Sometime in 1980 I was busy playing with the one and only female guitarist available in all of Brooklyn and nearby galaxies, let's just call her AJ. She and I spent most of our time at a place called Great Gildersleeves, a stanky glorified biker bar on the Bowery in Manhattan which had the unmistakable stench of regurgitated stout, and was home away from home. Back then the Bowery was not the Flowery that it is today. There was CBGBs, Gildersleeves and Phoebes Diner for the essential cheese fries at 4 a.m. to name a few. So, AJ and I were band mates, only there was no band. AJ was a blast, smart, talented, but we had different musical tastes. When rehearsing, we'd play the one tune we knew together in her basement a few times a week--Train Kept a Rollin' by Aerosmith, which peaked my homicidal tendencies. It was time for us both to find some other musicians, but gender was a tiny problem, and eventually AJ and I parted ways. I believe she did well for herself and I admired her for her "lone wolf" no-nonsense attitude. Once we drifted, I had to contend with the fact that there were, um...NO WOMEN MUSICIANS PLAYING ROCK. I listened to a steady stream of all types of music, day and night. I wasn't really feeling like "puttin' another notch in my lipstick case" or emulating the Go-Gos, although I appreciated what they were doing. Right. (....deeeeep beath....) Ok, I loathed what the Go-Gos were doing. Hated it. It stuck like gum on the bottom of my 7-inch heel. Forgive me. I wanted to play the polar opposite. Sabbath was the closest thing I had to religion, and, when not scribbling band logos and preaching sab lyrics to my friends as gospel, I was writing songs about Death, Doom and Destruction and painting my bedroom walls black. I was also a straight A student bored with college. I was taking music 101 in BK College, and I sat next to a long-haired blonde male guitarist, who a) I secretly wrote off as a Poser, and b) never stopped whining. That semester he said to me (in his Old Lady from Bensonhurst drawl), "FRIG THIS. I'm going to L.A. where there IS a music scene because it SUCKS here in NYC." A few years later, Cat throws a Poison album at me and says "these guys are gonna be HUGE" (she was an Aquarian writer at the time) and there was Poser on the cover, in full make-up, and looking quite fetching in eyeliner and satin. My first response was "These, um...GUYS??" Go effing figure. He goes to L.A., dresses as a woman, hits it big, and we spend the next couple of years trying to find REAL women dressed as men who could successfully play in the same key. The early 80s was also the era of the Plasmatics crossing over into some heavier shit. Wendy O -- now, there was a goddess. Someone I could respect. A real woman with fantabulous balls, wielding a chainsaw.
On bass, some of my personal influences were Squire, Geddy, McCartney, JPJ, Entwistle, and the king of kings, Jaco. Weather Report with JACO, enough said. BUT, to get right down to what kind of music filled my dissonant guts at the time, I preferred things a tad darker, Sabbath being uber Numero Uno, Priest, very early Maiden, Scorps, Witchfynder General, Angelwitch...any name with witch in it...and so on. Alice Cooper provided comic relief and satisfied any urge for broadway-style tunes relating to necrophilia and dead babies. What can I say. In the early 80s this wasn't the norm for most women in gold spandex, and I refused to compromise. So, sometime around 1980-81-ish, I met a guitarist named Linda through a guy named Joe at Zig-Zag records in Brooklyn. Zig-Zag was the single source in Brooklyn for anything metal, and then some. I met Joe on the long line, waiting to get in to meet Iron Maiden with Paul Dianno at an in-store record signing. Dianno practically threw up on me, whilst Steve Harris signed my thigh, and I blurted out something asinine to him like THANKS MAN for actually playing the BASS in THESE SONGS. Joe and I are still friends. Back to Lin...so Joe said he knew Lin, she could play, and she was a "tough chick." Secret prerequisite? Hmm. Problem was, she was still in High School. So I had to drive to Staten Island and meet her after school to go to rehearsal. That's how and when Missdemeanor laid down its roots. Lin in high school, rehearsing in a friend's basement 3 nights a week. The friend was also a drummer named Jo, but not JoJo of later years. So the floating horse-poo about the band being a brainchild of a different group of gals years later was a giant crock of shite. Lin, me, Joe tagging along, hanging out on graves at the Mount Richmond cemetery, and wondering what to put in the Aquarian ad to find a real drummer and singer.
