guy. He loved everything really. He loved Frank Selva. This seemed like an ariospeed wagon kind of guy.
No. No. No, even though he was like, I would say not quite hardcore, his rock tastes were fairly eclectic. Oh, you just said that because I feel like he had kind of a cool smooth rock vibe when I see old pictures of him.
He was actually awesome. I mean, he was a guy. He had such a cool look. And he was fun.
Yeah. He was really fun. I love those curly-haired pictures of him. Yeah.
So Murph joined you guys. And then Charlie also moved with you. And you were then shifted over from guitar to bass, Jay to guitar, and Charlie to singing. Exactly.
Okay. And so then Charlie retired. He was kicked out of the band. Oh, okay.
We played a show on the Amherst Common. And Charlie had it. He was kind of trying to incite the police. Oh.
And that really unnerved to Jay. Okay. You know, I think Charlie kind of took a very confrontational sense as a lead singer, which is great. But I think Jay just something kind of switched in him and he began singing his own songs.
So it was kind of like maybe let's not use this concert to like start a riot. Let's just play music. Yeah. I think maybe that was more the like I would prefer to maybe just be playing music instead of being confrontational.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we parted ways with Charlie then.
That was sort of something. I mean, Jay kind of did that. I mean, Jay sort of took over. Did you ever was it bad with him then?
Was he mad or? I don't think he was happy about it. He and Murph stayed really close friends over the years. I would see Charlie here and there and he's still around.
His brother actually ran for Congress. Wow. Do you ever see Charlie at gigs? Does he ever come down?
No. No. Yeah. He did the Gobblehoof show I believe.
What's Gobblehoof? Remember right before the pandemic, the big show at the Academy of Music? Yeah. The one we went to?
Yeah. It was band Gobblehoof and Charlie was the lead singer of Gobblehoof. I mean, it sounds like you didn't know him as much because he went to a different high school right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said, you, Murph and Jay.
Yep. And then Jay said, okay, I'll sing or? Yep. He said, well, he wanted himself and me to sing.
Yeah, because you sing a lot on those early songs. Yeah. He signed me those songs. When we were in New York for the anniversary of what's that first record?
Dinosaur. Okay. Sorry. Dinosaur.
I was the name of that. It was our self-titled release, but we had to change our name shortly. Okay. That's enough.
Oh, no. Wait. I wanted to say one more thing about it. Oh, we can't.
We have to wait. No. Do you think I can get three times? No.
We'll just have to someday. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.