In a mid-sized suburban city in Minnesota, a short Jewish-looking boy runs through the streets, carrying a large black guitar case emblazoned with an oversized RAMONES bumpersticker. Ignoring the cries and taunts of the other youths driving by in their customized candy-apple-red jacked-up mufflerless chariots.
Skeleton Ed.
What was it about them?
Their verve, their wit and their artistic integrity combined to form one of the most caustic, spontaneous bands we've ever seen.
During a career cut short by intra-band strife, the Edsters released only five cassettes and played only once live, but managed to put other, more established bands to shame with their innovative artistry and tireless wit.
This wit is nowhere more apparent than on the first taped, entitled simply 'Skeleton Ed', but known universally to rabid fans as 'The Green Tape' because of its distinctive coloring. On that tape Jeremy Saperstein showed an early flash of brilliance that would soon tragically be tarnished through his excessive drug use in the later days of Ed. Saperstein wrote two songs and co-wrote four others on the tape, the first member of Ed to come up with anything to put an end to the tiring series of three-chord songs was limited to playing.
Saperstein's finest contribution to the tape was also his most memorable moment with Ed. 'Real Neat Car' was all at once a typical but brilliant wish for a girl to notice him, a biting sociological commentary on materialism and a rockin' dance tune. It also contained an off-hand reference to one of his primary influences, Jonathan Richman ('Got a real neat car/Goes a thousand miles an hour' sings Jeremy in a voice grown husky through the previous five hours of practice takes). Moments to come were foreshadowed un the screeching, whining lead guitar of Dave Randall, who had only begun playing guitar three months previously and was still playing an imitation Les Paul borrowed from Gilbert Pitts (who would later be memorialized in Saperstein's 'Gilbert Pitts Had A Nice Guitar' after Dave broke said guitar in a fit of exuberant strumming), and the always stellar drumming of tubman Rodney Lynch. John DiGiovanni displayed the instumental diversity that was an Ed trademark by bleating a saxophone riff that sounded like something right out of frat-rock favorite 'Tequila'.
Other songs of note on that first tape were 'Brutally Sodomized By Little Green Men From Space' and 'Aliens Erased My Mind', actually the same track in both instrumental and vocal versions. These were the first track the Ed recorded as a quartet (although some tapes still exist from before Randall joined the group), and they are set apart by the firm rhythm set by Saperstein strumming furiously on his newly acquired Gibson Sonex and Lynch thumping his tom-toms like a madman. DiGiovanni adds a screaming lead guitar that seems to fly all around the song, coming back and then leaving again. Randall, who had yet to acquire a guitar or amplifier, quickly scribbled some words on the back of an used sheet of paper, set up a microphone with some weird electronic effects and a song was born! Although the production quality was crude (the song was multi-tracked between two stereo cassette recorders), the song itself stands alone as a primitive, rhythmic and psychotic rock and roll track.
Skeleton Ed was still an obviously primitive garage band at this time, but some things suggested that this would not always be so, such as the haunting 'Ballad of Skeleton Ed' when Randall and Lynch sing in almost-Byrdsian harmony and 'Gilbert Pitts Had A Nice Guitar' which showcased the band's ability to write and perform extemporaneously, a talent that would help them enormously as they matured.
The rest of the tape was notable only for the choice covers Skeleton Ed – formerly a band that exclusively played garage-punk hits from the sixties – performed: a rave-up of Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' in which both DiGiovanni and Randall play fiery solos and Dave muffs lyrics as Jeremy shouts off-mike backing vocals; a somewhat restrained cover of the Velvet Underground's 'What Goes On' with both DiGiovanni and Randall contributing sinuous guitar solos while Lynch - the purest voice of the quartet – sings; and a weird, hollow-sounding 'Light My Fire' with an extraordinary feedback-laced guitar solo from Jeremy, The band was starting to form the musical diversity that would make them the band of the eighties.
The Ed practiced intensively for a long while, becoming tighter and adding new material as both Randall and DiGiovanni contributed songs. The combo discarded the revolutionary three-guitar approach of their debut tape in favor of a more traditional guitar/guitar/bass/drums approach. The approach worked, as much of the primitivism of the first disappeared with the subtle underpinnings of a bass usually played by Saperstein or DiGiovanni (although no member felt locked to a specific instrument – Lynch frequently played bass while DiGiovanni drummed, as he did on roughly half of the cuts on the first tape. Randall and Saperstein sometimes drummed as well, though never on tape).
Randall began to particularly flourish, buying an amplifier and writing a pair of songs – the moody, introspective 'Getting Along' and the witty revenge epic 'Won't Forget'. The band immediately started working on these songs as well as some of Saperstein's compositions, among them the first song he had ever written, 'Intellectual Girl', now dusted off for Ed. Saperstein also introduced the ripping 'Don't Wanna Die' and the scathing 'At The Mall', which continued in the vein of social commentary he preferred to work in. DiGiovanni returned to his role as a lead singer only – which he had done for the germinal Skeleton Ed trio, the Silly Boys – for his 'Lonely', written in the throes of a failing relationship.
The band recorded several versions of these songs, some of which later surfaced on 'The Curse of Skeleton Ed', a collection of outtakes, demos and general studio awareness, but did not release any of them, choosing instead to take a hiatus as Randall, DiGiovanni and Saperstein pursued their education and Lynch returned to his writing career, supported by his dreary job as a a messenger for Minneapolis grain giant Atwood-Larsen (indeed, you can hear references to his employment in 'Ed's Lament' from the 'Green Tape'). The band played occasionally after this, but not seriously, preferring to jam their way through cover songs.
This was a time of tension for Ed, with each member considering outside interests, and no real direction for the band. This would prove to be a constant problem for Ed, and would eventually lead to their downfall. Frequently at practice sessions, tensions would erupt and one or another of the members would finish things out in a smoldering rage, playing faster and more furiously until the end of the session, when the group departed wordlessly.
When Ed reconvened seriously around the summer of 1985, Randall written several new songs that seemed to set a definite direction. 'Happy Song For Misery' and 'In My Midnight' (and, to a lesser extent, 'Skeleton Death March', which was never released as a band effort but was later released in the Randall demo version) were without a doubt the finest material Ed had produced thus far, combining Randall's angst-filled lyrics with the swirling interplay of his and Saperstein's guitars. DiGiovanni had moved over to bass more or less permanently now, and proved to be a fine player, providing a steady, pulsing rhythm for the floating arpeggiated guitars. Lynch rose to the occasion, drumming with a restrained passion that emphasized the urgency of these songs.
The Ed immediately recorded these songs and released them on a new cassette, again simply titled 'Skeleton Ed', but this time released with a white cover.
On the 'White Tape', as it quickly became known, were Randall's stunning new songs, DiGiovanni's 'Lonely' and a re-release of Saperstein's 'Real Neat Car' as well as 'Intellectual Girl' and 'At The Mall'. Also included was a new version of 'Light My Fire', more threatening than the first but lacking the powerful solo of the first, and a tongue-in-cheek instrumental called 'Bat Surf Wipeout, Man!', a pastiche of the 'Batman Theme' and 'Wipeout', with Bob Mould-like screaming guitar thrown in by Saperstein as Randall played bass and DiGiovanni added his own guitar chops.
The Edsters were satisfied with this tape for only a short time and immediately set about working on new material while Saperstein put together a stopgap release of studio odds-and-ends. Called 'The Curse of Skeleton Ed', the tape had a limited release, but contained a plethora of previously unreleased and fascinating material. Two live-in-the-studio jams are included, and we can hear the tangled roots of Ed begin to grow together as they perform a wondrous sonic medley of the Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' (an old Silly Boys staple) and their own 'Gilbert Pitts…' followed by Dave's voice spitting out words that would echo long after the relentless waves of amplified mayhem died away – "Loud as SHIT!"
Also included were some studio experiments and an all-acoustic late night set recorded by Lynch, Randall and Saperstein after one of the many tense practices at DiGiovanni's house led them to consider proceeding as a trio.
Luckily, they didn't and the tape exists and remains an interesting – if extremely eclectic – collection of Ed tunes, covers (Led Zeppelin's 'Your Time Is Gonna Come', for example, and the Jackson 5's 'I'll Be There') and otherwise unreleased Ed material performed acoustically.
By Smedley Butler-Butler