Lost In Music — Hardcore Norfolk

By Chris Hite

I feel lucky to have been able to play with as many cool musicians as I have. Every band, no matter its duration, had its own soul, and that soul was the culmination of all the musicians, the venues, and the support from everyone that loved these bands. It could not have happened without all of these things in place. C.Hite

This story is dedicated to David Orr...never forgotten!

This was the first real bass I had, but I had been playing cello in the Maury Orchestra, torturing Boris Nixon, but I must mention him because he made me stick with the cello and learning music better in general. A pimply-faced gherkin and social outcast playing with a popular guy named Mac Quayle...you may have heard of him! . Mac was popular, but for some reason had decided not to hang out with jocks or bookworms or other students who made good grades. His dad had recently divorced, so we could hang out at his place and listen to records. We used to hang out on this wall at school, and there were areas of the wall that each group hung out at; I guess the wall at Maury High was enticing around our part of it, and it was not long before Mac and I decided we wanted to put a band together, and we hashed out the idea in my room at home. The NAROS formed in the NARO theater, and after a few tryouts, we got the line up: myself, Ron Harris, Mac Quayle, and Rand Baker. A funny story! Rand Baker came in for his audition, and we asked him if he knew anything about New Wave or Punk music, don’t forget The NAROS played I Need Lunch by the Dead Boys as well as Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth, which the baloney industry had sued to try and get changed, what New Wave bands he liked or even just what kind of music he liked. He proceeded to turn up his amp to eleven, and then he played AC/DC songs for an hour; I shit you not! Ron Harris can attest to this….and we were just blown away. We knew we had the right guy, and also someone who was a little older and would have our backs. Rand was scrappy, and if you made him a grilled cheese sangy, he would do anything for you….and because our backs were tender and weak, and we had no idea what was to come in clubs, etc. We basically just played the New Wave songs that we liked at the time with some punk rock songs, Dead Boys, Vibrators, etc, thrown in because they were easy to play. The flyers and photos that I have found in an old folder in my house will serve as a background to some of the groups I have played in. One of these days I’ll write them down, and what I really wish is that I had recordings of some of the groups I played in.

This is a John Murray original flyer for The NAROS, and his style is unmistakable! Johnny was our manager at the time, and provided marketing ideas and helped us promote gigs. If you know Johnny, you can tell this was one of his typical nods to DEVO, a band we all admired at that time. My alma mater, Virginia Wesleyan College, was always very supportive of anything I ever did musically, and I sang in the Chamber Singers during my whole college experience.

I guess because I kind of have a short attention span, I moved from group to group quickly….it often had nothing to do with anyone I played with, it was just wanting to keep a lot of variety in my musical pursuits. The few years that I played in the Poetics after The NAROS broke up and after I met Scott Carlisle and Kim Berdick, I think every musician that I know was going from band to band trying to find the right fit. The Poetics played constantly, and even though I was an erratic drummer (still am), I had enough gigs under my belt to get other gigs and try out new sounds with other players.

This flyer is a good representation of how my mind works, but you’ll notice that we were one of the first bands to play for all ages AND all cultures….not sure why I thought this was funny, but humor is a strange bird. No doubt the band put up with my flyer making and a lot of eye-rolling, but I never meant to hurt anyone! I loved to do pop art and media stuff, and I think if I had not got into teaching, I would have liked to have maybe worked at a shoe store or done window dressings.

The Swing Shots was a great band made up of musicians just kind of laying about! Kim and Scott had finished with The Irritation/The Obvious, and Dave Dombrowski was on hiatus from Tango Storm, and I was finished with what I had been currently doing so we decided to put a band together. Kim and Scott and I already lived together in one house, but then we moved to 5000 Powhatan Ave., and the real fun began. The Swing Shots band, and I mean the whole band, with the exception of Dave, moved into one house so we could “be together!” That house had a notorious reputation, and John Murray and myself shared a bedroom, I know kinky right….on the second floor. Actually John had the real “room” and I lived on the porch. In the winter it would get so cold that the cat’s water bowl would freeze, and I feel sorry for anyone that dated me at that time….all apologies! The band could practice anytime we wanted because everyone was usually there, and the parties at that house were amazing, with any number of musicians showing up and jammin until the wee hours. That house has since been fully renovated, and looks pretty good! Sipping whisky on the front porch and just knowing that all your best friends were close by is a luxury I don’t have now and sometimes miss. I’ll never forget a party that got a little out of control one night and we unloaded a fire-extinguisher on Scott while he was passed out in his room…..Jack Daniels makes you do crazy things, and I remember freaking out and then getting Scott to wake up and come outside to get some fresh air. As usual, Scott took it all in stride, and we are still like bothers today; that’s no way to treat your brother! Also, I guess when they were renovating the house they noticed a big gaping hole in the kitchen wall where one night, thinking that I was stronger than [notorious soundman] Mole for some reason, we started to wrasslin…...and he literally threw me through the wall. For anyone that is not familiar with More, he is a lot stranger than he looks.

Female Trouble - Female Trouble was a band Kim put together I’m pretty sure, and I can’t even remember how we hooked up with Pam. Pam is one of those singers that just kills it every time she opens her mouth to sing, and she is for sure one of the best I have had the pleasure to work with. Female Trouble also got me together with Walter Wright, who is a multi-talented musician, like my friend Dave Almeleh, except with Walter, he was just breaking into the scene. We knew we wanted to do originals, but with a stinger like Pam, we knew we should do some songs to showcase her vocal power. Kim has always been a prolific songwriter, and always told me, it’s easier to write songs than to play covers. So she always had a song on deck for us to work on. Walter and I were basically just along for the ride. White Funk, or as the *New York Times called it, Wonder Bread re-fried fried for the suburban club crawler. Female Trouble played a lot of shows, and Pam had her own following from just being a kick ass vocalist. She was a good friend to me, and the band got along famously! Female Trouble released one cassette recording, engineered by Randy Melton and produced by Randy Duff, who was a very versatile musician himself.

*Fake News

This next photo is of a band called After Math...formerly Mighty Big Band and the band was made up of Robin Miller, David Webb (RIP), and myself. This was a very short-lived band and had a type of volatility about it that kept it exciting. Anyone that had ever played with David Webb has never had a dull moment, and anyone that has played with him knows exactly what I am talking about; you had to be tough to play with David, and his talent cannot be debated. David demanded 100% loyalty from his co-musicians, and anyone that can drink a two litter half and half mix of Coke and Vodka has my respect! Robin was and is a tech wiz, and was the first person who ever got me to experiment with playing with a click track. Playing with a click was a real eye-opener for me, and up to that point, I had no idea how absolutely terrible my meter was. It improved, but I’ve always sped up on songs….still do! This band was a lot of fun, but like a lot of bands, we were kind of doomed by the absolute lack of any kind of adherence to a style or type of music. We played what we wanted and listeners be damned! So we would play XTC and then do a Motown song...it sure was a fun band though! My biggest memory from this band is, we had a New Year’s gig at an old hotel downtown Norfolk, and we had been celebrating like musicians tend to do. David decided that it would be cool during a musical break to climb up on the chandelier in the main ballroom we were playing in. As you might expect, the bar manager was a little freaked out as Dave was swingin to and fro. Robin and I were kind of freaked out by it, but at the same time, we had come to expect interesting antics when David was about….good times! For a short time, he was my Keith Moon, and he turned me on to more Power Pop than anyone else I know except maybe John Murray.

Sticker design Chris Hite and Frank Lindsey

Bouncing off to another strange musical endeavor was the creation of Birds on Drugs. Birds on Drugs formed when John Murray and myself got into my dad’s Nakamichi cassette recording equipment and recorded a strange but very cool cassette in my parents’ living room. We used a pillow for a crude bass drum, and basically pots and pans for other percussion along with some cool sound effect records my dad had. So songs like Smack Those Sacks were born. When BOD was not playing live, many times it was just Frank Lindsey, Johnny, and myself in an apartment building making cassettes. Those recordings were totally different from the stuff we did live or the way we did it and that was typical. Below is an early prototype of a bumper sticker I designed at the printing shop I had been working at with Frank, Variety Printing at Wards Corner. Printing costs were low thanks to my very gracious boss Allen Koonen, who always gave me lots of leeway, and often found me on the floor of the shop after long road trips. I would be scared that I would oversleep, so I would just crash in the shop, and Al would wake me up when he came into work!

So I guess by now you’re getting the feeling like I am skipping around, and missing a lot of bands that I played with, but many of those bands I don’t have any media to remind me of the experiences, only my old Facebook friends and people I still talk about this stuff with.

When the Patio Boys formed with a bunch of us local musicians, I had been friends with all of the people in the band for years, and we all knew there was absolutely no pressure in doing a band together.

The Patio Boys were lucky because all of us in the music scene at the time supported each other, no matter how weird we thought the band was. I guess it was like that in small music scenes all over the country, but our solidarity was the glue that held us all together. Antic Hay was but one band that helped other bands, and the more popular they got the more they helped other bands just to keep gigging. The next few photos will be flyers and groups that I played in just before deciding to leave the U.S. for a bigger adventure.

Quang T - was a great band that I played in a few years before I decided to depart the U.S. We had a really fun chemistry that you never know if you’re going to get or not. Missy Meercats, David Almeleh, Scott Carlisle, Kim Berdick, and myself had what I thought was a very casual sound and I don’t think we ever had an argument between us. Super fun band that combined Alice Cooper type rock and roll with crazy stage theatrics and other local actors who helped out. Maybe you caught the jello wrestling or our own Spinal Tap moment when we played Goldfinger with midgets dancing behind a sheet. Or the time we played in DC and our fire-breather almost set the rafters on fire….good times! (Another Q-T photo ) 10 Quang-T Band Shot

Older musicians have a real hard time hanging up their drumsticks, basses, or whatever they play, and I have never been able to stop playing music. I guess the fact that I still play in three bands in Germany means that this mistress of music cannot easily just be cast aside. I play with great people now, and I am an anomaly in any band I play in because I am sometimes the only American in the band, but I like it that way. Music is a force that brings people together, and it certainly has helped me feel at home in this place I now call home.

Southwards - is one of three bands I currently play with, and I met the leader of this band, Art Hofmann online. Art is one of my best German friends, and the kind of guy that when you are in another country and you can’t figure out what the fuck is going on, he has your back, and he has always had my back. I got an email from him on a musician search site, and he wrote me in English. He said his band needed a drummer that weekend and there was no time for practice. He sent me the sets and it was all stuff I kind of knew, Southern rock and stuff like that. I went to play the gig, and now Southwards is in its third stage, and I have moved to bass and helping to front the band. It’s a great band of guys and my German NEW brothers for sure. Art is the guy in black, to my right playing guitar. He has made my adventures in Germany when it comes to music much more fun than I could have ever imagined, and music, as all musicians know, is truly an international language!

https://southwards-music.jimdofree.com

Here is a list of Bands that I can remember playing in and I say that because I know I have left out some...maybe! I must say, every band I have ever played in, I have loved doing it….even when I had to eat peanut butter sandwiches all week in the Platters Tribute Show because we didn't get paid until we were done with the work. My nickname in that band...Wonder Bread….still makes me laugh!

In Norfolk and the Surrounding Area:

The NAROS, Taxi Dancer (Ron Harris and I joined this band as a rhythm section after the NAROS broke up), The Probe (this is when I first met Dave Middleton and the rest of the Poetics gang), Waxing Poetics, Swing Shots, The Mockers, The Noise, The Patio Boys, Birds on Drugs, Aftermath, Thin Lads X, Changing Times (country), Strange Brew, Blind Tuna, Female Trouble, Blue Valley, Cruisin Coyotes, Ice 9, Platters Tribute Band, Quang T, The Pumps, Various Religious Pop Groups in Church

Bahrain 2002 - 2005

Myoclonic Jerk, Gary and The Firm (Motown)

Germany 2005 - NOW

Best Before, Aftermath II, Simple Men, Project Blue, The Cadz, Resonance Chamber, Southwards (still going strong), Easy Friends (still going strong), 10 Pound Batman, New Group...Free Radical or Mighty Big Bang...we’re still thinking on it!

And that….is my little story of a happy musical life albeit without much success. I have learned that success is not everything, and it’s the connections you make with people that add what value you get out of life! Thanks to anyone that ever put up with my mess….I love all of you!!

C. Hite….AKA….Mood Ring…..AKA….The Grim Reaper

(Terms of Endearment courtesy of Scott Carlisle)