By Tommy George
In the winter of 1973, a droll, gnomish seventeen-year-old stopped his car at a
freeway ramp near Detroit's Wayne State University to pick up a hitch-hiker, me. He didn't know me, I didn't know him. I was simply a man out in the cold. The good-hearted kid who stopped to give me a lift was teenage Joel Bacow, who years later was to produce Dead wyreS and also some artists of whom you've actually heard. (Incidentally, among the Dutch a "gnome" is a financial heavy-hitter.)
My young 1973 rescuer was driving an old Volkswagen bug. The car'sinterior reeked of leaking exhaust, but we kept its windows up due to the elements. We talked about music, and Joel whipped out a harmonica and riffed as he weaved through rush-hour traffic--to show me that he really could play. It further came out that he owned the tiniest music store in Creation, The Hole in the Wall--once a hat-check counter at the Belcrest Hotel.
17-year-old Joel had this miniscule guitar shop across the street from the university's Music Department, where I took my classes. I wasn't much of a music student, but I dreamt of writing popular songs. Joel had some musical aspirations too, and a winning way with people. He was so funny and forthcoming that by the end of my hitched '73 ride, he had offered me a job at his Hole in the Wall, where I played guitar and worked on songs in free moments.
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| Tommy George and Joe L Banco at The Hole in the Wall |
Predictably, the exhaust from his leaking VW muffler weakened his immune system. He got sick with an illness that kept him down a long time. He trusted me to run the world's smallest guitar shop, and by the time he recovered from his illness, The Hole in the Wall had pretty much disappeared altogether. I believe that Joel blames me for the closing of his Hole in the Wall, and I understand any animosity he still may harbor. He had a good thing going which I ran badly. I'm not going to mention the thievery of my sole employee, Peter Chippandale.
Joel once showed me a tiny plastic box meant to contain guitar picks, and told me this was all that remained of his guitar shop. It was at that moment I began intuitively to feel that my relationship with him could easily evolve into a drawn-out species of revenge, characterized by a sardonic ambiguity understood by only a handful of people, and appreciated by even fewer.
The demise of The Hole marked an increase in our musical collaboration. We formed "The Wrestlers," playing at bars like the Old Miami and Bookies, where patrons expressed their critical opinions by throwing heavy drink glasses and empty beer bottles. Objects whizzing by our heads discouraged that venture somewhat, so we concentrated on studio work, working with several artists who never got signed, despite our junkets to New York City with their tapes.
However, I did get to meet such industry legends as Nat Tarnapol and Gary Katz. Back in Detroit the newspapers covered the odd story of a blind blues singer--I think his name was Blind Lemon--picked up by a friendly stranger on Woodward Avenue, taken into a big recording studio, and his songs recorded before he was driven back to the corner where the anonymous producer found him in the first place. Blind Lemon never did figure out who had picked him up. He's probably still waiting for a royalty check.
Colleen Collins & Tommy George
Bad-Ass Rockers or Lost Tourists?
Bad-Ass Rockers or Lost Tourists?
Joel got his break when Westbound Records signed the group Seven Below Zero (renamed “Eramus Hall”) in 1977, and our relationship as coproducers came to an abrupt end. Still, we continued to play together with the same results. It wasn't until eye-candy Colleen Collins sweetened up our live gigs with good looks, and brought to our original recordings a different, whispy quality. We renamed ourselves the Leisure Crowd. The picture above may give you an idea of how hip we really were. The above photo was taken by a perplexed Tom Wechsler--now a Detroit legend, and probably its finest photographer--who couldn’t figure out what the heck this job was: an engagement portrait, or a couple of tourists who had stumbled into the wrong room
On the strength of his Seven Below Zero acquisition, Joel got the Leisure Crowd signed with Detroit producer Don Davis, who would occasionally stick his head into the studio, shake his head in utter confusion, and quickly withdraw. Nonetheless, we were beginning to sound like something--what, I'm not sure--but something. When the contract with Don Davis expired, I could not relinquish vanity and settle into a job like any normal person, but continued writing, and writing, and writing--most of it pretty mediocre.
I continued to write material for the Leisure Crowd, restricted to a melodic range within a 4 - 6 note range, for as striking as she was, Colleen never wanted to be the lead singer. She was an exceptional multi-instrumentalist, yet made to sing every song except for a couple. In 1990 or thereabouts, Joel launched her and me on our final venture, still nominally the Leisure Crowd. It was a name I grew to detest, and with absolutely no authority, renamed it--the Dwyers, then the Dead wyerS with a capital letter at the end, just like the zookS.
By this time, Joel's involvement in the project was limited to the occasional critical listen, but mainly playing late-night pranks on me, like sneaking in and triggering the alarms to watch my reaction, or turning off power to the studio to hear me groping around in the dark.
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| Unauthorized Use: Do Not Look at It! |
He had set me up in a small work-bench area of the original 54 Sound, equipped with a Tascam 8-track, Louis Resto's old Emulator, a sampler, DX synth and drum-box. The room, exactly the same dimensions as the Hole in the Wall, was too small to shut the door located about 36 inches away from the building's only bathroom, and adjacent to the busy back door. My writing was improving, and I engineered Colleen Collin's demo vocals in the work-bench studio, with no isolation booth, using the speakers for her monitors.
If you listen carefully, you can hear various knocks, squeaking hinges, snatches of conversations, and bleed galore from the original music tracks, because these demo vocals wound up on most of the final product--tuned-up electronically twenty years after the fact, and arranged to mask a lot of the noise. Listeners may discern the art of artlessness similar to many quirky acts featuring girl singers on the market today. Maybe Joel was ahead of his time.
The Dead wyreS songs (ten of them, free to download) on Reverb Nation were written and recorded as early as 1983 ("Luv Drums"), and as recently as 1997 ("As You Say"). In 2005, the multi-track tapes were transferred to digital format, original music stripped away, and Colleen's vocals set to different music. Joel had grown sufficiently influential to call in other musicians (Louis Resto and John Quigley foremost among them) to remix the songs with textures geared to film, advertising, and special projects. I was banned from sessions in the Fall of 2005. It’s a strange business. As far as I know, the remixed tracks were never used. I suspect they never will be, but you can hear some of them here, or use them in your daily soundtrack.
That's the history behind Dead wyreS as retrospectively spun by an embittered old crank (just kidding). But judge for yourself, for the songs are both streaming and downloadable; we offer them free by clicking the above graphic..
The occurrence on a freeway ramp happened some forty-four years ago. Over the intervening years, I became the group's cur. Some days it feels like I am still getting my comeuppance; trying to catch a ride, although I no longer have any idea where I am bound, other than down, down, down the dark ladder, as Joni Mitchell wrote.
Forty years after the humanity Joel Bacow showed by picking me up at that freeway ramp in Detroit, winter is setting in again. Like an uncle of mine who was called but not chosen, I will probably drop dead walking along some road, to the surprise of nobody. I am still writing songs, and they may be getting better.
Joel Bacow has become Joel Martin, an understated legend in the music publishing industry. He enjoys his great family life and good income. On those rare occasions we meet, he's still the same charismatic fellow. No doubt he still plays the blues harp. But these days he publishes American musical giants, which I will refrain from naming--but he's a leader in music publishing.
Colleen Collins didn't make it as big as her talent deserves, but she did produce the finest offspring imaginable--all of them top-ten hits. She never really warmed to pop music anyway, always preferring to play demanding piano pieces like Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude," Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", and the rags of WC Handy. She changed her name too, for a few decades, but she's Colleen Collins again. I'm sure she still plays very well.
The occurrence on a freeway ramp happened some forty-four years ago. Over the intervening years, I became the group's cur. Some days it feels like I am still getting my comeuppance; trying to catch a ride, although I no longer have any idea where I am bound, other than down, down, down the dark ladder, as Joni Mitchell wrote.
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| Joe L Banco & Tommy George May 26, 2017 |
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| Baby Girl and Colleen Collins |
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The Newlyweds of May, 2017
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And now that we finally have the cool, grizzly graphics that belong in this millennial slaughterhouse culture, nobody looks. We hope you’ll take the time to download the soundtracks of life superannuated. You too can imagine existence as a movie, but you’ll probably want to use that old projector your dad stored down in the basement. -–Tommy George, 17 April 2017. Revised 9 August 2017. Opinions do not necessarily represent the views of anybody affiliated with the Dead wyreS.
