Shawn Kilroy Was Here

I called Jamie up and told him that I had bought a drum machine. I asked him if he wanted to come over and give it a whirl. He came over to my house and we set up in the basement. He brought his bass and amp and I plugged my guitar and the drum… Continue reading Little Shop Of Horrors

One day I was at Cintioli’s Music Center on Oxford Circle. I went in and started lookin’ at the guitars hangin overhead. I wasn’t gonna buy one. I was quite happy with my black and white Squier Strat and my Peavey Classic amplifier. They had a lot of cool guitars there. They had a lot… Continue reading A Drum Machine

“Is he white power?” I asked myself. It was a good question. In northeast Philly, pretty much everyone you’d ever met was a racist. Not formal racists, like Klan members and white power neo nazi skinheads. Just regular ass, run of the mill white people who didn’t want any ethnic minorities around. Jamie was the… Continue reading Skinheads

Hang on a minute…You know what? That’s not right about Kate. We did see her a few more times. I think about a week or 2 after that first rehearsal with Kate, we did another one in Midgett’s basement. Same line up. Same everybody. Same tunes, a few more. Definitely more yankin’ around. I wanted… Continue reading The Insulation Warehouse

A few months earlier, Midgett and I had figured out some way of cutting school. It was VERY hard to cut even a single class at the high school I went to. They had a super tight system of attendance, and they knew where everybody was all the time, just like in prison. However, there… Continue reading The Chanteuse

One morning, as I got off the el to go to school, a few of the priests who taught there were standing at the bottom of the stairways, telling the students, “Go back. Go home! Water main break! No school today!” My heart leaped. It was like a dream; too good to be true. One… Continue reading Water Main Break

Shortly after Camelot, Christian told me that I had to meet his friend, Jerry. Jerry was a guitar player, singer, and songwriter that Chris went to school with. I don’t remember exactly how it all unfolded, but I think there was some odd catholic holiday that we all had off from school or something and… Continue reading Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door