...nostalgia doctors...
...unearthing old music and memories from a band called NO DOCTORS...
“Nostalgia is not a place to live.”
-Gulzar-
Summer, a couple decades in rearview. Me holding vinyl. Breezes blowing jasmine. Me laid on lawnchair. Skin a lobster red, head a spritz of lemon dye. Me crouched at firepit. Getting all shitted up on cans of regret brand cheap beer. Heavy D on cassingle, nothing but love.
I can’t tell if looking back is a disease or a gift. It feels that regardless of how much now and later I chew on, my mind will inevitably blow some bubbles of there and then instead.
I can’t help but remember.
From my “barely legal smoking days” to my “what are you going to do with your life era”, I devoted existence to playing bad(ass) sax, singing, howling and scratch djing in a touring noise rock bar band called No Doctors (1998-2008).
Nostalgia Doctors are those who attempt to cure the past. No Doctors are those for whom the past needs no cure.
You can tell we were a real thing because we have an oft-disputed wikipedia page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Doctors
Two weeks ago, my band-brother Chauncey Chaumpers, a lithe enigmatic guitar humping redhead from middle lIllinois, reached out with some shoebox curios from this midriff and arm leggings era of my life.
If you read that last sentence as mad lib let me explain in brief.
There is nothing stranger than a creative truth (that is my creative truth, also known as a lie). The years to come will allow me to share more stories about “the band”. My well stretches into and out of the earth, that is why it is called rock and roll.
From deep chemical conspiracy to shadowy offers to disappear in Bangladesh, No Doctors was my life and purpose until one day it wasn’t. I remember when it ended. 6:21 PM, dusky, awkward splintery redwood slab seats. Mumble mumble daydream mumble. It was a break in a practice that never picked up again.
Unearthed here for your consumption (my nostalgia) are a series of recordings, audio and video, that capture us roughly four years into our experiment/experience.
We started playing music together because we could. A keyboard lonely in an unused basement guest room. A scratchy four track recorder from a used record show in South St. Paul. Queer hunting graffiti on brick restrooms walls of lakeside basketball courts.
We wanted a taste for anything other than the suburban malaise we freebased. We spent the sunsets beating up the safe sidewalk life we were gifted while wearing thongs and bird masks (I might have said we, when I meant me).
A warning to all parents out there raising their kids that way. This can happen if you don’t try harder. If you move to the suburbs and bore children with your mediocrity there is a good chance they will terrorize you and the friends of your neighbors with the scuzzy sounds of amplified angst.
Maybe you should raise your kids that way.
Maybe you shouldn’t try too hard.
Bob Seger tells me that rock and roll never forgets. Neither does the digital disease. These following five timestamps remind me of where I was when I wasn’t here. Tight pants and hand rolls. Obfuscated obfuscations. Relentless pursuit of what we were told not to do.
It wouldn’t be if it wasn’t.
If you want to buy a record, reach out, I got a handful in the basement and some free hand printed t-shirts to go with them. To see more, please sub to this youtube channel…
https://www.youtube.com/@oafwc
The best advice a man named French Witty Remarks ever gave me was to document my travel with disposable cameras. I do that now with my “telephone”. The photos included here are from a shoebox filled with 2000+ of them. These were taken on those two dollar green single use ones. Greasy grainy prints. Handheld reality in review.
As I pored amongst them, a friend I haven’t heard from in years wrote to ask how my other bandmate (missing in Cambodia) is doing. Chances are I won’t ever know. If you live there and want to help me find Elvis please reach out below.
* editor’s note - this might sound like a muse, but honestly, my old bandmate Elvis is M.I.A. last seen in Cambodia, if you know him tell him to contact us. He can keep the $46.24 he owes me.
II’m not there anymore. I’m not here either. But you can find me if you want to. I try to reveal all that was so that I can reveal all that is not yet. I look back because I look forward to what will end up there.
CLXLXPXS CLXVXIXIDXM CXLXPXSXIXDVXS
“I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine.”
-Lou Reed-
NO DOCTORS - ICICLE OF LOVESONG - MEGAMIX
NO DOCTORS - SHARKSKIN BLUES @ CONTINENTAL CLUB NYC
NO DOCTORS - LIVE ON WLUW
NO DOCTORS - SHARKSKIN BLUES @ SOUTHGATE HOUSE KY
NO DOCTORS - LIVE @ FIRESIDE BOWL CHICAGO
…thanks to & for your help unfuddling and befuddling this jaunt…thanks to DJ Don’t Tell mom for helping me curate the photos…thanks to Chauncey Chaumpers for unearthing and mastering the music…thanks to PAT ON BASS, CLXPXS, MR. BRIANS, KEVeKEV THE APEMAN, MAYOR BUD E. LUV, and all the other members of NO DOCTORS over the years…also all my bandmates in all the bands I ever played in (hello Tom/Mark — see you this weekend)…thanks to Pat for video-editing the Icicle Megamix (at least I think you did)…there are about 2000 other people I should probably thank for today and for yesterday and for maybe tomorrow…also to anyone who read, watched, or listened this far…thanks to all of you…nostalgia isn’t that bad, is it?…
This is fucking great dude. Ugh no notes
The last rock and roll band