Notes

Gladys the van and FPM have been on my mind since this post the other day about the old band rehearsal house.

A pic of Gladys actually being driven by the band while also sporting a P.A.S.S. decal either on the window or on a case inside the van—hard to tell from this old photograph. This must've been taken by friends in another vehicle—and I think that's Tim being goofy in the window.

As the keeper of the van, I remember getting a literal crash course in brake calipers while driving Gladys to one of our first shows, at a hall called the Little Devils Shack, as I recall. It was named after the Belleville, IL-based Little Devils football team, and I suppose it was their home base when folks like us weren't renting it out on the weekend.

While driving either to the same rehearsal house referenced in the earlier post above, or maybe from that house to the show in Belleville, one of the wheels just kind of locked up—like, the brakes were stuck or something.

That's exactly what was happening: one of the brakes on one of the wheels locked up and held on for dear life as we somehow pushed the old girl through the pain and on to the gig. No doubt squealing, and definitely pulling to one side with great conviction and might.

The entrance to Citizens Park in Belleville, IL earlier today.

We pulled our wounded vehicle into the Citizens Park entrance, which led back to the Little Devils Shack, tucked behind the property next to the railroad tracks.

I think this must be where everyone came and went from the show, but I somehow don't remember ever using anything but the rear doors at the venue that night. Probably because that's where the van was, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get it home later.

Our friend Erin, a budding photographer, took our first official 8x10 black-and-white promo photo (below) out in the back of the building that night.

L-R: Scott Randall, me, Tim O'Saben, and Dave Winkeler (seated). Photo by Erin Wallace.

Here's what it looked like today in that same spot behind the old Little Devils Shack (not called that anymore, I suppose):

I remember opening with the song "Scary Spiders"—about three minutes of a haunting bassline with Scott doing a low-key vocal thing before the drums and guitar finally kicked in. It featured a slow, very heavy four-on-the-floor rock beat and a distorted guitar part chugging along a la The Melvins.

Tim, Dave, and I had actually opened for the Melvins not too long before that, back when we were still a band called Dementia 13—which featured Tim's brother Dan O'Saben on vocals and a completely different repertoire of songs.

The people there who knew us from the Dementia 13 days had no idea what to expect from the new rock entity known as Fragile Porcelain Mice. I remember not really knowing what to expect either. But when the first big crash cymbals kicked off the heavy, driving rock—almost metal, probably—section of the opening song, something clicked.

I didn't know it yet, but that busted-brake gig at a rented-out football shack next to the railroad tracks was the start of a 25-year ride.

The back of the FPM promo photo. No Photoshop or fancy Microsoft Word for us back then. Nope, it was a rubber stamp from the Kwik Kopy print shop in west Belleville.

I remember it kind of clearly even though it was probably 25 years ago now.

Above is an actual printed photograph that Fragile Porcelain Mice manager Chris mailed to me from the New York area, so I could see what our website looked like on his personal device.

I'd just learned to build websites for people to visit from their computers, and now the new trend was supposedly pushing to have websites that worked on cellphones, PalmPilots, and other "personal digital assistant (PDA)" devices at the time.

Pretty sure I added a "splash page" that you'd see when visiting the Fragile Porcelain Mice website. A splash page was one of those old-school gateway pages that asked you to choose your own adventure before you'd seen a single thing. "Click here for the standard site. Click here for the mobile version." As if anyone was excited to opt into the inferior experience on purpose.

The mobile version was basically a mostly-text-only copy of the standard site, except for one big, monochromatic FPM .bmp logo sitting proudly at the top (because even on a two-inch screen, branding mattered).

Simple as the designs were, it still required the use of free device emulator tools available at the time to test everything. I'd toggle between views of the sleek, modern Motorola Razr, assorted BlackBerries and PDAs, and your standard little Nokia flip-phone—squinting at my monitor trying to judge whether something looked right on a screen I'd never actually held. Half the time the emulators disagreed with each other anyway, so you'd just pick the one that made your site look the least broken and call it a day.

And then there was my attempt at a MIDI ringtone featuring the bassline from Fragile Porcelain Mice's "Concept of Grief"—which, after being translated into MIDI, sounded less like music and more like one of those old LCD football games gone mad.

This hit me kind of hard today.

I took the truck out for some air, and ended up heading into Columbia, IL and onto Steppig Road, where Fragile Porcelain Mice rehearsed in the very early 1990s at the house of the late Bob Ault, a friend and mentor of mine.

Bob and I worked together for a while at P.A.S.S. (formerly "Police Alert Security Systems") in East St. Louis, where he showed me the ropes and trained me not only on how to pull wire, install motion and smoke detectors, etc., but he also gave me some real-life, tough love kinds of lessons in life that I probably hated him for at the time, but fully appreciate now as a man with 54 years of experience behind me.

FPM has a cassette demo recorded at this house that includes the first iteration of "Southside of Luck," along with probably the first real recording of "More Cop Shows" and some other long-forgotten gems like "Plant Wagon," "Welcome to Xenon" (named after a pinball machine in the basement next to us), "Meanbadaction," "Sky Houses," and "Scary Spiders."

Below is the current state of the basement room where we practiced. My drums sat in the lower, left-hand corner, Tim stood to my left, Scott in the middle (of course), and Dave to the right—over by the pinball machine. That extra framed-in room on the lower right wasn't there in those days, as I recall.

The song "Scary Spiders" was kind of a stream of consciousness, lyrically, that Scott wrote as we entertained a small crowd that consisted of the kids who lived in the house and their friends (who were there for a party or possibly a sleepover). The awkwardly-comical opening lyric, "Little girl sitting in a green trash can," was inspired by an actual little girl sat, sunken halfway into a (clean) waste basket, surrounded by her friends who were all transfixed on us—Tim, Scott, Dave, and me—making loud, goofy music in the basement where no doubt they were anxiously waiting to use for typical crazy kid activities once we wrapped up and moved our stuff out of the way.

These days, the house once treasured by Bob and his family—truly his pride and joy, that spot out in the peaceful country where drivers greet each other with a familiar wave while passing each other on those back roads—sits quiet and gutted. A remnant of its former life. Like it's been beaten by flood waters and ravaged by vandals and wildlife.

I experienced the "country wave" today—something like thirty-five years later—and it made me smile and actually laugh out loud as a guy in a passing truck lifted a single finger from the steering wheel as we made eye contact and passed each other on the narrow road before the railroad crossing.

That's the same elevated railroad crossing that I remember hitting at a high rate of speed while we all sang out the General Lee's famous call! 🛤️

I used to drive the band out there and back from our Belleville home base in our first, little band van: a baby blue, stubby beauty we named Gladys.

I tinted her windows in this same garage one night, probably after a long day of installing a burglar or fire alarm system with Bob and then practicing with FPM. I had that kind of energy back then, and was up for anything it seems.

So much has happened since those days, which seem like a lifetime ago, when we just did things. No internet or social media—just dreams, telephones with directory assistance, and seemingly endless time to build what we thought needed to be built.

Sad to see the old house sitting there dark and humbly resting where it once housed probably many others before and maybe after Bob and his family. I could almost hear the excitement in Bob's voice as he'd describe the exhilaration of being in the country finally, where he could play loud music or sit quietly on the back porch and watch the sun set.

Check out some random banter below from the actual recording session that happened in this very basement.

Been one of those seasons of looking back where I've been and looking forward where I'm headed, and FPM has been a recurring theme as of late. Not always the easiest times of my life, but priceless experience and a lot of fun along with the heartache and pain. Art imitates life, as they say.