{"id":2816,"date":"2010-07-03T22:35:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T02:35:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-10T20:08:32","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:08:32","slug":"independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g53PFiTv_9Q?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIn December 1988 the woman who would become my wife and I first conversed at a show by an Bethlehem, PA garage-rock band called <strong>The Creatures<\/strong>. This band played Philadelphia a lot, wearing black suits and never straying from garage-rock conventions. Unlike a lot of bands that adhered that closely to re-creating an era that was long gone, they didn&#8217;t get bogged down in anachronistic hairdos. Although their songs were as stoopid as could be expected from any no-holds-barred garage-rock band at that time, they delivered their material with some real snarl. Their drummer was one of those tall, thin guys who seemed capable of driving a dance beat while playing nothing but fills. Their bassist looked like a chubby, nerdy cartoon version of my own band&#8217;s bassist. I think he even played a Gibson Ripper, which my close personal friend <strong>chickenfrank<\/strong> initially played when he joined our band as the bass\/guitar swingman, filling in for whichever of our two original members in those roles had decided to &#8220;retire&#8221; or go whitewater rafting for a given show. The Creatures&#8217; singer and leader had a strong, if stiff, stage presence. He reminded me a bit of Herman Munster, had Herman taken the stage with whatever garage band it was that appeared on an episode of <em>The Munsters<\/em>. There may have been a second guitarist, too, a blond guy who functioned as Malcolm Young to the lead guitarist&#8217;s garage-rock Angus. The lead guitarist was the main attraction for me, however, in the half dozen shows I caught by The Creatures, another chubby, mop-topped guy who looked like he loved nothing more than digging into his riffs and shouting all the requisite backing vocal parts that the band&#8217;s no-nonsense garage-rock songs required.<\/p>\n<p>Around the same time I started dating this woman who would become my wife I learned that the lead guitar player, who went by his initials, <strong>JT<\/strong>, also led his own band, <strong>The Original Sins<\/strong>. They made a deservedly big splash with their debut record. The Original Sins were The Creatures minus their lead singer and plus a wicked organ player. The Original Sins were still squarely in the garage-rock camp, but they were more intense and had more range and emotional depth. JT would bark out a series of Stooges-influenced &#8220;outta-my-head&#8221; songs, actually seeming a little out of his head as he delivered his rave-ups, and then shift gears with something more introspective and poppy, something more akin to one of <strong>Big Star<\/strong>&#8216;s feelin&#8217;-kinda-strange-but-it&#8217;s-all-right numbers. I missed the suits, and over time, as the band continued to follow JT&#8217;s increasing flights of fancy, sometimes missed the early Animals-like focus of The Creatures&#8217; material, but &#8211; no offense to the abandoned leader of The Creatures &#8211; I was happy that JT gained his &#8220;independence&#8221; and got to lead his own band. (This is not to suggest that he was tied down, or anything like that, when he was the guitarist for The Creatures &#8211; I never knew their history or intra-band dynamics.)<\/p>\n<p>For purposes of discussion, <em>have you ever followed a band, keyed in on a particular musician who did not seem to be the leader of said band, and then get to enjoy seeing that musician go off and start his or her own thing?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By the way, I believe the leader of The Creatures kept his band going and may still play to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In December 1988 the woman who would become my wife and I first conversed at a show by an Bethlehem, PA garage-rock band called The Creatures. This band played Philadelphia a lot, wearing black suits and never straying from garage-rock conventions. Unlike a lot of bands that adhered that closely to re-creating an era that <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/independence-day\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}