The Paranoids - by Joe Harvard
The Paranoids - by Joe Harvard
Joe Harvard
The first song I ever tried to sing while playing in public was at a Paranoids gig with you and Richie Cunningham. Patty Smith’s version of Gloria from Horses. Sunny Bhutto was there, too, I think we had just come from my first trip to London, so beginning of ’79? I still had my beautiful ’68 Les Paul I pimped out with PAFs & nickel hardware carefully scavenged at the Record Garage.
Paranoids
Dick Wozniak was a classic resident of Q-World, as Quincy House was known at the time. If Adams House was the arts-faggy house, Q was the hippy-druggy headquarters. A good percentage of the University’s freakiest individuals resided there. I remember walking into a certain Caleb’s room once and being confronted by several forty-pound bales of weed. It was that sort of place in the seventies. Dick was a pioneer in many ways: a vegetarian and Buddhist at the time, before it got ultra-hip, he also rode a skateboard around campus WAY before the post-punk run on boards. One of my more memorable moments came when he rode into Adams House during a bones gig, came tearing through a somewhat lame crowd, and almost executed a dramatic skid stop right at the edge of the “stage”…which was just a section of the dining hall floor. Unfortunately, the Building and Grounds boys had given the floor a mean waxing that very day, and instead Dicky sailed sideways and headlong into the mic stand I was singing into, knocking it over and barely avoiding loosening several of my teeth and plowing through my Vox AC-30 amp. It was fucking brilliant! Nice way to warm up a crowd.
The Paranoids took their name from the band of the same monniker in the Thomas Pyncheon novel V. Dicky’s style was very much a product of his Motor City upbringing, and harkened to the Stooges and the MC5 in terms of mayhem and metallic din. With Mike Polite on bass, they could whip up a whole hell of a lot of noise.
I can’t really recall who was the first drummer that Dicky used, but the first time the bones drummer, Richie “Cunningham” Madallo, saw the band, he was sold, and he began to play with the Paranoids for a 2 or 3 years tenure. With them, he was Richie Mondo, a reflection of the wilder side of his persona that the Paranoids allowed him to give vent to. Long after Dicky graduated, Richie moved to Hollywood to work in the video industry, and the pair reunited to work together again, recording an LP in the process. One thing about the Paranoids that set them far apart from most on-campus groups was their existence as a band outside of the dining halls and Junior Common rooms. The poster above, advertising a three-night run at Cambridge’s club, and the post-humous LP are characteristic of the band’s involvement in the legitimate music scene beyond the Ivy. They weren’t just a student hobby or a lark to entertain their house pals, as several of the Harvard groups came down to; they were a real band that made an effort at participating in the local scene. For that, they get extra points.
My own first-ever stage appearance at Harvard, I’m almost certain, was sitting in as a guitarist during a Paranoids show at Q-World. I remember I was wearing these leather pants I’d gotten in London, and so was my then-girlfriend, Sunny Bhutto. She was hot and had these Fiorucci fuck-me pump spike-heels and a fresh Vidal Sassoon doo from his place in London, and I felt like a real rock star! I jumped up and we did an unrehearsed version of “Gloria: In Excelsus Dio” from the Patti Smith Horses album. It was a blast. After that things sort of degenerated, and I hopped off the stage and let the man do his thing. The Paranoids were, I think, a dedicated three-piece outfit from then on. Which was cool, because they worked best that way. I sat in now and again, always a fun gig, but I also felt Dick worked best alone and unfettered when he could crank up his fuzz box and wail with his trademark Gibson Flying V.
Dicky recently wrote me, and reminded me that he had come along to a Slow Children rehearsal with me…this was at the time I was rehearsing with those guys, and had done one or two shows with them, and was realizing that they too worked better as a three-piece (hmmm, do I detect a pattern here?)- or, at least, they sounded better without me. I was thinking Dicky would be a good replacement, he and Joe Fagan both owned Gibson Flying V’s, after all (though Fagey’s preferred axe was the Gibson Explorer/Destroyer, their other futuristic design shaped like a thunderbolt). Dicky sez:
“I am annoyed that you don’t have the Paranoids listed here. I mastered the CD from the original 1/4” tapes of what we recorded in NYC in 1981 and 1982. Fun stuff. The CD has me, Richie Mondo ‘Cunningham’ etc…and Mike Polite on it. I remember YOU playing with our little three-piece on many occasions, sometimes at the various Harvard bear busts. Oh, yeah, it even has one Joe Harvard tune on it ‘the Edge’ which you wrote the music for and gave to me. Do you remember? I still play Joe Slow’s ‘Going to the Station’, correctly in the early slow version. I have some tapes of them.
Also, I remember playing with the Slow Children with you. Joe kicked us out on the same day, as I recall. He kicked me out because ‘Joe is a fuckup and you are his friend, and besides we want to be a three piece’. Also, I remember someone shooting at us in Joe Slows house when we were practicing in the living room.”
Ahhhh…memories! I forgot about getting shot at over at Slow Children’s practice space (it was bass player Austin “Aut” Powell’s basement). Guess the walls were thick enough to stop bullets, but not thick enough to stop Joe’s Marshall amplifier from disturbing the Newton neighbors.
A big nite at the Kirkland House JCR, with five of Harvard’s top bands at the time in question. The Paranoids were the brainchild of the Motor City’s Dick Wozniak, a mean guitarist, Buddhist, and proto-skateboard punk; Bones drummer Richie “Cunningham” Madallo handled the percussion chores.
Joe Harvard
The first song I ever tried to sing while playing in public was at a Paranoids gig with you and Richie Cunningham. Patty Smith’s version of Gloria from Horses. Sunny Bhutto was there, too, I think we had just come from my first trip to London, so beginning of ’79? I still had my beautiful ’68 Les Paul I pimped out with PAFs & nickel hardware carefully scavenged at the Record Garage.
Paranoids
Dick Wozniak was a classic resident of Q-World, as Quincy House was known at the time. If Adams House was the arts-faggy house, Q was the hippy-druggy headquarters. A good percentage of the University’s freakiest individuals resided there. I remember walking into a certain Caleb’s room once and being confronted by several forty-pound bales of weed. It was that sort of place in the seventies. Dick was a pioneer in many ways: a vegetarian and Buddhist at the time, before it got ultra-hip, he also rode a skateboard around campus WAY before the post-punk run on boards. One of my more memorable moments came when he rode into Adams House during a bones gig, came tearing through a somewhat lame crowd, and almost executed a dramatic skid stop right at the edge of the “stage”…which was just a section
of the dining hall floor. Unfortunately, the Building and Grounds boys had given the floor a mean waxing that very day, and instead Dicky sailed sideways and headlong into the mic stand I was singing into, knocking it over and barely avoiding loosening several of my teeth and plowing through my Vox AC-30 amp. It was fucking brilliant! Nice way to warm up a crowd.
The Paranoids took their name from the band of the same monniker in the Thomas Pyncheon novel V. Dicky’s style was very much a product of his Motor City upbringing, and harkened to the Stooges and the MC5 in terms of mayhem and metallic din. With Mike Polite on bass, they could whip up a whole hell of a lot of noise.
I can’t really recall who was the first drummer that Dicky used, but the first time the bones drummer, Richie “Cunningham” Madallo, saw the band, he was sold, and he began to play with the Paranoids for a 2 or 3 years tenure. With them, he was Richie Mondo, a reflection of the wilder side of his persona that the Paranoids allowed him to give vent to. Long after Dicky graduated, Richie moved to Hollywood to work in the video industry, and the pair reunited to work together again, recording an LP in the process. One thing about the Paranoids that set them far apart from most on-campus groups was their existence as a band outside of the dining halls and Junior Common rooms. The poster above, advertising a three-night run at Cambridge’s club, and the post-humous LP are characteristic of the band’s involvement in the legitimate music scene beyond the Ivy. They weren’t just a student hobby or a lark to entertain their house pals, as several of the Harvard groups came down to; they were a real band that made an effort at participating in the local scene. For that, they get extra points.
My own first-ever stage appearance at Harvard, I’m almost certain, was sitting in as a guitarist during a Paranoids show at Q-World. I remember I was wearing these leather pants I’d gotten in London, and so was my then-girlfriend, Sunny Bhutto. She was hot and had these Fiorucci fuck-me pump spike-heels and a fresh Vidal Sassoon doo from his place in London, and I felt like a real rock star! I jumped up and we did an unrehearsed version of “Gloria: In Excelsus Dio” from the Patti Smith Horses album. It was a blast. After that things sort of degenerated, and I hopped off the stage and let the man do his thing. The Paranoids were, I think, a dedicated three-piece outfit from then on. Which was cool, because they worked best that way. I sat in now and again, always a fun gig, but I also felt Dick worked best alone and unfettered when he could crank up his fuzz box and wail with his trademark Gibson Flying V.
Dicky recently wrote me, and reminded me that he had come along to a Slow Children rehearsal with me…this was at the time I was rehearsing with those guys, and had done one or two shows with them, and was realizing that they too worked better as a three-piece (hmmm, do I detect a pattern here?)- or, at least, they sounded better without me. I was thinking Dicky would be a good replacement, he and Joe Fagan both owned Gibson Flying V’s, after all (though Fagey’s preferred axe was the Gibson Explorer/Destroyer, their other futuristic design shaped like a thunderbolt). Dicky sez:
“I am annoyed that you don’t have the Paranoids listed here. I mastered the CD from the original 1/4” tapes of what we recorded in NYC in 1981 and 1982. Fun stuff. The CD has me, Richie Mondo ‘Cunningham’ etc…and Mike Polite on it. I remember YOU playing with our little three-piece on many occasions, sometimes at the various Harvard bear busts. Oh, yeah, it even has one Joe Harvard tune on it ‘the Edge’ which you wrote the music for and gave to me. Do you remember? I still play Joe Slow’s ‘Going to the Station’, correctly in the early slow version. I have some tapes of them.
Also, I remember playing with the Slow Children with you. Joe kicked us out on the same day, as I recall. He kicked me out because ‘Joe is a fuckup and you are his friend, and besides we want to be a three piece’. Also, I remember someone shooting at us in Joe Slows house when we were practicing in the
living room.” Ahhhh…memories! I forgot about getting shot at over at Slow Children’s practice space (it was bass player Austin “Aut” Powell’s basement). Guess the walls were thick enough to stop bullets, but not thick enough to stop Joe’s Marshall amplifier from disturbing the Newton neighbors.
A big nite at the Kirkland House JCR, with five of Harvard’s top bands at the time in question. The Paranoids were the brainchild of the Motor City’s Dick Wozniak, a mean guitarist, Buddhist, and proto-skateboard punk; Bones drummer Richie “Cunningham” Madallo handled the percussion chores.
Joe Harvard
The first song I ever tried to sing while playing in public was at a Paranoids gig with you and Richie Cunningham. Patty Smith’s version of Gloria from Horses. Sunny Bhutto was there, too, I think we had just come from my first trip to London, so beginning of ’79? I still had my beautiful ’68 Les Paul I pimped out with PAFs & nickel hardware carefully scavenged at the Record Garage.
Paranoids
Dick Wozniak was a classic resident of Q-World, as Quincy House was known at the time. If Adams House was the arts-faggy house, Q was the hippy-druggy headquarters. A good percentage of the University’s freakiest individuals resided there. I remember walking into a certain Caleb’s room once and being confronted by several forty-pound bales of weed. It was that sort of place in the seventies. Dick was a pioneer in many ways: a vegetarian and Buddhist at the time, before it got ultra-hip, he also rode a skateboard around campus WAY before the post-punk run on boards. One of my more memorable moments came when he rode into Adams House during a bones gig, came tearing through a somewhat lame crowd, and almost executed a dramatic skid stop right at the edge of the “stage”…which was just a section of the dining hall floor. Unfortunately, the Building and Grounds boys had given the floor a mean waxing that very day, and instead Dicky sailed sideways and headlong into the mic stand I was singing into, knocking it over and barely avoiding loosening several of my teeth and plowing through my Vox AC-30 amp. It was fucking brilliant! Nice way to warm up a crowd.
The Paranoids took their name from the band of the same monniker in the Thomas Pyncheon novel V. Dicky’s style was very much a product of his Motor City upbringing, and harkened to the Stooges and the MC5 in terms of mayhem and metallic din. With Mike Polite on bass, they could whip up a whole hell of a lot of noise.
I can’t really recall who was the first drummer that Dicky used, but the first time the bones drummer, Richie “Cunningham” Madallo, saw the band, he was sold, and he began to play with the Paranoids for a 2 or 3 years tenure. With them, he was Richie Mondo, a reflection of the wilder side of his persona that the Paranoids allowed him to give vent to. Long after Dicky graduated, Richie moved to Hollywood to work in the video industry, and the pair reunited to work together again, recording an LP in the process. One thing about the Paranoids that set them far apart from most on-campus groups was their existence as a band outside of the dining halls and Junior Common rooms. The poster above, advertising a three-night run at Cambridge’s club, and the post-humous LP are characteristic of the band’s involvement in the legitimate music scene beyond the Ivy. They weren’t just a student hobby or a lark to entertain their house pals, as several of the Harvard groups came down to; they were a real band that made an effort at participating in the local scene. For that, they get extra points.
My own first-ever stage appearance at Harvard, I’m almost certain, was sitting in as a guitarist during a Paranoids show at Q-World. I remember I was wearing these leather pants I’d gotten in London, and so was my then-girlfriend, Sunny Bhutto. She was hot and had these Fiorucci fuck-me pump spike-heels and a fresh Vidal Sassoon doo from his place in London, and I felt like a real rock star! I jumped up and we did an unrehearsed version of “Gloria: In Excelsus Dio” from the Patti Smith Horses album. It was a blast. After that things sort of degenerated, and I hopped off the stage and let the man do his thing. The Paranoids were, I think, a dedicated three-piece outfit from then on. Which was cool, because they worked best that way. I sat in now and again, always a fun gig, but I also felt Dick worked best alone and unfettered when he could crank up his fuzz box and wail with his trademark Gibson Flying V.
Dicky recently wrote me, and reminded me that he had come along to a Slow Children rehearsal with me…this was at the time I was rehearsing with those guys, and had done one or two shows with them, and was realizing that they too worked better as a three-piece (hmmm, do I detect a pattern here?)- or, at least, they sounded better without me. I was thinking Dicky would be a good replacement, he and Joe Fagan both owned Gibson Flying V’s, after all (though Fagey’s preferred axe was the Gibson Explorer/Destroyer, their other futuristic design shaped like a thunderbolt). Dicky sez:
“I am annoyed that you don’t have the Paranoids listed here. I mastered the CD from the original 1/4” tapes of what we recorded in NYC in 1981 and 1982. Fun stuff. The CD has me, Richie Mondo ‘Cunningham’ etc…and Mike Polite on it. I remember YOU playing with our little three-piece on many occasions, sometimes at the various Harvard bear busts. Oh, yeah, it even has one Joe Harvard tune on it ‘the Edge’ which you wrote the music for and gave to me. Do you remember? I still play Joe Slow’s ‘Going to the Station’, correctly in the early slow version. I have some tapes of them.
Also, I remember playing with the Slow Children with you. Joe kicked us out on the same day, as I recall. He kicked me out because ‘Joe is a fuckup and you are his friend, and besides we want to be a three piece’. Also, I remember someone shooting at us in Joe Slows house when we were practicing in the living room.”
Ahhhh…memories! I forgot about getting shot at over at Slow Children’s practice space (it was bass player Austin “Aut” Powell’s basement). Guess the walls were thick enough to stop bullets, but not thick enough to stop Joe’s Marshall amplifier from disturbing the Newton neighbors.
A big nite at the Kirkland House JCR, with five of Harvard’s top bands at the time in question. The Paranoids were the brainchild of the Motor City’s Dick Wozniak, a mean guitarist, Buddhist, and proto-skateboard punk; Bones drummer Richie “Cunningham” Madallo handled the percussion chores.