Off To See The Elephant

Welcome to the Drug Free Society

This story is dedicated to the late Dr. Joseph Mitchell, associate professor of public relations and communication theory at Valdosta University, who died in 2017 after a lengthy illness.

Welcome to the Drug Free Society

My first rock band started in a church. I have the tape of our first practice. It is not good. My partners in this musical crime were Joe Mitchell and Chris Pullman, fellow members of the United Methodist Church Senior High Youth Fellowship of Elmhurst, Illinois. The seed was planted at a retreat in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the late winter of 1986. The name of our band would be “Rapture.” 

Joe and I had met through the YF the previous summer on a trip to Red Bird Mission in eastern Kentucky, where we picked rocks from the infield of a baseball diamond in the middle of a hot, muggy August for a week. As with most friends I met in high school, we bonded over music, later making mixtapes and taping albums for each other. Joe taped the Beatles’ albums for me as they were being released for the first time on Compact Disc. I had not heard “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” or “Sgt. Pepper’s” until then. I didn’t own a CD player either. At the end of “A Day In The Life,” Joe turned the volume way up at the very end of the decay of that last chord so I could hear John Lennon squeaking in a chair that, supposedly, the CD quality revealed for the very first time.

We didn’t hang out that much because we went to different schools – He and Chris went to York High School in Elmhurst. And I hadn’t met Chris until that winter retreat.

Chris had his acoustic guitar with him and was playing something that sounded to me like .38 Special. I asked him what that was, thinking he would tell me what .38 Special song he was playing, and he said “Uh…music?” But somehow what could have been an argument about mistakenly ripping off tired, 70s rockers who were trying to make it into the 80s turned into “Hey, wanna start a band?”

The tape of our first practice a few months later opens with me announcing the
date for posterity: “Today is April 4^th, 1987,” and then Chris says, “Today is today!” Neither of us were mindful of the racket we were about to make for the next forty-five minutes.

I fancied myself the lead singer and lyricist from the get-go, though the words of the first song on this tape were written by Joe. He mainly played drums but also said he knew how to sing and play keyboards. But Joe’s singing didn’t seem right for the song if I did say so myself, so I muscled in. It was called “Popular Girl.” Here is an excerpt that showcases the fine lyrical ideas we were bandying about:

She wears all the latest clothes from her head to her toes
Her appearance ain’t so cute, she looks like a prostitute
But she’s a popular girl
She lives for her public in her popular world
She’s a popular girl…

I think I’m gonna puke as I see her face
’cos she’s the kind of girl who’s way too fake
Why is her hair red, blue and green
Things just ain’t the way they seem

A better name for us might have been “The Misogynists.” The song opens with Chris on distorted electric guitar. At first it sounds exactly like the beginning of “Talk Dirty to Me” by Poison, but then it changes for the two final chords to “D” and “E” instead of “F#” and “G” (don’t worry, there is not going to be a quiz). At the end of the song, Joe kicks in with a keyboard part that sounds, note for note, like the opening line for “Too Much Time on My Hands,” by Styx. My voice throughout the song had awkward growls and yelps to it – like a cross between David Byrne, my new hero, and 80s solo-period Roger Daltrey. “After the fire, the fire still burns…”

Chris was deeply religious, a born again Christian, and his ultimate goal was to serve through the instrument of music. That’s fine, but Joe and I weren’t too sure about all of that. In fact, Joe’s interest in the band lasted only a couple of months. He went silent and then quit by way of an emotional “Dear John” letter that was also a breaking off of our friendship. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. I knew one thing by then: I didn’t want to play Christian rock. But I should have known I would run into pressures like this because, for reasons time has forgotten, I seemed to be spending so much of my time in churches.

Another church was the Community Presbyterian Church in nearby Lombard. One Saturday, my new best friends Joe Blidy, Ken Knapp and I walked into “Presby,” as they called it, because Ken wanted me to check out a band with a friend of his who played the keyboards. There was a buff dude named Doug singing into the microphone at the altar wearing a biker glove on one hand, fist-pumping in the air. Behind him was a spiky haired dude named Dean wearing the other biker glove on his opposite hand, playing roto-toms. The third guy was the keyboard player, Parin Schmidt, making up almost the entirety of their sound on an Akai analog synth that had some pretty cool sounds on it. He was a really good player, sounded powerful in that room. I could tell that he could also sing harmonies well.

Parin brought along this home-made, peanut-shaped, two-string fretless bass that his dad built – he’d lend it to me later – I kept it for almost fifteen years. It was plugged into a small amp and at one point I picked it up and started noodling along. Doug was having none of it - kept dismissively shouting “bass,” between verses, and waving at me to stop. I didn’t know what the hell I was playing, but it was clear this outfit wasn’t gonna be my bag. It didn’t matter, the seed was already planted to steal their keyboard player.

I called Parin a week or two later asking if he’d like to practice with my band some time. He was open to the idea, but said he already had a band. “No, he doesn’t,” I thought, but I was arrogant enough to figure he’d find that out soon enough. Parin was a person of Christian faith as well but didn’t seem to feel as strongly about it when it came to the purpose of music. When he succumbed to the inevitable and joined my band, Rapture became a three-piece again. We still needed a drummer.

In the summer of ’87 I took a job in the produce department at Cee Bee’s Finer Foods in Oakbrook Terrace. It was here that I got to know Daniel Patrick Timothy Sullivan, the future “Danny Panic” in punk circles and then, much later, drummer for Beulah’s final two records, “The Coast Is Never Clear,” and “Yoko.”

I knew that Dan was a drummer in the Willowbrook high school concert band, but I didn’t get to know him well until then because – he seemed to me to fit in pretty well with the stony looking metalheads that made up the drum line in the back. He looked the part, fitting my stereotype with his long mullet and a nickname I’d either seen or heard, “Dokken Dan.” After working together a bit, we became close friends. Our first bonding experience was in the back room of the produce department, banging on boxes pretending we were in a thrash metal band, head banging and yelling “KILL!” between drumbeats and dirty looks from old ladies coming back to see if we had any more grapes.

I learned early on that Dan was into a lot of different kinds of music other than metal. I told him my favorite band was Talking Heads. I was shocked when he told me with a straight face that he really liked Madonna. He had this way of making you feel closed minded by the way he would say things like that, knowing you were saying to yourself, “How could a guy that looks like a metalhead like Madonna?” He loved messing with people who’d be too quick to profile. He was also into The Cure, The Smiths, knew techno and was well versed in classic rock because his dad was a drummer too with a large record collection of stuff from the 50s, 60s and 70s. But Dan was especially well versed in The Beatles. He and his childhood friends went to Beatlefest in Chicago every year since they were old enough to remember. Not long after that, he made me a mix tape which had stuff from all over the map. It was called “Martian Mucus Muzak.”

We soon traded tapes of bands like The Minutemen, Fishbone, Hoodoo Gurus, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Jam and Jane’s Addiction. Then I asked him if he would practice with my band some time. He seemed wary. About a week later Chris, Parin and I went over to Dan’s house to, I guess, audition each other. My ears rang for days afterward.  Practice was super loud. Man did Dan hit those skins and cymbals hard! We were a ROCK Band! As far as Chris and I were concerned, Dan was in.

After we were done, I asked Dan what he thought of the practice, and all he could say was, “It was fun.” I remember trying to give him a hug afterwards and he just sort of stepped back and put out his hand. That was the first and only time I can recall Danny not giving anyone a hug.

Parin was still ambivalent about playing with us as well, but then Chris announced that he had secured a gig at Jefferson Junior High School in Elmhurst. We would play their winter dance. We’d have to learn covers like “Louie Louie” and “Johnny B. Goode” but we’d make $400.  Whatever, man, it was a gig, something to work towards. Chris and I managed to convince Dan and Parin to do it. The kids seemed to dig it, and from then on, we became a functioning band, if you can call a David Byrne wannabe, two Christians and a metalhead who liked Madonna a band.

Here is an early photo, probably a promo-shot for that first gig, taken in front of my garage in Villa Park:

(L to R: Me, Dan Sullivan (seated), Chris Pullman, Parin Schmidt)

So how did Rapture sound? Well, I suppose we sounded like a cross between Talking Heads, 38 Special, Dokken and Poison playing our own songs peppered with references to Jesus and cover tunes from the 50s and 60s as well as bands from the 80s like The Outfield.  I didn’t know how to play guitar well enough at the time, so I just stood up there awkwardly holding the mic when I sang.  I had no idea what to do with myself when I wasn’t singing. Jumping jacks? Running around the room with balloons and streamers tailing behind me like a dragon in a Chinese New Year’s parade? Check.

There’s no photographic evidence of that first gig that I am aware of, so here is a picture of me with the band at a later club gig, hanging onto the mic for dear life:

We had a logo too, which belies my aversion to being in a Christian rock band. The themes popping up in some of the songs we were writing clearly rubbed off on my artistic ability. One day, Chris came into practice with a box full of business cards debuting the logo, which indeed was my creation. Chris ran with it and created the contents of the cards:

I mean, I say I didn’t want to be in a Christian rock band, so what was I doing with that pen and ruler in my hand designing a logo that looked like a church? This has been lost with the passage of time. I’ll go with...paying homage to our humble beginnings.

We had two songs from this period which are instructive. The first one was called “Welcome to the Drug Free Society.” That phrase was something Dan used to yell at random to people out of my car window, as a joke. It would have fit well into a scene from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” — everyone was on drugs back in the 70s, right? Then Chris wrote lyrics to one of Parin’s songs and co-opted that phrase but ditched the irony:

Welcome to the drug free society
Everybody says that it’s one big lie
But I’m here to say that it’s not a dream
My words are true, by and by  

You’ve got to leave your world
Get in touch with your heart
Kick the habit, end your life with a brand-new start
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it
Anymore, anymore

The other song was “Absent Presence,” and it was another one for “The Misogynists,” vaguely about a girl who was not too bright. Eventually the name of our band would change from Rapture to Absent Presence and that song became our anthem. Since we were touting ourselves as an “All occasion, non-image band” already, Absent Presence fit that description better. The name certainly suited us; we had no image or presence to speak of. As the front man, that was probably my fault.

In April of 1988, we managed to land our first club gig at a sports bar in Elmhurst called McGregor’s. Right around this time we realized that maybe it would be a good idea to have a bass player. Parin was playing bass notes on the keyboard a lot of the time, which was kind of a waste of his talent.

Chris brought in a friend from his high school, Mike Gottlieb. If any of you have ever seen a “Gottlieb” pinball machine, Mike is from that family. He also had a PA system and a better place to practice, his incredibly huge and lavish house. His dad had a Bentley and an Alfa Romeo Spider in the garage, and we played in the room next to it. There was an indoor pool in the back. I remember practicing in bare feet on a very shaggy, plush white carpet that felt like coyote fur. They had a husky, with fur that matched the carpet. I have recorded documentation of these rehearsals peppered with little yelps from the dog. Not sure if he was excited about the music or if someone just stepped on him.

Mike Gottlieb played bass with a pick in a style like Mike Mills of R.E.M. — kinda nerdy, too. He considered himself more of a guitar player. His affable, fun-loving personality also brought some levity to the proceedings.

It wasn’t long, though, after we played a couple of gigs at McGregor’s that we sat down and ran some numbers. Mike, coming from a successful family, put a business hat on and said, if we learned a bunch of covers, we could get a lot more gigs around town. So we all hung out in his room and listened to 45s of songs ranging from “Hang on Sloopy” to “Turning Japanese.” By the end of the night, we had an unrealistically large, two page single-spaced, college ruled list of covers to work on.

This kind of took the wind out of my sails. I wanted us to write our own songs, and I didn’t care just yet about the profitability of a rock n roll band. We were still in high school for Christ’s sake! Nevertheless, we started learning more covers but kept in our originals. Also: Mike was not at all interested in doing Christian rock - that got put to bed.

I exerted what influence I could, along with Dan, who became my ally in the band as the months passed. If we had to play covers, Dan and I would insist on rotating in more obscure songs like “The Last of the Famous International Playboys” by Morrissey. By obscure, I mean what would have been obscure to the suburban Chicago cover band circuit, which consisted of a lot of Led Zeppelin “tribute” bands with names like “Kashmir,” playing on dollar wings night. Morrissey was an odd choice. He’s a tough one to cover. We tried it once, and only once. My voice wasn’t up to that challenge.

The breaking point came in a parking lot after we’d packed up from one of our gigs, talking for what seemed like hours about how it comes down to making a hard choice. “It’s fly or die,” Mike said. “All or nothing.” Go to college, do music on the side in your bedroom for fun or in front of a few of your friends, or play covers, make money, treat the band like a business. Don’t go to college, continue with the band full time, one or the other. This is a subject that would come up again and again for me. I’ve always had a hard time with any kind of ultimatum, or black and white decision making.

I checked out after that. In my mind, there was never really a question about Mike’s intentions. He would go off to some Ivy League college and then work for his dad in some business capacity, likely not having anything to do with being in a band. Chris deserved to play music for the reasons he really wanted to. Once I got accepted to the University of Wisconsin, I was all but officially done. I’d be gone anyway.

There was, as one might expect, a longer denouement to the story of Rapture or, by then, Absent Presence. We kept on going, through the summer of ’88 after our senior year in high school, though gigs were few and far between. 

I went off to Madison, and the band was put on hiatus. The following summer I went back home, and we got back together to play a party or two and that was just about it.

I believe this was our last show:

(L to R: Random photo bomber, our one dancer, perhaps — back turned, stage right; Chris Pullman, Me, Dan Sullivan (behind kit), Mike Gottlieb, Parin Schmidt. The camera must have looked small - look at all that space we have. Why were we all leaning into each other?)

Over the course of two years, our songwriting did get better, we recorded a couple of songs at a studio including a nice tribute Chris had written for his father who had passed away when he was young. I started playing guitar a little on some songs I’d written on it, and even brought my trumpet. Chris’s girlfriend at the time had a great voice, and she’d join Parin and me for some three part harmonies sometimes, and our voices blended well I thought. It also helped to have a world class drummer.

But it was the summer of ‘89, between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and I decided then that I was going to do whatever it took to start a new band in Madison the following school year and stay up there through the summers as well.

Things didn’t quite end there with Absent Presence. I remember us getting together at some point during Christmas break of ‘89 to work on some new songs for fun and Mike said he was thinking seriously again about doing the band thing. Then, on New Year’s Eve, Chris called me about a get-together over at Mike’s house. I told him I might try to make it over but that I had been invited to another party, which I went to with Joe Blidy. We bumped into Parin there.  

As it turned out, according to Dan, Chris and Mike had gear set up hoping all the members of Absent Presence would show up individually, and then…surprise…we could play a gig for old times’ sake at a party for some people who were – how best to put this – up a few rungs on the social ladder.

By then, Dan was playing in a punk band called Temper Tantrum and Mike must have really wanted this surprise Absent Presence jam to happen because he asked if Temper Tantrum would be willing to come over to his house and play a set! Dan recalls saying “Are you sure? It might not be your thing.” “Of course,” Mike said.

So, as Dan tells the story -- a whole caravan of punks drove over in beat-up old station wagons and rusted-out cars, making a hellish racket in the ritzy neighborhood in Elmhurst where Mike lived. When they got to his house, about fifty people with spiky, multi-colored hair, mohawks and so on, came filing out carrying a boom box blasting some hardcore band or another. When Mike answered the door, he had this “oh fuck” look on his face but let them in anyway. So, the band set up and started playing the kind of music you might expect from a band named “Temper Tantrum.”

I had this picture in my mind’s eye as Dan told it – of a scene from “The Decline of Western Civilization (Part I),” but crossed with Mike’s living room and its plush, white carpet, matching Husky, and a group of soon-to-be Ivy Leaguers in the back of the room with their fingers in their ears and their mouths wide open.

As Dan continued to tell it, after the second song in Temper Tantrum’s set, a terrified looking Mike sheepishly went up to them and said, “Uh, can you guys leave?” Dan just laughed and said, “I told you!” Meanwhile, Parin, Joe-B and I were busy getting drunk over at the other party, leaving the 80s behind.¹

1989 was the last summer I spent in Illinois, I stayed in Madison year round from then on until I graduated in 1992.

Dan’s band Temper Tantrum was later renamed Ivy League. I’m pretty sure the New Year’s Eve story had nothing do to with the name change, but it would be funny if it did. Ivy League ran into the same circles as bands like Screeching Weasel which Dan joined in 1990. Dan Sullivan became Danny Panic, replacing Steve Cheese, their previous drummer – Ben Weasel handed out surnames to all members of that band, I think – and Danny would later fill in as drummer, using the same moniker, for Pansy Division on a tour of Europe opening for Green Day. Danny Panic became quite well known. Saw him on MTV even. I had no idea back then that our paths would cross again about ten years later, when he would join Beulah as our second drummer. I kept the mix tapes he gave me:

Meanwhile, my first band to kick off the 90s would be called The Holsteins.

[Next chapter here.]

1. I never investigated this story for its accuracy by asking Mike or Chris about it - sometimes the absolute truth can get in the way of a funny story, after all. But one thing that’s nagging me about it all these years later as I think about it: if Parin was at the party with me, that means he must not have been in on the surprise. What were they planning on doing about keyboards?