The smiling faces of our Fried four look out from the book.
As told to Molly MegBonnet by The Quartet personally. With 23 pages of hot Pics, seen here for the first time
Our four beloved and scruffy jazz mutants hail from Infictive County and they where born during the Gas Wars. They were all too young for this war to make too much of an impact on them, Gan relates that the worst part for him was the hour plus lines at the gas stations and the food rationing that limited his meals. Phil recalls seeing blown apart bodies of innocent bystanders on the news nightly and having nightmares about it. Ross remembers nothing from this time period, his parents lived in a boonies and they didn't watch TV.
The lads grew up in a rough neighborhood, amongst gangsters and hardened Mollkins. All of them had ready fists and open hearts as caffeinated grade school boys, they developed a oily dark outlook on life with a crisp punch line that made even scarecrows giggle. They packed twinkies, cupcakes and sodas to lunch each day and they watched old Godzilla movies every weekend, while munching popcorn and swigging sodas. Phil was the first to discover Taco Pop As grade school lads they would wander the park and feed squirrels, race homemade skooters about, races often ending in a bloody nose or skinned knee. They read comics on rooftops and they drank lots of caffeine containing beverages, running down the streets screaming with naive joy. Separately as children and later together as teens and young adults they would hold onto they're dreams of being musicians, even when the rest of the world scorned them and laughed at them. They didn't give up, they just kept working and dreaming.
As a grade schooler Phil Lectrum was a sheet music worm, he would bring a stack of music books and a foot long battery powered keyboard his auntie had bought him for Christmas. He was always getting into trouble for constantly playing the thing at home, in school, on the bus rides to and from school, but nothing and no one could make him stop it. yes he could have paid attention in class, yes he could have done his homework. But had he done all that then he would not be the mutant jazz superstar that he now is, and this book would never have been written. Phil had by the age of 14, been studying magic for a year and a half as he was still on a keyboard all the time, by now he owned eight of them. Phil early years had been vary happy, it wasn't until he was fifteen that things grinded to a happiness halt. before he was a joyfull child, tough and ready to fight but more likely to be listening to Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis records while sketching on typing paper that he had stolen from school. School was the only unhappiness in his life until his mother Goethi Lectrum died when shot in the head by a deranged rouge member of Gerald Ellon's private guard. Things took a turn then, she had taught him how to read sheet music before he could talk and now she was gone, except the bits of her still clinging to the wall where the gung fight had erupted. Phil bad at everything but keyboard in school. Music, girls and cigarettes was all he desired all he wanted from this lost world. He was barely floating through school, always about to sink, he started drinking the occasional beer by sixteen, sometimes even two beers. Phil's first school was Wracksdale, but he has only repressed memories of his time there. Then it was off to Hedgerocks Middle school and Sludge factory, there he barely got by without failing and being thrown onto the streets to fend for himself with either his ass or his fists. Finally he spent his high school years creaking a educational by while getting a job smashing bricks into powder for a local eccentric retired corporate baron. The job payed for endless albums of the cassette tapes they put music on in those dark days. He was also buying a joint or two a week from his high school contacts and experimenting with green mullberrys. It was while listening to Sammy Davis Jr. on his CD walkman while tripping on Green Mullberrys that Phil decided to form a band. He reasoned that if they gig a lot and even more so if they make records the band could be big enough to quit school and his job and eek out a living in the slums somewhere. He assembled his first musical group, Dada Cabinet. This band consisted of:
Dada Cabinet was a popular band in a seven mile radius. A few cassette tape boot-legs exist to this day, often sold on e-bay for as much as four dollars a tape. At a concert at the hole in the hole in the hole in the wall Phil talked after wards to his friend and mullberry contact Ivan Scod. Scod was a close friend of later Quartet band member Gan Phemps. Gan's father had been in a acid-blues band of the late 1960's called Rory and the tempest prisms. So Phil and Gan meet at the Viking Faire restaurant a couple of days later and a partnership was formed. Phil liked Gan's looks, in a heterosexual, but somehow attracted anyway deal. So he signed Gan up, to strength his somewhat weak and bland band.
Gan was a useless punching bag in school, with his usually bloody nose in a book, no time to studies, I've almost finished this chapter. He made his own bass guitar out of broken chairs, electric fence wire and box, and a stack of old used up lighters. Gan got a job also, he dragged dead cows onto the backs of a truck so they could be piled and burned. He worked hard and bought himself a expensive bass, he had the best instrument in the band until Phil began stockpiling keyboards later on. Gan did well in literature class. He had a hip teacher who had him do book reports on William S Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson and such, the lit class was the only reason that Gan didn't drop out of school to sell stolen cell phones and hub cabs and live on a park bench.
So the boys of Dada Cabinet decide to try to make a living off of they're music alone. As soon as the money starts rolling in good and steady they would drop out of school and quit there slavish jobs. But the success part didn't start out too easey. They had many gigs at first, playing as much as five times a month, but the kind of music they played was at this time only popular in Infictive county, and in Washington A C, but they couldn't afford to tour there yet. The gigs dried up to one or two a month. Several of the band member's intruments where breaking down and held together with duck tape and super-glue. This was during the great Infictive County Mutant jazz scene days. Bands and musicians from all across the country where heading over to infictive county until there was a glut of bands, too many to play the many bars and clubs about the area. Getting a gig was harder than getting a blow job in solitary confinement. But Gan was ceaseless in his promotion of the band, and Phil kept banging on people's doors until they got a gig at The Infected Rat. The money was split among the band members and more gigs followed, and they just kept coming till the band was playing six nights a week, and twice on two nights a week, the hectic pace was too much for band members Bunny Bent and Triggs Holldill, they left the band to bus tables and flip burgers. The whole band where still teenagers and in high school, more or less. They're parents began leaning on the gigging and it's resulting hung over late for school side-effects, so they went to weekends only while the InFictive county mutant jazz scene began to explode all around them. But when summer hit they toured every night for three months straight, now the momentum was growing, sometimes they would even play outside of Infictive County. By now most of the band members had sampled drunken groupies, speed, weed, S and M, and Food in a can. The remaining band members would sit around a lot listening to the latest Johny Mollkin record and then try they're best to play the licks they had heard. At this time the first album by The Shunting was freshly out and they listened to it over and over again. They also listened to the All Star Uhh Chorus, and Pony Rose all the time, especially in the car, so they could enjoy the rich throbbing bass. The gigging was frantic, birthday partys, barbe-q's, weddings, high school dances, they played em all. Sometimes they played free sets for wild keg partys, paid only with free beer.
The middle line up of Data Cabinet:
Gan Phemps and Phil Lectrum where by now writing lots of songs together, and the rest of the band would learn parts to back the song. The clubs they played in where rough and they stayed up all night drinking beer and oftentimes getting into fights until the bouncers would interveine. They where falling farther behind in school, where they all would nod off from time to time, with the exception of the ever driven Phemps, he would pull an all-nighter, then float through school with a C average, the scholar of the band it seems.
Erms was a old school mate of Phil Lectrum. They where now attending different schools and had fallen out of touch, but they ran into each other at a keg party and Phil learned that Erms was now playing drums! He recruited him on the spot, freed Jabe Mulgrove up to play more trombone, his instrument of choice. Erms was a talented drummer and he was not a raving drunk on probation like Jabe. Plus Erms was dependable, he never missed a gig, even playing with one arm broken in a cast after a motorcycle wreck that took out two squirrels and injured a magpie. Erms was a non-conformist is a big way, often he was sent home at school for wearing things like capes, deep sea helmets, or clear spandex pants. Erms is a lazy drunk. He likes to sip beer slow and steady all day, building a buzz that is strong by evening.
DaDa Cabinets was at its strongest now. All it's members out of high school except Shank who was held back a year for refusing to stand for the National Anthem. Jabe Mulgrove begin developing a prescription pill problem at this time. Fresh out of high school and by now the whole band jobless. No money coming in yet adventure in young blood stirred. The band, excepting Shank Mohammad having just found the faith and changed his last name went on a ill fated road trip to Washington A C. Phil's green station wagon he inherited from his grandmother made it most of the way there but then it died once and final. The band was walking now, what would have been a six hour drive is now a two day or more hike, unless they get rides.
New Line up
This line up toured the local dirty clubs and after hours parties for nearly a year.