A night at the Packing House (A short history of Idiots Revenge pt. 1)

…be an idiot not a fool.

In memory of CR (Charles Robert) Smith

I’ve seen my fair share of new bands, catching their first shows when the talent was raw. The more interesting performances are the young kids just learning to play their instruments, sometimes struggling just to hold them in place. The idea that anyone can get up on a stage and run through a handful of songs has always been an appealing aspect about punk music. The emotions and clumsiness of kids rocking out their tunes are pure and honest. Standing in front of them on the dance floor, their friends cheer them on forgiving all the off-tempos, missed parts and not-so synchronized endings. In the early days of Idiots Revenge that’s exactly what we endured: standing in front of an audience essentially learning to play our instruments.  

One of the crucial components to starting a band is commitment from everyone involved, in addition to playable equipment, which was most likely second hand and/or partially broken. When Rob, CR, Jimmy and I started to play music we were totally focused on writing our own songs.  We were married to the idea that one day we’d be playing on stage opening up for touring groups like our friend's band, Immoral Attitude.    

For the time being, Idiots Revenge settled on my parent’s basement as our practice spot. I still didn’t own a real amp and had to rig my stereo so I could play a bass through it. My vintage Sear’s Silvertone bass had a loose bridge and one unlucky strum on the E string would cause it to fly off and whip you in the arm or worse, the face. It was a pathetic sight, but it mostly worked. CR had somewhat of a real drum set with cracked cymbals and duct taped drumheads. Jimmy used his allowance to buy himself a Radio Shack microphone. His makeshift PA was plugging the mic into one of Rob’s open inputs on his guitar amp. Rob had the best equipment out of the four of us. He managed to get a distorted sound out of jazz amp with tons of unwanted feedback. This was mostly due to him and Jimmy using it simultaneously. We made quite a racket writing songs.  It proved to be real work and a test of our collective patience. With the exception of Rob, I don’t think any of us had a clue how to play music.  

Since we were all under the driving age, our parents were the punk equivalent of soccer moms; we relied on them for transportation. CR’s dad would pack the drum set between the trunk and backseat and Rob’s mom would tow his guitar and amp in a similar fashion. After a summer of infrequent practices and less than successful attempts at writing music, CR eventually decided his new girlfriend was a bigger priority than spending time in a basement struggling to playing out-of-tune songs. He arrived an hour late one afternoon on a motorcycle.  We were in awe that he was driving around without a license, but it was overshadowed by the fact that he was busy getting laid. His excuse didn’t help matters. We were already bummed out from waiting and to throw in that he was having sex when the rest of us weren’t… When he stopped showing up altogether at the beginning of our freshman year, I was given the duty of telling him he was out of the band.

Jimmy started off his freshman year at a new high school and befriended a punk who went by the name of Arrow. Jimmy told him about our band and how we recently lost a drummer. Arrow mentioned that his classmate Spike (Ken Neubert) played drums and was looking for people to play with. We all met at a show and immediately clicked; he was in. Jimmy and I assumed Spike got his name from his spiked hair, leather jacket, and motorcycle boots.  He had a likeness to Mel Gibson’s character in Mad Max.

Before we played a show, we had stickers. Designed by Spike
Sure, I have this skull tattooed on the left side of my chest.

Idiots Revenge was back in action until Rob joined the high school wrestling team and found himself a preppy girlfriend. This left him little time or desire to continue playing music. He was hardly heartbroken when I told him that he was out of the band and followed that up with dropping out of the scene completely. Like CR, we still continued to be friends. Spike suggested that we should jam with his friend, a fellow senior he knew through Art Club and D&D. Mark Putt was like a mini-adult: he had his own car, equipment, knew how to play music, was responsible, and even dated a “normal” wholesome looking girl. At first I was a bit skeptical that he was into metal, prog rock and listened to bands like Yes and Rush. Mark definitely didn’t look like someone who would be into punk, much less play in a punk band. He dressed like someone you wanted your parents to meet. Jimmy and I both instantly liked him because aesthetically he would be that odd looking non-punk guy on stage along the lines of Spinal Tap's first drummer (the one who died in a gardening accident) and besides we really wanted to play in such a bad way. After the first practice, we were impressed that Mark sounded good, but more importantly he didn’t break any strings, which always seemed to plague Rob.

The addition of Mark was really what got Idiots Revenge off the ground. Not only did he have songwriting abilities, but he helped develop the band’s sound and quirkiness. We spent a little more than 8 months getting a set of songs together.

Our first performance almost happened in the form of a party on a snowy Friday evening when we were practicing in Mark’s parent’s garage. We stood in a room without a heater and one lonely light bulb that hung and flickered above us. We could hardly move our hands up and down the frets on our instruments. With our songs barely down, the thought of playing in a warm room full of partygoers sounded like the perfect remedy. Our dreams of a warmer setting were crushed when the guy throwing the party never called Mark back. I suppose most people wouldn't want a punk band playing in their living room. 

At the beginning of my sophomore year the band was ready to debut and we were finally asked to play a show at the Packing House in early November.

The Packing House was a tiny building converted into an art gallery/recording studio in the midst of Denver’s slaughterhouse district. All the touring bands played there: Suicidal Tendencies, The Freeze, Butthole Surfers, CH3, Samhain, The Necros, Ill Repute, Dr. Know, RKL, and countless others that defined punk/hardcore at the time. The space was unforgetable: lawless nights, skinheads, and especially the harsh smell of rotting flesh. The stink attached itself to your clothing and hair and in the morning you would have to dig out thick black snot from your nose.

The best part about the venue was that it was almost impossible to find. I remember the first time my dad drove Jimmy and me there. We spent close to 30 minutes looking for the place. Finally, a drunk near 7-11 pointed us in the right direction. Naturally, my dad was a bit hesitant about dropping us off. There were no signs of cops, authority figures, or other adults. I convinced my dad that everything would be fine once we went inside. After all, I was a 14 year-old freshman in high school so I thought I could take care of myself.  To tell you the truth, when my dad drove off I wondered if I would be alive at the end of the night. It wasn't like going to see Black Flag or GBH where the show was in a neighborhood with a pay phone around the corner in case shit went down. The atmosphere of the Packing House was like that of the Old West: every person fends for themselves. You didn't want to piss off the wrong person. The first experience going there was definitely a crash course on independence and self-preservation.

Try following this map. 

Hours before loading up the car and heading to the show we ran through our set in the garage to make sure we had our songs down. The line-up that night was a six-band local show. We were the openers, followed by The Lepers, The Druids, Bad Circus, Uberfall, and Immoral Attitude. When we hit the stage, about 30 people came in to watch us. We played our eight-song set of sloppy punk tunes overwhelmed by nervousness. By the end of our set, most of the crowd went back outside in the cold to drink. We were pretty forgettable. Our performance didn’t matter because it felt great to be on stage. It was like an initiation, a rite of passage into the Denver punk scene. We were just thankful our drum set didn’t fall over or we didn't break a string. When we were tearing down, Tommy from Immoral Attitude was the only person who came up to me up to say we sounded good. I always remembered and appreciated his encouraging words.

It was typical that each band would have their own flier.

The Lepers were a late addition to the bill and Uberfall was Denver’s newest street punk/oi band on the scene following the footsteps of the newly reformed and improved Immoral Attitude who traded in their skate punk roots and adopted a more English punk sound in the vein of GBH and Chron Gen. The Denver Skins were starting to develop a reputation. They were mainly a bunch of skater kids with shaved heads that danced harder than others in the pit. A couple of years later they would eventually grow into a monster and become a destructive element in the scene, but at this time it was mainly a small group of friends who would fuck with people by calling themselves skinheads.  

Unite, really? 

During the third or fourth band a drunken longhair dude jumped up on stage and said something to the effect of, "all you skinheads are a bunch of fucking assholes." A few seconds later, the guy came crashing out of the barn-like doors. One of the doors literally broke from its hinges and was on the ground with the guy lying on top of it. He staggered to stand up and the skins dragged him 100 or so yards in the direction of the Platt River. Minutes later, I saw the same longhair walk past me heading back into the club. I'm thinking, “that guy has some balls to show his face again.” His balls were much larger than I thought. Not only did he walk back into the space, he got on stage again to call the skins assholes. He was either determined to get his point across or suicidal or just plain stupid. Once again he came crashing through the doors chased by an even larger group of skins. They kicked his ass all the way down to the river and supposedly threw him in it. I kept watching and listening for the longhair's third appearance. He must have finally figured out that being at the Packing House wasn’t conducive to a long, healthy, and peaceful life.

Shortly after our debut show, Idiots Revenge would play one last time with Jimmy, a party in bum-fuck-Kansas (east Aurora towards the abandoned missile silos). The show was in the basement of Jeff’s house, a classmate of Jimmy’s. Most of the people attending all went to school together, including my newest crush, Jenny. The sound was terrible as it bounced off the unfinished cement walls and we played worse than at the Packing House. Maybe my jaundice view of that particular night was exaggerated by getting turned down by Jenny and waking up the following morning with a terrible hacking cough and a slight fever. I blame the clove cigarettes we all carelessly smoked. Being depressed from the night before and trying to get Jenny out of my head, I put on a Kraut album to lose myself in the music. My dad barged his way into my room yelling at me at the top of his lungs, “Turn that shit off!” He had a rare crazed look in his eyes like he was going to start breaking my records or possibly me. Maybe he had put up with my punk rock shit long enough. After yelling at me some more he eventually left, slamming the door behind him. I spent the rest of the day in bed hidden under my covers.

Ok, everyone call KAZY and ask for the Sex Pistols.

Maybe a month later, Jimmy’s dad caught us smoking kitchen spices in his house. True, we raided the spice cabinet because we were curious to see if smoking parsley, oregano, etc. through a soda pop can would get us high. He was convinced that we were smoking marijuana and claimed, “No one’s that stupid!” I readily responded, “We are.” One look at his face, I had a gut feeling that the wrong words said in the wrong tone had just escaped from my mouth. We naïvely hoped his dad would be understanding since he was a former hippy and all. Those hopes were immediately dashed when Jimmy’s father sat us down and told us we were prohibited from seeing or speaking to each other for an entire year! After the severe reprimand, his dad drove me home in silence. Our observance of the restriction lasted a little over 24-hours until Monday afternoon.  His dad wasn’t at the house when Jimmy got home from school, so we used that window of time to spend hours on the phone. Sadly, Jimmy’s parents got a divorce and his dad and the new girlfriend decided to move to Madison, Alabama taking Jimmy with them. It was a motherfucker of a winter, but Ken, Mark and I managed to continued on. 

Special thanks to Ana Medina and Monica Zarazua for editing

Tips On Starting a Punk Rock Band

Dead Punk Icon or Pro Bowler?

When I wasn’t pretending to be Sid Vicious by snarling, spiking up my hair, throwing a chain with a lock around my neck, and dancing in front of a mirror with my brother’s blue electric guitar, you might find me on a Saturday morning rolling a signature Earl Anthony bowling ball down a lane at Bowl Aurora. Somehow punk rock didn’t fit into the bowling equation and vice-versa. I could be singing along with Anarchy In The UK and a couple of hours later I’d be dreaming of being my generation’s Mark Roth touring across America on the Pro Bowlers Association circuit. This posed quite a dilemma; did I want to be the next tragic punk icon or a dude who spends his life in a bowling alley wearing a funny wristband with feathered hair parted down the middle ordering pitchers of Coors for my team. Thankfully neither dream panned out.

Should I be Sid or Mark?

Somehow I managed to sucker Jimmy into tagging along with me on my Saturday morning league for a couple of months especially after I told him there was a cute Latina who recently joined my team. We both went ga-ga over her. What I remembered most about Valerie was a shirt she wore with the slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Her shirt should have been a giant red flag not to ask her out. On the bright side, I manned up and did the asking this time unlike the Heather snafu from the pervious year. Valerie was the first girl I asked out on a date and I shouldn’t have been surprised when she laughed and answered with a resounding “no.” I went home that morning and drowned my sorrows in a half-gallon of milk poured over a box of Trix.

Valerie thought Jimmy and I were weird because we mostly talked about our soon-to-be band, more like a fake band we called Amerikan Hate. The only components missing were: instruments, a couple other band members, songs…just minor details as far as we were concerned. As 14 year-olds we thought our name was tough and original. I used my budding artistic skills to craft lettering and a logo complete with the letter A circled (for Anarchy) and a skull placed somewhere on the paper. Endless hours were spent developing our grandiose ideas of how our band was going to do this and that; we had it all figured out. We’d sit in my bedroom and compose song titles and lyrics. During school while my teachers endlessly lectured about stuff I should have been paying attention to, I spent hours redrawing to perfect the band’s name and logo so we could show our friends and peers and say, “See we have a band.” We somehow imagined by handing them lined notebook paper with a band name written in bone letters accompanied by a poorly drawn skull was a step closer to becoming legitimate. As much as we thought we had something tangible, in reality we only had some trite ideas scrawled out on paper.

Leonard Cohen might have had a famous blue raincoat, I had the famous green army jacket. Amerikan Hate c. 1982-83

Jimmy and I eventually figured out the bus route to Wax Trax and often spent our Saturdays going down to Denver, as my mom was not always available to drive us. The walk from where the bus dropped us off was a visual parade of graffiti and crudely made fliers that were hand written combined with sparsely related borrowed images. It was an introduction that art can be made by anyone and exist beyond a museum or gallery. The Xeroxed advertisements pasted on light and telephone poles made a deep impression on me; they were a testament that bands were able to promote themselves outside so-called conventional methods. The art of flier making was an alternate universe, a secret code of communicating with like-mined people.

Seeing that anyone could make a band inspired us.  We related with other angst ridden teens searching for an outlet to scream how fucked-up and confusing the world was. We were beginning to be well versed in the do-it-yourself punk ethic from the likes of zines and records we were accumulating. We originally decided to start our own band after I saw Black Flag but it was mostly talk. Neither of us knew how to play an instrument. I decided on the bass since Sid played bass (barely-I found out years later) and Jimmy would sing as he had little interest in picking up an instrument. We knew that if this were going to become something real, we’d have to move beyond coming up with a pedestrian band name and crappy drawings.  

This could be your band.

Several years later when I worked at Winchell’s Donut House on South Broadway a pair of characters would often stop by late at night. I always saw them digging through the trash to fish out a couple of cups before coming up to the counter to ask for refills. I never called them out on their scheme because I needed the warm bodies in the lobby to deter would-be bad guys who might be scoping out the place to rob the $20 drawer. As an incentive for keeping them around, I threw in a donut or two that were destined for the dumpster once the fresh ones came out. They could have been the  original Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith’s fictional characters Jay and Silent Bob but almost decade ahead of them. They went under the moniker of Prince Wicked and his manager. While the Prince chowed down and drowned the freebies, the manager told me his life’s mission was to make sure that Prince Wicked was the up and coming new thing on the metal scene. The full name of the group was Prince Wicked and The Demon Force. The manager carried a suitcase full of lyrics written by his client and was in search of two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. It was hard to keep a straight face when he told me this, by then I had already played in a couple of bands, promoted shows, started a record label and so on, their approach seemed a little unorthodox, it was hard not to be sympathetic. Is there a right way to start a band? I respected that they had a vision and spent all night in a donut shop, often until the sun came up, passionately dreaming about becoming rock stars. Every now and then I still do a Google search to see if Prince Wicked materialized.

The inspiration for starting a band was finding out that my classmate Rob was playing guitar with three high school punks. They called themselves Immoral Attitude. I think Rob got into the band because he and the drummer were next-door neighbors and childhood friends. Their towering drummer, Chris and singer Tommy (Splodge) told us they played skate punk like JFA and the Big Boys. Chris and his older brother Rob built a half-pipe in his backyard where everyone hung out and skated. Jimmy and I were both stoked and admired them; we wanted to have our band together, but it felt impossible at that time.

A neighbor around the corner from my house had a garage sale and was selling music equipment. I told Tommy about this since their bassist Buff was looking for an amp. Buff bought the amp and I borrowed $20 from my dad to buy the Sears Silverton bass. Buying the bass was the commitment we needed, the first step of turning an idea into something concrete. Another punk at school CR and I had been friends since elementary and did stuff together like sleepovers, riding BMX bikes and some skateboarding, both of which I was never really got good at. He seemed perfect for the American Hate equation, and with a simple “yes” he would be our drum-less drummer. CR eventually found a drum set and spent many hours annoying his father practicing to the beats of his favorite groups. Then the three of us just sort of stalled as we searched for a guitarist.

No booze, no spikes and don't fuck with the neighbors.

Immoral Attitude scored a big debut show opening for The Necros from Toledo, Ohio and Ill Repute from Oxnard, California at the beginning of my freshman year. They practiced hard at their brand of skate-punk. The show was at the infamous Packinghouse in the midst of Denver’s slaughterhouse district. The trick was finding the club. If you were a newbie, you’d have to camp out in the 7-11 parking lot that was sort of close by and wait for other punks making a beer run to follow them back to the space.

Article from my school's newspaper.

The tragic part of the evening for Immoral Attitude was Rob’s mom wouldn’t let him play the gig because he was Jewish and the date fell on Yom Kippur. I remember walking upstairs and Buff was teaching a fill-in guitarist the songs. The band’s performance was more or less a disaster with the drum set falling over mid-set while the songs were plagued with a lot of missed timings. The audience didn’t seem to mind, there is some sort of punk aesthetic seeing a new group start out, people were pretty forgiving and encouraging as long as you were having fun and didn’t take yourself too seriously. I thought they were cool for getting up there and pulling it off despite the obstacles. After the weekend Immoral Attitude kicked out Rob, which was good news for CR, Jimmy and I.

It didn’t take much coaxing for Rob to join our group and Chris was nice enough to let us practice on Immoral Attitude’s equipment in his basement a couple times at the beginning. One afternoon Chris’s brother, Rob came down to catch a few songs and went back upstairs with Chris shaking his head. It was a testament to how awful we were. After punishing everyone’s ears by working on our handful of songs several times over, Chris came back down and told us we should change our name to Idiots Revenge. Perhaps his proposal was some sort of commentary about how if we ever actually got a song down, it would be like an idiot’s revenge. We took a quick vote and all agreed on our new band’s name. This was only the beginning and over the next couple years of the band’s existence I would be the only remaining original member.       

Special thanks to Ana Medina and Monica Zarazua for editing