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Music
always fascinated me. I was a Hendrix freak by the time
I was in seventh grade, which was three years after
his death. Kids on the block were playing guitar so
when my friend Eric (Duke Snyder's older brother) picked
it up, I had to learn. All my friends were into music.
Jim Damm was a kid that transferred from St. Robert's
in Euclid to my school. Jim was a kick ass drummer.
Oddly enough we would play upstairs in Jim's bedroom
while his folks sat downstairs. Yes it was loud, but
they let us do it. So Jim and I started jamming in grade
school. When were in high school we met Brandon Zart
and were practicing Bowie, Sex Pistols and such with
no name or any intention of playing out. I guess we
turned into a real band when Bill came along.
MY
LIFE AS A DOG
The
Defnics started out as No Dogs. It was Jim, Brandon
and I with the addition of a new friend Bill DeGidio
(R. Conn). We met Bill through Mark Vocca who worked
with Brandon. Bill and Mark were baseball and fishing
buddies. It was Mark's idea to set Bill up with us.
I don't really remember the details but he did it. There
is a "studio" tape of No Dogs recorded in downtown Willoughby
at a storefront we practiced at for a minute. This hippie
guy Bill knew had a tape machine and we did five or
six songs. The place was all plate glass facing the
street. I remember one day we were playing and this
guy was pounding on the window. Bill was saying "Don't
pay attention to him he's an idiot." That guy was
asshole murderer Richard Pinto. He kept coming around
but I’m not sure if that was the reason that we vacated
that spot. After a while we started playing at Brandon's
place in Mentor-on-the-Lake. Bill wrote all of the material
for No Dogs although Brandon penned "Hello from Berlin"
during this period too. Most of those tunes were used
in the Defnics, and I played some of those songs in
my last punk band the Plague. Songs such as "No Future"
and "Crime on My Mind" were performed for ten years.
No Dogs never saw the light of day. After hearing a
practice tape, Hudson said we could have opened for
the Pagans if they were still together. That kind of
blew my mind, because with the addition of DeGidio we
had an inside track to the Cleveland scene. Not that
we had a twisted Courtney Love rock-n-roll master plan
or anything, we just happened to meet the right people
at the right time. We were a happy band for a while
but Jim grew tired of punk, after all it was 2 or 3
years old by then. He said it didn't have any soul,
he was way into what The Clash were doing then. Jim
quit playing drums for No Dogs in search of a Master's
belt in Kun Tau Kung Fu, I think he got it.
NEW
ORDER
So
there we were at the end of 1980 without a drummer.
My cousin John Korosec use to fool around with a set
that his brother's friend would leave at his house.
John wasn't supposed to play them but if you know Johnny
an order such as that might as well have not been uttered
at all. He bought a kit off this local cover group called
Abraxas. He got good at them pretty fast and then he
was in the band, which was rechristend Defnics.
The
name Defnics came from Johnny. One summer afternoon
when John and I were around twelve years old, we were
sitting in his parent's living room watching TV. We
would practice at that same house, 19207 Cherokee Rd.
off E.185th St. near the projects, years later. I guess
John was saying something to me but I wasn't paying
attention. All I remember was hearing him saying "Defnic,
hey defnic are you listening to me?" I thought it was
a funny word and I never forgot it. Johnny is a naturally
hilarious guy, he's always making words up and busting
balls. So when we were standing around the basement/jam
room trying to think of a new name I offered up John's
"Defnics". Everyone liked it but John had no idea that
he made it up some eight years earlier, I had to tell
him.
This
was a great time for me. It was Punk Rock 101. It was
these days that I learned: 1.) You won't make any money
and 2.) You won't make any money. By the time Grunge
broke everyone I knew were hanging up their guns and
the "new punks" were making the money. C’est la vie.
Having
Bill in the band was great; he always had real cool
insights and was the voice of reason. He was the only
one who had done something band wise out of all of us.
We loved the fact we had a Pagan in the band. Punk was
fun and life was good! As Brandon said, "All I want
to play is Punk, Punk and more Punk." That was cool
with me. I showed Brandon how to play a couple of songs
a few years earlier and now he was writing more and
better songs than me, and I was playing since I was
thirteen. I never saw anyone take to music that fast.
He was a natural.
LOVE
YOU LIVE
Our
first show was at the Euclid Tavern with the Generics.
It was o.k. I guess, I mean I don’t remember being nervous
or playing badly or anything. The best part was that
the guys working the bar were yelling at us, saying
we sucked and to turn it down. I guess they didn’t like
"Red Spy" or "Governor’s Daughter".
They even shut the board down on us. Not too hip for
the now hip Euclid Tavern. That place was strictly a
blues bar back then and they were trying out this new
wave stuff. So dare I say that the Generics and the
Defnics were the first punk/new wave/alternative band
to play the Tavern? Our next shows were at The Flipside
on Green Road. That was the place the cover photo to
our 45 and most of the pictures on this site are from.
That night it was the Revolvers and the Defnics. One
night there, this barfly chick was really fucking with
Johnny for no reason. After about an hour of haranguing
he had to tell her, "Look, I hit women." That
didn’t even shut her up, so her boyfriend was called
and he came to the bar, bitched her out and dragged
her out of there. Other places we played were The Sports
Page in the Flats, Tuckeys up and down, JB's in Kent,
The Pop Shop and believe it or not, this was a real
place: Stairway to Rock Heaven way out in the boonies.
That place sucked because there was this long stairway
you had to drag your equipment up to get to the room
where you played. Rock Heaven indeed. We did that show
with Raven Slaughter, those guys were cool. They were
genuinely interested in punk even though their bag was
the Bowie/Mott thing. During those days I met allot
of great punks like Alex & Romona Strouhal (they
never missed a show), Michelle, Colleen, Laverne and
Mom Mulhan, Tim Kelly and Joe Little.
TERMINAL
SPIRAL SCRATCHINGS
Defnics
only cut one 45, "51%" b/w "Hello from
Berlin". Those were recorded at Angel Studio on
Mayfield Road for Hudson’s Terminal Records. It was
summer 1981. I don’t think I threw in for the records
because I was crying poor mouth. Those guys were probably
thinking "cheap bastard". I remember doing
the art for the back cover photo. I had all the credits
perfectly lettered in perspective but something happened
to the art, it got ruined some how and Bill had to redo
it. So after this Barney guy had them printed up I saw
Bill’s version, which looked cooler because the lettering
looked warped. For the front cover Bill took some White•Out
and lettered Defnics and that was it. We all went over
to his house one night and cut the prints up and glue
sticked the covers to the sleeves of 1,000 records at
his kitchen table. Some of the prints ran in blue ink,
which were cool and some of them the press messed up
so the image was offset and multiplied three times.
Those sleeves looked really cool! We also had a cut
on Mike Hudson’s Cleveland Confidential. That was Suicide
Trip, one of my favorite Defnics songs. We did that
one at Mike Crossen’s studio on E.185th St.
So far that’s it for our recording history. Cheese has
a version of "Governor’s Daughter" coming
out on his compilation PIE&EARS in Feb. 2001. I’m
putting out a CD soon of all our studio stuff (5 songs)
plus some live and practice material. It won’t all be
studio quality but definitely decent sounding.
ENTER
SKINHEADS
The
Defnics found our selves at war with the Kent skinhead
contingent. I guess it was a clash of punk ideology
if there is such a thing. The band in particular was
Zero Defex: Tommy Strange, Jimi Imij and Johnny Phlegm,
I can’t remember their drummers name from the original
line up but I know he was active in the Kent music scene
long after ODFX broke up. We played a party with them
there. We were stinking the joint up with pot smoke
and were drinking beer and generally being our Cleveland
selves. I think this was when ODFX decided they didn’t
like our style. We certainly didn’t fuck with them.
So by the time the Grand Slam events were going on we
were full-fledged enemies. I even wrote a song called
"Skinheads Suck". They didn’t like that song.
It was silly but like I said we didn’t fuck with them.
After the Defnics broke up and we all went our separate
ways, the skins booked the Misfits at this small party
center they dubbed Club Hell, "Mommy can I go to
Hell?" the flyer said. I went down there with Michelle
Mulhan who I was dating at the time, and when we got
out of the car I saw Jimi Imij approaching us. I though
"Oh boy, here we go." But instead of being
rude to each other or whatever, Jimi extended his hand
and said something to the effect "Let’s knock this
stuff off, we’re all punks, we should be on the same
side." Which was really very cool of him to do
because that’s how I felt but I would have never made
the first move to bury the hatchet. He was so right
because back then if you were a punk, everybody automatically
hated you anyway, no room for in fighting. Nicely done
Jimi.
BOOT
HILL
So
we played out as the Defnics on the East Side for almost
two years. The Defnics broke up in the summer of 1982.
Bill went on to join the second formation of the Pagans,
the Pink Pagans as they were later referred to because
of the pink LP covers and to separate that iteration
from the near original line up that was to happen around
‘85. Brandon joined Red October with Chris Andrews.
I started the Plague with Duke Snyder and Johnny. Also,
I was jamming in the Pink Holes with Bob and Kevin drumming
as Dick Hertz. The Defnics were definitely a blast and
a learning experience for me. Viva la DEFNICS!
(Bob Sablack, Jan 2001)
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