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Profiles In Courage

Our profiles In Courage section is designed to honor individuals who have, in the eyes of Winghead, contributed the most to the human condition through acts of selfless charity, uncommon bravery, or blithe stupidity. Past honorees include Louis Pasteur, Mother Theresa, John Wayne Gacy, G. G. Allin, and John Tesh.

It was August 27, 1999, and Winghead was fucked. Drummer Dustin "Upchuck" Reynolds was violently ill, and there was a gig on that night’s calendar. The boys were scheduled to play their first gig at Bailey’s, a Tulsa nightspot recently opened by former Cain’s Ballroom fixture Steve Bailey. They had called and invited us to play there, and had offered us a very competitive wage for a first-time gig. Steve "Twenty-Two or Two Times Twenty?" Jones was celebrating a birthday that day, and the thought of canceling a show did not fit into his list of festivities. Aaron was busy, Alan Corey was hard to get hold of, and Manson saw no alternative to showing up w/the Rhythm Jester drum machine and a nervous smile. Steve called the club and spoke to Chris Bailey, the son of Steve and member of the techno-terrorist band Jakob. Chris informed Steve that his brother (and Jakob front man) Cody was  a kickass drummer, and if BJW would bring him the band’s CD’s and a set of tubs that the gig would go on. Winghead had done a similar show once with local drum legend Mike Newburry, so they said OK. It was that or a cancellation, which is poison to the soul of Winghead.

The show that followed was 3 sets long, with at least 8 songs totally pulled out of the air. Cody did not miss a beat. He played with enthusiasm. He was just generally a gas to be with. Don’t get me wrong, Dustin is BJW’s drummer and we like it that way, but for a fill in gig with no rehearsal to be so painless was a miracle. Cody, you helped us out and we appreciate it. Thanks!

BEATLE BOB

Attending Sleazefest ’98, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the event’s emcee, St. Louis’ Beatle Bob. Dustin and Dan had met him earlier this year at SXSW; I had not yet had the pleasure. As the picture in our photo gallery shows, Beatle Bob is a visually stunning creature. The vintage suits, the groovy moptop, the ability to throw dance kicks on a crowded stage and injure no one, all these factors make him an interesting specimen. Only in watching Beatle Bob throughout the festival did the true scope of his courage come to light. Beatle Bob introduced and danced during the first band on the night we played. He introduced us and danced during our set. He danced during every band at Sleazefest. He sees 500 bands a year, and my money says he dances through 500 sets a year. After our set, he gave me the lowdown on clubs in St. Louis that could book us since Cicero’s changed its format. When I saw him later in the evening, one of his main concerns was letting the fans in attendance know that the Sleaze Lounge next door to Local 506 was air conditioned, so when people at the main show got overheated they would come next door and cool off for a while instead of going home. When Beatle Bob is not dancing at Sleazefest, SXSW or Jazzfest, he’s either DJing in St Louis or working as a youth counsellor. My perception is that Beatle Bob spends most of his waking hours trying to make sure everyone is having a good time. He rocks- eight days a week.

Mike “Spike” Easterling

So far, the Profiles in Courage section has been a rather flimsy and transparent suck-up-to that Winghead uses to acknowledge the favor chips tossed to the band by the recipients. Would it were always so. Real courage should never have to be exhibited, for with it all too often come real danger, real loss, and real human suffering. The story of Mike Easterling and the OCAF-Channel 4 fabricated furor over an allegedly naughty doodle is a real story, and the Committee wishes to commend Mr. Easterling for exhibiting real courage.

A couple of weeks ago, I called the Oklahoma Gazette to talk to the editor, the aforementioned Mr. Easterling. Local restauranteur and certified egomaniac Chris Lower had been trading salvos with his detractors in the letters column, and I was checking out how the war was going. Spike informed me that there was another much more high profile war going on that, being insulated from the local mainstream media by cable TV and internet addiction, I was not aware of.

Since the departure of cranky Dallas-based cartoonist Steve Hill, the Oklahoma Gazette had put a nationally syndicated cartoon on the editorial page. The April issue of the Gazette featured an old etching depicting people in various forms of whoopee that the cartoonist had drawn balloons on to comment on America’s public disapproval but private obsession with media coverage of the private lives of public figures. Still cum-drunk from their “Tin Drum” success, OCAF(Oklahomans for Cunnilingus and Anal Fornication) took the cartoon to a judge and tried to, on the basis of a nipple, a buttcrack, and someone standing behind someone, have the cartoon declared pornographic. While the judge had more sense than to declare the cartoon obscene, the OCAF tactic of whipping dull-witted Jesus-lovers into a book-burning frenzy met with more success.

The publisher of the Gazette is a local attorney who, among other things, does work for various school districts around the state. The Moore school district was about to put the publishers contract up for review. Lo and behold, at the school board meeting the fundies poured out their outrage at letting a known pornographer do work for their inbred brood. The motion not to renew his contract was tabled for discussion at a later date, but the contract seemed in serious jeopardy.

The induction of Mr. Easterling into the PIC Gallery is based primarily upon his response to this sequence of events. Rather than defend his decision to publish the cartoon, rather than curse the OCAF lemmings, Mr. Easterling was genuinely upset that a decision he made might loose the jobs of the attorneys in the publisher’s firm that did the school district work. Often in the pursuit of journalistic absolutes the writer looses sight of the innocents who may be effected by the handling of these truths. Mr. Easterling has demonstrated that intellect, drive, and humanity can exist in the same soul, albeit a soul trapped in a body that hasn’t had pussy since pussy had it. Keep up the good fight, Spike. We love you!

MIKE "GUTTERBOY" HAYNES

I met Mike Haynes in 1988, right when the Blue Note Lounge came under control of the Gang Of Five(Manson, Vic DaBone, Shipley, and the Dillonsteins). The night before our grand opening with the Vandals and Die Laughing(featuring Steve "Geritol" Jones and Ice Cream Chuck) Mr. Haynes organized a bachelor party for Poison Okie Robert Medley. I had not yet met Mr. Haynes, but Robert told me his family owned the 66 Bowl bowling alley and that he was crazier than a gay Klansman. As the party wore on, police cruisers began circling the club. I was a tad self-conscious, seeing as how we didn't have our licenses yet, and tried to convince Mike to wind down the festivities before the cops decided to do it for us. Mike then whipped out a machete and began swinging, maiming several of his close friends in the process. Medley and I managed to wrestle him into a cab before the SWAT team arrived, and the poor cabby sped off with Mike screaming that he was going to kill us all and that I looked like a Jew.

Flash forward to '89, when the Fiddlebacks were making their flash in OKC's pan. Then-Fiddleback and now-Reverb Brother Alan Crider told me that the son of the owner of the 66 Bowl was going to book them into the alley's bar, over the protests of his father, who didn't want a bunch of greasy rockers messing up the wholesome, family atmosphere the alley maintained. Dad won that battle, for the Fiddlebacks never played the Silver Dollar Lounge. I vaguely remembered the troublemaker from the bachelor party, and mused that it would have been an interesting gig.

Flash way forward to '96. The Poison Okies begin playing the 66 Bowl once a month or so. Remembering the ill-fated attempts of seven years ago, I am happy that Mr. Hanes persevered & saw his little rock & roll dream come true. I ask the Okies about the gig & they say sometimes it's great, and sometimes a bunch of redneck Lobowskis give you grief. Rather than having the bands set up in the bar, they are in the bowling alley proper, competing with the noise of crashing pins. It's sounding cooler and cooler. Mike approaches me at Flip's and says he likes BJW and wants us to play the 66 Bowl. We set a date, and make our 66 Bowl debut on June 29, 1996. Mike spins records between sets, and it's just what I want to hear: Cramps, Link Wray, Stooges, Replacements, Lee & Nancy. It makes me proud to be part of America's Main Street. The crowd is two thirds bowlers, one third punks. Half the bowlers seem to enjoy the show, the other half are at least polite enough not to throw anything. Mike loves the show, and books us back on the spot.

For a time, the Poison Okies and Billy Joe Winghead are the only bands to play Rock and Bowl at 66 Bowl. Over the course of a year, the roster expands to include Brian Parton and the Nashville Rebels, The Demon Seeds, the Reverb Brothers, Sky Godders, the Sleepy Trio, Lord High Octane and the Camshaft Kings, Ong, and others. Mike has recently put out his feelers out to Estrus Records to try and book any of their acts who find themselves in need of kicks on 66.

When Jerry Church wrote his asinine review of Sleepy Trio at 66 Bowl, he described it as a dreary gig where the band is humiliated by having the loudspeaker from the snack bar call out orders between songs. Funny- When I describe the 66 Bowl experience to touring bands, they all think it sounds cool as shit, mulletheads, snackbar pa and all. Playing if front of a less than receptive audience is part of what makes the gig so fucking cool; playing in front of the same hipsters on Western gets repetitive, and does nothing to prepare you for the harsh reality of going out on the road away from your sycophantic local fan base and getting in front of people who don't know who you are, much less care. And that's on a bad night. On a good night, there are as many mohawks as skoal cans, and you get the joy of watching them glare at one another.

Mike Haynes had a dream of putting real rock and roll on a section of Route 66 that had been previously only been inhabited by 50's jokesters like Harvey and the Wallbangers. He had tremendous obstacles to overcome: His own crippling alcoholism and sexual deviancies, the objections of his parents, his geographic distance from the epicenter of the live music venue hub. Like the kids in "Footloose" who wanted to dance in the Bible Belt, Mike "Gutterboy" Haynes wanted to Rumble where only the KATT-heads had tread before. He made his own reality. The night we opened for the Chainsaw Kittens at VZD, I found myself in the dilemma of wondering whether I wanted to stay and watch the Reverb's or go across town to 66 and see the Demon Seeds- not the usual problem in OKC.

Oklahoma City is full of people who like to bitch about the fact that there is nothing to do. A few people in this town, rather than bitch, do something. A very few do something inspired, something that captures what is unique about this region and builds from it, rather than mimicking the goings-on in the trendy major market du jour. It takes balls, and Mike Haynes has plenty of them. If only we could talk him into a nice recovery program??

                                              -Ross "Rosco" Shoemaker-

  Born in utter poverty in a one-room shack without plumbing, heat or a satellite dish in a postage-stamp of a town called Hominy, Oklahoma, Ross "Rosco" Shoemaker rose beyond his humble beginnings to become known across eastern Oklahoma as, in the words of on of his high school chums, "a rockin sumbitch!" The first person to be admitted to Oklahoma State University with a high school diploma, Rosco shattered the "dropouts only" barrier that OSU had embraced for centuries. Like all true pioneers, Rosco endured taunts and jeers, and was forced to sit in a specially constructed pen so the other students wouldn't catch "Smart Cooties" and cause the school to loose its government subsidy for teaching the students nothing.
Rosco escaped his isolation by delving into obscure music by untalented bands, single-handedly creating a market for their twangings and yammerings by walking up to strangers and saying,"Have you heard these guys? They're real good!"
  Upon graduating from OSU, Ross "Rosco" Shoemaker set his sights upon the glittering metropolis of Oklahoma City. Soon his love of questionable music became the rage of the city's punky elite. His DJ services were fiercely bid on by The Bowery, Charlie's Chili, and all the other spiky-haired shitholes of the early 80's. Rainbow Records begged him to be their man on the indie inside. Rosco enjoyed his heyday with the unassuming country charm that spoke volumes of the value of his Hominy upbringing. He engineered, produced, and mixed the classic Replacements album,"When The Shit Hits The Fans" in one night, and donated his services for free. He coined the phrase, "That guy Mooneyham's an asshole!" and never once tried to collect royalties, even when everyone was saying it!
  Another patented Roscophrase would prove more prophetic:"This town sucks, I'm moving to Austin." Rosco made the move sometime in the late 80's and assumed more of the iconic stature of the mythic rockdude he had become. He worked the door at the famed Liberty Lunch concert hall, was a rep for Polygram Records, and was mentioned on Buick Makane's smash hit, "Don't Worry About Paul".
  When Rosco disappeared from Austin, many wondered why. I didn't. After so much time in the air, even the mightiest jet must refuel. Consciously or not, Rosco knew the source of his power, his life was in that town called Hominy. And, in the tradition of our greatest elder statesman, Jimmy Carter, Rosco is THE MAN to call to get the job done when neither God nor the Devil will give you a break. As surely as he took my best shot to the chin and then didn't sick the cops on me when he was sitting in a squad car for shit I did, he'll still call a club in Austin to get them to listen to my shit. As surely as he will call someone with a key to break into the VU restroom when yours truly had locked himself in in a drunken janitorial stupor, he will make sure that the Grand Poobah at SXSW gives your package an honest chance.
  It is the recommendation of the Winghead Profiles In Courage Committee that the midway rest stop on the Turner Turnpike have its name changed from the W. D. "Bill" Hoback Pavilion to The R. A. "Rosco" Shoemaker Pavilion, since on the journey of rock and roll life, Rosco is the midway bump that keeps us going.

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