Where is so-and-so today?

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Permalink Reply by chelsea on April 8, 2008 at 10:09pm

Jay, his wife and children (not sure #'s & details) live in Pasadena, CA last I checked (3-4 yrs ago).

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 9, 2008 at 1:18am

I've paged him at facebook, I'm sure he'll be arriving momentarily...

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 9, 2008 at 1:19am

Do you recall 'Zo's last name? I bet Blackketter would know if all else fails.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 9, 2008 at 1:26am

Kate has a bunch of Brit pix up on her FB profile, another page is in order.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 9, 2008 at 1:28am

Me three Jay and Summer info, love to hear about 'em. I think Jay might still be in touch with Zirk, as they seemed to stay in touch whichever way the wind blew. Freda might know, and I guess she'll probably see these threads at some point.

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Permalink Reply by BURD on April 9, 2008 at 5:30am

Alonso Evans. He wrote some pretty good short stories too. Always had a notebook and paper.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 9, 2008 at 4:13pm

This thread seems like the best place to drop this in. A couple years ago I wrote a reminiscence of Freddy the biker:

http://mike.whybark.com/archives/003079.html

Burd has seen this already, the rest of you may not have. Criag Blackketter commented on the original post with some more tales, and noted that New Orleans is probably NOT where Fred's been laid to rest. I leave it in because New Orleans is where Freddy should have been buried.

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During the tail end of high school and early college, I was friends with a street drunk named Freddy, “Freddy the Biker,” to give his full moniker.

“I’se just a broke-down ol’ scooter tramp without a scooter,” he’d say, by way of intro or explanation. Fred was originally from “the Region,” the megaplex around Gary, Indiana, and had run with a few MCs, according to him, over the late sixties to late seventies. When I knew him, he was a profound alcoholic prone to passing out and wetting himself. Despite this, his weatherbeaten face and inexhaustible repertoire of entertaining stories of rock and roll shenanigans - and his happy willingness to buy booze for underage drinkers - endeared him to my social circle.

One of the many things Fred claimed to have done in his life was to have worked as a roadie for innumerable rock bands. Among others, he claimed Metallica, Iron Maiden, and the Sex Pistols, on their sole American tour until reforming in the 1990s. The Pistols claim, for sheer improbability, was subject to the greatest interrogation and elaboration.

Before I met Fred, I had a photo poster of the Pistols taken during a concert presented in Texas during the 1978 tour. In the shot, Sid Vicious, the band’s second bassist, is caught mid-pogo, and his feet are clearly visible. He was wearing full-height engineer boots, the motorcycle boot that has a single buckle and a clearly defined block heel. Full-height boots reach to protect the entire calf and shin.

This image formed my idea of desirable footwear and for twenty years thereafter engineer boots were my preferred footgarb.

The day I first set steel taps to resist the rapid heel wear on the heels of my first low-rise engineer boots, I slipped and stumbled at a party in front of Freddy. He remarked, laughing, “You need to learn to walk on steel, boy!”

That night, I pressed him, disbelieving, about roadie-ing for the Pistols. He told me that it was a fun gig and that “the boys” were just folks. Except, he said, for Sid.

Fred claimed that Sid was the nicest kid most of the time, but that sometimes he would “get an idea” and that you couldn’t talk him out of it. The particular example he gave was that in Texas (a city place I knew the band had played but which I did not mention to Fred), Sid had admired his motorcycle boots. They were, it seems, high boots that Fred had just bought, happy to have the money for some durable footwear. Vicious, it seems, would not be put off, and he badgered Fred into giving him the boots.

When I heard this story, I was utterly skeptical, but suspended critique in respect of Fred’s entertainment value. A few years later, I heard that Fred had died of complications from an infection brought about by an untreated cut on his foot - he’d contracted gangrene and the amputation came too late to save him. He died, and I understand was buried, in New Orleans, a perfectly appropriate place.

Years later, I read Jon Savage’s detailed account of punk rock, circa 1974-1980, England’s Dreaming. In the book, Savage incorporates an anecdote about Vicious on the US tour, in which the Pistol badgers an unnamed roadie into giving up his brand new pair of calf-high motorcycle boots just before the band’s Texas show.

Freddy, here’s to ya.

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Permalink Reply by David Alexander on April 9, 2008 at 9:51pm

Ah, Freddie. I remember when you lost consciousness on the couch in the back room of Harold & Alice. We took a bottle of ink and filled your navel. We wrote "HOY" on your shirt. Why? Why, indeed; why did we do most of what we did? Because it was to be done. I enjoyed your company, you big, cuddly, smelly man. H&A was a nonstop procession of characters, was it not, Mikey? DZA

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Permalink Reply by BURD on April 9, 2008 at 10:26pm

Oh man- the adventures of Freddy! I remember a particularly gruesome photo of him after he fell down the Video Saloon steps-nose and lips a mish mash of gore. I believe he spit a big wad of blood into the face of Norman Costellan.
He used to tell me tales of his (supposed)membership in the Hells Angels and his work for the mob. He was a lot of bluster and bravado-pretty fun to hang out with (sometimes) too.
Frequently in the later 1980's in Bloomington he would pass out and then lose control of his bowels - all too often we'd wake up to a horrible smell and find Freddy snoring on our couch! I had to ask him not to spend the night anymore at the Studbarn after a couple of incidents-it broke my heart but we were running out of couches...Bill Foster has a photo he took of Freddy on his MySpace page. He won a photo contest with it in high school.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on April 10, 2008 at 12:44am

The characters, I think, built character.

I mean, it stands to reason, right?

Man, goddam good to hear from ya!

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Permalink Reply by Kate Matthew on April 10, 2008 at 1:20am

Oh Shit!
One morning at The House of Ragin' Women there was crap all over the floor of the "Cat's Bathroom". The downstairs bathroom in The House of Ragin' Women was a half bathroom with only a toilet and a sink.. and a litterbox. None of us could really be bothered to clean out the litter box as we had way more important things to do.....as I think certain other households would agree. There were usually, I mean always, cat poops in the litter box and also on the floor...
On this particular morning, after a party, there was crap smeared all over the floor, as the door had been opened and closed on the poop a bunch of times. It was fucking disgusting and smelly as hell. Fat Freddy had crashed on one of the couches that night and was still hanging around in the morning. I was ranting about how nasty the shit was when Freddy jumped up and cleaned it all up!
Craig Blacketter appeared in our kitchen; I was telling him how wonderful it was that Freddy was helping out by cleaning up the smeared-all-over-the-place cat poo. Craig shook his head and said to me "Katie, Katie, Katie... That isn't cat shit, it is Freddy Shit".

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Permalink Reply by BURD on April 10, 2008 at 7:10pm

I was wondering what became of Andrew Wagner? I first met him when he was a short order cook at the Our Place Restaurant. He'd frequently engage me in conversation as he worked the late shift on weekends-or maybe it was the early shift-I would drop acid (2 occasions)with a girl named Amy (? lived in campus view) - I'm sure my eyeballs were twirling around but Andrew just kept right on talking and filling up my water glass. He was a fun fixture around Bloomington up through the Stud Barn years.

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