We Could Not Fucking Believe It.

Did you ever hear of The Lyres? This was a Boston group that grewout of the ashes of the great late 70's punk rock band DMZ. The were on Ace of Hearts and they were pretty happening for 3-4 years in the mid-to-late 80's. Sorta garagey, sorta Kinks, sorta Animals. Vox organ, syncopated back beats, all that.
So the front guy Mono Man (real name Jeff Connolly) got his name from being a huge 60's punk record collector in college. When he was out of smoke he used to try to trade old records for weed, his selling point being, "it's mono, man."

What a character. Not necessarily the nicest guy but that was sort of his charm. These guys were more colorful than your average band. I think my band when I was a greenie, The Malarians, was maybe even more colorful.

We opened for The Lyres once in Montreal at Les Founfouns Electriques which, wonderfully enough, means The Electric Buttocks. I was twenty and I gave a ridiculous interview before our show, intimating that our entire band was on heroin. I was always trying to figure out how to get copy space back then, before I learned that you do that by giving a publication money in the form of buying ad space. Simple.

it's all like that. Anyone who has tried to sell a record or two knows. It all cash. And it all flows downhill....ultimately....to radio. Either by more ad time purchased or plain old graft and payola. Maybe that changes now. But it'll always flow downhill somewhere.

So, we were opening for The Lyres at Pearl Street in Northampton when I was twenty or twenty-one, and there was the usual alcohol and drama with them. The guitarist actually whipped it out at one point and pissed off the side of the stage. We could not fucking believe it.

After the show the manager of the club was understandably livid and threatened to withold the guy's money.

So Johnny Bernardo, the drummer, asks if he can have the guitarist's share if he mops up the piss. We could not fucking believe it.

I remember opening for The Lyres at TT the Bear's in Cambridge on New Year's of 1987 and Mono guy was wearing this cat mask that covered the top of his face. He was so cocked on Sea Breezes that he was staggering and falling off the stage, and he was actually drooling all over his chin he was so plastered. So he's wearing this mask and drooling and falling over his Vox. Some people just seem to understand that this is Entertainment, you know? If Mono Man thought you'd wanted to see a bunch of guys who look like they're on their way to bowling night, then he'd tell you to go to the fucking bowling alley.

We could not fucking believe it.

Johnny went on to form The Upper Crust, for god's sake. These are people of import.