August 30, 2000 - Eddie and the Otters (sort of) at R.J.'s Lounge in North Versailles

Eddie was visiting the Pittsburgh area, and we were able to get together to play. After originally planning to play at Waverly Church, we opted for R.J.'s because of the beer. R.J.'s was (and is) owned by Bob Fedor, a friend of mine (and Jim B.'s) going back to the 2nd grade, and Jim and I had played there a couple of times with Mon Gumbo. Doug was still living in Pittsburgh at the time and brought along a friend of his who played trumpet, and Steve Fisher played bass. Needless to say things were a little rough, with lots of forgotten arrangements, blown chord changes, and the inappropriate trumpet.

Audio - yes, Video - no, Photos - no

August 29, 1981 - Eddie & the Otters at Fat City opening for Norm Nardini & the Tigers

In the late summer, Jim released the four song we'd recorded in March 1980 as an EP ("Journey Through Time and Space"?) on his Public Records label, and we decided to get the band back together to play more regularly, I suppose in the interest of promoting it. We had upcoming dates in early September at The Decade and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, so we were rehearsing, working in a lot of new material. I don't remember how this gig came about, but either Norman called us while we were rehearsing (at Waverly Church? That doesn't seem likely) or Eddie called Norman, but we went straight from a rehearsal to open for Norman and the Tigers at Fat City, only the second time we'd played there. Obviously this wasn't our crowd, although I guess we went over OK. I don't have a tape of the show, but I definitely remember playing "This Ol' House", one of the tunes we'd just learned. We probably also played "Black Slacks" for the first time here.

Late August, 1978 - Otis & the Otters formed.

Earlier in August I took an acetate of the Psychotic Petunias 45 to Jim's Records. Jim and Doug were planning to put a band together to play at a toga party at Chatham College's REA House. As I recall, Jim had asked or was going to ask his friend Micah Clarke to be the drummer, but after hearing the Petunias 45 he asked me if I was interested. I, in turn, got Jim "Surfin'" Bird into the band because they needed a lead guitarist. We rehearsed at REA House maybe twice (?) The first one was the first time Jim (Bird) and I met Eddie. I remember introducing myself to him and adding, "I'm the drummer" to which he replied with typical dry sarcasm (after looking at my car loaded with drums) "No kidding." At the first rehearsal, Craig Match was there to play piano and sing, but he changed his mind pretty quickly (probably because the drums were too loud.) We started learning songs from the "Animal House" soundtrack which made up the bulk of our early repertoire - "Louie Louie", "Money", "Let's Dance", "Tossin' & Turnin'", "Shama Lama Ding Dong", and, of course, "Shout". We also rehearsed "Hey Paula" but it didn't make the cut. Initially I think the expectation was that we'd do the one gig for the fun of it, and that would be it.

August 27, 1980 - The Hornets at The Decade. Maybe the opening act for the Flashcats? I got a partial tape of this set from Carl Grefenstette years ago, including "Julia So Far Away", "Route 66", and "(My Baby's In) Prep School",

August 25, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters' farewell show at The Decade with The Hell Band.

For obvious reasons, this was one of the most memorable shows we ever did, at least for me. With Eddie preparing to move to Uniontown, this was our last show. I had a hard time dealing with it - this was the first band I was in that was really successful, and I felt like a large part of my identity was tied to being an Otter. Anyway, we went out with a bang, playing one of our best shows ever.

In honor of the occasion, the Hell Band graciously agreed to open for us (for once). We did all of our "A" material and played two long sets. Several memories stand out:

- As we started our third song, "I Saw Her Standing There", Ramone broke a bass string on his Ripper and had to borrow Dave Rusnak's Rickenbacker for the rest of the night.

- In "I Fought The Law", instead of doing the "six gun" rim shots, I grabbed a vocal mic and yelled, "SIX GUN AAUUGGHH!!!" for my only vocal performance ever with the Otters

- During "Love Me Two Times" in the second set, Kim Honath and Diane Ford jumped on stage and ripped Eddie's jeans off. Fortunately Eddie was wearing underwear for once (very stylish plaid boxers).

- When we took our bows after "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", the machine head on Jim's bass smacked me in the nose. It hurt like hell but there was no blood and the emotion of the moment kind of helped me block the pain.

- The Decade management wanted to stop the show after our first encore ("Kick Out The Jams") because it was after 2 a.m., so I went out to tell the audience, insiting them to yell for more in the process. They finally agreed to let us do a second encore, "Louie Louie", but half-way through the p.a. was turned off. The audience sang along for the last verse and chorus.

We got a good tape of the show thanks to Jean (as usual) and I ended up using a lot of songs for "Otterbiography".

1st set

1) Little Girl
2) Get Off My Cloud
3) I Saw Her Standing There (inc. false start with broken bass string)
4) I Think We're Alone Now
5) I Fought the Law
6) Brown-Eyed Girl
7) Tossin' & Turnin'
8) I Got a Line on You
9) Peter Gunn Theme
10) Secret Agent Man
11) Angel Baby
12) Riot in Cell Block #9
13) Day Tripper
14) Roll Over Beethoven
15) Slow Down

2nd set

1) The Kids Are Alright
2) Mystery Dance
3) Hound Dog
4) Best Friend's Girl
5) Grand Larceny
6) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
7) I Knew the Bride
8) Love Me Two Times (Eddie gets de-pants'd)
9) Feel a Whole Lot Better
10) So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star
11) Fire
12) You Really Got Me
13) Gloria
14) Shout
15) We Gotta Get Out of This Place
16) Kick Out the Jams (1st encore)
17) Louie Louie (2nd encore)

Sorry I didn't add any photos to this post. For some reason I don't have any scanned, but I'll get some up eventually.

Audio - yes, Video - no, Photos - yes

August 23, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters at The Decade. This was the last show we played at The Decade by ourselves before the first breakup. For several reasons, this was a more memorable show. Two of the sets featured guest introductions, one by Derf and one by Wayno. At the end of the show I kicked over my drums (two bass drums, no less) and Jim smashed his guitar (his first electric guitar, purchased at Clabers many years earlier).

I had a potential scheduling conflict once again because I was scheduled to work 3-11 shift at the Duquesne Works, but I arranged for the girl working 11-7 to come in early so I could make the show. At lunchtime I went to The Decade and set my drums up so I wouldn't have to worry about taking time to set them up. Obviously I was very trusting that they'd still be there that night! I decide to use both bass drums (visual effect only since I could play them particularly well) and I also used my Synare electronic drum for a "ray gun" effect on "I Fought the Law".

During the encore, Jim switched guitars after "You Really Got Me". He hadn't told anyone except me that he planned to smash a guitar, and apparently a few people were freaked out because they thought it was his Strat because both guitars had sunburst finishes. Unfortunately, the Clabers guitar was horribly out of tune and Jim desperately tried to tune it during Eddie's spoken intro to "Kick Out the Jams". When it was time to start the song he wasn't done, but in order to preserve some momentum, I started playing after trying to buy him a couple of more seconds. As a result, the guitar is still badly out of tune throughout.

There are a fair number of pictures from this show because my friend Rob came to take pictures of the band, and Wayno took some pictures of the equipment trashing with my camera. The audio tape came out pretty good, too, and I used "I Fought the Law" and "Do the Otter" for the "Otterbiography" CD in 1999.

1st set

1) Wayno introduction - Little Girl

2) Get Off My Cloud

3) Open My Eyes

4) Summertime Blues

5) Tossin' & Turnin'

6) Let's Dance

7) Twistin' the Night Away

8) Best Friend's Girl

9) They Called It Rock

10) Ticket to Ride

11) Roll Over Beethoven

12) Detroit Medley

2nd set

1) The Kids Are Alright

2) I Think We're Alone Now

3) Riot in Cell Block #9

4) Peter Gunn Theme

5) Secret Agent Man

6) Brown-Eyed Girl

7) I Saw Her Standing There

8) You Can't Do That

9) I Hear You Knockin'

10) Last Train to Clarksville

11) I Got a Line on You

12) The Last Time

13) Like a Rolling Stone

14) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

15) Don't Come Close

16) I Fought the Law

17) Grand Larceny

18) Slow Down

3rd set

1) Derf introduction - Mystery Dance

2) Hound Dog

3) 19th Nervous Breakdown

4) Sky Pilot

5) Louie Louie

6) So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star

7) Day Tripper

8) Feel a Whole Lot Better

9) Love Me Two Times

10) Yummy Yummy Yummy

11) Sweet Little Sixteen/Surfin' U.S.A.

12) I Knew the Bride

13) Do the Otter

14) Shout

15) Gloria (with drum solo)

16) We Gotta Get Out of This Place

(encore)

17) You Really Got Me

18) Kick Out the Jams (equipment trashing at the end)

Audio - yes, Video - no, Photos - yes (2 sources)

August 18, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters and the Hell Band at The Decade. I have no particular memories of anything regarding this show.

Audio - no, Video - no, Photos - no

August 16, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters at The Decade. Because this was one of the last shows we were going to do before breaking up (for the first time), I asked my friend Rob to take some pictures of the show (he had recently graduated from the Art Institute studying photography). Due to a misunderstanding, he only took pictures of me and Jim Bird, so I asked him to come back on the 23rd and take pictures of the whole band. Other than that, I remember nothing about this show.

audio - no, video - no, photos - yes

August 11, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters opened for the Hell Band back at The Decade. There are no audio or video recordings or photographs of this show, and frankly I don't remember anything about it. Just another show at The Decade.

Also, on August 8, 1981, the Spuds (aka Five Small Cigars) played at a wedding reception on the steps of library at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. There's an audio recording of this show.

Hell On Earth

August 10, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters opened for the Hell Band at Fat City. The Hell Band's show was videotaped for a proposed cable TV (?) special to be called "Hell On Earth". The show was also broadcast live on WYEP-FM with Concrete Window in the studio and Francis Volpe MC'ing on stage. Francis graciously insured that the end of our set was broadcast - the last three songs ("So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star", "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", and one other that I have documented somewhere but can't recall offhand). There was enough of a break between our set and the Hell Band that Jim and I drove back to my parents' house (in North Versailles) and I started taping the broadcast just before it started.

Our set was also videotaped (I remember briefly watching some playback afterwards), but the tapes apparently have vanished. In the mid/late 90's I asked Dave Rusnak about it and he never got a copy of or even saw the Hell Band footage. I've never been able to locate a recording of our abbreviated live broadcast, either.

This was the first of only two times that we played at Fat City, the other being an August 1981 opening set for Norm Nardini & the Tigers.

Full Circle

Friday night things came full circle (sort of) when the Hank Band opened for the Puke at RePunk 2, held at Manny Theiner's Garfield Artworks. After a short set by Tom Moran and his wife Stephanie Vargo of the Deliberate Strangers (backed by myself on drums), the Hank Band (Hank, Jim, Mark Gaudio, and me) played a 25 minute set warming up the "crowd" for the much-anticipated Puke reunion.

Original members Bill "Bored" Von Hagen (on laptop PC) and Kim "Pat D. Hearse" Walters (on acoustic guitar) were joined by Kim's mother (on harmonium), who took the place of the late Joe "Barney Scum" Wargo. Their 5-minute set started with "When I Get Bored I Play One Chord" with guest vocalist Larry Rippel. Jim Bird then made a surprise appearance by sitting in to sing "You Piss Me Off". Fun was had by all.

The Hank Band added an extended psychedelic improvisation based on (the late) Harry Wagner's "Holiday in Pittsburgh" and a cover of the Jam's "Funeral Pyre" to several of Hank's standards.

The Deliberate Strangers were joined by Bill Loiselle's daughter Cassie, making her first public appearance playing acoustic guitar on Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot".

July 21, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters at The Decade with the Hell Band. It was either this night or the 28th that I had to work 3-11 shift so Diane played the first set and I played the second. Other than that, I have no particular recollection about this show other than each time we saw the Hell Band we were less impressed.

July 18, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters at The Decade. This was the show that Diane Ford subbed for me on drums because I was originally scheduled to work nightshift at the mill (my summer job at U.S. Steel Duquesne Works). With a day or two to spare I got my schedule changed, but no one wanted to tell Diane she could play after she'd prepared for the gig, so she got to play and I went to see "Blow Up" at the Pittsburgh Playhouse with Bob Spieler and Linda Ribnicky.

Audio - yes, Video - no, Photos - no

July 14, 1979 - Eddie & the Otters at The Decade with the Hell Band

This was the first of several Saturday nights that we split with the Hell Band, playing first and third using their amps, drums, and p.a. This particular show was recorded by Stan (don't know his last name?)

Set 1 - Summertime Blues / Little Girl / I Think We're Alone Now / Best Friend's Girl / Tossin' & Turnin' / Riot In Cell Block #9 / Get Off My Cloud / You Can't Do That / Brown-Eyed Girl / Don't Come Close / I Fought The Law / Sweet Little Sixteen / Grand Larceny / Slow Down

Set 2 - Mystery Dance / The Kids Are Alright / They Called It Rock / I Knew The Bride / Peter Gunn Theme / Secret Agent Man / I Saw Her Standing There / Twistin' The Night Away / (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction / Day Tripper / Feel A Whole Lot Better / Roll Over Beethoven / Love Me Two times / You Really Got Me / Gloria / So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star / We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

Audio - yes, Video - no, Photos - no

July 12, 1986 - Party at Skomra's house, Uniontown, with the Grapetones and Lost Cause (Phil Skomra and Sean Lally's band). Eddie and I did a set of Otters standards with Doug, Steve, Tim Menees on keyboards (Jim B. was attending his brother's wedding that day, I believe) and probably Phil. Our set was interrupted twice by rain. I wanted to play through it, but Steve was understandably concerned about damage to his DX7 keyboard, which Tim was playing.

Audio - yes, Video - yes, Photos - yes

July 11, 1981 - We played a beach party at The Decade along with the Crackers, Endless Summer, and several truckloads of sand. Don't recall much about our set since there's no recording of it, although I think it might have been the only time we played "Wipe Out".

Audio - no, Video - no (Gary Noftz videotaped the show but erased it before I could get a copy because the audio patch from the soundboard didn't work), Photos - yes (by Jean Bird)

July 10, 1987 - Eddie, Jim B. and I sat in with the Grapetones at Brewski's on the South Side (with Doug and Steve) and played a short set of Otters standards.

audio - yes, video - no, photos - no

http://www.levelgreen.com/art

Last night, Tuesday July 8, was the opening reception for my show of photo abstracts, "Alienation Seems Ordinary".

Here's a copy of the press release:

THE ORDINARY SEEMS ALIEN IN LOCAL ARTIST’S FIRST SOLO SHOW

Ithaca, June 12, 2008 – Visual artist and musician, James Spitznagel, will present his first exhibition of photo abstracts at the Clinton House ArtSpace. The show, titled “Alienation Seems Ordinary”, will be held during the entire month of July.

“Spitznagel’s photo abstracts free the viewer from the tyranny of representation,” states novelist J.Robert Lennon, “They make the ordinary seem alien, and alienation seem ordinary.” Spitznagel adds, “I often see colors and shapes in everyday objects that speak to my emotions in ways not originally intended by nature or human design.”

The path to viewing the world this way began when Spitznagel started taking photographs to create original images for his own CD covers. “Have you ever seen a landscape or object and thought, ‘Wow, that would make a great album cover’?” asks Spitznagel. “I used to think in those terms all the time. Now it’s become an integral part of my senses to see and feel artistic expression everywhere.” As a musician working primarily with electronics and computers, Spitznagel sees no difference between the shape of visuals and the shape of sounds.

An opening reception at the Clinton House ArtSpace will be held on Tuesday, July 8th, from 6:15pm to 8:15pm with James Spitznagel and will feature live, ambient music by Inverse Room. A closing reception with the artist, on Tuesday, July 29th, from 6:15pm to 8:15pm, will feature an interactive sound installation (with theremin, tenori-on and synthesizers). “Alienation Seems Ordinary” will be on view from July 1st until July 31st at the Clinton House ArtSpace (located at the corner of Cayuga and Seneca Streets in downtown Ithaca, NY). For more information please call 607-200-4046, or email james@levelgreen.com.

And on THIS date...

July 7, 1979 - Jim (Bird) and I met at Phase III to see the Shakes, the Cardboards, and Hans Brinker & the Dykes. Tom Moran (of the Dark, later of the Five) met Robert Fripp after his Frippertronics performance at Oasis that evening and brought him to the Phase to see the show. Fripp was seen pogoing to the Dykes ("Are they really dykes?" he was heard to ask) and photographer Larry Rippel caught him at the bar as the Cardboards conga line passed by. (Note the late Joe Wargo aka Barney Scum of the Puke in the background)

July 7, 1980 - Hornets rehearsal (caught on a tape that Ramone graciously let me copy)

STONE FAILS TO FLOAT

Also on this day in rock'n'roll history...

Brian Jones RIP 1969

Jim Morrison RIP 1971

On This Date In Otters History...

FINALLY, with help of Jims Bird and Spitznagel, I have arrived. Thanks guys!

July 3, 1979 Eddie & the Otters at The Decade for "Tribute to John Wayne Night" with the Hell Band.

This was the first time we played with the Hell Band. Even though it was a Tuesday night, the place was packed - probably as large a crowd as when we played with the Ramones. Our previous gig was June 27, also at The Decade, where we celebrated the day before Surfin' Bird's birthday by having one of the waitresses hit him in the face with a pie on the last note of our last song. I don't remember much else about the July 3rd show except that someone brought a small donkey (?) in and walked (or rode) it through the audience before leaving. I do remember being somewhat intimidated by the Hell Band at first because they were so well rehearsed and sounded pretty tight and professional. Of course, this first impression wore off pretty quickly with each subsequent show after we found out how boring and repetitive they were. I don't have a tape or any pictures from this show, but there was a handmade poster for this show that remained on the wall of The Decade until the day it closed.

Good lovin'

I was out to dinner with Maddie (my 12 year old) last night. "Good Lovin'" by The Young Rascals comes on the muzak...Maddie says, "Hey dad, isn't this one of Eddie and the Otters songs?".

She's heard me say,"We used to do that song", so often when "oldies" are played on the radio or on TV or in diners that she's beginning to know which songs the Otters used to play. LOL!!!

Otter pix

To answer Mike's question: No, I don't have any other pictures other then what I gave you guys a few years ago. Also, I don't have any Otters (Diane, Jonathan version) gig info.

How about Deluxe? Hey Doug, do you have any pix?

First post

Is this the first post in the otter cookbook?

Logging on

You will need to create a google account to be able to log on and post. The link in the invitation will only work once (you might want to 'cut-n-paste'). So....from what I understand...when you click the link on the invitation email you will be prompted to sign on to an existing account or start a new one. After that you should be directed to the Otter Cookbook page and be ready to start blogging. If this still doesn't work for you, I'm giving up.