BY TOMMY CASSMe and Doug came out of the closet and started Shock way back in 1996 with Johnny Lovedrops Kosik and Josh Muncy, then Josh quit after we fired Eric Fairchildern, we con'd pretty Jody Parkenstein into the band to play guitar. We went through a dozen terrible drummers. We talked our Overbear'un buddy Tony Notario to stop playing guitar, beat the drums and let us move into his basement, he left to do his own thing....more crap drummer try outs, then we picked up Tony Peterson who played in Helvis wih Doug and Jodi, then Doug desided Holland was the place you ought to be so we loaded up the truck and we headed down to Bobby Courters to make a very quick shittttty CD...crap that is, lots of booze... polished turds...... our human time keeper got tipsy russell on a few tracks, feeling were hurty, so Bob "I dont like mondays" Courter desided he needed to Ringo-it so we lay down some tracks with him that turned out ok...
Bob tried to "Phil Spector" this p.o.s. tgt with me but it was a mess to begin with, 5 white russians and $2k later "Filthy" CD was born......
Doug moved back after Hollands Run, we picked up CC "I never met a hairstylist I didnt like" Ramone who learned me to play guitar when he wasnt concentrating on playing drums, later he fried his hair blonde and 2 weeks later he left the very lucrative bloated cash cow, Shock to play with the multi-platinum, local stars of cinema and NY stages, the Unsatisfied, so then we though it would be a hoot if we got the Unshatisfired's hammy-down drummer, Dave Shankter to join, Johnny had moved to FL but was coming home to do gigs every now and then, we desided this was too much to ask, some how Terry Clause ended up playing with us over a summer, later he got tired of smelling Dougs hair goo so we tried out a handful of fools and settled on Wes Reynolds because he had a Johnny Thunders tattoo on his artifical peg leg, plus he didnt look like a member of Phish or own a 5 string.
We desided we didnt have enough fucking headaches or enough local people jealous and hating us so we desided to all grow Hitler stashes and goosestepped our way into gutter punks hearts, they ate it up, cleaned up their act and we gathered a new generation of Shock youth. Later Dave desided no one could hear him enough, he wanted his own PA, stage crew and mini bar, we veto'd that idea, so he departed to become a full time mud shark wrestler in Korea so we tried out 4-5 more drummys and got lemon squeezer, Mike "superbuzzed" Smith, everything looked good for the Monsters, then Mike desided that we needed to shave our heads and play Aerosmith covers to get the frat gigs...we told him we wanted to be more like Green Day meets Blind Melon Jefferson bacon bits but he wasnt buying it so he desided to drive his icee van home and no one has seen him since (except Doug who need him to usher folks at his wedding) now 20 drummers later, a member with panic attacks and no job, another settled down and married wanting to be the next photo journalist for Creem magazine,
another who doesnt eat beans but eats pizzas and a nanner every day.... another asking himself why the fuck he got mixed up with this and anothers left the band to sell lemonade..... who knows what the fucking future holds??
This is what's truly great about Rock and Roll, or in this case, Rocque and Roll. The Upper Crust deliver amped-up, AC/DC-style guitar crunch whilst bedecked as snobby, degenerate 18th-century noblemen. The Crust incorporate the catchiest of power-pop hooks with the most intelligent yet foot-stomping-est elements of hard arena-rock. To top it off, their lyrics address the dilemmas of the lives of the idle rich: "Let Them Eat Rock," "Friend Of A Friend Of The Working Class," "Rabble Rouser," etc.
